LITMIR.BIZ

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and the best food and cars and servants, for their father was a millionaire many times over. But it was, to Katharine, still a deprived house, for there had been so little genuine love in it. She shuddered involuntarily. She had not set foot in that house for six years, and on the day she had left it she had vowed she would never darken its doors again.

      Katharine’s thoughts rushed to her father, and although she consistently obliterated his image in her mind’s eye, today she did not even attempt to extinguish it. She saw him quite vividly, as if he stood before her, Patrick Michael Sean O’Rourke, with his handsome saturnine face and ebony-black hair, eyes as blue as sapphires and as hard as that stone they so closely resembled. He was a dreadful man, and she realized suddenly that she had always understood this, even when she had been a very small child. She had simply not known the words to properly describe him then. Today she had them at the tip of her tongue. He was exigent, rapacious and ruthless, a venal man who had made money his mistress and power his God. The world did not know Patrick Michael Sean O’Rourke as she knew him. He was a monumental anachronism: the charming, laughing, entertaining, silver-tongued Irishman in public, the stern, glowering and dictatorial tyrant in his own home. Katharine hated him. Just as he hated her. Gooseflesh speckled her arms and she pulled her robe closer around her. She recalled, with the most sharp and awful clarity, the day she had first recognized her father’s virulent hatred for her. It had been in August 1947. She had been twelve years old.

      On that day, nearly nine years ago, Katharine had been her happiest in many months, this state engendered by her mother’s unexpected presence at lunch. Rosalie O’Rourke was feeling so much better she had decided to join her children at their noonday meal. Katharine had been singularly overjoyed to see her mother looking practically like her old self; and if Rosalie was not brimming with the vitality which had once been such an essential and natural part of her personality, she seemed lighthearted, almost carefree. Her eyes, widely set and a clear tourmaline green, sparkled with laughter, and her abundant red hair, crackling with life, was a burnished bronze helmet above her heart-shaped face, which was free of pain today, and had lost some of its waxen pallor. She was wearing a pale green silk-shantung dress with long sleeves and a full skirt, and its style disguised her thin body, so tragically wasted by illness. A choker of lustrous pearls encircled her neck, and there were matching pearl studs in her ears; her tapering fingers glittered with beautiful rings set with diamonds and emeralds.

      Mrs O’Rourke had instructed Annie, the housekeeper, to serve luncheon in the breakfast room, one of the few cheerful spots in the dim and shadowy house, and which Rosalie herself had personally decorated. It had a lovely aura of airy lightness, was brushstroked throughout in a pretty mélange of crisp white and sharp lemon yellow, rafts of these refreshing colours appearing everywhere. It was furnished, in the main, with white wicker furniture, unusual handsome pieces from the Victorian era, and there were colourful prints of exotic birds and rare orchids on the walls and an abundance of tall green plants. Decorated in the same charming manner as Rosalie’s suite of rooms on the second floor, it was refined and gracious, yet without being at all stylized in appearance.

      As she had sat gazing adoringly at her mother across the table, Katharine had thought how distinguished and elegant she looked, perfectly groomed and smelling faintly of lilies of the valley as she invariably did. To Katharine her mother was, and always would be, the epitome of beauty and feminine grace, and she idolized her. Katharine, at this moment, was filled with renewed hope for her mother, who seemed to be on the way to recovering from the mysterious illness which had afflicted her for the past two years, an illness no one really discussed, except in whispers.

      Since it was a weekday, Patrick O’Rourke had not been present, and in consequence, the tension which generally accompanied their meals was fortunately missing. Ryan had chattered like a magpie, had kept them entertained, and they had laughed a lot and enjoyed themselves. Katharine had felt secure, basking in her mother’s love. It was a love given unstintingly and with all of Rosalie’s tender and caring heart.

      Only one thing marred this joyful occasion for Katharine, and this was her mother’s poor appetite, and she had watched with growing dismay as Rosalie had picked at her food desultorily, leaving untouched most of the delicious and tempting dishes their housekeeper Annie had prepared. After lunch, Ryan had disappeared, intent on some boyish escapade. When her mother had asked Katharine to spend another hour with her, she had delightedly accepted. Nothing pleased the twelve-year-old girl more than to be alone with her mother in the cool secluded suite she occupied. Katharine loved the comfortable rooms with their pastel colour schemes and delicate fabrics, French Provincial furniture and lovely paintings, so unlike the rest of the house which bore her father’s vulgar stamp. The sitting room, in particular, was Katharine’s favourite, and most especially on cold days. Then the fire blazed and crackled in the hearth and they sat before its roaring flames in that special twilight hour, toasting their toes and chatting cosily about books and music and the theatre, or relaxing in silence, always in perfect harmony, for there was a deep understanding and abiding love between them. That afternoon they had seated themselves by the window overlooking Lake Michigan, not talking very much, content to be sharing this time. It had been a long while since they had had an opportunity to spend an afternoon with each other because of Rosalie’s precarious health.

      At thirty-two Rosalie O’Rourke had made her peace with herself and her God, and this new-found tranquillity showed in her face, which, despite her illness, was still lovely. Today it had an ethereal quality lightly overshadowed by a faint wistfulness, and her eyes were soft and filled with the tenderest of lights as she sat gazing out over the lake, endeavouring to gather her strength. The lunch had vitiated her energies, but she did not wish this to show, wanted Katharine to be reassured about her condition. Rosalie had not experienced much joy in her life after her marriage, except through her children, mostly Katharine, whom she adored. She had quickly discovered she was no match for Patrick, with his rampant virility and quick Irish temper, his lust for life in all its aspects, and his hunger for money and power, which was insatiable. Her refinement and delicacy, her fragility and artistic nature had inevitably isolated her from her husband, and her gentle soul continually shrank from his blatant masculinity and voracious appetites. Despite her love for him, curiously undiminished, she had come to regret the union, recognizing the unsuitability of their temperaments. Few knew the real Patrick, for he was adept at concealment, cloaking his true nature behind an austere and dignified façade; and he was a past master at the art of dissimulation, adroit, and persuasive of tongue.

      ‘That one’s kissed the Blarney stone, by God he has, and not once but many times over,’ her father had said to her early in the whirlwind courtship. Her father had continued to be ambivalent about Patrick long after their marriage, never truly sure the relationship would work. In certain ways it had been successful, in others it had not, and there had been times when Rosalie had contemplated leaving Patrick. But divorce was unthinkable. She was a Catholic, as was he, and there were the children, whom she knew he would never relinquish. And she still had deep feelings for him, regardless of his faults.

      Although Rosalie hardly ever acknowledged it as a fact, or dwelt upon it morbidly, she knew that she was dying. The spurts of vigour and renewed energy and remissions were quite meaningless, and they were growing increasingly infrequent. Now, as she sat with her daughter, she thought sadly: I have so little time left on this good earth, so little time to give to Katharine and Ryan, God help them.

      Every day Rosalie, who was devout, gave thankful prayers to the Almighty that her daughter and her son were more like her in their basic characters, and had not inherited many of their father’s dismaying traits, at least so far as she could ascertain. She glanced at Katharine, sitting sedately in he chair, obedient and well mannered, and she marvelled at her yet again. The child looked so young and demure in her yellow cotton dress and white socks and black patent-leather strap shoes. And yet there was something oddly grown-up in her demeanour, as though she had seen much of life, had encountered its pain and pitfalls and was wise and knowing. Rosalie realized this was an idiotic idea, since the girl was over-protected, had never been exposed to anything but luxury and the safety of her family and her home. But one thing which could not be denied was Katharine’s extraordinary physical appearance. She was a great beauty, even at this tender age, with her lovely features and rich chestnut hair and those liquid eyes with their curious turquoise hue.

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