by Brian Moore
Mangan drove his car into the mouth of the small field. At once, a sheepdog with foxy face and black-and-white piebald colors jumped down from its perch on the makeshift stone wall surrounding the field, to come at the car yowling and snapping. Mangan feared dogs. He did not open the car door but stared at the animal, which bared its teeth, then jumped up, bracing its forefeet on the door. He made a menacing gesture, safe behind the door, and the dog dropped back on four feet and, yowling, began to edge away. He looked toward the trailer, where the door was opening. A young woman stepped down. “Spot! Come in out of that!”
The dog, still barking, ran feverishly back toward the young woman, then ran forward again, feinting at the car. Mangan could no longer remain under cover. Reluctantly, he got out.
“Spot!” the young woman cried again, and the dog with a few halfhearted barks abandoned the field, retreating under the trailer. Mangan advanced, ashamed yet irritated by the dog and his own cowardice. The young woman, narrowing her eyes, peered at him as though she could not see him properly. Then, when he was close, he saw that there came on her face a look of astonishment. She was tall, younger than he had first imagined; about twenty, he supposed. She wore dirty blue jeans, tightly sculpted to her legs, and a baby-blue cardigan, unbuttoned in front, tucked into the jeans. Her reddish-blond hair fell to below her waist. Her eyes were a bright blue, her features pretty but insipid, her skin pale and unhealthy, a slum pallor at odds with this wild, lonely place.
“Hello,” Mangan said. “I’m looking for Conor Mangan.”
But the girl did not seem to hear him. She stood staring, as though he had come to arrest her.
“Is he at home?” Mangan said awkwardly.
“What’s your name?”
“My name is Mangan, too. I’m from Montreal, originally. I think we might be relatives.”
“Then you’re the man that’s staying at Duntally?”
“That’s right.”
“You’re the one who’s a fillim star from America.”
Where on earth had she got hold of that story? Feeley? “No, I’m not.”
“But you have to do with the fillims. Isn’t that right, now?”
He was going to say it was his wife who was mixed up in films, but decided not to get into that. “No, absolutely not.”
“Too bad,” she said, and smiled. Her features, which had made him think of the vapid beauties of female saints in modern Catholic Church sculpture, were transformed by that smile. At once, despite her dirty clothes and slum pallor, he felt an overwhelming attraction toward her.
“I’m mad for the fillims,” she said and laughed. “I’m Kathleen, Con’s sister. He’s gone up to Bantry, but he should be back soon. Do you want to come in and wait for him?”
“All right. Thank you.”
He followed her up the steps, eying the moving arcs of her thighs. Underneath the caravan the dog set up a grumbling bark, then subsided. When the girl opened the door, Mangan noticed two bunk beds, one atop the other, partitioned off at the far end. So she slept in the same room with her brother. The sitting area was crowded and sleazy, with two velveteen armchairs and a small sofa with stuffing coming out of rips in its arms. There was also a rickety card table on which sat teacups and a jar of jam; a kerosene table lamp, a four-burner butane-gas ring, and, beside it, a counter containing a disarray of food cartons, dirty dishes, and a sink filled with wet clothes. In the center was a tin stove with a funnel which poked through an opening in the caravan’s roof. The pleasant smell of burning turf in the stove was offset by a stale body odor from the girl. On three of the living-area walls were, variously, lithographs of Pope Paul, John F. Kennedy, and Our Lady appearing to Saint Thérèse at Lisieux.
“Do you want a cup of tea? I have it wet already. Are you here on your holidays?”
“In a way. I’m trying to trace someone who might be a relative of mine. Did you ever hear of James Clarence Mangan?”
Her face was blank.
“He was a poet,” he said.
“A poet?” she said. Did she seem to flinch, or did he just imagine it. “What relation would he be to you, then?”
“Well, he could be my great-great-grandfather.”
”That far back,” she said. “Sure, who knows that far back?” She lifted the kettle off the ring and poured boiling water into the teapot. She smiled at him and again he felt that overwhelming attraction. But then she walked past him to pour the tea and the acrid smell of her body came into his nostrils, filling him with distaste. So these were the Irish Mangans, dirty, semiliterate gypsies. And yet, despite his distaste, the attraction remained.
“Milk and sugar?” she asked.
“Thanks. Whose is the big house back there?”
“Gorteen? It’s ours. But the roof is damaged. That’s why we’re living in this caravan. I like it, the caravan. It suits me rightly. I suppose Mrs. Feeley’s told you a few yarns about me?”
“No.”
“Did she not, now? Has the cat got her tongue, then?” She laughed and sat down on the torn sofa, leaning forward, handing him his teacup. The half-buttoned baby-blue cardigan showed her young breasts. “That ould fool,” she said. “Sitting there in her shop like a hen on eggs.”
He sat opposite her. He now had an erection. She reminded him, not of women he had known in his adult life, but of the pubescent temptresses of his boyhood, those first forbidden fruits of sexual encounter, which remained the most erotic memories of his life. He felt his face hot and avoided her eye, afraid that she might guess the cause of his perturbation.
“Do you know, I think you’re shy,” she said and laughed.
He shook his head.
“How could a person be shy and them in the fillims?”
“I’m not in the films.”
“I wish I was in the fillims,” she said. “Ah, I suppose I’m too ugly.” As though posing for a photograph, she paraded her profile for his inspection. “There’s a pal of mine, a girl from Dublin that used to come here on her holidays, she’s in the telly now in England. She was in a Kung Fu. Ah, but anyway, she had bosoms out to here.” She gestured, then hooked her fingers into the unbuttoned cardigan, pulling it open wider so that her breasts were almost completely exposed. She smiled at him. “Too small?”
“No. I mean, I don’t think it matters,” he said, staring in excited dismay at her rounded childish breasts.
“You’re just saying that.” She lifted the teapot, offering him a second cup. “What’s your first name, again?”
“James.”
“Do you not get Jim or Jimmy?”
“Jamie. But I don’t like it.”
“And are you married?”
“I was. My wife died.”
“I’m sorry, now. Do you have children?”
“No.”
“It must be lonely for you, so. Was she sick long?”
“No. She died in a car accident.”
She leaned forward, pouring the tea, her reddish-blond hair falling about her cheeks. “More milk?”
“Thanks.”
She rose and went to the counter to fetch a milk bottle. When she turned away from him, he stared like a voyeur at her long, straight back and girlish buttocks. “How old are you?” he said. “Or do you mind my asking?”
“How old do you think I am?”
“I don’t know. Twenty-two?”
“Get away out of that! Do I look that ancient?”
A sadness filled him. For the first time in his life he felt he had crossed the bar: had become a widower sailing out on a sea of no return. This girl could be his daughter. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m bad at people’s ages. How old would you say I am?”
It was a mistake, a desperate attempt to tack back, to return to that innocent harbor where, in his own mind, he was young enough for any girl. “Would forty be about right?” she asked.
“Younger.”
“Well, you’re over thirty, I’d say.” She put back her head and laughed. Below the
floor, Spot growled, then began to bark. She got up and went toward the caravan window, saying: “That’ll be Con.”
Mangan stood up, putting down his teacup. He saw, coming in at the caravan door, what at first seemed to be a little boy in a torn sports coat with dirty flannel trousers tucked into rubber fishing boots. The newcomer looked at the girl, then looked up at Mangan. He was not a boy but a small man, almost a midget. His skin had the flayed redness of the Irish countryman, and on his chin was a heavy blue undergrowth of beard. “So you’re the Mangan from the United States, am I right?” he said at once.
“That’s right.”
The little man looked at him again, then turned and looked at his sister. “Amazing.”
“Yes. I nearly dropped dead,” she said.
The little man turned back to Mangan. “You look like a relative of ours. Did you know that?”
“The doctor, Dr. Murphy, told me I look like someone who used to live here. Would that be the same man?”
“I’d say it would,” the little man said. “An uncle of mine who’s dead now. You’re the spit of him.”
“And what was his name?”
But the little man simply laughed and shrugged and said to his sister, “Well, he wasn’t a fillim star, our uncle, was he, Kath?”
“This man says he’s not a fillim star, either.”
“Is that a fact? So Feeley was wrong-shipped, as per usual,” the little man said sourly. “I’m not surprised. Ah, you had no luck, running into the same Feeley the first minute you landed up in Drishane. Putting you into Duntally.”
“The hotel was shut.”
“I know. But you could have stayed with us. We’d be glad to have you, wouldn’t we, Kath?”
Mangan looked at the girl, then looked at the partition beyond the two single bunk beds.
“Not in the caravan,” the little man said, as though he understood the look. “But there’s beds and plenty at the old house down the road. Will you take a bottle of stout?” He reached under the tattered sofa and brought out a cardboard carton containing black bottles of Guinness. He took two of these to the sink and opened them, pouring the heavy stout into glasses. “Kath, do you want a glass?”
“I do, surely.”
“So you’re on your holidays?” the little man asked Mangan.
“He’s here looking for his great-great-grandfather,” the girl said, and laughed.
“This uncle of yours,” Mangan asked, “the one you say looked like me. Do you have a photograph of him?”
“Down at the other house, maybe.” The little man handed him a glass of stout. At that moment Mangan thought of the daguerreotype in his pocket, but something warned him not to take it out. Let them show him a photograph of their uncle first.
“Your health now,” the little man said.
He sipped the heavy stout. It was not to his liking, but he imitated his host and Kathleen and drank a long, deep swallow. “When was it your people emigrated to America?” the little man asked.
“Sit down,” the girl urged, and so he sat and took out the notebook he had compiled in the past week in New York, giving the birthdates of his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. In the next half hour he went over his family history, going back to the family Bible listing births in Drishane. In that time, they drank two more bottles of stout and Conor Mangan pored over Mangan’s notebook as though it were a racing form. Suddenly he stabbed a finger at a page. “India!” he said. “It says here that your great-grandfather went to India. I have a photo down at the house of a soldier on a draft to India. Now that could be the very man. Your great-grandfather. Patrick James Mangan, it says here. That was his name, was it?”
“Yes.”
“Will we go down to the house and have a look?”
Mangan stood at once. The stout had made him lightheaded. India, the army, a photograph of a soldier. It seemed his quest was on track. “Right, then,” he said. He turned to the girl, uneager to leave her behind. “Will you come, too?”
“Of course I will.” And so the three of them went down the caravan steps out to a blustery, overcast afternoon, fast-flying clouds coming at them, slicing into the mountaintop. The dog, after a preliminary growl, came from under the caravan and fell in at Conor Mangan’s heels. Through the wet grass of the field they went to the road, where, parked at an angle to prevent its rolling downhill, was a small, battered pickup truck. “We’ll take the lorry,” the little man said.
“You take it on your own, then,” the girl said. She reached for Mangan’s arm. “The two of us will walk, won’t we, Jim?”
“Right, then. Stretch your legs,” the little man said, and hopped into his truck, the dog after him. The girl stood, smiling, still holding Mangan’s arm as the truck moved out and went past them in low gear down the incline of the road. And so, arm-linked, Mangan and the girl followed, leaning back to counteract the steep slope. She shifted her grip, putting her arm around his body, and he in turn slipped his arm about her waist, feeling the soft warmth of her under her cardigan. The fast-moving clouds came on them, enveloping them in a mountain mist. He looked at her and smiled, and she smiled that smile he could not resist, then leaned against him provocatively in the mock-innocent way of little girls he remembered from long ago when sex was all delicious frustrated anticipation. Her red tresses blew about, obscuring her features, and she removed her hand from his waist to brush her hair back out of her eyes. At that moment, without thinking, Mangan pulled her to a standstill on the steep incline and took her in his arms, kissing her, feeling her soft mouth open to his.
He felt elated, guilty, and surprised at his boldness, then, remembering her youth, turned in sudden fear, peering ahead in the mist, worried that the manikin her brother might be watching. But the little truck was invisible in the mist. He looked at her again with an uneasy grin and she took his arm, urging him down the steep road, both of them breaking into an involuntary run which continued until they reached the high ragged hedgerows surrounding and concealing the house. Opening to the yard was a rusted, unhinged gate, revealing a cobblestone driveway green with weeds. Beyond, in the cloud mist, they saw the truck sitting in the yard and Conor Mangan, the dog at his heels, hurrying toward the front door.
Despite the girl’s arm entwined in his, despite the evidence of his eyes that there was a car, a man, and a dog in the yard, Mangan felt utterly alone in this place. The house, a tall two-story building of gray stone, faced him as though it were somehow aware of his intrusion into its territory. Its aspect was at once minatory and compelling, as though it willed him to approach, yet intended to destroy him. As he came toward it, the faded green front door seemed false as a trompe l’oeil painting, giving no hint of how he might penetrate this façade. It was not, as he had expected, an old farmhouse, but rather the sort of minor manse which might have been built for a minister, not here on the top of a mountain, but on the outskirts of a small town. Behind the house was an inner yard with abandoned stables, a cow byre, and a barn in which stood a high old jaunting cart, its wheels buckled, its leather seats rotted and soaked by rain. In the yard also was an old plow turned on its side, sticking up like a whale’s fin. And as he stood gazing on this scene, he felt that he was looking, not at a real house in a real yard, but at a photograph of such a house, caught in the wink of a shutter on some day long ago.
And then the dog began to bark, running around the front steps as the little man lifted a heavy iron key from under the doormat, put it in the door, turned it twice in the lock; then, grasping the iron doorknob, which was high as his chest, pulled the door toward him with a loud clatter of its wooden footboard on the stone step. He looked back, a gnomelike figure holding the door open on an interior darkness, and with his free hand beckoned Mangan to enter.
And so Mangan went forward, the girl following after him, and as the little man saw them approach he preceded them into the house. It was dark because the corridor doors were shut, and the little man moved ahead through a field of bowls
and tin cans placed to catch ceiling drips, opening the doors of the ground-floor rooms to let light fall into the hallway. The first door he opened revealed a large dining room with a table and chairs in dark brown rosewood. However, the room seemed to be used as a storeroom and the dining table was covered with jumbled heaps of old sweaters, undergarments, and cardboard cartons containing sheepskin rugs. Empty stout bottles sat in boxes on the floor and there was a large sack of meal in one corner and an old canvas-and-leather trunk in another. They passed on, the little man opening the door on the right of the corridor, which gave on a rectangular sitting room. Mangan hesitated at the threshold, held by what he saw there.
“Go in, go in,” the little man said. “That’s the right room for former history. We don’t use it now. I suppose they never did use it much. It’s the parlor, the place where you’d put your visitors in the old days. The photo we’re looking for should be in here someplace.”
Mangan went in. Through the cracked and dusty windowpanes a blear northern light beat down on the objects in the room, highlighting them in the manner of an old-fashioned time exposure, seeming further to bleach the flowered wallpaper and cretonne furniture covers, which were already faded by age and wear. This strong light fell impartially on two armchairs, a chaise longue, a painted firescreen, and an occasional table, leaving shadowed around them the many pictures, photographs, and drawings which adorned walls, tables, and mantelpiece. Only one of these pictures was familiar to Mangan: a framed lithograph of Veronese’s “Madonna and Child.” The many others were all of real people, ranging from ill-executed portraits in oils to silhouettes, daguerreotypes, and group photographs in sepia tones. As Mangan hesitated in the way of someone entering a picture gallery, uncertain where to start his inspection, the little man skipped ahead of him in a proprietorial manner. “This is the room, do you see. All the Mangans are here, even the skeletons in the closet. Over there now, those old fellas, those were all original oil paintings done by one family of painters that still lives in Bantry. Harrington is the painter’s name and it’s a trade that’s handed down from father to son, and one of that family, Teig Harrington, was down here a few years back and he told me this picture, the first one here in the corner, was done by his great-grandfather. And they’re all of Mangans or women married into the Mangan family, the people in these paintings. Would you credit that, now?”
