“You’re here,” she called out, even though she wasn’t that far away.
“So it would seem.” Kitty considered getting up from the cliff’s edge, but didn’t feel like accommodating the intrusion. What Lolly’s purpose might be she had no ready idea, unless—and this was a thought she’d prefer not to entertain—it was the hope or expectation of meeting Declan. If so, Kitty preferred to hear that news sitting down.
Lolly, in a more conversational tone, said, “You’ve come to look for Declan?” From the sound of her voice, Kitty could tell she was more than a few paces behind her.
“Why would I come here to see Declan? I see him most days, doing the thatching.”
Oh. Well. Of course. But … is he here?”
“I’ve not the least notion. So it’s he you’ve come to find?”
“Well, yes. But he’s not here, I guess. I’ve something to tell him, but maybe it’s not that important.” That Lolly had some reason to be either reticent or apologetic about being there was apparent from the way she was speaking.
“Did you try the castle? He could be there by now.”
“I thought I’d come here first. It’s said in the village he comes here often—early in the morning or late in the day. The men working on the road, they see him often.”
“They don’t think it strange?”
“Well, it is strange. To them.”
“But not to us?”
“To us nothing Declan does is strange. Or, rather, all of it is. We’re used to it.”
“And that’s the end of it?”
“If he wants anyone to know his reasons, he’ll tell them, is how I see it. Otherwise, nothing.”
“Well, come to think of it, don’t try the castle till later. He may be down at the bog cutting sedge so it’ll dry by the time he ridges the thatch.”
“Oh. Thanks. I can always find him another time.” Kitty waited to hear more. It finally came. “And you,” Lolly said, “are you looking to see if the old house is going to show itself or what?”
“No. I’ve let it go. It can show itself or not show itself. I have a better home by far. And what is it that’s maybe not important if I may be so bold as to ask?”
“Oh, nothing. Not really.”
“Now it’s beginning to sound important after all.”
“All right, then. I’ll tell you and you can decide for yourself.” Lolly sat next to Kitty on the cliff’s edge. With the heel of her shoe she gave a light touch to the cliff-side below, a lifelong reflex to make sure something was there to support her.
Kitty could see she was wearing a dress, hardly her usual daytime attire, her bright blue one at that, linen, and newly ironed by the smell of it, the one whose blue deepened the color of her eyes—which, by common consent, heightened her allure. Whatever that might be.
“There’s a thatcher wanted in the north past Connemara, putting up holiday houses. Aaron came across it on the Internet and I made a printout to give Declan. They plan to make them cottages and the roofs thatched so those who come can feel themselves living like long ago. I don’t see any work for him around here, now that the thatching you’ve given him to do is all but done.”
Kitty looked sideways. Lolly had cocked her head, waiting for Kitty to say something. Kitty felt no need to say anything. She was content to give her full regard to the blue dress and the intensified eyes.
Assuming an attitude of lofty indifference, Lolly, still looking directly at Kitty, said, “After all, I am an old friend of his. Surely, I’d do something that might help a man destroyed as he is these days.”
Kitty turned her face again to the sea. Her voice was quiet. “You are a good friend of Declan’s, Lolly, that you worry about him having work to do. And I hope the man knows it.”
Less loftily, Lolly said, “Well, there’s nothing here for him. Nothing to keep him. There’d be no purpose to it, him not going off the way he always does. Why would he want to be here? He’ll find something worthwhile a distance away. As he always does. I have to laugh to think about it.” To reinforce her words, she let out a laugh that sounded reasonably like the real thing.
Kitty considered changing the subject, but Lolly went on. “How foolish we all were. But we were young then. Younger than young. And just the sight of him. The great dark hero come from another world.” Again the laugh, but less convincing. “Nothing on his mind it seemed but … well, you know what. And even our guardian angel’s sheltering wings no protection we’d know. But it wasn’t just ‘you know what’ he was after, but the offering of himself as if he were the Eden apple itself, daring you to come to the feast. Oh the life of it … the …”
She stopped and brushed her hand across her forehead. Softly she said, “And we believed we’d known the last of him and him gone into the sea, never to come again. But the sea couldn’t keep him. He’s come up out of the waves, Kitty. How could waters wide as the world hold him forever? It could never be. Not for him. He’s come again—”
“From the north, where he’d gone.”
“I know. I know. But isn’t it allowed that sometimes the old madness comes over you—”
“Not over me. You, maybe. But not me.”
“Ah, of course. Not you.” Again a small laugh, this one unforced, but not without its sorrows. “And not over me, either. It’s not permitted. It must never come, the madness. And we must make sure it never does.”
The full tide had come in, the waves now battering away as if enraged by the cliff’s earlier indifference to its lapping and licking. Kitty shifted Mrs. Wharton’s book from her left hand to her right. The moment was near. She must toss it, not merely drop it as if it were a thing to be rid of. She must cast it out as far as she could, in tribute to her sister writer for whose flaws she had nothing but respect.
Again Lolly interrupted. “You were reading. I didn’t realize. You probably never noticed, but I can be thoughtless at times.”
“No, I never noticed.” Without previous consultation, they giggled together. Lolly began to draw her right leg up from the cliff’s edge, but stopped, then lowered it again. After an interval sufficient to let Kitty know she had more to say, Lolly smoothed the bright blue dress covering her lap and began what seemed a soliloquy, even though the words were obviously meant for Kitty as well.
“It’s the bones of a boy out there beneath the waves. Declan told me and said how it happened. You know it all as well, he said, but according to him you needed no telling. He said all this to me when he was showing me the way up the secret stairs. Did you know he found them? They’re still there, where the priests escaped and where we hid the skeleton when the gardaí, Tom and Jim, came looking for a man escaped.”
“I knew,” said Kitty, “but never went up them or down. They were a part of the house. They should have gone with it.”
“But they didn’t. It was dark even with Declan’s flashlight, but I wasn’t afraid. Not with Declan there. Halfway up … Oh, but I guess I should tell you. I came looking for him after I’d made such a fool of myself telling him about my book, trying to convince him I wasn’t the crazy lady he’d seen when Aaron and I went to Caherciveen to hear the Messiah. And he offered to show me the stairs. Halfway up he stopped on a landing, the damp stones all around and the smell still there from the years gone rotten so long ago. The flashlight he kept aimed toward the steps above and he spoke to me. About the boy’s fall and the dying. And him buried in Declan’s own coat because the ground was so cold, he said. And with the thatcher’s tools and other things besides from Declan’s life put into the old sack so the boy wouldn’t be left without things he’d known in the world and that Declan had known, too. And then the search to the north and no one to claim the boy. Now the coming here, and it’s all gone away, given by the wind and taken by the sea. And the grief was upon him, telling me all, and nothing to be done.” She paused, then added more quietly, “Well, almost nothing.” She paused again. “I’ll say no more.”
Kitty let the book fall.
/> Lolly shifted back from the cliff. She stood up, then paid the sea some final obeisance: a prolonged gaze. She started toward her car. After a few steps, she stopped. Kitty waited, hoping she’d continue on. She’d wait until Lolly was gone, then get up, her task completed, and go back to whatever work she could find for herself to do. When Lolly began to speak again, Kitty simply sat and listened, looking up at the cloud from the north.
“It was to me Declan came the night he buried the boy in the garden—though I didn’t know that at the time, until he told me that day on the secret stair. That a change had come over him that night I knew, and him with more of a need of me than ever before, and I all gone wild to give. Let me say it and I’ll go. We were together through the whole night, until he let me sleep just before morning. I had no dreams, but the sun woke me before too long went by. He was gone. That part hadn’t changed. He was gone and the sun up full. But it was to me he had come that night and no one else besides. Only to me.”
Kitty waited to hear more, but there was no sound until the motor started and the car drove off. The cloud from the north changed course and headed out to sea.
12
Declan saw the infamous Bentley come into the courtyard, purring like a cat much too pleased with itself. With no other vehicle to inconvenience, it made a turn and came to a halt alongside the shed where he was working. Through a window opened to the country air, the man called out, “Hard at it, eh? And it’s a great work you’re doing.” He stepped out of the car and, with a ruthlessness that seemed central to his nature, slammed the door.
Again he was wearing his linens and silks, the only variant being the scarf, which this time had been dispensed with, the better to display an Adam’s apple that seemed more a knot of words trapped in the man’s throat to keep him from afflicting the earth with yet more pollutants.
Declan considered it best to simply continue his task and pay the least attention possible to the visitor. In an attempt to end the man’s stay before it could begin, he muttered, “There’s no one here. They’re off.”
“So I understand.” The man spoke with a cheerfulness that revealed his preference for their absence. “Mrs. Sweeney to Dublin where she’s to read from her most recent triumph, the title of which escapes me. And himself to somewhere below Blarney to see his brother on some business of which I’m ignorant.”
Declan was tempted to mutter, “To see a fine lady upon a white horse”, but he wanted as little conversation with this man as possible. He said nothing.
Undeterred, his lordship continued. “I regret the mishap that brought my recent visit to such an unhappy end. But that’s hardly your concern. You are an artist and therefore exempt from the least regard for the woes of common mortals. But allow me to say your artistry shows an uncommon skill.”
The man waited for a response. When none seemed forthcoming, he plunged into what was obviously a well-prepared speech meant specifically for Declan’s benefit. “The true reason I’ve come is to see again, as I did before, the masterly work you’re doing here. As I’m sure you’re aware, my family were once protectors of all these lands, including, of course, the castle. And I lack the words to tell you how deeply pleased I am to see the courtyard restored to its earlier perfection. What you’re doing is the practice of a craft long in decline, allowing me the privilege—nay, the honor—of seeing the castle as my illustrious ancestors so happily beheld it.”
By a force of will not congenital to his character, Declan managed to control himself. The man paused, expecting, hoping, for some expression of gratitude for his fulsomeness. Puzzled by the lack of appreciation, but as determined as ever to complete his speech, he went on. “I’m told your name is Tovey. Fine name, too. I’ve already used the world illustrious, so I’m forced to say merely that it is a name distinguished by English gentlemen and scholars down through the ages. Is it possible that you’re related to Sir Donald Francis Tovey, the great musicologist?”
Declan managed a look of utter incomprehension. His lordship chose to ignore the thatcher’s lack of response. “He’s a man who’s added so much knowledge and enlightenment to our appreciation of the great composers and their noble works. You yourself are, from what I observe here, also a singular contributor to your own noble traditions. Hardly a surprise considering you’re obviously descended from a familial line that continues to bring distinction to our English heritage.”
Declan was sore tempted to inform the man that “Tovey” was a corruption of the good name “Tuohy” imposed upon his family by authorities inclined to record names more congenial to their own spelling than the names spoken in a language they were determined to render extinct. Rather than reclaim their original identity at a later date, his family had decided to retain the imposition lest they forget the corruptions thrust upon them, determined that the name be a perpetual reminder of perfidies practiced during the centuries of imperial intrusion. Let his lordship rattle on. He obviously had some insidious intent, and perhaps, before long, he would indict himself completely.
Which he did. Forthwith. “As you may have overheard during my recent visit, my attempt to claim my birthright—the castle and all these grounds—were diverted by some legal misunderstandings. I am sure you appreciate my determination to take up again my obligations to my forebears, and it occurred to me that I might enlist your own good offices. That a generous remuneration is involved goes without saying. And since we obviously share a common past, it came to me as in a dream, that the fates had put me into the company of one who might lend his support to a plan that should restore these lands and the castle itself to their legitimate owner. Myself, of course. No, you need say nothing now.”
In a hushed voice meant to suggest confidentiality and the need for secrecy, with the unsubtle hint that the conspiracy admitted only the most privileged into its company, he said, “I will expand on this at some near date. There’s a boy over there, reading, who might overhear, much to our disadvantage. You understand.”
That a boy was there, reading, Declan had understood from the beginning, but he also understood that the man was plotting some mischief that could not possibly be to the benefit of his Kerry compatriots. Rather than become enraged, he immediately decided that feigned complicity was the better course. There was more to be revealed. And here was a God-given opportunity to become a recipient of these revelations. In the mutter he knew the man had come to expect, he said, without interrupting his work, “I might possibly be the one you’re looking for. But I’ll need to know more.”
“And you shall. You shall. Soon enough. Meanwhile, make no mention of today’s visit. And instruct the boy to forget that I stopped by. As for you, Mr. Tovey—as for us I should say—we shall meet again and all will be put before you. We needn’t make a gesture of our pledge, with the boy in attendance. But I consider this visit most successful. And I don’t doubt that, in time, you will come to a similar conclusion. Let us content ourselves with my goodbye. And my promise to return—at an even more propitious time. Au revoir, my countryman.” His slight bow, his smile, captured so accurately the oily farewells of so many villains in so many ill-acted films that Declan managed to stifle a hiss only by reminding himself that there existed a plot against his friends, and that he, Declan Tovey—of Tuohy descent—had been appointed by heaven itself to frustrate it in the making.
After the Bentley had made its self-satisfied departure, Peter came to where Declan was working. “That was Mr. Shaftoe. Mr. Sweeney saved his life. He was going to jump from the top of the tower because he wanted the castle and it wasn’t to be allowed. But Mr. Sweeney wouldn’t let him. Jump, I mean. Did he come to try it again, do you know?”
“I know nothing. And there’s nothing I need to know. Keep watch at what I’m doing. And let our agreement be enforced. No talking.”
“Yes, sir. I mean, yes, Mr. Tovey.”
“Tuohy if you want.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“Never mind. Just remember. No talking.”
>
The boy stood where he was, watching, the book held against his side. Declan Tovey—Tuohy of old—went on with his work.
Lord Shaftoe, to continue the work to which he was now so completely committed, went to his London tailor to have himself outfitted in the eighteenth-century clothing worn by his ancestor, the gentleman threatened by the Irish rabble with a gunpowder plot that would surpass the perfidy of Guy Fawkes and all the papist traitors conspiring against a Crown and a Parliament committed to the cause of supremacy and to the preservation of privilege. Not for his lordship the musty threads still reeking with the sweat of actors or the perfumes of masqueraders. Not for him the mothy leavings of the long-gone dead. Nothing but the new and the unique would do. He alone would wear these garments; he alone would reserve to himself the right to future vestings. (His one concession to inauthenticity was his decision to wear, instead of the joined cotton tubings that served as undergarments in his ancestor’s time, his own silk boxer shorts, secure in the knowledge that no incident would expose, as it were, his inconsistency.)
His lordship had taken his presumed compatriot, Declan Tovey, into his confidence as to the reasons for this extravagance. Since Mr. Tovey’s cooperation seemed assured to get him into the castle at the chosen time—when Mr. and Mrs. Sweeney would not be present but would return sometime after dark, dark being an integral element to carrying out his plot successfully—he had now moved on to the next phase of his plan.
At a date not that distant from his first interview with the estimable Mr. Tovey, he returned now to confide in him, spelling out in gleeful detail his brilliant scheme. “I will be dressed in a somewhat peculiar manner, but give it no heed. It will replicate the clothing worn by my illustrious ancestor, one of the more than several who legitimize my claim to the castle. I’ll not go into the details of that, but suffice it to say that the present occupants are trespassers and must be dealt with as such.”
The Pig Goes to Hog Heaven Page 16
