the wooden trunk and lifted the heavy lid and fished about inside and brought out something wrapped loosely in an oily rag. He stood in thought for a moment, hefting the thing in his hand. “Loyalty,” he said, “it’s not valued anymore, is it. Loyalty. Honor. What used to be called common decency. All gone, that kind of thing.”
He began to unwind the rag, and as he did so Davy heard himself say something, exclaim something- Whoa! it sounded like-and he looked about wildly, as if, even out here, there might be a place to shelter behind. And yet at the same time he felt almost like laughing.
“Yes,” Delahaye said, as if reading his mind and sharing in his desperate amusement, “it is an ugly bugger, isn’t it. A Webley, Mark”-he brought the pistol close to his eyes and peered at the frame below the cylinder-“Mark Six. Pa got it off a fellow in the Civil War, I think it was.” He glanced sideways at Davy with a sort of smile. “Oh, yes,” he said, “it works. I tested it.”
He sat down again, dangling the gun in both hands between his knees. It was an absurd-looking thing, all right, big and heavy and nearly a foot long, with a chamfered barrel and a hammer at the back like a silvery tongue sticking out. There was the faintest swell now, and the boat rocked gently from side to side, the small waves making a playful chattering sound against the hull. Davy tried to get his bearings from the sky, but the sky was empty. The boat seemed not to be moving at all, as if it were at anchor, but he supposed it must be drifting, at the mercy of tide and breeze, and that it only seemed motionless because there was nothing to measure movement against. He was amazed at how calm he felt, tranquil, almost. He might have been running in a race, a marathon that had been going on for so long he had forgotten he was running, and only now remembered, when everything had come to a sudden stop. Why was he not frightened? Why was he not terrified?
“I’d send you for an ice cream, if there were any shops,” Delahaye said, and laughed, and turned the pistol about and put the barrel to his chest and pulled the trigger.
What amazed Davy was that there was so much blood; that, and the vivid redness of it, which made him think of those spiders or insects or whatever they were, tiny scarlet specks, that used to fascinate him when he was a child, as they crawled among the rosebushes in his grandfather’s garden. The blood had a faint smell, too, spicy and slightly sweet. The bullet hole in the left side of Delahaye’s chest was black in the center with a ragged rim the color of crushed raspberries. The blood had quickly soaked the lower half of his blue cotton shirt and the lap of his white trousers, and had dripped out between his legs and made a puddle in the bottom of the boat with a single rivulet running out of it. Davy had managed to ease the packet of Churchman’s out of the pocket of Delahaye’s trousers-it had seemed important somehow that the cigarettes should not get blood on them. He checked his watch, as if it was important too to know what time it was.
The gunshot had sent Delahaye sprawling, with a look of astonishment on his face, and for the first seconds Davy had thought the boat would capsize, so violently did it yaw from side to side. He pictured the two of them sinking together feetfirst through the water, down through the glinting light into the shadows, and then on into the blackness of the deep.
The awful thing was that Delahaye was not dead. He would be, eventually, that was certain-Davy had never seen anyone die, yet he knew Delahaye was a goner-but for now he was still breathing, making wheezing noises, like a child when it has finished crying and is trying to catch its breath. Once he moaned, and seemed to try to say something. His eyes stayed closed; there was that to be thankful for. He had slid off the trunk and was sitting at a crooked angle. He had dropped the pistol between his legs, and the handle was in the puddle of blood in the bottom.
Davy leaned forward, holding on with one hand to the what-was-it-called, the gunwale-he hated boats, hated them-and picked up the weapon by the barrel and flung it out of the boat as far as it would go; it landed in the water with a comical plop. He sat back, and realized at once that he should not have thrown the gun away. They would not think he had shot Delahaye, would they? But what if they did? He swore, over and over, punching himself on the knee with his fist.
He looked about, scanning the sea in all directions. There was no other vessel in sight. What was he to do? Down in the middle of the boat there was a pool of water-it was there that the single thin rivulet of blood was heading for-that swayed and shivered as the little waves nudged against the sides. It was not a lot of water, but what if it was not rainwater but seawater, coming from a leak? He remembered from films how leaks that sprang in the hulls of ships widened in a matter of seconds, until the sea was cascading in, washing sailors away and floating their bunks up to the ceilings. Maybe Delahaye had bored a little hole in the bottom, a little hole that would get bigger and bigger.
Davy looked at the dying man. His face was a bluish gray, like putty, and there was a film of moisture on his forehead and on his upper lip. His breathing was slower now. He looked at his watch and was surprised to find that not quite three minutes had passed since Delahaye had fired the gun-three minutes! It seemed to Davy that he was suspended high above the boat and looking down on all this, Delahaye slumped there, and the two puddles, one of blood and one of water, and himself, huddled in the stern, his two hands out and clutching to the sides in terror. For the first time it occurred to him that he too would die, lost out here in a sinking boat.
A plane appeared from the south, banking to the right, headed for Dublin. He jumped up and waved his arms frantically. The boat set up an angry rocking and at once he sat down again, feeling foolish and dizzy. The plane was too high, no one would see him, and even if someone did spot him he would probably look like some half-witted fisherman waving hello to the tourists as they flew in.
He examined the outboard motor. He had no idea how to start it. Should there be a key? He turned to Delahaye, and heard himself swallow. Did he have the stomach to search in those blood-soaked trousers again? He crept forward and ran his fingers over the outsides of Delahaye’s pockets. He could feel no key. Maybe Delahaye had dropped it into the sea. A lesson in self-reliance. He sat back once more on the bench. The sun was high now, shining directly on the crown of his head, he could feel the beads of sweat crawling on his scalp like insects. He thought again of those blood-red mites in his Grandad Clancy’s garden.
Delahaye opened dazed eyes and frowned at the sky. He gave a rattly groan and struggled forward as if trying to get to his feet, spoke a string of incomprehensible words in what seemed a tone of irritation, then slumped back into silence and died.
2
Marguerite Delahaye did not like her brother’s wife. She had tried to like her, had tried and tried over, but in vain. This troubled her, for Marguerite-or Maggie, as everyone called her, though she hated it-was a kindly soul and wished to think well of people. However, it was difficult to think well of Mona. Not that Mona seemed to care. There were not many things, it seemed, that Mona did care about. She was what Maggie’s late mother would have called an awkward customer. Still, Maggie kept on trying. Mona was her sister-in-law, after all, and it was her duty to keep up the effort, even if in her heart she knew she would not succeed. In her heart too she suspected that Victor himself found it hard to like his wife. He loved her, that was certain-loved her too much, as Maggie knew to her chagrin-but she was sure it was perfectly possible to be in love with someone without liking the person. Disliking Mona meant that Maggie had to work all the harder at being nice to her. Mona took Maggie’s tribute as she took all signs of kindness and regard: with indifference, or at best a sort of vacant amusement.
Mrs. Hartigan had put a crystal bowl of sweet peas on the table in the hall, and the lovely scent was everywhere in the house, even in the bedrooms and the big stone kitchen off at the end of the corridor behind the green baize door. Maggie, coming down from her room, stopped on the return to admire the flowers, arrayed there in soft sunlight falling in through the transom over the front door. The leads of the transom broke up the light and reassembled it into a bright, complicated shape, like a birdcage.
Maggie loved Ashgrove. She had been coming here with her family every year for as long as she could remember. The house had been old when she was young, yet she had the secret notion that it was somehow accompanying her through the years, keeping pace with her, its most favored visitor. For the rest of the year, when she was not here, she missed the old place, as she would miss a beloved dog, or a friend, even. A pity there had to be so many people in the house. She always made sure to arrive a day or two before the others, and to leave a day or two after they were gone. That was bliss, being on her own. She loved especially to lie awake early in the morning, the newly risen sun striping the counterpane and the house all around her stretching and creaking under
