Ballinn, County Kerry
September 2019
The village hall was a large building sandwiched between Ballinn’s two pubs. Its entrance – a squeezed space grandly called ‘the Lobby’ – was covered wall-to-wall in notices: yoga practice, a bed for sale, diggers for hire. Forgotten coats hung on hooks and a retro fixed-gear bike sat propped up against a shoe rack. A pile of books for swap or loan sat on a bench as though huddled together for warmth.
The last time Ellie had been to the village hall was as a teenager, when her parents had taken her to a Dramatics Secret Society production. Why the society was secret, she had never found out. The plays were always written by the pharmacist and the starring cast comprised local characters: the doctor, Bernie and several farmers who said their lines with such gusto that the entire audience giggled throughout.
The Lobby opened up into a spacious hall, chairs stacked against its walls, scarlet curtains gathered either side of a stage. A small trestle table and a large box sat in the middle of the room. Aside from the door Ellie had stepped through, the only other one was halfway down the left of the hall, and it swung outwards now as a tray topped with a pot, two cups and a pile of biscuits appeared. It tottered left, then right, before emerging from the doorway to reveal a man who looked like a retiree who’d been playing a nice round of golf in 1975 and been teleported to the future.
Ellie took in his appearance with no small measure of relief. Not a set-up, then.
‘Ellie!’ he said. ‘Delighted you could make it.’ He deposited the tray on the trestle table. His peach-and-cream argyle sweater was even more alarming without the cover of morning tea. Or was it lunch? Ellie checked her watch: nearly one o’clock.
‘Jules Bristole?’ She followed him to the table.
His handshake was firm. ‘The very one.’ He had a mop of white hair and eyebrows that could do with a trim. Ellie couldn’t help but look down at his trousers; they were a shade of seventies brown. ‘Your mother tells me you’ve found a very interesting letter.’ He poured, then raised his eyebrows and the two cups in unison. His cheeks were speckled with very fine freckles. Or was that . . . mud?
She sat, and he eagerly took a place opposite, leaning forward with an expectant expression. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I’ve just returned from Blackwater Hall, but Albert – Lord Rathmore – he . . . isn’t well. He wouldn’t accept the letter.’
‘You have it here?’ She could almost see his fingers tingling.
‘Yes.’ But she made no move to take it out. She peered suspiciously into her drink, but took a sip anyway, to fill the gap. ‘This is good,’ she said. Part surprise, part relief.
‘Yorkshire Tea,’ said Jules. ‘Don’t tell the locals.’
Ellie laughed. So, she thought, this particular blow-in was well versed in tea politics at least. She appraised him. ‘You’re from Sussex?’
His cup, lifted halfway to his mouth, teetered dangerously from horizontal. ‘Born and bred. Your mother told you that?’
She shook her head. ‘I had a colleague from Brighton. You sound just like him.’ She leaned back. ‘Trust me, Jules, if Mum knew any juicy details about you, I’d have heard them already. In long form. And several times.’
He began to say something, then smiled. Two dimples formed on his cheeks. They sat in companionable silence.
‘So . . .’ She dipped into her pocket and produced the envelope, spread the paper in front of him.
Jules took out a case containing a pair of round glasses. He perched them on the end of his nose and read the letter with a look of such anticipation Ellie wondered if he expected it to leap to life and spill its secrets. ‘Poor Charlotte,’ he murmured when he reached the end. ‘Poor, poor Charlotte. When I heard about the letter . . .’
She frowned. ‘Yes, when did you hear about the letter?’
‘Your mum called this morning.’ Moira had pointedly said Bernie had told him. Ellie narrowed her eyes. He continued. ‘When I heard about the letter, I remembered something about that name.’
‘Oh?’
‘Charlotte was Lord Albert’s aunt.’
‘What?’ This was a surprise.
‘Yes, it’s in here.’ He leaned over and hefted a box onto the table. From it he took a slip of a book: Ballinn: A History, A Legacy. ‘So I went back to check the details.’
Details. That was what Jeremy had said to her, back when he’d been overruled. We’d have a chance of publication if there were more details. Places, times, witnesses. When and where did Cray and McCarthy meet? She’d asked Cray’s secretary, who said whole sections of his calendar were often blocked out. ‘For one of his mistresses, I assumed,’ she’d said bitterly. ‘I don’t have the details.’
Jules opened the book to a dog-eared page. ‘Lady Charlotte Rathmore; she grew up at Blackwater Hall. Then . . .’ He turned the page to face her.
In August 1940, tragedy struck the Rathmore family. Charlotte Rathmore was reported missing and staff gathered to search the estate. At 3 p.m. the gardaí were called. A string of pearls, reportedly Charlotte’s eighteenth birthday present, was found broken and scattered by the lough and a wooden rowboat was missing from the boathouse. The search continued into the night, assisted by volunteers from Ballinn, where Charlotte was well known for her charitable endeavours. In the early hours of the morning the boat was found on the Atoon river, containing an oar caked in blood. The lough was dragged but Charlotte’s body was never found. Two known IRA collaborators were arrested and questioned, later released without charge. The case remains open. She was nineteen years old.
Ellie blinked once, twice. Charlotte had disappeared the same month she wrote the letter, August 1940. She turned back a page, scanning it for details of Blackwater Hall and the Rathmore family, but there was little more than the paragraph she’d read the evening before, the house’s two hundred years of history swept aside in a few disparate sentences.
‘It’s a great investigation for a journalist,’ said Jules.
She looked up. ‘What?’
‘A wonderful mystery to get your teeth into. A letter from someone who disappeared.’ This last said with wide eyes.
‘Jules,’ she said, ‘cold cases aren’t really my cup of tea.’ She put aside her drink.
‘Charlotte’s words . . . they must interest you?’
Interest me? If she’d found this letter two months ago, the pull would have been irresistible. But that was before. ‘The last time I investigated a scandal I lost my job and my . . .’ She stopped short and pushed the letter towards him, felt grief tug at her heart, in her belly. ‘Please, take it. Give it to Albert’s son. Put it in your files. Do whatever you think is best.’
‘These aren’t my files, Ellie. They’re Brigid Sullivan’s. Took loan of them last month. What a find!’
Despite herself, Ellie said, ‘Brigid who?’
Jules closed the book and tapped its cover. There was the name, Brigid Sullivan, author of Ballinn: A History, A Legacy. ‘She was once the last word on local history. Her daughter didn’t inherit her passion, but she did inherit her belongings.’
What was it Albert had said . . . She planned to put some of the family history in a book. Brigid someone? A handsome woman. Ellie turned to the back cover. There she was, Brigid; green eyes, dark hair. Handsome? Yes, in a permed, austere kind of way. She flicked to the title page: published 1958.
Jules withdraw a photo from the box and placed it before Ellie.
She couldn’t help but look.
It was a soft-focus black-and-white portrait of a beautiful girl. Doe eyes that looked to the upper right of the frame, thick dark lashes. Though she wasn’t smiling, faint ghosts of dimples brushed her cheeks. She had unlined, translucent skin and the top of her blonde hair was swept into two rolls, one pinned with a comb that stood proud of her head.
Ellie turned the photo over. Lady Charlotte Rathmore, July 1940.
Jules said, ‘She was born in 1921. Daughter to Charles and Niamh Rathmore. Sister to Hugo and Edward.’ He turned his notebook towards her. ‘I’ve been putting together a family tree.’
Looking anywhere but at the photo, Ellie said, ‘That’s great.’ Daughter to Charles and Niamh. Grandma Niamh? Albert had remembered her well enough.
Jules continued, ‘Brigid wrote that the gardaí thought the IRA was involved, which seems plausible. A wealthy girl. Probably Protestant. Potential for ransom.’
Ellie raised an eyebrow. ‘But considering that the letter and the disappearance were in the same month . . .’
‘They must be connected?’
‘Given Charlotte’s words, I can’t think otherwise.’ Because she had thought about them. Turned the letter over in her mind as she went to sleep. Conjured it as she woke. But it was one thing to think about Charlotte Rathmore and quite another to investigate her.
Jules nodded, lost in his notebook. ‘They were, I suppose, difficult times.’ He looked up. ‘When did de Valera outlaw the IRA?’
‘Just before the war, I think.’
He opened a second notebook. Two dozen Post-it notes marked the pages. ‘June 1939. And three months later Ireland declared neutrality.’ He spread his hands. ‘Appease the IRA on one hand, keep the Germans at bay on the other. And dance a tango with Chamberlain, who was furious about the ports.’
Ellie bristled. ‘Sweden and Norway declared neutrality too . . .’
‘But in this country it was all so complicated.’ Jules said this as though he relished the complexity rather than resented it. ‘There was still rationing. Seventy thousand Irish fought for the British. And thousands more went to work in Britain, chasing wages.’
‘And adventure,’ said Ellie, thinking of Charlotte’s words: What an adventure, really. I have it all planned. She leaned forward and frowned. ‘She says, You knew my feelings. She must have been intimate with the person she was writing to. This T. But the letter seems both last-minute and calculated. I think . . . I think she couldn’t wait to get where she was going.’ She picked up Charlotte’s portrait; that far-away gaze looking off camera, out of frame, into another place . . .
The thud of the Lobby door made her jump. She turned and saw a large, bright shape crossing the hall. Multicoloured fabrics, a huge grin. ‘Bernie!’ she said, feeling that same sense of relief she had the day before.
Bernie dragged a chair across the hall with a screech. ‘Your mammy said you were here.’ She nodded to each of them. ‘I was up with Tabby Ryan. I tell you, Ellie, if I could be half as lively as her, I’d be delighted with myself.’ Tabby Ryan was a former school teacher and fixture of the community. ‘She was on mighty form.’ Bernie sat herself next to Ellie, rather close. Then she leaned over and read the letter.
‘So yer wan ran off?’
‘Planned to at least,’ said Ellie. ‘Was she ever found?’
‘Not that I know of.’ Bernie picked up Charlotte’s portrait. ‘Ink House is on the border of the parish; hard to know if its gossip belongs to us or Kenmare. Don’t want to be treading on any toes.’
Ellie looked down at Bernie’s feet. They were huge. ‘No,’ she said.
‘And you’ve been up to Albert?’
‘Yes, he wasn’t . . . well.’
‘No.’ Bernie was less concerned than Ellie had expected. ‘I dropped up to the hall a couple of months ago. Thought he might want Meals on Wheels.’ She paused. ‘I was also a bit curious about the house. Went there once as a child, wanted to see it again. He agreed to take a meal a week.’
‘Good, I was worried.’
‘And now that the son’s here, the old place has spruced up a bit.’
Ellie wondered how it had looked before. ‘The son? He exists?’
Bernie gave her a look. ‘As real as you or me.’ She turned back to the letter. ‘Still, Charlotte probably disappeared before Lord Albert was born. But hard to say. I only know about it because of the poem.’
Ellie frowned. ‘What poem?’
‘That ditty,’ said Bernie, ‘the one you kids used to run around chanting. Haven’t heard it for a decade.’ She looked to the ceiling, nodded her head:
‘Grab your boots and leave your drink,
Take your torches to the Ink,
Search high and low among the reeds,
Find a string of pearly beads,
Tell me ye, what will it take . . .’
She paused, gestured to Ellie, who nodded her head in time: ‘To find the Lady of the Lake?’
‘You remember?’ said Bernie.
‘I remember something of it. I thought it was about a mermaid.’
‘Oh, Ellie!’
Jules scribbled in his notebook.
‘And this . . .’ Bernie touched the letter’s header. It was smeared with a deep brown smudge. ‘Wynn’s something . . . well, that could be Wynn’s Castle.’
‘Where?’ said Jules frantically, as though his exams were coming up and he’d forgotten to study a module.
‘It’s in Glenbeigh,’ said Ellie quietly. She’d been there once, as a child. And she’d never returned. Couldn’t bring herself to. The trip had been with her father.
‘Owned by Lord Heaney, I think,’ said Bernie.
‘Heaney?’ said Jules.
Bernie frowned. ‘Yes, I think so. Or was it Healy? Something like that.’
Jules laid out another photo. ‘I also found this, taken at Blackwater Hall.’
It was a formal shot of a group of people arranged in two lines; one seated, one standing. There was a distinct difference in the dress style and poise of the two rows. Jules ran his finger along the seated figures. ‘This is the family.’ He traced the standing row behind them. ‘And staff.’
Ellie turned the photo over. Summer Party, 12th August 1939. A list of names was written across the bottom. She returned to the image, searching for Charlotte.
‘Here she is.’ Jules pointed to a girl seated at the far left of the photo.
‘And,’ said Bernie, frowning, ‘this is Edward – or Teddy, as he was known – Charlotte’s brother.’ He was fair and had the same dark oval eyes as his sister. His hand was raised near his face, as though he had been about to push a flop of hair from his eyes. ‘I met him that time I visited the house as a child.’
Ellie raised her eyebrows. ‘Teddy?’ She turned the letter to face her. My dearest T.
Jules followed her gaze and nodded, scribbled down Teddy’s name. Then he moved his finger along the line of seated aristocrats. ‘This is Lord Charles Rathmore, and Lady Niamh Rathmore . . . and their elder son, and heir, Hugo.’
Between Charlotte and Teddy sat a woman, her long legs tucked neatly under her. Her face was beautifully framed with arched eyebrows and wavy hair. The masculine Pied Piper hat she wore dropped low over her right eye, one hand up to steady it, and her head tipped towards Charlotte. Ellie looked closer. ‘Who’s this?’
Jules said, ‘That’s Teddy’s wife, Nancy.’
Ellie frowned, thinking of the third cup Albert had poured, the one she had thought was for his mother. ‘Charlotte looks worried,’ she said, then regretted reading so much into an expression captured eighty years before.
Jules surprised her by saying: ‘Yes, I agree.’
‘Well, none of them really look all that delighted,’ said Bernie, her attention beginning to wane.
Ellie studied the two women, Charlotte and Nancy. Nancy’s hand rested on Charlotte’s and they were looking halfway between each other and the photographer, as though they had been interrupted sharing a secret. The formality of Charlotte’s long dress looked dated compared to the below-the-knee pencil skirt that Nancy wore.
‘Are they the same age?’ she asked.
‘According to Ms Sullivan’ – Jules consulted his notebook – ‘Nancy was born in 1914. Seven years before Charlotte.’
‘It doesn’t say any more about her?’
‘No,’ said Jules. ‘The Rathmore story is a tiny part of the book; just those few paragraphs.’
Ellie thought back to her visit to the house that morning. ‘Lord Albert said that when his grandmother – Niamh – renovated Blackwater Hall, she . . . decluttered. So perhaps Brigid didn’t have much to work with.’ She paused. ‘And anyway, people round here are probably not so interested in reading about landed gentry.’
Bernie added, ‘It’s a bit of a sore point.’
‘I see what you mean . . .’ Jules looked down at his notebook, deflated.
‘Doesn’t mean the Rathmores’ history isn’t important,’ Ellie said quickly. She looked between them. ‘How old is this historical society anyway?’
Jules rallied. ‘This is our first meeting.’
‘I see.’
‘It’s just us three so far,’ he added.
Ellie was alarmed. ‘Thank you, Jules, but I—’ she said at the very same time Bernie offered, ‘Ah, listen, I’m not dilly-dallying, I only dropped in because Moira called me—’
Both of them stopped at the man’s crestfallen face. Then Bernie stood and muttered, ‘I’ll get some fresh tea,’ while Ellie busied herself with studying the hall’s high windows.
After a moment, she said, ‘How long have you lived in Ballinn, Jules?’
He flushed. ‘A year. I visited last summer, took up a friend’s offer of a cottage near Derrynane Beach. I stayed for three weeks, and when I returned to London, well, it felt . . .’ he paused, ‘empty. I tried to keep up with my old life, even though I’d retired.’ He took off his glasses, set them on the table. ‘I was a lawyer for forty years. My whole world was work. And when that finished, I really had nothing. I never married. Never had children. Everything I did was for my own benefit.’
‘I’m sorry.’
He rubbed his eyes and replaced his glasses. ‘Kerry stuck in my mind. The peace. The space. The lack of trying to be someone I wasn’t any more. So I just came back.’
‘You’d be surprised how many stories like that there are around here,’ said Ellie. From Killarney to Kenmare, Kerry’s hills were littered with blow-ins, running to – or escaping from – another life. She thought of Bernie’s kindness in putting aside the books, the comfort of her mum’s home, the feeling of rolling back into the village after Dublin spat her out the other side.
He smiled with satisfaction. ‘My old colleagues wouldn’t recognise me. And a good thing too. I feel renewed. I want to do something that isn’t on the clock. Something interesting. Something that matters.’
‘Why do you think this’ – Ellie touched the portrait in front of her – ‘matters?’
He rotated the summer party shot so it faced her. ‘Look at Charlotte again.’
Warily she leaned in. Charlotte’s face was marred with worry. Or was it sadness? Perhaps Nancy had reached across to comfort her . . .
Ellie gasped. ‘Jules, look at her hand!’ A white bandage, half obscured under Nancy’s grip, was wrapped from her wrist to her fingertips.
He nodded. ‘At first I thought it was a glove, but it’s not, is it?’
‘No.’
‘I don’t think Charlotte looks worried . . . I think she looks afraid.’
‘You’re reading too much into this.’ But she knew Jules was right. Charlotte Rathmore had been afraid.
When Bernie returned, she said, ‘I’ve checked the whole kitchen . . . nothing but this muck.’ She plonked the Yorkshire Tea down with a huff. ‘I take it this is yours?’ The Englishman grimaced.
Ellie glanced at her watch. It was twenty to two. ‘Look,’ she said, getting to her feet, ‘I have to go. I need to drop into the doctor’s surgery. Here . . .’ She pushed Charlotte’s letter towards Jules, towards Bernie, towards anyone but herself. ‘I think it’s best if one of you takes this.’
Jules looked up. ‘What about this son of Albert’s . . . Milo, is it?’
Ellie’s hand lingered on the back of the chair. ‘Did I mention his name?’
‘Of course!’ said Bernie, butting in; she and Jules once again aligned. ‘You could drop the letter off while you’re there.’
‘And,’ Jules said, riding the wave of Bernie’s enthusiasm, ‘while you’re at it, you can ask him to look into the surgery records. See if the local doctor attended Charlotte in the summer of 1939.’
Ellie narrowed her eyes. ‘While I’m where? Why would Albert’s son have access to the surgery records?’
Jules closed his notebook. ‘Milo Rathmore is the new locum.’
‘Please tell me you’re joking.’
A satisfied smile was plastered on Bernie’s face.
Ellie shook her head and snatched the letter from the table. ‘You two,’ she pointed at each of them, ‘you’re both as bad as my mother.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ said Jules as he put the boxes away in a trunk beside the stage, the meeting evidently over. His hand hovered over Charlotte’s photo. ‘Here,’ he said, placing it in her hand. ‘Look after that for now.’ She began to argue. He cut her short. ‘Just for now.’
Bernie was off, out the door. ‘Places to be,’ she shouted back over her shoulder. ‘I’ll see you Saturday.’
Ellie called, ‘Saturday?’
Bernie paused, her hand resting on the door frame. ‘It’s Tabby Ryan’s one hundredth birthday. Here in the hall. Open invite.’ She looked at Jules. ‘Even blow-ins are welcome.’
Ellie paused. Moira had mentioned something about a hooley; a whole village-worth of people chatting, asking questions. ‘I hadn’t planned on going.’
‘Really?’ said Bernie. ‘Is that so?’
‘It is.’
‘Because,’ she continued, ‘you should know that Tabby worked up at the big house, at Blackwater Hall, before the war. I imagine she knew Charlotte. Before she . . . disappeared.’ And then, with a speed that belied her size, Bernie was gone.
Jules followed Ellie out. He went to the shoe rack in the Lobby and lifted the fixed-gear bike she had thought long abandoned.
‘You ride that thing?’ she said.
‘My new toy,’ said Jules as they spilled onto the street. ‘As I said, my old colleagues wouldn’t recognise me.’ He swung his leg over the saddle and pushed away from the kerb, calling over his shoulder: ‘Don’t forget to ask Milo about your girl.’
Your girl, she wanted to shout after him, but he was already halfway down the street.