‘He’s neglected it, has he?’
‘Well, yes.’
‘The older a man is the harder it is for him to part with what he has. And the more reason he should. Not that selling out isn’t hard on any man, never mind his years.’
‘Gahagan has a fair bit left, all the same.’
Dillahan stood up. There was a golf cup on the desk and Mr Hassett saw him looking at it. A bit of luck, he said, the Rathmoye Bankers’ Prize. He held the door of his small private office open. The two men shook hands and Dillahan passed through the main offices, out into the sunshine of the Square. He looked to see if Ellie had come back from her shopping. One of the back doors of the Vauxhall was open, a basket and two bags still on the ground beside where she stood. The mad old Protestant was talking to her.
‘They went because of it,’ Orpen Wren said. ‘The St Johns didn’t have control over their sons.’
Ellie nodded. She read her list again, making sure she’d got everything.
‘The last steward they had at Lisquin was Mr Boyle and the mistress had himself and myself brought to her little room. “Close the door,” she said, and I did and Mr Boyle didn’t say a word. Men coming to the house looking for their women, she said. Wives or daughters, it never mattered. The Rakes of Mallow weren’t in it, she said. “Oh, worse,” she said. “Worse than that any day.”
‘The master had taken to his bed for the shame of it, and she came out with it then: that Elador was gone off with a woman. “All I know is the running of the house,” she said. “I can’t be devising stratagems.” Her two little girls were a few years old and Jack maybe fourteen. What good was she for more besides that, was what she was asking us, and Mr Boyle said he’d scour all Ireland. He’d take a stableman with him and they’d go into every inn and hotel. They’d search the two of them out if it took them a six-month. He wouldn’t spare Elador, he promised her that. He’d have it clear and plain with Elador that he must give the woman back where she belonged. Mr Boyle said to the mistress, “Ma’am, I’d maybe have to thrash it out of Elador.” He said he’d need her permission for laying hands on her boy, and the master’s permission, because he’d be frightened of the law. She said it again that her husband was in his bed. She was beside herself, she didn’t remember telling us before. “Mr Wren will write it down,” Mr Boyle said. “Mr Wren will write it down that Elador came back chastened to Lisquin. Mr Wren will put the date to it. And write it down that permission was given.”’
Ellie tried to detect from her husband’s gait if he’d been allowed the loan, but she couldn’t tell. A shawled woman held out a hand and when he’d reached into his pockets he dropped a coin into it.
‘Her heart was broken for Lisquin, Mr Boyle said. Her heart was broken for the St Johns brought low by a son. “It’s in this family always,” she said, and there were tears on her face. For a long time already it was in the family, she said, one generation to the next. “Let me go, ma’am,” Mr Boyle begged her. “Let the stableman and myself make an end of the unworthiness of the whole thing.” If afterwards the story would be told, Mr Boyle said, if afterwards the children of the St Johns would hear before they became men of how Elador St John had been thrashed in Letterkenny or Arklow or by the roadside in County Clare, how he and his woman were hunted down like two wild creatures by dogs - if the children would be told the story, that would be an end to it for ever. And when himself and the stableman went they found the two in Portumna by the river, in lodgings where spalpeens would stay, or labouring men on the repair of a road. They gave the woman back to her husband, and Elador St John was sent out of Ireland. But one night, when years again had passed, a farmer came to Lisquin with a gun, which was taken off him or he’d have shot Jack dead. The day following there was no one in the household that didn’t know the St Johns would go.’
His eyes had become steely and intense. One hand gripped the top of the car’s open door. All during his long monologue Ellie had had the impression that he was trying to say something else and couldn’t manage to because he couldn’t find the words. He asked her if she understood.
‘Lisquin’s gone this long time, Mr Wren,’ she said. ‘The St Johns with it.’
‘“We know old trouble, sir,” I said to George Anthony the first day he was back with us. It was the trouble brought the family down, lady, only that wouldn’t be said unless it was within the walls of Lisquin. That’s how it is to this time, lady.’
‘Yes.’
‘The papers are back where they belong. He was good to take them from me. An old ghost, they’d say, if they saw me coming with them myself. I wouldn’t presume to be welcome in the house. George Anthony saw me right.’
‘Who you’re talking about isn’t a St John, Mr Wren.’
‘There’s your husband coming now, lady. I know your husband well.’
Dillahan waited for a car to pass before he began to cross the Square and then was delayed by Fennerty the cattle auctioneer, who told him Con Hannington was dead. ‘Last evening,’ he said.
‘I heard.’
They talked for a few minutes. Poor Con had been shook a long time, Fennerty said, and Dillahan kept nodding, trying to edge away. He didn’t like coming in to Rathmoye because he still sensed the pity of people, and since he continued to blame himself for the accident it came naturally to him to assume that in spite of their sympathy others blamed him too. On Sundays he went to early Mass because it was less crowded.
He said he’d see Fennerty around. When he reached the Vauxhall Ellie was alone again.
‘That’s fixed,’ he said. ‘Have you everything?’
‘I have.’
‘We’ll be off so.’
He eased the Vauxhall through the other cars in the Square and drove across Magennis Street into Cashel Street.
‘What’d the old fellow want?’
‘Only rambling on,’ Ellie said, ‘you wouldn’t know what he was at.’
‘It can’t be much of a joke, your memory turned inside out for you.’ He stopped for a woman and a pram at a crossing. ‘Poor old devil.’
