The Disenchanted Widow

by Christina McKenna

  Donal cowered and tried to sink into the chair. The bald man adjusted the lamp slightly and lifted a wooden spatula from a tray beside the chair. Without a word, he inserted it between Donal’s teeth and forced the unfortunate man’s mouth open. He tut-tutted.

  “Just as I thought,” he said calmly. “Ye haven’t taken care of them teeth atall, atall, have ye, Donal?” He tapped a brown specimen. “See that boy there, now? That’ll have to come out. Nothin’ else for it. Yer mammy would tell ye the same thing, so she would.”

  The victim gurgled, eyes wild with fright.

  “Now that I see the rest of them,” his tormentor said, “I’m inclined to think there’s nothin’ in there worth savin’ atall.”

  Lorcan coughed politely.

  The Dentist harrumphed and threw the spatula back onto the tray. He returned to his briefcase, drew out a set of keys. Lorcan followed him to a door at the far end of the room. He was conscious of Donal Carmody’s terrified eyes following their every move, and the thuggish guards’ unblinking vigilance.

  The small room, which the Dentist referred to as “the office,” was likewise sparsely furnished, a desk and chair taking up most of the space. On the desk stood a rod-stand lamp magnifier. Lined up neatly to the left of it were several dangerous-looking tools.

  “So, how goes it, me old son?” He clapped Lorcan on the back with a meaty hand.

  “I’m fine, thanks.”

  “Not you, ye bloody eejit. The pitcher. How far are ye?”

  “Well, that’s…that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I—”

  “We’re dependin’ on ye, Lorcan. Ye wouldn’t want anything tae happen tae them nice hands of yours.”

  “No…no, I wouldn’t want that, sir.” The artist’s legs began to tremble, and he stood more rigidly in an attempt to calm himself. He could well have been the unfortunate Donal in the next room.

  “I’ll do the best I can,” he assured the brute, trying very hard not to dwell on the wine-stain birthmark. He’d heard of men who’d suffered skull-numbing head butts and worse for having stared at it too long.

  “’Course ye will. You’ll do yer best. That’s why we picked ye. Sure a man like you is wasted on all that nancy pitcher-work for that Brit-infested museum. See what them bastard Brits are doin’ tae our boys in the Kesh?”

  From the desk he picked up the May edition of An Phoblacht, the monthly newspaper of the Republican movement. Dominating the front page were black-and-white photographs of three young men—portraits that had acquired almost iconic status in Irish nationalist households. He shook his head and flung the paper down in fury.

  “It’s the fuckin’ Famine again! Bobby’s sixtieth day. Poor Bobby. What would you do in Bobby’s position?”

  Lorcan was in a quandary, sensing that whatever answer he gave would be the wrong one. “I’d…I’d do what I felt was right.”

  “And what would be right—in your educated opinion, now?” The Dentist’s tone was grim.

  “What…what I believed in.”

  “Ye’d die for Irish freedom then?”

  “If I thought…if I thought it would achieve that aim.” Lorcan rarely lied about anything. There’d been little need to. He’d been brought up to believe that such behavior was the default setting of lesser men.

  The Dentist, calmer now, picked up the paper again and chuckled to himself. “That’s a good ’un.” He drew a finger gently round the emaciated features of Bobby Sands, a face with the hair and beard of a biblical ascetic. “Who would-a thunk it? Aye…who’d-a thunk it?”

  “Sir…I’m taking…I mean I’m taking a month’s leave of absence as of tomorr—”

  “Are ye now? Who said ye could?”

  The enforcer took a step toward him, bloodshot eyes like angry raspberries fixing on him. The artist took a step back.

  “Well, my…my boss. H-he insisted on it. And my mother’s not well. I—I’ll be away for a…for a month.”

  “Now, let’s get a coupla things straight, Lorcan, me boyo,” the Dentist said, stabbing him in the chest with his trigger finger. It was a finger that had released bullets into the heads of an ill-fated cop and a squaddie before his promotion to Nutter-in-Chief. “First thing: ye have no boss tae answer till but me. Secondly, ye don’t leave that pitcher for a month, ’cos I need it last month. Now, how d’ye suggest we get round this wee problem? I’m all ears, so I am.”

  He withdrew the finger and turned to ponder the display of instruments on the desk. Lorcan tensed. He could feel the perspiration in his armpits. He was deeply regretting having opened his mouth at all. Many men in his position had had similar regrets.

  “I’m waitin’, so I am.” Blennerhassett had lifted a surgeon’s scalpel and was running it along the inside of his palm. “Sharp wee bastard, that one. In the hands of the wrong man it could be lethal.”

  “I…I could take the painting home with me and f-fin…finish it at home…in Tailorstown.”

  The scalpel was placed back on the desk again—ever so daintily—as if it were a precious gem. The torturer straightened up, put his hands behind his back, rocked on his heels, and began whistling “A Nation Once Again” up at the ceiling light.

  An imploring voice intruded from the other room. Donal’s pleas were cut short by uncouth laughter.

  The whistling stopped. The air quivered. Lorcan wanted to hightail it from the room. But the thought died as quickly as it had risen.

  “See that bastard out there? Him and his mates did a wee job for me then took off with my money.” He laughed at the floor, shaking his big head from side to side. “Ye’ll never believe what he told me.” He eyed the artist, who was still pressing himself rigid against the wall, hoping he might melt into it. It was clear the Dentist was demanding some kind of response to his rhetorical question.

  “I-I wouldn’t know, s-sir. I—”

  “Said the fuckin’ UDR took it. Can ye believe it, Lorcan? Aye, the fuckin’ Ulster Defence Regiment took it and divvied it up between them…hmph! The other pair got themselves kilt in a car crash, which saved me the bother. But that boy out there?” He jerked a thumb at the door. “He’ll be joinin’ his mates very soon…ye see, that’s what happens tae any fucks that mess up me plans. Now Lawless’s whore of a wife has took off with my money. But, d’ye see, when I get me hands on her, I’ll…”

  At which point the brute seemed to suffer a psychotic fit. He crossed to the door and head-butted it several times.

  Lorcan was appalled.

  “And d’ye see this wee haul’day yer takin’? Well, it’s messin’ up me plans a fair bit. So tell me again how ye’re gonna make me feel a wee bit better about things. Me ears are waitin’ for some pleasant news, so they are.”

  A thought struck Lorcan. He’d blind him with science. Play up the importance of taking his time over the painting.

  “I…I assure you, I’ll have it completed within three weeks—four at the maximum. It’ll take that time for each layer of paint to dry. Otherwise…otherwise the colors…well, the colors bleed into one another, ruining the effect. If that happened I’d have to abandon it and start all over again. Then it would take even longer. It’s the nature of oil painting, I’m afraid. You just can’t rush it if you want the best result.”

  Blennerhassett glared. “Hmph!”

  Lorcan knew he had him stymied. Feeling himself on firmer ground, he matched his stare, tempering it with a little shrug. “I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is. Skill is important in a painter, but so is patience.”

  The floorboards creaked beneath the Dentist’s heavy-duty boots. “Ye’d better be tellin’ me the truth. Three weeks it is and not a fuckin’ day more.” He drew himself up to his full height and sneered. “Nice wee spot, Tailorstown, I believe. Would be a shame to spoil the peace and quiet—if ye folly me drift.” He moved to the door. “And yer mammy not too well an’ all. Sure where would we be without our mammies? Was that all ye wanted to discuss, Lorcan, me old son? Got a bitta surgery w
aitin’ out here. Bad tae keep the patient waitin’, isn’t it, now?”

  Lorcan simply nodded, unable to find his voice. He followed the torturer out, trying not to look in the terrified Donal’s direction.

  “Ah, Jesus, no! Please, nooooooo!”

  The piercing pleas followed the conservator all the way down the stairs. When he finally gained the safety of the street and slammed the door on the horror, he stood panting under a murky moon and made himself a promise.

  He promised himself that, no matter what the consequences, he’d never enter that dreaded house in Nansen Street again.

  Chapter twelve

  Kilfeckin Manor was a well-preserved Georgian mansion set in its own grounds a short distance to the north of Tailorstown. It was reached by a long and gracious graveled drive lined by ash and spruce trees. The lush rhododendrons that burst into life every summer, when the orchards were heavy with fruit, lent the place an opulence and sophistication much at odds with its present incumbent, the cantankerous octogenarian Ned Grant.

  The house was big—one of the largest properties in the area—and built to last for centuries. It had two stories, groaning with antique furniture. The ground floor contained three generous reception rooms, a library, a kitchen, a scullery, and a pantry; the floor above it boasted six bedrooms and four dressing rooms (most of which had fallen out of use). A steep and narrow staircase led up to a third story that consisted largely of a single room at the rear. It was known as the Turret Room because of its circular shape and its commanding view of the trees and fields that surrounded it on three sides. It was rarely used.

  Kilfeckin had a turbulent history. During the First World War it had been requisitioned by the military—two Nissen huts in the grounds still bore their Red Cross roundels, long faded to a ghostly pink—after which it had reverted to its rightful heir: Lord Sebastian Dinsford-Kilfeckin.

  On His Lordship’s death, however, things took a turn for the worse. The new heir, his only son, Viscount Lucien-Percy, a transvestite buffoon with no hair and a gambling habit, did not exactly value his inheritance. In no time at all, he’d frittered away his entire share portfolio at the gaming tables in Monte Carlo and Las Vegas, had sold off great swaths of the outlying land, and was just beginning to plunder the art collection when he decided to call it a day.

  One fateful morning, his shocked gardener discovered his lifeless body, clad in nothing more than a bra and matching panties, dangling from the landing chandelier. The year was 1938.

  The house was shut up after that. It lay vacant for several years. Rumors abounded that ill luck would befall anyone who dared enter through its linteled doors—until Ned Grant showed up. Joylessly wed and down on his luck, he saw the opportunity to take advantage of the silly rumor and bought the house for a pittance. The locals resented him for his fearlessness, and he disdained them for the pack of superstitious duffers they surely were.

  “God, what’s keepin’ her the day?”

  Ned’s nephew, Gusty Grant, sat by the turret window in what had once been the ill-fated viscount’s dressing room. The mechanic, in his oil-stained overalls and hobnail lace-ups, could have been a hog in a harem, so gloriously feminine and grand was the chamber.

  Gilt-crested mirrors reflected what once had been an opulence of furnishings and fabrics, dusty and faded now. The theme was pink, the mood flirtatious—lavish drapes, frilled pelmets, and damask armchairs with heart-shaped cushions. There were satinwood closets and lacquered chests sporting swan-neck handles of ebony and glass. A chandelier dripped crystal from the ceiling. Two fat cherubs blowing fatly on trumpets flanked a three-mirrored dressing table raised on bun feet.

  Gusty, backside sunk in an armchair, one foot resting on a velveteen gout stool, was training his binoculars on Rosehip Cottage. He was hoping to get a close-up of Mrs. Hailstone in her nightdress—or better still, out of it—but wasn’t having very much luck so far.

  At his feet lay his pet piglet, Veronica, snorting in porcine slumber.

  He’d chosen this particular room, which he seldom ventured into, because it afforded the best view of the cottage.

  From the moment Mrs. Hailstone drove into Gusty’s life in her battered Morris Traveller, he knew he wanted to look at her for a wee while longer than the few minutes allowed for the fill-up of petrol. That worn fan belt was a godsend. Hadn’t it all worked out so well? Because now she was caught in his sights, quite literally, and what a grand specimen she was!

  On the armrest of the chair a copy of Reader’s Digest lay open at an article about crop circles. Evidence of an alien invasion in East Surrey, or the Devil doing a spot of midnight mowing, who was to say? The mechanic was looking forward to getting stuck into his next article, a study of the eating habits of the twenty-two-tentacled star-nosed mole, but was loath to start it, in case he missed something on the hill.

  He rotated the focus wheel on the binoculars and panned around the rear of the cottage. Her car was parked under the big ash, where she’d left it the day before. But where was she?

  It hadn’t taken him long to learn her routine. She’d go to bed around midnight and was usually up by eight thirty. She’d draw back the curtains in the bedroom at that hour. On three occasions, she’d come out the back in her nightdress to smoke a cigarette. She had two nightdresses: a pink frilly one and a red shiny one with a low-cut neckline. He liked the red one in particular and imagined her in Aunt Dora’s bed thus attired, a fantasy that made his heart hammer and his knees shake.

  Still no sign. Disappointed, he set the binoculars down on the floor beside him, knowing that any minute he’d be hearing a twin thump from the room below.

  The thumper, his Uncle Ned, a onetime farmer who’d survived two world wars and served in one—flat feet and rickets having kept him out of the second—spent most of his time in bed with his bad legs and dodgy chest, nursing his war wounds and listening to the wireless. Gusty, the illicit fruit of a graceless encounter between Ned’s late brother, Eustace, and a washerwoman, did double duty as caregiver and handyman. Along with his brief stints bartending at the Crowing Cock and sporadic work as an auto mechanic, he fell into that most superficial of categories, generally known as “Jack of all trades and master of none.”

  The young Gusty’s arrival at Kilfeckin had been as unceremonious as one could imagine. He’d simply materialized one hot August morning with a change of socks and a note that read: I rared him from scretch now its yew’s turn. His washerwoman mother had found better prospects—a used-car salesman with a mobile home set on two acres and a Triumph Toledo pickup that was “going places”—a couple of weeks after the errant Eustace had dropped dead of a hepatitic seizure outside a pub in Clonmany, County Donegal. In this new and unexpected state of affairs, the sixteen-year-old Gusty had become surplus to requirements and was thus unceremoniously sent back to his roots.

  So Ned, a childless widower with more living space than was respectable, reluctantly accommodated the lad. Never quite accepting the fact that his “ward” was the issue of the wayward Eustace (even though Gusty carried the undeniable proof of the Grant progeny in his big feet and trophy-cup ears), Ned sought to advertise the falsity of such a claim by housing the boy in a lean-to attached to an old garage out the road.

  Over the years, Kilfeckin Manor saw Gusty’s constant coming and going as he both slaved for and befriended his crotchety uncle. The pair grew to like and loathe each other in equal measure, blowing hot and cold with the sureness and contrariness of the seasons. As time passed and Ned retreated more to the bedroom on the first floor, he became less aware that Gusty was even in the house. Raidió Teilifís Éireann’s afternoon shows with their hourly news bulletins, coupled with encroaching deafness, would mute footfalls and creaking doorknobs and muffle the odd shouted salutation from the front hall door. These days even the roars and rattles of Gusty’s truck were progressively going unheard.

  Thump, thump.

  “Hoi! Are ye up there?”

  There it was: t
he all-too-familiar summons, made by the broom shaft the oul’ boy kept by the bedside, sending tremors through the armchair. Veronica snorted and opened one piggy eye.

  “Och, what d’ye want now?” Gusty muttered, half to himself and half to the uncaring universe.

  With resignation he stood up, licked a grubby thumb to mark the page about the curious star-nosed moles, took another gape out the window, and kicked a trunk before lumbering down the stairs, piglet trotting behind him.

  Old Ned was propped up as usual in his Elizabethan four-poster, sucking on a pipe and sending out great gouts of smoke that hung in the room like thunderheads over the Serengeti.

  “Where’s me tay?” he demanded.

  “Rose is comin’ today. Did ye forget, did ye? She’ll make yer tea.”

  “She is, is she? Aye, Rose’ll make me tay and not crab about it like you. Better take a piss afore she comes then. Help me up, will ye?” He hoisted himself up in the bed. “And get that bloody pig outta here. It ate one-a-me socks yesterday.”

  “She doesn’t eat socks. Ye lost the sock yerself.”

  Gusty clumped over and helped haul his uncle out of bed. He knew that Ned was well able to get up unaided but assisted him anyway, if only to keep the peace.

  “Now, open that windee for me.”

  “Och, ye don’t need tae do it out the windee no more. That’s why the commode’s over there in the corner. That Mrs. Hailstone’s up in Dora’s now.” In the past, he hadn’t minded the old man using the yard as a toilet, but the arrival of Mrs. Hailstone had changed all that—hence the provision of Lord Kilfeckin’s ancient commode.

  “Aye, she’ll not see nothin’ she hasn’t seen afore. The day I sit down on a chair tae piss is the day they kerry me out in a box.”

  “Ye didn’t see me wallet, did ye?” Gusty was changing the subject, trying to forestall the repellent act while checking for activity on the hill.