The Forgotten Secret. Kathleen McGurl
I considered my options. I could drive back to Blackstown, try to find a public phone, or perhaps even find a hotel or B&B to stay in just for tonight. I’d be able to charge my phone and call Matt, or ask the B&B owners how to get electricity reconnected. But it was growing dark and I didn’t fancy driving the unfamiliar narrow lanes in the dark. I wasn’t a confident driver at the best of times. Paul usually did all the driving.
The alternative was to stick it out here at the farm. Find a torch or some candles. Manage without electricity for the first night, then go into Blackstown and get things sorted out in the morning. This option didn’t appeal – I fancied the idea of a B&B more – but then I imagined Paul’s sneering laugh if he heard about it. ‘Couldn’t even manage one night alone,’ he’d say. ‘You’re nothing without me, Clare.’
Funnily, that thought, and his voice sounding so clear in my head, made up my mind for me. I was something without him. I’d prove it. I’d deal with this somehow. I went through to the kitchen and rummaged through cupboards and drawers while there was still a little grey light creeping in at the windows. In a dresser drawer I found some matches. And in another cupboard was a box of cheap white candles.
‘We have light,’ I said to the empty room. And the oven ran off bottled gas so at least I’d be able to cook and boil water. I hadn’t brought anything to cook, but another search through the cupboards turned up half a pack of Barry’s teabags and an assortment of tinned food, some of which was still in date. I first cursed myself for not thinking to do some shopping in Blackstown before coming here, and then smiled as I realised I could make a meal of sorts with a tin of boiled new potatoes, a tin of corned beef and a tin of beans. It’d do.
I dug out the least burned and battered saucepan I could find in the kitchen, filled it with water and put it on the hob to boil. There was a collection of chipped mugs in a cupboard (and my favourite ‘World’s Best Mum’ one in the car, but it was bucketing down now so fetching that would have to wait) so I made myself a cup of tea. No milk, but black tea was better than no tea.
It was odd but as soon as I had a cup of tea in my hand and a candle lit and placed on the kitchen table, I felt better. I had light, I had a hot drink and I would be able to make myself a meal later. But first, before it was fully dark, I wanted to explore my new home.
It was a strange feeling, going round it this time. Last time, with Paul, had been all about my memories of the past as I recalled visiting here as a child. This time was all about the future, as I tried to envisage how I would clean up, decorate and use each room. It would be a big job. Poor old Uncle Pádraig had clearly not spent any money on the place for years. Seventies’ brown floral carpets clashed with Eighties’ cheap black ash-effect furniture. There was woodchip wallpaper painted peach on most walls.
Upstairs, ancient candlewick bedspreads covered lumpy mattresses. One bedroom was filled with boxes of old paperwork. I wondered if any of it would be interesting, or if it was just old bills and bank statements. One day I’d have to go through it all.
I chose the least damp-smelling room for my own, and set about making the bed with the best of the bedding available, making yet another note to buy new bed linen as soon as possible. Why hadn’t I brought some from home? We had far too many sets, and Paul would not even have noticed if some disappeared. I left a couple of candles on the bedside table for use later. The box of matches was in my jeans pocket.
The living room was the most habitable room. A worn-out armchair sat near the fireplace, angled so that the occupant had a view through the window across the fields. I sat down and contemplated the view as the rain stopped and the clouds parted to reveal the very last of a dusky sunset.
‘Well, this is nice,’ I told myself. And it was. It was mine. My chair, my house, my view. I could make it something special, somewhere the boys would want to come to visit. Somewhere I could bring friends to. Somewhere I could feel safe as I gradually cut ties to Paul and gained my independence. Arise and go now. I’d done it.
Sitting there, in that old armchair looking out at the view brought back memories of my childhood, when I’d visited Clonamurty Farm several times while Granny Irish was still alive. She was my mum’s mum, and lived with Uncle Pádraig in the farm that had been hers and Granddad’s. Pádraig had taken it over, and then Granddad had died when I was 3 so I don’t remember him.
I do remember Granny Irish though. So unlike Dad’s mum, who I called Nanna. Where Nanna was round, smiley and plump and always feeding me sweets and chocolate whenever my parents looked the other way, Granny Irish was tall, thin and rarely smiled. She would have been a good-looking woman in her youth, with her high cheekbones and startling blue eyes, but as an old woman she appeared (to me as a child, at least) forbidding and austere.
She habitually wore a long black dress, almost to her ankles, and a hand-knitted shawl in a nondescript shade of beige. Her hair was pinned up in a bun. She was an old-fashioned woman – even in the 1970s she was old-fashioned. Mum tried to buy her new, brightly coloured clothes and persuade her to have her hair done differently, but Granny Irish wouldn’t have it. ‘What was good enough for my mammy is good enough for me,’ she’d say, her County Meath accent so strong I could hardly understand her.
I think her looks, her manner, her strong accent and her belief that children should be tamed and kept out of sight were what made her seem such a distant, forbidding figure. As a young woman she’d worked as a maid in a big house not far from Clonamurty Farm. She would never talk of those days, though, no matter how much we children would pester her.
There were family legends about her that I’d heard later, mostly from my cousin David, of how she’d played a part in Ireland’s War of Independence. Near the end of the war, she’d been some sort of spy, he said, feeding information on movements of the British run paramilitary Royal Irish Constabulary back to the Irish Volunteers who were fighting for independence. David had spoken of her actions in reverent tones, as he did any Republican.
Granny Irish died when I was 11, and we came over for the funeral. I remember my cousin David telling me then that he’d always been a little fearful of her, even though he’d grown up having her around. ‘It was always so hard to please her,’ he’d said. ‘Hard to make her smile, or get her to talk. But I always wanted to hear her stories of the war, and write them down before they were all forgotten.’
I shuffled in my chair, and felt an ominous bulge in the seat beneath me, suggesting a spring had worked loose of its ties. And the fabric on the arms was worn with the stuffing poking through. Well then, maybe stripping it back and reupholstering it from the woodwork up could be a good first project for me. As soon as I’d sorted out the utilities and cleaned the place up, of course. And now that I was here in Ireland, in my grandmother’s old house, I thought I’d like to find out more about my ancestry as well. Maybe some of those papers upstairs could have belonged to Granny Irish. It’d be good to find out more about her.
I should have asked Mum and Uncle Pádraig more about her, while they were still around. Why was it always the case that you left these things too late? All those memories, buried with the last generation.
Ellen, October 1919
As the weeks passed, Ellen fell into a routine of work during the week, meeting Jimmy on Saturday evenings, and spending Sundays at home with her father and Digger before returning to Carlton House. Digger at least was always pleased to see her, even if Da would grumble about having to cook his own meals.
Ellen was enjoying her job, now that Siobhan was acting a little more friendly towards her. They’d established a habit of chatting for half an hour or so every night at bedtime, and Ellen felt a tentative friendship towards the other girl. Madame Carlton was a good person to work for, and Ellen was growing used to the idea that the house was used by the Irish Republicans, with men arriving for clandestine meetings that took place after dark. Occasionally rooms were designated out-of-bounds to all staff, for reasons Ellen could only guess at.
On