‘Kilmona 23. You have only to summon me. Or call up at the rectory.’
The McDowds didn’t. They watched the summer going by, taking in their hay during the warm spell in June, keeping an eye on the field of potatoes and the ripening barley. It began to rain more than usual; they worried about the barley.
‘Excuse me,’ a man said in the yard one afternoon in October. ‘Are you Mr McDowd?’
McDowd said he was, shouting at the dogs to behave themselves. The stranger would be a traveller in fertilizers, he said to himself, a replacement for Donoghue, who had been coming to the farm for years. Then he realized that it was the wrong time of year for Donoghue.
‘Would it be possible to have a word, Mr McDowd?’
McDowd’s scrawny features slowly puckered; slowly he frowned. He lifted a hand and scratched at his grey, ragged hair, which was a way he had when he wished to disguise bewilderment. Part of his countryman’s wiliness was that he preferred outsiders not to know, or deduce, what was occurring in his mind.
‘A word?’ he said.
‘Could we maybe step inside, sir?’
McDowd saw no reason to step inside his own house with this man. The visitor was florid-faced, untidily dressed in dark corduroy trousers and a gaberdine jacket. His hair was long and black, and grew coarsely down the sides of his face in two brushlike panels. He had a city voice; it wasn’t difficult to guess he came from Dublin.
‘What d’you want with me?’
‘I was sorry to hear that thing about your daughter, Mr McDowd. That was a terrible business.’
‘It’s over and done with.’
‘It is, sir. Over and done with.’
The red bonnet of a car edged its way into the yard. McDowd watched it, reminded of some cautious animal by the slow, creeping movement, the engine purring so lightly you could hardly hear it. When the car stopped by the milking shed nobody got out of it, but McDowd could see a figure wearing sunglasses at the wheel. This was a woman, with black hair also, smoking a cigarette.
‘It could be to your advantage, Mr McDowd.’
‘What could be? Does that car belong to you?’
‘We drove down to see you, sir. That lady’s a friend of mine, a colleague by the name of Hetty Fortune.’
The woman stepped out of the car. She was taller than the man, with a sombre face and blue trousers that matched her blue shirt. She dropped her cigarette on to the ground and carefully stubbed it out with the toe of her shoe. As slowly as she had driven the car she walked across the yard to where the two men were standing. The dogs growled at her, but she took no notice. ‘I’m Hetty Fortune,’ she said in an English accent.
‘I didn’t tell you my own name, Mr McDowd,’ the man said. ‘It’s Jeremiah Tyler.’
‘I hope Jeremiah has offered you our condolences, Mr McDowd. I hope both you and your wife will accept our deepest sympathy.’
‘What do you want here?’
‘We’ve been over at the Butlers’ place, Mr McDowd. We spent a long time there. We’ve been talking to a few people. Could we talk to you, d’you think?’
‘Are you the newspapers?’
‘In a manner of speaking. Yes, in a manner of speaking we represent the media. And I’m perfectly sure,’ the woman added hastily, ‘you’ve had more than enough of all that. I believe you’ll find what we have to say to you is different, Mr McDowd.’
‘The wife and myself have nothing to say to the newspapers. We didn’t say anything at the time, and we have nothing to say since. I have things to do about the place.’
‘Mr McDowd, would you be good enough to give us five minutes of your time? Five minutes in your kitchen, talking to yourself and your wife? Would you give us an opportunity to explain?’
Attracted by the sound by voices, Mrs McDowd came out of the house. She stood in the doorway, not quite emerging from the kitchen porch, regarding the strangers even more distrustfully than her husband had. She didn’t say anything when the woman approached her and held out a hand which she was obliged to shake.
‘We are sorry to obtrude on your grief, Mrs McDowd. Mr Tyler and I have been keen to make that clear to your husband.’
Mrs McDowd did not acknowledge this. She didn’t like the look of the sombre-faced woman or her unkempt companion. There was a seediness about him, a quality that city people seemed often to exude if they weren’t smartly attired. The woman wasn’t seedy but you could see she was insincere from the way her mouth was. You could hear the insincerity when she spoke.
‘The full truth has not been established, Mrs McDowd. It is that we would like to discuss with you.’
‘I’ve told you no,’ McDowd said. ‘I’ve told them to go away,’ he said to his wife.
Mrs McDowd’s eyes stared at the woman’s sunglasses. She remained where she was, not quite coming into the yard. The man said:
‘Would it break the ice if I took a snap? Would you mind that, sir? If I was to take a few snaps of yourself and the wife?’
He had spoken out of turn. A shadow of anger passed over the woman’s face. The fingers of her left hand moved in an irritated wriggle. She said quickly:
‘That’s not necessary at this stage.’
