Secrets of the Lighthouse (38 page)

Dylan sat up expectantly. A shadow of concern darkened his face. For a moment, his eyes assumed the haunted look they had had the first time Ellen met him, and she felt her heart buckle with
compassion. He stood up. She was only intending to ask him to step outside, but she felt herself carried on a wave of emotion and was unable to control herself. Here was the man who had given her
life but never known her. How could her mother have done this to him? How could she have done it to
her
? Ellen fought back tears. She didn’t want to break down in the pub, in front
of all these people, but her whole chest was aching with the effort of restraining her feelings. ‘Ellen?’ Dylan enquired, gazing at her searchingly. He looked so worried that Ellen put
her arms around him. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

‘I
know
,’ she whispered and held him tightly. It took a moment for her words to register. Then he relaxed and she felt his arms tighten around her, containing her trembling
body.

‘Oh, Ellen.’ He groaned and his voice seemed to resonate from deep inside his chest.

‘I stole one of your CDs, but I’m not sorry.’ She pulled away and gazed at him as if for the first time. Conor was right, she had his eyes. ‘I should have guessed,
shouldn’t I?’

Dylan stiffened as a murmur rippled around the pub. He turned to Conor. ‘Let’s go and have some tea. I’m starving, I could eat a horse.’

Joe was watching with interest. ‘Jaysus, what’s all this about? Am I missing something?’ His father, whose face was long and serious, shot him a look that silenced him as
surely as a slap. He said nothing but watched pensively as Conor, Dylan and Ellen stepped out into the night.

Once outside, Conor took Ellen’s hand. ‘Do you want me to leave you and Dylan alone together? I don’t want to impose.’

‘No, I want you to come,’ she replied. ‘You don’t mind, do you, Dylan?’

‘Come on, then. I don’t know about you, Conor, but I need a whiskey. I’ve got something soft for the little thief. You don’t get your slippery fingers from me,
Ellen.’

‘I wanted to hear your songs,’ she explained, following him down the road. Her hand still held Conor’s tightly to steady her legs, which felt strangely dislocated from her
body.

‘Jaysus, what’s your mother going to say about this?’ Dylan groaned, thrusting his hands into his pockets.

‘I won’t tell her.’

‘That’s what you think, but everything comes to light one way or another.’

‘I have a right to know who made me.’

‘It’s going to upset the apple cart,’ Dylan warned.

Ellen was aware of one or two other revelations which were going to upset her mother’s apple cart. ‘I have so many questions,’ she began.

‘At least give the man a whiskey before you interrogate him,’ said Conor.

‘Wise words indeed,’ Dylan replied, stopping at his front door.

‘For a community that thrives on gossip, you sure know how to keep secrets,’ said Ellen.

As they stepped inside, Finch jumped up at Conor, sniffing Magnum on his clothes and wagging his tail wildly. ‘Down, boy!’ Dylan commanded, taking off his coat and beanie and hanging
them on the peg in the corridor. Conor took Ellen’s coat and hung it up with his, then put his hand in the small of her back, accompanying her into the sitting room where Dylan was already
pouring two large glasses of whiskey. He took a swig then handed the other tumbler to Conor.

‘I’ll go and fetch my Coke,’ said Ellen, walking on into the kitchen. She heard the two men talking in the sitting room but not what they were saying. She opened the fridge.
Besides bottles of soda and a few Cokes there was little in the way of food. She found a glass in the cupboard above the sideboard and opened her can. She looked about her and considered the man
who had turned out to be her father. It was too momentous to digest. It made sense, certainly. It answered questions, too. But where did it leave her in a family where she had already felt out of
place? Where did it leave her father? Nothing had changed except knowledge but somehow that knowledge changed everything. The past thirty-three years could not be altered or erased, and yet her
perception of them had now shifted. She saw those years in a different light and therefore, in her mind, they
had
changed. The tingling in her body reflected her shock, but she wondered
why she wasn’t reacting in the normal way. Why she wasn’t tearing out her hair, accusing her mother of deception and bewailing her life as a lie. She and Dylan had every reason to tear
the place apart with fury.

When she went back into the sitting room, Dylan was sitting in the armchair, smoking a Rothmans, and Conor was on the sofa. Their glasses were already half empty. The golden liquid glistened in
the yellow light of the lamps. Ellen took the space on the sofa between them and thought how extraordinary it was that these two men she had only recently met were now two of the most important in
her life. A couple of weeks ago she hadn’t known either of them and her life had been so much poorer.

Dylan smiled at her with affection, which Ellen now recognized as paternal. ‘So, you know,’ he said simply.

‘I know,’ she replied, suddenly feeling bashful. ‘Your songs are very beautiful.’

‘Thank you. I was inspired.’

‘Surely, if you sang about the child you lost everyone who knew you and my mother must have known you fathered her child?’

‘No one knew she was pregnant,’ he said.

‘Did
you
know?’ Conor asked.

‘Not at the time.’ Dylan took another swig. His Adam’s apple rose and fell sharply as he swallowed. ‘It was in the letter.’

‘The one Mum sent you after I was born?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Do you still have it?’ Conor asked.

Dylan nodded. ‘I still have it. I’m a sentimental old fool. Ellen, bring me that cardboard box.’ He pointed to the top of the tall bureau. ‘You’ll have to climb on
the chair.’ Ellen could just see the box peeping out from behind the decorative crest at the top of the piece of furniture.

‘Let me,’ said Conor, putting his glass on the coffee table. ‘I’m tall.’ Ellen watched him stand on the chair and reach up. He lifted the box down and handed it to
Dylan. Dylan settled it on his lap and lifted the lid. Ellen was curious to see what was inside.

Dylan rummaged about until he found the letter. He popped his cigarette between his lips and pulled the folded piece of paper out of the envelope. Ellen recognized her mother’s pale-blue
writing paper and the family crest engraved in gold on the flap. The letter itself was headed in the same gold with the address at Eaton Court. After looking at it for a moment, Dylan handed it to
Ellen. She and Conor read it together.

‘Does that answer your questions?’ Dylan asked when Ellen had finished reading.

‘Yes,’ Ellen replied quietly. ‘It doesn’t sound like Mum at all.’

Conor noticed her flushed face and took her hand. ‘Why didn’t you bring her home?’ he asked Dylan.

Dylan blew out a cloud of smoke. ‘I had no money. What could I give her? What could I give
you
?’ he said to Ellen.

‘I don’t think she cared about that,’ Ellen argued.

‘Not when she wrote the letter, perhaps, but I knew your mother.’

‘Wharton’s Ellen Olenska didn’t care for money,’ said Conor.

‘This one did,’ Dylan added. ‘Listen, she was married. She was Lady Trawton. I thought about this long and hard. Anthony thought you were his. If I went bowling in there,
claiming to be the father of his child, think of the scandal that would have caused. I couldn’t do it to Maddie. She’d made her decision. I’m not a religious man but I
wasn’t ready to break up a family.’

‘So, you walked away?’ said Conor.

‘I walked away. She never even knew I’d gone to see her.’

‘And now, here I am,’ said Ellen shyly.

Dylan smiled, incredulous. ‘Here you are. Out of the blue.’

‘Who else knows?’ Conor asked.

‘Your grandmother knew because Peg told her, which means Father Michael knows, because he knows everything.’

‘Oh, Father Michael knows,’ interrupted Ellen, recalling their conversation at Desmond and Alanna’s house. ‘When I sat next to him at lunch, he assumed I had already
worked it out. He didn’t mention me being your daughter, Dylan. I think he took it for granted that I already knew. Although one thing baffles me now. He suggested my mother had to forgive
her mother. He gave me a very meaningful look when he said it. But what did she have to forgive
her
for?’

Dylan looked blank. ‘I don’t know.’

‘You could ask Peg?’ Conor suggested.

‘Of course, Peg must know,’ said Ellen.

‘But you’re here,’ said Dylan, his big, sentimental eyes shining with emotion. ‘I hoped we’d meet one day and here you are, in my sitting room. In my life.
Who’d believe it?’ His chin trembled and his mouth wobbled into a grin. ‘One minute I had nothing but memories and now I have a daughter. A daughter who sings like an
angel.’

A while later the food was ready and they sat down to eat at the small kitchen table. Dylan produced cold meat and cheese. He asked Conor about his new project and the two men
discussed composers who might be suitable to write the film score. Ellen listened contentedly as they analysed the great writers and the movies they had written for. ‘You know Elmer Bernstein
wrote the soundtrack to the film of
The Age of Innocence
,’ said Dylan.

‘I recall it was nominated for an Academy Award for best original score,’ Conor replied. ‘But lost out to—’

‘
Schindler’s List
,’ Dylan interjected. ‘It was a great film and I rarely say that a film does justice to a novel.’

‘You’re right,’ Conor agreed. ‘It’s one of my favourites. Ellen’s never seen it.’

‘But you read the book?’ Dylan asked.

‘I finished it,’ she replied. ‘It’s got a sad ending,’ she added to Conor. ‘So, Ellen is an
un
lucky name.’

He squeezed her hand. ‘Don’t reduce yourself to a character in a novel.’

‘Your name represents hope and love,’ interjected Dylan. ‘And what’s luck if it didn’t bring you to my door?’

‘And to mine,’ Conor agreed.

Dylan raised his whiskey glass. ‘I’d like to make a toast.’

‘Go on,’ said Conor.

‘To Ellen, for walking into my life like a spring breeze full of optimism. The future looks brighter because you’re in it.’ His eyes watered and he blinked self-consciously.
‘I never thought I’d say that.’

Conor raised his glass, too. ‘ To Ellen.’ His smile was full of gratitude. ‘I couldn’t agree more.’

It was after midnight when they parted. A light drizzle was carried inland off the sea and the sky was dark. Ellen embraced Dylan. They held each other tightly, silently
affirming their determination not to allow any more years to come between them. Dylan stood in the doorway and watched them walk up the road, hand in hand, until they had disappeared round the
corner. Then he went back inside and closed the door behind him.

Conor drove Ellen back to Peg’s. ‘Thank you for coming with me,’ she said, as he pulled up in front of the house.

‘I’m glad I came. You made Dylan a very happy man tonight. But how do
you
feel?’

‘I’m fine. I should be devastated, but I’m not.’