For my dear friend Emer Melody,
who embodies everything I love about the Irish
Chapter 1
Nantucket, 1960
Last night I dreamed I was at the castle again. In real life I have never been to such a place, yet in my dream those grey-stone walls are as familiar to me as my own skin. They envelop me in a keen embrace as if they have arms to hold me, as if they want to draw me in, as if I have been away a long, long time and am returned home at last. And I yearn to be held. I ache to luxuriate in this sense of belonging, this sense of home, as if everything that has come before is but a dream and only this is real, where I want to be, where my heart is. And as I wander into the great hall there is a baronial fireplace where flames crackle and flicker and throw dancing shadows across the walls. Everything is majestic, as if I am in a royal palace. There are paintings in gilt frames, Persian rugs on the flagstone floor, a grand staircase that leads me up into dark corridors, enticing me deeper and deeper into the castle, and I run now, because I know that I am close.
Candlelight illuminates the darkness. I reach a gap in the wall and take the narrow staircase there. This is the core of the castle, the oldest wing, the only section to survive the fire. I know this as if it is part of my own history. I climb the uneven wooden steps, each worn into a gentle hollow from centuries of treading feet. Now I place mine into those hollows and slowly ascend. My heart accelerates and I am suddenly afraid. At the top there is a sturdy old door. It is blackened with time and smoke and the iron hinges and studs are from another age, when men wore plumed hats and boots and carried swords at their hips. I put my fingers on the latch and gently lift it. The door opens without protest; it is used to my coming.
Inside, with her back to me, stands a woman. She is slim with thick red hair falling in waves down to her waist. She is staring into the fire, one pale hand on the mantelpiece, the other hanging by the side of her long green dress. She has been expecting me. She turns and looks at me. I gasp, horrified. Those grey eyes, that sweet smile, the freckles that play about her white skin, the rosy apples of her cheeks, the lustrous red hair, are mine, all mine.
She is me and I am staring at myself.
From the swing chair on the veranda I gaze out over the sea at the translucent dawn sky, the last fading star and the vaporous wisps of pink cloud and know that the castle in my dream is far from this shore. This big house on Nantucket, with its dove-grey clapboard walls, tall windows and white widow’s walk where lonely wives once kept vigil for their mariner husbands, has been in my father’s family since the first Claytons arrived in America from Ireland in the early nineteenth century, and yet it feels less familiar to me than the castle I have only ever visited in my sleep. It is a strange feeling and one I am unable to shake off. I don’t even know where this castle is. I assume it must be in Ireland, although I have never been there. I would ask my mother, for she was born in Co. Cork, but since her stroke some five months ago she is unable to speak and I don’t want to burden her with what is, after all, only a dream. I tell Temperance instead, as I have told her my thoughts and feelings since I was a child. She is originally from South Carolina and has worked for my mother for fifty-six years, from the age of fourteen. She is seventy now, twelve years my senior, but she doesn’t look old to me. She looks as she always has done: black skin plump and smooth, voluptuous body all curves and softness, brown eyes round and shiny like chestnuts. She’s a big woman. I’ve always thought that she needs to be big to accommodate such an enormous heart; Temperance is all unconditional love and compassion and the most noble person I’ve ever met. She’s like an angel put on earth to heal it. I wonder, with such a nurturing, maternal nature, whether she would have liked to marry and have children of her own, but I don’t suppose my mother would have been happy with that. Arethusa Clayton is a very needy woman and has always wanted Temperance to herself. Not that she’s unkind. In fact, I’d say she’s kindest when Temperance is in the room – there’s something about her that brings out the best in my mother. However, her affection for Temperance makes her selfish, and Temperance has spoiled her rotten.
Temperance brings me a mug of milky coffee, sprinkled with chocolate and other secret spices she won’t reveal in spite of my asking. She only smiles, waves her long fingers and says, ‘That’s a secret, Miss Faye, and a secret’s not a secret if you share it.’ I notice her hands as I take the mug; they are the only parts of her body that betray her age. The skin is rough and dry from household chores, the shell-pink palms etched with deep lines, which, according to her, denote an old soul. ‘Sit with me a while,’ I say.
She sinks with a loud sigh into the chair opposite. Her soft body melts into the wicker frame and I find comfort in this quiet routine, for every morning we meet like this, just the two of us, waiting with patience and trepidation for the old woman in the downstairs bedroom to die.
I push myself off with my toes and gently swing. Temperance looks tired. Her eyes are rheumy and the sorrow in them makes me feel guilty. I think Temperance loves my mother more than I do. Or perhaps she needs her more. After all, I have a husband and children who, in spite of being all grown-up now, demand my attention; Temperance has only Mother. She has given her life to her, every drop of it, and, knowing my mother as I do, she will have taken it greedily. I wonder whether Mom has ever thanked her. I doubt it. I doubt Mom has ever considered Temperance and the loyal service she has given her. Temperance would not expect thanks; she loves her all the same, unconditionally. Love is a mystery, I muse, Temperance’s love for my mother more of a mystery than most. I know one thing, Temperance’s love is closer to God than mine. I shouldn’t feel sorry for her, I should feel awed.
‘I had that dream again last night,’ I tell her. ‘I must have had it a dozen times since Mom had her stroke. Why do you think that is?’
Temperance always has an answer for everything. She nods and smiles and folds her rough hands in her lap. ‘They say, Miss Faye, that recurring dreams are past-life memories unleashed from your subconscious. You are simply remembering your past.’
I laugh affectionately at her. Temperance is all spirits, magic charms and enchantment. I love her for that, but I was brought up in the Catholic faith and feel more secure remaining close to the teachings of the Bible, which say nothing of reincarnation, or any of her other pagan beliefs. ‘I think it’s just anxiety, Tempie,’ I reply, taking a sip of coffee. No one makes coffee like Temperance and I sigh with pleasure, suddenly caught off guard by the chocolatey taste of my youth and the nostalgia that comes with it in a sudden onslaught of images, sounds and smells. I am a little girl again, in the kitchen, sharing my thoughts with Temperance, and she is listening to me with patience, her round face full of wisdom, her big eyes brimming with love. I hold on to the feeling and in it I can smell the sweetness of her baking and hear the resonance of our laughter. I can even see the dress I am wearing and feel the seersucker fabric against my skin. I am filled with wistfulness, which is nostalgia’s companion, as I reflect on the passing of time, the transience of life and the tender moments lost for ever in the wake of constant change.
Mom’s passing will be the natural order of things for my brother Logan and me, but for Temperance, it will be the end. We will look after her, of course; she is like family. But this house, where we have spent every summer of our lives and to where my mother retired after my father died, will pass on to the next generation, and it will never be the same again. Ted Clayton, my father, was the eldest of seven brothers and sisters and the Governor of Massachusetts in his younger days. A big, burly man with a short temper, a quick mind and a formidable character, he was a person who did not suffer fools and liked to have total autonomy over his world – even after his death eleven year
s ago his cigar smoke is still embedded in the fabrics and furnishings so that I continue to smell him as if he is still sitting in his chair, barking commands. He was king and everyone else his loyal and obedient subject, except Mom, his queen. His worshipping of her was his only weakness, and the source of her power. While Mom continues to live here, Ted’s rules still apply. When she goes, their reign will end and new rules will grow up over the old ones. It will no longer be my home. It will no longer be Temperance’s, either. It will be Logan’s and he’s not sentimental like I am. His wife will gut it, transform it and it will cease to smell of cigars.
I hug my mug of coffee and look at Temperance, anxious to show her the compassion she has always shown me. ‘You’ve been a saint, Tempie, looking after Mom all these years. She’s never been easy, has she?’
‘She is a good woman,’ Temperance replies reverentially, eyes shining and face aglow with admiration, as if she’s speaking of an angel and not my self-centred mother.
‘Since her stroke she has been strangely peaceful,’ I say, reflecting on the remarkable change in my mother’s nature. She went from cantankerous to meek overnight, as if she realized she was nearing the end and had accepted her fate without question or complaint.
‘She will die with a clear conscience,’ says Temperance. ‘She has banished her ghosts and will rise into God’s light with joy.’ I’m not sure what ghosts Temperance is referring to. I know little of Mother’s past. She came from Ireland, from a poor farming family, to escape poverty and start a new life in America as so many did in those times of hardship and famine. That much she told us. She never elaborated and we weren’t curious to know. Only now, as she is on the point of dying, do I wonder about her beginnings. I know she had two brothers. Whatever became of them? Did they leave Ireland too? With all my uncles and aunts on my father’s side and more cousins than I can count, it now seems odd to know not one of my mother’s relations. She came to America alone and will leave alone, and we will be none the wiser.
Mother has two nurses looking after her around the clock, but she insists on having Temperance by her side too. It is plain that she needs her even more than she needs me, her daughter. I’m a little jealous, but that is only natural. Temperance has been with her constantly, but I married and moved away when I was twenty-two. I bear no grudges, have no regrets. Mom and I have had an easy relationship only because I have always bowed to her will. I have been dominated all my life, by my father and then by my husband, so I am used to accommodating stronger characters. I’m as flexible as a reed in a pond. I don’t resist. I do as I’m told and I don’t complain. I know what is expected of me. My father was a direct man who left no room for doubt. To be a good wife and mother were, to him, the highest aspirations of any well-brought-up girl and I desired nothing more than to please him and make him proud. But something in me is shifting now as if, like the earth, I have tectonic plates of my own; I feel movement deep within me.
I am a woman of fifty-eight and I realize, as I sit on this veranda in the morning and gaze out over the sea, that I have pleased everyone all these years, except myself. I reflect on life and the lack of impression I have made with mine. My footsteps in the sand are shallow and will fast disappear when the waves finally wash over them, for I have done little besides raise my three children, look after my husband and be a gracious and charming hostess. My mother is dying and that makes me think of life and death and our purpose here. I realize in a blaze of clarity that I have been living for everyone else and not for me. I consider my dream once again. It makes me uneasy because I sense it is trying to tell me something. My subconscious prompting me to take a closer look at myself, perhaps. Unlike other dreams, it does not fade, but remains with the obstinacy of a dog determined to stay at his dead master’s side.
I am at my mother’s bedside when she passes. My brother Logan has made it from Boston in time and the two of us hold her hands while Temperance looks on, her face wet with tears, her bottom lip glistening and trembling as she mumbles inaudible prayers. Arethusa Clayton was a strikingly handsome woman once – she was never considered a beauty, her features were too strong for that, but her looks were arresting and men found her irresistible, even when she was no longer a young woman. Now, in death, she is serene, benign, passive, which is strange for me and my brother because she was never any of those things in life. She looks sweet, gentle even, as if she has given up a fight. As I gaze at her the word ‘fight’ rises in my thoughts like a cork in water. It is insistent. I wonder what she had to fight for, why she had to fight at all. The fight is over now, for sure, she is at peace. But I can’t help wondering why it was there in the first place.
Her death hits me in unexpected ways. It is complicated, like a tangled ball of wool I had expected to be tidy. I feel sadness, a hollow, aching sadness, but I am also relieved for she has been released from her suffering and I have been released from her dominance. It is a thorny thing to feel both sorrow and relief at the same time. I feel guilty for feeling relieved and then I feel regret for all the things I never said. All the love I didn’t realize I felt. And I feel terribly alone and a little lost, as if she has been the puppet master and I the ignorant puppet, oblivious of the strings that have, until now, held me up. Temperance is just sad and I know her sorrow cuts a cleaner wound than mine. For her there is no relief or regret or guilt. For her there is only mourning.
Now it is up to Logan, as executor of her will, to see that our mother’s wishes are carried out. It is up to Temperance and me to begin the laborious task of sorting out all her belongings. Her wardrobes of clothes and shoes and handbags, her jewellery boxes, make-up, toiletries and her desk of papers and library of books. Really, it is a daunting task and one I would rather hand over to somebody else, but there is no one else. Only the two of us, and, as the days go by, I feel we are getting nowhere. Mother clearly did not like to throw things away. What are we going to do with all this stuff?
There is one item which I find out of place among her things. It is an instrument that looks like a small violin, but the belly is round and the fretboard very long. Temperance gasps when she sees it and smiles with childish delight, as if she has just found a beloved old friend. ‘That, Miss Faye, is a banjo,’ she says, and her voice is full of wonder. Sensing she wants to hold it, I give it to her. She takes it with great care. Then she begins to play. Her fingers move deftly over the strings. I’m astonished. I didn’t know she could play the banjo. I listen as she sings. Her voice is low and soft like whiskey and cream, and all the while she sings she looks at me, the emotion in her eyes raw and tender. I’m enchanted. But I’m doubtful my mother ever knew how to play such a thing. It must have been an unwanted gift she never got round to throwing away.
‘Tempie,’ I gasp when she is done. ‘You play beautifully.’
Temperance’s heart is bleeding on account of her loss and she cries easily and often. She cries now as she strokes the banjo nostalgically. ‘My father taught me how to play when I was a little girl,’ she tells me. ‘He worked these strings like he was born for it. And he could dance, Miss Faye, tapping his feet, so light and graceful he was, like a fire spirit, and he could sing too. He used to play and sing to send me to sleep, but I would lie with my eyes wide open like a frog, not wanting to miss a single minute of it.’ She gives it back to me. ‘After he died I never played again. I regret that now.’
‘It’s never too late to start,’ I say. ‘Why don’t you have it. It will remind you of your father.’ I see Temperance then as a little girl, with her father, who I imagine to be handsome like she is, with her smile and the same tenderness in his eyes, and I wonder at the differences in our childhoods. Me with my white, privileged upbringing and she with prejudice and intolerance on account of her colour. The injustice of it makes my heart swell with compassion. America has come a long way since she was a girl, but still, old mindsets die hard. ‘I want you to have it, Tempie,’ I insist.
‘You mean that, Miss Faye?’
&n
bsp; ‘Of course, I mean that, Tempie. Mom would want you to have it.’
‘I will treasure it, Miss Faye. And I’ll play it too. I’ll play it and remember the past.’ Her eyes are moist. I’d like to ask her about her past. I’d like to hear more about her father, who she clearly adored. I’m aware suddenly of how very little I know about her apart from stories of her grandmother’s cooking, and I’m ashamed by my lack of curiosity. My lack of interest. However, now isn’t the time to ask. I don’t want to upset her. Her grief is very close to the surface at the moment and the slightest thing will set her off. I can’t cope with her tears right now. I’m barely coping with my own.
My children are wonderfully supportive. Rose, who is thirty-two and works in fashion in New York, offers to come and help, but I put her off. She has her own young family to think about. She insists she can get away and I know she really means it. She would cancel anything to come to my aid, but I assure her that Temperance and I are just fine on our own. Instead, she calls me every day. Sweet, considerate and patient, she listens as I tell her about the odd things I have found in my mother’s closets. I know it’s boring for her, but she’s in no haste to hang up. She knows I need to work through my grief and gives me all the time I need. As for Edwina, she is two years younger and has just started a new job in California, making movies, so cannot get away, but I appreciate the telephone call and her sympathy. It’s very typical of Edwina to offer to help, hoping that she won’t have to. I love her ambition and her drive, but she is the selfish one of my chidren and won’t put herself out for anyone. Walter, our son, is twenty-two and studying for his final exams at college. He wants to come up, but this is no job for a young man. He doesn’t call very often. He’s working hard, he has a girlfriend. I know his heart is in the right place but only Rose is truly empathetic.
They will all come for the funeral, however, along with their father, my husband, who telephoned last night to ask when I am coming home. I would usually put everything down and hurry to his side, as he expects me to do, even in this case. He cannot understand why I can’t just leave it all to Temperance. But I want to be here. At last I am thinking of myself. I want to be here, so I shall stay.
The Secret Hours Page 1
