In the Company of Others (10 page)

He saw something, then, moving in the heavy mist beyond the reedbeds, someone walking his way and nearly upon him. Probably one of their gung-ho fishing guys. Without his glasses, which would be no better than windshields without wipers, he was clueless. He threw up his hand, didn’t look to see if there was a response, and headed toward the path.

‘Reverend.’

He turned. Anna was wearing a raincoat, the hood pulled close about her face.

‘I hope I didn’t startle you,’ she said. It’s my day off.’

‘Not at all.’

‘Well, then, let’s hope it clears up and gives you sunshine.’

‘Reverend ...’

Why harp on this foolishness of having people call him Tim, let them call him what they bloody well pleased.

‘I can’t call you Tim,’ she said. ‘I did it the once to be brave and modern, but I’m not at all modern and certainly not brave.’

‘I’m sure one must be very brave to operate a fishing lodge!’ This was no place for a jocular chat; he wanted coffee.

‘Could we . . . could I possibly talk with you? I won’t keep you, I’m so sorry to ask. I’ve been wanting . . . but I didn’t know . . .’

He saw a kind of agony in her face. ‘Of course. Where shall we ...’

‘Our fishing hut just there, in the beeches. God bless you. Thank you. I won’t keep you.’

‘You lead, I’ll follow.’

The hut was a small, parged building with a couple of stone steps to the door and a single room. A table with anglers’ magazines and an ashtray, a few books on a shelf, a candle in a bottle, chairs, a mantel clock stopped at twelve minutes past three. Rain streaked the windows.

‘We could sit,’ she said, anxious.

‘Good idea.’ He untied his hood, shook water from his jacket, hung it on the back of a chair. She hung her raincoat on a hook by the door and sat across the table from him.

‘I didn’t know I would see you this morning, ’ she said, ‘but I was hoping . . . I’m so sorry to do it like this.’ Tears welled in her eyes.

‘Tell you what—no more apologies. Not for anything.’

She put her hands over her face and wept, silent.

As a curate, he’d tried using words against tears, yet something he thought wise often came out as banal. Later, he learned to be silent, praying.

Rain pecked the roof; she wiped her eyes with the palms of her hands and looked at him. She was brave after all, he thought.

‘I don’t know where to begin.’

‘Begin anywhere.’

‘Yes.’ She was silent again, looking at her hands on the table, palms down. ‘My mother died when I was born. That has always haunted me, I always felt I had to apologize to my father, somehow, and of course there can be no making up for such a loss. I think he loved her, but more than that, I think he needed her, yes, that’s what it was, he needed her. She was a kind and lovely woman, everyone said, very deep—and they say I look like her. There are long days when I miss her; ’t is a punishing want, and yet I never knew her at all.’ She looked at him, appealing.

‘I never saw what was needed to be a mother, I had no model for it. I bungled the job.’ She turned away. ‘But I love my child.’ She wept again, soundless.

He drew a bandanna from his pocket and handed it to her and she took it and wiped her eyes and blew her nose. ‘I’ll wash it,’ she said, earnest. ‘Bella is hurting and I can’t reach her—she won’t let me in. She was angry with me for leaving her Da, she was only four at the time, but a very bright and deep and sensitive four, she begged me to stay with him, but I could not. Niall was very loose with his affections those years we were married, and I couldn’t bear what it was doing to all of us. When Koife—Bella—and I left, we lived for a time in Dublin, but it wasn’t a good place for her to come up, and so we moved here to be with Da in what’s now the kitchen wing. He had bought the oul’ place long ago when Liam’s mother had to let it go. Da had invested his boxing money in a haulage business in Dublin. It did very well—seventeen lorries on the move; in good times, day and night together. When someone bought him out, he came back to Lough Arrow, just five kilometers from where he lived as a lad.

‘I hadn’t a car and couldn’t get about for work—I heard that Catharmore was looking for someone to cook and clean. Da said, don’t speak th’ name William Donavan in that house, and I didn’t, and I was taken on. Lough Arrow was the terrible opposite of Dublin, I suppose—Bella hated it here, there were no children about, and she was very lonely. Until she entered school, my da watched out for her during the day. I was working up th’ hill from early morning ’til late afternoon, and at Broughadoon at night. ’t was my dream to turn th’ wreck of it into a fishing lodge to make us a living, so I didn’t give Bella the attention she craved. She was but six when she took up the fiddle; ’t was her boon companion and she was brilliant at it, it came as natural as the waxing of the moon.

‘She left to live with her father when she was twelve. I couldn’t stop her, Reverend, it’s what she wanted, she was fierce to do it. She and Niall have the bond of music, which is her life—but I never forgave myself for letting her go.’

‘God gave me a boy to raise,’ he said. ‘We’ll talk about it later, I hope, but I tell you now that it’s not too late—no matter how deep the wound.’

She wiped her eyes with the bandanna. ‘I’ve lived for years thinking it’s too late. Too late for Bella and me, too late for Liam and his mother, too late for . . . too late.’

‘Never,’ he said. ‘Please know that. When did you leave Catharmore?’

‘I continued working up the hill after Paddy and Seamus came. She wanted me to stay because I did very personal things for her—washed out her undies, altered her clothes to keep them in fashion, moved her jewelry around to various hiding places in the house—sometimes but a step ahead of Paddy, who was after selling it.’ She lowered her eyes. ‘I don’t know whether I should tell you everything, Reverend. I want to tell you, but it is so frightening to tell everything.’

‘I understand.’

‘Each morning at first light, I pray the Lord’s Prayer, and often the decade of Sorrowful Mysteries—but Liam and I stopped going to Mass long ago. He gave up so much that reminded him of his father, and when I moved here, I told myself it was the work that was on me seven days a week. Liam says we’re more than lapsed, Reverend, we’re fallen altogether. As a girl, I wished so terribly to satisfy God . . .’

‘A good Scot named George MacDonald said God is impossible to satisfy but easy to please.’

‘I think I’ve forgotten how to do pleasing things—except for our guests.’ She looked away from him. ‘All these years, there’s been no one to ... to ...’

‘Hear your confession?’

‘Yes. Confession was always important to me, I was schooled in a convent and took it seriously as a girl.’

‘Confession brings pardon and peace,’ he said. ‘We all need it. St. John says, If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.’

‘It’s all right then, to speak ...’—she seemed dubious—‘my heart?’

‘God asks us to do it. But you know I can’t grant you absolution.’

‘I know. But you’ll hear me?’

‘I will.’

‘Liam’s mother was always after the gin, and sometimes she would be . . . out of her head with me. She never cared for me, though I worked very hard for her. By the time she learned who I was, she had come to depend on me, but despised me even more for what she called my wicked deception in not telling her I was William Donavan’s daughter.

‘Liam used to come home at the weekends, and I fell in love with him altogether—I couldn’t imagine how he turned out to be such a lovely man with such a deep spirit—he’s like his father, they say. She was always angry with Liam for his admiration and love for his father—she wanted her boys to love only her. And yet, she couldn’t feel love, Reverend, she couldn’t feel anything at all.

‘She hated me for loving him—Paddy says she could never get on with women who love her sons—but I wouldn’t let her hurt me, I shut myself from her so coldly that I hardly had any feelings left. I turned my own heart to stone.’

She rose from the table and walked to a window, her hands plunged into the pockets of her loose dress. ‘Sure, she had a terrible blow when she was young, a tragic accident in her family, but that’s no excuse, Reverend, for inflicting her outrage on others, it doesn’t give one license ...’ She turned to him. ‘Not at all.

‘I held myself away from Liam for more than a year; it was a torment to us both. I held myself away because . . .

‘My da met Evelyn McGuiness in Collooney, when he was just a lad trying to earn his way as a boxing champion. It was a brutal sport, and he was very brave and hardworking and determined to make something of himself, a boy with hardly a shoe to his foot. At the time he met her, he was just beginning to get a leg up, as he says, and was soon traveling all over Ireland, then England, and up to Scotland. When they fell in love he promised her he would come home again and marry her. And he did come home again, but ’t was seven long years that had passed, and she had seen two sisters and her mother die a horrible death and no one to turn to in her grief. She had married Mr. Conor—Mr. Riley, we all call him—and they had a son, Paddy. She had been nursemaid at Catharmore to Mr. Riley’s first wife who died of cancer.

‘She was very bitter towards Da for not coming for her as he promised, and he was bitter towards her for not waiting, though heaven knows he had handled matters in a gormless way. So off again he went to Dublin, and then, some while before he married my mother, he came back and . . . there was something between them. Da would never say what, he refuses to talk about it, but Paddy thinks ...’

She wrung the bandanna in her hands. ‘Nine months later, Liam was born.

‘And so I held myself from Liam. ’t was agony to find myself in love with my halfbrother—’t is against the church and against the law, a misbegotten thing. And yet I loved him so, I thought I couldn’t bear the pain.

‘To his mother, I was but a lowly servant girl, just as she’d been when she worked for Mr. Riley’s first wife. For Liam to love me was a deep sting to her, and because she couldn’t hurt me with her tormenting, she tried to hurt Liam, instead. One night when she was very drunk, she told me something that was—in its way—as ...’

Her face colored with an old fury. ‘She told me Mr. Riley wasn’t Liam’s father.’

‘She confessed to you, then.’

‘But ’t was another heavy blade entirely. She said Liam’s real father was Mr. Riley’s business partner . . . someone who came here for fishing parties.’ She caught her breath sharply. ‘He’s in the pictures in our library, God help us.’

She came and sat at the table. ‘I don’t know if it’s true, there’s no way to know. She often said crazy, mindless things.’

‘Why do you think she told you this?’

‘I think she believed I would tell Liam in one of the dreadful fights he and I had in those days. But of course I would never tell him such a terrible thing.’ Her voice shook with the trembling in her. ‘The truth is of no importance in the end, Reverend, because Mr. Riley loved Liam very much. I’m sure he never knew he wasn’t Liam’s father.’

‘How did you feel about what she said?’

‘I felt suddenly free . . . that maybe it was all right for us to love, maybe it was God’s way of giving us permission.’ She drew in her breath. ‘I decided to take the risk.

‘I left Catharmore and Liam came with me, and we were wed in the library with the roof nearly gone above us. He began helping me resurrect Broughadoon. He worked so hard and is gifted in so many ways; ’t is all because of him that we have such a lovely place.’

‘He gives the credit to you.’

‘Aye, he would.’ He saw for a moment the light in her eyes. ‘I love my husband.’

‘Your husband loves you.’

‘I’ve lived all these years knowing the truth, and the hatred I feel for her is so cruel, it devours me even yet. Sometimes I feel as if my heart would break for Liam—knowing the truth doesn’t always set us free, Reverend.’

Not always, perhaps, but often. Learning he had a brother from his father’s intimacy with the dark-skinned woman who helped raise him had been, after the initial shock, liberating—scary, but liberating. He had a brother now, that was the important thing, and he and Henry had the rest of their lives to puzzle out the mystery of it, to give thanks for it.

‘Liam loves Bella as best he can, he wants to be a good da to her, but she shuts him out. And there’s a coldness in Liam towards Da, though he tries to hide it from me. I think he resents that Da was allowed to buy his birth-right. All around us, there’s a shutting out of love, so.’

‘I sense there’s hard feeling still between Evelyn Conor and your father.’

‘My da bought Broughadoon anonymously, after Mr. Riley died and she came up against it. Perhaps Da was trying to make up for his misguided ways and help her; perhaps he was only bitter, and bent on taking away something she loved—I don’t know. But when she found it was Da who owned what had been hers, things went to pieces altogether.

‘And then there’s Paddy, always after Liam to give a hand with the roof, the gardens, the guttering, to loan him money—and Bella with such a fierce and dangerous rage, and myself thinking she got it from me, after all, that it’s in the blood, this brutal fury, perhaps I’m the one who ...’—she put her hands over her face and sobbed—‘infects others with it.’

He waited.

‘I confess, Reverend, my weakness of faith, my hurtful selfishness, the sin of this consuming hatred that withers my bones. I want to let it go.’ A long keening came out of her. ‘I want to let it all go.’

He looked at the grainy light slanting across the floor, and wondered where Ibiza might be, that place for which the Irish yearn when it rains.

Twelve

‘Wicked-looking stuff, his art, collected when he lived in New York.’

‘Did you visit New York?’

They were driving up the hill in the Rover.

‘In my late thirties,’ said Liam. ‘I couldn’t wait to get home. Don’t like a lot of frizzing about, horns blaring, that sort of thing.’

‘A bumpkin like myself.’

‘And our father’s gardens have run riot, of course. Seamus is no hand with a spade, nor Paddy, either.’

‘Gardening is civil and social, Thoreau said, but it wants the rigor of the forest and the outlaw.’

‘This one’s all outlaw. I’d love to get my hands on ’t, but there’s no stoppin’ th’ force of a goin’ wheel—I’d be up to my eyeballs, an’ Broughadoon runnin’ wild.’

‘Any hope for the country house hotel to happen?’

‘No hope a’tall as I see it. Paddy can’t boil water, much less cook a decent fry; he’s rude to everybody and a bloody terror with the cheque book. So he’s after writing a novel to make his fortune. Says a lot of ad blokes have done th’ same—James Patterson, Salman Rushdie, Peter Mayle, Elmore Leonard . . .’

‘Dorothy Sayers,’ he said. ‘She was in the ad business. Mystery writer, Christian apologist. A great success.’

‘So there you have it,’ said Liam. ‘Paddy’s convinced he’s next in line.’

‘This bridge club—it’s been around a few years?’

‘Feeney and Father O’Reilly have paid a monthly call to Mother since Father passed. He was generous to Feeney when he was coming along in his medical practice, and openhanded to th’ parish altogether. They were with him when he died; one of the last things he said was, lads, keep an eye on Evelyn. God knows, they’ve been faithful, they’ve done their bit— but none can wean her of the drink or the stepstool. ’

‘The stepstool.’

‘Goes up it like a monkey—pops herself onto a counter or table or whatever’s at hand—an’ squirrels her jumble in cupboards. She’s after keepin’ her last bit of jewelry from Paddy, who’d be off to the pawnshop in th’ blink of an eye. When Seamus came, she hauled the family plate to the top shelves, forks, knives, spoons, and all. Up she’d go to get herself a fork, and after the washing-up, Seamus would leave it out for her to put away again. That lasted for a year or two.’

He might have laughed, but Liam wasn’t amused.

The misting rain of the morning had turned to a pelting; he reached to the backseat and grabbed his wet umbrella. ‘By the way, where’s Pud?’

‘Shut up in th’ family quarters.’

‘Why is that?’

‘To give you your peace!’

‘If you’re putting him up on our account, please turn him out. We like the little guy.’

‘You’re sure of it?’

‘Absolutely.’

Liam grinned. ‘Righto, then.’ The engine idled at the front portico; Liam stared ahead. ‘Perhaps one day we could . . . that is . . . ah, no, a foolish thought. Dinner this evening compliments of the travel club.’

‘Can’t seem to think of them as anything but the poker club. No eel, I trust.’

‘Trout, salmon, an’ plenty of it. There’ll be long eatin’ in that, as William says. After dessert, we move to th’ library for Anna’s surprise. ’t will be grand, I hope.’

Liam’s mobile buzzed; he squinted at the ID. ‘It’s Corrigan. Hallo, Conor here . . . Well, then . . . Did you check in with Jack Kennedy, he dropped a good bit of his wages there. Yes . . . No . . . Of course. Will do.’

Liam snapped the phone shut. ‘Nobody’s seen Slade in two weeks. Corrigan says there’s nothing more can be done, call him if anything turns up.’

Again, the weight on Liam, the stricken look. He remembered what Peggy often said when he was a boy and things were hard. ‘Ever’thing gon’ be all right.’ It had always consoled him, even when he didn’t believe it.

‘Everything’s going to be all right,’ he said.

Liam looked surprised. ‘That’s what my father used to say—just like that. ’t is a wonder to hear it again.’

He climbed out and shot up the umbrella.

‘You’re a lovely man, Rev’rend. Don’t take our mother’s ways too personally, an’ enjoy your visit.’

The Rover rattled down the drive.

‘Seamus! Is that you?’

Seamus hailed him from the portico. ‘’t is m’self in my butler’s equipage, fittin’ tight as a sausage casin’.’

The Catharmore dogs burst from the house, an eruption of Vesuvius. He bounded up the steps, lowered the umbrella, shook hands. ‘You’re looking very smart in that gear, my friend.’

‘You can see your face in th’ shine of it, but Mrs. Conor likes me to wear it for company. Can’t gain so much as half a stone without rip-pin’ th’ seat of it.’ Seamus pulled a small comb from his pocket and hurriedly assailed his mustache. ‘Haven’t had two minutes to rub together, but we’re ready for the bridge club and glad to have you join us, Rev’rend.’

‘Tim, Seamus. Try Tim.’ He dropped a few dog biscuits onto the porch decking.

‘Tim it is, then. I’ll just lean your brolly against the rail here. As you can see, we’re standing at the west portico, which Dr. O’Donnell adapted from that of Bellamont Forest in County Cavan. They say the design was derived from Palladio’s Villa Rotunda in Vicenza—the historians who visit make quite a bit of that. But come inside, I’ll tour you around; Dr. Feeney and Father O’Reilly are on their way—runnin’ a bit late, I’m afraid.’

The front door stood open as Irish doors might in a land presumably free of bugs. He stepped inside, adjusted his eyes to the shadowed space. He hadn’t expected such a vast entry hall, nor one so handsomely proportioned.

A high ceiling with elaborate cornices. Pilasters on either side of two double doorways. A low fire on the hearth at the right of the hall, and in the center, Doric columns flanking a broad stair that ascended to a landing and a bank of dim windows.

‘Very beautiful, Seamus. Very grand.’

As for the art, Liam was right. Odious stuff. Smears of black, red, white, ocher, on unframed canvases of immense size.

Seamus gave him a discreet look. ‘They keep th’ devil in his rightful place.’

‘To each his own.’

‘Aye. He tried to sell it off, but ’t wouldn’t sell. Now, then, you’re seeing Catharmore at a good time of year—in winter, the hall is perishin’ cold. Paddy and his mother like a fire here on Christmas Day, but in no time a’tall, they’re off to th’ kitchen for th’ heat of the Aga.

‘This is the room as completed in 1862 or thereabout, everything done by Irish workmen. Mr. Riley carried out a restoration of the place in the 1940s—nothing changed save the add-on of closets and loos. Then Paddy did grand work on the main floor when he came home from New York.’

‘And you came with him, Liam says.’

‘We met in a pub, Paddy and I, in lower Manhattan. I was there with my employer, Michael Kerr—an Irish gentleman of means who emigrated as a lad and lived to be ninety-eight years and a day. Mr. Kerr liked to visit this particular pub at the weekend, to have himself an Irish whiskey and a good cry about the oul’ country—a lovely man, he was, and like a father to me. Paddy would come in with his riotous crowd from the advertisin’ shop and all th’ Irish among us would end up singin’ the old songs of the Eire; ’t was a great highlight of Mr. Kerr’s last years. When Mr. Kerr passed, Paddy had sold his business and was comin’ home to Sligo a rich man. Come with me, Seamus, he says, I’ll buy you a suit of butler’s clothes and you’ll have a pint and three meals a day for the rest of your life.’

Seamus laughed, patted his midsection. ‘Three is one too many, but I took the offer and never looked back. I had longed for home, but had nothin’ saved to give myself a start—I confess th’ habit of sharin’ my earnings with Irish down on their luck.’

‘There are worse habits.’

‘Wouldn’t have minded bein’ poor if I hadn’t been so short of cash.’

They had a laugh.

‘But here I am, thanks to God and Paddy Conor. Now, that’s th’ Doric-style columns that’s holdin’ up the ceilin’ there—and a good thing it is, as th’ two floors above need all th’ holdin’ up they can get.’

‘Is that an engraving?’ On a pane of glass in a window near the front door, something chiseled—a date, very likely. He walked over and looked, stooped, adjusted his glasses.

My dearest love
Always and forever
Evelyn

He glanced at Seamus, who appeared abstracted.

‘Mrs. Conor scratched that in as a young bride, with the diamond Mr. Riley gave her. He was very pleased—they say. You’ll see the drawing room and dining room at drinks and lunch, so if you’ll come this way, I’ll show you the kitchen.’

They walked along the stair hall, lined with display cases of mounted fish, and turned left into what he reckoned may be Catharmore’s crown jewel.

‘Paddy put a bob or two in th’ kitchen, as you see. ’t was the oul’ kitchen and maids’ quarters they combined into one.’

A wall of windows looking out to the ruined garden; decorative tile work surrounding a blue Aga; limestone floors, a coved ceiling, an enormous iron rack hung with copperware. Impressive.

‘Paddy was after letting guests dine in th’ kitchen, he said, th’ way they do in th’ States. They would pay a deal more for th’ privilege, he said, an’ cover the cost of a roof altogether.’

The cooking smells could stand against any at Broughadoon. He realized he was ravenous.

‘I’m hoping to meet Paddy. Will he be with us?’

‘Paddy’s after doing some business or other, haven’t seen much of him in several days. Make yourself comfortable, now, I’ll just stir up the pot.’

Seamus took an apron from a hook, tied it on, lifted the pot lid, looked in, replaced the lid. ‘I hope you don’t mind being treated like family, Tim.’

‘I’m honored to be treated like family.’

Seamus opened the oven door. ‘I hope I didn’t overstep my bounds bringin’ you into the kitchen.’

‘Not in the least.’

Seamus used a long fork to poke whatever was in the oven; by the smell, roast lamb.

‘This will be the end of the tour, as the old scullery has been turned over to Mrs. Conor and the paneled library to Paddy, for there’s no livin’ a’tall on the upper floors. As for me, I’m in the laundry which I’ve fitted out quite snug, if you don’t mind th’ washer cyclin’ as you watch th’ telly.’

‘How about the basement? I believe O’Donnell’s surgery was located there.’

‘’t was, yes, but we never go below unless at gunpoint; ’t is a calamity with the risin’ damp. On occasion, Paddy’s forced to do something about th’ plumbing or such, and then we’re in for it, ’t is like openin’ a hole to China and pourin’ in euro by th’ washtub.’

‘I have one of those holes myself,’ he said. Their new heating and cooling system had cost twice a year’s salary in his first parish. ‘Have you read O’Donnell’s journal?’

‘I’ve made a stab at it, but my eyes are unfit for th’ faded ink and he goes on too long about th’ least thing. My da inherited a journal from his grandfather. Wind rising, it might say. Figs ripe. Annie bilious. Farrelly ploughing.’ Seamus laughed. ‘That would be my style of a journal.’

‘Is the doctor’s old cabin standing?’

‘A pile of rubble in the sheep meadow, they say.’ Seamus removed his apron, hung it on the hook, buttoned his jacket. ‘Well, then. Everything’s under control; the rolls will pop in after the other guests arrive. I hope you’ve an appetite.’

‘You can count on it.’

‘Drinks will go for a half hour or so, you could probably do with a nibble.’ Seamus cut a slice from a round of cheese on a platter. ‘Our own sheep. Very fine.’

The cheese was proffered on the blade of a knife, the way his father had done years ago.

He bit into the cheese—aged, mildly tart beneath a mellow sweetness. ‘Hits the spot. There’s a lot to be said for being treated like family.’

Seamus gave him a paper napkin. ‘A taste of Irish to wash it down?’

‘No, no, thanks.’

‘Liam says you’re light on th’ drink—a good thing. Thirst after the drink, m’ father said, sorrow after th’ money.’

‘I was never much for spirits. A glass of burgundy or Bordeaux, a sherry now and then.’

‘I seem to remember a bottle of sherry at the back of the cabinet; it may have aged a good deal.’

‘All the better.’

‘I feel the need of a pipe, m’self. Would you step out with me? We’ve a bit of time before I show you to the drawing room. You might have to stick it out with Herself—ah, sorry, Tim, please forgive that—with Mrs. Conor—’til the rest of the party show up.’

The rain-soaked terrace was bare, save for a huddle of plastic chairs stacked together and anchored with a rock. ‘Th’ wind carried off th’ good stuff long ago. Probably somewhere in Easkey, on the porch of a stout fisherman and his wife.’

They stood well back of the rain pouring in a sheet from the terrace roof. Ever the earnest home owner, he suspected leaking gutters or none at all.

Seamus lit his pipe, puffed, kept the match to it, puffed, flicked the match. The scent of tobacco curled into the damp air.

‘I should warn you, Tim, if Liam didn’t. She’ll be after trimmin’ your sails.’

Seamus drew on his pipe. ‘She came up grin-din’ poor in a mud cabin in Collooney with four brothers and two sisters, all dead now—two passing with their mother in a most tragic manner. And there were certain other . . . matters, as well. She’s been takin’ th’ hurt out on th’ rest of th’ world for many a year.’

A loud buzzing in the kitchen.

‘There she is.’ Seamus checked his watch. ‘Five ’til one.’

In the kitchen, Seamus pressed a button near the Aga. ‘Yes, mum.’

‘Show our guest into the drawing room, I’ll be along directly.’

‘Yes, mum.’

‘Well, then.’ Seamus took out his comb, looked at it a moment, doleful. ‘She likes it groomed,’ he said of his mustache.

At the drawing room door, Seamus shook his hand gravely, as if seeing him off on a coffin ship.