‘Oh, that’s right,’ Peggy said archly. ‘The Prods are great ones for the tradition.’
She had to stand up to pull on her skirt. ‘Give us a hug,’ she said, ‘before I go to that bloody fridge of a room.’
After a while he said, ‘Archbishop McQuaid told me Protestantism isn’t a religion at all.’
‘Then what is it, if it’s not?’
‘A reaction against a religion. According to the Archbishop.’
She laughed. ‘Oh, that would be old Chilly-Chops, all right!’
‘Chilly-Chops?’
‘It’s what I call him. He always looks as if he’d been left out all night in the cold, with that grey face he has, and the little beady eyes. How did you come to be talking to him, anyway?’
‘He sent out a summons for me – he has a house outside Gorey – to tell me the Church expected every man, me especially, to do his duty.’
‘To do his duty and say nothing about what really happened to Father Tom, is that it?’
‘How wise you are, Peggy.’
‘A girl has to keep tabs on the likes of His Holiness John Charles, that’s for sure. I don’t want to end up a slave in a laundry somewhere, working my hands to the bone and the nuns shouting at me.’ She pushed him away, not untenderly. ‘Now I’m off, Christmas Eve or no Christmas Eve.’
She stood up, adjusting her skirt and running her hands through her hair.
‘It was a lovely Christmas present,’ Strafford said. He was lying on his side, with a hand under his cheek. She leaned down and kissed him on the forehead.
‘Next time, make sure to bring a Frenchie with you,’ she said, ‘and who knows what you might get from Father Christmas.’
25
In the morning he rose late. Mrs Reck, sleepy, in a woollen dressing gown and fluffy pink slippers, wished him a happy Christmas, and made his breakfast for him. He was hungry, and ate two boiled eggs and four slices of toast.
He thought of Jenkins. A crystal of icy dread had formed inside him, that no toast or tea or Christmas cheer, or even sweet Peggy’s attentions, could melt.
Through the window he saw that the clouds were gone. How strange the sky looked, scoured clean and of a powdery blueness, naked – no, nude, after days of being wrapped in layers of dirty cotton.
He would call Sergeant Radford. They would have to organise another search party. It wouldn’t be easy to get the men out again, on Christmas morning.
Barney the dog came waddling out of the kitchen. Seeing Strafford, it stopped. It was wearing, tilted over its left ear, a cone-shaped party hat made of crimson cardboard sprinkled with fake frost, and held precariously in place with an elastic string under its throat. Dog and man gazed at each other, the dog clearly daring the man to laugh.
When Strafford had finished his breakfast, Mrs Reck set down a shapeless parcel by his plate, wrapped in tissue paper and tied with twine. Inside was a pair of grey woollen gloves.
‘Happy Christmas,’ she said. ‘I hope they fit you. I knitted them myself for His Majesty Mr Reck, but the bloody man won’t wear them.’
Strafford thanked her, and said he was sorry that he had nothing to give her in return. She blushed.
‘Oh, I nearly forgot,’ she said, ‘Mr Harbison left this for you.’ She fished in the pocket of her apron. ‘Here you are.’
She handed him a cork beer mat, advertising Bass ale. On the back was written, in pencil, in a childish hand, Tell Osborne Im prepared to give 100 guineas for that horse. F. Harbison. Strafford shook his head. He had not even seen Father Tom’s horse, but he knew he would never forget it.
There was no sign of Peggy. When he asked after her, Mrs Reck said she had gone home – ‘It is Christmas Day, in case you’d forgotten’ – and gave him what, to his consternation, he thought was a knowing look. Had she heard Peggy creeping back to her room in the small hours?
He put on his hat and coat and his new, hand-knitted woollen gloves.
The door locks of the Morris Minor were frozen, and he had to go back and get a jug of hot water from the bar to pour over them, saving half of it for the ice on the windscreen. He was weary of this seemingly endless winter.
Once more the engine, to his renewed surprise, started on the first try.
It was only then that he remembered the other note, the one that had been left last night in the pocket of his overcoat. He didn’t need to go back for it. He remembered what it said.
All was silent at Ballyglass House. Only Mrs Duffy was about. She told him Colonel Osborne had gone to church, that Mrs Osborne was ‘lying down’, and that Lettie was asleep.
‘And Dominic?’
‘I believe he’s gone out with the dog.’
‘Do you know which direction he went in?’
‘Down by the Long Meadow, I’d say. That’s where he usually goes.’ Strafford could see she was itching to know why he had developed so sudden an interest in the son of the house. ‘Go right, and through the wicket gate, and follow the path.’
‘Thank you,’ he said. He caught faintly the smell of roasting turkey. ‘Oh, and tell Mr Duffy I wish him a happy Christmas, will you?’
He borrowed the wellington boots and the big black coat he had worn yesterday, and stepped out into the sparkling, windless morning. The air was clear and cuttingly cold, and struck into his lungs like the blade of a knife. In the silence he heard the sound of a snow-laden branch breaking somewhere far off in the woods.
Beyond the wicket gate the path curved downwards along a snow-covered slope. There was ice, and he had to go carefully, taking mincing little steps and holding his arms out from his sides for balance, like a tightrope walker. At the bottom of the slope the way became easier. The snow here was criss-crossed by animal tracks. Colonel Osborne had said that foxes were a plague this year. There were bird prints too, crisp as hieroglyphs cut in stone.
Here was what must be the Long Meadow, blanketed with snow. He spotted a robin on a fence. His talisman. His familiar.
Before he saw the dog, he heard its deep-throated bark. Then it came into view, trotting along briskly with its head down, sniffing in the hedgerow. Strafford stopped beneath an ancient, leafless elm, and waited. When Dominic saw him, he stopped, too. He was wearing his checked overcoat and his Tyrolean hat with the feather in the brim. His shepherd’s crook was in his hand. The two men stood, twenty yards apart, regarding each other in the clear, tense air. Now the dog too saw Strafford, and stopped and peered at him, its nostrils twitching. For some moments they made a tableau, the three of them, the two men and the dog. Then Dominic came forward.
‘Hello,’ he said warily. ‘What are you doing out here?’
‘Looking for you,’ Strafford answered.
The dog was sniffing delicately at Strafford’s boots, puzzled by their familiarity.
‘You were looking for me?’ the young man said, surprised. ‘Why?’
‘It’s time we had a talk.’
Dominic thought about this, then squinted up at the sky. ‘Lovely day,’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘I’m going to the house.’
‘I’ll walk with you.’
Dominic nodded. He was still looking away. The dog glanced from one of them to the other and whined impatiently. The two men still stood together, an ill-assorted pair.
‘What did you want to talk to me about, exactly?’ Dominic asked, tapping the tip of his shepherd’s crook on the icy ground at his feet.
‘Let’s go, shall we?’ Strafford said.
‘First tell me what you have to say.’
The dog whined again, and sat down grumpily on its haunches. Strafford twitched his shoulders under the weight of his borrowed coat. It was still damp from yesterday’s snow.
‘My feet are cold,’ he said. ‘I really think we should make a move.’
Dominic shrugged, and the dog sprang up eagerly, grinning, and showing a floppy pink tongue.
They set off and walked along by the side of the meadow.
‘Any ne
ws of your colleague, what’s-his-name?’ the young man asked.
‘Jenkins? No, there’s no news of him.’
‘It’s very strange, his just vanishing like that. Do you think something happened to him?’
Strafford wasn’t paying attention. He walked on in silence for a while, then spoke. ‘I know about the Shelbourne Hotel,’ he said, keeping his eye on the snowy pathway ahead of them. Dominic’s step didn’t falter, but the blood drained from his face, and he looked for a moment as if he were about to cry. ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’ Strafford said softly.
‘I thought you said you knew?’
‘I do,’ Strafford lied, ‘but I’d like to hear your version.’
A rabbit hopped out of a patch of brambles at the side of the path, saw the trio of menacing creatures approaching, and turned and dived back into the bush, the patch of white on its tail bobbing. The dog shot away in pursuit.
After a few paces Dominic stopped abruptly and turned to the detective.
‘How do you know?’ he asked suspiciously.
‘Someone wrote me a note,’ Strafford said, stopping too and turning back to face the young man.
‘What sort of a note?’
‘Just a scribble. No signature. It didn’t go into details.’
‘Lettie,’ Dominic said, stabbing the shepherd’s crook into the ground with angry force.
‘Why would you think it was Lettie?’
‘Because I told her, about meeting him at the hotel.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘That will teach me to confide in her, the bitch.’
The dog returned from its fruitless chase. It stood between the two men, again looking from one of them to the other, puzzled and uneasy.
‘Tell me what happened,’ Strafford said.
They walked on, the dog trotting ahead. They could see the house from here. The sunlight glinted on a wireless aerial sticking up beside one of the chimneys.
‘We were in Dublin because Lettie was starting at Alex,’ Dominic said. ‘Alexandra College, you know – boarding school. Daddy had to make a fuss, of course, to mark’ – he mimicked his father’s voice – ‘the great event in his daughter’s young life, don’t you know.’ He gave a bitter little laugh. ‘So he took us, the four of us, Mummy as well, to stay at the Shelbourne. It was awful. Lettie was getting all the attention, and I was jealous.’
‘What age were you?’ Strafford asked.
‘Oh, ten, I suppose. Ten or eleven. They got Lettie installed, and that night my parents went to dinner at Jammet’s, and left me at the hotel. I couldn’t sleep, and went downstairs. The place was crowded – there was something going on, the Horse Show, or something like that – and no one took any notice of me, despite the late hour.’ He stopped, and Strafford heard him swallow. At each step he stabbed the shepherd’s crook at the pathway. He wouldn’t meet Strafford’s eye. ‘I didn’t notice him, at first. He was sitting on his own in the lobby, at one of the corner tables, out of the lamplight. He was often at our house in those days, for the Keelmore hunt. But even when I did spot him I didn’t recognise him, I suppose because I hadn’t seen him in an ordinary suit before, and without his collar. He caught my eye and smiled, and put a finger to his lips, as if we were already conspirators. Then he beckoned me over. I remember what he said to me – “Don’t tell anyone,” he said, “but I’m here in disguise.” Meaning he was in mufti. He was staying at the hotel, I don’t know why. I think he often stayed there. He invited me to sit down, and asked if I would like to eat something. I was tongue-tied, of course, but he called over a waiter and ordered me an ice cream sundae with chocolate sauce. Funny, the details one remembers. I was shy, but pleased, too. Being there made me feel – I don’t know – it made me feel grown-up, I suppose. Grown-up and sophisticated, to be sitting in a busy hotel, late at night.’
They had come to the slope below the wicket gate. They stopped, Dominic looking up at the house, frowning and biting his lip, and Strafford looking at him.
‘So what happened?’ Strafford asked.
‘Well, we sat there, him drinking whiskey and I with my ice cream. I had the impression he’d been there a long time, waiting. Maybe he knew we were staying there, but he couldn’t have known I would come down. He asked me where my parents were, and when I told him, he seemed surprised, I mean surprised that they would have left me on my own. I hadn’t thought it was a strange thing for them to do, but suddenly it seemed very – very romantic, you know? I mean like in a novel, or a film. I felt like David Copperfield, or Pip, in Great Expectations. My head was spinning. I was just a child. I didn’t understand anything.’
They had come to the wicket gate. Dominic was about to open it, but Strafford put a hand on his arm and said, ‘Let’s walk back a bit the way we came. There’s some heat in that sun, we won’t freeze.’
The ashen-faced young man looked at once miserable and excited, and kept jiggling the shepherd’s crook in his hand and gnawing at his lip. He seemed almost to have forgotten Strafford’s presence. In his mind he was back there, in the lobby of the Shelbourne Hotel, with Father Tom in his elegant suit and tie, the two of them together, like men of the world.
‘Then he asked me to come up to his room. He said he had something to show me, a book or something – I can’t remember.’
‘And you went.’
‘Yes. I went.’
Strafford understood at last. It was the one thing that hadn’t occurred to him, the one piece of the jigsaw he had missed, and yet how obvious it was. He could see it, he could play it out in his head, like a film, as the young man had said. He could even hear the dialogue. Finish up that ice cream. Good man. This way – here’s the stairs. I’m on the first floor. Here we are – come on in. And here’s the book. Sit down beside me on the bed and we can look at it together. Are you not tired, so late at night? What time did your parents say they’d be back? Are you in the same room as they are? No? A room to yourself, eh? Maybe I’ll come along and see you there, later. Neither of us is sleepy, I think, are we? Don’t say a word to your parents, though – it will be our secret. I used to love staying up and talking to my friends late at night, when I was your age. What number is your room? All right. Why don’t you take the book and run along there now, and I’ll come later. Three taps, I’ll give – tap, tap, tap – so you’ll know it’s me.
They walked slowly back down the sloping path. The dog kept pace with them, still looking up questioningly at them and frowning, wondering why they were behaving so strangely, why there was such tension between them.
There was that robin again, with its little bright bead of an eye.
‘And then, when you came home, you saw him again?’ Strafford asked.
‘What?’ The young man stopped and gazed at him, blinking. He had again that swollen, tremulous look, the look of a child about to burst into tears.
‘When he was staying here, at the house, he would come to your room, as he did in the hotel?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you stayed – you stayed friends, ever since?’
‘Yes.’
They walked on.
‘It always seemed so innocent, in a way,’ the young man went on. ‘Like the games children play – mummies and daddies, doctor and patient – you know? And there was the same kind of excitement, the same sense of doing something that was forbidden and all the more thrilling because of that. And in fact, we did play games. He would put on his priest’s outfit, and I’d be the altar boy, or a child receiving Communion. And then, the thing itself, well, it was never more than hands, his hands, my hands, sometimes our mouths. I’d never let him do more than that. He was very gentle and considerate. He never made demands, never tried to force me to do things I didn’t want to do. He said it couldn’t be wrong if there was love, that God himself was love – I never paid much attention when he started on about that kind of thing, about God, and love, and forgiveness. There was a word he used, agape. It’s Greek. I’d never heard it before. It means something like bro
therly love, only more than that. I think he was trying to persuade himself, as well as me, that we weren’t really doing anything wrong. “Oh, you’re just a little boy,” he’d say, “my little boy.” But I knew what we were doing, and I didn’t care.’ He paused. ‘You can’t imagine what a relief it is to hear myself saying these things out loud. Do you know what I mean?’
They had come to the bare elm tree where they had stood together a little while ago, and now they stopped again. The dog ran in a circle around them, whining impatiently.
‘Did you see him, on Tuesday night? The night that he died?’
‘Yes. He came to my room. He had pictures to show me, photographs.’
‘What kind of photographs?’
‘Of children. He used to have new ones all the time, we often looked at them together. I don’t know where he got them.’ The young man paused. His expression by now was one of anguished suffering. ‘He was making sure that I was still – that I was still interested in that kind of thing. There’s a sort of solidarity, you know. A sort of comfort, in knowing that others are – are the same as you are.’
‘And when he left you, to go back to his own room,’ Strafford said, ‘you must have heard something. You must have heard him cry out.’
‘I didn’t – really, I didn’t. I was asleep. He always stayed until I fell asleep. “You need someone to watch over you,” he’d say. Like the song, you know? Anyway, my room is at the other end of the corridor.’
They were silent. Strafford looked steadily into the young man’s eyes. ‘Do you know who did it, Dominic? Do you know who killed him?’
‘No, I don’t,’ the young man said, returning look for look, unblinking. ‘Do you?’
Strafford glanced aside, tapping a fingernail against his teeth. ‘Yes, I think I do.’
‘But you’re not going to tell me.’
‘No.’
They turned and walked back again towards the house, each of them lost in his own thoughts. They arrived at the wicket gate once more. The young man said, ‘Can I tell you something? I’m not sorry that he’s gone. It’s terrible, isn’t it? But I’m not, I’m not sorry. It’s like being addicted to something and then waking up one morning and finding the drug or whatever has been taken away and yet the craving isn’t there any more.’ He opened the gate and they went through and started up the slope. ‘Will this mean I’ll have to talk to other people? Will there be solicitors and things?’
Snow Page 24
