The Last Storyteller

  When the last guests had gone, we went home to her kitchen table, a place where lives—mostly mine—were saved.

  “What will you do now?”

  “I will build a garden,” she said. “Here. At the back of the house. There’s plenty of room. And everything I put in that garden will have to do with James. And with you.”

  When you have nothing to say, say nothing.

  “And you, Ben? Well, I know what you will do.”

  She could always surprise me.

  “You do?”

  “You will pursue Venetia. Bring her here to me, so that I can tell her about you.”

  I said, “I don’t know. I’m not sure.”

  “You should,” she said. “It’s what life wants you to do. My garden—I will begin it soon. We will both be gardening at the same time. In a manner of speaking.”

  How old was Miss Fay? I think in her seventies, but passing for sixty; and when she eventually died I found three birth certificates, all showing different ages.

  After dinner, she led me into the drawing room. She had set up the long dining table to its full, extended length. White sheets concealed piles of objects. She loaded a Chopin nocturne onto her gramophone. No. 19. Peaceful as deep snow. She laid a finger on her lips. As the first breaths of the E Minor moved across the room, she beckoned. Together we lifted and folded the white sheets.

  In sectors along the table, she had laid out James’s possessions. First, his shirts, all white, all collarless; the starched collars lay folded beside them. Next to them, laid to their full length, lay James’s one dozen black ties.

  She pointed. Across the room, on a coat stand from the hall, hung his four black suits. Draped across an armchair lay his famous long black coat, empty now, and hollow with missing him.

  Next to the shirts sat his tobacco pipes, and his two pouches, one in soft black leather, one in brown. All the accoutrements lay there, too: his cigarette lighters, the pipe-cleaning tools, a little brass tamp he had like a tiny barbell.

  James used this to punctuate his stories as he told them; just at the moment of greatest suspense he would finger the barbell, turn it over in his fingers like a magician doing a coin trick, and pause in his telling as he tamped down the tobacco. Sometimes he made it worse; he allowed the pipe to go out, and then, with short, grunting pauses in his tale, he’d relight it and tamp down the tobacco. Maddening, but I now recognized where he had learned it.

  From looking at the pipes and the tobacco equipment I understood that two versions of James had been on this earth: the James who traveled the roads and the James who had maintained an identical life in this house for much of his adult life. And he’d kept this side of him a secret from most people.

  We moved along the table to a series of boxes—ebony, sandalwood, mahogany, some with inlay, all about the size of an average book. Miss Fay opened each box like an Egyptologist and displayed the contents: pens and nibs, some as old-fashioned as quills, some fountain pens with shiny black or marbled barrels and gold bands, more than one of which bore the initials J.A.C. I hadn’t even known of a middle initial. “Abraham,” she told me; even at christening his life had been unusual.

  I stroked the boxes; I handled the pens; I fingered the gold bands with the initials. Beside me, Miss Fay leaned across the table and pulled the boxes toward us. With a sweep of the hand, but not a word from her lips, she gave me the boxes; I have them still; you have seen them, children, and handled them. I cherish them; in fact, as you know, I mention them specifically in my Will.

  By now I understood that I was being led through James’s life, and being asked without words what possessions of his I would like to have. James’s books had long been merged with Miss Fay’s, and in time, when she left the planet, all of those came to me. They are full of annotations, those books, some in James’s handwriting, some in Miss Fay’s. Often I come across a notation from one or the other of them, and for that moment they’re standing beside me again.

  The next group made me smile. James had a passion for small, useful tools—screwdrivers, pocketknives, bottle openers, and, as he used to say, “things for taking stones out of horses’ hooves.” Some had metal handles and casings, some bone, some mother-of-pearl, and when Miss Fay saw my smile she swept them, too, toward me.

  Now we came to an attaché case, again with the initials J.A.C. About the size of a deep modern briefcase, it had a new leather smell, and the central brass catch also looked undisturbed—no scratches, no wear and tear. This case had scarcely been out-of-doors.

  Miss Fay clicked open the brass lock and then pushed the attaché case to me. I took hold of it, felt its significant weight. She made an “open it” gesture. When I eased back the lid, I saw a card lying on a green felt cloth: James’s handwriting: “For Ben: a legacy of sorts.”

  Beneath the green cloth lay packet after packet of banknotes, each denomination a hundred pounds, each packet containing a hundred bills—ten thousand per packet, and the case contained twenty packets.

  I recoiled. Too much, too much—both the size of the gift and the intent behind it. I already knew, though, that I had no way of refusing it; and Miss Fay—as she had often made clear—had deep financial security (all of which she bequeathed to me).

  Later that night she would tell me that James had had a “saving demon” in him, and every Monday he’d put aside what he had not spent of his previous week’s allotted budget. When it reached a hundred pounds, he went to a bank and translated the smaller bills into a one-hundred-pound note. From time to time he took the older notes to the bank and refreshed them with new issues.

  My arithmetic raced. How could he have saved that much money? Not on government pay. The full story didn’t come from Miss Fay. In the following months and years, out in the country, I learned that James had been a card player—who always won. Miss Fay never told me that. Nor did she confirm it when I found out. It was probably the only time I ever saw her defensive.

  The last pile of possessions on the table lay under a brocade tablecloth of blue and gold. Miss Fay hesitated for a moment, slipped a hand under the cloth, and pulled forth a card much like the one I’d found with the money. James had written, “Ben’s true legacy.”

  As tenderly as nurses, we removed the tablecloth—and exposed neat piles of black notebooks. I counted them: eighty-two; I opened one—and learned that every notebook had been numbered, and that these contained everything private that James had taken down in his life of collecting folklore, and that each of these unofficial notebooks covered approximately six months at a time.

  I said to Miss Fay, “This is—” and got no further. Tears took over.

  “He admired you so much, Ben.”

  She left the room. While she was gone, I turned to the notebooks, and at great speed, I found the summer of 1932. That was when I had introduced him to Venetia.

  Easy to find: James had written, “Ben’s young lady, Venetia, is tender and lovely. She is so kind to him. He is mature in her company, and gentle.”

  Miss Fay returned, lugging a suitcase. In silence she laid it on the floor: more notebooks, different in size and texture—James’s official notebooks, his own daily journals.

  “They’ll have to go to the Commission archives,” she said, “but you should trawl through them first. I’ll hold them for a year.”

  We had almost finished. Miss Fay pointed to the suits. I shook my head—but I picked up the long black coat. First I draped it over my shoulders. Then I put my arms in the sleeves. Finally, I wore it.

  The mood snapped. Miss Fay stared. Then she turned away and with the vigor of a woman half her age began to hammer on the wall. And howl.

  I reached for her, but she rejected my hand. Thinking of last straws and the backs of camels, I began to take off the coat.

  “No, no, no, no, no!” she screamed. “Leave it on. Go away. Go!”

  46

  Where could I go after all that emotion? How could I come down from those heights? I waited in t
he hallway. Miss Fay wept for long minutes. In due course she allowed me to lead her to another room and an armchair. Brandy? She nodded; I took none. By now we had come close to midnight, and she looked exhausted.

  The weeping stopped. She asked me, “Can you stay?”

  “Of course.”

  I said that I felt uneasy about the private notebooks.

  “Shouldn’t they go to you?”

  She said, “No!”

  “Why so vehement?”

  “He said they’d be a fuel source for you.”

  “Do you know what he meant?”

  “Open one.”

  I went to the other room, took a notebook at random, brought it back, and handed it to Miss Fay.

  She thumbed and mused: “At the end of each notebook James kept some spare pages for what he called short jottings. He used to read them to me. Look.”

  I read, “Irish legends state that a king will always be a king. Not even a wizard can bring him down.”

  “Few characters in mythology gain as much respect as the hero or champion, i.e., the man who shows determination no matter what challenges he faces.”

  “The beauty of women in mythology doesn’t always denote beauty of spirit.”

  “In legends, the hero always knows his destiny, even if he refuses to face it.”

  Miss Fay, detached as a clerk, said, “That was his favorite quotation. That’s what James lived by. See what I mean?”

  47

  The next day, I should have climbed into my safe car and gone back to the countryside. Why didn’t I? Pusillanimity again. It even trumped my passion for fields, lakes, and stories told by the fire.

  Unease nagged, too. The joust with Man One and Man Two had disturbed me. On two counts: they might set out after me, and I hadn’t freed myself from the guns nonsense. In broad daylight I couldn’t believe that I had come so close to such events. Or that they’d happened.

  On impulse, as I walked past a police station near the Commission offices, I went in. Might I find a superior officer? Someone with a broader view? No thugs to manhandle me?

  Naturally, my mind was asking, What would James say? Meet it head-on. Or would he again say, Never trouble trouble until trouble troubles you?

  I waited. For two hours. First, the desk sergeant asked if I had a complaint to make. No, no complaint. He asked the nature of my business. Important. And confidential. About what, like? This is serious. He asked how serious was serious. Gun serious. IRA serious. He asked my employer’s name, and when I said, A government department, he grabbed a notepad and pencil and disappeared. When he came back, many minutes later, he took me to a small room and locked the door behind me. And there I waited. For two more hours.

  A superior officer did indeed appear—accompanied by Man Two. Not good, said my mind. This is not the result I wanted.

  Man Two said, “Heh, Little Boy, I thought it was you.” I presumed that the sergeant at the desk had made a phone call.

  James, where are you? In legends, the hero always knows his destiny, even if he refuses to face it. But what the hell is my destiny in this stuff? Another mistake, eh, Ben?

  The senior man, not quite as old as my father, and with a cyst on his forehead, held out a handshake.

  “I knew James Clare. I hear ’twas a great funeral.” James, you’re still here, thank you.

  I said, “He was very well known.”

  “Now, was James your boss?”

  “He was indeed.”

  “Well, you must be all right.” He smiled. “What’s the trouble?” He offered a cigarette—to me but not to Man Two, who stood behind him and glowered. “Larry here tells me that you’ve met some undesirables.”

  I said, “It’s complicated.”

  “Ah, sure nothing is simple,” said the Man with the Cyst. “How complicated?”

  “Very.”

  “Now, are you frightened or something? People who volunteer to see us are usually lunatics or frightened, and I don’t think you’re a lunatic.”

  Oh, Christ! I haven’t thought this through. I don’t know where it could go.

  “Now, what do you want to tell me, Ben?” I said,

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, in my department we always say, We can’t torture you for facts, but we can hang you for them.”

  He chuckled, and Man Two snorted.

  I said, “Suppose I did meet some ‘undesirables,’ as you call them, and suppose they were running guns, and suppose one of them told me in detail about an attempted murder or about a military-style operation outside of this—” I hesitated.

  “Jurisdiction?” he asked.

  “Jurisdiction, yes.” I reached for some steam. “And suppose, say, just for the sake of argument, suppose I had ferried weapons here and there, and suppose I’d even handled a gun—even if I hadn’t taken part in anything?”

  Behind the other man’s back, Man Two mimed a hanging. Hands around his neck, he rolled his eyes. Made silent, gagging faces. Tongue far out.

  His superior remained kindly. “The burden of proof is always on us, Ben. But now there are ways of handling everything.”

  Why does he say “now” so often?

  “Such as?”

  Oh, great, rampaged my mind, terrific. At one leap you wind up in something so deep and dangerous that you get yourself caught every which way.

  The Man with the Cyst took his time, looking at the floor and dragging on his cigarette.

  “Hmm. Now—the best way, and in fact the only way—” He paused, contemplating every word. “In fact, yes, the only way—if what you’re describing—for the sake of argument—if it had, say, already happened.” He looked up at me quickly. “The only way you could cope with that would be, well, you’d have, so to speak, to become one of us.”

  “But—how would that work?”

  Yes, yes, yes. Caught. Comprehensively snagged and snared. Breathing in and breathing out. Would Jimmy B. put a bullet in my head? You bet he would. What did Randall call him? That little narcissist. Didn’t somebody—my father—call Al Capone a narcissist? Or was that Pretty Boy Floyd? My father and his books and magazines about gangsters. No use to me now.

  “You’d work with Larry here. Tell him where you were going. Who you’d be with.”

  “At all times?”

  “Well, if there was something undesirable going on. Or about to go on. That’s how it would work.”

  I looked at Man Two—“Larry,” as I now knew. He winked at me. Not a nice wink, not a friendly wink, not a decent wink, but a wink that said, “I’ll cut off your private parts”—which he would, one day, actually say to me. “And feed them to my greyhounds, only they’d probably choke.”

  Violence everywhere. Everywhere. Oh, God, how I needed Venetia. Or James. Or any kind of kindness.

  “So—I need to get this clear. If I knew of anything that was ‘undesirable’ as you say—”

  The Man with the Cyst interrupted me. “We’re not talking about a fellow who hasn’t put up the tax disc on his car or anything like that. Or hasn’t paid his income tax. Do you get that, Ben?”

  I looked at the floor. And took a pause. Which they didn’t interrupt.

  “Is this,” I asked, “what they call ‘turning’ somebody?”

  The Man with the Cyst smiled. “You must have read a lot of spy books.”

  I said, with a touch of rue, “My father.”

  “And your next question will be,” said the Man with the Cyst, “what would happen to you if those you turned against found out?”

  “I’m not with anyone,” I said, “so you can’t say I’m against anyone.”

  “Well, you bloody well should be,” said Larry (who, by the way, went on to become a leading figure in Irish security matters). “Enemies of the state.”

  “Larry, you sound like a Communist,” chuckled the Man with the Cyst. “Now, Ben.” He sat on the edge of the banged-up table, his cigarette almost down to the butt. “Do we have some kind of understandin
g here?”

  I said, “I’ll have to think about it.”

  To my surprise, he shook his head. “Too late for that, I’m afraid.”

  “But I didn’t say a thing.”

  He smiled—sympathy, compassion, regret. “My job is to address any implications that these recent activities north of the border have for us.” He became official. “The government has made it clear that it will seek the death penalty for any such killings committed down here. Killers and associates. If and when convicted. And it will extradite to Britain anyone wanted there.”

  I said, “Hold on, hold on. I’ve said nothing about anything.”

  The Man with the Cyst said, “I could have you in jail within minutes—and for years.” He snapped his fingers at me. “Fix it. Stay on the right side.”

  I backed away. “But either way—”

  Larry drew his hand across his throat. “Either way a man could have his neck damaged,” Larry said.

  The Man with the Cyst headed for the door. “My advice would be: do the right thing.”

  He went. And Larry said, “If I don’t hear from you, Little Boy—I’ll come looking.” He winked again.

  48

  Thanks to that delay button in my emotional metabolism, I don’t respond fast to dramatic moments. Whether through paralysis, fear, or a wish to postpone delight, I store them until I can control them. How else could I have not shrunk into drink after such a meeting?

  And what, children, happened next that day of the Man with the Cyst? I met Jimmy Bermingham again—the man upon whom I was supposed to inform. At the funeral party he had asked me to come and meet his “heart’s delight.”

  “If she’s that important to you, Jimmy, why do you keep calling her ‘Dirty’ Marian?”

  “Ah, you’ll see, Ben, you’ll see.”

  “I bet she doesn’t like being called that.”