Cloud Castle Read online

  “Well?”

  “Well, I tried to get out of it by saying the money went into Judy’s pocket in lieu of a tip, and the wretched girl let me down. Said she’d never had it.”

  “Oh, you’re a fool! Why didn’t you prime her first?”

  “Didn’t get the chance. Anyway she’d probably have been suspicious after that other affair.”

  “And what pretty tales has she cooked up for Raff?”

  “God knows! He swept her off to his study like a delinquent pupil and she’s in there with him now.”

  Judy herself felt not unlike a delinquent pupil as she sat at her typewriter listening to Raff’s terse comments. She had been acutely embarrassed by the scene in Noel’s office and had realised, too late, that she should have held her tongue when appealed to by Mrs. Lucas. Even so, she could not let what she at first took to be a genuine mistake pass without trying to correct it. Raff had dealt with the matter with such chilly courtesy that the Lucases almost found themselves apologising, and it was not until she was alone with him that Judy realised he might have misunderstood the whole incident.

  “Is Noel in the habit of putting a surcharge on the bill for your services for the guests?” he asked, and she looked unhappy.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Now let this be plainly understood between us, Judy,” he said. “You are employed here as secretary first and foremost, and if you choose to do extra chores for my guests that’s entirely a matter for your own good nature and nothing more. You might have known that I wouldn’t countenance a charge on the bill for unlisted courtesies, and neither will I permit anyone on my staff to take money, other than the servants who would naturally expect their tips. If the wage I pay you is not sufficient, then you should say so and not scrounge perks with Noel’s missed connivance.”

  She listened, at first dismayed by the unexpected turn of his conclusions, then her temper began to rise.

  “The wage you pay me is perfectly sufficient, and I’m not a scrounger, Mr. O’Rafferty,” she said, and her eyes looked suddenly very green.

  “I’m sure you’re not by nature,” he replied more pacifically, “but you’re inexperienced, rather naturally, in this type of post. If guests choose to make you a present on leaving, that’s a different matter, but you must never make private charges that are outside the tariff I draw up and send out. What sort of reputation do you imagine that would get us?”

  She said, following her own line of thought, unconscious at that moment that it was she herself who was being found fault with:

  “You should keep an eye on everything a great deal more than you do. You don’t see the bills when visitors check out. How do you know if they tally with the books?”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “The presenting of bills is the manager’s job. Have you any further suggestions for the running of my business?” he observed dryly, and saw her flush.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “That wasn’t meant as an impertinence. Do you want me to go?”

  “Certainly not. We have some work to do.”

  “I didn’t mean now. I meant do you want me to leave your employment?”

  He reached automatically for his pipe and his face became frankly puzzled.

  “Now why on earth should you imagine that?” he asked. “I’m not prepared to sack you every time I have to haul you over the coals.”

  She blinked at him dumbly, confused by this odd habit he had of addressing her at times with the indulgence he might have shown to an argumentative child. He had, she thought, no conception of when maturity in a woman began.

  “You label us, don’t you?” she said, and, had she known it, equally confused him by the sudden voicing of her private thoughts.

  “Who do you mean—secretaries in general?” he asked, frowning.

  “No, young girls. Under twenty we’re sort of half-baked fledglings—after twenty-five we blossom into womanhood—if we’re lucky.”

  “What very extraordinary things you say! I wouldn’t have set you down as a half-baked fledgling, if that’s any comfort to you, but I don’t imagine I’d be far wrong in saying that you’re a most unusual secretary.”

  “Am I? Perhaps I haven’t learnt to conform,” she said, sounding suddenly humble, and he smiled, his ugly face creasing into those lines and wrinkles that were expectedly endearing.

  “Then don’t try,” he said. “I, no doubt, haven’t learnt to conform as an employer and, as I’ve never had a secretary before, we’ll just have to make a guess at the right relationship. Let’s get down to some work.”

  III

  The Maules’ attitude changed slightly after that incident Noel, though he shrugged the whole affair off and only laughed at Judy’s endeavours to avoid him, took pleasure in a form of teasing that was not always kindly, and Marcia, after a few sharp words, made it her business to exclude Judy as much as possible from the routine business of the guest house.

  “Leave such matters as bills and accounts to Noel. That’s what he’s here for,” she said.

  “But I have to check the accounts when they come in for Mr. O’Rafferty’s final O.K.,” Judy said, and Marcia gave one of her conspiratorial smiles and patted Judy lightly on the cheek.

  “Of course,” she said humorously, “but you don’t have to dot your i’s and cross your t’s quite so thoroughly, do you? Your conscientiousness is very praiseworthy, my dear child, but it can become an awful bore if carried to extremes.”

  “I’m paid to be conscientious—and accurate,” Judy replied stubbornly, and Marcia yawned.

  “Of course,” she said again. “But your job is to transcribe what’s set before you, not to question methods which you couldn’t be expected to understand.”

  “Yes, Miss Maule,” said Judy dutifully, and Marcia threw her a look of impatient tolerance.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, call us by our Christian names!” she exclaimed. “We should be friends, you and I and Noel, Judy. We’re all three employed here in minor and lesser degrees.”

  “But you and your brother have money in the business, haven’t you? That would make you partners.”

  “What gave you that idea?” Marcia laughed. “We are paid for our services, the same as you are, so that puts us on an equal footing, doesn’t it? Perhaps you’ll understand now, my dear, that any little perks on the side are a quite justifiable license. Noel and I were flat broke when we came here.”

  Judy understood, but not in the way Marcia had intended. She had thought, all along, that the Maules had money in the business; neither of them behaved like subordinates, and the fact that the friendship between the’ two men appeared to be of long standing had given her the wrong impression. Marcia, for some reason of her own, was evidently trying to establish a new relationship with the latest member of the staff, but Judy thought she preferred the old one. It was not pleasant to be tentatively included in methods of taking advantage of a tolerant employer.

  She did not find it easy at first to address either of them by their Christian names, but since Marcia seemed to become irritated by a more formal approach, the habit grew. They were forced, the four of them, very much into one another’s company by virtue of the fact that Raff’s study was the one private place left to them when the house was full, but the hours spent there were often uncomfortable for Judy. Marcia, lying back in a chair, smoking her interminable cigarettes and watching Raff through half-closed eyes, made it plain that she wanted to be alone with him, and Raff himself would sometimes lean over the back of the chair, between restless pacing about the room, as if he also was impatient of the presence of the other two. Often Noel would lounge and chatter as if he enjoyed the fact that his company was unwanted, but sometimes he would make the excuse that the bar needed him and leave the room with studied casualness, taking Judy with him.

  “I don’t want to sit in the bar for the rest of the evening,” she said on the first occasion, and he slapped her carelessly on the behind.

 
; “Then go to your room, Miss Gooseberry,” he said. “Don’t you know when you’re not wanted?”

  She spent many evenings in the nursery after that, looking at the books which had been Raff’s as a child, and wondering, as she had at the beginning, whether Marcia’s undoubted beauty was succeeding in effacing the ghost of that early love. She had no knowledge herself of affairs of the heart, but she did not believe, from the little she knew of him, that a man of Raff’s temperament would be content to remain celibate for the sake of a memory that must, by now, be a little dimmed; but Marcia ... what had she to offer in exchange? Beauty, poise, the natural makings of a good chatelaine, the accomplished facade of a woman most men would be proud to claim as wife; but underneath all that ... was there a core to be touched that was not self-seeking, was there some deeper quality which was not apparent in the brother?

  It’s none of my business, Judy told herself, crossly, at the end of these speculations. Raff was old enough to look after his own interests, both personal and financial. If he was being cheated by the handsome couple who depended on him for a living, it was not her affair, neither were Marcia’s future intentions; it was merely a little unfortunate that Michael O’Rafferty was beginning to stir feelings in herself that were not altogether impersonal.

  “What would you say to a drive across the Plain of Cluny and that promised tea at the inn by Lough Creagh—I did promise, didn’t I?” he said, one afternoon.

  So he had remembered after all!

  “I would say thank you very much, Mr. O’Rafferty,” she replied at once, and he smiled.

  “Can’t it be Raff?” he asked unexpectedly. “I’m not a great deal older than Noel and Marcia, you know.”

  “You’re my employer, and that’s quite different,” she answered, whereupon he told her a little brusquely to go and get ready and not to keep him waiting.

  She perched beside him in the Land Rover which he had chosen today instead of the shooting-brake he usually drove, and was dismayed when he bade her take the wheel and show him what she could do. He was soon, however, uttering soft imprecations, and after she had stalled the engine for the third time avoiding the sheep and the unattended donkeys which to her seemed to populate the roads of Ireland, he ordered her to change over again.

  “Never in all my born days!” he exclaimed, conscious, with a sudden jolt of memory, how he had endeavoured to teach Kathy to drive all those years ago. But Kathy had dissolved in tears under his instruction and had to be comforted; this girl simply gave him a wide smile and observed tranquilly that she was afraid she had not got the hang of the gears.

  “You certainly haven’t—or the hang of our roads or an eye for judgement,” he retorted. “You’ll not drive, even on the more civilised north road, without further lessons from me.”

  “Very well, Mr. O’Rafferty,” she replied obediently, but she did not think he would be a very patient teacher, neither did she imagine he would remember, or find time to instruct her.

  “I’ve ceased to be your employer for the afternoon,” he said, and added, at her look of surprise, “I get tired of being addressed with such formality. It makes me feel old.”

  “Oh, I see. Very well, I will call you Raff for the afternoon, if it would please you,” she said with composure. “It’s a nice nickname, but Michael is nicer. Does no one call you that?”

  Kathy had called him that, and she knew it at once as he answered absently:

  “Not for many years. Raff was the obvious abbreviation of my surname, and in the Air Force most of us collected nicknames of sorts. Noel’s was Spongy.”

  “Spongy! Not a very nice nickname to acquire—and did he?”

  “Sponge? Quite blatantly, nobody minded. Noel could always charm the shirt off your back.”

  She was silent, irritated for a moment by his tolerant acceptance of the rights of a young man who could still behave with the unthinking egotism of a spoilt child.

  He said gently, glancing at her disapproving profile:

  “I haven’t any illusions about Noel, you know. He’s good at his job, but he’s out for what he can get.”

  “Why do you keep him, then?” she asked, before she could stop herself, and expected an immediate rebuff, but he answered quite mildly:

  “I’ve a sort of fondness for him, I suppose, and I couldn’t run the place without him. Besides—there’s Marcia.”

  Of course, Marcia ... if Noel were to leave Slyne, his sister would go too, presumably ... it seemed very obvious to Judy now where Raff’s interests lay, and the wind blowing in through the unprotected windows of the Land Rover felt suddenly cold.

  They had reached the Plain of Cluny, a wild bleak stretch of moorland, broken only by a criss-cross pattern of neglected stone walls and a brilliant patch or two of bog. Judy looked at it with dubious eyes; it was unfriendly, barren country and she thought of the gentle beauty of the view from the Pass of Slyne and shivered.

  “Cold?” Raff asked, and she nodded; but it was a coldness of the spirit rather than of the flesh, she thought, which made her pull the collar of her coat high about her ears.

  “Tea will warm you up,” he said, negotiating a humpbacked bridge with the ease of one well versed in the peculiarities of the terrain. “The plain is a bit dour for the tourist taste, but Lough Creagh should cheer you up. It’s very beautiful.”

  It was indeed beautiful, smaller than their own lough at Slyne and incredibly blue, with a silver rim of powdery sand encircling its shores. The little inn was empty of visitors at this time of the year and they were welcomed in by the landlord with all the extravagant display of delight and amazement which Judy was becoming used to.

  Tea, in the warming comfort of the inn’s spare parlour, redolent with the scent of turf and the lingering smell of paraffin, compensated suddenly for the bleakness of the Plain of Cluny and her own disturbed thoughts. There was trout, as Raff had promised, and Dublin Bay prawns, and hot bread from the oven and a pile of richly buttered baps.

  “I shall burst,” she said, heaping her plate with childlike gusto, and Raff smiled.

  “You haven’t lost your appetite for adolescent treats,” he said, and she looked surprised.

  “Do you count this sort of enjoyment as adolescent?” she inquired gravely. “I’m twenty, Mr. O’Rafferty—Raff, I mean—but I don’t expect my appreciation of the simple pleasures of life to diminish with the years.”

  “Don’t you, indeed? And how would you have satisfied this appreciation if you hadn’t come to Slyne?”

  “I don’t know. Not in this way, of course—but there’s always something, isn’t there—even in London streets and the rather sad make-believe of the suburbs?”

  His eyes were tender as they rested on her bright, shining head, bent so expectantly over her lavishly piled plate.

  “I think for you, Judy, there would always be a way,” he said softly. “You are perhaps one of the rare ones of the earth.”

  She glanced up quickly, startled by such a strange tribute, but her mind was still on the delectable morsels she was discovering on her plate.

  “Oh, no,” she replied, her mouth half full. ‘I’m very ordinary and rather easily pleased—but there’s nothing rare about me.”

  There had, he supposed, been nothing rare about Kathy, either, except this same endearing zest for living.

  “What do you think of Marcia?” he asked suddenly, and, as she carefully laid down her knife and fork and faced him over the rough oak table, he saw that he had dispelled that inconsequent mood of the moment She looked across at him with eyes that were grave and attentive.

  “What do you want me to say?” she asked gently. “Marcia is a very beautiful woman, which in itself is self-evident I don’t really know her as a person, so how can I tell you what I think of her?”

  He felt for his pipe, filled and lighted it, the scratch of the match sounding loud and irritable in the little pause. He was, she thought like her, lost in that same abstraction from time and place which,
once before, had fallen between them. On that other occasion it had been Kathy who had filled his thoughts; today it was Marcia, and in either case, Judy knew that once back at Slyne with her typewriter clacking away and the prosaic work of the day to get through, both would be forgotten.

  “Do you want her, Raff—permanently in your life, I mean?” she asked, but saw that she had trespassed as soon as she had spoken.

  “That’s a question for the two most concerned, don’t you think?” he said pleasantly, and went out to the kitchen to settle up his bill.

  Judy, left alone with the debris of the meal, leaned her elbows on the table and thought how like the empty finish of their conversation it all looked. What right had he to invite opinions, then snub her for her pains in answering? What right had he to bring her here at all and offer half-revelations which could only be disturbing? But when Raff came back, assurance again came with him. A lamp, carried by the landlord’s wife, dispelled the shadows and, in its warm glow, his ugly, bony features had a homely attraction that was becoming familiar.

  “Does she remind you of anyone?” he asked, his eyes on Judy with an indulgence that was faintly proprietorial.

  “Miss Kathy, I suppose you’d be meaning,” the woman replied, observing Judy with a curious eye. “The hair’s the same, but ‘tis common enough in these parts; for the rest, no. Miss Kathy was pretty as a picture and soft as a kitten—no disrespect to you, young miss, for you’ll have other things, I’m thinking. Would you be still grieving for her, O’Rafferty?”

  “No—no, Mrs. Farrell. One doesn’t grieve for ever, one just remembers,” Raff replied, and although his eyes still rested on her, Judy knew that he was not thinking of her.

  “They say the fine young lady you have at the castle is fancied as mistress there. Have you put off the willow, O’Rafferty?”

  “I’ve just told you one doesn’t grieve for ever.”

  “And this young lady here—does she put you in mind of that other one, for all they’re not alike at all?”