The Ludlow Ladies Society Read online

  It was a plain skirt with a slight gather at the waist and two side pockets. Mary McGuane would hardly do it justice with her thick waist, but such things she knew she could never say out loud. The red colour was too bright for a heavy woman. No doubt Mary McGuane would wear a hideous bling top with it when she attended the rugby club dance. She could have run along the hem with her machine for all her customer would know, but Eve was particular and determined that any garment which passed through her hands was one she could be proud of. Stopping to rethread the needle twice before she got to the end, she got up and stood at the ironing board to press the skirt with a warm iron, ready for collection.

  When the doorbell sounded, Eve first checked her hair in the mirror before swinging back to open the front door to Mary McGuane.

  “Bang on the button,” she said, showing the woman into her front room, away from the sewing machine and the floor riddled with loose threads. She took the taffeta skirt from the back of the armchair. “A beautiful colour. It will suit you just fine. What are you wearing with it?”

  “I brought it with me. Would you like to see it?”

  Eve nodded, hoping the silly woman might just hold it up to her, but instead Mary McGuane pulled off her hoodie, showing a white bra gone grey, fastened too tight, her skin bulging over the sides. Taking out a sequinned black top, she pulled it on, at the same time stepping into the skirt, leaving on her tracksuit bottoms underneath. She stood back, moving over to the full-length mirror that Eve had asked Michael Conway’s son Richie to fix to the wall by the window.

  “The belle of the ball, that is what you will be. Such a lovely top and perfect with the skirt.”

  “I was in Gorey and saw it in that fancy boutique. I took a chance. Wasn’t I right?” She swayed around the room, the taffeta whooshing across the carpet. “I was wondering, Mrs Brannigan, is there any fabric left over? Maybe we could make a little rosette to pin to the bodice?”

  “I am not sure I would be able to fashion such a fancy thing, Mary.”

  “Sure, what is it, only curling up the fabric to look nice.”

  “There might be a bit more to it than that.”

  Mary McGuane straightened up and Eve worried she might find it hard to get the money out of her if she did not acquiesce to the request.

  “Hold on there, I might be able to find a small bit of the red among the scraps.”

  She padded into the kitchen, cursing Mary McGuane and her fancy ideas. A full metre she had left over. Whoever sold that fabric had seen the dentist’s wife coming, telling her she needed five metres for a long skirt. Pulling out the taffeta, she snipped a quarter of a metre in two big, uneven patches so it looked as if she only had scraps left over. She brought them back to the front room.

  “These are the biggest pieces I could find. We might be able to twist them into something.”

  Mary McGuane snatched the taffeta from her. “I was in Clerys in Dublin yesterday and I saw this lovely rosette.” She began to fumble with the fabric. “It looked so simple, why can’t I do it?” Scrunching the fabric, she balled it tight. Eve reached across and took it from her.

  “First, we will cut out some circles, and maybe if we stitch them together, they will form a flower of sorts.”

  Mary McGuane impatiently looked at her watch. “Can you do it now? I have to go to Arklow to get my hair done, along with my nails and make-up. I will never get back out here again.”

  A frustration rose up in Eve, making her want to pelt the fabric at Mary McGuane, but she smiled, leading the other woman to the armchair by the window.

  “You take a seat. I will run this up on the machine and then we can try our hands at the rosette.”

  Mary McGuane made to follow Eve to the little sewing section at the back. “I will keep you company while you work.”

  Eve guffawed out loud. “You won’t, you will only be a distraction. Sit down there and wait for me, like a good girl.”

  Surprised, Mary McGuane did as she was bid.

  Eve made sure to close the door of the front parlour behind her on the way to the sewing room. Neatly, she cut out eight circles from the taffeta. She sewed one all the way around, quickly pressing the machine pedal, making sure to leave enough of a gap to turn the fabric right side out. She did the same with the next group of circles, until she had four completed. Gathering them up and opening the parlour door, she paused as Mary McGuane picked up an ornament on the mantelpiece, turning it upside down to examine it.

  “That is a nice piece of china, you have a good eye,” she said as she stepped into the room, making Mary McGuane jump back in embarrassment.

  “It is so beautiful, I hope you don’t mind. Is it from Ludlow Hall?” she asked, her voice shaking a little.

  “It is from a different time all right. I will just get this corsage together for you.”

  Sitting in her armchair, she pinched one circle in the middle, taking it in her hand, so it looked like the fragile petals of a flower. She did the same with another circle, tacking them together at the bottom, and continued with the remaining circles until she had formed a full red bloom. Reaching into her sewing box, she picked out a safety pin.

  “Just a few stitches and it will be ready.”

  “Mrs Brannigan, you are a wizard. What would we do without you?”

  “I imagine, very well indeed.” She ducked the needle around, in and out, securing the clasp of the safety pin, finishing with a double stitch, using her teeth to cut the thread. “That should do it.” Walking over to Mary McGuane, she pinned the small corsage to her sparkly top.

  “Better than anything I could ever get in Clerys.”

  Eve could not help but think a lot cheaper too, as she smiled tightly at her customer.

  “What do I owe you?” Mary McGuane asked, making a big fuss about not wanting to make a fuss, while taking a scrunch of notes from her purse. “Charge me enough, Mrs Brannigan, you have done me a big favour,” she bellowed, as if she had opened up the bank for free withdrawals.

  “It is twenty euros for the skirt and a fiver for the corsage.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Eve was tempted to say no, she bloody well was not, but she pretended to tidy away her needle and thread in her sewing basket as Mary McGuane stuffed a few notes behind the clock on the mantelpiece, before quickly changing back into her tracksuit.

  As she made for the door, she turned to Eve. “I added a bit extra, because you always are so kind and patient with me, Mrs Brannigan.”

  “Thank you kindly, but really there was no need,” Eve replied, taking a quick glance at the mantelpiece, where a twenty- and a ten-euro note were leaning against the wall.

  Mary McGuane waved at her husband, who had been waiting for her all this time.

  “Bert is the best in the world, I don’t know what I would do without him.”

  She was going to say more, but she realised she had said too much already. In an attempt to hide her embarrassment, she babbled on about the weather before escaping across the road, where the car was already indicating out of its parking place.

  Eve waved them gone, relief flooding through her. A silly, shallow woman, Mary McGuane was nevertheless very useful in providing extra fabric, which Eve squirrelled away in nice, neatly cut squares of different sizes for her patchwork. She had won first prize at the Wicklow Agricultural Show last year with a patchwork cushion made entirely from the McGuane fancy fabrics. If Mary McGuane found the cushion to be oddly familiar, she did not say anything outright, but might have hinted at it when she told Eve it was a piece dear to her heart.

  Sitting down by the window, Eve reached for her button box. It was sad, she thought, that her life could be summed up in the contents of a rusted biscuit tin. That morning when she had been evicted from Ludlow Hall, her button box under her arm, they stopped her and asked her to open it. The young man doing the bank’s dirty business took out a pen, pushing the buttons about. He did not say anything to her, but nodded to the security man to let he
r pass. She had clipped the cover back on, relieved she had taken Michael Conway’s advice and moved her favourite family pieces and jewellery to his house several months before.

  Ludlow Hall still held so much, but she had these special bits and pieces that defined all those decades at the Hall. When she moved into this house, on a terrace at the edge of the town and within spitting distance of Ludlow Hall, she was at first afraid to have the flotsam of her former life, silver, china, the odd piece of furniture, around her lest the bank bullies returned. But as the days and months passed, Eve realised the bank had no interest in her little life once it owned Ludlow Hall and its land. Within three months, the property and land were sold to the American Ed Carter for over the amount she owed, but any surplus was swallowed up by the bank’s legal fees. These days, she tried not to dwell on those painful details, but she took down the Jacob’s Afternoon Tea biscuit tin to sift through the buttons, which told her life story.

  Swirling her hand through the box, the buttons caressed her. There were all sorts: sometimes she picked out a plain button clipped off a favourite item when it was well gone past its good wear or, like today, a precious button, a square one, from an outfit never forgotten. She remembered there were three on the red swing jacket she had worn that first night he brought her home to Ludlow Hall.

  It was a beautiful suit, red fleck tweed, a longish straight skirt and a swing jacket with a wide collar. She had sewed it herself, not that she told Arnold of course; he was far too snobby for that sort of thing. He did not say he disapproved of the brash square buttons, but pointed out it must be very difficult to open them. “Silly man,” she said, but somehow she never wore the suit after that day, feeling it might be too flashy for Mrs Brannigan of Ludlow Hall.

  She sat back reflecting on that time, when the world was just the two of them and the Hall. When Arnold had brought her up the drive that first night, she thought she would never see a poor day. She certainly could not have imagined her life as it was now. The avenue was long and winding, and she had to get out twice to open and close the gates, swung across in place to keep the horses from wandering. When they pulled up outside Ludlow Hall, every light in the place was blazing.

  “I told the housekeeper, Mrs Kelly, you were to be made welcome,” he said, taking her hand, helping her from the car. She straightened her clothes and put her hand up to her hair to fix it, nervous about making the right impression.

  Margaret Kelly had coffee and warm scones ready. A fire was lit in the bedroom, a silk gown draped across a chair beside the bed. They had meant to start their married life staying on in London, but within days of the wedding Arnold was called home to Ludlow to manage the estate. His mother, Martha, would not hear any of Arnold’s protests and simply informed him Ludlow Hall was his responsibility now, before leaving, retiring to Bath to live with her sister.

  “After your father died, I stayed on here, kept it going. Now that you have decided to marry it is time to pick up the baton,” she said firmly.

  “I have a life in London; I have to travel to the States every few weeks.”

  “And you can do all that from Ludlow Hall. Your father was very good at juggling all the facets of his life. Ludlow Hall is your primary responsibility now.”

  She was on her way the next morning, leaving Arnold in no doubt but she expected him to settle into life in Rosdaniel. Arnold was sullen and quiet for a few days afterwards, refusing to answer even the basic questions which arose in the running of the estate. At one stage he took off to Dublin for three days, but when he came back Eve suggested they throw a party, inviting everybody from the village.

  “Why would we do that?” Arnold asked.

  “Silly man, they need to know you are running Ludlow Hall; a party is the perfect way to do it.”

  Two weeks later, when everybody in the locality was invited to Ludlow Hall, she shimmered in a dress she had specially made for the occasion. She did not tell her husband she had sewed it herself, as he would have frowned his disapproval, but she took extra pleasure when he admired the dress, a Vogue special design with a sweetheart neckline. She found the fabric at a drapery shop in Gorey, Margaret Kelly helping her carefully pin the tissue pattern in place before stitching the dress together on an old Singer sewing machine Margaret kept in the scullery. The neckline, highlighted with delicate old lace, she ripped from a favourite dress too old to get a public show. Soft pleats were nipped into a tight waist. Mrs Kelly made a flower in the same fabric for her hair and, after she curled up the sides, she clipped it in place at an angle, so it was the first thing her husband commented on.

  “I think, my dear, you have brought a little bit of the city to the countryside,” he said and she laughed, winking at Mrs Kelly as she arranged plates of food on the buffet table. A silver cauldron of beef stew was laid out, a small burner underneath at a low heat to keep it warm. Large plates with enough of a dip in the middle to hold in the stew were stocked high, with cloth napkins in a pile to the side. Arnold refused to open up the canteens of silver, so they brought in plain but shining stainless steel forks and knives, as well as small spoons for the dessert of rhubarb crumble and cream. Sherry, whiskey and stout were laid on, with orange squash and minerals for the pioneers.

  Eve stood with her husband at the entrance to the huge dining room, greeting guests before they were ushered to the table and quickly moved on to the overspill sitting room beyond.

  At one stage, Arnold leaned over and whispered in her ear, “You are the talk of the town, my dear, in the nicest possible way of course.”

  Arnold was formal and polite to everybody, but when Michael Conway approached he heartily shook his hand, thumping his old friend on the back as well.

  “Michael and I understand each other well; he is one of life’s true gentlemen. This man knows even more about the Ludlow estate than I do,” he told Eve.

  Michael Conway, shaking Eve’s hand, noticed her looking over his shoulder.

  “Arnold may not have said, but I lost my wife a few months back.”

  She thought his voice trembled.

  “I am so sorry.”

  “An accident, a lorry doing deliveries from Arklow took the bend at the bottom of the street too tight. Marion had no chance on the bicycle. We are only grateful she did not have little Richard sitting on the back.”

  Eve gasped.

  “I am sorry, it is not the time or the place to talk about such things.”

  She caught his hand and squeezed it gently.

  “Thank you for telling me.”

  Later, after the whole of Rosdaniel had all eaten their fill and oohed and aahed over the fine furnishings, and everybody had had a word with the new lady of the house, they tripped down the avenue home.

  Arnold, glad to have the house back to normal, waltzed her across the sitting room in dance, expertly avoiding the two big armchairs jutting out at the fireplace and the couch which had been pushed back into the bay window for the day. Her skirt flowing, her head thrown back, she thought that with this man she was going to stay very happy.

  An anger rose inside Eve. She shook her head fiercely to wipe away the memories. Pushing the button deep into the box, she pressed the lid back on, shoving the tin box onto the small shelf. It would stay there until she was brave enough another time to face the stories it contained.

  There was little warmth in the past any more, no comfort in such reminiscences, so she went to her sewing place to scoop up the myriad threads from the floor.

  3

  Mrs Hetty Gorman twitched the net curtain lightly, to get a better look at her caller. Michael Conway had rung to tell her to expect a visitor, so she had her best room ready: a huge one at the top of the house, with a view over the fields away from the town.

  He had also warned her to keep the talk simple. “She won’t want to think of the town whispering behind her back; she hardly needs reminding of what happened,” he said and Hetty felt slightly offended that he thought she might gossip.

 
She waited inside the window watching the newcomer, secure in the knowledge her lace nets were thick and of good enough quality that she could not be detected.

  The woman stood by the plastic urn of young geraniums at the front and pressed the doorbell. Hetty waited a moment, so it did not appear she was so anxious for the custom. She took the visitor in. Tall, with a nice bone structure, she thought, but too slim. The hunched shoulders, dark circles under her eyes and the grey eating into her auburn hair made up a woman showing older than her years.

  Hetty rolled her shoulders three times before pulling the front door back wide. “Good afternoon. Can I help you?”

  “I am Connie. Michael Conway said to come by.”

  “You are looking for a room?”

  Connie, slightly put off by the formality, dithered, not sure what to say, before mumbling that she wanted a room for the night.

  “Only for the night?” Hetty Gorman looked put out, but she invited her guest upstairs. “I would not normally show a room so early in the day, it is only a few minutes past one, but I know you have come a long way. You are the new owner of Ludlow, aren’t you?”

  Connie nodded, but did not say anything.

  Straightening her skirt with a nervous hand, Hetty stopped at the top landing, pushing the bedroom door open. “You will find it nice and quiet in this house, nobody to ask you your business,” she said, immediately regretting her words when she saw a flash of alarm streak across Connie’s face. “The sitting room is available every night, except Tuesdays: that is my women’s group night. You are welcome to join us if you are at a loose end.” Hetty knew she was gassing on, but she was nervous, afraid she would stray into the wrong territory. “The Ludlow Ladies’ Society. It sounds fancy, but we love to chat, and we all adore the patchwork. I have to say we are pretty good at it. Our only limitation is the size of this place, otherwise we could go for those huge patchwork quilts . . .”