contrived – which would alleviate her situation, satisfy her self-esteem, and solve her quandary conclusively.
It was dinnertime on the Thursday following her woebegone arrival at Knockfane the previous Saturday when Julia came downstairs for the first time. Lydia and her father were already seated in the dining room and, when Julia walked in, they were astounded. Not only did she appear quite well, but she was also fully restored. That is to say, her makeup was all in place and she was dressed in what she called her ‘country informals’: riding breeches (although she did not ride), a shirt and tie, and a well-cut tweed jacket. She looked quite splendid.
‘It’s great to have you back among us, Miss Julia,’ Rose said when she came in with a shepherd’s pie. ‘But Lord knows you’ve been a proper little soldier all week and God in his mercy was at your side. It’s Him we have to thank.’
‘That’ll do, Rose,’ Willis said, ‘just leave the tray on the sideboard. Miss Lydia will dish up.’
Over dinner, Julia did not refer to having been out of sorts but chatted as though there was nothing amiss. She thought she might take the car, she said, if Pappy did not need it, and go over to Coolowen in the afternoon. As Old Esdaile was so pleased to have her well again, he did not demur. When she arrived home after six and appeared to be exceedingly cheerful, her father was reassured.
That night, after they had all gone to bed and Lydia was settled under the blankets and at last catching up with her book, Julia burst into her room.
‘Lydia darling …’ she cooed, shutting the door behind her.
Lydia had heard these very same words from her sister less than a week previously when Julia had bounded into her bedroom in similar circumstances and she was not sure that she was at all happy at hearing them again now: she feared yet more of the exhausting discussions which she had been obliged to suffer since Julia’s arrival home. But before she had a chance to speak, Julia had moved to the end of her bed and grasped the rail.
‘I’m so, so happy, Lydia dearest,’ she said, ‘so, so happy. And I want you to be the first to know.’
Lydia was now perplexed. She had been the first to know that Julia was in trouble and very miserable and now, in less than a week, she was to be the first to know that her sister was deliriously happy. She did not understand. It crossed her mind that, by some stroke of good fortune, Julia may have had a little accident during the afternoon and, if that was the case, she hoped that Julia had done nothing to bring it upon herself.
‘How can you be, Julia?’ she said, ‘what has happened? I hope …’
Julia stopped her with a hug and then getting up from the bed, she twirled around the room like a dervish. Coming to a stop and again clasping the bed end, she announced:
‘I’m engaged, Lydia. Isn’t it wonderful?’
‘Engaged?’ said Lydia. ‘But how …? Have you been in touch with Tarquin? And the baby? I don’t understand, Julia.’
‘Fergal is coming over tomorrow morning to ask Pappy’s consent.’
‘Fergal?’ said Lydia, ‘but what about Tarquin?’
Julia ignored the interruption.
‘Fergal says he will always love the baby as though it were his own. He doesn’t mind in the least that it’s not. We’ll get married before it arrives.’
‘Julia! …’ said Lydia.
The room suddenly seemed chilly to her and she felt goose pimples forming on her arms. In the absence of knowing what to feel, she became frightened within herself. She stared at Julia, standing there at the end of the bed in her nightgown, looking flushed and even proud. It was a very different Julia to the one who had trembled there, like a waif off the streets, less than a week previously.
‘Are you sure, Julia? I mean … are you doing the right thing?’ said Lydia.
She thought of Fergal, how gentle and kind he was, and how much like an older brother he had always been to them.
‘I mean … there are other people to consider.’
‘Like who?’ said Julia. ‘Fergal thinks I have always loved him, he said so. And Pappy is bound to be pleased.’
When Fergal came over the following morning and asked her Pappy if he might marry Julia, Willis was as astonished by the development as Lydia had been. And then he thought to himself, ‘It all makes sense. They have been sweethearts all along, under my very nose and I never realised. There must have been a tiff which is why Julia was out of sorts and took to her bed, but now all is fine.’
Later that day Lydia asked Julia if she was going to tell their father about her condition and the circumstances of Fergal’s proposal.
‘Don’t be a goose, Lydia,’ Julia said, ‘of course not. Pappy doesn’t need to know and why should I worry him by telling him?’
‘But …’ said Lydia.
‘Fergal is happy that we get married straight away and that we both go to England for maybe a year. Our baby will be born over there …’
Lydia blinked. And then she blinked again.
‘Had Julia no conscience?’ she thought, ‘was there no limit to her effrontery? Talking about “our baby” in this way.’
‘… and no one will ever be any the wiser’, continued Julia.
‘But Pappy …’ said Lydia, ‘he, at least, will have to be told the truth.’
‘No, he won’t, Lydia,’ said Julia. ‘Only you and I and Fergal need ever know and it is a secret we will guard to the grave.’
As Lydia was only sixteen, the sentence of ‘silence to the grave’ which Julia thought fit to hand down seemed to her to be inordinately severe but Lydia accepted it, as she had always accepted everything from her sister, without further ado.
10
An Heir for Coolowen
WHILE ‘NECESSITY HAD been the mother of invention’ as far as Julia was concerned – motherhood in all its forms was very much on her mind – her father was not slow in coming to understand the exact nature of what had taken place. When, therefore, Julia announced – soon after announcing her engagement – that she and Fergal would be marrying straight way, he was scarcely surprised. But while Willis could recognise necessity when confronted by it, he was on less sure ground when it came to invention and, when the invention involved his daughter Julia, he was generally at sea altogether. He could, therefore, be excused for not appreciating the full extent of the embarrassment in which she had found herself and nor could he be blamed for failing to recognise how inventive she had been in finding a solution to her predicament.
He prided himself on being a man of the world so that when Julia first broached the notion that, following her hasty engagement and her even hastier marriage, she and Fergal would hasten away on an extended honeymoon, he was not fooled. He did wonder, however, how he could have been so blind as not to see that the two were in love, and obviously passionately so, or the need for an extended honeymoon would never have arisen.
‘Fergal needs to get away and see something of the world,’ was how Julia put it to her father. ‘He’s been stuck at Coolowen since he was seventeen. It’s been no life for a young man like him. He’s seen nothing and been nowhere. This is his last chance.’
‘A last chance for Fergal’ was not at all how Willis viewed the situation but, nevertheless, he refrained from questioning Julia too closely and thus made it easy for her to continue her plotting. He did, however, enquire about the extended honeymoon that she was proposing and asked her just how extended she meant it to be.
‘About a year or so,’ Julia said.
‘I see,’ he said. ‘Then Fergal will have to make some arrangements about who is to look after Coolowen while he’s away. I can’t think his aunts