Ballinn, County Kerry
September 2019
Later that morning, with a Procaffination coffee beside her, Ellie began the search for ferry passenger lists in 1940. From Dublin. From Cork. From Belfast.
I am coming on the next boat.
Departures to America were digitised and complete – a search for Rathmore brought up nothing – but Britain and mainland Europe were a different story. There were no emigration lists. No records. No footprints. If Charlotte had made her way across the Irish Sea – or further, to continental Europe – her departure from Ireland wasn’t recorded.
She called Jules.
‘At least,’ he said, ‘we know she didn’t go to America. There was always the chance she’d crossed the pond to find her mother’s relatives.’
‘Speaking of relatives . . . or almost relatives . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘Could you look into Lord Hawley for me?’ She imagined Jules scrambling to find his notebook. There was a pause. ‘Hello?’ she said down the silent line.
Then a muffled sound, and he was back. His voice overflowed with excitement. ‘Just getting my notebook.’
‘Really?’ She smothered a smile.
‘Leave it with me,’ he said. And with a click, he was gone.
When Dylan called, Ellie was already thinking about him. She’d got sidetracked while researching Dún Laoghaire – had Charlotte taken a boat from that harbour? – and spent an hour dragging around Google Maps looking at all the places the two of them used to go. Dublin already felt like a lifetime ago.
Her shaking finger hovered over the phone. The red cross. Then the green. Red again. While she debated, it rang out.
Coward.
She thought back to Moira, when they’d sat together in the reeds before the setting sun. Feck him, Ellie, she’d said, her eyes like fire. Ellie longed to be that angry at Dylan. Longed to hate him.
But she loved him still. Didn’t she?
Beneath her fingers, the phone pinged.
I’d like to come to Kerry to see you.
Then another:
I’m so sorry x
She put down the phone and plunged her hands deep into her pockets. Trapped them where they could no longer tremble. She stood. Went to the counter. ‘A turmeric latte, please, Nils. With a shot of espresso.’
As he packed the portafilter, he half turned to her, frowning. ‘The work is . . . heavy?’
‘No, it’s okay.’ She smiled reassuringly, reading Nils’s latest quote written in bright blue chalk on the board behind him.
It’s always darkest before the dawn.
How she hoped that was true.
He handed her the latte and leaned forward on the counter, resting his chin in his hands. ‘So, journalist Ellie, what kind of things do you write?’
She ran her finger around the rim of the double-walled glass. ‘Housing, mostly.’
He made a face. ‘Housing?’
‘Well, the human side of housing.’ She felt a little defensive.
‘Ah, oui. A man’s house is his castle.’
She smiled at his use of the phrase. ‘I suspect Tabby Ryan would like you.’
‘The one-hundred-year-old?’
She nodded. ‘She’s fond of proverbs. Seanfhocal in Irish. It means old word.’
‘Mais oui. Seanfhocal. I know this.’
‘Oh?’
‘I am learning Irish.’
‘Really?’
‘I love languages.’
Ellie felt a stab of shame. Her own Irish was no more than phrases that lingered from her school days. It was almost as bad as her French. ‘I’m terrible at them.’
He shook his head. ‘Languages are like music, Ellie. Everyone has a bit of it in them, non?’
‘Not me.’ They paused. Outside, the sun broke through a cloud and hit Ballinn’s green square. Several maple trees waved, the ground beneath them rich red with early fallen leaves.
‘So,’ he said, pouring himself a glass of milk, ‘this housing . . . whose castle are you writing about?’
‘Castle?’
‘Oui, the man’s house . . . his castle?’
She thought of her blog. ‘I suppose I used to write about houses as . . . more than a place to spend the night, more than a building. Houses as . . . an anchor.’ She gazed out at Ballinn’s empty main street. ‘Somewhere people return to when everywhere else is stormy.’
‘Well,’ he said, wiping the already pristine countertop, ‘sounds good. But . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘A castle is more . . . how do you say? Sexy?’
She laughed. Castle. She looked out of the window again. A whisper of gold lay like a blanket over the hills. And the café was empty. ‘Nils,’ she said before she knew it, ‘want to go for a spin?’
They stood with their arms draped over a farm gate and stared at the towering ruin in the field. ‘Well,’ said Nils, ‘it is no Versailles.’
Ellie turned from him, closed her eyes. ‘No . . .’ Wynn’s Castle was not as she remembered. Her mind had played a cruel trick. Her father’s words had lain like a pall over her memories. Create it, Ellie: the smoke rising from the chimneys, the smell of a rose garden, the taste of bread baked on hot coals. See the soaring roof. Watch the crows circle overhead. The castle appeared to have been abandoned for centuries. The four-storey gable – punched through with gaping holes that had once held windows – was surrounded by an impressive, imposing stone wall, but the rest of the structure was gone, scattered in the field at its feet.
On the gate was a sign.
Private. Keep Out.
‘I think it is not likely, Ellie.’ Nils interrupted her reverie. The day had brightened and the wind was now just a gentle breeze.
‘What?’
He was looking at her, frowning. ‘Your needle. Here. At this castle. In 1940.’
There were too many gaps in Charlotte’s story and no threads to tie them together. That was what Ellie had told Nils as they drove west out of Ballinn. An hour and a half of winding coastal road had passed in a flash.
Why had she jumped to the conclusion that Charlotte had written the letter from Wynn’s Castle? That the second word in the letterhead – obscured as it was by a smudge – was castle at all. It was Bernie, she realised. Bernie had echoed her own initial thoughts.
And Ellie had run with it.
Because of what it meant to her.
Nils nudged her. She followed his gaze. A huge man strode across the field towards them. He had hands the size of bowling balls and a face like thunder. Cattle scattered like pins as he passed.
‘’Tis a private field!’
Ellie and Nils took a step back.
As he came closer, red faced and puffing, it dawned on Ellie that she’d met him before.
‘Mr O’Leary?’ she said, moving forward once more to the gate. His stride faltered, his eyes narrowed. He stopped ten feet from them. Suspicious. ‘Mr O’Leary, it’s Ellie Fitzgerald. I came here once. With Dad.’
‘Dad?’ he looked behind her as though he expected an extra man to appear.
Ellie cleared her throat. ‘Cillian. Cillian Fitzgerald. We came here when I was younger.’
The man searched her face, his brow furrowed. Then realisation dawned. Pity, sorrow crossed his features. ‘Young Eleanor?’
She spread her hands. ‘Not so young now. But yes.’
He removed his cap; it was stained with flecks of paint and mud. ‘How are you? How’s your mammy?’
‘Fine, fine.’ Ellie wanted to ask about his wife or children, but she knew nothing about him save his name and his face, now two decades older. She smiled. Faltered.
‘And I’m Nils.’
Mr O’Leary looked up, clearly glad of the interjection. ‘Neil!’ He held out his hand and his meaty fingers curled around Nils’s elegant digits. He turned to Ellie, beaming. ‘Glad to see you’re well settled.’
Nils and Ellie looked at each other, and laughed. ‘Thank you,’ was all they said, because the notion had clearly delighted Mr O’Leary. Her and Neil. Here by his field.
Ellie nodded past his shoulder at the folly towering above them. ‘We thought we’d drop by to get a glimpse of the castle.’
Mr O’Leary looked around with annoyance, as though the ruin had just appeared. ‘Ah yes. She’s still there. Still standing. Could do with some work, o’course, but who’s going to pay for it, that’s what I ask.’
Ellie thought about Blackwater Hall; that mustiness, the overgrown ivy, the untended lawn that led to the lake. Wynn’s Castle made it look like a new-build. ‘Well . . . it’s a big job,’ she said inadequately.
‘The place has ruined enough lives,’ he said. ‘Let it go to dust.’
They appraised the ruin in silence. The only sound now was the gentle grazing of cattle. The ocean, though visible in the distance, was quiet, the wind having gone to worry elsewhere. That was Kerry: four seasons in one day.
‘When was it built?’ asked Nils.
‘Started in 1867 by a Lord Headley. Englishman, o’course.’ Mr O’Leary rolled his eyes, then grimaced. ‘No offence, lad.’ Ellie and Nils exchanged another giggle.
Ellie said: ‘Are you sure it wasn’t a Lord Hawley?’
‘No, Eleanor. Lord Headley.’ He tapped his temple. ‘Head-ley. That’s the one. Brought himself an architect across the Irish Sea. But no sooner had they started work than the lord raised rents. And when people couldn’t pay, they were evicted.’ He seemed delighted with his audience now that they posed no threat. ‘Some starved, you see? By 1886, the lord had gone. Bankrupt.’
Nils attempted an English accent without success. ‘And after?’
‘Abandoned,’ said Mr O’Leary. ‘Then used as a training centre for reservists during the First World War.’
Ellie tried to imagine it: the roof intact, the grounds a hive of activity, chimneys puffing turf smoke. ‘And then?’
Mr O’Leary shrugged. ‘The IRA burned it in the Civil War. Along with most everything else English. But ’tis water under the bridge nowadays. Right, Neil?’ He tapped Nils’s shoulder and the Frenchman nodded graciously.
Although Ellie knew the answer the moment they’d arrived, she asked, ‘So no one lived here in the 1940s?’
Mr O’Leary let out a booming laugh. Leaned across the gate and looked at Nils. ‘Would you listen to yer wan!’ He cleared his throat. ‘No chance. Sure, it’s been this way since 1921.’
Ellie nodded, feeling foolish. She’d remembered Wynn’s Castle from the trip with her father and seen things the way she’d wanted rather than the way things were. Was that, she thought, how she’d been with Maxwell Cray’s secretary? An idea, an intimation, that she’d run away with until it had run away with her?
Nils was watching her as Mr O’Leary filled him in on the whereabouts of Lord Headley’s descendants, and he reached across and took her hand. Squeezed it. She gave him a small smile.
‘Young love,’ said Mr O’Leary, stopping to appreciate them. ‘Your father would have approved, I’m sure of it.’ Ellie smiled; Cillian Fitzgerald would have seen the humour in the situation, that was for sure.
Mr O’Leary fished in his pocket for his phone. The jingle it made shattered the countryside peace. He held up a finger, then answered with little more than a grunt. ‘’Tis herself above. Lunch.’ He repeated his regards to ‘your mammy’ and started off across the field, his shoulders a little looser than when he’d barrelled towards them scattering cattle in his wake.
Ellie glared at the folly. ‘A dead end.’
‘No,’ said Nils, letting go of her hand and leaning back on the gate. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Charlotte wasn’t here.’
‘No, but you were.’ His voice was gentle. ‘That’s why you wanted to come.’ It wasn’t a question.
She watched a robin search Mr O’Leary’s boot prints for treats. ‘I was here with my dad. Once.’
‘What happened to him, Ellie?’
She looked at her bitten fingernails. ‘He died. When I was seventeen.’
Nils waited.
‘An accident. He . . .’ She glanced at the ruin. ‘He was on his way here. To Wynn’s Castle. I was supposed to go with him.’ It was true, but not the whole truth. She pushed away the events that came after: the garda knocking at the farm’s door, the incomprehensible words, the ashen face of her mum as she’d fallen to her knees. ‘But I didn’t.’
It could all have been different.
Nils said gently: ‘And you never came back?’
‘No.’
‘And it is as you expected?’
She shook her head. The castle was not at all what she remembered. But when she glanced at Nils, she realised he meant something entirely different. ‘He’s not here, if that’s what you mean. I was afraid he would be. I had this . . . this fear that when I looked, I’d see his face in the shadows.’
Nils took her hand once again, turned it over in his own. ‘Ellie, did no one ever tell you . . . the dead, they don’t live in places like this.’ He placed her own palm to her chest. ‘It is here. That,’ he said, ‘is where they stay.’
When she only nodded and looked at her feet, he took his hand away and looked back to the castle. Let the silence linger. Then he cleared his throat. ‘It’s funny, non, about Charlotte . . .’
She looked up, glad of the interjection. ‘What about her?’
‘It’s funny that the paper was not from a hotel. Because she must have stayed somewhere before taking a boat.’
Ellie blinked once, twice. A hotel? She gazed back at the ruin, then dug into her satchel. Carefully she unfolded Charlotte’s letter and held it to the sky.
There it was. Right in front of her. The word Hotel, visible through the brown stain that smeared the header.
And it was a place she knew.
‘Nils, you’re a genius.’
‘Mais oui, I try.’
She took his hand and squeezed it. Pulled him away from the gate. ‘I have to go.’
‘But where?’ He laughed at her enthusiasm.
‘To Dublin.’