Secrets of the Lighthouse (25 page)

‘Does it feel different?’

His eyes twinkled at her and he rubbed his chin again. ‘
You
’ll have to tell
me
,’ he replied quietly so that the children couldn’t hear.

She coloured, but the suggestive tone in his voice made her smile. ‘I’ll be happy to.’ She folded her arms in front of her chest because the desire to reach out to him was
almost unbearable.

‘Shame you have to join your family for lunch. Meg is cooking a roast.’

‘Father Michael is coming.’

‘And you have lots of unanswered questions for him, I know. I’m not sure lunch will be the right time to ask them, though.’

‘I might be able to take him off into a corner.’

‘I’m sure you will. After a few glasses of wine, he might be more garrulous.’

Daphne now joined them and the formality of their conversation was torturous. Aware that the eyes of the locals were still upon them, questioning their acquaintance, they remained a polite
distance apart, Conor’s hands deep in his coat pockets, Ellen’s still folded across her chest. The children began to get impatient.

‘All right, sweetie,’ said Daphne, taking Ida’s hand. ‘We’d better go. It’s nice to see you, Ellen. Send my regards to Peg, won’t you?’

‘I will, thank you,’ Ellen replied, as Daphne and Ida walked away.

Conor hung back a moment. ‘It’s killing me that I can’t kiss you, Ellen,’ he said in a low voice, his gaze unwavering.

‘I think my newfound family would send me straight back to London.’ She laughed, but inside she felt suddenly desperate. Conor was leaving and she didn’t know when she’d
see him again. If it hadn’t been for the throng of spectators who stood like a herd of cattle outside the church, she’d have thrown herself against him and begged him not to go.
‘I’ll just have to wait to experience the feel of your new face,’ she said instead, trying to steady her voice so she didn’t come across as needy.

‘The woodcutter won the day,’ he grinned.

She smiled back at the shared memory. ‘Yes, he well and truly slew the wolf!’

‘We’ll make up our own fairy tale, Ellen,’ he said, looking serious for a moment. ‘Come on, Finbar, let’s get you home.’ He took the child’s hand, then
turned to Ellen and gave her a meaningful nod. ‘I’ll be back.’

She watched him walk down the steps to the Range Rover where Daphne and Ida waited for him. The boy looked very small beside the tall figure of his father. Ellen wished she were climbing in with
them, but she had committed to lunch with Alanna and Desmond. There was nothing she could do but watch them drive away. No doubt her family would all be asking her about Conor. She resolved to keep
her cards very close to her chest. She didn’t want to raise Desmond’s suspicions any higher than she already had.

Lunch was a jolly affair. Joe’s sister, Ashley, was there with her husband and two young children, and Alanna’s brother Patrick had come with his wife, Clare. Father Michael said
grace, then they all sat down at the long dining-room table and tucked into a hearty Sunday lunch. Ellen had been deliberately placed next to Father Michael, but it wasn’t until the end of
the meal, when people began to disperse into the sitting room, that her mother’s name was mentioned.

‘Don’t you look like your mother, Ellen?’ he said quietly, as if it was a secret.

‘I don’t know. Perhaps,’ Ellen replied. In London no one ever mentioned that she resembled her. It was becoming clear that Maddie Byrne had shed a skin when she left Ireland
all those years ago, and emerged an entirely different person.

‘Well, I’d say that you do,’ the priest continued in his melodious Irish drawl. ‘She had the same-shaped face as you, the same chin and the same smile. She had a very
sweet smile, you know. And your eyes, I wouldn’t say they’re the same colour or shape; no, yours are bigger and hers were blue, but there’s something of her in the expression. One
can’t be sure what you’re going to do next.’ He chuckled tipsily, pleased with his analysis. Ellen wondered whether, by the way he was speaking about her mother in the past tense,
he thought she was dead.

‘I think you’d find her very different now,’ Ellen said to remind him that she was alive.

‘Well, people grow up, don’t they, and your mother was very young when she lived here.’ He toyed with his empty gin and tonic glass, rolling it onto its edges like a boat in
danger of capsizing.

Ellen lowered her voice too, hoping to lure Father Michael into revealing things by pretending to confide in him. ‘You know, I didn’t even know Mother had a family over here. It came
as a complete shock when I discovered she had brothers. I knew about Peg, but I knew nothing of the others.’

His eyebrows crawled together like fluffy white caterpillars. ‘So I heard. What a brutal thing not to have known your grandmother.’

‘I wish I had known her,’ said Ellen, sadly.

‘Aye, she was a fine woman, Ellen. A fine woman indeed.’

‘I’m sure she was. A strong woman, to have brought up six children and run a farm on her own?’

‘Oh, she was never on her own, Ellen. She was a community-spirited woman and everyone rallied around her, although it would have hurt her pride to have acknowledged that she was helped.
She was a very proud woman, altogether.’

‘It must have hurt her when my mother ran off.’

Father Michael dug his chin into his neck as he contemplated how best to answer. The round balls of his cheeks shone with the whiskey he had had before Mass and the two gin and tonics since. He
inhaled through hairy nostrils. ‘It rocked the whole community,’ he said softly. ‘Your grandmother was a strong woman but Maddie floored her.’ He shook his head at the
memory.

Ellen decided to take a gamble. ‘Was that because . . . because of me?’

She almost held her breath as he turned his rheumy eyes to her in astonishment. After a hasty glance into the sitting room, he leaned closer and spoke so softly Ellen could only just hear.
‘So, you
know
?’

‘I
know
,’ she replied with equal emphasis.

‘Did Maddie tell you?’

‘No, I worked it out.’

He nodded gravely. ‘Of course you did. You’re a clever girl.’ He patted her hand unsteadily.

‘I assume no one else knows, though?’

‘Only your grandmother knew, because Peg told her.’ Ellen clamped her teeth together to stop her jaw swinging open. Her mind was racing, trying work out how her mother might have
discovered her sister’s betrayal. But as she had told Father Michael she
knew
, she had to mask her shock and curtail her questions. He was too tipsy to notice and pursed his lips
with the residue of bitterness. ‘And Maddie knew the consequences of bearing a child out of wedlock. But she was a bold girl, was Maddie Byrne. She was always a bold girl.’ He heaved a
sigh. ‘She saw an opportunity and she took it.’

‘I suppose it was the only option.’

‘It was the only option for
her
. A terrible choice to make for any young woman, but brutal for Maddie because she had to leave so much behind. Poor Dylan Murphy is still living
with the consequences to this day. I don’t know whether he’s forgiven her. I have tried to gently lead him in that direction, but it’s a mighty thing to ask of a man. As for your
grandmother, she wrestled with her faith but I’m afraid she died without making peace with Maddie. One day, they will meet again and I hope then they will be able to forgive each
other.’

Ellen frowned at Father Michael. ‘What did my
mother
have to forgive?’

Father Michael frowned at Ellen, as if surprised that she didn’t know. ‘Well, a great deal, Ellen. A very great deal.’

Conor has shaved off his beard and his mother has cut his hair. Something dramatic is going on and I don’t like it at all. I watched the hair fall in feathers onto the
bathroom floor and felt that
I
was being cut with those scissors and swept away with the dustpan and brush. He emerged looking young again and happy, as if he had shed his grief along with
his hair. I can feel he is now fired up with inspiration and energy and I know it has nothing to do with me. I follow him around the house and listen to him humming contentedly, knowing that it is
another woman and not I who has infected him with joy.

What does he see in Ellen? She is nothing compared to me. I was passionate and hot-blooded as well as beautiful. I was a firefly, bright, compelling and unpredictable. Conor loved my
eccentricities. He loved my romantic nature. There is nothing eccentric about Ellen. She is not beautiful and she is not exciting. She is ordinary.

I followed him to Mass. He wore a suit and tie beneath his smart black coat and fedora hat. He looked so handsome and dignified, like an old-fashioned gentleman, but I could tell that he was
nervous, for his fingers fidgeted at his sides. Ida and Finbar found the transformation astonishing because neither can remember a time when their father didn’t have hair on his face. They
couldn’t take their eyes off him and grew suddenly shy as if he had become someone else entirely. Daphne lifted her chin with pride as she walked up the aisle, because the last time she
accompanied her son to church was at my funeral in the little chapel, when Conor had looked like Edmond Dantès after a few years in the Château d’If. I know she feels that she
has got her son back. I am no longer around to keep him away from her, so perhaps she is right.

It was only when Ellen and Conor caught eyes across the aisle that I realized how strongly they feel for one other. They held that stare for a long while and somehow their eyes communicated more
than words ever could. Conor’s eyes were full of tenderness. His whole face was aglow with a brighter light than lust alone and I was consumed with jealousy. I raged about the church, like I
did at my funeral, but affected nothing. Not even a flicker of candle flame or a rustle of prayer book. Nothing. I am lighter than air but I feel heavy with earthly emotions. Why is it that
Peg’s little girl can blow out flames and stroke dogs when all I can do is frighten the birds?

Outside in the churchyard he smiled at her like he had once smiled at me. Conor has a smile that is so irresistible it can melt the stoniest of hearts. He doesn’t realize how powerful it
is. If only he smiled on the locals of Ballymaldoon like that, he would win their love and their trust. But he won’t. Conor is a man who doesn’t care what other people think of him. He
is his own man and won’t be held to ransom by anyone. I even think he took pleasure in their curiosity.

Ellen has inflated his confidence and lifted him out of the quagmire that was his grief. But while he was in that quagmire he was mine. Unhappy though he was, he belonged only to me. I was his
present as he is mine. But now I am his past. I have died all over again. But I will not have it. I will find a way to stop it before it flowers. I will nip it in the bud and Conor will belong to
me once again. I thought Ellen would be my saviour, but she is my curse.

And so Conor returns to Dublin a different man. He walks with a bounce in his step and smiles at everyone he encounters. The heavy atmosphere in his office evaporates like summer fog burnt away
by the sun. It is as if his happiness is sunshine that infuses the place with joy. He takes trouble with his appearance and even opens the bottle of cologne that has been sitting in his bathroom
unopened for years. Everyone in his office is astonished by the extraordinary transformation and the scent of verbena that he leaves in his wake. His secretary loses the years that stress has
engraved on her skin, although she cannot quite trust that it will last, so traumatized is she by his constant anger that has smouldered and sparked during the last five years like a fire which
feeds on itself. He has not treated her well and is determined to make it up to her. He wants to make it up to everyone. To his partner, Robert, and their team of twenty capable and creative men
and women who have suffered from his long inferno. He wants them to know that it is over and he is now back.

He sends his secretary out to buy a new phone for Ellen. He wants to call her but is reluctant to dial Peg’s number. I understand his reluctance; after all, he is only human and there is
only so much a man can forgive. But his desire is stronger than his reservation and he eventually calls her. He sits in his office, overlooking the river that runs through the city, and dials
Peg’s number. It is on his system because her son Ronan used to work for us when I was alive, transforming my ideas into reality with pine and oak. He used to live with his mother in those
days. I liked having him around because he worshipped me with the unquestioning love of a puppy. He’d do anything for me. Anything at all.

‘Hello, Peg, it’s Conor,’ he says when Peg answers the phone.

‘Oh, hello, Conor,’ she replies, surprised. ‘You’ll be wanting Ellen, I expect.’

‘Please.’

‘Hang on a minute, I’ll go and get her.’

He sits back in his chair and runs a hand through his hair. It is still thick and glossy, like the hair of a young man, although it is now greying at the temples, close to the crow’s feet
which fan out in deep lines across his skin. But his ageing only serves to make him more handsome.

Ellen comes to the phone breathless with excitement. ‘Hello,’ she says.

‘Are you missing me?’ he asks. He has an appealing voice, deep and grainy like sand. If she could see him down the line she would know that his smile is wide and his eyes are full of
laughter.

‘A little,’ she teases.

‘So, you haven’t forgotten me, then?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Then I better not leave it too long.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t if I were you. With all the other handsome young men here in Ballymaldoon . . .’ She laughs. They both know that none of them can hold a candle to Conor.

‘I have a few things to sort out up here. Then I’m coming down on Thursday. Wild horses wouldn’t keep me from you. I’m leaving the children here with my
mother.’

‘That’s good,’ she replies, which is an understatement, but I suppose she is trying to play it cool.

‘I’m going to have you all to myself,’ he says, lowering his voice. He picks up a pen and flicks it between his fingers. ‘I’ve thought of little else since I got
back to Dublin.’