Dylan shook his head and grinned at Ellen. As he did so, something in his face gave way and his character shone through, handsome, humorous and bold. ‘And what about you, Ellen Olenska, do you think Joe’s talking rubbish?’
She was surprised to find she liked the man, who was now grinning at her raffishly. ‘Ask me again in a week. This is my second day and I’ve only just met Joe so I couldn’t tell you whether or not I think he’s talking like a gobshite.’
‘I like the way you said that.’ Dylan chuckled. ‘Gobshite, said in the poshest London accent.’
‘She’s very posh, my niece,’ said Johnny. ‘A posh London bird!’
Joe returned to the table with a glass of water for Ellen. She took it gratefully. ‘Bet you were surprised to find your family has working-class roots,’ he said, sitting down.
‘Honest working-class roots,’ Johnny added. ‘There’s nothing wrong with those!’
‘Aunt Peg said that Mother was always grand. Is that true?’
Johnny’s eyes slid to Dylan then back to Ellen. He took a swig of Guinness. ‘Aye, she was grand, in her dreams,’ he replied cagily.
‘I know nothing of her childhood,’ Ellen said, casting a line and hoping to catch a large fish full of information. She didn’t miss the sly looks that passed between her uncle and Dylan. Perhaps she wasn’t the only person keeping secrets after all. ‘It’s as if her past doesn’t exist. I mean, I felt sorry for Aunt Peg, missing out on knowing all of us, when it’s the other way around. We’re missing out on knowing all of you! I didn’t even know Mum had brothers, let alone four of them! It’s crazy.’
‘Do you have brothers or sisters, Ellen Olenska?’ Dylan asked, rubbing his bristly chin nervously.
‘Two younger sisters.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Really?’
‘They’re both married.’
‘Are they now?’
She shrugged. ‘I’m the last to marry, if I marry at all.’ She was about to add that her mother was doing all she could to marry her off, but she didn’t. Something inside warned her against giving too much away.
‘You don’t want to be marrying too young,’ said Joe. ‘Life is long.’
Dylan stared at her across the table, saying nothing. The touch of madness in his eyes was now replaced by a solemn curiosity and he devoured her features as if he’d starved himself for years.
‘So, what was my mother like as a girl?’ Ellen asked, steering the conversation away from marriage and wishing Dylan wouldn’t look at her like that. He made her feel very uncomfortable.
‘Wild as a snake,’ said Johnny, draining his glass of stout.
‘Really, Mum? Are you sure?’
‘Sure as I’m sitting here now. Peg was always sensible but Maddie, well, what can I say?’ He shook his head. ‘She was headstrong. It was only a matter of time before she did something really stupid.’
Ellen frowned. ‘So, what did she do?’
At that moment the waitress appeared with a couple of dishes. She leaned over the table. ‘Bangers and mash for you, Johnny?’ she said, smiling at him warmly. ‘Same for you, Dylan?’
‘Another round of Guinness,’ Johnny replied, taking the hot plate from her. ‘And another . . .’ He peered into Ellen’s glass.
‘Water,’ said Joe with a regretful shrug.
Johnny shook his head. ‘Another water. Jaysus, let’s not waste a good pint!’ And he picked up her glass of stout and took a long swig.
The waitress returned with the rest of the food and they all tucked in hungrily. Ellen asked the question again. ‘So, what did she do? Someone must know?’ She looked at Dylan, but he avoided her eyes and said nothing.
‘She ran away,’ said Johnny simply.
‘Just like that?’
‘Just like that,’ he replied, chewing on a large mouthful of sausage. ‘She met your dad, fell in love and was never seen again.’
‘But that doesn’t make sense,’ Ellen complained.
‘It didn’t make sense to any of us, either.’
‘So, she eloped?’
‘I suppose you could call it that. Like I said, she was a wild card. She was always going to go and do something stupid.’
‘Did your mother disapprove or something? People don’t run away for no reason.’
‘Mam wanted her to marry a good Irish Catholic. She chose a good English Protestant. That’s all there is to it.’
Ellen was silenced. Madeline Byrne might have married a Protestant but she was a Catholic to the marrow of her bones. Ellen and her sisters had been brought up Catholic and both Leonora and Lavinia had married Catholics. It was as clear as crystal that her mother had never doubted her faith.
‘So, that’s why she never came home, because your mother thought she’d turned her back on her faith? That’s ridiculous. She’s a devout Catholic. You know she goes to Mass every morning!’
‘Your mother wanted a different life, Ellen,’ said Johnny softly. ‘No one turned her away and no one would have shunned her had she come home. It was her choice.’
‘So, did you come here looking for something?’ Dylan asked, gazing at her steadily. His eyes no longer had the look of madness, but of something sadder, the worn-out remnants of hope.
My freedom would be the honest answer, she thought, but she replied: ‘No, I came here by chance, actually. I never expected to stumble upon my long-lost family.’ She dropped her gaze to her food. ‘I don’t suppose my mother ever expected me to want to find it.’
‘So, she doesn’t know you’re here?’ Dylan asked, but he nodded to himself as if something had just clicked into place. He grinned, eyes now flashing with renewed optimism. ‘Sometimes fate lends a hand when people grow stubborn.’
Ellen frowned at him. ‘You think I’m meant to find my family?’ she asked.
‘Aye, that’s exactly what I mean.’ He grinned at her and once again the warmth in his face took her by surprise. ‘There’s no such thing as coincidence, Ellen Olenska. Everything always happens for a reason.’
‘She’s a writer,’ Johnny interrupted. ‘She’s come here to write about the castle and its ghosts.’
‘A writer, eh? Fancy that,’ Dylan murmured, the corners of his mouth beginning to twitch. ‘So, you chose to come here to write your book when you could have gone anywhere in the world.’ He nodded to himself again and stabbed at the last piece of sausage. ‘Fancy that, eh?’
‘Fate,’ said Joe, winking at Ellen. ‘Dylan knows.’
‘Oswald says you know where all the leprechauns lie buried,’ Ellen said to Dylan. ‘Do you?’
‘Oswald is crazy,’ said Johnny. ‘But he makes Peg happy.’
‘He’s a rotten painter,’ Dylan added.
‘But he’s a demon at cards,’ interjected Joe.
‘He’s a character,’ Ellen said, picking up her glass of water. ‘Wonderful characters are rare and must be treasured. So many people are regular, like bread sauce without any salt. I can’t bear ordinary and bland. Oswald is made of primary colours. He’s fabulously unique.’
‘You are a writer, aren’t you?’ Dylan mused.
Ellen felt a terrible fraud and blushed. ‘I’m afraid I’m not, really. I’ve had nothing published and I probably won’t.’
‘Yet,’ said Dylan. ‘You haven’t had anything published yet.’
‘Thank you for your encouragement.’
‘He’s a fortune-teller as well,’ Johnny joked, now flushed with stout. ‘Go on, Dylan. Tell her what’s in her future.’
‘You have writer’s eyes,’ Dylan continued, ignoring Johnny. ‘Deep and enquiring.’ She laughed, embarrassed. ‘And you have a beautiful smile,’ he added wistfully. ‘Just like your mother.’
Chapter 6
Johnny dropped Ellen back at Peg’s after lunch. She noticed that her aunt’s car wasn’t in front of the house and presumed she must be out, shopping for groceries perhaps. If Ellen were a proper writer she would now relish the opportunity of having some qu
iet time in the little sitting room in front of her laptop. As it was, she rather dreaded the idea of starting a novel, having never attempted to write one before. She lingered outside the front door, wondering what to do. With Peg gone she could call Emily in London from the house telephone and find out the news, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to know that her mother was going crazy trying to track her down or that William was beside himself with anguish. She hadn’t tossed her iPhone into the sea for nothing. She thrust her hands into her coat pockets and hunched her shoulders. The sky had clouded over, turning the air misty and damp. She could see the lighthouse looming out of the fog like a ghostly galleon. It looked lonely and cold out there. She wondered what on earth had possessed Caitlin Macausland to row out so often, and at night. She shuddered at the thought of being alone in the middle of the sea with only the gulls to talk to.
She decided to take a walk rather than face the empty house and her laptop, and set off into the field where Peg’s woolly llama and weathered donkey munched the grass alongside her sheep. It was strange to be out of communication with her London life. She was so used to having access to her friends at the press of a button. Texts and emails had punctuated her days as often as commas and full stops on the page of a book. But now she had no means of getting in touch other than Aunt Peg’s landline.
Connemara was so quiet. She could hear the cries of gulls, feel the wind on her face and the drizzle on her skin. She could hear the roar of the ocean and smell the salt and ozone that saturated the air. And as she did so she became aware of a stillness inside that she hadn’t noticed before. In London, she was constantly on the run: running to get to work on time, running to a meeting, running to get ready to go out – always running, against a backdrop of constant noise. There was never any time to just be. Even when she was staying with friends in the countryside she was never alone like this: never alone and alert to the quiet stillness that is at the heart of every rock, flower and tree.
Here in Connemara, there was no reason to run anywhere. She had no alternative other than to ‘be’, and it was this surrender to the moment that made her realize just how hollow her life had previously been. She wondered now, as she strode down the hill towards the sea, whether she had been deliberately running into a future of promise with William to release her from an unsatisfactory present at home. And what was her present? Why was it so unsatisfactory? The stillness enabled her to see her situation more clearly, as if the answer had always been there, unnoticed, a small voice fighting to be heard against the racket of her running. It was unsatisfactory because it hadn’t belonged to her. She had been living the life her parents wanted for her, but it wasn’t the life she wished for herself. She was tired of the constant struggle to conform to their expectations, the relentless effort of pretending to be something she was not, as if she had been wearing an ill-fitting suit and had now, at last, burst out of it.
She realized, as she walked past the abandoned house on the beach, that she was also running from herself. She didn’t like the person she had become or the person she would grow into were she to follow her sisters’ carefully prepared path into a materially comfortable but soulless existence as Mrs William Sackville. There was something dreadfully empty about the routine of her daily life in London: the parties, the air-kissing, the fair-weather friends, the shopping and lunching. There was no depth to it. It gave her no sense of fulfilment. She braced herself against the wind and walked up the sand just out of reach of the waves. Leonora and Lavinia would laugh at her if she told them she was sick of holidays in St Barts, sick of reading glossy magazines by the pool that promised happiness with a new a lipstick or handbag, sick of skiing in St Moritz, sick of the people – the endless shallow people who live for invitations and for moving in the right circles; the heaving mass of superficial, socially upwardly mobile people. She chuckled bitterly, astonished by the sudden clarity of her vision and the fact that she was talking out loud like a woman possessed. Her mother would take her to visit her therapist, her father would stare at her in bewilderment, shaking his head once again at the child he had never understood. But the truth was, none of it made her happy. Oh, there were moments of happiness, many of them, but they were as fleeting as bursts of sunshine; deep down in her soul she was restless – and unhappy.
She had always had a strong desire to create something. Whether a book, a poem, a song or a garden – she didn’t know quite what yet; she just knew that she wanted to express herself somehow. As a teenager she had taught herself the guitar, but when she had requested lessons at school her mother had screwed up her nose and replied that she didn’t want her daughter joining a band ‘or anything silly like that’ and signed her up for extra French lessons instead, because apparently, according to her mother, every young lady should speak French. So she had formed a band to spite her and written pop songs with her friends, performing at school concerts her parents weren’t invited to. She had dabbled at writing stories, been very good at art and had sung in the choir. But she had fallen in with a gaggle of rebellious girls and spent most of her teens behind hedges smoking cigarettes and bitching about authority, rather than doing the things that would have made her spirit grow. She regretted all that wasted time now. She regretted having let the creative part of herself wither. But it was never too late to let the sunshine in. There was still time to write the book, compose the song, plant the garden. Right now, life seemed to be opening up for her like a surprise door onto a vast new horizon.
She took a deep breath and her shoulders dropped. Here in this beautiful place she felt peace – the peace that comes only from being in harmony with nature. The feeling of joy was so strong she began to cry. It was so surprising that she began to laugh at the same time. She had never laughed and cried together, and with such abandon. It was the most wonderful feeling she had ever had. The clouds grew grey and heavy and it began to rain. Her faux-fur jacket, which was so inappropriate on that beach, quickly became sodden and clung to her like the soggy hair of a dog. If it hadn’t been so cold she would have taken it off and tossed it into the sea, to die a watery death with her iPhone.
The trouble was, she didn’t know what or who she wanted to be. She just knew that she didn’t like the person she was. One thing she was sure about, however, was that she wasn’t going to go back to London until she had achieved a sense of who she really was, beneath her parents’ conditioning. Until then, she was going to stay in Connemara. She began to walk back up the beach in the direction of Peg’s house. The rain was falling heavily now and she was wet to the bone. She quickened her pace and shivered as a drop of water rolled down her back. If she was going to stay with Peg, she’d better pay rent, she thought. It was obvious that Peg didn’t have a lot of money and it wouldn’t be fair to sponge off her, however convenient that might be. If she stayed more than a week it would only be right to contribute something.
When she reached the hill she almost ran. The thought of a hot bath and a cup of tea spurred her on. She stumbled up the sodden grass, past nonchalant sheep who were perfectly dry beneath their woolly coats, and the poor old donkey, who looked rather bedraggled and miserable in the rain even though there was a shed for him at the bottom of the hill so he could shelter out of the wind. The house came into view and she wasn’t surprised to see more than one vehicle parked outside. It was becoming clear that Peg’s large family ensured that she was never lonely.
She burst in, sending Mr Badger leaping into the hall with excitement. Bertie the pig remained in front of the Stanley, snoring loudly. Peg jumped up from her chair where she was having a cup of tea with a young man. ‘Jaysus, child, will you look at you? Where have you been? Did Johnny leave you up at the castle? Take that jacket off at once and I’ll hang it up to dry.’
‘I went for a walk,’ Ellen explained, peeling off her jacket like a skin.
‘In this weather? Are you off your head?’
‘Throw the jacket away. I’ve ruined it.’
‘Animals are meant to g
et wet,’ interjected the young man dryly.
‘Not fake ones,’ Ellen retorted.
Peg gestured to the man. ‘This is my son, Ronan.’ The young man, who appeared to be about the same age as Ellen, looked up from beneath a thick blond fringe but didn’t smile.
‘I would shake your hand,’ said Ellen apologetically. ‘But I’ll only get it wet.’
‘I’ll shake it when you’re dry, then,’ Ronan replied.
‘I think I’d better go up and have a bath.’
‘I think you’d better, pet. Really, you Londoners know nothing about the countryside, do you?’ Peg turned to her son. ‘You should see the boots she came in . . .’
As Ellen made her way upstairs, she reflected on the members of her family she had met that day. They were all very handsome, with intense eyes and strong characters. It was almost as if she had walked through C. S. Lewis’s wardrobe into an enchanting new world that had always been there beyond the fur coats. For a moment she felt a wave of anger that her mother had hidden them all away: after all, they were Ellen’s family too! And what about Lavinia and Leonora? How could their mother have simply erased them from their lives as well? What could she have done that was so dreadful as to make her return impossible? Didn’t the memories of her childhood count for anything? Didn’t they keep her awake at night? Did she miss her family?
Ellen bathed in hot water, steaming up the windows as the rain pelted against the glass like pebbles. When she went back downstairs in a pair of jeans and sweater, her aunt was still at the kitchen table with Ronan. ‘Come and have a nice cup of tea, pet,’ she said, getting up to fetch the kettle from the stove where it was keeping warm. ‘You look better now. What have you done with your wet clothes?’
‘They’re in the bathroom,’ Ellen replied, sitting down opposite Ronan.
‘Well, they’re not going to get dry in there, are they? Bring them down here later and we’ll hang them over the Stanley.’
Secrets of the Lighthouse Page 8