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  Noel shrugged, then tugged at his black curly hair with a gesture which he knew to be boyish, wandering whether to turn on the slight brogue which usually could capture the transatlantic visitors, but his sister forestalled him “Go and see if you can find Raff, Judy,” she said, and following the girl a little way down the hall, added in a low voice: “If you do find him, keep him busy, He hates a scene of this kind. Noel and I will get the matter straightened out between us.”

  Judy went, rather glad to be out of any further argument. She had been led to believe from the beginning that the richer the customer the more they objected to paying, and it seemed to be true. She found Raff eventually in the old gun-room, seldom used now, except for his own purpose. He was cleaning a shotgun and she stood and watched him, seeing that he would be occupied for some time without the necessity of any intervention to distract him.

  Eventually he looked up and asked casually:

  “Have those American women gone yet? I ought to do my stuff, I suppose, and wish them God-speed.”

  She started a little guiltily at the reminder that she had entirely forgotten her reason for being in the gun-room.

  “I think they must have gone by now,” she said, speaking rather quickly. “They were having a little argument about their bill, but I expect it’s all settled now.”

  “Had they asked to see me?” he inquired sharply.

  “Well, yes—but Miss Maule said you hated those sort of scenes and they would settle it between them.”

  “So you were sent to keep me out of the way, were you?” he said on a curious inflection.”

  “I’d better go and find out what’s been happening.”

  He walked out of the room with that long swinging stride she had come to associate with his loosely built frame. His tweed jacket, she noticed, needed another patch of leather just below the elbow. She followed him back to the hall and the open door of the manager’s office, but to her relief brother and sister were alone, and Noel, catching sight of her over Raff’s shoulder, gave her a wink.

  “What was this trouble over the American’s bill?” Raff asked, and Marcia, busy filing her nails in an idle moment, said, opening her eyes wide:

  “Didn’t Judy find you in time? Well, never mind, it’s all settled now and they’ve gone. Rather an impossible woman really.”

  “Had you overcharged?” Raff asked, and Noel shrugged. “Only the usual little frills we pile on for the Yanks. And we always cock it on for the Sarsfield Suite—after all, it’s got the lot—four-posters, gloomy tapestries, and even gloomier Irish history! It’s even got plumbing of a sort,” he said.

  “You’re too fond of sticking on extras when you think the currency will trip them up,” Raff said with surprising brusqueness. “You’d better let me see the bills.”

  “How can I? They’ve gone off with them, all nicely receipted as they should be.”

  “You presumably keep duplicates in the ledger.”

  Noel shrugged again.

  “I don’t always bother—just write down the total,” he said. “Anyway, I got rid of these two by handsomely knocking something off, so not to worry.”

  The overworked phrase irritated Raff.

  “You’re a little too casual over these matters, Noel,” he said. “Can’t you see that by reducing the bill to end an argument you’re only admitting you’ve overcharged?”

  “Dar-ling!” Marcia said silkily, shaping one nail with exquisite care, “you’re making awfully heavy weather. Poor Noel’s only trying to make money for you. Let’s leave it all now, shall we? After lunch you and I will go through the details quietly together. I saw the bills, so even if the poor sweet hasn’t kept duplicates I can probably remember. We’ll write it all down in a ledger so that we’ll know for another time what extras are permissible and what are not Shall we all go and have a drink? It’s nearly lunchtime and Noel ought to be behind the bar.”

  So Judy found herself driving to Knockferry with Noel on some unspecified errand of his sister’s, and although she wished that Raff had kept his earlier promise and told her himself, her interest and pleasure soon became independent of her escort. To Noel the market was a familiar sight and one to be avoided if one wished to effect one’s personal business quickly, but to Judy’s English eyes the town presented a scene of colourful chaos, very different from like proceedings in an orderly market square. Stalls were set up in every street, and beasts roamed at will on to the pavements and even into the shops, while their owners gathered in the drink-shops or argued excitedly at the street corners. Rosy-cheeked men with long upper lips and round eyes and snub noses all looked alike to her, wearing the extraordinary hats of their race, desiccated felts like puddings, and bowlers green with age with flattened brim and battered crown.

  “I’ve never seen such hats!” she told Noel, staring in frank amazement, so much so that one mildly inebriated gentleman chucked her under the chin and observed, with rich appreciation:

  “Is it the face on me that takes your fancy, me doty? Sure, you’re a lovely gurrl, a lovely gurrl...”

  “Do you think he meant it?” Judy asked, her face pink and her green eyes shining, but Noel was already bored, and had not been paying attention. The little redhead’s naiveness had amused him at first, but now he wanted to get out of this smelly mob and go home; Marcia should have succeeded in smoothing down Raff by now, and he was tired of doing nursemaid.

  While he was putting away the car, back at Slyne, she wandered down to the jetty and, still mindful of the compliment which had been paid her by a stranger, knelt down on the end of the jetty and gazed into the water, trying to see in her wavering reflection the promise of a beauty not before suspected.

  She heard a step on the wooden planks behind her, and, thinking it was Noel, did not move until Raff’s voice asked suddenly:

  “What on earth are you doing?”

  “Looking to see if I was pretty,” she answered, without stopping to think, and he squatted down beside her and began peering into the water too.

  “O-ho!” he said. “So you’re vain, after all, Miss Ware! What do you see in your watery mirror—Cinderella transformed, Beauty awakened, duckling into swan?”

  “You’re laughing at me!” she said, suddenly a little shy. “I’m not really vain, only—well, a man in the town called me a lovely girl, and no one ever has before. Of course he was a bit drunk, so that probably explains it.”

  He glanced at her with amused affection.

  “It’s a common expression in Ireland and can apply to almost anything,” he told her, then laughed gently at her crestfallen face. “How do you know he wasn’t what you would call a wolf?”

  “One can tell,” she said.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. Wolves are wolves and nice men are nice men—it’s quite simple, really. It’s an instinct one’s provided with, I suppose.”

  “Very convenient” he retorted a little dryly. “Do your labels never come unstuck?”

  “Not so far—but then,” she added honestly, “I haven’t very much experience.”

  “How would you label me?” he asked her suddenly, and she gave him a little sidelong glance.

  “Not a wolf anyway,” she said, and his ugly face registered mock regret.

  “How disappointing! Wolves have the best of it, I imagine,” he said, and she frowned.

  “Not in the long run, would you think?” she replied quite seriously. “I mean there are fundamental things they miss—things like roots.”

  “Ah, yes, roots—how serious we are becoming!” he said.

  “Did you enjoy yourself today?”

  “Yes, but I wish you’d taken me.”

  “Why—didn’t Noel come up to standard?”

  “It’s hardly Mr. Maule’s idea of an afternoon’s entertainment, I imagine. Why are you talking to me like a child, Mr. O’Rafferty?”

  He raised his eyebrows as they turned to walk back along the jetty.

  “I wasn’t aw
are of it,” he said, sounding surprised. “Now I’ll ask you one! Why do you resent your youth, Miss Ware?”

  “I don’t,” she replied sedately. “I only resent being talked down to. Twenty, after all, is quite a responsible age.”

  “Dear me!” he exclaimed, glancing at her a little wryly. “What a terrible indictment! I’d no idea I sounded such a prig.”

  She slipped a hand through his arm, quite unconscious of the familiarity.

  “You could never be that,” she told him fondly.

  Marcia herself came out of the house at that moment, and stood under the porch, watching them, observing the unconscious ease with which Judy was hanging on to Raff’s arm, and the quick response he made to her eager questions.

  “Well,” she said as they reached her, “you work fast, I must say, Judy! I thought Noel was your escort for the afternoon.”

  “We’ve just got back,” Judy said, trying to withdraw her hand, knowing very well that Marcia was displeased by the gesture, but Raff unexpectedly anchored her hand firmly under his arm, then put the other carelessly round Marcia’s shoulders.

  “Come on!” he said. “Let’s go in and see what Mary Kate’s got for tea.”

  II

  March was a month to be remembered for events which annually stirred their small community and, indeed, the whole of the country. St Patrick’s Day with its holiday air, its shamrock and its drunks: the Grand National and the Irish horse which nearly won, and the football games, and the dog tracks and the horse fairs and all the hundred-and-one brief happenings that lent colour to the days and seemed to crowd together following the wild inconsequence of the weather. The Atlantic storms broke over the mountains which sheltered Slyne and lashed the quiet waters of the lough to an angry sea of turbulence so that miniature waves beat on the shore and the north side was hidden in a mist of spray.

  Sometimes it was too rough to take the boat across to the other side for provisions and Noel or Marcia would send Judy in the Land Rover to Knockferry for supplies. She was not an expert driver, having had little opportunity in England for practice, and she found difficulty in mastering the Land Rover’s unfamiliar gears, but she enjoyed bumping over the rough south road in the wind and rain, blissfully unaware, in her ignorance, of its perils. Visitors and tourists, she knew, used the north road which lay on the other side of the lough past Casey’s, and was properly macadamed, but it was a long way round and no one at Slyne ever thought of taking it

  It was Raff who put an untimely stop to these jaunts, and by so doing did not further Marcia’s liking for the girl.

  “You must be crazy, sending her on the south road alone!” he snapped at Noel when, one day, he discovered the cause of his secretary’s absence at a moment when he needed her services. “Those twists and bends are most dangerous unless you know them, and for someone inexperienced they’re murder! What on earth possessed you?”

  “My dear chap, it isn’t the first time!” Noel protested mildly. “The girl has her wits about her even if she does crash the gears. Who else is there to send if Marcia or I are busy?”

  “One of the farmhands—or myself, if necessary. It’s not to happen again, do you understand, Noel? I won’t have the child risking her neck and limbs on that road.”

  “You let Marcia use it,” Noel said, too interested in such a definite reaction to turn sulky at being reprimanded.

  “That’s different Marcia can look after herself,” he retorted, and then found she had joined them in Noel’s office and was standing at his elbow.

  “How ungallant! In what way am I supposed to look after myself?” she said lightly, but her eyes were suddenly watchful.

  “You and Noel have been sending Judy on errands to Knockferry without warning her to take the north road. Apart from the fact that she should take such instructions from me, I will not shoulder that kind of responsibility for an inexperienced girl who hasn’t the sense to realise the danger. You should both of you have known better.”

  “We-ll...” Marcia drawled when he had slammed out of the office. “What an extraordinary to-do about a very ordinary matter! The girl can drive, can’t she?”

  “She gets there and back each time, so I imagine she can, but don’t air those remarks to Raff or he’ll flay you again for not making sure,” her brother said with a grin.

  “And I don’t matter, taking this dangerous south road—I can look after myself,” she said with narrowed eyes. “If that’s to be simple little Miss Ware’s line, I’ll think up a few rather more subtle approaches myself, to spike her guns.”

  “I don’t honestly think she’s got a line,” Noel submitted regretfully. “She’s just a nice, uninhibited young girl, anxious to please.”

  “Have you fallen for it, too?” asked his sister scornfully.

  “No, she’s not really my cup of tea—besides, she’s up to the tricks of wolves, so she tells me.”

  “Another line, I shouldn’t be surprised! Oh, don’t think I underrate her, darling. Even I can see there’s a sort of coltish charm, coupled with that ghastly passion for truth and honesty.”

  Noel began to laugh.

  “You sound quite human when you’re jealous, my sweet.”

  “What do you mean, I sound quite human?” she asked. “Just what I say. You’ve been putting on the elegant sophisticate act for so long that you’ve probably forgotten about the milk of human kindness that’s supposed to spring up in us all.”

  “I think you’re nuts!” she said. “Since when have you discovered the milk of human kindness in yourself?”

  “Not often, it’s true,” he replied cheerfully, “but I haven’t needed it. In your case you might find it an asset—if you still want to land old Raff, that is. He’s one of the Romantics, I suspect and Kathy pandered to it. He’s very simple, really—too simple for you, sweet. You’d get bored.”

  “Do you think so? You don’t know as much about me as you think you do, darling, and I’m sick and tired of Kathy’s wholesome little ghost always popping up to my disadvantage. He can’t still be hankering after her!”

  “Oh, I shouldn’t think so. She’s probably just a sweet nostalgic memory of his own youth.”

  “She’d have been my age now if she’d lived, and he’d have been tired to death of her. Sweetness can cloy.”

  “But not youth—not the untapped capacity of inexperience to give and be grateful,” he said, not because he really believed it but because he never could resist sowing seeds of mischief and watching for results.

  “Are you thinking of Judy, by any chance?” she asked with a sudden dangerous calm.

  “Aren’t you?”

  “That red hair! But of course it’s ridiculous!”

  “Yes, isn’t it?”

  But he knew it was not.

  When Judy returned, ignorant of the small stir her absence had caused, she was unprepared for Raff’s reception.

  “I employed you as a secretary, and not to go gallivanting into the town with no specific orders from me,” he snapped when she joined him in his study. “There’s a pile of work to get through.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, pausing uncertainly before she sat down at her typewriter. “They said you were out, and things were wanted from Knockferry.”

  “They—if you mean the Maules—had no business to send you. In future, you will take your orders from me—understand?”

  “Yes, Mr. O’Rafferty,” she said, and sat down opposite him to await his instructions, wondering what had caused such sharp displeasure in him.

  It was the first taste she had had of what Marcia called his king-of-the-castle mood and she was at a loss to understand how she could have provoked it. Already her duties had begun to exceed those usual to a secretary and she countered the errands to Knockferry as one of the more pleasant of them.

  “Are you afraid I’ll damage your car?” she asked, thinking a little guiltily of the hazards she had met with on the south road, the twists and turns that she had negotiated by a mira
cle, the sheep that seemed to appear from nowhere, causing her to brake with such suddenness that she stalled the engine.

  “I’m more concerned that you might damage yourself,” he said then, and the disfavour had gone from his voice. “The south road is not suitable for the novice driver, as Noel should have known, and whole limbs are more important to me than a broken back axle. Remember, will you?”

  She looked at him with sudden understanding. He had been thinking, of course, of Kathy, whose limbs had been crippled by disease, with whom he was sometimes bound to compare her because she was young and whole and had red hair.

  “I’m not a very good driver, but I’m safe,” she said, wishing to reassure him, but he suddenly switched on the desk-light, dispelling what illusions he might have had, and answered briskly:

  “Safe or not, you’ll ask permission from me before you take either of the cars out again. Now, we’d better get on with some work.”

  He kept her hard at it for several days, seeming suddenly to have shed his old indifference in regard to the running of the place. Noel was several times called upon to explain discrepancies which were beginning to creep back into his own ledgers, and an awkward little scene over their bill with the departing Lucas family only served as an unfortunate reminder of the recent trouble with the two Americans.

  “You might have known you were sticking it on too much for people like that to swallow,” Marcia told her brother impatiently. “That type always check their bills with care and raise a stink if they’ve been overcharged, and it’s too soon after that business with the Yanks. Why couldn’t you have put things right without bringing Raff into it?”

  “Because, my dearly beloved sister, they insisted on seeing the proprietor, Blanks to that halfwit Judy’s interference,” he replied sulkily.

  “Judy? What had she got to do with it?”

  “Simply that I’d wangle a nice bit of surcharge for her services baby-sitting which, if you remember, was Ma Lucas’s own suggestion, and I suppose I piled it on too thick.”