The Girl on the Cliff (11 page)

‘Hello, Alexander, it’s Grania Ryan here. Aurora is very well indeed, and I’m sorry to bother you, but I just wanted
to check that it was all right for Aurora to take some dancing lessons. The one she did today she really enjoyed, and she wants to continue. Perhaps you could give me a quick call back or even send me a text, and –’ Grania thought about it swiftly before she said – ‘if I don’t hear from you in the next two or three days, I’ll take it that it’s fine. Hope all is well with you, bye.’

Despite herself, Grania felt apprehensive as she climbed into bed at eleven that night. Her senses were alert to hear footsteps along the corridor, and however hard she tried, sleep would not come. At three o’clock – the time she had woken on the previous nights – Grania tiptoed into Aurora’s room to find the child peacefully asleep. Tiptoeing back out again, she reached for the heavy pile of envelopes her mother had given to her. Undoing the string that bound them together, she opened the first one, and began to read …

So, the story has begun. And some of our characters are in place. Including me, of course. As usual, I take centre stage. I look back and see what a precocious child I was. But also ‘troubled’, for which adults forgive a lot.

I will not spoil the story by giving too much away about my midnight wanderings. But I have put in a little for ‘effect’, especially about me. Besides, in Act Two of The Sleeping Beauty, the gossamer curtain between reality and dreams is opened by Princess Aurora herself, with the help of the Lilac Fairy.

Who is to say what is real or imagined?

I told you from the start I believed in magic.

I’ve also discovered today that not only am I named after a princess in a fairy tale, but a mystical set of lights that brighten the night sky. I like the idea of being a star, shining down forever from the heavens, although I’m quite glad my second name isn’t ‘Borealis’.

Now, we move back in time, and I must start to exercise my writing powers more proficiently. Up until this point, I’ve known the living, breathing protagonists:

Grania, who grieved so much for the baby she had lost, and was in such a muddle about the man she loved. I can see now how vulnerable she was. Easy prey for a child needing a mother, and a handsome father struggling to cope.

Kathleen, whose past knowledge makes her desperate, yet impotent, to protect her child.

And Matt, dear Matt, so confused and helpless, and at the mercy of the strange breed, which men, it seems to me, can’t do with or without
–

Women.

We will meet many females in the next hundred pages. We will meet good men and bad, too – a cast of characters to do justice to any fairy tale. It was a darker time then, a time when little value was placed on human life, when survival for the most part was all we strove for.

I wish I could say that we have learned our lesson.

But humans rarely look back to the past, until they have made the same mistakes. By which time their opinions are considered irrelevant, as they are apparently too old to understand the young. Which is why the human race will remain as flawed yet as magical as we are.

We are returning now to that same clifftop in Dunworley Bay, where my story began …

‘My mobilisation papers have come. I’m to leave for Wellington Barracks in London tomorrow.’

Mary, who had been enjoying the unusual blue of the sea below her – the hot August day turning the murky, forbidding colours of Dunworley Bay into a picture postcard of the French Riviera – stopped dead in her tracks and released Sean’s hand.

‘What?!’ she exclaimed.

‘Mary, pet, you knew as well as I did that this was coming. I’m a reserve in the Irish Guards and now that war has broken out against Germany, I’m needed to help the Allies win it.’

Mary stared hard at her fiancé, wondering if the sun had gone to his head. ‘But we’re to be married in a month’s time! We’re halfway through building our house! You can’t just up and leave!’

Sean smiled down at her, his gentle eyes understanding her shock. To be sure, it had been a shock to him too, even though he was a reserve. But a thought in your mind and the reality of it happening were two different things altogether. He reached down to pull Mary to him – at six foot three to her five foot one, it was a big reach – but Mary resisted.

‘Come now, Mary, I must go and fight for my country.’

‘Sean Ryan!’ Mary put her hands on her hips. ‘’Tis not your country you’ll be fighting for! ’Tis Britain, the country that’s oppressed
this
country for the last three hundred years.’

‘Ah, Mary, even Mr Redmond is urging us to fight for the British; you know yourself about the bill that is going to be passed by Parliament giving us independence here in Ireland. They’ve done us a favour and now we must repay it.’

‘Favour! Letting those to whom this land belongs have a say in its rule? Ah well,’ Mary sat down abruptly on a convenient rock, ‘I’d say ’tis a pretty big favour they’ve granted us.’ She crossed her arms and stared staunchly ahead of her into the bay.

‘You’ll be signing up for the Nationalist Party soon, too, will you?’ Sean understood her need to blame anyone else for the catastrophe he’d brought to her life.

‘If ’twill keep my man by my side where he belongs, I’ll do anything.’

Sean crouched on the ground beside her, his long legs almost to his ears as he bent them. He reached for her hand but she nudged him away. ‘Mary, please. All it means is that our plans will be delayed, not cancelled.’

Mary continued to stare out to sea, ignoring him. Eventually she sighed. ‘And there was me thinking the soldiering business was a boy’s game, a chance for you to play with guns and feel big with yourself. Never did I think it could be real. And I would lose you to it,’ she added softly.

‘Sweetheart,’ Sean offered his hand again and this time
she accepted it, ‘it wouldn’t matter whether I was a reservist or not. John Redmond is wanting all us Irish boys to volunteer. The way I see it, at least I’ve had some training, whereas some of the other fellows will have none. And the Irish Guards – ’tis a true and proud institution. I’ll be with my own out there, Mary; we’ll give Jerry a lesson he’ll never forget. And I’ll be returning to you and Ireland soon, don’t you worry.’

Another long silence ensued before Mary was able to voice her thoughts, choked with emotion now. ‘Ah, Sean,
will
you be back? There’s no guarantee of that, you know it as well as I do.’

Sean stood up, pulling himself to his full height. ‘Look at me, Mary, I’ve the kind of build that was made for fighting. Your husband-to-be is no wimp of a man who can be brought down by a few Germans. I could take on three of them at one go and they’d not be a match for me.’

She looked up at him, tears in her eyes. ‘But a single bullet in the heart doesn’t worry about the size of you.’

‘Don’t you be thinking thoughts like that, pet. I know how to take care of myself. I’ll be back to you sooner than you know it.’

Mary studied his eyes and saw the glint of excitement there. While all she could see was the possibility of his death, Sean was imagining glory on the battlefield. She realised this was what he’d been waiting for. ‘So, you leave for London tomorrow?’

‘Yes. There’s transport from Cork city, taking us Munster reservists up to Dublin to catch the boat to England.’

Mary dropped her eyes from the skyline and stared instead at the thick, coarse grass beneath her feet. ‘When will I see you again?’

‘Mary, I can’t be knowing that,’ Sean replied softly. ‘To be sure, they’ll give us leave and I’ll be straight home to you.’ He took her hand in his. ‘’Tis not grand timing, but there’s not much to be done about it.’

‘How will your daddy manage without you on the farm?’ Mary asked plaintively.

‘The women will do what they always have at a time like this; they’ll take on the man’s work. Sure, when my daddy was fighting in the Boer War, my mammy did a grand job altogether.’

‘Have you told her yet?’

‘No, I wanted to break the news to you first. Telling her is my next task. And I must do that now. Ah, Mary. What can I say?’ Sean put his arms around her shoulders and hugged her to him. ‘We’ll get wed as soon as I return. Now, pet, will you walk back down to the farm with me?’

‘No,’ Mary shook her head slowly. ‘I think I need to be by myself for a while. You go off and tell your mammy.’

Sean nodded silently, kissed her on top of her head and straightened up. ‘I’ll be calling round later to see you, to … say goodbye.’

‘Yes,’ she whispered to herself as Sean began to walk slowly back down the hill. She waited until he was out of sight, then she put her head in her hands and wept. Inwardly, she raged at the God she’d spent so many hours confessing her sins to. Yet Mary could not think of one thing she had done wrong to deserve this catastrophe.

In her old life – the life that had existed up to twenty
minutes ago before he’d broken the news – she was to be Mrs Sean Ryan in under four weeks’ time. She was to have, for the first time in her life, a home of her own, a family and respectability. And, above all, a man who wasn’t bothered about her unknown provenance, but simply loved her for being her. On the day she wed, her past was to have disappeared. She would have left her position as a maid at Dunworley House, scrubbing floors and fetching and carrying for the Lisle family. And would have her very own floors to scrub.

Not that young Sebastian Lisle, her employer, had been anything but kind to her during her time at the house; he had come to the nuns who ran the orphanage nearly four years ago, when she had been fourteen, looking for a girl to fill a place on his household staff. Mary had begged to be considered for the position. The Reverend Mother had been less than keen – Mary was a bright girl and a hard worker who’d been able to help the other orphaned children with their reading and writing. She was an asset to the convent, and Mary knew that the Reverend Mother’s greatest desire was for her to take the veil and remain at the convent for the rest of her life.

This was not Mary’s wish; she had too many doubts – kept to herself – about a God who allowed his flock so much suffering. Motherless babies left on the doorstep of the convent, merely to die unloved and in pain a few months later during a diphtheria outbreak, or perhaps measles. She’d been taught that suffering was part of the path on the way to Heaven and God Himself, and so she tried hard to believe in His goodness. But a life spent devoted to Him, never moving on or seeing the world,
cloistered inside the walls of a convent, was not what she believed was right for her.

The Reverend Mother had given in gracefully; she could see that Mary, blessed with her intelligent, enquiring mind and quick wits, would not settle for what she herself had chosen. However, she was unhappy at Mary beginning her life as a servant.

‘I was thinking that you could be taking a position as a governess,’ she’d urged. ‘You have a natural gift for teaching children. I could make enquiries … to see if there is such a position available when you turn eighteen.’

To fourteen-year-old Mary, the idea of waiting another four years for her life to begin was unthinkable. ‘Reverend Mother, I’ll not be caring what I do. Please, I’d like at least to be given the opportunity to meet Mr Lisle when he comes here,’ Mary had begged.

Finally, the Reverend Mother had agreed. ‘You may meet him, and then it will be God’s will to decide if you go.’

Happily for Mary, this seemed to be the case. Out of the six girls the Reverend Mother had put forward for the position as ‘tweeny’ – the in-between maid – Sebastian Lisle had chosen her.

Mary had packed her few possessions and left the convent without a backward glance.

As the Reverend Mother had suggested, her position was far below Mary’s capabilities but, after her years at the convent, she was not afraid of hard work. The room in the attic, which she shared with one other maid, was enough to thrill her after spending her entire life in a dormitory with eleven other girls. Mary gave of her best and worked diligently.

And it wasn’t long before the young master noticed.

In the space of a few months, Mary was promoted to parlour maid. As she served the master and his guests, Mary watched, she listened and she learned. The Lisle family were English. They had come to Dunworley House two hundred years ago, to take control of the heathen Irish who inhabited the land the British believed was theirs. Mary learned to decipher their clipped accent, became used to their strange, formal traditions and their instilled and unshakeable sense of superiority.

It was not a demanding household to be part of. The master, Sebastian Lisle, a young man of eighteen, lived there with his mother, Evelyn, who had lost her husband to the Boer War and now relied on her son to run the house for her. Mary learned that Evelyn Lisle also had an older son, Lawrence, who had followed his father into the diplomatic service and was currently abroad. The Lisles had another residence in London; a grand, white house that reminded Mary of a wedding cake, from the painting she had seen.

One day, Mary dreamed, she would leave Ireland and go off and see the world. But until then, she saved up the few shillings she was paid every week and stored them under her mattress.

And it had been two years later that she’d met Sean Ryan.

The housekeeper had been laid up with her chest, and had not wanted to walk down the hill to the farm in the pouring rain to collect the eggs and the milk. So she had sent Mary.

Mary had walked down the cliff and arrived, soaking
wet, in the yard in front of Dunworley Farmhouse. Knocking on the door, she had stood dripping outside it.

‘Can I be helping you there, miss?’ came a deep voice from behind her. Mary turned round and looked up, and up again, into the gentle green eyes of a young man. He was unusually tall and broad-shouldered – built for the land, she felt. This was a man that you just knew for sure would protect you through any bother. With those strong, muscled arms around your shoulders, you’d be as safe as houses, whatever the trouble.