The Secret Hours

by Santa Montefiore

  ‘I think she’s where she wants to be now,’ agreed Arethusa and she smiled as something Peregrine said made Mrs Stubbs burst into a fit of laughter again. Rupert looked up from beneath his dark eyebrows and caught Lady Alexandra’s eye.

  ‘I didn’t practise either,’ said Lady Alexandra, enlivening beneath Rupert’s gaze. ‘I suppose I must if I am to play and sing. And I don’t want to let myself down. I’m not used to doing things badly.’

  Jonas put the girls to work, teaching them how to strum and how to pluck, but only Arethusa had a real desire to learn. She listened, copied and concentrated and was thrilled by her progress. However, after an hour it became obvious that Lady Alexandra’s attention was waning and Jonas suggested they take a break. No sooner had he suggested it than Lady Alexandra and Margherita put down their instruments and hastened across the floor to join the men and Mrs Stubbs, who, being American, was less concerned about leaving a young lady alone with a man. It did not occur to her that Arethusa might harbour inappropriate feelings for her banjo teacher on account of his class and his colour. She was much more concerned about her own daughter appealing to Lord Penrith and doing everything in her power to promote their growing friendship.

  While Lady Alexandra fluttered about Rupert like a butterfly bedazzled in sunshine and Margherita diverted Peregrine in a more sultry and mature manner, Arethusa was left alone with Jonas.

  ‘I don’t want a rest,’ she told him, gazing into his brown eyes steadily. ‘I want you to teach me some more.’

  ‘You’re a rewarding pupil,’ he said with a smile. ‘I couldn’t ask for more enthusiasm.’

  ‘I learned piano as a child, but I never got beyond the most basic tunes, and I learned to sing, but I didn’t enjoy that either. Now I realize that it wasn’t me who was unmusical, but my teacher who was uninspiring. I am taking to the banjo like a fish to water because of you, Mr Madison. You’re enthusing me and making me want to impress you. Had you taught me piano I’m sure I’d be a concert pianist by now, and had you taught me to sing I’d rival the nightingale. I heard you sing at the ball and lost my heart to your beautiful voice, and I wanted so very badly for music to be a part of my life again. Somehow my dearest wish has been answered. Here we are, you and I.’ She slid her eyes to the other end of the room, saw that they were paying her not the slightest attention, and continued boldly. ‘You are opening a door, Mr Madison, which I thought had been closed for ever, and now I’m looking out onto a new and exciting world. I’ll learn the banjo and my life will no longer be so monotonous and dull because I will have this wonderful companion to accompany my voice and fill the empty hours with delight.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say,’ he murmured, returning her uninhibited gaze with a frown. ‘I’ve never met anyone like you in all my life.’

  ‘And I’ve never met anyone like you.’

  He grinned. ‘Well, that I believe.’

  She grinned too and positioned the banjo in preparation to play. ‘I don’t mean your colour, Mr Madison. I mean you.’

  Jonas reached over and took her fingers in his. She caught her breath, electrified, and stared at him in surprise. But she did not take her fingers away. ‘You have beautiful hands, Miss Deverill,’ he said softly. She dropped her gaze to see how white hers looked in his brown ones. How well they fitted together. How natural it felt for his skin to touch hers. ‘You’ll find, if you bring your wrist down, like this’ – he moved her wrist accordingly – ‘that it will be easier to position your fingers over the strings. And don’t grip the neck too tightly, unlike a guitar a banjo has a rather sensitive neck.’

  Arethusa watched him closely. His face was serious, his eyes a little feverish.

  He was still holding her wrist.

  Arethusa’s heart was so full and so light with happiness that she felt compelled to speak her mind. She allowed herself to sink into his rich mahogany irises. ‘When one looks into a person’s eyes, one sees past colour and class. One sees into the person’s soul, which is not made of matter but of something finer, something indestructible. The eternal soul does not belong to this intolerant and prejudiced world, Mr Madison, only the body, which is mortal. When I look into your eyes, your soul is what I see. I only wish everyone saw the soul like I do.’ She knew she sounded like her mother, but instead of thinking ill of Adeline, she was grateful to her, because right now she really believed it, as if a veil had been lifted, revealing only truth. To Arethusa nothing mattered but the soul that shone out of him like a light and connected with her own. At this very moment she believed she had never felt more at one with another person in her entire life. They were soulmates, twin souls, or whatever her mother meant when she spoke about those who connect on a level beyond the material. Arethusa had always scorned that kind of spiritual nonsense, but she was not laughing now.

  ‘It’s as if I’ve met you before, Miss Deverill,’ said Jonas quietly, letting go of her wrist and casting his eyes briefly to Mrs Stubbs who was fanning herself with one hand and placing the other on Peregrine’s arm, as if she were already his mother-in-law. He turned back to Arethusa and lowered his voice. ‘It’s as if we already know each other. Stop me if I’m being forward, but—’

  ‘You’re not being forward, Mr Madison,’ Arethusa cut in quickly. ‘It is I who am speaking out of turn.’

  ‘If we both are, then it’s not out of turn,’ he added with a small smile.

  Arethusa smiled back and she knew then that he had acknowledged their connection. They would only need to look at each other in future for that connection to be reinforced, for their mutual admiration to be confirmed. They might not get the chance to speak on their own again, but it didn’t matter. They could communicate with their eyes. They only had one thing they wanted to say to each other anyhow and that needed no words.

  Mrs Stubbs was now telling the girls to return to their lesson. ‘Or the Duchess will reproach me for failing in my duty as chaperone!’ she gushed. ‘Really, you boys,’ she added, looking at Peregrine and Rupert in turn, ‘are a mighty distraction!’

  Margherita and Lady Alexandra returned flushed and exhilarated from their break. They both glowed with infatuation and Arethusa wondered if she glowed too. Not that anyone besides Rupert would notice. He, of course, would comment on it on the way home, but he would not know its source. He would assume she had eyes for Peregrine and warn her that she didn’t stand a chance against Margherita and her enormous wealth. But that suited her very well. It suited her very well indeed.

  Chapter 19

  Ballinakelly, 1961

  I snap the diary shut. The blood rushes into my cheeks and I feel a sudden sinking sensation, as if my bed is no longer solid and I am losing my balance. I get up and walk unsteadily to the bathroom to fetch a glass of water. I take a deep breath, gulp down the water, then stare at my shocked face in the mirror. From the little I have read it is now obvious that my mother left for America because she fell in love with a black man. I could never have predicted that. The revelation has knocked me for six! I can only assume that somehow someone found out and there followed an unholy row. I don’t see anything wrong with a relationship between two people of different races, but in some circles, even now, in the sixties, it would cause a scandal. I cannot imagine how scandalous it must have been at the end of the last century.

  I want to read on but I’m afraid. On one hand I feel desperately sad for my mother. If she truly loved Jonas Madison she must have suffered. They must have both suffered. There was no earthly way they could have ever been together in those days, and it must have been agony for my mother to leave her home and her familiar world for a country far away – perhaps she followed him to America. I sense the next chapter of her diary is going to be full of distress and heartbreak. I’m not sure I can take it. On the other hand, I am extremely anxious. I feel duty-bound to share her story with Logan, but I’m not sure I can. My brother is not like me. He will hate to think of our mother having sexual relations with a man who was not our
father. He will not want to think of her as a sexual creature at all. Should I share it? Does he need to know?

  Wyatt slips into my mind then. I haven’t given much thought to my husband over the last five days. The longer I am here the weaker he becomes. A mere dot on the horizon, getting smaller and smaller and fainter and fainter. Now he looms large. I definitely couldn’t tell him. He is conventional and old-fashioned, even more so than Logan, and the revelation would appal him. I’m ashamed to admit that he will be shocked. He certainly wouldn’t want it to get out. What other people think matters very much to Wyatt, and he assumes, quite wrongly of course, that everyone else is just like him. Thankfully, they are not.

  As for my children, I have given thought to them, especially Rose. I know that she, in particular, will understand as I do, and, as a romantic, be enthralled by the love story. Who would have guessed that her grandmother had this secret past? I’m sure she’ll be riveted, and saddened too, by the hopelessness of it. I wish she were here to share it with me. I long to tell her.

  I wonder then about the banjo I gave to Temperance. It can only be the very one Mom learned to play with Jonas. She kept it all these years and I never knew about it. I wonder how often she took it out and played it. Or whether she just held it and thought of him.

  I wonder, during her long marriage to my father, how often she thought of Jonas.

  I return to bed and try to sleep, but I cannot. My mind is too agitated to rest. I cannot stop chewing on the flesh of this tragic tale. How devastating for her to love a man she couldn’t have. How devastating for them both. And what became of Jonas? I know how her story ended, because I’m part of that ending. But I know nothing of him. If their affair was discovered, what happened to him?

  But does it matter that she loved Jonas Madison? She eventually married my father and, as far as I know, was very happy. Perhaps Jonas married too and was happy as well. I suspect, however, that theirs was a love that accompanied them throughout the whole of their lives. I don’t know why I know that. I just do.

  I’m discovering that I knew my mother so very little. The woman I grew up with is not the same as the girl I’m reading about in her diary. Try as I might, I cannot reconcile the two. It’s as if she arrived in America and put away her old self, never to revisit it. I find that unbearably sad. So, what made my mother change? Perhaps that’s why I’m restless, because I know I’m about to find out. And it had to be something big. No one changes to that degree on account of a small ripple. It had to be an earthquake.

  It occurs to me that perhaps I should skip to the end of the diary. Cut the suspense and just find out what happened. I have often wanted to do that while reading a novel. The story is so tense that I want to read the last page to put myself out of my misery. But I don’t, because I know that the author hasn’t written all those words for the reader to cut to the final paragraph. So I won’t. Mom wanted me to read her diary and read it I will, in the right order, page by page.

  I am relieved when dawn’s gentle light dissolves the darkness and it is time to get up. I look at the clock on the mantelpiece and see that it is half past five. I haven’t slept at all, I don’t think. I realize there’s no point lying in bed lamenting my lack of sleep. So I get up and dress, then creep out of the house and walk down to the beach. The sky is a pale, dusty pink and the sun has begun its leisurely rise. A flock of birds flies across it, silhouetted. There is something very beautiful about their silent flight. I don’t know what they are. Cormac would know. As I begin to walk up the sand, with the wind in my hair and the briny tang of the ocean in my nostrils, my thoughts turn to Cormac. I understand my mother’s infatuation. I know what it’s like to be smitten – to be smitten by someone you can’t have.

  The waves wash up on the beach then retreat again. They swell and break and foam and their rhythm is comforting. They have done this for thousands of years. While the world has changed around them, they have remained the same. My mother must have paced this beach. She must have watched the same sea and listened to the same waves. I may not know the woman in the diary but I feel connected to her all the same. Perhaps that’s what Mom wanted me to do. To understand who she was. To understand why she was the way she was. Why she changed. She could have kept her story secret. It would have died with her; but she didn’t. She wanted me to know.

  Perhaps she wanted to honour Jonas Madison in some way. Maybe she just wanted him to live on.

  I want to see Cormac. I want to see him very badly, but I don’t know how to. I don’t even know where he lives. It’s crazy. I’m a married woman and I’m hankering after a man I have only just met. What would Logan think? What would Wyatt say? How would my children react? Would they, like me, lament that they don’t know their mother like they thought they did?

  I know what my mother would do. She’d encourage me all the way. That’s exactly what she’d do. She’d encourage me to follow my heart, because she wasn’t able to follow hers.

  I hurry up the beach, a growing sense of excitement charging my paces. I will ask one of the grooms, or the butler, where Cormac lives. Everyone knows everything about each other in this town, someone will know where he lives, for sure. But when I reach the house I find Kitty in the hall in her riding clothes. She is surprised to see me up at this hour. ‘Well, look at the early bird!’ she laughs. ‘You’re just like me. The first hours of the morning are the sweetest, I believe. Do you want to come out?’

  I had not planned to go riding, but since she is offering, I accept. There is a wildness in me that I suddenly want to unleash. There’s something about Kitty that tells me I can.

  Up on the hills my anxiety evaporates. What does it matter whether my mother loved Jonas or not? The fact remains the same: she left Ireland never to return. If Jonas is the reason why, it’s better than being pregnant with Dermot McLoughlin’s baby, because bringing a child into the world like that would be heartbreaking. She would have had to give it up and I cannot imagine an agony such as that. Everything seems possible here, as if the only limitations in our lives are the ones we impose upon ourselves. I realize, as we gallop over the dewy grass, that I can make any life for myself that I choose. Mom couldn’t, but I can. I think of Cormac and something in the wind encourages me to ask Kitty where he lives.

  ‘Cormac?’ she repeats. ‘Not far from here. Come, we’ll go and knock on his door. He’s an early riser too.’

  We set off at a gentle pace, allowing the horses to catch their breath after the gallop. With the sea on our right and the velvet green hills on our left, we meander along a well-trodden path, through long grasses and heather. The sun rises higher and floods the landscape with a soft, golden light, releasing into the warming air the scents of wild rosemary and thyme which remind me of my walk with Cormac. Then, like a schoolgirl who finds excuses to mention her boyfriend at every opportunity because the sound of his name is so sweet, I ask Kitty about him.

  ‘Was Cormac devoted to his wife?’

  ‘She was lovely and it was a great sadness when she died before her time, of cancer,’ Kitty replies. ‘She was a girl from Clonakilty, which isn’t far from here. Very pretty, as one would expect. Cormac was quite a catch, you know.’

  ‘Well, he’s handsome now,’ I say, trying to sound dispassionate.

  ‘He was devilishly handsome when he was a young man, and quite the hero.’ She laughs. ‘He was brave to the point of being reckless. But that’s Cormac. Everything he does, he does with passion.’

  ‘He showed me his missing finger.’

  ‘He was tortured by the Tans,’ she tells me. ‘He laughs about it because that’s his way of coping, but I can tell you it was no laughing matter at the time. He had information that could have led to the deaths of a dozen good men.’

  ‘He didn’t divulge anything?’

  ‘Not a word. He was black and blue when they rescued him.’

  ‘How did they find him?’

  ‘He was locked in a cabin in the hills, guarded by just a few m
en. One of those men was one of us.’ I notice she used the word ‘us’. I long to know more about the part she played in this war.

  ‘We sheltered in a cabin yesterday,’ I say. ‘There seem to be lots of them in these hills.’

  ‘Homes abandoned during the famine, and in the years that followed. Times were hard.’ Kitty sighs, as if the resonance of pain is embedded in the earth and will always be there, as a constant reminder that freedom came at a price. ‘They give the landscape a melancholy air, don’t they?’

  ‘Yes, but I like them. I don’t know why, nostalgia perhaps for a bygone age.’

  ‘Because they’re full of romance, like Cormac’s songs,’ she adds.

  ‘He does sing beautifully.’

  ‘People like Cormac will never forget the struggle for independence and the suffering that came with it.’

  ‘And you?’ I ask.

  She looks at me and I notice shadows beneath her eyes that I’m sure weren’t there before. ‘And me?’ she says. ‘I live a quiet life now, but I still hear the roar of my memories. They’re all around me.’

  I see a pretty white house ahead, nestled in the crescent of a cove down below the cliffs. ‘Is that Cormac’s house?’ I ask hopefully.

  ‘No, that’s the O’Learys’ house,’ she replies. Her horse stops walking and mine copies and stops too. We gaze upon it. A silence falls over us, only the waves thunder and crash against the rocks, and I feel the need to break it, because it is heavy and uncomfortable.

  ‘It’s a lovely place to live,’ I say.

  She sighs again and tilts her head to one side. I sense longing in her sigh and wistfulness in the way she tilts her head. ‘It is lovely,’ she agrees. I think she is about to elaborate. I sense something happened here in her past and I’m sure she is going to tell me about it. But then she inhales sharply, moves her head briskly as if she has decided against it and now wants to leave. She turns her horse away. ‘Come, I’ll show you Cormac’s.’