This morning, going from one half-empty room to another, he found himself, without resentment, reflecting for longer than usual on such moments of spent time, and more reluctant than usual to accept the end that every day pressed closer. He stood in the doorway of the bedroom where his father had died while dressing himself and where - three years before that - his mother hadn’t woken up on her sixty-first birthday. Now, only the wardrobe and the bed remained. ‘Later on we’ll see to the clothes,’ his father had said, gathering together dresses and coats on their hangers, to be given to a charity he never made contact with, unable to bring himself to do it. His own clothes hung beside them now.
They couldn’t help it, thinking the world of him. Florian knew that. Even then he almost had. Other forms of art had been suggested, and still - in spite of each negative outcome - the promise apparently remained, while he himself was aware only of failure. He minded at first, later much less. The house was full of books; he read a lot.
He didn’t mind at all when the fees at his Dublin boarding-school were difficult to find and he had to leave it. An elderly tutor, a Mr Blades, arrived from Castledrummond on a motorcycle every day for a while, until the same difficulty arose again and education ended. Then, or later, Florian might have left Shelhanagh, but he remained.
Florian never did. Instead, what he discovered, not long after his father’s death, was an old Leica camera among the junk in one of the garden sheds. Picking it up, he pondered why, during all that searching the world of art for a niche he might have settled into, photography had not been mentioned. And when he tried the camera, to his surprise it worked.
He photographed Shelhanagh, its disrepair and melancholy atmosphere an attraction that afterwards in his photographs he invariably sought: today he intended to return to the burnt-out cinema where he’d been reprimanded for trespassing.
He completed before he did so the clearing of an attic choked with what had been put aside to throw away and never had been. His dog sniffed about in the dust, before lying down to wait for something better to happen. Not long ago she had gone with him on his photographic excursions, trotting behind his bicycle, but now she didn’t want to. He carried what could be burnt to the bonfire that smouldered in the garden, then threw her tennis ball for her.
‘See you mind the old place,’ he instructed before he left and, lying down again, she beat her tail against the ground as if she understood. Jessie she was called.
4
Ellie Dillahan changed into her blue dress and almost immediately took it off again because the skirt needed to be ironed. She did that in the kitchen and when she was ready, when she’d smeared on lipstick and tidied her hair where the dress had mussed it, she wrote her list. Outside, she made sure the two trays of eggs on the carrier of her bicycle were secure and rode out of the yard with the basket for her shopping hanging empty on the handlebars.
She met no one, and there was still no sign of life at the grey cottage by the signpost, unoccupied since the Nelligans had had to be moved out. A Garda car was drawn up on the main road, as if there’d been an accident, two gardai measuring skidmarks.
At the presbytery Father Millane himself answered the doorbell, the plump pinkness of his face broken into a smile. He said he’d have to get Mrs Lawlor before he noticed that Mrs Lawlor had left the egg money out on the ledge in the porch, which Ellie had been about to draw his attention to. While he was making sure it was right, he said he’d seen her at Mrs Connulty’s funeral a week ago and said it was good of her.
‘How’re things with yourself, Ellie? The hay looking good, is it?’
Ellie said things were all right. Some of the hay was cut and still lying. It was plentiful this year.
‘Grand!’ Father Millane enthused. ‘Isn’t that grand!’
He often used the word. Noted in the town for his skills of persuasion and an ability to fix things, he it was who laid down the spiritual tenets by which Rathmoye’s people lived their lives, his the voice that fiercely condemned all threats to the orderly Church he spoke for. Respected for his cloth and for himself, Father Millane rejoiced when the news brought to him by his parishioners was good. There was a lot to be thankful for, he regularly asserted; no matter which way you looked at it, that had to be said. This morning Ellie heard it said again; and, believing that she had herself a lot to be thankful for, was warm in her agreement.
Opening her hall door some minutes later, Miss Connulty repeated the sentiments of Father Millane when he’d said that Ellie had been good to attend the funeral.
‘Ah well, I wouldn’t not have, Miss Connulty. I’m only sorry I couldn’t come back to the house. We had Mr Brennock that day. D’you know Mr Brennock at all?’
‘I don’t, to be honest.’
‘He’s the best of them with the cattle.’
It was the daily girl who’d been taking in the eggs for a long time, ever since Mrs Connulty had found the stairs too much. Only once or twice during the last year had Miss Connulty answered the doorbell: Ellie didn’t know her all that well. Not that she’d known Mrs Connulty much better, but even so she wouldn’t not have attended the funeral.
‘I don’t know what we’d do without you, Ellie,’ Miss Connulty said, sounding like her mother. She remarked that it was a glorious day, which Father Millane had said also. ‘Now, whoever’s that?’ she interrupted herself.
Ellie turned round.
‘Just after crossing from Matthew Street,’ Miss Connulty said, and Ellie saw the man who’d asked her for directions on the morning of the funeral. He was wheeling a bicycle through the parked cars and was occasionally obscured by them.
‘Whoever’s that?’ Miss Connulty said again.
Ellie took the money that had been held out to her before Miss Connulty’s attention was distracted. ‘Thanks, Miss Connulty,’ she said.
