The Mangan Inheritance

by Brian Moore

  “The clerk in the courthouse in Cork says he’ll likely get five years.”

  Dinny and his mother exchanged a look. “But that’s terrible,” Dinny said. “Don’t they have a solicitor?”

  “I don’t know, nor do I care,” Kathleen said. She stared glassily at Mangan. “God, isn’t it like a ghost story, him sitting there by the fire with his face bashed up.”

  “Milk and sugar, sir?” the old woman asked.

  “And it was in Bantry that it happened,” Kathleen said, and laughed in a shaky manner. “Bashed in Bantry, the both of them.”

  The old woman offered milk and sugar to Dinny.

  “Did he lose a tooth?” Mangan asked.

  They all three looked at him.

  “This tooth, was your father missing this tooth?” Mangan said, pointing to the gap in his own mouth.

  “That’s the thing of it,” Dinny said. “He lost it just the same way you did, one time he got in trouble in Bantry when he had drink taken, making remarks to some fellows in a pub that were coming home from a football match.”

  “Ah, will you give over with that ould yarn,” Kathleen said, suddenly beginning to rock and stare into the fire.

  “It was yourself that started it.”

  “Never mind, Dinny,” the old woman whispered. “Kathleen is right. Are you sleepy, love? Those pills work very quick.”

  Kathleen nodded, staring into the fire, her eyes glazed as though she were drunk. The old woman put down her teacup and went over to her. “I’d say you’d be better lying down, love.”

  Obediently, Kathleen nodded and stood up. “I feel it,” she said thickly.

  “You can sleep in with me,” the old woman said. “And, Dinny, if Mr. Mangan doesn’t want to go back up to Gorteen tonight, you could put him in the house beyond. The bed he had is still made up with his sheets on it. Would you like to stay down here, sir?”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” Mangan said, but was grateful for the offer. The thought of going back alone to that dark house disquieted him and so he was pleased when Dinny joined in, nodding agreement. “Good idea, so.”

  “But it would be a trouble for you.”

  “No trouble,” Dinny said.

  Kathleen, her eyes glazed, her gait unsteady, allowed the old woman to take her by the arm and turn her in the direction of the bedroom. As they moved slowly past the kitchen table, she seemed to remember something and turned to Mangan. “You’re staying the night?” she said, her voice suddenly anxious.

  “Yes, he is,” the old woman reassured her.

  “I’ll see you in the morning, then?”

  “Yes, of course,” Mangan said. “Just have a good sleep, now. You’ll be all right in the morning.”

  She looked at him as though she waited for an answer to some question. Then a placating half smile came over her features. Her glazed eyes tried to focus on him. “It’s promised now, for my fare, isn’t it?”

  “It is.”

  “The fillim star’s husband.” She smiled vacantly. “Did I give you a fright back there?”

  “No, no.”

  “Just old nightmares. Aunt Eileen has them, too, don’t you, Aunt Eileen?”

  “I do, love, I do. Come on, now, it’s past your bedtime. Good night, Mr. Mangan.”

  “Good night,” Mangan said, but Kathleen, breaking away from the old woman, caught at his hand. “Only nightmares,” she said in an anxious tone. “I’ll be all right in America. I’m sure of that.”

  “Of course you will.” He watched the old woman lead her into the bedroom. It was not just nightmares. He could not bear the thought of losing her, but he would lose her. She was mad. It would never be the same again.

  When they had gone, he became aware of the loud ticking of a clock. He looked up and saw Dinny Mangan sitting across the hearth, sipping his tea and staring at him over the rim of his teacup. Caught, Dinny blushed until his florid complexion went dark red, and lowered his eyes to contemplate his large workman’s boots. “She’ll be all right,” he said, as if to himself.

  “Kathleen?”

  “Yes, she’ll be all right. It’s that brother of hers, feeding her drink all the time. Drink is bad for her in her condition.”

  “Has she had mental troubles before?”

  Dinny looked up as though he had discovered something interesting on the low-roofed ceiling of the cottage, his neck straining, his complexion deepening again. “Did you say mental troubles?” he asked in a high, uncertain voice. “No, I wouldn’t say so. Though she does get these bad dreams from time to time that do leave her very low in herself. My mammy has had to nurse her a few times. But she’s a young girl. With God’s help, all that will pass.”

  He paused. Again, his face darkened, approaching the color of wine. Finally, almost stifling with embarrassment, he said, “That is, if she is let alone.”

  For a moment they sat in a dreadful silence. Then Mangan said, “You mean, by me.”

  “Yourself and others, yes.”

  “I know you probably won’t believe this,” Mangan said, “but I don’t normally go around picking up eighteen-year-old girls.”

  Dinny took up the poker and rattled it furiously among the red turf embers. “What you do or don’t do back in America is none of my concern. And I will tell you straight out what Kathleen does is not my concern, either. It should be, but it is not. What does concern me is my own mother, who is very fond of Kathleen. And what she saw tonight was enough to break her heart. My mammy is a saint, Mr. Mangan. She has no bitterness in her for any soul living or dead. But she has suffered more than I can tell you, and seeing you like she did tonight with Kathleen is more than she can be expected to bear. She has had mental troubles of her own, as you know, and I don’t want to see her back in Our Lady’s Hospital, God forbid. So I am asking you now, man to man, here in my own house. What is it you want in Drishane? And is there any way I can persuade you to leave us in peace?”

  Mangan looked at the fire. He did not speak. Go away and stop molesting a young mad girl. That is what is being asked of me.

  “The other day I saw you looking around in the cemetery,” Dinny said. “I was with the other lads in the truck that passed by. What is it you want, exactly?”

  Mangan touched his pocket. The daguerreotype was there. He drew it out and handed it to Dinny. “This was found together with some books by and about James Clarence Mangan in my grandfather’s papers in Montreal. Look at that picture. It’s me, isn’t it?”

  Dinny picked up the photograph by the edges of its frame as though it were explosive. He adjusted his round spectacles and peered nearsightedly at it.

  “Hmm,” he said noncommittally.

  “I understand it’s also very like your father.”

  “It is not my father.”

  “I know that. It’s a daguerreotype, they were the earliest sort of photographs. Look on the back of the frame. See the date.”

  “Eighteen forty-seven,” Dinny said. “That would be Mangan’s time, all right.”

  “Do you think it’s his photograph?”

  The distorting lenses of Dinny’s spectacles effectively visored his glance. “Let me ask you a question,” he said. “Is that what you came to Ireland to find out?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you expect me to believe that’s why you came all this way?”

  “It’s a strange time in my life,” Mangan said. “My wife died unexpectedly. I didn’t know what to do with myself.”

  “I am sorry.”

  “No, it’s just that I—well, dammit, I was excited when I found this photograph. There’s something about seeing your double who lived a hundred and thirty years ago in another country. And who might have been the famous poet. I’ve always had a special interest in poetry. I’ve published poems of my own.”

  “That is interesting. It fits.”

  “How does it fit?”

  “It’s not up to me to tell you,” Dinny said. “I am trying to make a bargain with you. If
I put you in touch with a certain person who can give you the answer to these questions of yours, will you give me your solemn promise to go home to America once you have them?”

  “But why?”

  “For my mother’s peace of mind. And for Kathy’s as well. You will know why once you get your answers.”

  When I get my answers. He sat in the silence which followed, hearing the loud, ticking clock. The excitement he had first felt when he picked up the daguerreotype in his father’s cottage in Quebec surged back like the rush of a drug, and again he sensed himself to be on the verge of revelation of a mystery, the mystery of his double who had lived a hundred and thirty years ago. Someone was alive who knew these answers. Someone here in Ireland knew.

  “Where do I find this person?”

  “First I need your promise. Your promise that you will leave Ireland.”

  A promise that he would leave Ireland. Not a promise that he would leave Kathleen. He could make that promise and be waiting for her in America when she came to join him on the money he provided. For now, when it was time to promise, he could not think of losing her. Maybe he would not lose her. Maybe she could be cured. “A promise?”

  “Your solemn word of honor. And I will hold you to it.”

  “That I leave Ireland when I know these answers, as you call them.”

  “And that you never come back,” Dinny said. “And let me tell you now that I am the only one who can tell you the name of this person and where to find them. I promise you you cannot find out from anyone else. I am the only person in the world who knows.”

  “All right,” Mangan said. He felt at the same time ashamed of his duplicity and yet like a man who watches a roulette ball fall into a pocket on the wheel, winning him a great sum.

  “It is a promise, then?” Dinny asked.

  “Yes, I said yes.”

  “One more condition. You will not tell anyone, not my mother or Kathleen or anyone, the name of this person and that you have met him.”

  So the person is a man. “All right, I promise.”

  At that, Dinny rose up and went to the scullery door, where several garments hung on coat hooks. He took down his wet overcoat and buttoned himself into it. “Right,” he said. “I will take you up to the house now. I have to write a long letter tonight explaining who you are and telling this man why he must help you. In the morning I’ll come for you and give you breakfast and put you on your road. But tomorrow, before you start, you had better go back up the mountain to the other house and take your luggage. For I doubt you’ll be wanting to come back this way once you get to where I’m sending you.”

  “Why is that?”

  “You’ll see,” Dinny said cryptically. “This place is a fair journey from here, and once you are there you would be on the road to Shannon airport. You could go straight home when you have finished your business.”

  “But I promised to give Kathleen her fare to America. I think I’d like to come back and speak to her and make sure she’s over this attack.”

  There was a long pause. Dinny studied the fire. “Well, that is your prerogative,” he said. “But I’d say she might be better in the morning. You could speak to her before you go.”

  “I still would like to come back and see her. To say goodbye.”

  “I think you will not be wanting to come back. But never mind. Suit yourself. Are you ready, now?”

  “Ready.” He rose, going out into the rainy night after his host, hurrying up the little lane behind Dinny’s flashlight to the rocky back yard and the shut kitchen door of the Duntally house. Once inside, Dinny switched on the light and laid the door key on the scullery table. “You know your way. It is the big bedroom upstairs. The bed is made up. I will give you a shout at seven, for I have to be at my work by eight. You could save me time if you will give me a lift down to the crossroads for Drishane.”

  “Okay. At seven.”

  “Good night to you, Jim.”

  “Good night, Dinny.”

  The door shut. Here, back in the first house he had slept in, he looked at the familiar furniture, the stove on which he had cooked his first breakfast. He turned off the light and went upstairs to the big bedroom, undressing under the scroll dedicating this house to the Sacred Heart, the red lamp in the shape of a heart burning small and bright over the bed. Tomorrow he would begin to know what it was that had happened in this house and in the house on the mountain. Tomorrow he would meet a man who would tell him if his double was Mangan the poet. Tomorrow.

  He took the daguerreotype from his pocket before hanging his jacket on a chair and looked once again at that face which was his, at those eyes which now seemed to mirror his own with their look of steely, controlled hysteria, at the gap in the teeth on the right side of the mouth. He no longer felt elation at sight of this, his mysterious self. Instead, he again felt fear, the same fear he had felt that night in the shadowed parlor of the house at Gorteen. Was this photograph a document which would one day pronounce judgment on his own life? Tomorrow he might know. As he pulled the bedclothes over his naked body he thought of Kathleen lying drugged and asleep in that little cottage and of the old woman lying beside her in the bed, wakeful, her mind filled with what mad memories, with what tale of blood and wounds and shrieks in the night. And as he switched off the lamp and lay in the shadowed red glow from the votive lamp above the bed he tried to imagine what sort of man he would meet tomorrow, this man who could link him with his forebears, with Dinny’s dead father, also a poet, and the father’s uncle, a poet who had died a terrible death. And who might name the man in the daguerreotype, the man with his face who had walked this earth one hundred and thirty years ago, perhaps the poet Mangan himself. And so, excited, fearful, anticipating morning, he fell into a fitful and exhausted sleep.

  Hens, their orange feathers glistening, their vermilion head wattles jerking around like fools’ caps, their diamond eyes nervously darting to and fro, stalked through the soft morning light in and out of the threshold of the cottage, rushing forward to peck at what might be crumbs of food. The old woman raised her arm, banishing them. “Chu-chuck!” she cried. “Chu-chuck!” The hens fled outdoors and a heavy shadow replaced them on the bright floor as Dinny came in from the yard with three brown eggs in his hand.

  “Would you like yours soft-boiled?” the old woman asked Mangan.

  He nodded. “How’s Kathleen this morning?”

  “Sleeping the sleep of the dead,” the old woman said. “Those pills are the lads, all right. She’ll not stir before noon.”

  “I was hoping to speak to her before I go.”

  “Ah, I wouldn’t wake her,” the old woman said. “That’s the best medicine for what ails her. Sleep and plenty of it.”

  Dinny had gone back to the wall desk in the corner and now folded several handwritten sheets and put them in a long brown envelope which he carefully licked and pressed shut. He took out a fountain pen and wrote something on the envelope. The old woman, meantime, sat down at the table, took a large loaf of soda bread, and cut three slices off it with a sharp knife.

  “How far away is this place?” Mangan asked Dinny. “Would I have to spend the night?”

  “What place is that?” the old woman asked, and Dinny gave Mangan a disapproving look. “It’s a place he’s going to get his car seen to,” he said. “It’s about thirty miles out of Bantry. You could be back tonight. Depends on the garage. As I told you last night, I’d say you’d be better to take your luggage with you.”

  “But as I told you, I still want to come back and see Kathleen.”

  “Suit yourself,” Dinny said after a pause.

  The old woman put butter on the table and poured three cups of strong tea. The eggs jiggled in the iron pot as the water boiled.

  “Well, if Kathleen is still asleep when I go,” Mangan told the old woman, “will you please tell her that I’ll be back tonight, or tomorrow at the latest?” He turned to Dinny. “There’s another reason why I have to come back. The police
may want me for a statement.”

  “What statement?”

  “Kathleen told them Con was with us the day that stuff was stolen. We’re supposed to make a deposition or something.”

  “And was he?” the old woman asked, ladling out the eggs.

  Mangan shook his head.

  “They should not be putting you in that position,” Dinny said severely. He put the brown envelope in his jacket pocket. “Jim is giving me a lift down to the cross,” he told his mother.

  “I was wondering why you were so late getting started. What’s that you’re writing? You were up very late last night. Was it writing, you were?”

  “I have a letter I want Jim to post,” Dinny said. “It is about my insurance. I wrote it last night.”

  The old woman served the boiled eggs, and all three sat into the table. The hens again began their forays into the kitchen. “Chu-chuck!” the old woman called. The hens fled.

  “This garage,” Dinny said to Mangan. “Do you have a map in the car?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I will show you on the map the road you must take to get there. We will talk about it on the way down. We will have to hurry. I’m going to be late for my work.”

  They ate swiftly, in silence. “Do you want more tea, either of you?” the old woman asked.

  Dinny looked at Mangan. “No thanks,” Mangan said.

  “Are we ready, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “Safe journey, Mr. Mangan,” the old woman said as Dinny headed for the door. But at the last moment Mangan hung back. “Is she in here?” he asked, and went to the bedroom door. “Don’t worry, I won’t wake her.”

  The old woman came after him, looking her disapproval. Mangan turned the doorknob and in the dark, small bedroom in an old brass double bed saw Kathleen, her lovely young face still as marble, her long red hair tumbled over the pillows. She slept like a child, all peace and innocence. It could not be over, could it? “Tell her I’ll be back,” he said to the old woman. “Don’t forget to tell her. It’s important for her that she know I’ll be back.”

  “That’s Dinny calling,” the old woman said. “You’d better be going.”