The Secret Hours

by Santa Montefiore

  ‘She wants us to go, Logan,’ I say, and in that second everything becomes clear, like water after the mud settles. ‘Of course!’ I mumble, my voice rising with excitement. ‘She wants us to go. She wants us to know her story. That’s why she is sending us there.’ A look of irritation darkens his face. ‘I know, it sounds crazy. But I have a strange feeling—’

  ‘She got nostalgic, that’s all,’ Logan interrupts, gazing at me down his long nose. ‘Old people always get nostalgic.’

  ‘No, it’s more than that,’ I insist, tearful because he does not understand and I want to go to Ireland, very much. ‘I feel it in my gut,’ I add quietly, putting a hand on my stomach.

  He pats my shoulder. ‘Your gut needs a little wine, I think. Come on, we can’t stand at the window all afternoon ignoring our guests. Have you talked to Aunt Bernard? She had me in a corner for ten long minutes and I know she wants to talk to you too.’

  I sigh at the prospect of Aunt Bernard, Dad’s sister. All the Clayton girls have boys’ names because their father, Clinton Clayton, had only wanted boys. I do not wish to see Aunt Bernard. I haven’t got the strength for her strident personality. In fact, I do not wish to see anyone. I feel low because I anticipate not being allowed to go to Ireland. I have the money, my father left me a great deal, but I don’t have my independence and I am afraid to assert myself, because I have never done so before. I anticipate my husband telling me I can’t go. Logan telling me I can’t go. I see myself, in my mind’s eye, bending to their will, as I always do. It is a pattern that is both familiar and depressing. I’m appalled at my own weakness. That makes me feel lower than anything, my inability to stand up for myself.

  I want to sit on the swing chair outside and hold on to that tugging feeling, because there is something strangely comforting about it. I don’t know why. The room is too noisy and full of people for me to be able to think. I need peace and quiet. I turn to face the throng, hoping to weave through the people and escape onto the veranda. To my dismay, Aunt Bernard is pushing her way past the guests, elbows out, jaw jutting with determination. Nothing is going to stop her. And because of her size, no one can.

  Before I am able to escape, Aunt Bernard is staring up at me with her round, moon face and round, china-blue eyes. Everything about Aunt Bernard is round. ‘Good! I’ve been looking for you, Faye. Now, what’s all this about Tussy wanting her ashes scattered in Ireland? I mean, what in God’s name was she thinking? And cremation! Ted must be turning in his grave. It’s outrageous.’

  I feel my fury mount. ‘It’s what she wanted and we are compelled to carry out her wishes,’ I say, trying to be patient and not let my irritation show. I am used to the Claytons. They are as thick-skinned and insensitive as buffaloes, and the women are as tough as the men.

  ‘She said nothing of it when she was alive. Did she say anything to you?’

  ‘No.’

  Aunt Bernard chuckles and her big bosom heaves. ‘Of course she didn’t, because she knew what kind of reception she’d get. No one can reach her where she is now, you see.’ Aunt Bernard’s eyes widen further, giving her the intense look of a madwoman. ‘You’re not going to Ireland, are you? You’re not considering it?’

  ‘Well . . .’ I hesitate.

  ‘Of course you’re not. You know it’s a silly idea. Bury her ashes next to Ted. They’re meant to be together.’

  ‘But she’s been very specific—’

  Aunt Bernard waves a chubby hand. Her nails are bitten to the quick and her fingers are short and square, like her body. ‘She’s just playing you for fools. She doesn’t want to go to Ireland any more than you and Logan want to take her. She turned her back on that country decades ago and that was that. It seems mighty strange to me that she wants to return now, when she’s nothing but ashes.’ At the mention of my mother reduced to ash my eyes fill with tears. The thought of it is horrendous. Can that be all that is left? Aunt Bernard continues regardless, either ignoring – or oblivious to – my pain. ‘I went there once, Co. Wexford. Pretty but wet. Rained all the time. I’ve never been so soaked in all my life. There’s nothing to see in Ireland but hills and sea and rain.’ She waves her fingers again. ‘Bury her next to Ted. You will, won’t you, Faye? It’s the right thing to do. The family has to stay together and generations of Claytons are buried in that cemetery. It would be wrong to take her halfway across the world. You know that as well as I do. And trust me’ – she chuckles and clamps those saucer eyes onto mine – ‘you really don’t want to go to Ireland.’

  I lift my chin and hear myself declare, ‘Actually, I do.’

  Aunt Bernard blinks in astonishment. ‘Sorry, what did you say?’

  ‘I said that I do want to go.’

  Two red spots of indignation flourish on Aunt Bernard’s cheeks. ‘You do?’

  ‘Yes, I want to see where my mother came from.’

  ‘Muddy fields and cold parlours, I suspect,’ Aunt Bernard replies dismissively.

  ‘Then I shall see those,’ I say. ‘And I shall find out who my mother was.’ As I say it I realize, with a frisson of pleasure which takes me totally by surprise, that I have decided. It is done. I will stand up for myself and do exactly as I want. I don’t have to take the ashes, I can go alone, that way Logan can’t stop me, and if Wyatt objects, I’ll simply say that I want to find out whether any of Mother’s family are still alive. How can he deny me that? I only hope he doesn’t decide to come with me.

  I manage to extricate myself from Aunt Bernard and leave the drawing room. I flee to my father’s old study, which was transformed by the children into a games room after he died, with a pool table, dart board and a card table in the bay window where his desk used to be. In there I find the cousins hiding out like naughty schoolchildren. Rose and Edwina are lounging on the sofa with their older cousin Maggie, Logan’s daughter. They have kicked off their shoes and are smoking cigarettes, complaining about the inordinately large number of ghastly relations present. Logan’s boys, Henry, Christopher and Alexander, are playing pool with my son Walter, who is younger than them and easily led. When they see me standing in the doorway they stop what they are doing and look at me guiltily.

  I don’t blame them, however. I wish I could take refuge in there as well. But I can’t. I am the hostess and I have to do my duty. ‘Have you seen your father?’ I ask the girls. They shake their heads. ‘If you see him, tell him I’m looking for him.’

  ‘Are you okay, Mom?’ Rose asks. How like Rose to be concerned.

  ‘Oh, I’m fine,’ I reply, forcing a smile. ‘It’ll be over soon.’

  ‘Thank the Lord for that!’ says Edwina, blowing out a puff of smoke. ‘If one more person tells me how wonderful my grandmother was I’m going to slap them.’ She flashes a mischievous smile, designed to win the support of her cousins. ‘She was a prima donna of the first degree!’

  They giggle, then glance anxiously at me to see if I have taken offence. I haven’t.

  As I leave the room, taking care to close the door behind me so that the young people will not be found by determined relations, I see, out of the corner of my eye, someone hurrying down the corridor to my right. I realize that it is Temperance. In her black dress with the white collar, short greying hair and fulsome body, she is unmistakable. She gets to the end of the corridor and turns left, disappearing into the pantry.

  I follow. I know how hard my mother’s death has been on Temperance, but I also welcome an excuse not to have to go back into the drawing room. I find her leaning back on the butler’s sink, handkerchief pressed against her lips, eyes red-rimmed. She is a pitiful sight and my heart goes out to her. ‘Temperance . . .’ I say.

  Temperance shakes her head. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Faye,’ she snivels. ‘But I can’t stand around there watching all them people without making a fool of myself.’

  I go to embrace her. ‘It’s okay, Tempie,’ I say softly. ‘I wish they’d all go away too.’ I put my arms around her and squeeze her hard. She smells of cake, having
baked for the occasion. It clings to her hair and to the oil in her skin. I inhale the familiar scent of home and feel the same reassurance I felt when, as a little girl, I used to sit in her lap and allow myself to be gathered into her big arms and spongy bosom. But now it is I who am comforting her. She lets out a sob, then a shudder.

  ‘I don’t know how I’m gon’ do without her,’ she sniffs. ‘I known her since I was fourteen. She’s been good to me.’

  I reflect on my mother’s short fuse, her endless demands, her impatience, her addiction to drama and her obstinacy. ‘But you were good to her, too, Tempie,’ I say truthfully. ‘You put up with a great deal.’

  Temperance lifts her face off my shoulder, leaving a wet patch where her tears have soaked into the fabric. ‘She never meant to lose her temper, Miss Faye. She was just colourful. One minute up, the next minute down. Sometimes she was all over the place. But she had a heart of gold. There was not a more generous soul on the earth than Miss Tussy. She was never anything but kind to me.’ I reflect on the servants’ house and the small fortune my mother has left her and agree that she was certainly generous, at least in death. I don’t remember her being especially generous when she was alive. Then, as if reading my thoughts, she adds, ‘I don’t deserve such earthly riches, but she’s given them to me anyway.’ She begins to cry again.

  ‘Did she ever talk to you about her past?’ I ask, changing the subject.

  ‘In Ireland, you mean? She scarcely mentioned it.’

  ‘She wants her ashes scattered there.’

  This does not surprise Temperance. ‘Of course she does,’ she says, as if it is the most natural thing in the world. ‘It’s home, isn’t it? Everybody wants to go home in the end.’

  My eyes well and my throat grows tight. ‘That’s beautiful, Tempie,’ I whisper. I hadn’t thought of that.

  ‘Are you gon’ take her, Miss Faye?’

  ‘Logan wants to lay her to rest beside Daddy.’

  ‘That’s no good,’ says Temperance, her eyebrows coming together in a scowl. ‘She don’t wanna be buried there. You must take her to Ireland or she’ll be stompin’ and stampin’ up there in the clouds like it’s nobody’s business and givin’ us mortals no peace.’

  ‘I think she wants me to go to Ireland,’ I say, a warm, excited feeling firing up in the pit of my belly, dispelling my sorrow. ‘I think she wants me to go and discover her roots.’

  Temperance looks suspicious. ‘You gon’ find out about her past?’

  ‘I want to.’

  She taps a finger on my nose like she used to do when I was a little girl and looks at me steadily with her dark amber eyes. ‘You be careful now, Miss Faye. You don’t know what you gon’ find.’

  ‘A few old relatives, I hope.’

  ‘And more, I suspect,’ says Temperance darkly. ‘Everyone has a past, Miss Faye, and I guess Miss Tussy had more of a past than most.’

  But I am adamant now that I am going. I am sure that if I go to the place where my mother grew up I’ll be able to come back with a strong argument in favour of fulfilling her wish and scattering her ashes there. I know it is the right thing to do, for Mom as well as for myself.

  The tugging feeling is persistent. It is now in my heart, as if it has strings and someone is pulling them. I put a hand on my chest as I walk up the corridor towards the noise coming from the drawing room, and smile. It doesn’t matter who is doing the tugging, or if it is grief causing my imagination to feel things that aren’t really there, because I want to go. I want to go very much because I sense it will somehow connect me with my mother. Without her I don’t know who I am anymore. She was the wind in my sail and I am now lost at sea. Perhaps if I go to Ireland and spend time alone, far from home, I will find my own wind, and learn how to use my own rudder.

  Wyatt is talking to a group of men by the fireplace in the drawing room. They are smoking and drinking and laughing as if it is a party, not a wake. My enthusiasm deflates and I resolve to wait until the guests have gone and we’re alone to tell him of my plan. I plunge back into the crowd and accept the condolences with grace.

  At last everyone has left. Temperance has served us a light supper, for none of us are hungry. We are all staying at the house; Logan and Lucy and their four children, Wyatt and me and our three. Walter, who is the youngest and the clown of the family, imitates the more eccentric relations and we all laugh. It feels good to laugh, albeit a little inappropriate. When at last we are alone, upstairs in the bedroom which was mine as a girl and later as a married woman, with blue floral wallpaper and matching curtains, I tell Wyatt about Ireland.

  He looks at me with a mixture of irritation and sympathy. I can tell he thinks grief has made me irrational. ‘Logan says the ashes will remain here,’ he tells me, untying his tie. I feel a pressure build beneath my ribcage as the two men rise up in my imagination as obstacles to my independence.

  ‘I’m not going to take Mom with me,’ I explain. ‘I just want to go and see where she grew up. I feel like I didn’t really know her at all.’

  Wyatt sighs and puts his hands on his hips. I have been in Nantucket for almost two months, waiting for Mom to die, and after clearing the house with Temperance, so it is natural he should want me back in Boston. He is a partner in a big advertising firm and likes me to accompany him to work dinners and the endless social functions he insists we go to. Wyatt comes alive when he’s surrounded by people he can show off to. ‘I need you at home, Faye,’ he says. ‘Everything goes awry when you’re not there. I’m bored of going out on my own and coming back to an empty house and it’s been months since we entertained. Besides, it doesn’t look good. People will start to talk.’

  ‘I’m sure they’ll understand.’

  ‘What? You heading off to Ireland on your own? I mean, you don’t expect me to come with you, do you?’

  ‘Of course not. I know how busy you are at work.’ Wyatt would never put himself out for me, or for anyone else for that matter. He missed Rose’s graduation because he wouldn’t postpone a game of golf. (Rose was sweet and said she didn’t mind. Had it been Edwina all hell would have broken loose!)

  ‘It’s out of the question that you go to Ireland on your own,’ he continues. ‘What will people think?’

  I can’t help but chuckle at his archaic attitude. ‘I hardly think a grown woman travelling on her own is going to raise any eyebrows,’ I argue. ‘They’ll think what we tell them to think,’ I add.

  He shakes his head and steps out of his trousers. ‘It’s not safe,’ he adds, picking them up and folding them carefully. Wyatt is very particular about tidiness.

  ‘I’ll manage,’ I reply.

  ‘It’s not appropriate.’

  ‘I’m hardly a scarlet woman.’

  He brightens. ‘I tell you what. I’ll take you to Ireland. Next year, perhaps. We can go together.’

  This does not suit me. I don’t want Wyatt to come with me. If he comes, it will be all about Wyatt. ‘That’s a nice thought. It really is,’ I say. ‘I appreciate it, I do. But I don’t want to wait. I want to go now. I need to go now. I have never gone anywhere on my own.’ I look at him beseechingly. ‘I’ve never asked you for anything, Wyatt. Not in all the years we’ve been married. So, I’m asking now. I want to go. I want to go alone, and I want to go now.’

  Wyatt doesn’t know what to say. He blinks at me in bewilderment. I hold my ground. I am quite determined. I’m not sure where this determination is coming from. My heart is pounding against my ribs, my hands are sweating and I can feel myself trembling in my skin and yet, I don’t back down. ‘I’ll think about it,’ he says at last.

  ‘Wyatt, I’m not asking you to think about it. I’m telling you that I’m going.’

  Wyatt has never been spoken to like this in all his life. His obedient little wife has always done what she is told. He has always been the alpha male in the family, the one who calls the shots, the man who makes the rules and all the decisions. He scratches his head and his face twists w
ith irritation, all sympathy now gone. He is dealing with a rebellion and he wants to quell it before it gets out of control. He looks at me quizzically, as if wondering who I have been talking to. Who has sown these seeds of subversion? ‘Faye, I accept that this is a difficult time for you, your mother dying and all, but don’t forget your place. You are my wife and I need you at home.’

  ‘And I have lost my mother and I need to go to Ireland,’ I reply, standing firm and quite astonished by my own tenacity.

  ‘Fine!’ He raises his voice now and I flinch. I don’t like it when he’s angry. But all the same, I don’t back down. ‘If you still feel the need to go to Ireland, go in the spring. But I suspect, by then, you’ll have come to your senses.’ He strides into the bathroom and closes the door behind him with a bang.

  I nearly jump out of my skin at the sound, but I am triumphant. It is not what I wanted, but it is good enough. I will wait for the spring and I will not change my mind.

  Chapter 3

  Spring, 1961

  Spring comes and I surprise Wyatt by announcing that I am booking my flight to Shannon Airport. I have arranged to stay in a small hotel in Ballinakelly, the town near the castle, called Vickery’s Inn, and they have organized a car to pick me up at the airport. The duration of my stay will be two weeks. Wyatt is aghast. He can’t understand why I want to be away so long. I’m not entirely sure myself why I booked two weeks and not one. I’m aware that there are darker reasons besides loss that propel me to go. They lurk like shadows around my heart, growing denser the more I wilfully ignore them. But I’m scared to look too closely. Scared of what I will find at their source. I tell myself that I need time away, to rest, recharge and reassess my life, and that in so doing those shadows will go away.

  Logan is disapproving and I know he has discussed my trip with Wyatt, undoubtedly on the golf course. Wyatt doesn’t know, because I have kept my word and not told a soul, that Mom has left a third of her wealth to a mysterious third party. Logan is trying to change the will, but he really hasn’t got a leg to stand on. There is no argument. Until we find out the identity of this anonymous person, how can we complain? What if it is one of our children, for example? Unlikely, of course, but not impossible. We wouldn’t want to object in that case. Mom has designed this elaborate will for a reason, and I’m pretty sure that going to Ireland will reveal what that reason is. But Logan is trying to alter it all the same. He is damned if he is going to share what he believes to be our inheritance with anyone else.