‘You already know your daughter, Bridie. She’s Martha.’
Bridie put a hand to her mouth and gasped loudly. ‘Martha Wallace? My friend Martha?’
‘Your friend Martha,’ Kitty replied. ‘She came to Ballinakelly in search of you, but because Grace had put her own name on her birth certificate in order to fetch a greater price, she found Grace instead. That is when I found out. When Grace came to tell me. She lied to Martha and told her that her mother had died giving birth to her.’
‘Martha thinks I’m dead? Oh, that’s dreadful!’
‘I’m so sorry, Bridie. I collaborated to save JP from discovering the truth. I lied to you too to save my own skin and I regret it bitterly. I’m as guilty as she is.’
‘Of course, that’s why Martha and JP could never marry,’ said Bridie, struggling in her agitation to put the pieces together. ‘Does she know? She never even mentioned that she was adopted. We talked about everything, but she never told me that.’
‘And I assume that you never told her that you had given birth to two babies who were taken from you,’ said Kitty sensibly.
‘No, it’s true. I didn’t. Neither one of us told the other the truth, which would have united us as mother and daughter.’
‘I think Martha should know that you’re her mother.’
Bridie sighed and lay back against the cushions and thought of Martha, the delightful girl who had brought her companionship and joy. ‘I could never have asked for a more wonderful daughter,’ she said, suddenly dizzy with happiness. ‘She and I are so alike, you know, Kitty. We think the same and find the same things funny. We are like two peas in a pod, we are. To think we never knew . . .’
‘And she’s joined the convent where you gave birth to her,’ Kitty reminded her.
‘Indeed she has. What a strange twist of Fate.’ Bridie took Kitty’s hand. ‘Thank you, Kitty. I have lived my whole life believing my daughter dead and now you have told me that she didn’t die, but enjoyed a good life in America. I’m grateful that she grew up in a happy place.’ Bridie wiped away a tear with the back of her hand. ‘I’m glad that she has parents who love her.’
Kitty had not expected Bridie to react like this. She had expected to be shouted at and banished from the castle. She had not expected understanding. She was humbled. ‘I should never have kept secrets from you or JP,’ she said. ‘We should all have been open with each other.’
‘Sometimes the truth is not the wisest path, Kitty, at least, there is a time for it. I forgive you. After all, if you had told Martha I was her mother, you would have had to tell JP. What a tangle of secrets and lies we’ve created.’ Her face hardened as she considered the woman who, like a beautiful, beguiling spider, had spun all the lies. ‘But I will never forgive Grace,’ she said. ‘Not in this world or the next.’
‘I think you should meet JP and Martha together,’ Kitty suggested. ‘There is a time for truth and it is now. I will tell them and bring them to you.’
Bridie shook her head and smiled beatifically. ‘I don’t want them to see me like this, Kitty, a woman with one foot in the grave. I want Martha to remember me the way I was when she stayed here. I don’t want her to remember a dying woman. And I don’t want JP to meet his mother who he believed dead, only then to lose her. Perhaps it’s selfish of me, but I don’t think I could take it, Kitty, the awkwardness of it. JP doesn’t know me, after all. Better that he holds on to the image he already has of me. An angel in Heaven perhaps. I’ll write them each a letter explaining everything and you can deliver them when I’m gone.’
‘Don’t say that,’ said Kitty, appalled. ‘You’re not going to go.’
‘Kitty Deverill, since when have you been afraid of death? Weren’t you the one who told me that there is no such thing?’
‘But I’ve just found you again and now I’m going to lose you.’ Kitty began to cry. ‘Oh, please don’t leave me, Bridie.’
‘Had I not been dying you would never have come to see me. I’m glad I’m dying because I’ve not only found my old friend, but I’ve found my daughter too.’ Bridie’s eyes glistened with contentment. ‘Do you remember when we were little girls here at Castle Deverill . . .’ she began and Kitty reminisced with her, for how could she ever forget those blissful, innocent days of their youth?
When Michael heard from Bridie what Kitty had told her he was filled with a violent and uncontrollable rage. He downed half a bottle of whiskey then drove to Grace’s manor house, chewing on his lover’s betrayal as the car swerved dangerously in the darkening road.
He banged on the front door and shouted her name. At length a butler opened it, but Michael didn’t wait to be invited in. He pushed past the man who had on so many previous occasions welcomed him in without hesitation and marched across the hall and down the corridor towards the drawing room, from where he heard the sound of sedate voices.
Grace looked up in alarm from the sofa when Michael appeared in the doorframe. He looked terrifying with his wild black hair and his angry black eyes. He was so tall and broad and his energy so intense that he seemed to fill the entire room and Grace was afraid. The butler caught up with him and tried to persuade him to wait in the hall. ‘Lady Rowan-Hampton is with guests,’ he exclaimed in exasperation. But Michael wasn’t listening. He was staring at Grace and she was wilting beneath his gaze.
‘What the devil is this all about?’ Sir Ronald demanded. The portly old gentleman was standing in front of the fireplace dressed in a green velvet dinner jacket and embroidered slippers, holding a crystal glass half full of whiskey. His face had flushed pink with indignation that this uncouth man was interrupting his dinner party, but he looked incongruous there in his finery, like a fat parrot squawking at a giant eagle. The two couples who had been invited to dinner glanced at each other in shock and embarrassment. There they were enjoying a dignified drink before dinner and now, without any warning, a drunken madman had burst into the drawing room insisting on seeing Grace. If this had happened thirty years before they would have feared for their lives; as it was they feared for Grace’s honour as the very coarse man began to launch a persuasive attack on her character.
‘How well do you know your wife?’ Michael asked Sir Ronald.
‘I think you should leave,’ said Sir Ronald bravely. The other two men stood up and rallied beside their host, albeit a little nervously.
‘Oh, I’ll leave, but not till I’m done.’ Michael staggered to the tray of drinks, which had been placed on one of the tables, and helped himself to a glass of whiskey from a crystal decanter. He downed it in one and poured another.
‘Michael . . .’ Grace began, but she recognized the deep colour of his face and the cruel twist to his mouth and knew that trying to appease him would be futile: she was lost.
‘Did you know that your Anglo-Irish, Protestant wife fought on our side during the War of Independence? In fact, it was she who lured Colonel Manley to that farmhouse on the Dunashee Road so that we could kill him. We couldn’t have done it without her. Did she tell you that?’
‘What nonsense,’ Sir Ronald scoffed.
‘Or what about her conversion to Catholicism?’ Sir Ronald made a huffing sound. ‘She never told you that, either? I didn’t think so. She’s a dark horse, your wife. But even I didn’t know how much of a dark horse she was.’
‘Get out!’ Sir Ronald shouted, losing all temper. His face swelled like a ripe tomato. ‘Call the Garda!’ he bellowed to his butler. ‘Goddamn it!’
‘Michael, please . . .’ Grace whispered, but Michael ignored her.
He narrowed his eyes and spat out the words with vitriol. The three men stepped back as Michael edged towards them. ‘But to steal a baby barely out of her mother’s womb and sell her to an American couple, well, that’s something I would never have believed her capable of.’ He turned on Grace and like a great bear rose to his full height. The two female guests blanched. ‘But you did that, didn’t you, Grace? You told Bridie her daughter was dead and she’s lived
her whole life mourning her child.’ Michael was swaying now, pointing shakily with his finger and glaring at Grace with burning eyes. ‘Did they name a chapel after you at the convent? Did they pay you handsomely? What did you get out of the deal? Oh, sorry, I forgot an important piece of the puzzle. You were sleeping with Lord Deverill, weren’t you? You couldn’t bear it that he had seduced my sister and impregnated her. So you wanted those babies out of the way, and you wanted my sister out of the way too. As far away from your lover as was possible. Was America far enough?’ The two female guests gasped and turned to Grace with their mouths agape like a pair of trout. ‘How could you do it, Grace? How could you do it and live with yourself? Bridie trusted you. She thought you were her friend. But when her daughter came looking for her mother you told her that her mother was dead! Why? Because you didn’t want your dirty little secret exposed.’
‘This is preposterous!’ Sir Ronald spluttered weakly. But he glanced uncertainly at Grace. ‘How dare you insult my wife like this?’
Michael laughed maliciously. ‘She won’t deny it. She can’t. Kitty Deverill has told us the whole story. Yes, Kitty Deverill betrayed you, Grace, like you betrayed her all those years ago, many times. We betrayed her together. For sure I’m going to Hell, but when I go I’m taking you with me.’
Sir Ronald turned to his wife. ‘Grace?’ he said. ‘What do you say to this man?’
Grace hung her head. Michael could see that the glass she held in her hand was trembling. ‘Grace? This isn’t true. Tell me this isn’t true.’ But Sir Ronald stared helplessly at his wife and from the bewildered look on his face it was plain that he now doubted the woman he thought he knew.
Michael heard the footsteps approaching up the corridor. A moment later a pair of Gardai entered the room. He put up his hands and laughed as he tossed Grace a final glance. ‘She’s a good fuck, I will give her that.’
When Bridie left the world she did so in peace. Leopoldo sat on the chair and held her hand while her mother held the other, begging God in mumbled prayers to forgive her daughter’s sins and open wide the gates of Heaven. Michael, Sean and Rosetta stood by her bed and at length the fire burnt out in the grate and the light faded from Bridie’s eyes. She knew that Kitty was right, she was going to see Cesare, her father and her nanna, so there was nothing to be afraid of: they would show her the way home.
There was no resistance when she left, just an easy drifting into the next world. As she rose out of her physical body she felt as if she was a breeze lightly slipping out of the window into the night, a velvet night, and she marvelled at how very bright the stars were. How very bright the moon was, too, shining over Castle Deverill as it had done the night of the Deverill Summer Ball. Bridie only remembered the love. As she made her final journey she suddenly realized that that was what it had all been about: love. How very foolish of her not to have known.
Martha received Bridie’s letter in the convent. She sat down in a shady corner of the courtyard and read it.
My dear Martha
There is no easy way to tell you that I am dying. But you more than most will understand that my heart is full of joy because I am going to see the face of God. Before I die, there is something I want to share with you. When I was a young maid working at Castle Deverill, I had a brief affair of the heart with Kitty’s father, who was then Mr Deverill. I loved him and I believed he loved me. I got pregnant and was sent to Dublin to have my child in the convent where you are now working towards becoming a nun. I gave birth to not one but two babies. My son survived, but my daughter, they told me, had died. They took her away before I could press my lips to her brow and say a prayer for her poor soul. I was sent to America to make a new life. Later my brother Michael took my son from the nuns by devious means and put him on the doorstep of the Hunting Lodge so that Kitty would raise him as her own. This Kitty did and I bless her from the bottom of my heart for her kindness. Kitty called him Jack Patrick (JP) and later her father recognized him as his son. My daughter, I always believed, was buried in the gardens of the convent. Four years later I came back to Ireland for my son. When I was at the convent I asked to know where my daughter had been buried. There wasn’t a headstone, they told me, for babies not baptized were buried in unmarked graves. I went to Ballinakelly and saw my son. I realized that he was happy where he was. With a grieving heart I returned to America and tried to forget him. But I never did and I never forgot my daughter either. I prayed for her soul and I suffered daily because of the two children I had brought into the world yet lost so cruelly.
The reason I tell you this, Martha, is because I have discovered, to my joy, that you are my daughter, the child I thought was dead – now a beautiful young woman. I thank God that we had some time together, even though we didn’t know we were so closely related. I am happy to know that you have found your vocation and that it fulfils you so. Your grandmother is a devout woman who cherishes her faith, as her mother, your great-grandmother, did before her. You must have inherited that from them.
I don’t want you to see me sick. I want you to remember me as I was. I want you to remember the laughter and the love, because I loved you then and I love you now, and I didn’t know why, at the time, you penetrated my heart, but now I do. We have come a long way, the two of us, and we have God to thank for allowing our paths to cross.
I have asked Kitty to give you this letter after I am gone and the solicitor’s letter, because I have provided for you in my will. You have my blessing to donate it to the convent.
Live well, Martha. Be strong, bold, fearless and full of love.
Your mother, Bridie
Martha stared at the letter until her vision clouded with tears and the words became black smudges on the paper. She pressed the page to her lips and closed her eyes.
JP read the letter Bridie had written for him with a strange detachment as if he were reading something meant for someone else. Bridie told him her story and explained why Kitty had kept her identity secret all those years. He had always believed that his mother was dead, but he was desperately sad that he had had the opportunity to know her and missed it. What hit him like a bolt between the eyes, however, was the solicitor’s letter that informed him of his inheritance. He read it again just to make sure. Then he telephoned Kitty.
‘The Countess has left me Castle Deverill,’ he said, his voice quivering. Kitty had to sit down. ‘Are you there, Kitty?’
‘I’m here,’ she replied quietly.
‘And a fortune. Kitty, she’s left me a fortune!’
Kitty’s heart was thumping so hard she could barely hear herself think. If Bridie had left JP the castle that meant that the moment he moved in the Deverill heirs would be set free because his wife Alana was an O’Leary. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she gasped, but JP wasn’t thinking of the poor Deverill spirits, he was thinking of his father and the joy it would bring him to see his beloved Castle Deverill restored to his family.
‘I must telephone Papa,’ he said.
‘He will be as happy as I am,’ said Kitty, putting down the telephone. Poor Leopoldo, she thought. This must have come as a terrible shock.
Leopoldo was furious. He had always believed the castle would be his. Sean tried to explain that his mother had left him an enormous amount of money. ‘But it’s in trust!’ Leopoldo cried. ‘I have to ask you and Michael before I can have any of it. How am I going to have fun in London if I have to ask you for money all the time?’ he asked.
‘Perhaps you’ll just have to have less fun,’ said Sean reasonably. Rosetta watched Leopoldo storm out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Bridie hadn’t been so oblivious, after all, she thought with a smile.
‘Do you know, I never really liked this castle anyway,’ she said. ‘I dream of a little house by the sea, just for us and the children.’
‘Then you shall have it,’ Sean told her, taking her hand. ‘The sooner the better.’
Bridie was buried in the churchyard beside her husband. It was the last
golden day of autumn, before the winter gales would rob the trees of their leaves and the icy winds would blow in off the ocean. A day that, everyone would later agree, was charmed.
It seemed as if the entire town had come to say goodbye. The church had been so full that many members of the congregation had had to stand outside. Now, at the burial, JP Deverill stood beside his sister Martha and watched the coffin being lowered into the hole in the ground. He was going to be master of Castle Deverill; a great responsibility, which he would not take lightly. He remembered attempting to make a model of it with his father when he was a boy and fantasizing that one day, perhaps, he might have the money to buy it back. Well, he didn’t have to now; he’d been given it. He wondered at the unpredictability of Fate.
Kitty knew that Bridie was not in the wooden coffin, but in the sunlight, watching her children with pride and love as she should have been allowed to do in life. She silently thanked her friend for returning the castle to the Deverills and thought how fitting it was because JP really belonged to both of them. Having been the reason for their animosity, he had become the catalyst for their reconciliation. Had Bridie lived the two women would have taken equal pride in him. Now Bridie had not only healed the wounds of the past by restoring the castle to the Deverills, but also she would release the spirits. Kitty was impatient to see that happen.
Mrs Doyle held on to Michael tightly and sobbed quietly into a handkerchief, hoping that the Lord had answered her prayers and reunited her daughter with her father and her nanna. Sean stood on his mother’s other side with Rosetta and their children and wondered what would become of his nephew now that he had lost both parents – the only two people who had championed him. Leopoldo made a great show of his grief, which, in the opinions of the Weeping Women of Jerusalem, was overdramatic and mollyish in a young man. Everyone but Leopoldo was delighted that JP Deverill had been left the castle. There would be much celebrating in O’Donovan’s tonight. Michael, who had fallen off the wagon with a spectacular thud, would drink with the best of them and, he thought with satisfaction, start looking for a wife. Released by Kitty, liberated from Grace and from his own inflated sense of piety, it was time to live again.
The Last Secret of the Deverills Page 38