At her writing-desk she made out their bills and when she went downstairs left them on the shelf by the front door, more convenient than the hallstand, where in her mother’s day they had been left. Each man would pick his up, would rattle the little bell she had moved from the hallstand to the shelf and, hearing the summons, she would answer it.
‘Have you spoken to him?’ she enquired of her brother in the dining-room, going there when the daily girl had brought in his breakfast.
Arranging egg, bacon and a corner of fried bread on his fork, Joseph Paul consumed the combination before he replied.
‘I have him fixed for November,’ he said then.
‘I don’t understand that.’
‘Bernadette O’Keeffe has Dempsey down for November. ’
‘Down? What’s it mean, down? I’m not asking you about Dempsey.’
‘You said would we get him in for the back bedrooms.’
‘I’m not talking about the back bedrooms. You know what I’m talking about.’
‘Bernadette O’Keeffe has Dempsey booked for the back bedrooms.’ Joseph Paul spoke slowly. ‘For the month of November,’ he said. ‘Commencing on the first Monday. Seemingly, he’s chock-a-block till then.’
‘I’m talking about Ellie Dillahan.’
‘What about Ellie Dillahan?’
‘You know what about her.’
‘I’d say there’s a lot being imagined as regards that.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, have sense!’
‘Ellie Dillahan’s a married woman, why’d she be going with a photographer? Dillahan used bring his turf into the yard. Sure, I know him well. Not in a million years would he permit the like of that.’
‘Dillahan knows nothing about it, why would he? His wife’s being bothered by a scut you wouldn’t give tuppence for, and the state she’s in you’d hardly get a word out of her. The cut of him on the bicycle with the hat, he’s the talk of the town and you’re telling me he doesn’t exist.’
An extraordinary thing, Joseph Paul considered, his breakfast getting cold. It might be her mother talking, expressions used he hadn’t heard since the time of the trouble. The two red spots had appeared high up on her cheeks and he remembered them from childhood. She’d pick up a handful of slack and throw it at you.
‘I mentioned it to Ellie myself,’ she was saying. ‘No option left to me.’
‘What’d you say to the poor girl?’
‘What had to be said, no more than that. What harm would it do you to say the same to him? Haven’t we had eggs from the Dillahans since they were brought in to us on a horse and cart? Then again, there’s the turf.’
‘You want me to go up to this man on the street?’
‘Isn’t it something you could say that that orphan girl is a daughter to us?’
The tedium of the conversation had lightened for Joseph Paul with his reflection that their mother’s influence and her insistences hadn’t entirely left the house, but he was considerably taken aback by the concept of a girl he doubted he’d ever addressed a word to being his daughter.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ He spoke roughly, not meaning to. It would be a terrible thing - and he often thought it - if the peculiarities his sister had acquired over the years turned out to be a creeping dementia. You’d hear of that unfortunate affliction, people would mention a relative. It could be that the running of the house on her own was too much for her. It could be that her delusions about people getting into the picture house ruins had to do with their father being forgotten there on the night of the disaster. She had been their father’s pet, as he had been their mother’s. That had never been denied by either of them, and it would have been upsetting for her, the way their father would be when he came into the house every night since the time of her trouble - the bloodshot eyes of him, his collar and tie in his pocket, the way he’d start up a foolish whistling in the hall, stumbling and falling down on the stairs, taking money from his wallet and offering it around as a mark of his remorse. He hadn’t touched more than a drop or two before the trouble.
His sister was still standing by the breakfast table and Joseph Paul suggested that she should sit down.
‘Will I get you water?’
‘What’d I want water for?’
‘I thought you might.’
‘Ask him who he is. Tell him there’s talk. What’ll happen to the girl when Dillahan washes his hands of her? Where’ll she go? Will she walk the roads like poor Orpen Wren? If a child is born, what’ll happen then? Take it easy with him, don’t abuse him in case he’d hit you. All I’m saying is, explain to him we take an interest in the girl because of the family association. All I’m saying is, ask him straight out what he thinks he’s doing. I always liked Ellie.’
‘There isn’t a word spoken in the back bar of anything awry going on.’
‘Who comes into the back bar would know? Aren’t the priests bound by the confessional? What I’m saying to you is a person who interferes with another person’s funeral should be spoken to, never mind the interest taken in a picture house where a tragedy occurred, never mind he’s after a young Catholic girl from the hills.’
She went on talking, repeating everything she’d said already. The fat on Joseph Paul’s plate had begun to congeal, a skin had formed on the yolk of his fried egg. The daily girl came in to clear the table.
‘I’ll make a few enquiries,’ he said.
The conversation ended with that but later, on his way to his business premises, Joseph Paul refle cted that, ever since the upheaval his sister’s foolishness had brought about in the house, he had regularly noticed her gazing out of one or other of the front windows and had known what she was looking for. He had seen her polishing the overnight shoes and had conjectured that each pair took on for her the form of Arthur Tetlow’s ornamental black brogues - a fantasy that was perhaps the last fantasy left to her and one that in her mind was somehow endangered by what she imagined was going on.
He unlocked the door of the public house while still dwelling on the matter and believing with even greater conviction that the venom directed against a stranger on a bicycle had its source in his sister’s betrayal by a traveller in veterinary requisites. Passing through the long street bar, he confirmed to himself his approval of that conclusion, even for a moment feeling sorry for his sister as once he would have.
Miss Connulty’s interpretation of the breakfast-time contretemps was different. Occupied with changing sheets, she did not regret her anger or wonder why so persistently she had gone on. Her reflections were practical and to the point: she felt better for what had been said. Had she been aware of the contents of her brother’s mind during their exchanges she could have told him that in the circumstances dementia was too convenient a term to throw about: she suffered from nothing of the kind, and it was only to be expected that in the normal course of nature she should have developed an interest in the well-being of the girl who delivered eggs to her. There was no more to anything but that.
She finished in one bedroom and began in the next, pulling off the top sheet and then the bottom one, shaking off the pillowslips. She had known what she was doing in giving herself to Arthur Tetlow, and regretted only that she had remained in a house she should not have remained in. Aloud, and firmly, she stated again that she intended to protect Ellie Dillahan in whatever way should be necessary. She gathered up the slept-in sheets, and knocked out four cigarette butts from the bedside ashtray. She propped the window open and settled the blind the way it should be, a little further down to make more of its lace frill.
Later that same morning, after Bernadette had been to the back bar with the letters and the cheques, it occurred to Joseph Paul that there might just possibly be another element in his sister’s eccentric conduct. Given what she believed was happening between Ellie Dillahan and the man from Castledrummond, she could have worked herself up into a state of resentful jealousy. Her own day was done; she made do with the polishing of other men’s shoes.
Affected as the morning advanced by the possible truth of this outcome, Joseph Paul again felt sorry for the sister who had once been his companion. And as if telepathy, long absent between the two, had once more come into play, Miss Connulty on her way downstairs wondered, too, about jealousy. But before the thought could get going, she dismissed it as ridiculous.
15
Florian’s passport arrived one morning. The photograph he’d taken of himself had been pasted in, his signature pasted in too, other details completed.
Florian Kilderry
.
Place of birth: Co. Tipperary
.
Colour of eyes: Blue
.
Residence: Ireland
.
It was signed by Kevin Greacen, and he wondered who that was. It was valid for all countries. It was a valuable document. With a golden harp embossed on its green Rexine cover, with
Éire, Ireland, Irlande
on every page, it declared its importance clearly, requesting that the bearer should be offered access to pass freely and be offered all necessary assistance and protection.
Florian put it on the mantelpiece of his bedroom, where he could see it and wouldn’t forget where it was. He wiped the mildew from the smallest of the suitcases he had found. He washed it and put it outside the back door to dry in the sun.
In the afternoon of that same day two charity women came for the clothes. Neither death was recent, Florian told them, not that they brought the subject up, but conversation of some kind seemed called for.
‘You’re on your own?’ the one with glasses asked on the way upstairs.
‘You’re peaceful here,’ the other one said, her face familiar but he couldn’t place it.
‘Yes, it’s peaceful.’
He sensed their thinking it was a shame to see the place run down. He opened the wardrobe that had been shared and considered saying it wasn’t as strange as it seemed, their clothes kept for so long. But he doubted that he could explain why it wasn’t and said nothing.
‘The shoes, the shoe-trees?’ the woman with glasses enquired. She was the older of the two, with thin grey hair, tall and very upright, as if she’d taught herself to hold on to her posture because she knew that with an effort she could.
‘Coat-hangers too?’ the other woman asked.
‘Everything, if you wouldn’t mind.’
‘Of course we wouldn’t.’
‘You’re clearing up?’
‘The house is being sold.’
Further prospective purchasers had come, the interest in the sale now so keen that the estate agents were increasingly confident of an early offer. The mass of creditors had already been optimistically reassured, a date arranged for a dealer to inspect the remaining furniture in case there was anything of value. A builder’s skip had been lowered on to the gravel in front of the hall door and was already almost half full.
Every little helped, the charity women said, thanking him before they left. They mentioned the charities they had in mind for the clothes and, of course, there would be the local poor as well. Florian nodded his understanding of the disposal, imagining his mother’s dresses, his father’s suits and shoes worn by other people. He waved when the car drove off and the women waved back.
It was more than a fortnight now since he had said the wrong thing in the square in Rathmoye. His clumsiness still nagged, his crassness, as he thought of it, his foolishness. How careless, too, not to notice a wedding ring that was there for anyone to see. He had been casual, even a nuisance in the end, and his regret brought with it an urge to be forgiven, to say that he was sorry.
He carried tennis racquets and umbrellas to the skip, heaved a paraffin heater to it, and buckets with holes in them, paint tins, fire-irons. Then he spread out on the kitchen table one of his father’s old Ordnance Survey maps he’d been intending to burn and found on it the Crilly hills and the townland of Cnocrea. He found Lisquin, its two avenues, the gate-lodge on the Kilaney road.
Dillahan washed his hands at the sink, scrubbing out the day’s dirt. A split in the flesh beside one of his thumbnails was sore when the soap got in, but he didn’t remark on it. Years ago his mother had kept ointment for that, but he couldn’t remember what it was called.
He asked Ellie if she’d gone in to Rathmoye. He asked about the hook spring in English’s. No hurry, he said, no call to go in specially.
‘They’ve ordered it,’ she said.
He nodded. He asked if there was a fox about and she said there was, the same one still.
‘The dogs were sniffing round the runs first thing. Nothing got in.’
‘You’re troubled, Ellie.’
‘Ah no, no.’
He mentioned Dr Riordan, but she shook her head.
Dillahan was not by nature an inquisitive man, nor did he usually question what bewildered him, accepting his bewilderment for what it was. But it crossed his mind - the first time it ever had - that Ellie was bored, that there was a loneliness about her days at the farmhouse, that housekeeping and eggs, and keeping the dairy spick and span, and whitewashing the turf sheds were not enough. Yet she had never wanted anything besides.
‘It’s quiet for you,’ he said.
‘It’s all right. Honestly, it’s all right.’
‘Any time you’d like I’d drive you over to see the nuns in Templeross. Why wouldn’t we do that?’
The lavender was uncut, the grass untrodden. Waiting at the Lisquin gate-lodge, Florian read
The Brothers Karamazov
. He read for most of the morning but no one came; and passing through Rathmoye again on his way back to his now almost empty house, he read there too, on the seat by the memorial statue in the Square. He lingered there, then rode about, glancing into the shops. He’d almost given up when he was accosted by Orpen Wren, one hand held up in the middle of a street.
‘A burden lifted from old shoulders, sir.’
Florian dismounted in a hurry.