Delahaye’s father, now, he would have had the measure of her, and indeed would probably have preferred her for a daughter to the daughter he did have. What was her name? Margaret? No-Marguerite. An odd party, that one. Keeper of secrets, storer of grudges, an aging embittered woman disguised as the long-suffering spinster daughter whose only care is for her family and ailing father, in her father’s house. Oh, yes, he knew the type, hard done by and sad but liable suddenly to turn and bite, and bite deep.
And there were the other Delahayes, the twins. A rich man’s sons, too satisfied, too sure of themselves, dismissive, careless, and uncaring. He thought again of the traffic island with its scorched grass.
He turned and pressed an electric bell on the corner of his desk, and presently heard heavy, dull footsteps on the stairs. There was a pause, then a brief knock on the door, and his assistant, young Jenkins, clattered in. Jenkins-pin head on a long stalk of neck, cowlick of hair across a narrow forehead, blue serge, boots, an ever-eager eye-was of a type that Headquarters seemed to think Hackett deserved; certainly at least they kept sending them to him, raw recruits fresh out of the Garda training college at Tullamore with less of an idea than the man in the moon of what a real policeman is and does.
“Yes, boss?” Jenkins said.
“Couple of lads I want you to round up,” Hackett said. He wrote out the Northumberland Road address-it was always best to write things down for Jenkins-and handed over the slip of paper. Jenkins frowned at the address as if it were a line of hieroglyphics.
“Am I to arrest them?” he asked, his face brightening with eagerness. Hackett put a hand to his forehead.
“No, no,” he said quietly, “no. Just bring them in. Tell them we believe they might be able to help us with our inquiries.”
“Right.” The young man started to go.
“Oh, and Jenkins-”
He put his head around the door again. “Yes, boss?”
“Go easy, right? This is the quality we’re dealing with here.”
The young man nodded. “Right-oh, boss.” His head, at the end of that neck, resembled nothing so much as an oversized Indian club.
Maggie Delahaye was blissfully happy-blissful, yes, it was the only word. Mrs. Hartigan had got everything ready for her before she arrived, had opened all the windows to air the house, had put fresh flowers on the hall table and made up her bed. She had even, Maggie saw with amusement, brought up a chamber pot from the back- stairs lavatory, for there was the china handle of it peeping out discreetly from under the frill of the old lace bedspread that had belonged to Maggie’s grandmother.
She stood at the window in the sun, looking down at the lawn. No rabbits this afternoon; they would be out in the morning, at first light, hopping around on the grass in that funny, hesitating way they did, like faulty clockwork toys. How peaceful it was, how quiet! She gazed out over the sweltering fields to the far, gray-blue mountains outlined against a hazy sky. This, this was where she belonged. Here she would rest, and let the great world pass over her, like a wave.
She deserved a little peace, a little contentment, at last. True, she felt guilty for having left her father. But he would manage. Her father always managed.
On the kitchen table she found that Mrs. Hartigan had left a plate of salad and sliced ham for her, covered with a tea towel. There were wedges of soda bread, too, on another plate-Mrs. Hartigan’s soda bread was famous throughout the parish-and fresh milk in a glass jug with a little lace doily on it to keep the flies out. She realized that she was hungry, and sat down to eat. How pleasant it was to hear nothing but the clinking of knife and fork-she always liked to be silent at mealtimes, and wished others would follow her example. She poured some milk into a glass, but it was warm and tasted as if it might be on the turn, although perhaps it was just that she was not used to milk so fresh, straight from the dairy, heavy with cream. She pushed it aside, feeling slightly queasy, and went to the dresser and took another glass and brought it to the sink and held it under the tap, but paused, and did not fill it.
A faint savor remained of the brandy she had drunk in that hotel-was it the village of Horse and Jockey she had stopped in? — and now it occurred to her that a glass of wine might settle her stomach. Also she should mark her arrival, her homecoming, as she thought of it, with a toast to herself-why not? There used to be bottles of wine at the back of the old stable-her father jokingly called it his cellar-and they were probably still there, if Jack Clancy had not guzzled them all. Why her father had ever let the Clancys come here to share the house each summer she did not know. Who were the Clancys, what were they to the Delahayes? In her heart she had always thought Jack Clancy common, for all his pretense of being a gentleman, with his swagger and his jokes and his genteel English wife.
She went out by the back door, leaving it on the latch, and made her way to the stables. There was a smell of horses still, after all these years! She thought of Tinsel, her pony that had died under her one day coming back from a ride-the poor thing’s heart had given out, just like that. What age was she then? Eleven, twelve? Happy times. She had never got another horse, for she could not bear to think of replacing Tinsel.
The wine was there, in a long rack against the back wall, the bottles dusty, their labels tattered and faded. She took one out at random, and brushed off the grime. Chateau Montrose, 1934. Goodness! To think of all that had happened since then, in the world, and in the family-her mother’s death, then Victor’s wife Lisa dying and Victor remarrying in such a rush, and then her father’s stroke. The twins had not even been born in 1934. And now Victor, too, was gone. She lifted the bottle and held its cool flanks between her palms. She would not weep, no, she would not start weeping again. She had come here to be happy, to forget and be happy. But how could she forget? The daytime was all right, but the nights, ah, the nights. A shiver ran along her spine, or not a shiver but a sort of flinching sensation. Someone walking over her grave, as the old people used to say. Someone walking over her grave.
She was on the way back to the house, with the wine bottle cradled like a baby in the crook of one arm, when the idea came to her of clearing all of the Clancy things out of the house. They would not be coming here anymore, surely, now that Jack was dead. Sylvia would not want to come, she was certain of that. By the time she got to the kitchen the plan had seized hold of her imagination, and in her excitement she almost overturned the bottle when she was trying to get the corkscrew into the cork. Yes, she would empty out all the bedrooms on the west side, the Clancys’ side, so called, and put the things, the clothes and bed linens and all the rest of it, into boxes and crates and ship them off to Dublin. Sylvia would find room for it all in that big house in Nelson Terrace, and what she did not need or want she could give to the St. Vincent de Paul.
Carefully she poured out a glass of wine, holding the bottle in one hand and supporting the neck on the fingers of the other. At the first taste the wine seemed musty and dry as ink, but she took another sip, and another, and suddenly it blossomed in her mouth like a flower, so soft and velvety. It came to her that it was the past she was drinking, the past itself, that mysterious other place where sometimes it seemed to her she lived more immediately, more vividly, than she did in the present. She sat down and ate some of the salad and a thin sliver of ham. The wine had taken the edge off her hunger. She looked again at the mildewed label: 1934! A whole world away.
Who was it she had hit, that time, with the bottle? Some girl Victor had brought home. She almost laughed to think of it. What age was she then? Old enough to know better. They were at dinner here, the whole family and the Clancys, and the girl had said something to Victor, teasing him. She was a big, stupid girl with an enormous bosom, like two footballs under her blouse, Maggie could not take her eyes off it. When the girl laughed Maggie could see the food in her mouth, half chewed. Then, a moment later, the girl had been crying and holding her head and there was blood where her ear was cut. Someone had jumped up and taken the bottle out of Maggie’s hand, she remembered-Jack Clancy, it was. Wine had spilled all down the front of her dress. It seemed she had hit the girl, had grabbed the bottle by the neck and swung it round and bashed her with it on the side of the head. She had no recollection of having done it, but she was not sorry that she had. It would teach Miss Big-bust not to laugh at her brother. Strange, how she could do things and forget having done them.
There was the question, of course, of what to do with the bedrooms once she had cleared the Clancys’ things out of them. She knew a furniture dealer in Cork who would come and advise her. Anything she bought to replace the Clancys’ things would have to be not only good but authentic; it would have to fit in. She had no intention of doing anything that would damage or compromise the delicate fabric of Ashgrove. She poured herself a little more
