Blackwater Hall, County Kerry
November 2019
How rare it was, a crisp, dry November dawn in County Kerry. And yet as Ellie, Milo and Jules gathered by Lough Atoon, not a lick of cloud sullied the hue that lit the sky. The blackened remains of a long-forgotten pier stretched out into the water.
Beside them, a spade lay against a knee-high pile of rocks; purple sandstone like the hills beyond.
The air was as still as anticipation, the lough’s surface a mirror perfectly reflecting the ivy-clad facade of Blackwater Hall as it sat proud at the top of the sloping lawn. A murmuration of starlings throbbed and morphed over the valley beyond, a strange creature painting the sky.
The envelope had contained a smoking gun. When Ellie saw the contents, she had looked at Hattie in amazement and said, ‘He’ll stand by this?’ and the older woman had nodded, already gathering her bag. ‘He will.’ Ellie had felt a heaviness lift from the pit of her stomach. From her shoulders. She’d stood and embraced Hattie, held her longer than was polite.
She went on, then, to The Irish Times offices and presented the envelope to Jeremy. He’d hugged her in a rare display of openness and she’d shrugged as if to say, You doubted me?
Armand, a man who never forgot a face, agreed to testify that Davy McCarthy had conducted three dinner meetings in the private rooms of the Pickled Oyster – where he was a regular – in July. Himself and another man, no scribe present. The table, Armand said – and the reservations record confirmed – was booked under the name Mr Smith, but the bill was settled on a credit card issued to Maxibuild. The company owned by Maxwell Cray.
The case against The Irish Times had been dropped, and in the furore that followed, an independent committee was rapidly formed to investigate the dealings between McCarthy and Cray.
The Stanley Street site had been returned to state ownership and a new tender was issued for the building of one hundred and twenty new flats for public housing.
For Ellie it had been not only vindication but the possibility of a return to a life that had, until only a month before, been everything she’d ever wanted. She had been offered her job back – with improvements: a promotion to property editor, the youngest in the publication’s history. When Jeremy had told her – over the phone while she sat in Procaffination, her copy of The ABC Murders open in her lap – he’d taken her silence for delight.
‘I’ll think about it,’ she’d said, gazing out onto Ballinn’s quiet square, where now-familiar faces went about their daily lives.
Milo had told his father that Ellie and a friend might come to fish the lough one day when the weather was nice. Not to worry if he woke to find an extra car at the house. When Ellie and Jules had driven up to the estate early that morning, the dawn was just a promise. But Albert had been there, watching the Micra pull up to the house, wincing as Ellie crunched into second gear. He was silhouetted in the open side door of Blackwater Hall, now completely free of ivy and painted a beautiful clematis blue. The smell of woodsmoke sat in the cool air and Albert held a tray of tea. Three cups. One each for Ellie, Jules and his son, who had just appeared from the warm interior of the house. ‘You’re not joining us, Albert?’ Ellie had said.
‘Not this morning, my dear, but you’ll be glad to know that Milo’s made the tea.’
They’d stood near the door, cradling their drinks and watching a heavy mist roll down Cottah Mountain. It clung to the sides of the fell as though for dear life, and as it reached the bottom, it dissipated like magic. Changed form until it could no longer be seen. As though, at that very moment, it decided it could simply . . . disappear.
Around them, piles of building materials covered the driveway. Scaffold boards, poles, stacks of purple Valentia slate. Bags of sharp sand and lime. Soon the work would begin. Blackwater Hall would come to life once again.
‘But how will you pay for it?’ Ellie had asked Milo when she’d visited them the week before. She’d taken on Bernie’s Meals on Wheels route; it took her around the parish, and its boundaries, as far as Blackwater Hall. With Milo moved in full time, Albert no longer needed the meals, but Ellie always put three aside and visited in the evening, so they could sit together and eat. Some days Albert knew who she was, and others they met as though for the first time.
‘I sold something,’ Milo had told her. ‘With Albert’s permission.’
The butterfly comb.
‘He knows about Charlotte. About who she was to him and how she died. Harriet and I decided; I told him.’
Ellie had gasped; she hadn’t expected it. ‘And?’
‘And the change in him has been remarkable. He’ll never be the man he might have been, so Harriet says, but on his good days he’s . . . better.’
‘And Tomas?’
Milo had shaken his head. ‘Harriet insists that he must never know that Tomas was his father.’
When they’d finished their tea, Albert had taken their cups. ‘Happy fishing, you youngsters!’ Ellie had noticed Jules’s delight at being included in the term, and as the three of them left for the lakeside, Milo had said, as natural as anything, ‘Thanks, Dad.’ Ellie’s heart had warmed at the look on Albert’s face.
‘Ready?’ said Jules now, his voice a whisper in the quiet morning.
Milo lifted the shovel and began to dig.
When Ellie had hung up the phone on a gobsmacked Jeremy – promising to get back to him by the end of the week – she’d taken a small box from her bag. Inside was the platinum comb that Dylan had given her; his olive branch. She ran her finger over its teeth, their ridges cool to the touch. It was a thing of beauty.
She’d closed the box, and left a note for Nils – John had arrived the week before and they were busy serving tea to a local book group, all smiles and cakes on the house – then walked up Ballinn’s main street to the post office. Three minutes later, she’d dropped a heavy padded envelope into the post box. She hadn’t bothered to add a note. The return of the comb would tell Dylan everything he needed to know.
The hole Milo had dug was now knee deep and two foot square. He put the spade aside. ‘That’ll do.’
Jules nodded. ‘Shall we?’
The three of them walked through the sparse undergrowth of the woods at the end of the lough. A wheelbarrow waited for them where the trees met the edge of the lawn.
It had been a week since Moira had sat Ellie down to reveal what she thought was a bombshell. She’d been nervous, her hands gripping a tea as weak as dishwater, her brow knitted in a knot that Ellie thought might be an attempt to look imploring.
‘The thing is, Ellie,’ she had said, ‘for so many years after your father died, I had you to think of. To care for. To put my energy into. But now you’ve flown the nest . . .’
Seventeen years ago. Ellie scratched her nose. Wondered whether to interrupt. She knew what was coming and felt a swell of happiness now that Moira was ready to admit it. But she understood – she had learned – that in order to speak the truth, we need the space to do it.
‘I must admit I’ve been—’
‘Delighted I was gone?’ Ellie had joked, trying to relax her mum. It had the opposite effect; Moira put her head in her hands. Ellie leaned over. ‘Oh, Mammy,’ she’d said, with warmth and comfort. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean . . .’
‘I’ve been lonely.’ Moira began to cry, a soft sound. A gentle, slow sob.
Ellie felt that her heart might burst. Moira suddenly looked smaller. Delicate. A woman with needs. Desires. Someone with a life outside the four walls of her home, outside of her daughter. Outside of their shared – and cherished – history. She’d leaned in and put her arms around her mum’s shoulders.
Moira wiped her eyes. ‘Silly old Mammy,’ she said, ‘blubbing like this.’
‘No, not silly.’
Moira took a deep breath. ‘There’s something I want to tell you.’
‘Is there?’ Ellie smiled conspiratorially.
‘What’s that grin for?’
‘Nothing . . . nothing . . .’ Ellie leaned back in her chair. ‘You know, Mammy, it’s been nearly twenty years since Dad died. And there isn’t a day when I don’t think about him. God, barely an hour . . .’
Moira nodded, her eyes welling once more.
Ellie reached out a hand, laid her fingers lightly on her mum’s. ‘What I mean is, he’s still here.’ She touched her heart, thought of the moment with Nils at Wynn’s Castle. ‘But you’ – she took Moira’s hand and squeezed it – ‘you’re here.’
‘So you know?’
‘I know nothing,’ said Ellie, ‘but I suspect everything.’ She grinned. ‘I’m kind of a detective now.’
‘He’s a good man.’
Ellie nodded, her heart full. Happy for her mum, sitting there in that small kitchen, her life expanding around her once again. She took both Moira’s hands into her own. ‘And I couldn’t be more pleased. For both of you.’
Now she looked across the wheelbarrow at Jules. ‘Ellie, you be careful. Of your back.’ Over his argyle jumper – this one had shades of blue – he was wearing a thick Puffa jacket. It was unzipped, ready for the exertion ahead. His eyes were bright in the morning light. He was shorter than Moira by half a head, and when they held hands, Ellie noticed, their fingers intertwined like the ivy that covered the walls of Blackwater Hall.
She made a strong-man gesture. ‘Let’s do it.’
They carried the stone between them, Jules and Ellie shoulder to shoulder at one end, Milo at the other, walking forwards, his arms behind him, gripping the rounded edges with hands that were larger than Ellie had previously noticed.
Jules held the stone upright in the hole while Ellie and Milo filled the base with rocks and topped it with soil so that it stood proud of the mound.
When Milo touched her shoulder and said, ‘Do you want to say something?’ – to which she’d shaken her head – a zing rang through her veins. A butterfly stomach; something she’d not felt for years.
Last week he’d asked her out for dinner. He didn’t call it a date specifically, but the nervousness in his voice suggested that it might be just that. It had been two days before she posted the comb to Dublin and she’d said she couldn’t, that she and Moira were taking a little trip. It was a throwaway comment, tossed out in the heat of the moment to give herself time. For what? To think? When she’d arrived back at Cahercillín Farm, she’d put the idea to her mum – who was equal parts delighted and confused – and they’d packed the car for a weekend in Clifden, where they’d spent two nights in a hotel she could ill afford. It was there that she told Moira about the fight with her father, that day when he’d walked out the door without looking back, and never returned. And Moira said all that mattered was that he’d loved Ellie more than life itself. That he would be so proud of her. Of everything she’d achieved. Of the woman she’d become.
Ellie reached into her jacket pocket, pulled out a sprig of gorse, brave yellow flowers hidden amongst spines. She’d plucked it from a bush at the edge of the woodland. She felt that Charlotte would like its simplicity. Its perseverance in the face of an approaching winter. Its courage at flowering when everything else had given up. Bending down, she placed it next to the stone.
When she’d returned from Galway, she had asked Milo to meet her in Procaffination. Over a slice of carrot cake – and pointed eyebrow waggles from Nils – she’d told him about her miscarriage, about Dylan. And he had told her about his divorce, his broken heart that was only now mending. She’d touched his hand and marvelled at its warmth. Hattie had invited him to Dublin to reassure him that the revelation about his biological grandparents – about Charlotte and Tomas – needn’t change anything. ‘But it does,’ he’d said. ‘Now I can choose whether the barony lives or dies.’ And? ‘And . . . I haven’t decided.’ But he’d smiled. ‘I think Charlotte would find a certain justice in it. Her grandson, Tomas’s grandson, inheriting down the female line. But she’d also relish the moment the peerage disappeared, just like that, confined to the recesses of history, where these things belong.’ He’d sighed then. ‘It’s ironic, isn’t it?’
‘What is?’
‘Either way, Charlotte wins.’
She’d smiled at that. ‘Yes,’ she’d said. ‘Charlotte wins.’ She thought of the girl, just nineteen when she’d left her life behind, embarked on a journey into the unknown so that she would never need to be separated from her child. She looked at Milo, felt a sense of calm, because although Charlotte was gone, a piece of her remained. Two pieces actually: Milo and Albert. One so damaged, the other in the image of his grandmother: stubborn, caring. Strong.
‘Milo?’ she’d said.
‘Yes?’
‘One day soon, in a month or two . . . will you ask me again? To dinner, I mean.’
Now, by the lake, she looked up from the stone and caught his eye as he kneeled beside her. Jules nodded. ‘Good job, Ellie,’ he said, patting her shoulder. ‘Very good job.’ He left them then, in the growing light.
Milo put out his hand and she took it. Still so warm despite the morning’s chill. He moved his fingers a little, and now they plaited together. Ellie ran her gaze over the text, white indentations on the rounded purple stone. It looked nothing like a grave, but already a piece of nature nestled into the side of the lake.
In memory of Charlotte Rathmore
1921–1941
They stayed a while, hand in hand, to watch Blackwater Hall emerge from darkness as the sun rose over the eastern reaches of Cottah Mountain. Before long, the house’s windows – peering from that ivy-clad exterior – began to twinkle and the blue slates that lay like scales on its roof turned to magenta in the golden morning light. Then, for a moment, a shadow crossed the lawn. The outline of a gentle curve. Reaching around the house. Gripping it in a hug.
A perfect circle.