When All Is Said Read online

  I never asked where they live. Up in the city is all I know. In a walled back garden possibly, or worse, an apartment. I’m not sure Bess knows quite what she’s letting herself in for with a working dog like that. It was her or the pound; maybe that would’ve been kinder. I know I could’ve given him to any of the boys around here. They’d have been glad of a dog as good as him, but then they’d have known, wouldn’t they, that something was up. When Bess eventually drove away, I sat in the sitting room and closed my eyes, listening to the engine recede into the distance, imagining Gearstick’s confusion. I ran a hand over my face, my mouth opening wide, warning away the burn in my eyes.

  ’Course, this is the first you’re hearing of it all – the sale of the house, the land, the lot. I just, well … I just couldn’t run the risk of you stopping me. I couldn’t let that happen, son.

  Svetlana’s inspecting the bar. Looking at the bottles one by one, checking the fridges, her finger touching labels as her hand passes over each brand. Her head nods and her lips read silently, memorising. Every now and again her eyes land on mine as she looks out at the room. She gives me a tight-lipped smile and I raise my glass a notch in her direction. Out she goes from behind the bar with a cloth to each table and dusts it down again. Can she not smell the Mr Sheen? Through the mirror I can see her hands make circular movements shining the already shined. She moves stools centimetres one way then back again. A real worker-bee, this one.

  After Anthony left this morning I headed for Robert Timoney’s office. I’ve always said he’s a solicitor a man can trust. Not one for sitting at the bar spreading rumours. Every inch his father. Robert Senior knew a man’s business was no one’s but his own. Not that I’ve let him in on everything. Anthony sorted a solicitor in Dublin so I wouldn’t have to use Robert this time, didn’t want him getting suspicious over the house sale and lifting the phone to you. Up to now, all I’ve asked him to do is to sort the hotel room.

  ‘Is he around?’ I asked his receptionist when I arrived into his offices earlier. She’s a Heaney. You know her; you used to pal with the brother, Donal.

  ‘He shouldn’t be too long. You can take a seat there.’

  I looked at the row of four black-cushioned seats, sitting right in the window, overlooking main street.

  ‘And have the world know my business? I’ll be in his office.’ I was already mounting the stairs.

  ‘That’s a private area, Mr Hannigan!’ she said, following me, her step echoing mine. Narrow stairs, no room for overtaking, I kept a steady, calm pace.

  ‘It’s locked,’ she added, at the top, all smug like.

  ‘No bother.’ My hand reached up over the door frame, finding the key and showing her. ‘All sorted,’ I said. Her indignant face disappeared from view as I shut the door and gave her my biggest smile.

  ‘That’s breaking and entering, you know. I’m calling the guards,’ she shouted through the door.

  ‘Super,’ I replied, from Robert’s chair, ‘I’ve a bit of business with Higgins, we can kill two birds with one stone.’

  When she added nothing further, I tilted my head back and fell into a welcome doze as I listened to her thudding down the stairs.

  ‘Glad to see you’re making yourself at home, Maurice,’ Robert said, coming through the door not five minutes later, smirking, reaching for my hand. ‘’Course it’ll take me all day to pacify Linda.’

  I’m sure, young Linda’s at home right now telling the same story to her father over the dinner. Him loving the roasting she’ll be giving me.

  ‘Robert, good to see you.’

  I rose and began to round the table to the not so comfy chair.

  ‘No, sit, sit,’ he replied, taking the cheaper model. ‘True to your word, what? Not a day late. I’ve the key, here.’

  He laid his briefcase down on the table, opened it and handed over a good old-fashioned weighty key that I put in my pocket.

  ‘Do they know it’s me that wants the room?’

  ‘A VIP, I said – “he’ll take nothing less than the honeymoon suite”,’ he laughed. ‘Emily tried everything to get it out of me.’

  ‘Good, that’s good. Listen, Robert,’ I said, a little more hesitantly than is my usual style, ‘I, eh, I’m moving into a nursing home over Kilboy way. I’ve sold the place and the farm to cover the costs. Kevin’s helped me. Found a buyer over in the States.’

  You’ll forgive me, son, for including you in my deception.

  ‘What?’ he asked, his voice hitting a pitch that I’m sure only dogs could hear. ‘And when did all this happen?’

  ‘Kevin talked to me about it when he was over last. I thought nothing of it, thought he might forget the whole thing, if I’m being honest, but then out of the blue, about six months ago he calls me saying he’s found a buyer. Some Yank who wants a taste of home. And here I am now, the bank account bulging and my bags packed. I’m surprised he’s not called you. He said he would; mind you, he’s been up to his eyes with the newspaper, something to do with Obamacare. He will though.’

  ‘Well, now,’ Robert answered, looking at me a little put out that we never used him. ‘None of my business, I suppose, once all’s legal and above board and no one’s going to scam you.’

  ‘No. It’s all signed, sealed and delivered.’

  ‘I’d never have taken you for a nursing home man, Maurice,’ he said, not letting me off the hook that quickly.

  ‘I’m not. Just couldn’t take Kevin’s nagging any more. An easy life, that’s all I want now. It’s hard enough with Sadie gone.’ Tug at the heartstrings, son, works every time.

  ‘Of course, of course. It can’t be easy, Maurice. How long is she eh … gone, now?’

  ‘Two years to the day.’

  ‘Is that right?’ he said, looking genuinely concerned. ‘It doesn’t seem that long.’

  ‘It feels like a lifetime to me.’

  His eyes moved away from mine as he started up his laptop.

  ‘’Course, I’m all for nursing homes,’ he said. ‘Book me in, I told Yvonne. Frankly, I can’t wait to be pampered.’

  A man can say that at forty years of age, having the comfort of a wife and two kids at home.

  ‘So the honeymoon suite is your final farewell to Rainsford. Is that what the hotel and the room is all about?’

  ‘You could say that,’ I replied, taking a good look at the hotel, sitting across the road in all its sunbathed glory.

  * * *

  You know, I first came to work here in 1940 before there was any talk of it being a hotel. It was still the Dollard family home then. It was odd looking, they say, for what was a Big House in the country. The front door opening right on to the main street of the village, like you might see in a square in Dublin. The original owners must have liked the idea of having a village there to serve them, literally, right on their doorstep. No big gate, no long driveway – that was all to the back. Rows of trees, like stage curtains, ran out to the sides of the front of the house, marking the border of their land that stretched long and wide far out to the rear. Most of those trees are gone now, and the main street has extended to run round the hotel on the right, with a row of shops on the left. Any of the land not bought by the council for the town’s expansion is still there, but it’s not theirs any more, as we well know.

  I was just a boy of ten, when I started to work as a farm labourer on the estate. Our land, my father’s land, I should say, what little of it there was then, backed on to theirs. My time under their employment wasn’t the happiest. So bad, that six years later when I left, I vowed never to darken their door again and wouldn’t have, had you and Rosaleen not been set on having your wedding here. Never understood your obsession, or Sadie’s for that matter. She was worse, going on and on about how magnificent it was and how luxurious the rooms were. Had me driven demented, with her gushing over the honeymoon suite. I thought the woman was going to have an attack of some description the day of the wedding fair. Of course, it could all have been an act, co
mpensation for my lack of enthusiasm. I’m not one for pretending.

  ‘The original owner’s master bedroom, Amelia and Hugh Dollard, before the conversion,’ the function manager said, beaming away like this was somehow astounding.

  That’s when I left you to it, heading straight for the bar. Sat at this exact spot and downed a whiskey, a toast to its demise. Don’t know who served me back then, not this young one, that’s for sure – in she wobbles now with a pile of glasses, God knows where she’ll put them, they’re stacked high already under the counters. I was never so engrossed in a drink in all my life that day. My head thought my neck was broken as I refused to look up, to acknowledge the place, or any of them for that matter, should they have been about. There were photos on every wall, in the corridors and rooms, taunting this hulk of a man with their history.

  When you all eventually joined me, I bought the round, or should I say rounds, and listened to you rave about the chandelier in the banquet room and the view from the honeymoon suite.

  ‘You mean the view of my land?’ I said.

  By then I pretty much owned every field surrounding the hotel.

  ‘And isn’t that why this place is just perfect? Looking out over the splendour of our farm. Your gorgeous rolling green hills, Maurice,’ Sadie said, placing a hand on mine. I’d swear she was a bit tipsy.

  The review went on for what felt like hours. And all the time, I swirled my drink and tried to drown you out. Rosaleen’s family arrived then and off you all went on the tour again. That was enough for me. I left. Drunk as a fool, I drove home to sit in the dark.

  To my utter surprise, though, I enjoyed your wedding, when it finally arrived. I suppose it was seeing you so happy, and Sadie too. I felt proud watching you take to the floor with Rosaleen for the first dance. And when we all joined you, me with Rosaleen’s mother and Sadie with the father, I caught your mother’s smile and laugh as she floated past. Later in the night, she even convinced me to have another look at that honeymoon suite.

  ‘Isn’t it just magnificent, Maurice? What I wouldn’t have given for this when we were married. Couldn’t you just see us now, Lord and Lady Muck?’

  I danced her around the bedroom, nearly crashing into the dressing table, falling on to the bed. The drink had gotten the better of us. But my kiss was one of honest sobriety. Full of the love she had unleashed in me and gone on unleashing for all our years together. Not that we were the perfect couple. But we were good, you know. Solid and steady. At least that’s how it felt for me. I never asked her, mind.

  ‘I’ll book us in. Someday, I promise, we’ll have the honeymoon suite just for us,’ I said, lying on the bed, looking at her. I fully believed my words. I wonder did she? And here I am now, two years too fecking late.

  She died in her sleep. She always said that when it was her turn to go, she’d like it to be that way. Just like her sister before her, there had been no sign of any illness, no complaint. She’d pecked me on the cheek the previous night, before turning over with her halo of curlers tied up in my old handkerchief. The woman had dead straight hair that she wound to within an inch of its life every night. All that bother, I used to think, as I watched her from the bed and her at the dressing table – what was so wrong with those silky lengths that I only ever glimpsed for a second? But, do you know something? I’d give my last breath right now to see her at that mirror one more time. I’d watch each twist and turn of her hand with complete admiration, appreciating every stroke.

  That morning, I was in the kitchen with the radio on and my shaving already done before I realised I hadn’t heard the shuffle of her slippers or her usual humming. By the time I’d put the kettle on and still hadn’t seen her, I knew something was up. And so I let the newsreader’s voice trail after me as I made my way back down the corridor. Mick Wallace and his tax evasion. The image of that man’s white, wispy hair and pink shirt froze in my brain when I stood at our door and realised she was still in the bed where I’d left her.

  Mick fucking Wallace.

  I touched her face and felt the coldness of her passing. My knees buckled instantly. Collapsed at the edge of our bed, I looked at her face only inches away. Contented, it was. Not a care. Still a red glow to her cheeks, or am I imagining that? My fingertips felt the softness of the lines around her eyes, then found her hand under the blankets. I held it between my own, trying to warm it. Holding it to my cheek, rubbing it. It’s not that I thought I could bring her back to life or anything, it’s just … I don’t know, it’s just what I did. I didn’t want her to be cold, I suppose. She hated being cold. It’s one of the only things I remember about her passing and the funeral – that quiet time with me and her alone, no one else. Don’t ask me what happened after, who came or who said what, it’s all a blur. I just sat in my chair in the sitting room, still holding her hand in my mind – my Sadie.

  I phoned you, of course. At least that’s what you told me when I admitted months after I couldn’t remember. I should’ve been alright for you when you and Rosaleen and the children arrived to say your goodbyes. I remember seeing your arms rise to hug me as I stood at the front door and them falling back by your side when you saw my face. You offered me your hand, instead. You clasped mine tightly, and my eyes concentrated on the two of them locked together until you let go. You touched my shoulder then, as you moved past into the hall. I can feel it there still, the only signifier that you were more than just another acquaintance who’d come to pay his respects. The shame of it. I wish now I’d wrapped my arms around you and cried on your shoulder and given you the chance to do the same. But no, I didn’t have the room for your grief as well as my own, it seemed.

  What’s more, I shouldn’t have let you go home to New Jersey fretting about me. But I couldn’t rise to it, could barely rise at all for that matter. If I managed to get out of the bed, it was just to make it to my chair in the front room. There I sat with Sadie, walking through our lives together, until a cup of tea appeared in front of me, wrenching me back to my unwanted widowerhood. And I know you wouldn’t have returned to the States so soon after only for Robert convincing you that he’d look in on me and ring at the first sign of any problem.

  You all came home again the following Christmas. We were to go to your in-laws, Rosaleen’s family, for the dinner. Good people, not that I made much of an effort with them over the years. I refused to go at the last minute.

  ‘Too much to keep an eye on,’ I said.

  I knew they were only the half hour out the road but I couldn’t leave Sadie, not the first Christmas, it didn’t feel right. So you sent Rosaleen and the children on and stayed behind with me. Can’t even remember what we ate. Soup from the press, maybe. They came back a couple of hours later with two black plastic bags full of the kids’ presents and two tin-foil-covered plates of Christmas dinner.

  Did I even manage to buy the children presents that year? That had always been your mother’s department.

  That was the start of it, the first of the talk about the home. Well, when I say that, I mean the first time it was ever discussed in my presence. I’m sure it had been the topic of many a conversation before it reached my ears. Sure I knew it would come. What poor widow or widower living alone out there hasn’t dreaded its arrival?

  ‘Would you feck off,’ I told you out straight. ‘Wouldn’t I look the right eejit sitting in playing Telly Bingo with a load of old women in cardigans rather than out tending the cattle?’

  In fairness, you laughed. That big, confident laugh – perhaps there’s something of my vocal genius in you after all.

  ‘Alright, Dad,’ you said, laying a hand on my knee, ‘we just thought you’d be safer there.’

  ‘Safer? What do you mean safer?’

  ‘Well, you just hear stories nowadays about people, you know, coming on to your property and—’

  ‘Sure isn’t that what this beauty’s for?’ I said, laying a hand on my faithful Winchester.

  You looked bewildered. But I wasn’t giving
up my life until I was good and ready.

  As hard as it might be to hear, in a way I’m glad you live as far away as you do. I couldn’t stand the constant reminder that I must be a worry. I’d say your biggest fear is that I’d end up shooting some poor unsuspecting fool of a hill walker who might stumble on to the land.

  Perhaps it’s a small consolation but I hope when you’re home you see that at least I’m clean. I manage perfectly on that score. I don’t smell, not like some I could mention. Old age is no excuse for stinking to high heaven. Sparkling, that’s what I am, having a good wash every morning with the face cloth and, of course, there’s the bath once a week. I had one of those rail things put in about five years ago and now I can lower myself in and out as easy as lifting that first pint. I’m not one for showers, could never take to them. Whenever I look at one I feel cold, that’s why I refused to have one installed despite your mother’s protests.

  My greatest discovery of late has to be the launderette over in Duncashel that collects my offerings and drops them back three days later. Not like the local one, you wouldn’t find her doing anything as helpful as that. Every week Pristine Pete’s gets my business, sending me back my shirts, crisper and cleaner than Sadie could ever have managed, however blasphemous that might sound.

  And what’s more there’s Bess, cleaning the house. Twice a week, never fail. Polishing and scrubbing it back to perfection. I think your mother would’ve liked her.