The Death of an Irish Tradition

by Bartholomew Gill

  “I mean, I certainly intend to protect myself.

  “Why—it’s not against the law to use them on my own property, is it?” His eyes, which the weathered skin of his face made very blue, were too wide, the brow too furrowed.

  “Tell me what you were doing in Dublin on Friday afternoon.”

  Bechel-Gore looked away. It was just a guess, but McGarr was now certain the man was concealing something. “Attending to certain of the Show details.”

  “And in the afternoon, say four-fifteen?”

  “At the Show Ground.”

  “You can prove that?”

  Again the glance to the left. “I believe so.”

  McGarr looked away, out the window. “Your horse has gone down,” he said in a low, matter-of-fact voice.

  “Didn’t catch that.”

  “I said your horse, the big chestnut mare—” McGarr gestured with his hand, “—she’s just gone down.”

  Bechel-Gore’s hands fell on the arms of the wheelchair, not the wheels, and he began to raise himself up. His eyes met McGarr’s and he eased himself back down. “She’s not down, is she?”

  McGarr turned toward the door. “You should clean your boots. You’ve got shit on them, mister.”

  “Where’re you going?”

  “To talk to your wife.”

  “Don’t do that.” Bechel-Gore stood up and pushed the wheelchair away from him. “I’ll make a trade. What I know and all of it, for your understanding of what the Show means to us. It’s taken me years to get Grainne and Kestral and the farm to this point. I can’t ride myself anymore, and we’re only a few days away from—” his voice trailed off.

  McGarr turned. “From what?”

  “From proving ourselves.”

  “To whom?”

  “To ourselves, to…the country and—.

  “Look, let me show you what I found in the post box yesterday.” With a key he opened the top drawer of the desk.

  The clouds had burnt off and sunlight flooded through the tall windows, making the library seem dusty and stale and an unnecessary refuge.

  Bechel-Gore pulled out two thick envelopes. “These were obviously Keegan’s. They were sent to me, but not through the mails. There isn’t a mark on them.

  “He’d been blackmailing me, you see.”

  McGarr hadn’t moved away from the door to the hall.

  Bechel-Gore had to raise his voice and seemed to speak across a distance, his voice echoing down the long room.

  “I…” he turned and looked out the window, at his wife and Noreen and the horses and grooms.

  Other mounts were being led through a cavalletti in a farther ring, and workers were leading horses into one of five vans that were parked beyond the stable yard.

  “…had an affair with Grainne, you see, before we were married.” It was difficult, McGarr could tell, for him to speak of the matter, privacy in personal matters being yet another characteristic of his class. He began pacing in front of the window, his steps long and seemingly firm, the heels of the boots coming down hard.

  “She was twenty-five at the time, and it was unconscionable of me, given her other…disabilities.”

  “Which are?” To McGarr the woman had seemed only a handsome person who appeared to be much younger than her forty-four years. Her body was lean but not thin, and she carried herself in a lanky, easy manner that had in fact reminded McGarr of the Caughey girl.

  And with that thought it became clear to him how the Caugheys had supported themselves in such style, the reason for the warning note from Keegan to the dead woman, and perhaps for even the murder itself.

  “She’s not quite right. It’s not that she’s feebleminded, really, it’s that she’s just not apt with words—reading and writing and such. And those are things which don’t interest her.

  “Well, I’m not trying to excuse myself, but she only lived over the hill and she was a natural with horses and beautiful—” he glanced out the window, “—if you could only have seen her then, McGarr. The raven hair and dark eyes and the way it seems that with her frame she couldn’t be so…full.

  “I got her pregnant,” he blurted out, coloring.

  “How old was she?”

  “As I said, mid-twenties.”

  “And you?”

  “Oh, Christ—in my forties. Three, four.” He paced a bit more, wringing one hand in the other, behind his back, unable to look at McGarr. “And I was married too.

  “Then—” more pacing, another pause, “—there was the difference in our…class, and I hope you can understand that, McGarr—I’m not class conscious myself, but the difference was real, then—and our religions, and her people too posed a difficulty.

  “Her mother had just died, father a few years before, and Keegan,” he said the name between his teeth, the vehemence obvious and undisguised, “was—well—not a man I could exactly talk to.”

  “Did you try?”

  “Not really. I never got the chance. He and that sister of his took her away and that was the last I saw of those two. Grainne returned to live with a neighboring family more than a year later, saying that the child had died. Keegan and the sister even put up a marker over there,” he moved toward the window, “where they had lived.

  “At the time I was relieved, not just because of the problems but because she wouldn’t have made much of a mother, I’m afraid. Her—what shall I say?—debilities. They were, they are, hereditary. Mind you, I researched the history of the family thoroughly—idiots, incompetents, every generation had its share. Ask anybody around here. They have the reputation of being somewhat…queer, the lot of them.

  “You see, I’d really never got along with my first wife and she’d sued for divorce in England and I was—well, unattached, but after—after Grainne returned.

  “I offered her a job because…because she was utterly destitute and horses was all she knew, the only thing she could do. Well—I thought she’d be an asset to my venture here.

  “No, that’s not the truth. Grainne is special. And I realized she was…special to me.

  “Anyhow, we were married.”

  “Where?”

  “In London.”

  “When?”

  “1962. January.”

  “She was judged competent?”

  His ears pulled back. “Of course,” he snapped. “She’s not an idjit. Speak to her yourself.”

  “And that’s when the letters began.”

  “Yes.” He stepped to the desk and picked up one stack. “Snapshots, doctors’ bills—London, Rome. Demands for money. Threats that they’d tell Grainne, and I knew what that would mean—disruption, unhappiness. Believe me when I tell you that Grainne could never bear all the pressures and demands of being a mother. She’s too…fragile. And I was just beginning this venture. I know that’s selfish of me, but do you quite understand the risks, the capital I’ve got—.

  “In any case, they weren’t about to give the child up. When, at first, I balked, they threatened to kill the child and send it to me in a box.”

  “Keegan threatened that?”

  Bechel-Gore nodded, but McGarr did not believe him. There was something he wasn’t being told.

  “Not once but several times. I destroyed the letters, of course, in case something happened to me and Grainne—.

  “But the child was, or I believed she was, a part of me, my own flesh and blood, and I went along with the demands, engaging at the same time several agencies to look into the matter, but they came up with nothing. Keegan, with his I. R. A. contacts—whenever any of them learned that, they told me they were no longer interested in pursuing the matter. Too dangerous. One man was dumped on the doorstep of his firm, beaten to a pulp. Around his neck was a card. ‘Next time the knees.’”

  “Where did that happen?”

  “In the North.”

  The man McGarr had chased had been tentatively identified as an I. R. A. fugitive whose last residence had been in County Tyrone.

 
“So I paid them off.”

  “You have other children?”

  Bechel-Gore shook his head. He paused, looking down at the stack of papers—letters, photos, record books—on the desk, then glanced up. “Have you met her?”

  “Who?”

  The mustache twitched, he blinked. “Mairead.”

  McGarr nodded.

  “What is she like?”

  McGarr really didn’t know beyond her appearance and the reports. “She’s…beautiful, like your wife, but more so. And talented, so it’s said.”

  Bechel-Gore waited.

  “She’s a pianist. Prize winner at the conservatory in London. This year. And a horsewoman. It’s a wonder you haven’t bumped into her. She rides the Murray horses and well, I’m told.”

  “Caughey,” Bechel-Gore mouthed and smiled. He had seen her. “Well,” he continued with renewed force in his voice, “what are you going to do?”

  “My very question to you.”

  “I don’t know. Whatever it is, it’ll have to wait.”

  Until after the Show, McGarr thought. The Show again. He reached for his packet of Woodbines and another cigarette. “Smoke?”

  “No, thanks. I don’t.”

  “Ever?” McGarr glanced at a pipe rack.

  “I used to. A pipe once in a while. A cigar after a good meal or a…victory.”

  Out in the stable yard, Bechel-Gore’s wife had said little to Noreen. “Do you know horses?”

  “No.”

  “What do you know?” Her voice had the mild lilt of that part of Galway, to Noreen’s ears perhaps the pleasantest of the country’s many brogues.

  And Noreen had had to think about it, noting the woman’s long and thin muscles that a knitted jersey and tight riding pants outlined. She knew nothing in a definitive sense, in the manner that one would or could say I know woodworking or battleships or—but she said, “Art. I own a shop,” if only to make conversation.

  “I know nothing about art,” the woman replied. “I only asked because you look—” the glance of the dark eyes was particular and all-inclusive, as though she were judging a mount at an auction, “—like you can ride.”

  Noreen was moved to say she could, but she knew what the other woman meant and in that way she could not ride.

  It was upon her again, the feeling. She wondered, as she had in the past, if it had something to do with a phase of the moon or atmospheric pressure or her diet or how she had slept, something…extraneous, but it was probably silly to question it. Still, like the headaches she got, there was the flashing in the periphery of her vision, the giddiness, the feeling of lightness as though she could float away, and the pounding heart. But there was the concentration too, and she knew when she sat down at the piano she’d be able to be outside herself and hear herself, almost like another person.

  She was on the stairs with Inspector Ward, whom she’d bumped into at the stables. He had said he had just been driving by and decided to stop in on the off-chance she’d be riding, but she’d seen him earlier, talking to the guard who patroled the neighborhood, and later on at Neary’s, conversing with a bartender. Perhaps he had merely been going about his tasks, but she thought not.

  She now remembered her mother and thought she should feel guilty for being so insensitive, but she felt too good for that. Damn—” she looked up from the purse in which she’d been digging for the latchkey, “—where is that key? It’s not necessary to keep it locked, now that Mammy—” Now she really did feel guilty. It sounded so…blithe and callous. “I mean, it’s only she who insisted—. I didn’t mean it as it sounded.”

  “That’s all right,” said Ward, “I realize why you think it should have sounded differently, but it sounded just fine, as though you’re going to get over it.” The landing was narrow and Ward had to brush by her to try the door. In the shadows she glanced up at him and smiled.

  And she had an effect on him, there was no denying that. Maybe it was because of the fact that he had met her under official circumstances—that he wasn’t able to pursue her—which made her special, like forbidden fruit, but he thought not. It was more the impression she gave him: of being extraordinary and not just in her dark, good looks, something precious and fragile but at the same time strong.

  But he found the door open, and his head turned into the apartment. There was a smell of smoke but scented and—. Without waiting for her to enter first, he stepped toward the sitting room.

  There, seated in a tall, wingback chair—smoke rising through a shaft of early evening sunlight and seeming very blue—was Sean Murray.

  “A police escort, no less. How nice of you, Inspector, or are you off-duty now, on another sort of chase?”

  The girl’s expression was pained. She tossed her jacket and handbag into the mother’s chair. “Oh, Sean—don’t be a boor, and put that thing out.” She moved to the bay windows and opened the tops and bottoms of those on either end. Silhouetted against the direct sunlight, her dress became almost transparent, and Ward caught a glimpse of her body—trim but full enough, lithe in an athletic way, tall and thin and balanced.

  “Ah, have a toke and relax.” Murray’s speech was a bit slurred, and he seemed to be shaking or moving slightly, the ankle of one leg, which was crossed over the other, spinning quick circles, jerking, like a pendulum marking some internal time.

  He was wearing a white linen suit, a violet shirt that was open at the neck, heavy-framed sunglasses, and shoes, which seemed to be made of plastic, that matched. In all, he looked like a clown. “Or one of your pills,” Murray went on. “You’re too tight—I’ve told you before. Learn to live.

  “Inspector—” On a bent wrist he offered Ward the cigarette, the smell from which Ward couldn’t place. Hashish? No, something sweet and not as scorched. Cocaine? Ward wondered if Sean would have enough money and the access to cocaine in such quantities that he would consider smoking it, even if it only laced some other substance. Perhaps it was just a variety of marijuana he had never smelled before. “A hit? Hell, I won’t tell. Not me.” He began laughing foolishly.

  Ward only stared at him.

  “I’m going to get us some wine,” she said, hands on her hips, looking down at him. “When I return, I expect you to be gone.” Her pose was interesting, Ward thought, militant and poised and almost like a boxer’s with one foot forward, one fist in the palm of the other hand.

  “Oh, be nice. Be nice, now, or I won’t let you near me pretty horses.

  “Do you know she’s going to ride for us in the Show? Papa’s orders. She’s got a line on him too, you see. I’d watch yourself, if I were you, Inspector. Got some witch in her, she does.”

  At the fridge, she became suddenly furious—with Sean, with being suddenly thwarted in her intention to play while the mood was on her. She grasped the neck of the wine bottle and slammed it down on the counter. And, dammit, there was hardly any left. She stormed into the pantry and tossed things around until she found the case, down below where the pots were, and another bottle.

  “Temper, temper—” Sean shouted to her. “And she’s got one, you know. Mairead gets what Mairead wants, if not—” he smiled foolishly at Ward, “—she could strangle you. I think Mammy,” he said derisively, “spoiled the bitch. Poor, dear, dead, darling Mammy.”

  Ward himself now felt his gall rising. He wanted to snatch the butt out of the young man’s hands and haul him outside, seeing to it he had a rough trip down the stairs, but he was interested in what was being said too, in a professional way.

  Still he said nothing, only stared.

  “A shame, isn’t it?” Murray went on. “That only now can I sit here with you, of all people, relaxing like it was home.” There was an off note in that too. “A pity. I bleed for her, honestly I do.”

  And he had for somebody else as well, Ward thought. There was a stitch in his upper lip.

  “Yes, Papa thinks Mairead’s just the cat’s pajamas, as he puts it. Or maybe it’s just that he prefers her in pajamas.”


  She moved back into the sitting room quickly, carrying a tray with two glasses and a bottle of red wine.

  “Quaint expression, isn’t it? Dates him, so it does. But Mairead isn’t anybody to hold age against a person. How old was that lover of yours, Meg? The randy old one in Rome? You know, Giuseppi di Pizza Pie.”

  She set the tray down on the back of the piano and turned on him. “Get out!”

  “Well—maybe he wasn’t exactly your lover, but you can dream, can’t you?” He turned his head to Ward. “Lots of imagination in Meg. She pictures herself with some Prince Valiant type, or at least a prince of something or other—older, loaded, somebody who can launch her ‘career,’ and she’s got several in mind.” He turned to her. “An ambitious girl. Imaginative, as I was saying. But don’t touch her, don’t dare touch her. Oh, no—”

  The girl took a step toward him, but Ward reached out and pulled her close. To Murray, he said, “Go. Now. No talk. Just go.”

  The ankle stopped spinning. The hand with the cigarette came down. The head quivered and the stitched mouth opened.

  Ward only shook his head.

  Murray stood, unsteadily at first, buttoned his jacket and stepped toward the door, Ward behind him.

  At the door he turned and opened his mouth but thought better of it.

  Ward followed him down and examined the catch, which was on.

  She was waiting for him at the top of the stairs.

  “Wasn’t that door locked?” he asked her.

  “I don’t know, I can’t remember. Is it important?” Her smile was strange, heightened, her eyes slightly glassy.

  “And this one?”

  She didn’t move out of his way, only stared down at him, as though she expected something from him. “I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

  She played for him for nearly two hours, mostly pieces that he didn’t know and hadn’t heard before, but she had a command over the large, black instrument that could not be denied, driving and checking it, making it sing at one moment and whisper the next, but never letting it get out of her grasp. In hand, he thought, remembering how she had treated a horse that had refused a gate at the jumping ring earlier, staying with it firmly until she bent it to her will. Her fine features, the wispy clothes she wore, her almost too feminine demeanor were deceiving. There was iron in her touch. It was well concealed, but it was there.