The Secret Hours

by Santa Montefiore

  ‘In the fire,’ I interrupt. ‘I’m so sorry about that. It must have been devastating for you all. To lose your home and your father on the same night. I can’t imagine . . .’

  ‘The only part of the castle to remain standing was the western tower, to where Mama subsequently retreated and refused to leave.’

  I put down my knife and fork. ‘The western tower? Is it still the same?’

  ‘It’s the only part of the castle that is original,’ he says.

  I think of my dream and my excitement mounts. ‘Might I see it?’

  ‘Of course. If you’re interested.’

  ‘Oh, I am. I’m interested in my family’s history. It’s the only part of the castle that existed in Mom’s day.’

  ‘No one ever went in there, even then. It has always been cold and damp and pretty unfriendly.’

  ‘Will you show me, all the same?’

  ‘I’ll show you after lunch,’ he says and I hope he doesn’t forget, because I want to go there very much. I want to see if it is the same tower as the one in my dream. I haven’t had that dream since leaving Nantucket, but I remember it clearly. It is still fresh in my memory as if I dreamed it last night.

  After lunch we drink tea and coffee in the drawing room. JP’s big dogs charge in, having been released from their confinement in the kitchen, and their tails wag so vigorously that they knock the odd ornament off the sofa tables and thrill the children by pushing their noses into people’s conversations in their desire to be petted.

  At last Uncle Bertie takes me upstairs to see the tower. JP’s eight-year-old daughter Aisling comes with us. She holds her grandfather’s hand and skips along beside him, talking incessantly about nothing. She is as chirpy as a songbird. I recognise the corridor at once. It is long and there are doors along both sides. We go deeper and deeper into the castle and my anticipation grows.

  I see the hole in the wall where the staircase is long before we reach it. I know it is there, and yet to the ignorant eye it is concealed. Aisling lets go of Uncle Bertie’s hand and runs ahead. She disappears into the wall and I hear her footsteps clattering up a staircase. ‘Here it is,’ says my uncle and he stands aside to let me go first. I look down at the steps, they are just as I have seen them in my dream. Dark wood, worn to a light brown in places by centuries of treading feet, with a slight hollow in the middle of each one. I put my foot in the first hollow and up I go.

  I catch my breath when I see the door. It is heavy and old and embellished with black studs and nails. Even the shape of it is the same as the door in my dream. It reaches into a gentle curve at the top, like the door to an old crypt. Aisling is already inside. She is by the empty fireplace, where the woman with red hair stands in my dream. Yet, the child has put her hands on the mantelpiece and is swinging with her feet off the ground. The room is the same size. The same window looks out onto the lawn. Only there is no one there. No one is waiting for me. Not Adeline nor a reflection of myself. Only Aisling giggling as she tries not to let go, her fingers slipping in the dust.

  ‘Well, here it is,’ says Uncle Bertie and I can tell that he finds it damp and cold and has no wish to linger. I absorb the energy in the room. It is very different from the energy downstairs. It’s not a nasty energy at all, in fact it’s pleasant in spite of the temperature. It’s an ancient energy, as if one has stepped back in time to another age. I feel very strange. ‘There are a couple of other rooms. Let me show them to you,’ says my uncle. But I don’t care about those. I only care about this one. Nonetheless, he opens another door to the right of the fireplace and leads me into what he tells me was once a bedroom. ‘Mama insisted on living here after the fire. She refused to move out, even though it was uncomfortable and cold.’ He puts his hands on his hips and shakes his head. ‘It was a dreadful business. She lived out her last days here and eventually passed away.’

  Aisling remains in the other room. I can hear her dancing now, her small feet lightly tapping on the floorboards. Uncle Bertie suggests we go back to the drawing room. ‘This isn’t a place one wants to loiter.’ We go back into the little sitting room. ‘Come on, my dear,’ he says to his granddaughter, patting her head. ‘Let’s go downstairs, shall we?’

  Uncle Bertie leaves the room. I start to follow. Then Aisling takes my hand. ‘Aunt Faye,’ she says.

  I turn to her and smile. ‘What is it, Aisling?’

  ‘There’s a woman in here who looks just like you,’ she says. Her big eyes stare up at me innocently.

  My heart stops. ‘Sorry, Aisling. What did you say?’

  ‘There’s a woman in here with red hair who looks just like you.’ I sweep my eyes about the room and see no one. ‘She’s often here,’ she continues, as if she’s talking about someone from the town and not a ghost. ‘She’s nice as well, just like you.’ Then she smiles, lets go of my hand and skips on down the staircase, leaving me bewildered and a little afraid. I turn back to the chimney but see nothing except the cold black hearth and the dusty mantelpiece above it, marked with Aisling’s fingerprints.

  I am stunned by what Aisling has told me. I want to believe that she was making it up, but how could she know about the woman with red hair who I see in my dream? I am well and truly spooked. I return to the drawing room and am grateful that the talk is of earthly things like the weather, the hunt and the local gossip. I don’t want to hear any more of ghosts.

  I return to the White House with Kitty and Robert by foot. It is not far when one cuts through the estate and the weather is fine. I do not tell Kitty what Aisling said in the tower; not because Robert is with us, although I doubt he believes in spirits, but because I am afraid of what she might tell me. I don’t want to believe the dead are around us. I like to think of them far away in Heaven. I have managed to avoid the topic for years, even though Temperance often slips it into the conversation or mutters under her breath. I don’t want to be subjected to it here.

  At four Cormac arrives in his Jeep. Kite is on the back seat. This time she does not regard me with suspicion but thumps her tail on the leather. I guess she has accepted me. Dogs sense when someone loves them. I lean over and scratch her beneath her chin. She lifts her nose with its pretty white blaze, shuts her eyes with pleasure and smiles. I swear she actually draws her mouth into a smile. I have never seen a dog do that before.

  ‘I thought I’d show you the Fairy Ring,’ he says.

  ‘What’s the Fairy Ring?’ I ask.

  ‘It’s a circle of big stones on the top of the cliff. Legend has it that they were once people, turned to stone by an evil witch. At sunset they move. That’s because the witch gave them a small window in which to become themselves again, and that’s just as the sun touches the sea. Then they’re stone again, poor devils.’

  ‘Do you believe that?’ I ask.

  He glances at me sidelong and laughs. ‘No.’ I’m relieved. ‘Pagans probably put them there for sun worship thousands of years ago. People love to invent elaborate stories, but the truth is no one really knows why they’re there.’

  We chatter on like old friends. I notice thick clouds blowing in off the ocean, slowly eating through the blue sky. Cormac parks in a field and we climb out. Kite races into the long grasses enthusiastically. There is a chilly wind and I’m glad I have my coat and scarf. I tie my hair into a ponytail to keep it from blowing about and rather wish I’d brought a hat. It’s spring, but every time the sun goes behind a cloud the temperature drops.

  Cormac is wearing a tweed cap. His grey hair curls beneath it. He looks like a farmer in his muted green coat and heavy lace-up boots. It wouldn’t surprise me if he has cows and sheep as well as being the local taxi driver and bard. We head along a path that meanders through the purple heather and yellow gorse. Every time the sun comes out the flowers shine brightly. He bends down and picks a sprig of something and crushes it between his finger and thumb. ‘What do you think this is?’ he asks.

  I take it and press it to my nose. ‘Thyme?’ I reply.

 
‘Wild thyme,’ he says. ‘In the summer it blooms into purple and pink flowers. You’ll find wild orchids here too, along with rosemary and other herbs. Once the sun’s been on it for a while the smell is grand.’ He inhales deeply. We walk on and every now and then he picks something else for me to look at, or smell. He points out birds, knowing them by name as Kitty does. There’s a wagtail and a bunting, cormorants, chaffinches and curlews, and a flamboyant hoopoe which is apparently very rare. Kite is quick to spot rabbits but not quick enough to catch them.

  ‘Tell me, who burned down the castle?’ I ask.

  ‘That’s a very good question. It wasn’t us,’ he replies, shaking his head.

  ‘So they never caught the culprits?’

  He narrows his eyes. ‘I suspect it was Michael Doyle, Faye. He had a hatred in him in those days, a hatred for the Deverills, and he was always on the bottle.’

  ‘Who rebuilt it?’

  ‘A cousin who lived in London. Celia Deverill. She poured money into it like there was no tomorrow, but her husband lost everything in the Depression of ’29 and he hanged himself. Right there in the garden.’

  ‘Goodness, that’s terrible!’

  ‘You see, the Deverills make a lot of drama.’

  ‘Alana told me about Bridie.’

  ‘Bridie was Michael’s sister. Michael blamed Lord Deverill for getting his sister into trouble. It’s a sad story. But Bridie came back from America a rich woman, married to a no-good Italian count, and bought the castle herself. Not long after that her husband was found buried up to his neck in the sand and drowned; murdered.’

  ‘I don’t suppose they ever found the culprits there either,’ I say. I’m beginning to get a clear picture about this place. I imagine this town looks after its own.

  ‘You’re right. He was a gambler and a fraud, and a philanderer to boot. There were many who wanted him out of the way, I can assure you.’

  We walk and talk and I am riveted by the history of this seemingly quiet little place. Cormac knows so much and I sense that, because I’m a Deverill, he feels it’s my right to know my own family’s history. I do not think he’s a gossip. He takes no pleasure from the tragedies and scandals. When I ask him about Kitty’s involvement during the War of Independence, he merely states that she was invaluable. I ask him about Grace and Kitty, whether they were friends, and he tells me that they were allies, fighting on the same side, but that is all. I would like to ask him about Kitty and Jack, but I don’t dare. I imagine he does not feel it is his place to tell me about my cousin. I don’t press him further. Kitty is a private person, a modest person too, so I will leave it at that.

  We reach the Fairy Ring. It is high up on the cliffs and we can see for miles around. The sea is turning grey beneath the clouds, the waves growing big and angry. Seabirds soar on the mounting gale and Kite races after rabbits, which disappear swiftly into their holes, flashing their white tails at her triumphantly. I put my hand on one of the stones. It is massive, three times the size of me, at least. There is something rather special about touching this ancient stone. Perhaps because it has been here for five thousand years and who knows who has placed their hand here before me.

  ‘If only these stones could talk,’ I say.

  Cormac puts his hands on his hips and nods. ‘They’d have a few tales to tell, I should think.’

  I sigh with pleasure and lean back against the stone. ‘What’s it like living in such a beautiful place, Cormac? Do you ever take it for granted?’

  He shakes his head and our eyes scan the horizon together. ‘I wake up with gratitude every morning of my life,’ he says.

  ‘How could my mother have left it and never come back?’

  ‘You have to read that diary of hers.’

  ‘I know. I’m afraid to.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because of what I’ll find out. Something terrible happened.’

  ‘It’s likely more terrible in your imagination than in her account of it,’ he tells me wisely.

  ‘She was very different in her youth to how she was as a wife and mother. I want to know her, because I realize now that I didn’t know her at all.’

  ‘Do children ever really know their parents?’ Cormac asks.

  ‘I don’t know. Do they?’ I think of Rose, Edwina and Walter and know that they would be totally unfamiliar with the Deverill side of me, which is only emerging now. I wonder what they’d think of it? I don’t imagine children ever want their parents to change. They want us to remain as solid rocks to their anchors, while the rest of the world moves around them.

  ‘I suppose it’s only by stepping back and looking at them with detachment that one can hope to see who they really are. As long as you see Arethusa as Mother, and not as Arethusa, you’ll judge her from the standpoint of a daughter, not a historian. You need to put your emotions to one side. It’s not about you.’

  Suddenly the sky darkens. The black clouds are upon us. The blue sky is all but gone and the temperature drops considerably. As it starts to rain, Cormac takes off his cap and puts it on my head. ‘Come, I’ll show you somewhere we can shelter until it’s passed.’ The rain hides my blushes. His cap is warm and there is something very intimate about having it on my head just after it’s been on his. I feel like the college girl who is wearing her boyfriend’s baseball shirt.

  We walk briskly down the hill, keeping to the path. Kite does not mind the rain and leaps about, tearing into the long grasses only to emerge moments later with her tail wagging. I see an abandoned cabin nestled into the hillside. There are many of these uninhabited buildings, lying derelict in the grass like old bones. Cormac pushes the door and it opens easily. There’s nothing inside, just a few empty sacks and a pile of dusty planks. But it is dry. Cormac puts a couple of sacks on the planks and we sit side by side. Kite lies in the open doorway and watches the rain, as do we. I am wet through. However, I don’t mind. I give him back his cap and he replaces it on his head. We stare out in silence and I wonder whether he feels the romance of this moment as I do.

  I know this is very out of character for me to be sitting here and feeling like this about a man who is not my husband. I barely recognize myself. But then I am discovering, as I trawl through my mother’s past, that I am not only a Clayton and a Langton, but a Deverill too. And I’m beginning to realize that the Deverill part is stronger than any other.

  Chapter 15

  ‘You didn’t come here just to find out about your mother, did you?’ says Cormac. His candour takes me by surprise. Only a moment ago we were discussing the weather. But it is intimate in here, just the two of us, and I should be flattered that he has clearly given it some thought.

  ‘What makes you leap to that conclusion?’ I ask.

  ‘Because you’re here without your husband.’

  ‘I didn’t want him to come,’ I reply quietly. ‘He’s busy working and he’s not interested in Ireland or finding out about my mother. I had to come alone.’

  Cormac nods. He is leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. He turns his head and looks at me. He smiles, not a jolly smile but a compassionate one, and I know he sees through me. I avert my gaze and stare out at the rain. ‘After my mother died, I needed time on my own to grieve,’ I tell him. ‘She has requested in her will that her ashes be scattered here. Well, since she never talked about Ireland, I was curious. Mom was a very sociable, gregarious woman. She was difficult too. Not easy to get close to, on reflection. I realized that I never really knew her – the sociable, gregarious woman was hiding a lot of secrets. But coming here has dug up more questions than it has answers. Each secret that is reveals takes her further away from the mother I knew. I’m no closer to understanding her.’

  ‘I think you came here to find yourself,’ he says, still fixing me with those lapis eyes.

  ‘How can you possibly think that when you don’t know me?’

  ‘You’ve changed.’ He shrugs and knits his fingers. ‘You’re quite a different woman to the one I p
icked up at the airport and that was what, five days ago?’

  I’m astonished and secretly flattered. ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘I’m enjoying myself, that’s all. Maybe I was sad when I arrived.’

  ‘You’re just different.’ I can feel him looking at me more intensely and I keep my eyes on the sea. ‘You’re lighter. You know, it’s okay to take time out to reassess your life. It’s okay to be selfish. To think of yourself. You’ve likely spent the last thirty-odd years looking after everyone else, you’re not even sure of your own needs. I’d say your mother’s death has triggered something in you.’ I drop my gaze into my hands, for he is right. Mom’s death has triggered something in me. I know what it is. I’m just afraid to say it out loud, or even in my head, to myself. ‘People don’t always stay the same, Faye,’ he continues. ‘Life is a long road.’

  ‘Wyatt hasn’t changed.’

  ‘That’s not what I mean. You have.’ I stare at him now, afraid that he is going to articulate how I truly feel. ‘You came to Ireland to find your mother, but I’d wager you’re going to find yourself.’ He chuckles, releasing the tension that’s been gradually building between us in this quiet cabin. ‘I’d wager you’re beginning to find the real Faye already.’

  I smile, relieved that he is no longer talking about Wyatt. ‘It is very healing to be here, in this beautiful place. I do feel lighter, much lighter. I like who I am here.’

  ‘That’s because you can finally be yourself.’ I frown at him. ‘Just a hunch.’ He grins playfully. ‘I don’t know you, after all.’ He is teasing me now. ‘But perhaps I’m an amateur psychologist as well as a taxi driver and a bard!’

  ‘And what of you, Cormac O’Farrell. How do you manage to be happy all the time?’

  ‘Because I make a conscious effort every day to be grateful for my life.’

  I’m surprised at the simplicity of his reply. ‘Is that it? The key to happiness?’

  He’s not being funny. ‘It’s a choice we all have,’ he says gravely and I can sense that after all he has been through he has worked very hard at this. ‘I choose to live in the moment and not to be dragged back to unhappy times. Sure, I have a lot I could be sad about. I lost friends in the war. I suffered and was afraid. I loved a woman and I lost her. I’d like to have had children, but it never happened. I could go on. We all have reasons to regret and wallow in self-pity. But that’s not who I am. I am who I choose to be today, right here, right now. So, I thank God for the rain, the beautiful rain. I thank God for the heather. For the gorse and the flowers. I thank God for my friends and my home. I thank God for Kite, who has healed the tears in my heart, indeed she has. I thank God for my life. It’s beautiful.’