The Distant Shores

by Santa Montefiore

  There was no time for self-pity. The fire was moving fast. The instinct to survive kicked in. She hurried into the bathroom, gasping with fear and a terrifying sense of helplessness. She threw a towel and a dressing gown into the bath and turned on the taps. Then she quickly struggled into the sodden gown and grabbed the towel. By now the bedroom was on fire as well and the flames were inching closer, devouring everything in their path. With her heart racing and her chest congested with smoke, Margot held out the dripping towel and fought her way to the window. She threw it open and took a gulp of air. It was pouring with rain. She hoped the rain would put out the fire. She looked down. There was a terrace some way below her window, a narrow walkway edged with a crenelated wall. This was the only way out. There was no other exit. However, it was too far for her to jump safely. She simply couldn’t. She’d break every bone in her body.

  She turned back. There must be some way out besides the window. But it was hopeless. With the fire behind her and the drop in front of her, she only had one option if she wanted to have a chance of surviving.

  Margot’s legs were trembling so violently she could barely climb onto the windowsill. She felt as if she had lost control of her body. Her insides had turned to jelly. Where was her courage? She had always prided herself in being strong, independent, fearless, but now she felt small and afraid. She sat down, legs dangling in the air, the narrow terrace a frightening vision beneath her feet. It was then that the fear really hit her. She began to sob. Loud, primeval sobs that were ejected from the deepest part of her. ‘Please, God, don’t let me die,’ she wailed. The rain thrashed against her face, the sodden dressing gown felt as tight as a straitjacket.

  She thought then of Colm. How could she have doubted that she loved him? She thought of her mother, but the image quickly dissolved and Dorothy floated into her mind. Her room was not far from Margot’s. She hoped she’d managed to get out. She prayed she was okay.

  The cries of the hotel guests rose up as they spilled onto the lawn. Margot looked to her left and right to see that the fire was spreading rapidly into the rest of the castle. She shouted, but her voice was lost in the roar of the fire. Would anyone see her through the smoke?

  Then the flames were consuming the tower. She could feel them almost licking the back of her neck. She smelt something rotten, like a dead animal, then realized suddenly, as a pain shot through the back of her neck, that her hair was on fire. She had no choice. She jumped.

  * * *

  JP had seen the fire from his bedroom window. Something had stirred him in his sleep and he had awoken with dread’s cold fist clenching his stomach. He had called Colm immediately. Colm had run out to his car in his pyjamas, but he wasn’t alone on the road. By now the whole town knew. Everyone was racing up to the castle as fast as they dared drive in the rain, in the middle of the night. Colm could barely breathe. The one night Margot chose to sleep in her hotel bedroom, this happened. He cursed loudly, hooted at the car in front of him and slammed his hand against the steering wheel with impatience.

  It began to rain hard. Big fat drops fell in a torrent, like a tropical rain storm, onto the land. Colm had never seen rain like it. If this doesn’t put out the fire, he thought, nothing will.

  * * *

  Dorothy sat up in bed. Her room was filled with smoke and flames were dancing all around her. Her first instinct was to panic. And she did panic, but only for a moment. She realized after a few seconds that she did not need to panic, because she didn’t feel the heat or, in fact, taste the smoke, which she was surely inhaling. The flames were now consuming her bed and she couldn’t see anything in the room except grey, billowing smoke, and yet she couldn’t smell it. It had no scent at all. This was very strange. A calm came over her. She climbed out of bed without the usual stiffness. Why, she didn’t even groan. She looked down at her feet, her bare feet, and was surprised to feel not the slightest discomfort from the burning wood on which she was standing. Then she turned her eyes and saw the horrifying sight of herself. Yes, there she was, Dorothy Walbridge, lying in the bed asleep while the fire took her.

  She should have panicked at that point. But this calm that had come over her was total. The sight of herself was quite mesmerizing, and she would have watched for longer if she hadn’t then become aware of a light far greater than the fire. She turned her attention away from her burning body to see her daughter, Lillie, surrounded by an aura of brilliant white. She was smiling, so she certainly wasn’t at all worried about the fire. The child held out her hand.

  Dorothy knew then that she was dead. A frisson of excitement rippled through her. Dan had been right all along. Lillie had come through that evening and here she was now, reaching out. She put out her hand and felt her daughter take it. At once she felt a tremendous love, a love greater than she had ever felt while alive. She was ready to burst with it.

  I never got to tell Margot how good her book is, she thought, and with that one small regret, she followed her daughter into the light.

  * * *

  When Colm reached the castle the fire brigade was in the process of putting out the fire. The rain was helping. Indeed, the rain was a blessing. A large number of people had congregated on the lawn, their faces horror-stricken as they stared up at the burning castle in disbelief. Mr Dukelow ran among them in agitation, rubbing his hands together, shouting orders, but achieving nothing. Cars arrived in droves, locals swarmed into the forecourt, everybody wanted to help, but there was nothing they could do but hope. In everyone’s mind was the same question: how was it possible that the castle had caught fire a second time?

  Colm shouted for Margot. He ran through the crowd, desperately calling her name. His chest ached with fear. The more he searched the more he feared that she wasn’t there. That she hadn’t got out. That she was still in the castle. ‘It started in that tower,’ said someone, pointing up to Margot’s room. ‘I believe it’s the oldest part of the hotel, so you can imagine how quickly it must have caught fire.’

  Colm found Mr Dukelow. ‘Have you seen Margot?’ he demanded.

  Mr Dukelow’s face was grey. ‘No,’ he replied. Then he lifted his eyes to the western tower.

  Colm looked at it too. The wooden ceiling had fallen in, but the thick stone walls were still standing. The rain was putting out the flames that remained. However, if Margot was in there, she wouldn’t have survived.

  The firemen and the rain were doing a very good job of putting out the fire, but Colm wasn’t going to stand there helplessly. He had to do something. ‘Perhaps she jumped out of the window!’ he exclaimed. ‘We need to get up to that terrace,’ he said, pointing at it.

  ‘We?’

  ‘Yes, you and me. Come on, Terrence. I need you to help me.’

  ‘It’s dangerous. The firemen—’

  ‘I’m not waiting for the firemen.’ He took Mr Dukelow’s sleeve and dragged him towards the back of the castle where the flames had not reached. Mr Dukelow found his courage – fuelled by guilt, because he knew, rather, he feared he knew, who had lit the match. Colm knew the old servants’ entrance well from when he was a child, playing about the castle with his sisters. Mr Dukelow felt nauseous as he pushed open the door, where only a week before he and the Countess had sneaked inside.

  The two men hurried up the staircase. Colm jumped three steps at a time in his hurry to get to Margot. Mr Dukelow struggled to keep up. At the top of the stairs the corridor was filled with thick, grey smoke. Mr Dukelow grabbed his throat and began to cough. ‘I can’t…’ he wailed, turning back. ‘My asthma.’

  ‘Come on, Terrence! Don’t let me down!’ he shouted, grabbing him by the arm. If he hadn’t needed him so badly he’d have punched him in the face.

  Mr Dukelow stared at him for a long moment, before pulling his arm away and disappearing back down the corridor.

  Colm took off his T-shirt and pressed it to his mouth, then, with his eyes watering and his chest filling with smoke, he made his way deeper into the hotel. The closer he go
t to the western tower the thicker the smoke became. At one point he wasn’t sure he’d be able to find the door. But he needn’t have worried. By the time he reached it, he saw that the door no longer existed. The wall had collapsed and the roof caved in, leaving smouldering beams and rubble. Margot’s tower bedroom above had been completely destroyed. A man’s voice shouted to him through the hole in the ceiling. ‘Hey, you…’ But Colm ignored it and fought his way outside.

  He saw her at once, lying like a broken doll on the stones. Blood staining her sodden dressing gown red. His heart stopped. He rushed over and knelt beside her, a sob bursting in his chest. Picking up her wrist he felt for a pulse. He thought he felt a faint beat, like the heartbeat of a bird, against his fingertips. Then he was surrounded by firemen. He was ordered to one side. After that it seemed as if everything quickened. The world looked blurred around the edges. Nothing was defined. Ambulances arrived, Margot was placed on a stretcher. Colm demanded to go with her to the hospital.

  ‘Are you a relation?’ an official asked.

  ‘I’m her husband,’ he lied.

  ‘Very well, then. Follow me.’

  Kitty

  It was I who caused the rain. I’m not sure quite how I managed it, but I did. Now I’m surprised at the things we spirits can do when we put our minds to it. Ah, the power of the mind to work miracles, but sadly the western tower is gone.

  Once I would have minded. I would have despaired. That was the oldest part of the castle, the only part to survive the fire of 1921, but now I am impassive. The castle is still a hotel. Sure, it’s going to take a long time for Mrs de Lisle to repair the damage, but I gather she is already making plans for the new tower. She’s going to call it the Margot Hart Suite.

  JP will continue to give talks; I think it has given him a new lease of life. He and Alana are growing close again. Out of the ashes of their marriage, new shoots are growing. It is promising. I realize now that home is where love is. The castle ceased to be my home long ago, I just never understood that. I do now. Everything in the material world passes away. But we souls are eternal and we endure, with the love in our hearts, because that is the meaning of life.

  I love JP. I love him fully and unconditionally. I love Colm and Alana and all those I have been watching over these past years. My spirit is so full of love that I no longer care about the castle and what becomes of it. I don’t care who set it alight. I will not be seeking revenge, for my heart feels only compassion for a soul so lost and full of resentment. What place have they created for themselves in the afterlife? I can do nothing but pray for them to find their way.

  My memories are not in the castle, but carried within me. I soar over the hills, the magnificent hills where yellow gorse and purple heather grow among tiny white orchids and wild garlic. I soar with the gulls and the rooks and the silent barn owls, and I am free. I will not return to the castle now. I am liberated from the obsession that I mistook for love. I have finally let go, and in so doing have unshackled myself.

  And I ascend towards the far distant horizon where all my truths lie, waiting for me to recognize them. In that serene, golden light I see Jack. He is not the old man who recently breathed his last in the cottage by the sea, but the young man I fell in love with, knee deep in the ravine searching for frogs. His hair is black and falling over eyes of indigo blue. His smile is wide and full of mischief and delight. His heart is overflowing and, as I take his hand, I know something I have always known, only forgotten. Our lives on earth are as the lives of characters in a play whose love is limited to the stage. As soon as the curtain falls our love is set free. It grows big, like a powerful light that knows no boundaries. Jack loves me, but he loves Emer too, and when it is her time to come home, he will reach out his hand with all the affection with which he now reaches out for me. And I love Emer, too. Why ever did I think I didn’t?

  Chapter 21

  Margot drifted in and out of consciousness. She was aware of people coming and going, but she couldn’t make out their features. She didn’t know where she was, and, quite frankly, she didn’t care. She was in a strange, dreamlike limbo, in her body and yet not particularly attached to it. She didn’t feel any pain. In fact, she didn’t feel her limbs at all. Neither was she aware of her breathing. But she knew she wasn’t dead. At least, she hoped she wasn’t, because, though not unpleasant, it wasn’t what she’d had in mind for the afterlife.

  Time no longer seemed to exist. Sure, she was aware of being conscious and then of slipping out of it, but she had no sense of day or night, hours or minutes. She was aware, however, of a dark presence beside her. Dark and solid and somehow reassuring. It wasn’t an angel – not that she believed in angels, but she was ready to believe in anything right now – because angels were meant to be made of light and this presence was dark and solid. Like a rock. Yes, like one of those megaliths in the Fairy Ring. It seemed to be beside her every time she emerged from oblivion. She thought of the Fairy Ring and then she thought of Colm. When she eventually opened her eyes, she saw that the dark, solid and reassuring presence was him. Then she felt her hand, warm and safe, in his.

  Colm had been by Margot’s bedside since she had come out of Intensive Care. She had broken most of the bones in her legs, her hips, her ribs, one arm, her cheekbone and jaw. Her hair had all but burnt so the nurse had cut it off, leaving it sticking up in uneven tufts. She was lucky to be alive. Colm had turned to God and prayed, the same supplication over and over: Please let her live. Please, I beg you, don’t let her die. His faith was strong, but it had been tested over the last week, when there had been a good chance that Margot wouldn’t survive. He realized, as he sat watching her lying silent and still in her hospital bed, her skin waxy and her hair short and uneven, that he loved her deeply.

  But now she opened her eyes and looked into his, and he knew that she would pull through. He held her gaze and smiled, revealing his sorrow and his pain only in the tears that caused his eyes to sparkle. ‘Hello there, you,’ he said softly. She blinked at him, knowing instinctively that she couldn’t speak. ‘Don’t try to talk. Let me do the talking for you.’ He stroked her hand with his thumb. She felt it, a rhythmic, gentle caress, and was comforted by it. ‘You gave me a fright, you know. Yes, you did. But you’re going to be just grand. You’re in hospital in Dublin and you’re going to be well again soon. The doctors have been great. You’re going to be as good as new. And I’m not leaving your side. Not for a minute.’

  She closed her eyes, a warm, sweet feeling washing over her like honey. Sinking into oblivion once again. The deep, cool sleep that allows the body to heal and the spirit to rest, in the knowledge of being loved. Somehow, that mattered; it mattered very much.

  * * *

  The Countess di Marcantonio was at her dressing table in a pink silk dressing gown when there came a knock on the front door of the apartment. ‘Darling, are you going to get it?’ she shouted. No reply. She sighed. She really didn’t want anyone seeing her like this, without her make-up on, with her hair in rollers. ‘Darling! The door!’ She scowled. Where was the Count? She shook her head and put down her make-up brush.

  She padded into the hall and pressed the button on the intercom. ‘Who is it?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s me, Terrence.’

  ‘You cannot come up here!’ she hissed, panicking suddenly. ‘You must leave at once!’

  ‘I’m here with Inspector Coyle. He wants to speak with you.’

  There was a long pause. Inspector Coyle? What on earth could the Garda possibly want with her? ‘Can he not come back another time? I’m not ready to receive visitors.’

  ‘This cannot wait, Countess di Marcantonio.’ That was the inspector. The Countess flinched a little at the sound of his voice replacing Terrence’s. She didn’t want either man to see her like this, but there was no avoiding it. ‘Very well. Please come up.’ She pressed the buzzer and waited.

  The Count shuffled into the hall in a scruffy shirt and stained sweater, looking frail.r />
  ‘Where have you been?’ she snapped. ‘Did you not hear the doorbell?’

  ‘Who is it?’ he asked.

  ‘The Garda.’

  The Count frowned. ‘The Garda? What do they want?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s coming up now, with Mr Dukelow from the castle.’

  ‘What’s left of it,’ said Leopoldo. He shook his head and put a hand on his heart. ‘A great tragedy. But thankfully not my problem.’

  ‘He wants to speak with me.’

  The Count frowned again. ‘Why, what have you done?’

  ‘Absolutely nothing,’ she replied. ‘I have done nothing. I cannot imagine what he wants to talk to me about.’

  There was a rap on the door. The Countess took a deep breath, then opened it. She shook hands with Mr Dukelow and then the inspector, who was a stout little man with a thick moustache and plump cheeks the colour of redcurrants. His eyes were large and unsmiling behind his glasses. She showed them into the sitting room, but did not offer them a seat. She did not expect them to stay for long.

  ‘What would you like to speak to me about?’ she asked the inspector haughtily. ‘I’m really not sure why it couldn’t wait.’

  ‘I will not waste your time, Countess.’ The inspector took a little pad out of his breast pocket and held the pen over the page. ‘Where were you the night the castle caught fire?’

  ‘Well, I was here, of course.’ She shook her head testily. ‘I don’t understand. Are you suggesting it was arson? Did someone set it alight on purpose?’

  ‘Mr Dukelow has confessed to letting you into the castle at night through the old servants’ entrance at the back, and up to the western tower, which is where the fire started.’ The Countess was careful not to look at Mr Dukelow, and held her chin up and her eyes impassive so as not to give anything away. She did not look at her husband, either. ‘He tells me you were unhappy with the book that Miss Hart was writing and you were determined to stop her getting it published.’