The Secret Hours

by Santa Montefiore

  After lunch I make a trunk call to America, because that is what is expected of me. Wyatt is in a meeting. I leave a message with his secretary to let him know I have arrived at the hotel. I do not leave my number; I do not want him to call me back.

  I wander into the street. The sun is warm but it is cold in the shadows. I take the side of the street that is not in shade and stroll up the sidewalk. I stop in front of store windows and browse. There is a shoe store called Downey’s, a woman’s clothing store called Garbo’s, a drugstore, a bakery, a bank, a post office and a newsagent. I enter Garbo’s, out of curiosity, not with a view to buying anything, and the young salesgirl does a double take, much like Cormac, Nora Maloney and Séamus did on first seeing me. I smile at her and frown, hoping for an explanation, but she smiles back without giving me one. I decide to get to the bottom of it.

  ‘Is it my red hair?’ I ask, touching it. She looks puzzled. I continue, determined to find out what it is that’s making everyone look at me strangely. ‘You gave me an odd look when I came in, I thought it must be on account of my hair.’

  ‘Oh no, I’m sorry for that,’ she says, blushing. ‘I thought you were someone else.’

  ‘Ah, so that’s what it is. Everyone’s been giving me odd looks today.’

  ‘That’s because you look very like Mrs Trench. I suppose it’s the hair, she has red hair as well, thick and wavy just like yours, and she wears it down her back. You have her face as well, or something of it.’

  ‘How funny, I’ll look out for her,’ I say, relieved that that is all it is.

  ‘Oh, you can’t miss her. Indeed, it’ll be like looking in the mirror,’ she says with a laugh.

  I browse. There are some very nice wool sweaters and skirts, but I’m not in the mood to try anything on. I just want to see the town. I thank her and walk back out into the street. I decide to make my way to the church. I feel it pulling at me for that is the one place I can be sure has not changed since my mother’s childhood. Now that I know why people are staring at me, I am no longer uncomfortable. I’m happy to be in Ireland, in this quaint little town where my mother grew up. I don’t think of Wyatt, save to appreciate the vast distance between us. This is the first time in my life that I am on my own in a foreign country and the feeling is intoxicating. I walk with a bounce in my step. I want to laugh, but I’m being looked at with that curious, surprised expression which accompanies every stare, so I hold in my laughter and acknowledge them with a smile instead.

  I reach the church of All Saints. It’s a grey-stone building built in the shape of a cross, probably hundreds of years old, with a tower that prods the sky. The big door is open and I walk inside. There are rows of wooden pews, an altar draped in a green silk cloth, a large statue of Christ hanging behind it and tall, stained-glass windows. It smells as all Catholic churches do, of incense and melted wax and years of worship. A table of votive candles is set up to the right of the altar, their little flames dancing jauntily in the gloomy atmosphere of this ancient house, and I think of the prayers that go with them and wonder if anyone hears. There are a few elderly women in black mantillas bent in prayer, but apart from them the church is empty. I sit at the back and think of my mother. As I picture her face I feel an ache in the core of my heart. It is a lonely, cold ache that is full of emptiness. I wonder where she is now and what she is seeing. I hope she knows I’m here in her home town, because I believe she wanted me to come.

  I decide to light a candle and say a prayer for her soul. I’m not particularly religious. I haven’t been to Mass in a long time, but I believe in God and am ashamed to admit that I only call on Him in times of need. I light the little candle and close my eyes. I need Him now. I need Him to hold Mom in His light, and to hold me in His light as well.

  When I leave, I find a gathering of people at the gate. I wonder what they are waiting for. Was one of those old ladies someone important? But as I walk down the path I realize that they are staring at me. Most of them are elderly. The men stand with their caps in hand and look away when I catch their eyes, but the women are less abashed and simply stare. I wonder who this Mrs Trench is and why they are so intrigued by my resemblance to her. I say hello and walk, embarrassed, through the throng. I hear a woman say to another, ‘Sacred Heart of Jesus, Mary, you’re right. She has a double. They say if you meet your double, you’ll be dead by midnight, God save us. I’m not in the better for the shock.’

  I’m not sure I can take two weeks of this. I resolve to ask Nora Maloney about Mrs Trench when I get back to the hotel. I’m not feeling so confident now and the bounce in my step has been deflated. I hurry back down the street, eyes to the ground. The sun has gone behind a cloud and I feel chilly. The town no longer looks so charming.

  I dash into the foyer and look for Nora Maloney. She is behind her desk talking to a woman with long red hair. I catch my breath. Nora Maloney looks past the woman and nods at me. ‘Here she is, Mrs Trench,’ she says. The woman turns round, just as she does in my dream, and for a moment I believe I really am staring at myself. At a more beautiful me, I must add, for this woman has finer features and fuller lips and an air of confidence that I do not possess. She settles her grey eyes onto my face and is as surprised as I am. Her lips part and her hand goes to her heart. ‘They said my double was in town, but I didn’t believe them,’ she says in an English accent. She approaches me, elegant in a pair of jodhpurs, fitted tweed jacket and boots. She looks as if she has just got off a horse.

  She puts out a gloved hand. ‘My name is Kitty Trench. And you are?’ She is amused by our similarity and her penetrating gaze probes my more reticent one.

  ‘Faye Langton,’ I reply and shake her hand.

  ‘You’re American?’

  ‘Yes, but my mother was Irish. She was born here, in Ballinakelly.’

  ‘Then we will know her, for sure. What is her name?’

  ‘Arethusa Deverill,’ I say. No sooner have those words escaped my lips than Kitty Trench blanches. Now she doesn’t look amused at all, more like astonished. She puts her fingers to her lips and exclaims, ‘Good Lord!’ before taking me by the arm and leading me away from Nora Maloney, who is listening to every word and gripped. ‘You are Arethusa Deverill’s daughter?’ she asks in a whisper.

  ‘Yes, I am,’ I reply, wondering why the sudden secrecy.

  ‘Then we are cousins,’ she tells me. ‘Arethusa is my father’s sister. I think you’d better come with me,’ she says in an urgent tone of voice. Then she turns to Nora Maloney. ‘Would you arrange for someone to drive Mrs Langton to the White House.’ She looks at me and grins. ‘I don’t suppose you brought a horse?’

  Chapter 4

  My cousin Kitty Trench, Kitty Deverill, trots off down the street on her horse, past O’Donovan’s pub where the men doff their caps, and heads off into the hills. I see her, beyond the rooftops, galloping up the hillside. She is an accomplished rider. She looks as if she has spent her entire life on a horse. Her flame-coloured hair flies out behind her and she is seated confidently in the saddle. My admiration for her grows, along with my excitement. I have found a relation, a first cousin, and I have only just arrived. She is beautiful, self-assured and glamorous. She has an energy about her that makes me long for her company. I want to be in this gracious woman’s light. I want to be like her. I look like her, although a less striking version, but I am not like her. I find it curious that she doesn’t have an Irish accent and she does not look poor. She is obviously a Deverill who made good, like my mother.

  While Nora Maloney tracks down someone to take me to Kitty’s house, I go upstairs to retrieve my mother’s diary. I don’t imagine Kitty will know how to break the code, but I feel the need to bring it with me all the same. When I return to the foyer Cormac O’Farrell is talking to Nora Maloney and I know they are discussing me and Kitty, because they stop talking the moment they see me and look guilty.

  ‘I understand you need to be taken to Mrs Trench’s house,’ says Cormac.

 
‘Yes, please,’ I reply. ‘Thank you for coming so quickly.’

  He smiles. ‘I see you’ve met your double.’ I now realize why he gave me such a strange look at the airport. It would have saved me a lot of confusion if he had just told me there and then that I had a twin in his town.

  Nora Maloney is waiting eagerly for my response. I imagine whatever I say will be spread around town before I’ve even arrived at Mrs Trench’s house. ‘We are very much alike, aren’t we,’ I reply.

  ‘The dead stamp of each other,’ Nora Maloney agrees and I’m a little embarrassed because I’m sure they are both thinking what I’m thinking, that Kitty Deverill is a far superior version.

  I climb into the front seat of the Jeep. I want to talk about Kitty Deverill and her family – my family. Cormac is only too happy to enlighten me. ‘Kitty Deverill lives in the White House, which is on the Castle Deverill estate.’

  At the mention of Castle Deverill I interrupt him. Mom wanted her ashes scattered in view of it. ‘Castle Deverill?’ I ask. ‘Who lives there?’

  ‘Why, it’s their family seat. The Deverill family seat,’ he says as if I’m very ignorant not knowing. As if everyone knows about Castle Deverill except me. I’m confused. I thought Mom was poor and now I learn that her family owns a castle. My dream flashes before me. I see the grand hall, the staircase and dark corridor and finally the little room at the top of the tower where I find myself. I shudder. Did my mother grow up in a castle? Am I somehow tapping into her memories? Is that possible? Temperance would certainly think so. ‘Castle Deverill has been in the Deverill family since Charles II’s day, when Barton Deverill, the first Lord Deverill of Ballinakelly, was given a title and lands as a reward for his loyalty to the King,’ Cormac continues.

  ‘Are they English then?’ I ask.

  ‘They are Anglo-Irish. Kitty would put more emphasis on the Irish than the Anglo, mind you, but historically the Deverills have considered themselves English.’

  I’m amazed that my mother never told us about the castle. ‘I’d love to see it,’ I say, hoping that Cormac will drive me past it.

  ‘You don’t see it from the road. It’s hidden behind a wall and trees. The best view is from the hills as it nestles nicely in the valley, overlooking the sea. I’m sure Mrs Trench will take you if you ask her.’

  ‘I’m her first cousin,’ I tell him proudly, because I’m so thrilled to be related to her that I have to tell someone. ‘My mother, who recently died, was her aunt.’

  Cormac keeps his eyes on the road. ‘Your mother was Arethusa Deverill?’ he asks, and there is wonder in his voice, as if I have just told him that I am related to Santa Claus.

  ‘Yes, she left Ireland for America and never came back.’

  ‘As so many did,’ he replies. Then he shakes his head. ‘Indeed, it was all very mysterious.’

  ‘What was?’

  ‘Arethusa Deverill. The forgotten Deverill.’ He glances at me and frowns. ‘Do you know why she left for America?’

  I shrug, as if it’s obvious why she left. But I stop myself replying. She wasn’t poor, clearly, and she wasn’t in search of a better life, if she lived in a castle. So why did she leave? ‘I don’t know,’ I admit. ‘Do you?’

  ‘There were rumours. People like to talk and when they don’t know something, they like to make it up.’

  ‘What were the rumours?’ I ask.

  He shakes his head. ‘I’m sure Mrs Trench will know all about it. Or at least, Lord Deverill will, her father.’

  Not only do I have a first cousin, but I have an uncle too, and he’s a lord! I’m finding it hard to take in, these sudden revelations. I can’t imagine why Mom never told us. ‘Are there many Deverills?’

  He chuckles. ‘Lots of them and lots to tell about them.’

  ‘Do tell me,’ I say, but Cormac steers the car through an open gate and up a drive towards a pretty white house that sits serenely at the top of the slope.

  ‘Another time,’ he says, pulling up outside the front door.

  Kitty appears as soon as I get out. I thank Cormac and he turns the Jeep around and sets off back down the drive. Kitty has changed clothes – she must have ridden like the wind – and is now in a tweed skirt and soft green twinset, her thick hair is pinned at the back of her head yet loose about her face and neck. She looks effortlessly stylish. I envy her panache. Her smile is wide and welcoming. I feel as if we already know each other, but then I suppose I have seen something close to her face a thousand times in the mirror. ‘Come in, Faye. I will call you Faye because you are my cousin. I hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘Of course you must,’ I reply, following her into the hall. The house is beautifully uncontrived. Nothing matches. It is as if Kitty has thrown things together because they give comfort and colour, not because they match, and everything is flamboyant, like she is. The walls could do with a fresh coat of paint and the fabrics on the chairs and the rug on the floor are faded and worn. The furniture is antique and polished, but I can see the odd chip and scratch here and there. I don’t think Kitty cares much for material things. She likes flowers, though. There is a large glass vase of white lilies on a round table and their sweet perfume saturates the air. And she likes light. Beams of sunshine stream through big sash windows and flood the house with a soft golden radiance. Kitty leads me into a square-shaped drawing room where tall windows look out onto a garden flourishing with daffodils, tulips and blossom, and to the sparkling ocean beyond. Big squidgy sofas and armchairs are arranged around a fireplace where a fire must have been burning for most of the day for the logs are covered in grey ash and gently smouldering, and the room smells of wood smoke and peat.

  Kitty sinks into the sofa and I take the place beside her. She is still looking at me in disbelief, as if she can’t quite believe her eyes. Yet there is a familiarity between us. We are already kin, we share the same blood, the same history, the same ancestors, now all we have to do is fill in the gaps.

  We chat about America, my flight and my first impressions of Ballinakelly, but I know we are just biding time while the maid puts down the tray of tea and cake and fills two china teacups. ‘You must try the porter cake,’ says Kitty. ‘It’s very Irish and quite delicious.’ I watch the maid cut a slice and hand it to me on a plate. It looks like fruit cake, but I can smell the alcohol in it. I fork a piece into my mouth. It is indeed delicious.

  At last we are left alone. Kitty leans forward and fixes me with her intense gaze. It is the sort of gaze that has the ability to extract secrets. I expect she is going to extract all of mine. Even the ones I should not tell. ‘I am dying to know,’ she says. ‘What has become of your mother?’

  ‘She died last fall,’ I reply, and I feel sad saying that word ‘die’, which is so final, so irrevocable.

  Her face crumples with compassion. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she says and I know she feels it. I know she has also suffered loss, because her empathy is deeply sincere. She touches my arm. Her fingers are long and pale, her nails cut short and a little ragged. They are the hands of a woman who spends much of her time outside, in the garden and the stables, I imagine. It is then that I notice she is wearing no make-up and that her hair, although pinned up, is unbrushed and tangled, greying slightly around the hairline. She gives the impression of being groomed and yet she isn’t. I admire her more for her lack of vanity. American women are so polished, it is refreshing to find a woman whose beauty does not depend on that.

  ‘My mother never spoke of her homeland,’ I tell her. ‘Or she said very little about it. When she died she requested in her will that her ashes be scattered in view of Castle Deverill.’

  Kitty puts a finger to her lips and shakes her head. ‘That’s so touching,’ she murmurs and her grey eyes begin to shine. I’m surprised at the depth of her emotion, for surely she was too young to know her aunt, who would have left Ireland before she was born.

  ‘We had never heard of Castle Deverill before the attorney came to read the will. Mom told us she left
Ireland because her family was poor.’ Kitty nods but says nothing, so I continue, telling this woman I have only just met things I have not shared with anyone. ‘The fact that she wanted to be cremated was bad enough. My father was a devout Catholic and it was always assumed that Mom would be buried beside him, along with all his other ancestors. But when she stipulated that she wanted to return home, we were astonished. We didn’t think she liked her home very much. Why else did she never go back? Not in all her married years did she ever want to go back. And after my father died, she never even mentioned Ireland at all.’

  ‘So you’ve come to scatter her ashes?’ Kitty asks.

  ‘No. I haven’t brought them. I’ve come on my own. You see, my brother Logan does not want to bring her here. He wants to bury her beside our father. In fact, he disagrees with most of the will and is trying to alter it.’

  ‘I see,’ says Kitty thoughtfully. ‘A bit of a conundrum.’

  ‘Yes, it’s complicated,’ I agree. I sigh, because I really don’t know how it will end. ‘But I decided to come and find out where my mother was born and what sort of life she had here in Ireland. I didn’t expect her to have grown up in a castle.’

  Kitty’s face flowers into an enchanting smile. ‘And Castle Deverill is not just any castle,’ she says, clearly enormously proud of it. ‘It’s one of the most magnificent castles in Ireland. I will take you to see it tomorrow. Sadly, it’s already getting dark now. Much better to see it in the light, in all its glory.’

  ‘Who lives there?’

  ‘My brother JP Deverill and his wife Alana.’

  ‘I gather the Deverills are a big family,’ I say, but Kitty is grinning at me and I realize that they are not only a big family but an important family too. I feel foolish knowing so little about my mother and where she once belonged.

  ‘We are many,’ Kitty says. ‘And now, with you, we are more. Do you have children, Faye?’