Page 5 of The Book of Irish Secrets
I hope this letter finds you well and happy. I am a huge fan of your Facebook page and feel excited at the prospect of working for you. Having been married to a difficult man for anumber of years, I know how to deal with grumpy people and make them feel that everything is my fault. (He is now my ex, but he left of his own accord.) I am also prepared to work hard and have excellent computer skills.
I was recently made redundant from an insurance company that went bust (not at all my fault), references attached. I worked over twenty years for them. I can fix any computer problem in a jiffy. I am now looking for a more exciting job than writing out insurance policies, which was a huge yawn.
I used to live in Dublin but now I’m on my way to Kerry to find myself in that beautiful place. I’d love to be your right-hand woman and if you hire me, I’ll make sure you won’t be sorry. I’m really good at practically everything except cooking but that’s your domain, of course! Hoping to meet you very soon.
All best wishes and fingers crossed that you’ll like me.
Claire O’Hanlon
Claire shook her head, still laughing. That was the maddest covering letter she had ever seen. She didn’t know if she should send it along with her CV but then she made up her mind. Why not? Maybe it would work better than something bland and correct? So after a little thinking, she put Karina Flavin’s email address into a new message, attached her CV and the reference her previous employer had sent her. Then she copied and pasted the covering letter into the body of the email, putting her phone number in after her name, and sent it off before she had a chance to change her mind. ‘Well, there it went,’ she muttered. ‘Now I’ll just have to look for another job. Who would hire someone like me?’
Claire decided to forget about that job application and concentrate on driving to Kerry, the county she had never been to but had heard so much about. Her parents had rented a cottage in Wicklow on the east coast every summer, her father telling Claire and her sister that this was the only seashore he’d bring them to. The southwest, particularly Kerry, was a no-go area, they had been told. They didn’t really mind as they had loved the beaches of Wicklow and the holidays had always been enjoyable, even if they had been curious to find out why Kerry was such forbidden territory.
Their parents were now dead and there was nobody left to answer any questions, not that they would have answered them anyway when they were alive.How can feuds and bad blood be so persistent through so many generations?Claire wondered as she drove through the ever-changing landscape on her way to the southwest. Rolling green hills turned into flat fields, with cattle grazing by meandering streams, only to turn hilly again.
Then, as she rounded a bend, there was a view so beautiful that Claire had to pull in at a layby and get out of the car to look. She gazed in awe at the sight of the mountains rising in the distance, the sun shining on the slopes, and clouds billowing above them shifting the light from golden to silver and then back again. This was the famous mountain range known as the MacGillicuddy Reeks, the highest peak of which was called Carrantuohill, two thousand metres above sea level. It was a stunning sight and even the cold January wind couldn’t chase Claire back into the car. She stood there, entranced, for a long while, this view of Kerry making her shiver more than the chilly breeze. She suddenly knew she was meant to come here and she wondered why she had waited so long. This county, this ‘kingdom’ as it was often called, was in her blood and she couldn’t wait to get to know it.
The views were wonderful all the way to Dingle and as Claire neared Inch Beach, she stopped to have a cup of coffee at the café in the dunes. She sat at the window looking out across the vast expanse of golden sand, at the waves crashing in. There were a few surfers who had braved the weather and got into the cold water in their wetsuits to enjoy the thrill of the wild sea. She imagined that this would be lovely in high summer, but even now, in mid-winter, it was a nice place to be.
It was getting late and the long drive had been tiring. It was time to head to Dingle town and check into the B&B. But as the skies darkened, and Claire drove into the lovely little town on the edge of the Atlantic with its seafront of colourful houses and the harbour where fishing vessels had just docked, she began to feel anxious again. Was the task she had set herself too impossible? Maybe she should turn around and go back to Dublin?Don’t be such a chicken, she told herself sternly.Auntie Rachel would not be impressed if this Fleury girl turned tail and ran away. In any case, this place was so gorgeous and peaceful, it was too hard to think of leaving.
There was a smell of salt and seaweed in the air as she rolled down the window and she breathed it in, trying to calm herself, and for a moment she felt as if she had come home. The sun was low on the horizon, ready to sink into the dark waters of the bay. Claire watched as the skies turned orange and pink by the setting sun, slowly turning darker and darker until the sun disappeared completely. A lovely sight which she would have enjoyed if she hadn’t been so tense.
She was glad when she drove up a steep slope to Madigan’s B&B and was finally greeted by a jovial man with grey hair who welcomed her to Dingle and their ‘humble abode’. There was no turning back now.
Claire brought her suitcase inside, leaving the rest of the luggage in her car, and followed him up the stairs to a small bedroom on the top floor.
‘I’m Joe Madigan,’ he said over his shoulder in his Kerry accent. ‘Madge, my wife, is out at the moment but she’ll serve you breakfast tomorrow. We don’t usually open until St Patrick’s Day, but as you booked a whole week, we thought we’d make an exception. Paddy’s Day is over a month away, so a few extra euros will come in handy right now.’
As they arrived on the landing, he opened the door to Claire’s room. ‘Here you are. I hope you’ll find it comfy. I can recommend the pub next door if you like fish and chips or a burger for your dinner.’
‘That sounds great,’ Claire said. ‘Thank you so much.’
‘No bother,’ Joe Madigan said. ‘The key to the door is on the keyring on the night table and there is also the key to the front door should you be late. We lock the door at ten or so.’
‘Okay.’ Claire went inside and put her bag on the bed. ‘Thank you. I don’t think I’ll be out that late.’
‘Good. Give us a shout if you need anything at all,’ Joe said. ‘Have a nice evening.’ Then he smiled and left, closing the door behind him.
Claire looked around the room that had a sloping ceiling, walls painted a light green and a dormer window with dark red velvet curtains. The diamond-patterned carpet was a darker green than the walls, and there was a smell of rose petals from a wooden bowl on the chest of drawers. It was an old-fashioned room that reminded Claire of the guestroom in her great-aunt’s house which felt at the same time nostalgic and comforting. It made her remember the book and she checked her suitcase to make sure it was still there. Then she pushed the suitcase under the bed, even though she was sure nobody would search her room while she was out.
Later that evening, after a delicious meal of fish and chips and a glass of Guinness in the cosy pub next door, Claire came back to the B&B and settled on the bed, taking out Auntie Rachel’s book from her suitcase. She felt she needed to remind herself why she was here. She pushed two of the big-size pillows behind her and leaned back, ready to discover what was in the old leather-bound volume. It was big and heavy and smelled a little musty. As she opened it to the first page, she studied what looked like a crudely drawn family tree with a caption above it in her great-aunt’s handwriting that read:
Charles-Louis Fleury arrived at Cork Harbour in 1690 after the persecution of the Huguenots in France after Louis XIV had revoked the Edict of Nantes. This book, however, is only about the Fleurys who built Magnolia Manor on the Dingle peninsula in County Kerry in 1801.
‘Wow,’ Claire mumbled to herself. ‘I had no idea the Fleurys came to Ireland that long ago.’
She looked at the top of the family tree and at all the names of the men and women who had founded the Fleury dynasty, amazed at the many children they had had. It made Claire sad to read that a lot of the children had died soon after they were born as they succumbed to disease. Such tragedies were recorded in the roughly drawn family tree and Claire wondered how her great-aunt had managed to get all the details of every single person who had lived and died at Magnolia Manor until today.
The first Fleury to live in Magnolia Manor was Charles, married to a Louisa Harrington. They had had five children, two sons and three daughters, two of whom had died at a young age. Louis, their eldest son, had married a girl called Kate O’Brien,the first Catholic Fleury wife, Claire assumed. They had four children, all girls, and then the manor had been passed on to a first cousin called James Fleury, as girls couldn’t inherit such estates in those days. And so it went on; the family tree had more and more branches, but it was always the eldest son, or a male cousin, who inherited as was the custom then.
By the time Claire got to the 1850s, her eyelids became heavy and she drifted off to sleep, dreaming of all the Fleury families living in the manor, their lives affected by the hard times and good, the manor steadily being added to and gardens laid out until it became one of the most important estates in that part of Dingle.
The shrill sound of her phone ringing woke Claire up an hour later. Startled out of her slumber, Claire grabbed her phone from the bedside table and said a hoarse, ‘Hello?’
‘Claire O’Hanlon?’ a woman’s voice asked.
‘Yes?’ Claire cleared her throat. ‘Speaking.’
