The Mangan Inheritance

by Brian Moore

  “Of course. Anyway, you’re going to be all right.”

  “Well . . . maybe,” his father said. He added something which was so slurred Mangan could not hear it.

  “Sorry, Dad? What was that?”

  His father shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. This bloody . . . speech. Your grandfather died . . . just like this. Couldn’t . . . speak. Anyway, we’ve . . . managed to talk. Thanks. And listen. Will you . . . phone . . . your mother? Margrethe’s been speaking to . . . her. I spoke to her on the . . . phone. I told her . . . don’t come. But, will you . . . call her?”

  “Yes, don’t worry.”

  His father coughed again and gasped for air. “A child,” he said. “It will . . . be a son. I . . . feel it.”

  Mangan nodded and smiled.

  And then his father closed his eyes, still gasping. “Just a . . . minute,” he said in a slow, slurred voice. “Just . . . a rest.”

  “Yes, of course. Rest,” Mangan said. He watched the old man’s chest expand and contract painfully, listened to the constant tearing sound of his breath. A child. He’s going to have a child. And I, flying the Atlantic, wondered what secret he wanted to tell. And it was then, watching his father try to rest, watching his pale sweating face, his long, lank, thinning gray hair, his childishly awkward white neck, that he knew his father would die. A stroke is a slow death. He bent his head and rested his cheek against his father’s hand. The old man opened his eyes. “You . . . all . . . right, Jamie?”

  “Yes, I’m fine.” He lifted his head and looked at his father. “I’m very fond of you, Dad. Do you know that?”

  His father, breathing laboriously, raised himself, looked at him, then said, “Were you . . . in a fight over . . . there? You . . . lost a tooth.”

  Mangan nodded. Through his father—who knew noth***thing of Gorteen, Duntally, Norman towers, and lonely headlands—the uncanny facial resemblance, the poetry, the wild blood had been transferred across the Atlantic Ocean to this cold winter land, to this, his father’s harsh native city in which he now lay dying. He looked at his father’s face and wished that those features were his own.

  Someone had entered the room. He turned and it was Margrethe, carrying a plastic cup of coffee. “All right?” she whispered. “Is he still asleep?”

  “No,” his father said suddenly, his eyes still shut. And added in a slurred voice, “We . . . had . . . a . . . talk. Good . . . talk, eh, Jamie?”

  “Yes, Dad. Now take it easy. Rest.”

  Silently, Margrethe offered the coffee, then went to sit at the other side of the sick man’s bed. They sat in silence, watching him labor to breathe, watching him die.

  THIS IS A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOK

  PUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

  435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

  www.nyrb.com

  Copyright © 1979 by Brian Moore

  Introduction copyright © 1979 by Christopher Ricks

  All rights reserved.

  The introduction by Christopher Ricks originally appeared, in slightly different form, in the London Review of Books.

  Cover image: Arthur Batut, "Portrait-type" composite photograph of six men, c. 1886

  Cover design: Katy Homans

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the earlier printing as follows:

  Moore, Brian, 1921–1999.

  The Mangan inheritance / by Brian Moore; introduction by Christopher Ricks.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-59017-448-7 (alk. paper)

  1. Mangan, James Clarence, 1803–1849—Family—Fiction. 2. Inheritance and succession—Fiction. 3. Poets—Fiction. 4. Ireland—Fiction. 5. Domestic fiction. I. Title.

  PR9199.3.M617M3 2011

  813’.54—dc22

  2011020447

  eISBN: 978-1-59017-469-2

  v1.0

  For a complete list of books in the NYRB Classics series, visit www.nyrb.com or write to:

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