Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [308]
Perhaps it was just her cheerfulness that Margaret found irritating. The harvest was ruined, William Walsh was away taking risks with his reputation; yet while the thunder crashed outside, this rich little Dublin woman chatted away as though there was nothing wrong in the world. She talked of events in the city and her life there, suddenly remarking, for no reason Margaret could see, “But you’re so lucky to live down here.” She ran on about the delights of Dalkey. She described a visit she’d paid to Fingal. But it was when, as an aside, she expressed her sorrow about the Talbot murder at the turn of the previous year that Margaret lost patience and almost before she realised what she was saying, sourly remarked, “One less Talbot never did any harm.”
It was quite unforgivable really. It would have been cruel even if she hadn’t known that Joan’s Butler family were close to the Talbots.
And however much the Doyle woman might have taunted her in the past, it was worse than bad manners to insult her like this when she was a guest in her own house. The words were scarcely out of her mouth before she felt ashamed. The insult found its mark. She saw the Doyle woman give a little gasp and flush, And she hardly knew where the conversation might have gone next if her fifteen-year-old son, Richard, had not just then come into the house from the barn.
“This is your son?” The Dublin woman turned and smiled; and Margaret secretly gave a sigh of relief.
There was no denying it, her youngest child was a very handsome boy. Slim, with red hair, not quite as dark as hers, a few freckles, an easy temper. If, like most boys of his age, he was sometimes moody, with strangers like the alderman’s wife he was always engaging. Margaret could see that he had charmed the Dublin woman in no time. Thank God, she thought ruefully, that he has his father’s good manners. He was soon answering all their guest’s questions about himself and describing his simple country life with such artless enthusiasm that Joan Doyle was quite delighted; and if she had not forgotten Margaret’s insult, she chose to believe as if she had, so that Margaret was only too glad to let the two of them talk. Only once did she interrupt. The Doyle woman had been asking Richard about his brothers and sisters when she enquired, “And your father, where is he?”
“He’s up in Fingal,” Margaret answered sharply, before her son could speak. He glanced at her with a hint of annoyance as though to say: do you think I’m so stupid that I’ll blurt out the wrong thing? The Doyle woman saw it, but all she said was, “My husband has a very high regard for your father.”
By late afternoon the storm had not abated. The thunder had rolled out into the bay, but the rain was still pounding down with the same monotonous hiss. “You won’t be going anywhere this evening,” Margaret heard herself say. When she went into the kitchen to supervise the preparation of the evening meal, Joan Doyle accompanied her; but she waited and didn’t get in the way until, seeing there were some peas to be shelled, she quietly made herself useful. Whatever her feelings about the woman might be, Margaret couldn’t really complain of her.
It was early evening when they began to eat. Normally it would still have been bright outside, but so black were the storm clouds that Margaret had to light candles on the big oak table. As well as a fish stew, beef, and sweetmeats—her guest was, after all, the wife of a Dublin alderman—Margaret provided a flagon of their best red wine. I’ll need it myself, she had thought, to get through this evening. Yet during the meal, at which, in the Irish manner, the whole household ate together, the Dublin woman was so easy with everybody, laughing and joking with her children and the groom, the men from the farm and the women who worked in the house, that Margaret had grudgingly to acknowledge that she was, after all, a wife and mother not so unlike herself. And perhaps it was the