‘It’s the proceeds of crime,’ his mother had sneered whenever she and her husband and son were invited there. His mother claimed that her high-and-mighty brother Davey’s branch of the family thought their poorer relatives beneath them. But Rufus suspected that she, with her make-do-and-mend life, was merely jealous of the material wealth they so obviously enjoyed, and it stuck in her craw to see it.
Once, Rufus’s father had been given a chance to join the family firm, but Mother had shouted the old man down, the way she always did. As a result, they remained poor, and she remained stubbornly and stupidly resentful of anyone who wasn’t in the same boat. ‘Talk about ill-gotten gains,’ she’d say. ‘It’s all robbed from London fellas, that place of theirs.’
But Rufus’s memories of his visits to the farm were sweet. Mostly, they centred on his cousin Orla. He had never got on with Tory or Pat; they were ham-fisted thugs without finesse. Brutality came naturally to them, and they’d pushed and shoved and bullied the younger members of their family – Orla, her twin Redmond and the baby of the clan, Kieron – mercilessly.
Rufus might look like a wild man, but at least he had some sensibilities. The Jesuit fathers had raised him, instilled a little common decency – something that was completely lacking in Tory and Pat.
He carried on walking up the great sweeping drive towards the house, the vision of Orla as she had been that long-ago summer’s day when he’d kissed her in the garden filling his mind. Sadness gripped him. She was lost to him, lost forever. Dead and gone.
He thought of her, as beautiful as any Dante Rossetti painting, with her lustrously tumbling auburn hair and her fine white skin. Her eyes, green as emeralds, always with that sad shuttered look about them.
Keep out, those eyes told the world around her. Don’t come near.
He remembered her so well. Wished he could have seen her again, got to know her better. They had shared one illicit kiss, one juvenile embrace. He remembered how madly excited he’d been, he’d loved her with a kind of desperation. She, on the other hand, had kissed him close-mouthed, her jaw tense. Her neck under his hand had trembled and strained, and she had broken free as soon as she could.
He’d been hurt by her reticence. He’d thought his affection was returned. But no, obviously not. She’d looked at him as if he was a monster, and run off.
He’d never kissed her again.
He would have liked to show her Paris, the City of Light, the Eiffel Tower all a-sparkle. Forget Don and all that shit. But now… now it was too late. He would never get the chance.