Secrets We Keep

by Faith Hogan

  He scampered down from the top of the hotel, three steps at a time, to book her in. He would give her the best room in the house; his mother would complain, but it didn’t matter. He stopped on the first floor, just for a second, checked his appearance in the sideboard that held only fresh flowers. He was an attractive man. It was impossible not to know it. For as long as he could remember, women smiled and blushed at him at every turn. He was, he knew, quite the catch. His parents would sign over the bathhouse to him for his next birthday. Although it seemed like an unlikely gold mine, he was making a real go of it. It was the farming and sale of seaweed as a health food that really put the place in profits. People loved the big copper baths, filled with seaweed and hot running water – business flourished in bad weather and in the winter months there was plenty of that. The Carrageen moss was a surprisingly profitable sideline. Boiled in milk and eaten for breakfast or supper as a pudding, he was selling tonnes of the stuff. Its qualities were extolled by the President of Ireland himself. People believed it was a remedy for ailments from asthma to skin rashes, even if the local doctor was sceptical, the Irish loved a natural ‘cure’. Robert had seized on the opportunity and now, with a couple of the locals, they were flogging it in both the Irish and English markets. People had no idea how popular it was. He knew that Archie thought he was certifiable. ‘Selling weeds? Whoever heard of anything so daft?’

  Archie, poor Archie. There was only two years between them, but Archie still seemed a lot younger. Stuck here with his parents until the day he died. He had no get-up-and-go. That was the problem with Archie, as Robert saw it.

  He sighed deeply, smoothed his oiled hair back from his face. He had a rakish look to him, and he strutted with the self-assurance of youth. It was the moustache, the even teeth and the dark eyes. Even if you did not know who he was, there was no mistaking the confidence success gave him. He plucked a small white rose from the urn in front of him and slipped it into the lapel of his sports jacket. Satisfied with his appearance, he turned quickly and headed towards the antique reception desk that Archie refused to get rid of.

  ‘Good morning, how can I…’ She was beautiful. No doubt, and Robert, if he could find the words had a feeling that in the moment he laid eyes on her everything in his world managed to flip, just a little.

  ‘Hello. I’m expected. My mother spoke to Mrs Hartley on the telephone. It was a terrible line, but she said she would set aside a single room.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure we can do better than that for you, Miss…’ he smiled, dipped his head slightly, knew that it gave the impression he was shy and unassuming.

  ‘It’s Miss Burns, actually, Robert.’ Archie came along the hall, buoyed up with excitement. ‘Iris, dearest, how did you manage to make such good time?’

  ‘Oh Archie, it’s lovely to see a familiar face.’

  ‘Amm…’ Robert stood and watched as his younger brother greeted Iris Burns and he couldn’t help feeling that somehow he had missed a step.

  ‘Robert, sorry. You haven’t met Iris, have you?’

  ‘No, but it’s my pleasure to meet you now, Iris.’ He swept up beside them and in a turn managed to stand between them. ‘How do you do? I’m Robert Hartley.’

  ‘Lovely to meet you, Archie has told me a little about you.’

  ‘Told?’ Robert really was feeling as though this was all too much. Archie had this adorable creature under wraps for how long exactly?

  ‘Well, I’ve been writing mainly. Pen pals, sort of. We met that year, when you went to the spa place in England, you remember? Mother and I stayed in St. Kiernan’s Guest House in Dublin.’ It was true, Robert had taken a couple of weeks to see how other people were making money in the bath business, he’d learned less than he’d spent on the trip. Now, as he looked at Iris Burns, he realized it may have been even more expensive than he thought. ‘Iris has spent the last year in Paris at a top cookery school, am I right?’

  ‘That’s right. I got back a few weeks ago and my mother thought it would be good for me to spend some time in the country. Get the colour back in my cheeks after city living.’

  ‘So the people of Ballytokeep are going to be eating cordon bleu?’ Robert raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Hardly, your mother said if I wanted to help out at the hotel for a few weeks I’d be welcome to come and stay, before I look for a post in one of the big hotels.’

  ‘And, so you are. How long can you stay for?’ Archie was like a cat with cream.

  ‘I have no plans. I will have to find some sort of proper work, but for now, I can take it easy.’

  ‘Well, we will have to show you the sights, introduce you to the best Ballytokeep has to offer.’ Robert tried to sound suave, but his voice faltered with an unfamiliar nervousness. With Iris Burns, was he in real danger of being out of his depth?

  He watched as Archie carried her bags and led her up to one of the smallest rooms in the hotel. From the foyer, he could hear their merry conversation and her light lilting laugh at whatever comment Archie made. Robert stood for a long while, looking after them, contemplating what had just happened and it made no sense to him.

  She was just a girl after all. He’d had many girls; none of them had affected him like this. She wasn’t just any girl though, was she? It looked like she was Archie’s girl, or at least Archie thought so. He wondered if Iris agreed; and that thought made Robert want to die of despair.

  Robert set his perfect jaw at an angle. It was simple. He would have to make her his.

  *

  Iris, Present

  Iris patted back her silver hair. These days it had taken on the white of the ocean. She wore it short now, short and curled, and sometimes she thought that maybe she was turning into her mother-in-law. Maureen Hartley had worn her silver-white hair in a halo of curls just about her face. It was not a bad thing. Iris loved her mother-in-law and she knew that the feeling was mutual. Iris had cared for her until she breathed her last. A short easy breath that sent with it a sigh of contentment as she left Ballytokeep and her life’s work far behind. Iris hoped for the same peaceful passing for herself and Archie when the time came.

  Archie. Even still when she thought about him, she smiled. It could so easily have all been so different. She had been lucky. It took decades for her to see it, of course.

  She could hear him, deep down in the belly of the hotel, pottering about. Today he planned to sand down some of the garden chairs ready for varnishing before the summer visitors arrived. He and Oisín Armstrong had stored them carefully at the end of last season and yesterday Archie took each one and completed any repairs needed. ‘Good as new,’ he told her proudly after he bought sandpaper and varnish in the local hardware shop. ‘There won’t be a chair to match them this side of the Shannon when I’m finished with them.’ Dear Archie, he said it every year. She wouldn’t be surprised if his father had said it before him. Sometimes she wondered how they had ever run the hotel all through the year. Now it took all their time and energy in the winter months to prepare for the summer. Of course, they got help in each year. Oisín Armstrong doted on Iris and he called every other day since his son took over the fishing boat. Then there were the local women, who arrived behind the swallows and dusted, aired, hoovered and scrubbed so the little hotel sparkled as it had the first time she came here.

  ‘Tea, dear.’ Archie pushed the door in gently. He balanced a tray set with cups, pot and one of her home-made scones smothered over with preserve she bought from one of the ladies locally.

  ‘Oh Archie, you really are too good to me,’ she said and she touched his face lightly with her hand. To her, he looked the same now as he did all those years ago. He was the softer, gentler version of his handsome brother. His dark hair had faded like her own. His eyes shone less but reflected more and about his face fine lines dug in truculently. ‘You should have called me earlier; I would have gotten breakfast ready for Kate.’

  Iris sighed. Kate, what a lovely young woman she turned out to be. Pamela’s grandchild
, tall and striking as Iris’s sister, Lady Pamela had once been, but with the colouring of their mother. Kate was the last in the line. That made her even more precious and Iris couldn’t fathom why there had been such a gulf between Kate and her grandparents. True, her father died tragically years before and perhaps that made it painful for Pamela. After all, Crispin was her only son – to lose him so tragically in a car crash must have left a terrible scar. They said he was a playboy – not at all like Clive, Iris hardly knew Crispin. When she saw him all those years ago, she only had eyes for her own son. It would have been too much, seeing Crispin could only open up her pain again, after her lovely Mark, so she kept her distance and her silence. Life had somehow slipped between them. Pamela was broken-hearted when Crispin died, of course, and even her grandchild didn’t make up for it, perhaps it only made the pain sharper. Clive said she died of a broken heart in the end. Iris could understand that, after Mark, she always thought the living had been harder. ‘Ah, mon dieu,’ she still prayed for him in French, still, sixty odd years on, the words fell from her lips. Archie didn’t even hear them anymore, they were just a way of life.

  ‘You have me spoiled, you know,’ she said as Archie folded his tall frame and crumpled clothes onto the bed beside her. All those years ago, she fell for Archie, maybe because of his kindness, but there had been warmth there too. His mother treated him with great care. ‘Scarlet Fever,’ Mrs Hartley whispered as she lay dying. ‘You’ll take care of him for me, Scarlet fever when he was just a boy. I almost lost him. It leaves scars you don’t see.’ And it did. Archie was not a weak man, quite the opposite. He was her strength, a tall quiet rock that never let her down and made her feel like she was standing in the sunshine when he was near. But the fever took its toll in other ways. Archie, it turned out, would never father a child. It was a disappointment. Iris hadn’t been surprised, not really. She felt it was karma. She was atoning for Mark. Life had a funny way of taxing you for your sins. ‘You do far too much.’

  ‘All under control, my dear. Remember, I was making breakfasts before most of the lads around here make their communions.’ He winked at her now and if he said the same line a hundred times before, it didn’t matter to either of them. He sat beside her, looked out at the tide making its way towards them. ‘I was at the bathhouse.’ Archie whispered the words.

  ‘Why on earth would you go there?’ She looked at him now, a little perplexed.

  ‘Well, you know Robert wouldn’t think in a million years of having fuel for that stove.’ For a moment, he seemed very far away. ‘It’s worth the walk, if only for the air and to see the sport, the porpoises were playing out in the water.’

  ‘There won’t be any dolphins there, not this time of year.’ Mostly, these days, she could tell when his voice was dipping into the past; his eyes took on a look of utter concentration, only a quiver of perplexity in his brow let him down.

  ‘Porpoises, dear, they’re porpoises.’ He smiled sadly, and she had a feeling he was coming back to her again. ‘Do you remember all those summer evenings when we’d walk down to the castle? The world was full of possibility then.’

  ‘We’ve been lucky, Archie; we’ve had a happy life.’ He was a good man, her Archie, far wiser than she realized when she married him. That was how she’d best describe him. Now that he was getting older and forgetting himself occasionally, she could glimpse what a wise man she had married all those years ago. In many ways, she hadn’t seen it when she met him at first. Oh, she’d seen that Robert was clever, but he was clever in an obvious way. Archie on the other hand – well, he was gentler in every way, even how he understood the world and the people around him. ‘I hope that Kate is as happy here as we’ve been.’

  ‘She’s fallen in love with Ballytokeep; it’s all she needs to start again,’ Archie said; taking her spoon, he slipped it carelessly in his pocket. He made her tea just right. It was just hot enough, not too strong, and not too weak. He actually made it better than she did herself, although, even with sixty odd years of marriage behind them, she wasn’t going to tell him that.

  ‘Hmm, maybe.’ Iris wasn’t so sure, she had a feeling that if Kate stayed she might be running away from more than what she was running to. ‘Maybe.’ Along the corridor, a pipe rattled belligerently. It seemed to Iris that each year the hotel grew noisier in the emptiness. Too many ghosts here, she thought.

  ‘Perhaps I’ll take a look at those pipes today,’ he said, but they both knew that there was no fixing old age.

  ‘Weren’t you going to ready some of the garden furniture?’ she reminded him gently.

  ‘Oh, was I?’ he shook his head, smiled a thoughtful smile. ‘I really can’t remember. What was it I was going to do with that?’

  ‘Well, you’ve bought enough sandpaper to clean the strand, so…’ she laughed gently to hide the worry in her voice. ‘Honestly, Archie, I might be as creaky as those pipes, but you’re far more forgetful.’ The summer season might do them both good, blow away some of the cobwebs.

  11

  Kate

  ‘It is truly returning to its former glory.’ Colin Lyons was standing in the doorway. It seemed he filled the place more each time he arrived. It was more than just his tall muscular frame; it was his voice, his eyes, his smile. Colin Lyons was a big man, but he had a quiet ruggedness about him that gave him a presence far beyond his size.

  ‘Well, if it is, I have you and Rita to thank for that.’ Kate walked towards him. It was true, Colin her new neighbour, had helped her drag out the cast-iron chairs and table so she could clean and polish them. He’d stayed late into the night to help her move dressers and paint walls that would never be seen by a paying customer. Most days when he was not busy with his own work he arrived to help with any jobs he could.

  ‘Don’t be so modest, it doesn’t suit you,’ he leant forward and pulled some dust from Kate’s hair. The action was intimate, and he pulled himself back a little as though he realized too late. ‘Anyway, it would be still sitting here an empty shell but for you,’ he said, dropping down the provisions he had picked up for her.

  ‘Well, I’m very proud,’ Kate said and she meant it, ‘although, it is a real group effort.’ Her chance encounter with Rita, a retired school teacher with time on her hands and a terrier who just wanted to chase the waves, had opened up a friendship that saw Rita pop in almost every other day and set the little bakery at the back of the tearooms to rights. They laughed as hard as they worked, with Rita regaling Kate with tales of her husband, Duncan, and the woes of married life.

  ‘We call it a meitheal here. It’s what people do for each other, everyone rowing in for his neighbour to get the hay saved or lending a tractor or whatever you might need.’

  ‘Does it apply to sharing lunch?’ Kate smiled at him.

  ‘You can be sure, if a man was waiting for some kind of payment around here he’d die a pauper. I’ll take the dinner when it’s going.’ He laughed now and nodded towards Rita who was filling the kettle. ‘How’s the menu coming along, Rita?’ Lucky for Kate, it turned out Rita was quite the cook, as well as being a home economics teacher she had a lifelong love of baking and testing. Her talents ran from the sweetest of desserts to the wholesome end of the scale. When Kate offered her the job for as long as the season lasted, Rita jumped at the chance. She rolled up her sleeves and helped with getting not just the menus ready, but knocking the tearooms into shape as well.

  ‘Good, we’ve settled on a simple fare of sandwiches and salads, quiches and baked potatoes.’ She pointed towards Kate. ‘Of course, herself thinks it’ll be all cucumber sandwiches and apple slices.’

  ‘Bless her,’ Colin looked across. ‘You’ll soon learn.’ He pulled down three mugs, dropped tea bags into each one. ‘A day at the seaside here and people will be famished. It’ll be spuds, spuds and more spuds to keep them going. The fancy-pants that come in for the baths, they will be your salad customers, bottled water and a slice of lime, for sure. The families who come here every year, the
y have been crying out for somewhere like this to come to. I’d say if you had the energy to put on a dinner menu, a little soft music, this could be a romantic spot for couples in the evenings too.’

  ‘Steady up there, Colin. People will think you’re getting notions,’ Rita said as she cut up the rolls she made earlier for them; she did not notice the colour rise to his cheeks.

  ‘I’m just saying, that’s all.’ They sat in companionable silence, at a table by the window so they could watch the waves crash far out at sea.

  Kate looked back at the coffee shop and a feeling of pride bubbled through her, it was happening more often. They would open for their first day’s business in a few weeks’ time. It was the beginning of the season, the hotel had bookings for the Easter holidays, just a few regulars, just enough to road-test the menu if they dropped into the bathhouse. Kate invited the whole village to come along and join them on that first morning. When they were in full swing, with bookings for the baths, Colin promised to help too, organizing the fresh seaweed and taking away what was used. Rita would bake and prepare the food. She found Amy and Zoe, two youngsters who were delighted to wait on tables and help with the baths after school and when the holidays started. Kate was glad to have them. They were bright, enthusiastic girls and she had a feeling that the customers would love them. For her own part, she planned to be front of house when things were busy and otherwise she would spend her time overseeing and making sure that everything was running smoothly. She wanted to spend the next week making everything just right.