Secrets We Keep

by Faith Hogan

  ‘But…’ Gemma said, and Iris thought for just a second that she saw something familiar flash across Gemma’s face. Perhaps, Iris was not the only person in the room unsure of her footing.

  ‘That’s settled so. We’ll meet again in, say two weeks?’ Robert said, draining the last of the teapot before him into Mrs O’Malley’s cup.

  *

  Present

  It took four days for the summer cold to clear. Iris sat, still and thoughtful for the afternoons, watching the waves crashing into the promenade. Sometimes, she felt like she had spent a lifetime looking out at the sea, lost in her thoughts. Often she wondered what might have been if her choices had been different. If she had not been so foolish to begin with. Then Archie, as though he could read her mind, would appear at her elbow, an understanding look in his eyes and she knew that things were as they should be.

  She never asked him what had happened that night to Robert. They never spoke of that time, long ago. Maybe neither of them wanted to know the truth of how Robert spent his final hours. Some things were best left in the past. So why couldn’t she just do that?

  It was Kate, of course. It was Kate moving into the bathhouse, digging up the past with photographs and talking of times that Iris found hard enough to put from her mind.

  ‘Isn’t she beautiful?’ she asked breathlessly as she sat in the chair opposite Iris. She held a faded photograph out to Iris. Black and white, but the features remained strong, as though cast in a beautiful marble long ago.

  ‘Yes, she certainly was.’ Iris gathered her breath; it had become more laboured these last few days, she couldn’t really blame it on the memories stirred up by the bathhouse, could she? It was the TB; they say it never fully clears from your lungs. Iris often wondered if it was something she passed on to Mark. The way she felt now, as though pushing each breath from her was an effort, was down to not getting fresh air as well as seeing this photo. Although, the layers of age that permeated her bones probably didn’t help either.

  ‘Who was she?’ Kate asked as Archie came into the sitting room.

  ‘Well now, Archie, look at what Kate has come across.’ Iris held the photo out to Archie.

  ‘She was Robert’s fiancée,’ the way he said the words, Iris knew it covered over many explanations.

  ‘Well, his sweetheart at any rate,’ Iris corrected him, but she could not catch his eye.

  ‘One of many,’ he handed the photograph back to Kate. ‘My brother had plenty of girls after him, he was quite the catch.’ Archie shook his head good-naturedly.

  ‘Oh, Archie, you were handsome too.’ Kate laughed and she took a second photo from her bag. ‘I found this buried in the middle of a ledger, it’s probably the last ledger he kept.’ She handed it to Archie, a gift perhaps.

  ‘It’s from the tea dance,’ Archie said sadly, ‘the last photo we had taken together, all three of us.’ He stood for a moment and Iris had a feeling that if he was alone he might have dropped a tear. He tucked the picture into his pocket and she wondered what would become of it. These days things seemed to disappear around Archie and then turn up in the most unusual places. On Tuesday, Iris found two fuses buried deep in the sugar bowl, as though Archie had hidden them there for safekeeping. Putting a name on it hadn’t really helped. Archie didn’t remember the doctor said he had Alzheimer’s and it only served to make Iris dread what lay ahead even more than she had before. How could she watch her wonderful Archie suffer as his father had? She quickly pushed the thoughts from her and smiled at him, she adored him now even more than she had all those years ago.

  She remembered the day of the tea dance well, the weather was warm and she was glad to get out of the hotel kitchen. It seemed for an afternoon that the world was an optimistic place. Ballytokeep had in it enough to keep her content for the rest of her days, or perhaps more than she felt she had any right to at least. She laughed with Archie, and Robert had danced with her. It was the start of everything, really. Had all that hope been captured in their eyes? Or would they look like strangers, people whose lives might not have touched each other at all, had it not been for one summer’s day. Part of her would have liked to look at it, most of her knew she could not and perhaps Archie knew that too.

  20

  Kate, 1992

  ‘She’ll have to stay in Ireland then.’ Jeremy’s voice was low, but not quite low enough. Kate could hear their conversation beyond her bedroom door. Her stepfather had even less to say to her than her own father did. Her mother concerned herself with entertaining his business acquaintances while Doris, the girl whose job it was to keep the house in shape, more often than not was left with Kate on her tail while she went about her business. ‘Can’t she stay with the Mornington-Hunts?’

  ‘She certainly cannot.’ Her mother’s voice was shrill; Kate could imagine her coming down with a very bad headache as soon as Jeremy left for London. ‘Over my dead body,’ she said, too often now for the words to have the desired theatrical effect.

  ‘Well, she can’t stay here. I’m not paying that girl to spend her days and nights here while we are in the States. We could be there for months. She’s twelve years old, for heaven’s sake, it’s time to get her a proper education, at her age I was away at boarding school and doing well.’

  ‘Don’t worry; I’ll take care of it, darling. Just you don’t miss your plane.’ She was jaded. Life had done that to her. At twelve years of age, Kate suspected she had done that to her mother. The truth was Jeremy, keeping up the perfection, the life with absolutely no bumps, was wearing her mother down.

  By the time Jeremy sat in his first-class seat to his important business meeting, Adaline had enrolled Kate in Rathmichael boarding school and Doris sorted her belongings by the week’s end.

  ‘You’ll love it; it’s a perfectly good school. The best there is to offer. And you’re bright; the teachers are always saying so. They’ll get you prepared for matriculation and in a few years’ time you’ll have your choice of the best colleges in Cambridge and Oxford.’ Adaline told her as soon as it was settled.

  The day before Kate left, the ‘for sale’ sign went up outside St. Kiernan’s. Immediately, Kate was filled with the sensation that life as she knew it, empty and lonely and all as it was, was slipping away from her. She was saying goodbye to Dublin without being told she wouldn’t be coming back. She had spent half of her life here. Her memories of her father were mainly tied up with this place and across the road, in the shared garden, she had buried Patch only last year.

  ‘It will be a wonderful adventure for both of us,’ Adaline said as she bundled her into the taxi and paid the driver. ‘I would go, but I have to make a flight,’ she said to Kate. They both knew the flight was the following day, but there were hairdressing appointments and the auctioneer to speak to. ‘I will see you at Christmas, all right? We’ll have a lovely holiday in New Hampshire, Jeremy has a charming clapboard house organized for us for the holidays.’

  Actually, Kate did not see Adaline or Jeremy for almost three and a half years. There was always a business trip, always an emergency, always something more important than Kate. The Mornington-Hunts, the grandparents she never met, seemed like they were just pretend characters her mother had painted badly. Her father? He married again, in Montenegro according to the society pages, and again in London when she was fifteen. If he thought about her, it wasn’t enough to get in contact. And then, one day, after four years in Rathmichael, she was called to the head mistress’s office. Her mother, older, richer and more fragile than she remembered, her lips still painted red and turned down had come with news.

  ‘Crispin is dead.’ Adaline held a perfectly laundered white handkerchief at the ready. ‘Your father is dead.’ Perhaps they expected Kate would cry for him. ‘He died in London. A car crash. They say he didn’t feel a thing,’ her mother, red-eyed, perfectly coiffured said. For a moment, Kate wondered if Adaline had loved him, if she still loved him, in her own cold way. It never crossed her mind to wonder if she
loved Kate. Some things were too painful to contemplate. Adaline’s hands shook; everything about her looked thinner, daintier than Kate remembered.

  ‘Well that’s good,’ Kate managed, but it didn’t seem real. That man that was supposed to be her father was just a distant memory. He was a stranger who once brought home a puppy, kissed her and then got into a car, without so much as glancing back.

  There was no funeral, just a memorial service. When she went in search of her father’s grave, she learned that his wish to be cremated and scattered in an anonymous London park had been adhered to. It left her with a sense that it had all come to nothing. Moreover, the Mornington-Hunts seemed even further removed than ever.

  It took until college before Kate understood how odd her family situation was. In that first year, she realized that Christmastime had to be marked in some meaningful way. ‘It’s what people do,’ her roommate said as she bundled too many dirty clothes into a rucksack. She was ‘heading home to middle-class madness, in the smallest town in England,’ she told Kate. There was an anticipation about her that contradicted her attempt at urbanity. ‘You should come, the more the merrier.’

  Later, in that little house in Manningtree, with a family she did not know, celebrating their holiday, Kate realized, that actually, yes, this is what people do, only Kate’s mother had never seen fit to spend the time with her.

  The following year, Kate made plans to stay with Adaline and Jeremy. They were living in Montreal at that stage. He was working his way steadily up the international corporate ladder. Her mother, for her contribution to society, was declining fast into a sea of gin. It became obvious, in one depressing holiday, what their lives were based on all along. They spent Christmas sitting uncomfortably around the dining table that was only used for entertaining strangers. It was apt, really, Kate thought, because that was essentially, what they all were. Strangers. It was all so different from the year before, where she spent those days with a family who were strange to her, and yet, they welcomed her as one of their own. In Montreal, they ate in silence. Each swallow was loud and uncomfortable. In Manningtree, there had been laughter, jokes, and jostling for the best seat and control of the TV remote. Before Kate sat on her return flight, she knew it was the last holiday she would willingly spend with Adaline and Jeremy.

  So it was at twenty that life began again. Kate operated as though she was alone in the world; her psyche built a framework about her. You can’t miss what you never had, right? Except at night. It was after that horrible holiday that the nightmare began. It started with being left at Rathmichael. Her mother dropped her off, left her on the steps with bags in hands and drove down the winding driveway. She was alone.

  The dream stayed with her for years. It woke her at odd hours in the night. Nothing terrible happened in it, but it was the overwhelming sense of isolation that woke her with a heavy heart and too often sobbing into the silent darkness.

  *

  ‘Divorce is the kind of job that requires wine,’ Kate said.

  Although Rita was no drinker, she filled up her glass and gasped with every mouthful. It should have caused her sadness, but then maybe this was a relief. Thirty years was a long time to be married to someone you did not like much anymore.

  ‘Why would he have most of his assets in your name, that’s what I don’t get,’ Kate had copied every sheet on the small printer copier back at the hotel. ‘The house, the business – on paper, you are a wealthy woman, Rita.’

  ‘Bankrupt. He went bankrupt or near it. At the time, his accountants said, offload as much as he could. I was the lucky recipient,’ Rita was po-faced. ‘It means nothing, though you know that. I’m not interested in his businesses or even in his money.’

  ‘Not really the point, though, is it?’ Duncan had played, unwittingly into their hands. According to his tax affairs, he might as well have been a well-paid employee, ‘You could fire him, of course. Technically, he is working in your company, living in your house. You could have him out on his ear; stay married to him, for what that is worth. From what I’ve seen of life, his passion would soon cool then.’ They laughed at that.

  ‘The very idea, Kate, you shouldn’t speak like that, don’t you know I’m coming to an age where drink and my bladder aren’t going to hold me together for too long.’ She wiped her face with the back of her hand, dispelling the image of Duncan, homeless and jobless and dependent on her. ‘No, I wouldn’t want that. I’ve been thinking about it and, really, I don’t want anything more than the house. I have my pension and my little job here. If I can stay in my home, hold on to that, then I will be happy enough.’

  ‘Maintenance?’

  ‘Not if it meant I’d have to see him or speak to him. Honestly, I’d just like to take a giant eraser and blot him out of my life for good.’ She gulped back the wine. The bathhouse was closed for the night. Colin would not be calling this evening. They had a slice of pizza each, plenty of time to decide what Rita wanted before they showed their hand.

  ‘Sure? You’re entitled and you’re in a really good position to hold him over a barrel.’ Kate could feel the old adrenalin fill her up, this was how she felt when she had started out, before Todd Riggs came into her life and she allowed him to suck the joy from just about everything, maybe especially her career. ‘You don’t want to make him suffer just a little?’

  ‘No, I just want it over, quickly and easily, and I want to hold onto my home.’ That was it for Rita, it was her home, her chintz-filled, wallpapered home, with china figurines and dog scratches on the doors. It did not mean much to Duncan. It was just a piece of property he could offload, its only value monetary, or maybe soon an advantage with which to hurt her. ‘No, just my home.’

  ‘Sometimes, Rita, for some women, drawing out the process, it gives them… closure? You know, you are finishing a huge chapter of your life. Once it’s over, I have a feeling, this really will be over.’ Kate had to say it. Rita was her friend, and no matter what she thought of Duncan now, she could be sorry later. Many women chose to hang on in their marriages and for some it was the right thing to do.

  ‘Oh, Kate. My marriage was over a long time ago. I’m not sure that there was ever enough to keep us together, but with this affair… Maybe I couldn’t prove it, but I think I always knew. Even then, it was as much a relief as anything else. The only thing that has changed is me. Before, teaching, as much as I loved it, I was stuck, but working here, with you, meeting people every day and maybe just having Barry, I suppose I don’t feel like I “need” Duncan anymore.’ Rita closed her eyes for a moment, ‘That’s not right either. It’s more that I feel happy and fulfilled. I suppose, I am ready to start a new life, one of my choosing. Duncan is the only thing actually making me unhappy in life and it’s not this affair. It goes much deeper than that. I don’t love him, and worse, I don’t like him, haven’t for a long time, why would I want to go on living with him when I feel like that?’

  ‘Right, we’ll use your ownership of the business to encourage him not to drag his heels and I’m asking for a payment to buy you out.’ Kate put up her hands to stop Rita from protesting, ‘It’s just a tactic to stop him from trying to make things awkward; don’t worry, you won’t get stuck with his dirty money.’ They both laughed at this.

  ‘I could always give it to the dog pound?’ Rita’s eyes danced, ‘that’d really get up his nose.’

  ‘You could do whatever you wanted with it, I’ll ask for enough to build a new pound and then you decide.’ She leant over and clinked her glass against Rita’s; it was a good night’s work for their friendship.

  21

  Todd

  ‘So, how did you end up in Ballytokeep?’ Todd said, they were walking on the beach and even if he looked ahead and tried to make it sound like small talk, they both knew that ending up here was just too freaky not to warrant a conversation.

  ‘Much less romantic than you might imagine.’ She laughed, she seemed to hold no grudges. ‘It turned out to be a funny thing. After
all those nightmares, all the family I ever needed was right here all along.’ He hadn’t thought about the nightmares in years, how she would wake, crying inconsolably and he would wrap himself around her until she fell into a stuttering quivering sleep again. How could he have forgotten that?

  ‘So you came home?’ he said, squinting ahead.

  ‘Yes and no.’ She smiled. ‘I didn’t really know it was home, actually, I’d hardly heard of Ballytokeep much less visited here. It was at Lady Pamela’s – grandma’s funeral, I met Iris there and we just rather clicked. Grandma died four years ago. Of course, my mother refused to go. They’re in San Francisco now.’ Todd did not ask about Adaline, what was the point in pretending that there had ever been a connection? ‘There was a service, in Dublin and I just planned to go to that. You know, I hardly knew them…’ she shrugged. ‘Things never did get any better between the two sides.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I know I complain about my family, but at least we all grew up together, got the chance to decide we didn’t like each other.’ Todd smiled.

  ‘It’s turned out well, I think.’ She screwed up her nose a little, ‘If not what I expected.’

  ‘Not what I expected either,’ Todd said; he was glad that somehow they had ended up here together.

  They walked on in silence. Beneath them, the sea rushed in for a full tide in the darkness, the porpoises opposite were enjoying the fruits of the swell.

  ‘And you don’t miss London?’ He knew she didn’t. He would have to be blind not to see how content she was here.

  ‘God no. I enjoyed it for a while, you know, the job, the city. It was good for the brain, just…’ she thought for a moment, ‘I suppose I came to the point where I wanted something that was actually good for the soul.’

  ‘And that wasn’t London,’ he finished for her. ‘I felt the very same,’ he said, realizing he just never put it that way.