What Divides Us

Book 2: The Kilteegan Bridge Series

by Jean Grainger

Genres: Historical Fiction; Sagas

Synopsis

Kilteegan Bridge, Ireland 1963. On the face of it, life is idyllic for Eli and Lena Kogan. Living in their beautiful house in the Irish countryside, their children are growing up happy and safe surrounded by a loving community. So when a letter arrives one day threatening to shatter their peaceful and prosperous world, Lena and Eli have no option but face the dark reality of their situation. How best to do that, is something that drives a wedge between them. As a Jewish child, escaped from Germany in 1939, Eli is all for letting those dark days where they belong, for him, there’s no future in the past. But for Lena, it’s different. She knows that the only way she can move her family forward in peace is to first go back, and there is only one man who knows the whole truth. From rural Ireland to wartime France, What Divides us, tells a tale of loyalty and love, resentment and revenge, that has far reaching consequences for the Kogan family, the unravelling of which might just destroy their future.

Release date: September 29, 2022

Publisher: Gold Harp Media Ltd

Sample

‘Mammy, I need another slice of bread and jam. Mammy? Mammy!’

Lena blinked and raised her head from the solicitor’s letter. Around her, the kitchen of Kilteegan House swam into focus, bright with vases of bluebells from the garden. Five-year-old Sarah was sitting at the long pine table, happily licking rich butter off her own slice of bread, while two-year-old Pádraig lolled in his high chair, chewing on a crust.

‘Mammy!’ Emmet, her seven-year-old son, frowned at her from the far end of the table. ‘I said I want more bread and jam!’

‘Oh, sorry, my love. I was miles away.’ Her brain still in a fog of panic, she set aside the stiff ivory linen sheet of headed notepaper and, with shaking hands, spread butter from her brother Jack’s farm on a warm slice of soda bread and handed it to her oldest son.

‘I said jam, Mammy!’

The door opened, and the local girl they employed as a part-time nanny appeared, smiling broadly. ‘Is that Prince Emmet’s voice I hear, demanding jam?’

‘Katie! Katie!’ Sarah jumped down and rushed to hug the red-haired teenager, Pádraig clapped and squealed with delight, and Emmet’s frown became a gap-toothed grin. Katie was a huge favourite with the children; she was always up for wild games and teddy bear picnics on the extensive grounds on the days she took care of them.

Lena stood up shakily. ‘Katie, can you take over the children from here? I need to attend to something.’

‘Of course, Mrs Kogan, no problem at all.’ The girl expertly wiped Sarah’s face clean of butter, then unstrapped Pádraig and lifted him out onto her hip. With her free hand, she pushed the pot of blackcurrant jam towards Emmet and handed him the jam spoon. ‘Now, Your Majesty…’

Lena crossed the wide sunny entrance hall into the library, where the heavy dark drapes and large mahogany furniture from August Berger’s time had been replaced over the last few years with pastels and pretty florals. She stood by the fireplace, rereading the letter again from the beginning, trying her best to take in the words.

It was from Hayes, Kilgallen and Moran, Solicitors at Law, with an address on Merrion Square in Dublin, and it was addressed solely to her, without a mention of either Eli or  Emmet.

Dear Mrs Lena Kogan,

We are writing to advise you regarding your current occupation of the property known as Kilteegan House. The legal owner as per the last will and testament of Mr August Berger, drawn up and placed in trust with us, wishes to assert his right to use or dispose of this property as he sees fit. Further to this wish, he desires you to vacate the property with immediate effect. Refusal on your part to comply will lead to legal action.

Yours faithfully,

Ignatius Hayes, 

Bachelor-at-Law

Lena felt her pulse beating in her temples. Calm, she urged herself, but she was anything but calm. How could Malachy Berger do this to her? How could he do this to Emmet? There must be some mistake. Malachy had left the house in trust to Emmet, with Lena and Eli administering that trust until the boy turned eighteen. Was it even legal for him to change his mind after signing the contract?

She needed to ask Kieran Devlin. He was the town solicitor, late fifties, good at his job and someone who told the truth with no frills. Or perhaps she would go to the hardware store to show the letter to her sister Emily, who knew the truth about Emmet’s parentage and was always the voice of reason.

No, stop. It would be better if she talked to Eli first. Her husband had gone to Cork, where there was a meeting at the South Infirmary of all rural doctors about TB vaccination services – the disease was still a problem in rural Ireland, even in 1966 – but she’d wait and talk to him about it tonight. He would know what to do, and he would keep her calm. Eli had a way of soothing people, helping them through the hardest times in their lives. She would need every ounce of his skill now.

Mrs Shanahan, their housekeeper, would be in in a while. She’d be grumbling about the school holidays because the children ‘would be constantly under her feet’, even though Lena knew the old woman loved all the Kogans, especially chubby little Pádraig.

She looked quickly around the room, then folded the letter, replaced it in its thick luxurious envelope and stuck it out of sight behind the big wooden clock on the mantelpiece. It could stay put until Eli got home. The awful poisonous thing. She imagined it pulsating there in the dark, its hateful contents dragging up memories so painful that she’d suppressed them for years now. How August Berger had lied to Malachy, telling him that Lena was a girl of loose morals who’d offered herself to all the local men. And how Malachy had foolishly believed his father and abandoned her. He never even had a conversation with her to end their relationship. So it was a terrified, lonely, lost Lena who took a boat to Wales to have her baby away from prying eyes. She was forced by an intolerant society to give Emmet up for adoption, until Eli Kogan saved her by marrying her and adopting Emmet, treating the little boy as his own.

Before turning away from the mantelpiece, Lena caught a glimpse of her face in the large gilt-framed oval mirror that hung over the fireplace and paused to gaze at it. She wondered if she looked so much different to the starry-eyed girl of seventeen who came to this house, thrilled to have caught the admiring eye of the local gentry. Malachy Berger had asked her to dance at the Lilac Ballroom in Enniskean, and she had felt like all her birthdays had come together. If only that wide-eyed girl had known then what lay in store.

Running around after three little ones had kept her trim, and her brown eyes remained unchanged. Her hair was still dark, but she wore it back in a sedate bun most days now, having decided that her signature Audrey Hepburn high ponytail was too young and flighty for a respectable doctor’s wife and mother of three. Was there a silver thread to be seen? She turned her head slightly. Eli had claimed she was imagining things when she asked him that question as she’d brushed her hair before bed a few nights ago, but she still wasn’t sure. That was the trouble with being so dark-haired – the greys were more obvious. She remembered her daddy having grey temples in his thirties, so it ran in the family.

Paudie O’Sullivan. She felt that old familiar pang of longing. He wouldn’t even be old now if he’d lived, still a middle-aged man, fit and strong, caring for his family, playing with his grandchildren. But he wasn’t here and never would be again, more work of that murderer Phillippe Decker and his employer, August Berger.

Like a tongue pushing a sore tooth, she felt the wave of grief. Her father was gone for so long now, but some days it felt like yesterday. Her eyes dropped once more to where the letter was tucked out of sight behind the clock. Malachy giving Emmet this house had enabled her some peace. It would never make up for her father’s murder, but it was kind of a symbol of moving on.

On the front lawn outside the long windows of the library, Katie and the children were playing with a ball, and their laughter filled the air. This magnificent manor was Emmet’s birthright. He and his sister and brother saw it as their home, and they loved it.

Was their peaceful, happy life about to implode?

No. There was no way on God’s green earth she would have this place taken from them. She would write to Malachy in America and beg him not to change his mind about the house. Or maybe it would be better if she called him. But she dreaded the thought of hearing his voice. She was glad that in the last few years, she had become able to gaze into Emmet’s green eyes and stroke his dark-red hair without once thinking of the man who had fathered him. She never wanted to go back to a time when Malachy Berger’s voice and face were constantly in her head, dominating her every waking thought.

 

Chapter 2

Later that evening, Lena tried not to get frustrated with her husband.

Eli was rolling around on the floor of the library with the three children, who were cackling like witches as they climbed all over and tickled him; he whooped in mock horror. They had already been bathed and were in bed when he came home, but they’d instantly piled down the stairs in their pyjamas. Now it would take ages to settle them again, because they would be high as kites after all this horseplay.

Normally Lena wouldn’t have minded at all. She appreciated how her husband never used a long day at work to duck the hard task of being a father. He was a very modern man in that regard. Other women, including her mother and sister, were astounded to hear how he changed nappies as well as bathed and dressed and read to the children. So much so that his example had led some other men in the village to push their babies in the pram down the main street of Kilteegan Bridge, a sight previously unseen. The whispering went on for weeks.

Still, tonight she needed Eli to be a husband, not a father. She needed to talk to him alone and in peace. ‘Eli, please…’

‘I’m not Eli, I’m a lion!’ His normally neat sandy hair was standing on end, and he had all three children on his back as he pretended to rampage through the Serengeti. Although he was so slim and tall, she thought he looked more like a giraffe than a lion. He had never put on an ounce of weight in all the years Lena had known him. He loved ice cream and cake and Irish butter and cream, and while she and her sister bemoaned regularly how they only needed to look at a cake to feel the pinch in their skirts, Eli could somehow eat whatever he liked.

‘Daddy, don’t eat us!’

‘I’m not going to eat you. I’m a friendly lion!’ He let out an incredibly realistic roar, to their hysterical screams of laughter.

Lena rolled her eyes. He was impossible to stay cross at.

‘Right, you intrepid explorers.’ He reared up gently, each child sliding to the carpet. ‘Time for bed. Mammy is giving me the evil eye.’ With yelps of protest, they rushed to climb up on him again, but he rolled away and stood up. ‘No, that’s enough fun for one evening. Mr Lion has got to go and munch on a few gazelles now, so off with you. Go and explore your bedrooms.’

‘But, Daddy, we had shepherd’s pie for dinner.’ Sarah giggled. ‘I think that’s all there is.’

‘You’re wrong. Mick Cronin had a special offer on minced gazelle this week, so that’s what was in the pie.’

‘Urgh, no…’ The little girl turned pale and looked like she might be sick.

‘I’m only joking, pet,’ said Eli hastily, kneeling down again with his arms out. ‘Come here to Daddy for a hug.’

She ran to him. ‘Are you sure you were joking?’

‘Of course he was joking,’ said Emmet, so sharply that Lena rather suspected he’d believed it for a moment himself. ‘You only get gazelles in Africa and India, which you would know if you ever learnt to read instead of just playing with your silly dolls.’

‘I can’t help it I can’t read…’ Now Sarah did start crying. ‘And I love my dolls.’

Eli frowned over Sarah’s shoulder at the boy. ‘Don’t be mean to your little sister, Emmet. Tell her you’re sorry.’

‘I’m not being mean. I just said she should learn to read.’

‘And I just said, “Tell her you’re sorry,” so do it.’

‘But –’

‘Emmet, say it now or you won’t get a bedtime story from me – only Sarah and Pádraig will have one.’

‘Fine, I’ll read my own story. Because I can.’ And the red-headed boy stormed out of the room and up the stairs.

Eli breathed heavily for a moment, then looked at Lena with a forced smile. Lena didn’t smile at him in return.

He turned back to Sarah. ‘Right then, my clever little daughter, since we are nowhere near either Africa or India, I think we can safely say we don’t eat gazelles. Now, up the stairs, you two, and no more shenanigans.’ He stood and swept Pádraig up in his arms, the toddler throwing his fat little arms around his daddy’s neck, and took Sarah by the hand. ‘Sarah, will I tell you a story about your dolls?’

‘And do the voices?’ Her tears had already dried as she trotted out of the room beside him.

‘Of course I’ll do the voices,’ Eli answered in a falsetto warble, which made Sarah giggle again.

Slowly taking the letter from behind the mantelpiece clock, Lena moved through an internal door into the small sitting room. The days were warming up, being April, but the evenings were still chilly, so she lit the fire that Mr Shanahan, the housekeeper’s husband who looked after the grounds, had set in the grate.

When August Berger lived here, there had been a pair of large heavy leather chairs either side of the hearth, but Lena had given them away and bought a lovely blue and pink chintz-covered sofa with some cream embroidered scatter cushions. The floorboards had been stripped back to the bare wood, and there was a ten-foot-square Persian silk rug on the floor, a wedding gift from Eli’s parents.

She sat waiting on the sofa, the letter in her hands, her thoughts with Emmet in the bedroom above. She hoped her husband would relent and let him come into the younger children’s room to listen to the story. Eli teased her sometimes that she let the older boy get away with too much, and Emmet did love to lord things over his younger siblings as if he were their superior. She didn’t think she let him get away with bad behaviour, and she would have said something to him tonight about the Sarah incident if Eli hadn’t done it first.

Twenty minutes later, Eli joined her. ‘Emmet apologised to Sarah for being mean, though I think he regretted it when he found out the story was about her dolls,’ he said with a grin as he plumped down on the sofa and put his arm around her. ‘You look lovely.’ He nuzzled her neck.

She pulled away from him slightly. ‘I really don’t think Emmet meant to be mean. He thought he was just telling the truth.’

Eli shook his head. ‘There are ways and means of telling the truth nicely, Lena, and he should have stopped when she cried. Sometimes Emmet acts like he’s better and cleverer than other people. Maybe he doesn’t mean it to come out that way, but it does, and it’s going to make life hard for him if he continues. So we need to stop it, for his own sake as much as for the other two.’ His voice had deep, strong, lilting tones. He was German by birth, but he and his mother and uncle had arrived in Cardiff as Jewish refugees during the war. He had developed a Welsh accent and never lost it.

‘Emmet is very clever, but he doesn’t think he’s better than other people.’

‘He does, and it’s not just me that’s noticed. I mean, only the other day, Emily was saying…’ He stopped, pressing his lips together.

Lena looked at him sharply. ‘Saying what?’

He shook his head. ‘Nothing, it doesn’t matter. Anyway, what did you want to talk to me about?’

‘No, Eli, that’s not fair. If this is about Emmet, then you have to tell me. I’m his mother, and if Emily had anything to say about him, she should have said it to me, not to you.’

Eli’s hurt was clear as his brown eyes met hers full on. ‘Why shouldn’t Emily speak about Emmet to me, Lena? I am his father.’

She swallowed, flustered. This was all Malachy’s fault for upsetting her and getting into her head with this crazy letter. She touched her husband’s arm pleadingly. ‘I know, of course you are, and I didn’t mean Emily shouldn’t talk to you about your son. But please tell me what it was about. I’m worried now. Did he do something wrong?’

Eli sighed and relented. ‘OK. She said he was very haughty with Nellie and talked to her like she was beneath him, even though they’re cousins and the same age.’

‘I’m sure he didn’t mean –’

‘Lena.’ He took her hand, laid it on his knee and patted it gently. ‘Lena, listen. I know you love Emmet with all your heart, and so do I. You don’t like to listen to anything being said against him, but he told his cousin she was only a shopkeeper’s daughter while he lived in Kilteegan House, the most important house in the town.’

‘Oh…’ She dropped her eyes, embarrassed, then raised them again hopefully. ‘Did Emily hear him say it? And why didn’t she tell me if she did?’

‘Honestly, Lena? Because she thought you wouldn’t believe her. You see, you’re right, she didn’t overhear it herself. It was Nellie who told her.’

Lena felt a sense of relief. ‘I thought so.’

‘No, Lena, you know Nellie wouldn’t make up anything like that – she’s an honest little girl. And when I spoke to Emmet about it, he didn’t deny it, just asked me not to tell you. So now I’ve broken my promise to Emmet, and I’d like you not to mention it to him because he needs to trust me. Anyway, it’s fine now, it’s dealt with. I took away his books and had him out weeding the garden with Mr Shanahan. I told Mr Shanahan that Emmet was under orders to do exactly as he was instructed, that he wasn’t to let Emmet boss him around and that he was to tell him off if he was rude. And you’ll be pleased to hear Emmet behaved perfectly. Mr Shanahan said he was a great help and very polite.’

Lena sighed. She knew she should be angry with Emmet for upsetting Nellie, if it was true, and she knew Eli as his father had a right to tell Emmet off. And nobody could say a few hours helping in the garden was a harsh punishment. But she still hated the idea of Eli talking about her son like that to Mr Shanahan. The social workers had stolen Emmet from her before and she’d had to fight to get him back, so she hated the idea of anyone having authority over her son apart from herself. Of course, Eli had fought for Emmet’s return as well. If it wasn’t for him convincing her it would be possible to get him back from the adoption services, her precious boy would be with another family now, strangers. She knew how unusual and lucky she was, and she was so grateful that Eli was Emmet’s father in every way that mattered, but still…

Sometimes she worried that Eli, and her sister Emily for that matter, were too much on the watch for Emmet showing traits of his real grandfather – the haughty, supercilious August Berger, who had certainly thought himself better than anyone else.

Eli broke the silence. ‘Ah, he’s a good boy at heart, and he’s exceptionally clever, just a little too autocratic. It’s a good thing he doesn’t know this house will belong to him one day. I hope he’ll be mature enough at eighteen not to let it go to his head. I sometimes wish we could leave it until he’s twenty-one.’

She suddenly remembered the letter she was holding, which had got momentarily pushed from her mind. ‘I got this in the post today, Eli. I’ve been waiting all day to show you and see what you think.’

She handed him the letter. He looked perplexed at the fancy envelope addressed to her, then pulled out and unfolded the single stiff sheet and began to read.

As he scanned the words, Lena waited for the same indignation, the same fury she felt at Malachy’s betrayal to be mirrored in Eli’s handsome boyish features, but instead her husband’s face remained calm and unlined.

‘Well,’ he said eventually, folding the letter and replacing it in the envelope, ‘if Malachy Berger has changed his mind, so be it. I can’t say I like the idea of him moving back to Kilteegan Bridge, but hopefully he’s just in financial difficulty and wants to sell.’

Lena couldn’t believe her ears. She leapt up from the sofa and turned to face him, standing square in the middle of the beautiful silk rug. ‘If Malachy Berger has changed his mind, “so be it”? We just pack our bags and leave our home, after all the time and effort I’ve spent on it?’ She could hear her voice rising on every word.

‘Do you seriously want to fight him in court?’ Eli asked quietly, gazing at her from the elegant sofa. ‘With everything that would have to come out about who Emmet’s father is? Everyone in the town thinks we bought this house from Malachy, and they think Emmet is my biological son. Only you and I and Emily and Jack know the truth.’

Something dawned on Lena, something she’d been ignoring since the day she’d persuaded her husband to move from their cramped accommodation above the surgery in the town to Kilteegan House. She fixed her dark-brown eyes on his accusingly. ‘You don’t want to live in this house, do you? You resent it.’

‘Ah, Lena, don’t be silly, that’s not it –’

‘I’m not being silly, as you put it. But I am furious. And now I realise this is exactly what you want. You never wanted us to live here – you hate it, in fact – and this is the perfect solution for you.’

He gazed at her in bewilderment. ‘Lena, what on earth are you going on about? I do like this house. Who wouldn’t? It’s beautiful. But I just think that if Berger has decided, for whatever reason, that he wants it back, then why not move? It’s not worth the hassle. It’s not like we’re penniless these days. We can buy a nice house – not as big as this one of course, but big enough to be happy in – and save ourselves all the trauma of a court case. We could just walk away –’

‘And as an added bonus to your fragile male ego, we won’t have to live in the house of a man who slept with your wife?’ she finished for him, frustration, hurt and disappointment fighting for supremacy in her tone.

Eli paused and gathered his thoughts. He was maddening to argue with in that regard. He wasn’t as fiery and passionate as she was, and it always meant he sounded more reasonable and rational, even if he wasn’t. ‘Lena, this has nothing to do with what you call my “fragile male ego”. But since you mention it, yes, I’d be happy to leave here. And I know you’ve done an amazing job with the place – it looks beautiful – but would a home entirely of our own, with no past, not be a nice thing to consider? And don’t you think it might be good for Emmet too?’

‘Good for Emmet?’ Lena couldn’t believe her ears.

‘Lena, listen…’ Eli continued to sound calm and rational. ‘It’s just a thought, and I know you might think it’s a selfish one, but if we don’t have to explain to Emmet about the house, then we won’t have to tell him about Malachy being his biological father if we decide not to.’

‘Not tell him?’ She was astonished; she’d had no idea this thought was in Eli’s head. ‘You’ve never suggested that before. I thought you agreed it was the right thing to do when he was eighteen. No more secrets, remember?’

‘I agreed we should tell him because he would have to know why he inherited the house. But the truth is…’ He sat forwards on the sofa, his elbows on his knees. ‘The truth is that every day I dread that moment in the future when we have to tell Emmet he is not my biological son. That day, when you gave him up, I saw the pain there, Lena. My heart broke for you. But I felt love for that little baby boy as well, because he was yours and part of you, and I swore then that if I could convince you to marry me, we would get him back, and we could raise him as our son. Emmet feels like he’s mine, he thinks I’m his father, and honestly, it hasn’t been hard. I worried when you were pregnant with Sarah that I might feel different, having a biological child, but it changed nothing. I love Emmet and Sarah and now Pádraig all the same – I make no distinction.’

‘I know, Eli.’ Although sometimes, like tonight, she wondered.

‘And I don’t think you should make a distinction either.’

‘What do you mean?’ She was astonished. ‘They’re all my children, and I love them all equally!’

He shrugged. ‘Maybe so, but I worry the fact that Emmet will inherit this house alone will come between him and his siblings. It singles him out, Lena, makes him different. I wonder sometimes if he senses that, or if unconsciously you treat him differently because of it.’

‘How dare you! I don’t treat him differently!’

‘Lena, I’m not criticising you.’ He reached for her, trying to grasp her fingers, to pull her back to the sofa, but she stepped away, thrusting her hands behind her back. ‘I’m just saying, maybe it’s better if he doesn’t inherit.’

‘No! This is Emmet’s house, and I’m not giving it away on his behalf. I want it for him. It’s to make up for everything Malachy never did for him.’ Her blood was pulsing in her ears, her cheeks were burning, and hot tears were forming and threatening to fall.

Eli’s face went dead. ‘You want to keep it for him because it’s his “real” family’s home.’

The words cut through Lena like a knife, yet as painful as it was, Eli was right. He might be raising Emmet, and doing a wonderful job, but this house belonged to Emmet because it had belonged to Malachy, and Malachy’s father, and Malachy’s mother’s family before that. And now Lena wanted to keep it for her son. ‘We’re his family, but this house is his birthright, don’t you see that? It has to be Emmet’s.’

Eli stared at her for a long time. The flames danced in the grate, but she shivered, like the room around her was growing cold.

Finally he said, ‘Like I told you, I don’t discriminate between our children. But you do. I see it now. You always have done.’

Her heart twisted. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Eli. I just meant –’

‘Except I’m not being ridiculous, am I? Lena, it’s written all over your face.’

‘That’s not what I’m saying at all. You’re not listening.’

‘Oh, I’m listening. You want to keep this mausoleum to the past because you think it’s our son’s birthright, that he should have something from his real father, and not any inferior house that I can buy him. I very foolishly thought I was Emmet’s father and we were his family. I thought that we were enough, that I was enough. Clearly not. The child I decided to raise as my own son –’

‘And I’m grateful to you, of course I am, but –’

Eli bolted to his feet, towering over her, his normally kind brown eyes glittering now in hurt and rage. ‘Grateful to me? That’s what you feel? The foundation of our marriage is gratitude? Then you do what you must to keep your favourite child’s birthright, Lena. I know better than to stand in your way. You think you know better than anyone, and we wonder where Emmet gets it? You know my feelings. If you choose to go against them, I can’t stop you, but I won’t have anything to do with it.’

Without saying another word, he stormed out of the room, slamming the door as he left. A moment later, the front door also slammed, and she heard the car start. It was something he did on the rare occasion that he lost his temper with her; he would go for a long drive while he calmed down and then come back and apologise for his behaviour and they would kiss and make up.

This time he would surely do the same, and then they would talk and he would forgive her and understand.