Secrets of the Lighthouse (36 page)

So, Madeline is alone with her anxiety because her husband does not perceive the true nature of his daughter’s running away. To him, she is simply taking a break from the stress of her
impending wedding. But to Madeline, her daughter is repeating what
she
did some thirty-three years ago, and with her flight she is running her nails through the silt at the bottom of
Madeline’s orderly life, clouding the water with memories she would rather forget.

So, it is easy for me to whisper into her consciousness at night, because the seed of suspicion has already been planted by Madeline’s own guilt. Ireland is on her mind, and when she is
sleeping it is in her dreams, for she tosses and mumbles and I intuit that scenes from her past are now resurfacing and beginning to haunt her, like corpses resurrected in a graveyard. So, I haunt
her yet more. I whisper the words that carry the most pain: Dylan, Ellen Olenska, Dylan, Ellen Olenska, over and over again. Remember, time is not an issue for me. I can remain at her ear for days
and not grow weary or bored. And so I do, and drop by drop I water the seed and watch it grow, until I see the first green shoot of my labours.

‘Ireland!’ she gasps one morning, sitting up in bed and pushing her eyemask onto her forehead. ‘Ireland!’ She prods her husband, who lies sleeping beside her. It is dawn
and the rumble of early traffic can be heard like the distant roar of the sea. ‘Anthony, wake up. I know where she is.’ She switches on the light at her bedside table.

Anthony rolls onto his back and opens his eyes with a groan. ‘You know where she is?’ he murmurs patiently, looking at his watch. ‘How do you know?’

‘I sense it. I can’t think why I didn’t think of it before.’

‘Darling, why would she have gone to Ireland? She doesn’t know anyone there.’

‘Because it’s the one place she knows I won’t look for her.’

Anthony puts his hand on her arm. It is the first affectionate gesture I have seen him make. ‘You’re driving yourself mad with this, Madeline. You’ve got to stop worrying about
her. She’s not a child. She’ll come back.’

‘No, I’m sure I’m right.’

‘Did you dream about Ireland?’

‘Yes.’ She gasps, as if he has just touched an open wound.

‘Come on, let’s have some breakfast.’

She climbs out of bed and hurries into the bathroom. ‘I need confirmation. You know that silly Emily never called me back, so I’m going to go around and see her myself. The mountain
will go to Muhammad.’

‘If you like, darling,’ he replies, wearily.

‘Yes, I’m going to get it out of her one way or another. This is going to stop right now. I’ve had enough.’ She stares at her face in the mirror, defeated a moment by the
onslaught of age which is at its most aggressive in the mornings. ‘How selfish of Ellen to put me through this! It’s spoiling my beauty!’

That evening, I follow her to a white stucco building in Pimlico. It is dark and windy and the pavements glisten with rain. She sits in her chauffeur-driven Bentley, watching the window like a
thief waiting to pounce. It is cold. The exhaust from the car disperses into the icy air like fog and there is a grey mist around the street lamps. I feel heavy and dark in my soul, as if the night
is somehow penetrating my being and dragging me deeper into my limbo and further away from the light, which I know is out there somewhere, beyond my powers of perception now.

At last, a young woman in a belted coat and woollen hat appears out of the shadows and hurries up the steps to her front door. She fumbles in her bag for the key. Madeline does not wait for her
to unlock the door and disappear inside. She is too shrewd for that. Instead, she climbs out before the chauffeur can open the door for her and in a moment she is right behind her.

‘Emily!’

The girl turns, her face white beneath her black hat. ‘Lady Trawton!’ She has been taken by surprise. She looks as if she has just seen a ghost. I don’t think she’d look
any more frightened were
I
to materialize before her.

‘As you didn’t return my call, I decided to pay you a visit.’

‘I . . .’

‘Why don’t we go inside? It’s much too cold to be standing out here.’

Emily unlocks the door with trembling fingers and they both step into the hall. Her apartment is on the first floor and neither speaks as they climb the narrow staircase. Madeline looks around
the small flat with detachment. She has no interest in it at all. I can tell you that it has infinitely more charm than No. 12 Eaton Court. Emily takes off her coat. She is wearing a fashionable
skirt to the knee and fine leather boots. In the light of the apartment, I can see that she is a pretty young woman with light-brown hair, high cheekbones and deep-set brown eyes. She’s too
thin, which is the modern malaise, and if I were her mother I’d bake her a few more spuds to fatten her up. Madeline remains in the middle of the sitting room, without taking off her coat.
She isn’t intending to stay long. Just long enough to have her theory confirmed. I can tell that Emily doesn’t stand a chance against Madeline Trawton. No one does.

‘So, you know why I’ve come,’ Madeline begins crisply.

Emily has stopped shaking. She wanders into the kitchen, which is attached to the sitting room, and takes a bottle of Chardonnay from the fridge. ‘I don’t know about you, Lady
Trawton, but I need a glass of wine at the end of my day.’

‘I know where she is, Emily.’

The girl pours the wine into a glass. She cannot drink it fast enough. No sooner has she put down the bottle than the glass is on her lips.

‘She’s in Ireland,’ Madeline states, as if it is an immutable fact. ‘Don’t look so surprised. It was inevitable that I was going to find out eventually. I
wasn’t born yesterday.’

‘Who told you?’ Emily asks, without even trying to protest.

‘I can’t tell you, I’m afraid.’

Emily gulps her wine and swallows loudly.

‘I want you to telephone her and tell her to come back.’

‘I can’t do that. I don’t have her number.’

‘You have her mobile telephone number, surely. She’ll answer for
you
.’

‘She threw it into the sea.’

Madeline is frustrated. ‘What a silly thing to do. What’s got into her?’

Emily looks anxious, then she blurts, ‘She doesn’t want to marry William.’

Madeline is shocked. ‘Of course she does,’ she snaps.

‘No, she really doesn’t.’ Emily’s shoulders drop in defeat, as if she is aware that she is betraying her friend and feels guilty.

‘She’s just got cold feet.’

‘It’s more than that. She doesn’t love him.’

‘She doesn’t know what she wants.’

Emily drains her glass and refills it, then leans back against the counter. ‘She told me she’s fallen in love with Connemara and never wants to come back.’

Madeline’s face swells, the colour of a pepper. Emily recovers, like an athlete who is back in the race after a brief stumble.

‘What do you mean, she’s fallen in love with Connemara? She’s only been away a fortnight.’

Emily shrugs. ‘I don’t know. She told me a week ago. They’re all singing “Danny Boy” in the pub, which is called the Pot of Gold.’

Madeline looks unsteady on her feet. Her voice grows quiet. ‘And she said she never wants to come back?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s ridiculous.’ But the venom has gone out of her tone. She sounds defeated.

‘But true. I can assure you, wild horses wouldn’t drag her up the aisle to marry William.’

‘Oh, it won’t take as much as that. Not after I’ve spoken to her. I’ll go and bring her back myself.’

‘What does it matter if she doesn’t want to marry William? It’s
her
life . . .’

For a moment, I see Madeline’s carefully constructed facade crack slightly, as if she is a porcelain doll, breaking from the inside. She blanches. Her skin goes very white, against which
her lips are as red as blood. She opens her mouth and lets out a little gasp. Her shoulders droop. I wonder whether Emily has noticed how this stiff, indomitable woman has suddenly taken on the
demeanour of a lost child. She is trying to put her thoughts into words, but they aren’t forming as they should. Emily takes another sip, seemingly oblivious to the pain which is so raw and
desperate in the older woman’s eyes. It is as if her tormented soul is crying out, but only I can hear it. Emily stands quite still, triumphant even, for she has shaken Ellen’s mother
to her core.

Without uttering another word, Madeline flees. She cannot explain to Emily what she feels. I don’t think she can explain to anyone. But something has rattled her and it is momentous. She
almost runs into the street. She tells her chauffeur to leave without her. She wants to walk home. There is no time for him to persuade her to get into the car, for she is already striding over the
tarmac. It is a cold night and there is a gale, but Madeline doesn’t care. I feel her need to be alone in the wind. The car drives off slowly, in case she changes her mind and waves for him
to come back. But she doesn’t, and eventually it disappears into the traffic.

Madeline begins to cry just as it starts to rain. She wanders slowly up the pavement, hands in pockets, shoulders hunched, her hair falling flat and wet about her face. Like a stricken animal in
search of a private place to lie down and lick her wounds, she staggers off the main street, down dark alleys and narrow roads, until she finds a bench. She sits down on the watery seat and puts
her head in her hands. Her sobbing shakes her whole body. I wonder what she is thinking. As I focus hard, I think I can tell.

I should feel compassion. But all I feel is a sense of triumph because now she will go to Ireland and bring Ellen back. She will take her daughter away from Conor and once again my husband will
belong to me. I don’t imagine the girl will fight her mother. I have seen Madeline at her most formidable and she is a force to be reckoned with. Ellen will marry William. He is the right man
for her, after all. Ireland will be reduced to a bittersweet memory. Did she really think she would fit in there?

I watch Madeline grow soggier and soggier, until her sobbing dwindles to the occasional sniff and shudder. She remains there for a long time, in the drizzle, staring ahead as if her memories are
being played out in front of her. She is lost in thought, far, far away, and I am trying to discern what she is seeing. But the strange thing is, as she sits there with her hair sodden and her
make-up run, she looks like Ellen. Beneath the immaculate Lady Trawton is a young woman whose spirit is broken. I imagine this is what Ellen will look like when Conor turns away from her and she is
plunged into the shadows along with all the other wrecks he has abandoned.

Strangely, I feel a sickness in my soul. It rises up from somewhere and fills me with sadness. I know it is compassion and I despise myself for my weakness. Compassion will not get me what I
want. Compassion will lose me everything I treasure. I focus on my purpose and after a while I sense the familiar darkness surrounding me like a cloak as the compassion is forced away by my
complete and utter loathing for Ellen.

Suddenly a Bentley turns the corner and the headlights shine on the bedraggled woman sitting alone on the bench. It pulls up beside her. Madeline snaps out of her trance and takes a deep breath.
Her face registers her surprise as she recognizes the car. The door is flung open and Anthony steps out in a heavy coat, gloves and hat. He throws a blanket around her shoulders and helps her to
her feet. She does not resist. I watch her climb into the car and think how much she looks like a child, being cared for by a patient, long-suffering father.

She rests her head against his shoulder as the chauffeur drives back to Eaton Court. No one speaks. For a while she was back in Ireland, sitting there on that bench, but now she has returned to
the life she chose thirty-three years ago, in the arms of the man she preferred over Dylan. She has stared into the pit of her past, but I know it will only strengthen her resolve.

Ellen now felt as if she had always lived in Ballymaldoon with Aunt Peg. Although she had only been there just over two weeks, the place felt like home. She had become a
familiar face about town. The locals greeted her as she went to buy groceries for her aunt or sat in the Pot of Gold with Johnny and Joe, or Dylan. People no longer stared at her as if she were an
alien, but accepted her as a Byrne. Her uncles had seen to that, forming a thick, protective wall around her, sending out a very clear message to the community that she was one of them.

She enjoyed helping Alanna in her shop. There weren’t many customers, but friends and family stopped by from time to time for a ‘chinwag’ and she was never bored. Besides, she
enjoyed Alanna’s company. Her aunt was an uncomplicated woman with a dry sense of humour and a generous spirit, and was full of local gossip which she was only too ready to share. The two of
them whiled away the hours chatting over endless cups of tea.

In the evenings, when she wasn’t jamming with Dylan, she was playing chess with Oswald, or making up a four at the bridge table with Oswald, Peg and Joe. The days were punctuated with
visits to the Pot of Gold, where she would always find her uncles and cousins and where Dylan would be waiting for her with a new idea for a song.

By Friday, her ache for Conor was almost unbearable. They spoke and texted but she missed his physical presence dreadfully. William and her mother had been relegated to the very back of her mind
and she no longer worried about them. Conor filled every spare thought and he was so dominant there was little room for anyone else.

When he arrived on Friday afternoon, he picked her up at Peg’s as before, but instead of driving her to Reedmace House, he stopped in front of the castle.

‘What are we doing here?’ she asked, excited at the prospect of being admitted into this inner sanctum she had assumed to be off limits.

‘I brought Mam and the children down. But I thought, you’re my girl and this is my house. There’s little furniture but I could see no reason why we shouldn’t use
it.’ He slipped his hand beneath her hair and wound it around her neck. ‘And here we get total privacy.’