The Forgotten Secret

by Kathleen McGurl

  Madame was still in bed, but woke as Ellen crouched beside the fire, arranging turf and kindling.

  ‘Ellen, is that you?’

  ‘Yes, Madame, sorry to disturb you. Will I light the fire now for you?’

  ‘Yes please. I must get up and see to our patient, and relieve Doctor O’Mahony who’s been with him overnight. Ellen, you did a good job yesterday fetching the doctor so promptly. You may have saved a good man’s life. Thank you. As a reward you may have the afternoon off tomorrow.’

  ‘But I just had a day off, so I did!’ Ellen blurted out.

  ‘Yes, and you deserve more time. You may leave after lunch and return by six o’clock. Just rest on your bed if you don’t want to go out anywhere.’

  ‘Thank you, Madame.’ Ellen smiled and curtseyed, then lit the fire and left the room. She was lucky to have such a thoughtful employer. She could go and see Jimmy again, at the farm. Maybe he’d know something about who was in the green bedroom. She could tell him her own small part in the war, and he’d be proud, and his eyes would shine as he gazed at her, and he’d pull her close and kiss her long and deep …

  The day passed much as usual, with Ellen catching up on her chores, still wondering who was in the green bedroom, and looking forward to her extra afternoon off tomorrow.

  ‘Are you recovered after your long walk yesterday?’ Madame asked, as Ellen collected a tray from the green room in the afternoon. ‘We could not telegraph Doctor O’Mahony, you understand. The telegraph office is watched and telegrams intercepted. I could not risk the other side finding out about our guest. I am glad we could trust you to take on this mission.’

  ‘It’s no problem, Madame. Whatever you ask.’

  Madame regarded her as though weighing something up. ‘You’re a good girl, Ellen, and one I can trust. May I ask you, do you have any experience of nursing?’

  ‘Not much, ma’am, though I did help look after my mammy at the end of her life.’

  ‘And are you afraid of nursing? Of tending to the sick or wounded, clearing up their mess, dressing their wounds?’

  ‘No, Madame, not at all.’ People were people, and surely there was no more worthwhile job than helping someone get better.

  Mrs Carlton smiled. ‘Good. I should like you to help with some nursing duties. As you are aware, we have a patient in the green bedroom and he is requiring round-the-clock care at the present time. You may leave your chores for this evening, as I would like you to sit with him for the next few hours to allow me to have a little rest. I shall return and take over from you by ten o’clock. Your evening meal will be brought to you. Now, follow me and I shall introduce you to your patient.’

  ‘But, Madame …’ Ellen looked at the tray she was still holding.

  Mrs Carlton smiled, took it from her and placed it on a side table in the corridor. ‘I’ll take that back downstairs later. Now come on.’

  Ellen followed her into the bedroom. The curtains were drawn and the room was gloomy. In the bed she could just make out a man, propped up against several pillows, with one shoulder and arm heavily bandaged. Another bandage was around his head, and he had one black eye. It was hard to be sure of his age, but Ellen judged him to be no more than 30.

  ‘Captain Cunningham? May I introduce Ellen, who is going to help nurse you. She will sit with you for the next few hours and I will return to cover the night shift. Is there anything you need?’

  The man’s good eye roved over Ellen, and he gave a half-smile. ‘Water, if you would, please.’ His voice was cracked and forced, as though talking was a huge effort.

  Ellen stepped forward and poured a glass of water from a jug that stood on a side table, and at a nod from Mrs Carlton, approached the bed. She put a hand behind Captain Cunningham’s head to steady him and held the glass to his lips while he took a sip. When he’d finished he leaned back and closed his eyes.

  Ellen replaced the glass on the side table and looked at Madame, who nodded her approval.

  ‘Keep an eye on that head wound. If the blood soaks through the bandage you will need to change the dressing. There are clean bandages and absorbent pads in that basket on the chair. At seven o’clock he should have another dose of his painkiller – two teaspoons of that medicine. He’ll probably sleep after that. Make sure he drinks as much as possible. Are you hungry, Captain Cunningham?’

  The man shook his head weakly, keeping his eyes closed.

  Mrs Carlton sighed. ‘We’ve been unable to tempt him to eat but he needs to keep up his strength. I’ll have some scrambled egg sent up. Even if he only eats a tiny amount the doctor said it would do him good. See if you can persuade him. Is everything clear?’

  ‘Yes, Madame.’ Ellen began tidying and straightening the bedclothes as Mrs Carlton left the room. A little later she returned herself with the egg, and Ellen managed to coax the patient to eat three spoonfuls before he collapsed back onto his pillow, exhausted by the effort.

  A few minutes later, gentle snores told her Captain Cunningham had nodded off, so when everything was in order she pulled a chair within reach of the bed and settled down. There was a book on the table beside the water jug – an edition of Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities. She was not sure if she was allowed to read it, but there seemed to be nothing else to do for the time being, so she picked it up and began reading, staying alert to her patient in case he woke or needed anything.

  It was a long evening, but eventually Mrs Carlton returned, looking refreshed from her sleep.

  ‘Thank you, Ellen. You have done a good job.’

  ‘I’ve done nothing, Madame. Captain Cunningham stayed asleep almost the whole time. If you want me to sit longer …’

  ‘No, you can go now. Perhaps you can take over for a bit in the morning, after your morning chores are done, and before you have your afternoon off.’

  ‘Yes, Madame, of course.’ Ellen curtseyed and left the room, noticing Mrs Carlton pick up the book and sit in the same chair Ellen had been in.

  That night when they were in bed, Siobhan asked her where’d she’d been all evening. Ellen hesitated to tell her, but realised it was no secret that an injured man was in the house. All the staff had seen the doctor arrive.

  ‘I was nursing,’ she said.

  ‘A Volunteer?’ Siobhan asked.

  ‘Mmm.’ Ellen tried to be non-committal with her answer.

  ‘Do you think they’ll win?’

  It was dark so Ellen couldn’t see her face, but there was something odd about her tone. ‘I don’t know,’ she replied.

  ‘Do you want them to?’

  ‘Of course. Don’t you?’

  ‘Ah, yes, I suppose so, in the end. Can I tell you a secret? It’s killing me, keeping it. I’ll explode, so I will. But you can’t tell anyone. Not a soul. I’d lose my job.’

  Ellen was quiet for a moment. They’d become sort-of friends, but not so close that she felt she wanted to know Siobhan’s darkest secrets.

  ‘Please, Ellen? It’s nothing bad, honest to God. But I just want someone to know.’

  ‘Go on, then.’

  Siobhan took a deep breath. ‘It’s this. My brother’s after joining the RIC. Above in Leitrim, not here in Meath. He’s on the other side, now, and I don’t know who to support. Who’s right and who’s wrong.’

  Ellen’s eyes widened at this, and she thought carefully about how to answer. ‘Siobhan, I won’t tell a soul, sure I won’t. But while you live in this house, you must support the Volunteers. If you don’t, you must leave, or you’ll put us all in danger.’

  ‘I won’t do anything. Madame’s been good to me. Thanks, Ellen. I feel better for having told someone. It felt like a heavy secret, you know?’

  Ellen did know. It felt heavy on her, too.

  Chapter 11

  Clare, May 2016

  One morning I woke up, in my fresh new sheets bought from Dunnes Stores, and realised I’d been in Ireland a week.

  And then it was ten days, and then two weeks. Time was speedi
ng up.

  I’d spent the days organising the house. I’d hired a skip, which stood across the yard opposite the unused front door. In it I’d tossed anything that was unsalvageable and unusable. Anything I didn’t want but which was serviceable had been free-cycled or given to charity. I’d kept upholstered furniture and anything sound made of wood. Those could be restored and given a new lease of life. The house was half empty now, but it would make renovations much easier having less junk to move around.

  I’d also gone through the boxes of paperwork Uncle Pádraig had left stored in one of the bedrooms. It was mostly old bills, some correspondence from decades ago, and ancient back issues of farming magazines.

  But tucked deep in one box were a set of cheap exercise books, and on the front of them I recognised the teenage David’s handwriting. A History of Ireland’s Fight for Independence by David Kennedy. I flicked one open and read a little. It looked like he’d written up everything he’d learned from school, and drawn maps and diagrams to illustrate it. I smiled at the thought of him doing all this extra-curricular homework – not something his brother Brian would have considered for a moment.

  A few pages further on it became a little more interesting, and I settled myself down, sitting on the floor leaning against a pile of boxes to read on. He’d interviewed Granny Irish. She’d been notoriously difficult to talk to as I recall, and had rarely wanted to say much about her part in the War of Independence. But David had managed to get her to talk, and had written it all down. It was strange, reading my grandmother’s stories like this, told in my cousin’s words. Both of them long gone. Both of them committed Republicans, who’d fought for their country’s freedom in different ways.

  I asked Granny if she was proud of everything she did in the war, David had written.

  Her answer surprised me. ‘There was one thing I shouldn’t have done. One thing I wished I hadn’t done.’

  But she wouldn’t tell me what it was, no matter how often I asked. In the end she got cross with me and I had to stop asking.

  I smiled, reading that, imagining teenage David pestering our rather cold and distant grandmother. Well, whatever it was she regretted, she’d presumably taken the secret to her grave.

  Paul had called me every day. I’d kept my phone switched off most of the time and only switched it on when I felt up to listening to his messages – always rants, accusing me of taking things that were his, going on about the car and how hard it was without one. (Although Matt told me he’d bought himself a second-hand Ford Focus two days after I’d left. I didn’t let on that I knew this.) In the end I’d bought myself a cheap new phone with a pay-as-you-go SIM from Vodafone. I’d told the boys and my new local friends the number and kept it switched on. Only Paul ever called the old number now.

  The boys were both planning to come to stay in a couple of weeks’ time, for my birthday.

  ‘Must help you celebrate the big five-oh,’ Matt had said. ‘Can’t believe my mum’s going to be 50.’ I couldn’t believe it either. Such a milestone. I’d been putting off thinking about it. Half a century!

  ‘It’s only the number of times you’ve been round the sun,’ Jon said, on the phone one evening. ‘Nothing special, even if the number is astronomical.’ Trust him to make a joke of it. If I’d been in the same room, he’d have had a gentle slap for that one.

  I had a vague idea I’d take them out for a meal somewhere. Or perhaps I’d have a small party in the farmhouse. I could invite Janice and her kids, Ryan, and … Who else did I know well enough to invite? Mr Greve the solicitor perhaps? Hmm. Perhaps not. To be frank, I didn’t really know Ryan well enough. I tried to imagine calling in at the bookshop and inviting him to a party, but just thinking about it made my cheeks burn with embarrassment and my hands feel clammy. I was too shy to do such a thing.

  Bit by bit I was building my life here. I went to Janice’s café at least three times a week, and she’d called on me on the way home from school with assorted children in tow twice more. After that first time I’d made sure I always had biscuits and juice or pop to offer them. They referred to me as Aunty Clare, which made me smile.

  I’d been back to the bookshop too, to pay my debt, but had not had the chance to ask Ryan about researching my genealogy or the names on the communion medallion and birth certificate. Whenever I went in he seemed to be busy with other customers, phone orders or with unpacking new stock. I’d end up buying something, exchanging a few words and leaving, feeling vaguely disappointed.

  It was Sunday morning, and I’d had a lazy start. All the local people would be at Mass. I wondered if I should start going – there was a large grey-brick church dedicated to St Barnabas in the centre of Blackstown. Mum had been brought up a Catholic and had attended Mass every week until she came to England. She’d been unable to find a Catholic church within walking distance of her first digs, and had quickly become a lapsed Catholic.

  When I’d asked her about it she’d shrugged and said I should form my own opinion. I guessed that she’d never been particularly devout, or else she’d have tried harder to keep going to church in England. When I was growing up there was a Catholic church on my way home from school. I only ever set foot in there when my Irish grandparents were visiting. I was baptised Catholic but that’s as far as it went. Never did First Communion or anything else. Dad was an atheist and I’d never really given it much thought.

  But here, in this country where everyone went to church and all children took classes in school to prepare them for First Communion, where the priest was an important member of the community, I felt perhaps I should try to join in a little. If nothing else I might get to know some more people.

  My job for the day was to begin making more space in the barn, so I could get on with some furniture restoration and upholstery projects out there. That old armchair I’d enthusiastically begun stripping back on my first day was still sitting in its calico underwear in the front room, feeling sorry for itself. I dressed in my oldest jeans and a ripped sweatshirt I’d found in one of the wardrobes upstairs. A part of me hoped it had been Daithí’s, rather than Uncle Pádraig’s or anyone else’s. But that was unlikely. Daithí had died so very long ago, way back in the 1980s.

  I headed out to the barn with a cup of coffee, to assess what needed to be done. It was one of those grey days, no wind, no rain, no sun. Just right for getting on with the job and not feeling I should be somewhere else, doing something else.

  Firstly there was some rubbish to clear. There was space in the skip, so I set down my coffee on the old workbench and began gathering up the soggy, mouldy cardboard boxes that were piled along one side of the barn. All were empty, or contained only more, smaller, empty boxes. Who knew why Uncle Pádraig had kept them. But they were easy to clear and soon in the skip.

  In the back corner was some rusty farm machinery. Some sort of plough, which looked as though it would have attached to a tractor. And some other rake-type attachment. They were too heavy to move on my own. I’d need to wait until Matt and Jon came.

  I gazed around. The workbench I could tackle on my own – I could go through the tools, keep what was usable, throw out the tins of rusty screws. And the end wall – there were old pieces of furniture and more boxes piled up higgledy-piggledy. I ought to be able to go through that lot by myself. But it was hard work. I finished my coffee and sighed. Maybe I should have waited till one or other of the boys was here to help. It’d be more fun with someone else.

  It’s spooky, but it was right as I was thinking that, that a battered old estate car drew up outside, and out climbed Ryan.

  ‘Hey!’ he called, raising a hand in greeting as he crossed the yard towards me. ‘I hoped this was the right place. Janice told me where you lived. Hope I’m not disturbing you, but I thought I’d call in and see how things are going. Whenever you’ve been in the shop I’ve been too tied up to spend long chatting.’

  I smiled. It was good to see him. ‘No, you’re not disturbing me. I was about ready fo
r a rest and a cuppa. Tea?’

  ‘That’d be grand.’ He followed me inside and sat at the kitchen table while I put the kettle on.

  ‘Sorry about the state of me. I’ve been trying to clear some junk out of the barn.’

  ‘So I saw. I can give you a hand when we’ve had our tea, if you like.’

  ‘Are you sure? It would help; there are some heavy things I can’t shift on my own. Old farm stuff. And I don’t know what to do with the metal implements – don’t think they should go in the skip.’

  He shook his head. ‘No, but I know a fella who deals in scrap metal. I’ll give him a call and he’ll come by and collect it. Might even give you a few euros for it.’

  ‘I don’t want money. I’ll just be grateful for it to be gone.’ I handed Ryan his tea. It’d be wonderful having his help for a while in the barn. I wondered how long he might stay. ‘Oh, before I forget, Janice said you might be able to help me with tracing who lived here before my grandparents. I found something …’ I nipped through to the sitting room and retrieved the communion medallion and birth certificate from the mantelpiece where they had been since I found them. ‘Look, I found these tucked inside an old chair.’

  Ryan raised his eyebrows as he took them from me and peered at them. ‘This child was born during the Anglo-Irish war, the fight for independence. And the medallion’s even older. Yes, I can help try to find these people. What a wonderful little mystery!’ He pulled out his phone and took close-up photos of both items. ‘Well, I’ll see what I can find for you.’

  ‘I want to research my own ancestors, too. There are family legends about my own grandmother being some sort of spy for the Volunteers during the War of Independence. I’d love to find out more about her.’ I pulled a face. ‘Wish I’d asked my mum while she was still alive.’

  Ryan gave me a sympathetic look. ‘Always the way. When we’re young we’re more interested in the future than the past.’