by Faith Hogan
She could not leave him standing in the square all night, could she? After all, he was a colleague of Sir Clive’s. What would they think of her if she left him out in the cold for the night? She tossed every scenario over in her thoughts, but she knew, more than anything, she wanted to meet him.
By eight o’clock, she had made up her mind. She would go to the gate and tell him she couldn’t possibly go on a date with him. She painted her lips in the ruby lipstick Pamela cast aside in favour of a timid pink and changed into her best clothes; just because she wasn’t going dancing, didn’t mean she couldn’t look her best. Creeping down each step, she cursed as they groaned in loud creeks beneath her stockinged feet, she didn’t dare make a sound, so she hugged her shoes tight to her chest. She would be coy and evasive. Perhaps, he would fall madly in love with her and wait until her mother could be as thrilled for her as she was for Pamela.
‘I’m freezing, but you were worth the wait,’ William pulled her close before she could say a word. But then she knew, she had wanted to come, really, even if she told herself she wouldn’t. He hadn’t needed to convince her. Then they were stalking down O’Connell Street, his arm tight about her, his pace fast and words sparse. He smelled of tobacco and beer; it seemed to Iris the most sophisticated aroma. From his coat, there was the tang of aftershave, or perhaps, a perfume worn by some woman, brushed too close to him before they met. She matched his purposeful strides; feeling like they owned the city, youth and beauty and illicit love. He did not say much until they turned into the basement steps of a hotel she never noticed before somewhere well past Trinity.
‘You’re with me, right. If anyone asks your age, just say nothing.’ He bent and kissed her full on the lips. It was strong and sweet and it felt to Iris like he might have sucked her soul from her. Her whole body emptied for a moment. When she floated back to ground, she just knew she was in love with William Keynes.
2
Kate, Present
Sometimes crossroads appear in the last place you expect them. Kate Hunt knew, as the Atlantic winter air dug hungrily into her bones, that she was standing at one now. The beach was empty, save for an occasional reluctant dog walker; certainly, she was the only holidaymaker. Was she a holidaymaker? She was staying with her great-aunt Iris and her husband Archie in their quaint hotel as far away from her real life in London as it was possible to get. Even if it was only an hour by plane to the west of Ireland, Kate felt like she was in a different world. Iris was her only real family now, unless you counted her mother and well, she and Adaline had never been close.
Ballytokeep did not get many tourists outside the summer months; none at all at the end of December. Kate booked the break on Christmas night. It was a whim, she needed to get away, to jump off the treadmill her life had become, just to breathe. Since they met at Pamela’s funeral, Iris sent a Christmas card each year. Just a card. ‘Hope you’re well, thinking of you, love if you had time to pop across,’ it was the kind of thing people said. Probably, you never took them up, but Kate saw it as a sign, a lighthouse in a vast ocean – maybe a place, or people, to call her own. Alone in her London flat, it felt like the whole world was sharing the holidays without her. The city outside twinkled with festive cheer. She convinced herself for so long that it didn’t matter. It was a time for drunks, rows and disappointments and, for almost a decade, she managed to ignore the silly cheerfulness around her. This year, she’d cracked open a bottle of champagne, a gift from work, had it made her maudlin? Rumour had it; her boss, Lyndon Tansey had just bought a winery in South Africa. He brought in a crate of white and red for their Christmas drinks and they’d all got nicely sozzled. Maybe, Kate thought that Christmas night, as she eyed the half-finished bottle of champagne, maybe that was what had made her feel restless, as though she was missing something. While other people were buying vineyards, she was wading through divorce papers for the rich and famous.
She booked it on a whim. Now, she was pleased she’d come here to this antiquated little place that was too big to be a village, too small to be a town. Ballytokeep, for all the desertion of the summer trade, was a place like no other she had ever been to. It was built on a stony hill, a picture postcard of gaudily painted shopfronts and houses looking down to where the powerful ocean swept up to the weathered promenade. The sea, with its rolling surf whispering slowly and determinedly up the golden sand, seemed to promise the cleaning rejuvenation she so badly craved. Far off in the distance, the towers of a Norman castle keep rose high into the skyline and Kate knew she would visit here again to sit beneath its stoic turret. She loved the little hotel; her room the only one with a guest, peeped out of the centre of the Victorian building. The view was spectacular, small blue and white fishing boats bobbed on the icy waves that beat against the old harbour.
In London, they’d call Hartley’s Guesthouse boutique, shabby-chic or maybe bohemian. If the place was a little faded, its chintz too threadbare to be fashionable, its varnishes dulled with age, it was no less charming for all of that. Here, it was what it was; there was no pretension about the Victorian building with all its original features and impressive views.
On New Year’s Eve they stood looking out across the harbour, just the three of them and toasted the year ahead.
‘To family,’ Archie said and Kate knew she had done the right thing in coming here. The night air was fresh, it seemed that every lighthouse in the distance might wink across the blue-black ocean waves. If Kate could wish for anything, it was that she could have these people close forever.
Iris and Archie were genuinely delighted to have someone to fuss over in the off-peak season, even more so because it was Kate. They made sure there was a dancing fire in the cast-iron grate for her every day and a hefty basket of turf that never seemed to empty. They offered hearty full Irish breakfasts and seemed relieved when she told them she was happy to muddle along with them and she did not want them going to any trouble. Even so, the aroma of freshly baked scones, a medley of fruit, cinnamon and malt seemed to waft through the hotel every day. Iris had a light touch and her warm scones tasted like heaven when Kate was ravenous after the fresh sea air.
‘We can’t have you fading away with all that walking you’re doing, can we?’ Iris said as she dropped a laden tray on the writing desk that filled the bay window. Here, they were facing the long promenade that kept the sea mostly at bay.
‘There’s no danger of that with you and uncle Archie about.’ Kate knew she looked gaunt and pale compared to the locals in Ballytokeep. She’d spent a decade in London, working, sleeping, and going through the motions: lonely. She could admit that here. In London, surrounded by people she knew, surrounded by millions of people and possibilities, she was lonely. Here, she walked across empty beaches with only the curlews for company and she was quite content. It was time for her to move on. The only problem was, Kate was not certain there was anywhere for her to move on to. ‘I’ll go back to London refreshed with the sea air and two stones heavier thanks to your breakfasts and baking, Aunt Iris.’
‘You should think about coming here in the summertime, it really is quite beautiful.’ Iris’s eyes were wistful as she looked out at the promenade. There was a high tide and it energized Kate, as though it vibrated within some part of her she never knew existed before.
‘Oh, I don’t know, I like having it all to myself. I’m not sure I want to share it with crowds of noisy holidaymakers and ice-cream vans and loud music blaring from every pub and shop along the promenade.’ Part of her didn’t want to impose, but deep down she was longing to return.
‘I think you’d love it. Actually, I think it would do you the world of good. The tourists we get here aren’t the kind you get in your usual Brighton or Bangor. Most of our visitors have been coming here for years, some first came with their parents.’
‘Well, I can certainly see why they come back.’ Kate leant forward to give the little fire a shake with the thin poker that looked as old, if not older, than Archie. The turf mo
ved and fell into a shaky pyramid with a satisfying hail of sparks and peaty smoke before she covered it over with another layer of fuel.
‘Oh, Ballytokeep is like that. People always come back – that’s the one’s that actually leave.’
‘How do you mean?’ Kate found it hard to keep the smile from her voice, she liked talking to Iris, even about mundane things. It felt like she was catching up on conversations that should have filled her childhood. Her great-aunt was a queer old thing, but there was genuine warmth to her mixed with a familiar emptiness that Kate couldn’t have missed even if she tried.
‘Well, look at me. I came here, just like you. I was meant to wait for a few weeks. I was making plans, just back from Paris and my life before me, who knows where I’d have ended up? And then I met Archie and well…’
‘The rest is history?’
‘Don’t say it like that, you make me feel old.’ Iris smiled and then straightened the little posy of snowdrops picked earlier in the day. ‘But, I suppose that’s what it is now, history.’ She sighed and, for a moment, a terrible silence descended on the room, as though the very fabric of the place was waiting for her to admit something. ‘It’s all a long time ago now.’ She looked at Kate, just for a moment, as though confirming that she was there and then she said goodnight.
There was no sign of Iris the following morning. Perhaps it was all too much for them; this place was a huge responsibility for anyone. She guessed they closed for the winter months as much to catch breath as to conserve profit. The Hartleys were in their seventies, if not their eighties and this was a big place to keep up and running.
‘Oh, in the summertime, we couldn’t do it on our own. We get help in. But, you dear, you’re no bother to keep. It’s a treat to have you here, you’re family,’ Archie assured her the next day. ‘You’ll have to make your way over to the castle before you leave. Well, I suppose, you probably wouldn’t call it a castle now, it’s an old keep – almost a thousand years old. It really is very beautiful.’
‘Of course, I’ve seen it, from my room and when I’m walking along the beach. I thought maybe when the sun was shining…’
‘We had a bathhouse there on the purple rocks. Well, my brother had at any rate, for a while. Robert was very popular with the girls, maybe too much so in the end.’ His eyes stretched their gaze into the distance and she had a feeling that he was very far away. ‘Sometimes, if you’re lucky, the porpoises will come right up. Of course, it’s all down to tides and weather and heaven knows how many other factors, but even without those scallywags, it’s worth a visit.’
‘A bathhouse?’
‘Of course, you probably wouldn’t get too many of them in London.’ When he smiled his eyes creased even further, but Kate could see he must have been very handsome when he was young. Even now, he stood tall and straight and his features had a distinct masculinity to them that made you think of dashing Hollywood leading men who might have been around when he was in his prime. ‘Bathhouses, like the one here, were all the go at one stage. Apparently, they’re making a bit of a comeback now. It’s the seaweed, you see. It’s full of all sorts of minerals and what we believed years ago was that it could cure anything from TB to gout and people came from miles around to bathe in it.’
‘In a pool?’
‘Oh, dear no. Nothing as fancy as what you’d have now, with your spa this and your therma that. No, the seaweed was harvested and we would fill copper baths with it mixed with hot seawater. You could move over and back between the bath and a steam press. It took out all the impurities and put back every vitamin you could name.’ He smiled at her. ‘Sounds a bit daft now, but we sweated out the bad and absorbed the good – they’re doing it again down in Strandhill. It’s running all the year through, with people coming from miles around.’ He shook his head. ‘Funny, when you get to my age, the number of things that go out of fashion only to come back again.’
‘I’ve heard of the purple rock, but I just thought it was the name of the amusement arcade?’ It was an unsightly place, boarded up now; Kate wondered if it would open for the summer months.
‘Oh, that place. No, they called that after the purple rock – and even that’s not going to be around soon, it’s been bought by a developer, making it into fancy flats, or whatever they’re called these days.’ Resignation gripped Archie’s eyes in a way that only comes with age. ‘Probably do the same to this place, when we’re gone.’
‘No, they’d never knock down somewhere so beautiful.’ Kate tried to soothe. ‘And you’re not going anywhere for a long time.’
‘Wouldn’t they? They went mad to get their hands on the bathhouse and it’s a little gem.’
‘Is it still running?’ Kate would have loved a real seaweed bath, now she’d heard about them. ‘The bathhouse?’
‘I’m sorry to say, it hasn’t been properly run in sixty years. We took it over for a while, but there comes a time when you know what you’re able for. Pity though, we closed the doors on it at the end of the season, so everything in it is just as Robert planned it.’ Archie began to clear some imagined crumbs from the table. ‘He died. Tragically, young. I’m afraid that the heart went out of the both of us at that stage.’ Archie shook his head sadly. ‘Will I make you a nice fresh pot of that tea now?’ he said, placing his time-worn hands on the pot and finding it still warm.
‘Ah no thanks, Archie, like I said to Aunt Iris, you’ll be responsible for ruining my figure if I don’t call a halt somewhere.’
*
It was nine o’clock before Kate set off walking towards the keep. It was hard to believe she had spent one precious week here already. Lyndon Tansey told her to take as long as she needed. Maybe he knew, maybe they all knew. Maybe everything she bottled up for the last decade had been blatantly obvious to the people around her while she remained blind to it. She had her heart broken long enough ago for her to have moved on. The public humiliation was harder to shake. Bad enough to be jilted at the last minute. It seemed to Kate that being reminded of it each time her ex-fiancé’s love life featured in the celebrity gossip columns made it into an ongoing nightmare from which there was no escape. Other people unfriended their exes on Facebook and cut their photos in half. That was not so easy when your ex was in the national newspaper every other week.
‘The important thing is that you come back safe and sound, old girl,’ Lyndon had said, patting her hand with sincerity. He had taken the helm of the law firm when he was almost fifty. He was old enough to have learned from the mistakes of others and he knew when someone was worth holding onto. Kate had raked in millions over the last decade for the practice. She had represented the spouses of rock stars, royalty and the ridiculously rich and managed to pull hefty and healthy settlements every time. People knew her in the divorce courts by reputation, and if they did not fear her exactly, they advised their clients that she was particularly adept in aspects of family law.
She looked around her now. This place with its vastness and intimacy cuckolded into the cold of the climate mixed with the warmth of the people, it was just what she needed. It was a five-mile round trip to the bathhouse and the keep, which would bring her along a track kept clean by a scurrilous pack of sheep and goats. She drank in the clean air greedily; the only sound here was the crashing of water to her right and the call of the gulls across the empty strand to her left. She walked slowly, surveying from her high middle ground the austere beauty of the place at this time of year. She stopped and sat on a rock that seemed to have moulded into her shape long before she ever knew she would be coming here. She knew now that she would come here again, it was as sure as the air she breathed. Perhaps this was the first step on that crossroads.
In the distance, she watched as a middle-aged woman made her way across the strand. Even from here, she recognized her. She saw her many times walk through the town, always with a shopping bag in her hand, sometimes wheeling one behind her. Today, she was making her way energetically with a yapping dog in her wake. Her
face was puce despite the cold that must surely be biting into her. She rounded towards the ridge where Kate sat and stopped short as she neared her, surprised to see anyone out on such a cold day.
‘Hi.’ Kate did her best to smile, remembering that she was not in London now. It was okay to make eye contact; people here wanted you to talk to them.
‘Hi yourself.’ The woman panted and seemed to take the greeting as an invitation to join Kate on her rock. ‘I’m wrecked,’ she said and she plopped her considerable weight down awkwardly. ‘Hot flushes,’ she said and she fanned herself with gloved hands. ‘Phew, who knew, hah?’
‘Your dog doesn’t seem to mind,’ Kate watched as the little black and white terrier skipped out after the tide and then scudded back towards them as each new wave arrived. He was yapping happily, enjoying the chase of something he’d never catch.
‘Ah, Barry. Yes, I got him from the rescue – best thing I ever did. I wanted one for years, but you know, you need to put the time into a dog and my Duncan is allergic to anything with a coat, so…’ the woman smiled enigmatically as if his discomfort might actually please her in some odd way. The dog, as though he heard his mistress, came running across the beach towards them, digging up sand as he came.
‘You’re a super little fella,’ Kate said and she rubbed his head affectionately as Barry licked her fingers and danced a greeting frenzy up around them.
‘You’re lucky, he likes you,’ the woman said, reaching out to the little dog. ‘Not everyone he takes to, he’s nipped my Duncan more than once when he’s not expecting it. He had to have a tetanus jab, the works, didn’t he Barry?’ She nuzzled into the dog’s neck. ‘You’re such a good boy.’ She looked across at Kate. ‘You can’t beat a terrier to judge character, no fooling our Barry.’
