by Faith Hogan
‘I never knew them, none of them really.’
‘What about Pamela?’ Iris asked. Oh, how she’d envied Pamela, first her child and then her grandchild. ‘I always imagined that she’d want to take you away and never let you back to Adaline.’ Iris had not met Adaline, but anyone who would abandon a child in a boarding school had to be very cold.
‘No. I think because my father and grandmother were estranged, before he married, that was never on the cards. Maybe there was some attempt at reconciliation around the time I was born, but no, I’m not sure there was ever much of a bond there at all.’ Kate smiled; it was all water under the bridge now. ‘My mother says my dad – Crispin – was easy to fall in love with, but hard to live with.’ She shook her head. ‘In many ways they were well met, he was a gambler and she was a drinker. Jeremy has been the saving of her, I think; even if he hasn’t made her happy, he’s made her comfortable. I might not particularly have bonded with him, but he was good for her and, at this stage, I’m glad she has him.’
‘It’s a shame though.’ Iris felt the familiar wave of regret that she’d let time and grief part her from her sister. It seemed the wise thing to do all those years ago. The thoughts of seeing Crispin every time they met, comparing him in her mind’s eye to the child she lost, some things just didn’t get any easier as she got older.
‘It’s really all a long time ago.’
‘I’d have given anything to have you here, even if it was just for holidays.’ It was the truth. The family she’d never had, for no good reason apart from karma, had made her life with Archie emptier. They told each other the void was down to the sadness of losing Robert, but they both knew a child would have made things better for them.
‘And knowing that now means more to me than you will ever imagine.’ Kate squeezed her hand affectionately. ‘Anyway, that’s enough about the recent past. Tell me more about what it was like growing up in St. Kiernan’s.’ Kate sat back, and even if she was only being polite, it was nice to think back to those times, before everything changed.
‘You two girls still chatting?’ Archie asked cheerfully as he came in for the evening. He loved to see Kate popping into the hotel. It would be hers one day, when they were gone. It was only right, after all, she was the closest now they had to a daughter – to any family really. Kate was the blessing they had waited for, even if they never realized it until she came. They had seen to it in the will; although she did not know it yet. Even now, although he could be forgetful, Archie was great for making sure that everything was just as it should be. They agreed they would not tell her yet. ‘Better she’s here because she wants to be, rather than because she feels she should be.’ That’s what Archie said, and of course, he was right. ‘There you go.’ He held out an envelope for Iris now. It was old, worn, and looked as though it might have spent weeks in his pocket. ‘Came for you this morning, went clear out of my head. Now there was another letter…’ and he ambled off towards the kitchen.
‘How is he?’ Kate asked softly as Iris looked at the post in her hand. It was an old electricity bill, out of date now, long paid.
‘God alone knows where he found this?’ Iris said, better to make light of her worries, perhaps it would stave off the worst for another while.
‘Is everything okay?’
‘Of course. He’s taking the medication, he’s fine.’ Although she knew he could spend the next two days searching for a letter he thought he’d lost, which more than likely never existed to start with. ‘He’s fine. I just like to keep an eye on him, you know, so he doesn’t do too much. He’s always been so busy; I don’t want him to wear himself out.’ It was true. She saw his father. In the end, there was neither day nor night, rest or sleep, his whole world turned into a jumble. She did not want that for Archie. Feared the same end for him and she was not ready to let him go.
*
Robert, 1957
Archie would marry her. Robert knew that, he knew it all along. Archie would marry her, but Robert would continue to love her. It had taken weeks, months – it had taken all his reserves not to bound in there and take her for himself and, of course, he could have. He could have produced an engagement ring that was twice the size of anything Archie could afford. He could have swept her off her feet. Of course, Mama would be furious. She wanted him to marry Gemma; she was everything Mama wanted for him. He would probably marry her, or one of her gang, eventually. But he did not love Gemma; and he was quite sure he wouldn’t love any of her friends either. Oh, they were glamorous and smart and some of them were even quite witty, but there was no spark. He couldn’t have Iris and so, he wanted her even more. He wanted her so much that it consumed almost his every thought. When they sat in the tearooms it felt like they could sit there forever and he would be content. It would pass, he told himself.
That night, the night she came to him, there were no words. Neither of them said a word, even when it was over, he wasn’t sure if he could speak. He held her in his arms, both of them shaking, spent, they cried – in part, for what had gone before – he’d never experienced anything like it. He knew, even then, that he would never feel the same again. It changed some fundamental part of him and there would be no fixing it.
In the days that followed, Robert felt an impending sense of doom was devouring him slowly and systematically. He couldn’t shake off the feeling any more than the tide could pause or the reefers still and suspend what lay ahead.
23
Kate
Kate felt the night drawing in a little earlier, the winter chill rising from the sea on her doorstep, but she was looking forward to it. There would be no more sitting out on the rocks, watching the sun go down with Colin. Instead, this last week, he’d called down and they sat by the stove in the tearooms. They chatted while the moon peeped occasionally from behind thick clouds and danced silver rays upon the waves beyond the rock. She loved the idea of being here for the winter, with the gales blowing outside and only herself to please.
She had plans. The whole area at the back that she managed to ignore for the summer would be her winter focus. Sometimes, the ideas that skipped through her mind scared her. It would be a completely new business, one that would mean the bathhouse would be open all year round. She wasn’t sure that was what she wanted, really, but, she had to give it a go. She needed to see what the potential was, maybe some of her ambition was returning. There were several double bathrooms. The copper baths now green with neglect, but not so bad you could not see how beautiful they could be.
The steam presses had come from a maker in Scotland. When she opened their doors, the fragrance of old wood, jasmine and eucalyptus still drifted before her.
A loud rap at the front door jerked her from her reverie and she made her way towards the tearooms quickly. ‘Hang on,’ she shouted at the insistent rapping.
‘’Bout time too.’ Duncan Delaney pushed past her, bringing a cold sea breeze that swept icy into the room with him. ‘You have some nerve, you know that…’ He was speaking as though a conversation had started and he was in mid-flow.
‘I’m presuming that you’ve heard from your solicitor, so.’ Kate had dropped the divorce petition down to a pokey office hours earlier and knew without any doubt that the woman there was no match for her in terms of experience or talent in the divorce courts.
‘Damn right I heard, and all I can say is you have a cheek. Coming over here, taking over this place,’ he looked around the tearooms disdainfully. No doubt if he had got his hands on it he’d have flattened it and built a couple of apartments into the cliff face. ‘Think you’re something else, with your fancy accent and turning my wife’s head. Well, I am not having it, you hear, I am not having it.’
‘You have very little choice, Mr Delaney. I’m acting on your wife’s behalf, carrying out her instructions.’ She moved to his side, opened the front door of the bathhouse. She didn’t want him here, there was nothing she had to say to him that she wouldn’t say in a court of law.
�
��Rita doesn’t know what she wants, that’s the truth of it. Look at her with that blasted dog and this place. She thinks she’s made up now she has a summer job and a pal with a fancy man in Rock Castle.’ He spat the words and, in his eyes, Kate could see he had no respect for her, and even less for Rita.
‘Mr Delaney, we will see about who knows what and fancy pieces when we go to court. You, with your girlfriend on the side and nothing in your name – you’re in no position to talk about any of us. Rita could take the shirt off your back if she wanted, and let me tell you, that’s exactly what I’ll be encouraging her to do.’ She held the door open wider for him, she was not afraid of him, she had lived life from a young age with no one to depend upon but herself and she knew she was more than a match for Duncan. ‘Good night, Mr Delaney.’
‘You don’t know who you’re dealing with. You ask people around here, I’m not just some old yokel who doesn’t know blocks from bull. I’m a self-made man, and you’ll be sorry you started this yet,’ he said as he pushed past her. Kate could hear in his voice, he wasn’t going to take any chances on losing anything more than he had to. She closed the door tight but softly behind him and knew that Rita had made the right decision. Duncan Delaney was no good and the sooner Rita had him out of her life the better for her.
*
‘So, I see your friend is in the papers again,’ Rita dropped a red top on the table in front of Kate. ‘All I’ll say is, leopards, spots, and I always had a bad feeling about him.’
‘What’s that?’ Kate’s stomach filled with the kind of dread that left no doubt; Rita was talking about Todd.
‘Him up there, in his ivory bloomin’ tower. I haven’t read it yet, mind, but sure we all know what it’s going to be about, once a womanizer, always a womanizer.’ She noisily opened the oven doors and carefully placed the baking trays she’d organized the night before. She had a ‘system’, or so she loudly reminded Kate regularly. It would not do for anyone to mess with her system, ‘trays would not fit and then where would we be?’
Of course, in her own obtuse way, she was trying to be kind. To let Kate gather herself and read the article that dominated the front pages. Not that there was much reading, it was all headlines and dramatic black and white photographs. It didn’t take long to the get the gist of things. The story that Todd had been concerned about had broken. Well, it was always going to happen, wasn’t it? Kate had a feeling that Todd had been lucky for most of his career.
‘I should call him, shouldn’t I?’
‘Why would you do that?’ Rita banged closed the oven door. ‘Why in God’s name would you do that? You listen to me now, this is his mess. He has done enough damage to you already, broke your heart, well, once is enough. If you were my daughter, I wouldn’t have let you outside the door with him. Walking along the beach indeed and Colin Lyons up there only gasping to bring you up to the Weaver’s, any night of the week, I’ll bet.’
‘Oh, Rita. It’s not like that at all.’
‘No? Well, that’s what it looks like from where I’m standing and I’ll bet for most of Ballytokeep as well.’ Rita plopped down into the seat opposite her. ‘I can’t see it myself, you know. He’s shook looking, especially after that heart attack. What would you want with an auld crock like that when you have Colin, the finest catch in the county just across the fields?’
‘You have it all wrong, Rita.’ Kate started to laugh, couldn’t help herself, even though she knew she shouldn’t. After all, poor Claudia and Todd, a story like this could ruin their careers. ‘I’m not interested in Todd Riggs. I haven’t wanted him back, not since the day he left, well…’ she knew that was not strictly true. ‘Well, I certainly haven’t wanted him since I left London, anyway.’
‘Well, it is a bit odd, you buying this place, him buying the tower and then…’
‘That’s not in the papers?’ she shuffled the tabloid, opened page four. ‘Oh, no.’ There they were, the same photos that had been dragged through the press years ago. Todd and Kate, caught in black and white coming from a club, late one night. In the dull image, she smiled, her bright eyes waiting for the future to roll out ahead of her, just as they had planned. He kept his head down, avoiding the glare of photographers, hiding his booze-filled eyes. Beneath the photograph, the caption, ‘the girl he never forgot.’ At the top of the page, a grainy image of them walking along the beach at Ballytokeep – she was serious, while he was gazing at her as he spoke. For a moment, it felt like the earth had turned in an unfamiliar direction. She stared at the image of Todd and herself, walking together; as though they were… she was not sure what, but together. It was too much. She felt that almost forgotten panic began to surge through her once more. She had felt it every day after he left her; it was too familiar not to place it. It was an emptiness that rose within her. It had no beginning and, for too long, she feared it had no end.
Todd and Kate, walking on the beach, together now, ten years after they had so publically split up. It suddenly hit her how ludicrous that was. Todd was her past. She never went looking for him. She had not tried to convince him or asked him to explain. She had simply gotten on with her empty life as well as she could. Until she came here, she had just gotten on with it. Maybe, before she came here, maybe walking along a beach with Todd Riggs might have seemed like the best possible outcome? But here, in her own tearooms, with the images before her, well the whole thing seemed preposterous.
Kate dropped the paper, felt her stomach flip sickeningly. She did not need to read the article to know instinctively where it was headed. ‘Poor Claudia,’ she said quietly. ‘Poor Claudia.’ She walked to the door of the bathhouse and looked across at the strand. It was windy; the tide was out, so the surfers were waiting in the comfort of camper vans, hidden from the breeze at this early hour.
They had gotten into the habit of walking the beach most evenings. That was all it took. The photograph conjured far more than what had passed between them.
24
Iris, 1957
Iris knew she should tell Archie. Call the engagement off, it was only fair, after all. How could she marry him now? There were too many secrets to build a future on between them.
She walked hard into the wind, scarcely noticing that the sun was peeping up and over the town to the east. She let herself into the hotel, her heart hammering in her chest. Already the drapes were pulled back, fireplaces cleared for the day ahead. Archie had begun his day’s work and she crept silently, guiltily, up the stairs, fearing that she might run into him.
In her small room, the light beat warm and dusty over the single bed. She took off her clothes, discarded them quickly and washed roughly in the cold water that stood on her nightstand. Then she sat on the side of her bed, she might have prayed but the nerve had left her. Instead, she waited for she did not know how long, lost in the ecstasy and guilt of the night spent with Robert. Tears streamed from her eyes, but deep in some part of her, a tension was rising, like she had never felt before and it frightened her. Robert Hartley had taken more than just her future with Archie from her last night. Now, this morning, with the harsh light streaming in on her tear-soaked face, Iris feared, she could not settle for that anymore. It would not be fair to any of them, especially not to Archie.
Archie – she still cared for him, the love she felt for him, though nothing like what was burning inside her for Robert, was true and genuine. She hated herself for the way she had treated him. She would have to leave here. She knew that. She couldn’t stay, not feeling as she did for Robert. There was no future for them together. She had a sense that even if she could be so callous to Archie, Robert might not settle for her now. He would marry Gemma or someone like Gemma. He would marry someone who was well connected, sophisticated, and worldly. Iris was just a cook, a glorified pot scrubber, albeit trained in Paris. Although her sister was Lady Pamela, in every other way, her family were no different to any other working-class family. If she had grown up in Ballytokeep, Robert Hartley would not have looked at
her twice.
Two light taps to her bedroom door brought Iris back to the present.
‘Iris, are you awake?’ Archie whispered close to the lock.
‘Yes, I’m just coming.’ She wiped her eyes and stood, straightening out her skirt and blouse and patting her hair before she opened the door.
‘Are you all right?’ Archie stood back from her a little, examining her reddened eyes. ‘Have you been crying?’
‘No, allergies, I’ve hardly slept, don’t mind me.’ She brushed past him. There would be plenty of time when the day was done for talking.
‘Are you able for the breakfasts? I could manage, I really wouldn’t mind.’ He touched her arm and the connection almost made her jump.
‘No, Archie, I’m fine.’ She pulled away from him, could not take his kindness now. It really was too much after how she had treated him.
She set about getting the breakfasts ready without another word. If Mrs Hartley noticed anything amiss, she certainly did not make a comment. Instead, Iris worked silently, her mind a maelstrom of sensations and images of the previous night and guilt for the way she had behaved. As she carried out each task, a small voice whispered deep inside her that she would have to leave this place. She would have to leave Archie, Ballytokeep, and the life she thought stretched before her until she had made love to Robert Hartley.
It was the afternoon before he arrived.
‘Go away,’ she said and she made for the stairs, but he grabbed her arm so hard she knew that struggling was futile and would only leave a bruise. ‘I don’t want to talk to you, Robert. It was a mistake.’ She looked about, thankfully, the reception was empty, the day was a scorcher and everyone had taken off to the beach as soon as breakfast was over.
‘We both know that’s not true.’ He pulled her before him. ‘Now, come on, either we talk here or we walk along the pier like everyone else today.’
