Standing on top of the cliffs one day, I allowed the cold wind to blow across my face. I reached behind my head and pulled
out the band that had been an almost permanent fixture in my hair in some form or other since I arrived. My hair fell loose
against my shoulders. Almost immediately the wind picked it up and billowed it about my face, but I didn’t care. I felt so
free standing there, surrounded by the sea and the sky, with the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks below, and
the smell of the crisp salty air filling my lungs.
As I looked out into the bay I no longer saw the dolphins jumping and playing in the waves, either. They’d disappeared the
day Eamon had left on the boat. It was him they were here to help all that time, not me. He was the one they were warning
of change. Eamon was the rightful owner of Tara, and once he was gone, so were they.
I thought again about everything that had happened since we’d arrived here. About everyone else’s lives changing for the better.
I’d thought mine had, too, for a while, and now it was being snatched back away from me again.
‘So, Tara,’ I called out into the wind, ‘between the two of us
we seem to have sorted out everyone else. And I’ve even helped you by bringing people here again, so you’re not lonely any
more. Why don’t you prove to me you really are magical, and do one thing for me in return? Then I can believe in you too.’
I closed my eyes and waited for Tara’s wind of change to blow its magic through me.
Eamon’s funeral is a simple but emotional service. The tiny church’s pews are filled with his fellow islanders and the few
local townsfolk who knew him from his occasional visits. As Eamon’s body leaves the church to be taken to a local crematorium,
I’m moved to shed even more tears when I hear the strains of ‘Forty Shades of Green’ floating up into the rafters of the church
– it was one of Eamon’s final requests that it be played today. And now I know why my aunt loved it so much. It had been one
of their favourite songs.
After the service, we hold Eamon’s wake in one of the town’s hotels. Eamon has requested that his wake is to be a lively affair
with no mourning. So I’ve made sure there’s plenty of alcohol, food and a band playing traditional Irish music. The band is
very good, but no one feels particularly like dancing tonight.
I’m in the ladies’ loos, composing myself yet again under the guise of washing my hands, when there’s a knock on the door.
‘Darcy,’ Paddy says apologetically, opening the door just wide enough to poke his head through the gap. ‘Sorry to disturb
you, like, but Niall wants to begin reading Eamon’s will in a minute.’
‘Now?’ I ask in astonishment. ‘But there’s only us from the island here: everyone else has gone.’
‘I don’t know,’ Paddy shrugs, ‘them’s my instructions, that you’re to come through for the reading. I’ve gathered everyone
else now.’
I finish drying my hands and Paddy leads me through to another room in the hotel where Niall has set up some chairs in a large
circle. At the head of the circle is a table and another chair where Niall is already sitting. Most of the chairs are already
filled with the islanders with just one left empty, so I sit down in the last remaining seat. I glance around; everyone looks
as confused as I feel right now.
Niall shuffles some important-looking papers on the table in front of him and clears his throat. ‘Thank you, everyone, for
breaking away from your food and drink to attend this official reading of Eamon Patrick John Murphy’s last will and testament.’
Niall is talking in his best solicitor’s voice. ‘I have attended many will readings in my time as a solicitor, but it was
recently brought to my attention that not everyone either understands, or enjoys hearing, our lawyer-talk at these occasions,’
he looks affectionately at me. ‘So from here on in, if acceptable to everyone, and seeing as we all know each other so well,
I shall convey Eamon’s will to you in layman’s terms.’
‘Great,’ Paddy mutters. ‘I don’t know that language either.’
Niall picks up an envelope in front of him on the table and opens it.
‘Eamon came to me while we were living on the island and asked for my advice on legal matters several times,’ Niall informs
us. ‘But he asked that I act on his behalf anonymously. So I’m afraid that I had to keep everything that is about to be
revealed over the next few minutes a secret from you all. And for that, I hope you will forgive me.’
Niall looks around nervously at us. He pushes his glasses up his nose, even though they haven’t actually slipped down.
I watch him and wonder what he’s going to say next. I glance at Dermot sitting across from me; he looks as mystified as me,
and shakes his head.
‘Eamon was a straightforward man, of simple pleasures and usually few words, and he has asked that I read his will in the
form of a letter to you all.’
Niall looks around at us again; his eyes rest on me for a moment. Then he takes a deep breath before beginning to read from
Eamon’s letter.
‘“If you are all sitting here now, listening to this, then I must be gone, so I hope you’ve had a good few drinks to celebrate
that fact. Especially you, Niall; you need to loosen up a bit.”’ Niall blushes as he reads. ‘“You’d better have had a damn
good party somewhere, with lots of music and dancing. Seamus, if you don’t play my favourite song tonight then I’ll come back
and haunt you with that damn tin whistle of yours.”’
Seamus salutes the sky.
‘“Aiden and Kathleen, you make a grand Irish stew, one of the best I’ve ever tasted. So keep up the good work cooking for
all those folk on Tara.”’ Aiden and Kathleen look on proudly. ‘“And Daniel, hurry up and make an honest woman out of Orla,
she’s your soulmate for God’s sake, man. Stop messing about.”’ Orla blushes profusely, while Daniel just shakes his head and
smiles.
‘I thought you two were married?’ I ask them in surprise.
‘We just said that in case it went against our application,’
Orla says. ‘Once we were there, it seemed easier to keep up the pretence.’
Is
anything
ever what it seems on Tara?
One by one, Eamon has words of encouragement and advice for each and every person that has lived with him on Tara. Considering
I’d felt Eamon didn’t interact with any of us that much, he certainly seems to know us all pretty well.
‘“And now I come to those I wish to leave a personal possession to,”’ Niall continues, still reading from the letter.
‘“Paddy, I leave you all my computer equipment and satellite dish. Use it wisely, my young friend, to further the cause of
Tara, and you won’t go far wrong.”’
‘Bleedin’ deadly.’ Paddy beams from ear to ear. ‘Fair play to you, Eamon!’ he lifts his bottle of beer.
‘“Niall, my font of all things legal, and executor of this will, I leave to you my walking stick, or my staff of knowledge,
as I like to call it. May it bring you even more wisdom than you already have, good sir.”’
Niall looks up proudly, before continuing.
‘“Roxi, my vibrant and wonderfully colourful companion on many an occasion. Thank you for listening to all my tales with such
patience. It was a joy to share them all with such a beautiful young woman. I leave to you my library of history books. Enjoy
them, my young student, and you shall go far with your studies.”’
Roxi smiles with tears in her eyes.
Niall breaks off from reading the letter for a moment. ‘And he particularly wanted me to mention you should immediately go
to his cottage and find a book on Finn McCool when we get back to the island today. He says,’ Niall looks at the letter again,
‘“You will find something in there I trust you to use wisely in the future.”’
‘I will, Eamon. I will!’ Roxi blows a kiss up to the sky.
‘“Dermot,”’ Niall continues, ‘“I know we didn’t always see eye to eye to begin with, but you’ve proved you’re a hard worker,
a talented craftsman and a good, genuine and honourable man. So I leave to you all my tools. They may not be some of your
newfangled nonsense. But there are some fine, trustworthy pieces there that I know you’ll make good use of. Dermot, I trust
you will look after all that I hold precious to me in the future.”’
Dermot nods. ‘Don’t you worry, Eamon, I’ll take the greatest care of them.’ He makes a small fist. ‘Good man.’
‘“Megan, the jewel in Tara’s new crown, to you I leave my star.” Do you know what he means by that, Megan?’ Niall asks, looking
over the top of his glasses at Megan.
Megan nods enthusiastically. ‘There’s a really bright star that comes up over Tara every night in exactly the same place.
You can see it if you stand on one of the cliffs, Eamon took me up there to see it one night. You can even make wishes on
it. And now it’s all mine,’ she says pulling her legs up on the chair and hugging her knees tightly to her chest.
We all smile.
‘“And finally, Darcy.”’
I look at Niall. I’ve been waiting for this. What is Eamon going to say to me that is going to make up for all that has happened?
‘“Darcy, I imagine you’re probably sitting there thinking that I deceived you when I let you think you owned Tara. Or perhaps
I deceived your aunt in letting her think
she
owned it.”’
The thought has crossed my mind.
‘“But the truth is we both deceived you, and for that I’m truly sorry.”’
What?
‘“I was always the rightful owner of Tara from the beginning. My family owned the island, when there were small communities
of people living on it in the past. That’s how I met Molly when she lived on Tara as a child. But her family moved from the
island when Molly was just a teenager in the early fifties. Sadly we didn’t see each other again until Molly moved back, alone,
in 1985. By that time she’d been married to your uncle. Molly loved Tara just as much as I did, and would come across to the
island to visit me regularly. Later she would bring you with her when you were staying for your holidays. I never had children,
as you now know, and neither did Molly, but she had you, Darcy, and I know she thought of you as her own.”’
Niall pauses for a moment to see how I’m coping with all this.
Not well, is the answer. I’m trying to hold back my tears, but they’re already beginning to spill down my face and into the
lap of my black dress as I let my head hang down.
A clean white handkerchief is thrust under my nose. I look up to see Dermot standing in front of me. Gratefully I take the
hanky from him and pat at my tears while Dermot returns to his seat.
‘Are you all right, Darcy?’ Niall asks gently.
‘Yes, I’m fine, please continue.’
‘“Time passed too quickly,”’ Niall says, reading from Eamon’s letter again. ‘“We were both growing old, and it came
time for us to start thinking about the future of the island, so that when we were gone Tara would remain in the hands of
someone who would love it as much as we did. Molly was convinced that you would fall in love with Tara if she could just get
you back here somehow. I wasn’t so sure; it had been so long since you’d even been to see your aunt, let alone visited the
island. So we came up with quite an intricate plan. The plan involved drawing up some fake documents to make it look like
Tara belonged to your aunt. And we have Niall’s father, a long-time friend of Molly’s, to thank for helping us make them look
as legal as we could without actually breaking any laws. This meant that when Molly died the island would look as if it automatically
went to you, Darcy. By this time Molly was already living in Dublin for her treatment, and her visits to Tara and to me were
very rare. Whatever the medics said, we both knew she hadn’t got that long to live, so time was of the essence.”’
‘But why go to all that trouble? Why didn’t Eamon just transfer Tara to my aunt there and then?’ I ask, my tears turning to
astonishment at what I’m hearing. This is all too much to comprehend. ‘Surely that would have been much easier than creating
fake documents?’
‘It’s all coming, Darcy,’ Niall says, nodding at the letter. ‘Just be patient. Believe me, I was as surprised at this as you
when I found out. I thought my father was straight down the line.’
‘“I’m so sorry I wasn’t able to trust you, Darcy, back then,”’ Niall continues, reading Eamon’s words. ‘“But if we had transferred
the island to Molly legally, and then you’d passed up her offer to come and live here, who knows what might have happened.
But Molly was right, as she often was: you didn’t pass up the challenge, and you did come to Tara, and you’ve
changed not only your own future by doing so, but the future of the island for many years to come.”’
I think about this as Niall turns over to the next page of the letter.
‘“When you first arrived, I did wonder just what sort of hands my island was being put into, with your modern ways and peculiar
ideas. But a wind of change has blown across Tara, and it’s left in its wake a trail of positivity and success. Tara has a
future, in which many others can not only come and appreciate her beauty, but also experience just a little of what makes
her so magical. Your aunt would have been very proud of what you’ve achieved here. She wanted nothing more than to let others
benefit from the magic of Tara, and now they can. Darcy, you have proved yourself to be a capable leader, and a fine young
woman, and I’m so proud to have known you. Tara and I will be happy for you to go on looking after her for as long as you
choose to. So this is what I leave to you, Miss Darcy Fiona McCall – all my other worldly possessions, including my island,
my Tara.”’
Everyone, including me, is stunned into silence.
Then a round of spontaneous applause breaks out around the room, and one by one I find myself surrounded by the people I’ve
spent the last seven months living with, and who now, suddenly, I can’t imagine living without.
‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,’ Dermot says, looking out over the cliff.
‘Dermot, what are you saying?’ I ask. ‘That’s what they say when they bury someone, not when you’re sprinkling someone’s ashes.’