Secrets We Keep

by Faith Hogan

  ‘Ballytokeep is home, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is for me at any rate. I have Aunt Iris and Uncle Archie here, the tearooms and…’

  ‘Colin?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve met some great people here, that’s true.’ She kept her eyes firmly on the road. ‘But it’s more than that. I feel complete here. A bit like you maybe, only I didn’t have to have a heart attack to realize it.’

  ‘Slow learner, that’s always been my problem,’ he made a face that was mock sad.

  ‘Hm, you could have fooled me.’

  He waited a moment in the silence of the car; neither of them had made a move to switch on the radio. ‘What was London like for you? I mean, I know you were successful, but weren’t you happy?’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t think I was unhappy exactly, but then I came here and I realized that this place, the people here, well, it was like I found something I didn’t know I was missing.’

  ‘God that sounds a hell of a lot easier than having a heart attack.’

  ‘It certainly is,’ she said softly. ‘Oh, it looks like you have a visitor,’ Kate said as they made their way along the narrow road toward the tower. A large off-roader stood squat and ugly at the perimeter wall of the castle.

  ‘So I have,’ Todd said and he had a feeling it was Claudia, which should have made him even happier but when he saw her stony expression, he had a feeling that Kate was in for the better night.

  *

  Claudia greeted Kate with the sickly sweetness of condescension. It was as though she was trying to be mellow in the victory of not being the jilted one. Still, she draped herself about Todd as though he were a prop on a fashion shoot. Everyone was clear about exactly who belonged to whom. They were still a couple, even if they lived a thousand miles apart. Kate just smiled in that way she always had and left them to it. Todd could admit it to himself; Claudia had never been much of a judge of character.

  ‘Well, well, well, wasn’t that very cosy?’ Claudia hissed as soon as Kate was out of earshot. ‘Is this your new thing now, driving Miss Daisy?

  ‘It’s not like that, Claudia, and anyway Kate was just giving me a lift.’

  ‘Oh, forget it, it’s all the same. It’s like retirement central, you pair driving her Noddy car to collect googleberries.’ She flounced off up the stairs towards the kitchen, leaving Todd to trail in her wake with his two shopping bags. It was strange having her here, this place it was meant to be somewhere they could build a future, but somehow she just didn’t seem to fit. Honestly, sometimes she made him feel like he was a pensioner. Although he should probably be thankful, she would convince herself that Kate was too old to be a threat – even if there was hardly five years between them.

  Claudia hated the tower last time and if he thought its appeal would grow on her, he was mistaken. ‘Look around you, Todd. This place, it’s positively medieval and… I’m not sleeping here.’

  ‘It was worse the first time you saw it, and then you said you loved it.’

  ‘I didn’t mean it though, did I? That was just for the press, babes, I am a London girl me. Give me Covent Garden any day.

  ‘So how long are you here for?’ He had been looking forward to his first night in the castle, was tempted to let Claudia stay in the local hotel.

  ‘Flying visit. I’m off to Italy next week, so I thought I’d catch up with you first and then it’s non-stop for about a month.’

  ‘Oh.’ Todd knew, he should be delighted she was here. After all, there were plenty who’d love to have Claudia Dey drop in for a flying visit and, to be fair, he wasn’t exactly inundated with people dropping by. ‘It’s good to see you, babe.’ He meant it. ‘This place will do you good, you look tired.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I work, don’t I? Well for you, Todd, to be able to sit back in your castle and count your money, but I’m still a career girl.’ She stood at the sink, while he unloaded the shopping from Kate’s car. ‘So I thought maybe before I head off I could catch some extra sleep. And of course catch up with you,’ she added.

  ‘Sure, London quiet at the moment?’

  ‘Like a dodo.’ She exhaled then searched in her large bag for a bottle of her favourite designer water. ‘Christ, my head hurts,’ she said and she flopped into a chair to play with her social media accounts for a few hours.

  19

  Iris, 1957

  Iris was happy that Robert seemed to have fallen for a local girl. It was all very sudden, but Gemma was exactly the type of girl Iris could imagine Robert falling for. She was pretty, stylish and her family was well connected – the perfect hostess. Within two weeks it seemed like they had settled into something serious. ‘Oh, once Robert sets his mind on something,’ Mrs Hartley said one afternoon as they worked together in the hotel kitchen.

  In some strange way, it took the danger out of him. When they met now she enjoyed his dry wit and they shared a common sense of humour, less polite than Archie approved of. Of course, she still had Archie and he treated her like a queen.

  It was all very well Pamela being married to an Earl’s son, but Iris thought there was nothing nicer than sitting on the veranda with Archie, knowing that a dozen girls in the village would give their best Sunday shoes to be where she was. He took her to the cinema, so really they were courting, although he never put a word on it. She adored Archie a little more with every passing day and sometimes she wondered if that would continue if they were still sitting here together into old age. He brought her the best roses from the garden and expensive perfume from the chemist, and occasionally he left gifts under her pillow. Silly things they’d been talking about during the day – a bar of chocolate or a magazine. She knew Archie would always try to make her life a little brighter.

  On the other hand, she missed Robert’s discreet devotion. Yes, she could admit it to herself; she actually missed the buried tension between them. She enjoyed feeling attractive to him. Damn it, she probably revelled in the illicit nature of it. She was still just a girl. If you couldn’t crave a little danger when you were young, well, when would you ever really live? Then, at the back of all these thoughts was Mark. Her baby Mark, buried in Parisian soil, his grave now dry in the summer sun, and she wondered if Pamela would visit it as often as she might visit the grave of her own son, had he been the one they lost. She longed to write to Marianne, but what more could she say? And then she worried that her correspondence might get Marianne into trouble with Clive and Pamela. So, instead she tortured herself with thoughts of Mark buried among strangers far away.

  ‘Oh, Gemma Routledge?’ Mrs Hartley said and she sniffed approvingly when Iris mentioned Robert’s new girlfriend. Gemma was from the kind of family Mrs Hartley approved of and fortunately for Robert she was easy on the eye and seemed to worship him.

  ‘It won’t last,’ Archie said sadly. ‘They never do. Robert has had more girls than…’ and he stopped, he was too polite to delve deeply into the romantic affairs of his brother.

  ‘Well, they seem to be very happy, he’s bringing her to the county fair at the end of the summer,’ Iris found herself defending Robert. She didn’t stop to wonder how much of it was defence and how much was possessiveness. After all, he liked her first. Although she would not admit it to anyone, hardly even to herself, those first frissons of passion that stirred within her had never quite died. Now, she found herself watching him, wondering what it might have been like. Had they ended up together, how would it be? Abruptly, when she became aware of how her mind was wandering off course, she would pull herself back to the hotel and Oisín Armstrong and Mark. At all times Mark.

  ‘Robert has always wanted what he can’t have,’ Archie said the words under his breath one evening as he watched his brother swagger through the hotel reception. ‘Things lose their lustre for him once he’s held them in his hand, or indeed in his…’ Archie went off to check the back doors for the night. It was not a cold night, but Iris shivered all the same, wondered if Archie could read her mind sometimes.

 
Gemma Routledge was very pretty. A diminutive blonde who said all the right things and whose father owned a racehorse tipped to win the Irish Grand National no less. Robert brought her for Sunday picnics in his open-top car. They attended glamorous cocktail parties in large houses where Iris could not see past the front gates and long winding drives. Robert had mercilessly paraded Gemma about Ballytokeep and half the county. Even Mrs Hartley was expecting an announcement before the season was out.

  ‘She wants him to propose,’ Archie said one morning, raising his eyes to heaven as though nothing was less likely.

  ‘He might.’

  ‘Honestly, you’re as bad as she is,’ Archie said in a rare moment of exasperation. ‘He’s using her, Iris, that’s what he does. Can’t you see it? God knows, you two spend enough time together these days, you’re as thick as thieves,’ there was something odd in his tone.

  ‘Yes, but we don’t actually talk to each other, not like that. We are just planning… you know, how to raise money for the trip to London and the operation.’

  ‘God, what is it with Robert, he has you all fooled.’ Archie stamped out the door angrily.

  ‘It’s a good cause,’ Iris said, but she had a feeling he didn’t hear and what did it matter anyway. She was not going to stop spending time with Robert just because Archie didn’t approve.

  The more Iris thought about the conversation later that day, the more the whole thing annoyed her. Who did Archie Hartley think he was anyway? He had not made her any solid proposal. He had kissed her on the lips, and true, it made her tingle in a way that was different to anything she felt before. When Archie kissed her, it didn’t feel illicit, it felt right. Was that true love? She had never experienced anything like it before. An overwhelming sense that someone loved her, truly loved her, not in a taking kind of way. Rather, Archie made her feel that she was – what was the word, oh yes – respected.

  Robert, on the other hand, with his dark good looks and his rakish smile – he made her feel like he could turn her inside out. She wasn’t sure that this was a good thing either. He hadn’t kissed her. But he had held her on that dance floor and she knew, deep down, she knew that if they kissed, she would have melted into him. Just like all those other girls before her.

  ‘Archie,’ she had to say something, she still didn’t’ know what, ‘I’m not sure what I’ve done wrong. Is it helping Robert with the fundraising efforts? I really can’t see that you have any right to be cross with me.’

  ‘No, I suppose you wouldn’t see, would you?’ Archie sighed, a long deep gentle sound that made her think he had given up already.

  ‘I shouldn’t have to say anything to you,’ she said, ‘we’ve made no agreement, you’ve never put words on any intentions you might have.’

  ‘No, but there wouldn’t be any point, would there? Not if you feel what I think you feel for Robert?’

  ‘That’s a big presumption on your part. I’m not sure I should even answer.’ Iris felt her heart sink uncontrollably down to the ground. There was much about Archie she admired; not in a silly, heart-fluttering sort of way, granted; but in a real and honest way. She knew from bitter experience that there were not that many men out there like him. He was handsome and funny and one day he would own this hotel. More than that, he was honourable and she knew the respect he had for her would never falter. The emotion she felt that night, when he kissed her hard on her lips, that was the kind of love she was sure would last a lifetime.

  And Robert?

  Whatever Robert Hartley felt for her in the past had faded already. You would have to be blind not to see that he and Gemma were made for each other. Robert Hartley had found his princess and good luck to them. She knew, in spite of all the chemicals in her body that drew her to Robert, she had the better brother here.

  ‘It’s you I love, Archie. You I love with all my heart,’ she whispered the words and then she ran from him. Back at the hotel, she cried until she’d soaked not alone every tissue in her room, but the pillowcase as well. She knew then, if she settled for Archie, she was turning her back on more than just Robert. It meant she would not be returning to Paris and it meant that Pamela would be tending to Mark’s grave instead of his own mother.

  *

  It did not take long to rally a group of do-gooders on the cause of Oisín Armstrong. Within a week they had a committee and by two they had news from the London specialist. Oisín would be placed on a waiting list, they had six weeks to gather his fees together. That evening they were gathering in the bathhouse for a meeting. In all, there were six of them and, between them, they had already organized a cake sale.

  ‘Eight pounds,’ said Mrs O’Hara who owned a little wool shop that carried out a great trade all year long.

  ‘It’s a start,’ Ernie Petrie said stoically.

  ‘Yes, Ernie is right. We have to start somewhere.’ Robert took the centre of the room.

  Gemma arrived and served tea to everyone. It was as though some tacit agreement had already been made between herself and Robert. Iris watched her; she was in her element, playing the host. She was quite beautiful with straw-coloured thick hair held back with glittering clips. She wore a full wide lilac taffeta skirt that owed much to the inspiration of the movies. It was topped off with a crisp white shirt, open at the neck to reveal a gold pendant that caught the evening light. To Iris’s mind, she was the Ballytokeep equivalent of Grace Kelly. She couldn’t help feeling a little pushed to the side in this girl’s presence. They were from different social classes and Iris had a feeling, it wasn’t something that Gemma was prepared to forget.

  ‘Maybe, we should just try and do one huge thing, something that would put the village on the map at the same time…’

  ‘I was thinking of doing a house to house collection, everyone would surely give something if we brought the little fella with us, so they could see him.’ Mrs O’Hara sipped from the delicate china cup before her.

  ‘Hmm. What if we could do something to collect money that would be fun and good for the village as well as for Oisín?’

  ‘Have you any ideas, Robert?’ Iris knew he had this well thought out. He struck her as a man who knew exactly what he was about.

  ‘I have heard all about what they are doing down in Tralee. They started a festival, it’s just a beauty contest really but…’ he looked at Gemma now, smiled an acknowledgement as she placed more milk in the jug before them. ‘They’ve brought huge numbers of visitors to the town, and not just the regular day-trippers, but they have busloads of Yanks and people coming back from England and all over. The town is wedged while this thing is on – and most of them don’t even go to the beauty pageant.’

  ‘So we invite back all the relations?’ Ernie smiled. ‘God knows, if every family got one son back from London or Boston for a day or two, we’d get a great crowd to the village.’ Ballytokeep had been badly hit with emigration after the war – it seemed now, the older people felt it most.

  ‘I don’t know. Do we want a lot of foreigners running about the place corrupting the young?’ Mrs O’Hara looked across at Iris.

  ‘Oh, we wouldn’t be getting just any types; we’d be looking to bring people on holiday that came from here years ago. People who’ve left and want to come back for a little break,’ Gemma said and Iris knew that Robert had already told her his plan. She felt a stab of something go through her but caught it quickly before it turned to jealousy.

  ‘And how would this benefit our Oisín, can you tell me?’ Mr Armstrong had sat silently until this. He did not take any tea, maybe feeling that he was taking enough already.

  ‘Well, once we get them here –they’ll spend money. They’ll have to stay somewhere, eat and drink and maybe even look for rides out on the fishing boats.’

  ‘It’s not bloody cruise ships we’re running, you know that?’

  ‘Yes, but I’ll wager it’s a lot easier make a few bob carrying a boatload of people out to see dolphins than it is hauling in a net of mackerel,’ Robert said, smi
ling.

  ‘You might be right.’ Mr Armstrong smiled too.

  ‘We could finish up with a dance or a bit of a hoolie, rent out a marquee and charge everyone to come. Anything we make could go straight to Oisín. I’ll wager we could make a good bit.’

  ‘It’s a lot of work,’ Iris said, thinking that it was coming at the busiest time of year for all of them.

  ‘I’d be happy to help,’ Gemma said, standing behind Robert proprietorially. ‘It’s a good cause and it could be good for the village.’

  Iris could feel a bubble of resentment rise within her. After all, she had started the ball rolling that day with Robert, now it felt like Gemma had slipped stealthily into her place and it rankled.

  ‘Count me in,’ Ernie said, winking at Gemma.

  A show of hands and it was done. Gemma would be in charge of organizing it. Iris conceded grudgingly, she would be a very capable chairperson. Mr Armstrong and Ernie would rally the fishermen together and see if they could organize some kind of fishing competition in the boats and on the pier. Mrs O’Malley would keep a moral eye on all proceedings. They agreed to hold it on the last weekend in August, just as most people were winding down their summer.

  ‘So, that just leaves our Gala Ball?’ Robert said, smiling. ‘Or perhaps just our village dance,’ he was looking at Iris now who had not been voted into any role so far.

  ‘Of course, I’ll help with organizing that,’ she said and she knew Archie would help.

  ‘You can’t take that on, all on your own.’ Ernie was watching Robert now.

  ‘I was thinking exactly the same thing,’ Robert said. ‘I’ll give you a hand with it.’