The Last Storyteller

  “Peter went to Canada. Paul went to San Francisco. And Patrick went to Brisbane in Australia.”

  “And who did you end up marrying?”

  “A nice man. He was an only child, and my grandmother said that a girl should always marry an only child, because they were always looking for love, and if they found it with you, they’d look after you very well.”

  “And what happened to Peter, Paul, and Patrick?”

  “They came home for my wedding. Would you believe that? They got over all their bitterness, and each of them danced with me, and we laughed and laughed about the three years they courted me. I said, If you added it all up didn’t I give each of them a year of my life. We had a great time.”

  Her name was Mrs. Hogan, originally Hannah Prendergast; she’s long dead, but you never saw such a twinkle.

  60

  The next tale I gathered that week—I’d been told it was a ghost story. A man in North Clare, on the edges of Galway Bay, had always boasted that he possessed a complete Spanish Armada uniform: “Haven’t I the tunic, the breastplate, the silver helmet, and the long sword?” Nobody believed him, because nobody had seen it. And he, a bachelor and a suspicious man, wouldn’t let anybody into his house.

  One winter he’d been saying that he hadn’t been well. Then came a time when nobody had seen him in Ballyvaughan for weeks. They went out to the house, broke down his door, and found him dead—but prepared for death: he’d arrayed himself on his bed in the silver uniform he’d always insisted he owned, all the parts of which had been maintained in museum condition.

  My informant said, “He told me one night, with drink on him, that he dreamed of being a Spanish conquistador because his family came from out there on the coast near Black Head, where some of the Armada ships foundered in 1588. The helmet was shining in the dark when we found him, and I knew how he died, and it probably answers a puzzle. He probably caught a chill.”

  I asked, “What’s the connection between the uniform, the puzzle, and the chill?”

  My narrator answered, “For years local people said they saw a ghost out there, the ghost of a Spanish soldier, walking the cliffs at night, with his helmet gleaming in the moonlight. Now I know who it was; it was our man. I bet he used to put on the uniform and go for a stroll when he thought nobody would see him. That’s how he caught his chill. So ’twas his dream that killed him.”

  61

  The following day I went east, inland by many miles. At dusk, I parked my car at a gate. This farm, half a mile from the road, never had an avenue. James used to say that the people who lived there didn’t want anyone to know they were alive.

  A shopping bag flapped from the gatepost. I snooped; it contained a note. I took the bag back to the car, where I could read the paper with some light. It was a letter two weeks old from the local health authority: one of the people in the house had contracted polio. “Accordingly,” it said, “these premises must now be considered quarantined.”

  I drove into the nearby town. It shall remain nameless; its people lacked decency in this case. At the grocery, I asked about the farm I’d wanted to visit. As excited as gossips, they told me that yes, it was true, the house had polio. A child might have died; they weren’t sure. Had anybody gone up there? Oh, God, no. Was anything confirmed? Listen, they said, even the police aren’t going in. Nor the doctors themselves.

  I said, “But how is the family managing for food?”

  Somebody answered, “Aren’t we all asking that question?” And then they looked awkward and began to resume their prior conversations, shutting me out.

  I loaded up: bacon, eggs, bread, butter, anything that seemed viable and convenient. If the people inside that house had serious illness, they surely had low morale. When I asked for milk, the owner, who hadn’t spoken a word, said, “They have their own cows; they’ll be milking every day.”

  I asked him to tally up my items. Maybe I expected him to say that they were free. Or that he’d give a discount. No such thing. I paid him, and as he gave me back the change, I said, “Maybe some sweets or something? For the children?” When he turned to fetch something, I planted the knife. “Do those people shop here? I mean when things are normal?”

  The blow landed. Embarrassment set in. He didn’t meet my eye.

  “That’s for the youngsters,” he said, and handed over a solitary chocolate bar.

  I took the risk of driving across the fields, a slow, careful journey, avoiding ruts. Gravel around a house is a good watchdog. Curtains twitched; I saw a face caught in the headlights. It disappeared when I climbed out of the car. From directly inside the door a man answered my knock.

  “Sir, we have polio here.”

  “I know that.”

  “We can’t mix with anyone for another three weeks.”

  “How are you fixed for food?” I called back. “I’m Ben MacCarthy, from the Folklore Commission. James Clare used to be my boss.”

  The voice spoke again: “Sir, we’ve no food, only boiled potatoes and milk; we ran out of tea yesterday.”

  I said, “I have food here for you. Let me in.”

  “Mr. MacCarthy, you might catch the polio.”

  “I might and I might not.”

  Why do misery and dignity so often go hand in hand? I could see that these were decent people, that this was a good farmhouse, on forty-five acres, enough to make a living in those days. Of late they’d been leading a shattered life. All day every day, and sometimes all night, each watched the others, they told me: father, mother, two sisters, three brothers.

  “Sir, we don’t even know what polio might look like.”

  “You seem healthy to me.”

  The boys unloaded the car. Their energy notwithstanding, a pall hung like a fog over the house and the yard. Their father, as strong a man as I have ever met, said, “How much do we owe you?”

  Dilemma: if I don’t let him pay, it will seem like charity; if I do let him pay, I can do it again. And the house feels as though they can well afford it.

  I said, “I’ll tell you how much because you’re not charity people. But on the condition that you let me do this again.”

  We agreed on the money. The family fell upon the parcels. I had included shop bread, even though I’d guessed that this woman did her own baking, like every other farmwife in the country—and, indeed, I’d also included flour and baking powder. They had no electricity yet—too remote—so the girls set to making toast on forks in front of the fire.

  Their father poured me a whiskey. He hadn’t known that James had died. We mourned with raised glasses.

  Then I asked about the polio. In school, their youngest child went sick: sore throat, stiff neck, and so on. A young doctor, new to the locality, called for an ambulance. He sent the other siblings home and quarantined the house. Since then they’d seen nobody. Nor had they heard from any hospital or doctor anywhere. No, there was nothing they could do about it.

  When I had shared their supper I left, promising to return. At the door, the wife, a handsome, quiet woman, thanked me again.

  “It’ll be a lucky woman that gets you, sir.”

  What is it I used to hear you say, children? Tell that to the marines.

  62

  Now the texture of my life changed again. I found myself on the banks of the River Shannon, near Limerick, alarmed and jarred. With flood warnings everywhere, and the river looking as threatening as a war, I did not want to be there. But in Adare the previous night a woman had given me a note. I don’t have the piece of paper; it was destroyed the next day. I can remember, though, what it said: Name: Kilconnell House. Address: You know where it is—on the riverbank below O’Brien’s Bridge. When: Tomorrow noon. Why: Urgent.

  Nothing more. I looked at the note again in the daylight. Did it offer anything else? No. The wind blew a hint of rain in my face. I looked at the house. Uneasy.

  Shouldn’t have come. Something’s up. Something’s amiss. That woman had bad air around her head. And how did she k
now me, how did she find me? Had somebody seen me, written the note? Given it to her to give to me? Are there people watching me and I not knowing it? Not seeing them? Not sensing them? Not good. And how did whoever they are know that I knew the house? Did “they” assume that I knew every prominent house in the country?

  Architecturally, I would love to have owned the place, a Georgian manor with a hint of Palladio. Not as grand as Randall’s and his floor-to-ceiling windows, it yet had a greater delicacy. Double pillars flanked the recessed front door, which somebody in love a long time ago had painted yellow. The fanlight above had ornate bones.

  Nobody answered the clanging bellpull. Four times I tugged it, shivering in that cold east wind. Thirty yards away from my legs, the Shannon flowed fast as a millrace. This is dangerous. She’d already flooded the land upriver: hundreds of acres under water, a shed swept away in the flood plains near Athlone, a man plucked off a riverside path and drowned. More and worse floods, said the news.

  When the bellbull produced nothing, I turned the giant brass doorknob, in the shape of a pentagon. It yielded, and the door swung aside as easily as a curtain. Either the original craftsmen had built superb hinges or, contrary to appearances, somebody was keeping the place oiled.

  The hallway echoed. Behind me, the door, when I released it, swung closed with a deep and secure click! When my eyes bested the gloom I could see the marks on the floors where furniture had once stood. Goldenfields will soon be like this. Empty and hollow. Our porch. My room. The parlor. Marks on the floors, the tracks of my life.

  To my left stood a door that had also been yellow. I tried it: locked so tight I couldn’t budge it. To my right rose the wide stairs. On the walls of the hall and up along the staircase, vacant rectangles showed where huge paintings had hung. They had taken the stair carpet when they left. And the lightbulbs.

  Which way? And if I move, won’t my footsteps be heard? Wait. Do nothing. See what happens. Whoever is here will have heard the bell but may not have heard my footsteps.

  Getting colder, I waited. One hand, deep in my pockets, touched my notebook; the other, my pen and pencil: comfort. And still I waited. All along the walls at hip height ran a mysterious heavy line. It looked as though somebody had thought to paint or apply wallpaper, and had then abandoned the decision. The floor planks had massive stains and blotches. In a corner, moss grew, a tiny, incongruous oasis.

  The sounds of the house came to me and, soon, the sights, like a photograph developing. I heard a windowpane rattling somewhere and a regular creaking, as of something oppressed by the wind. And I saw the corridor leading off the long hallway, and the doors in between. I heard the hoot of a gale down a chimney somewhere, and with the sun outside escaping the clouds briefly, I saw other doors off the hall, two of them, left and right.

  Guessing: the one on the right, that’s under the stairs; the one on the left, that’s perhaps a dining room. This locked door here beside me in the hall; that’s a parlor or a drawing room. I bet that was nice paint once.

  The creaking came from the end of the corridor. A door down there had a top panel that opened like a stable door. It creaked because it tried to do its job and let in the sunlight. How far away? Fifty feet?

  And still I waited. Patient though I am, my limits do make themselves felt. What to do? Stay or go? Maybe they haven’t heard me. Maybe they’ve yet to arrive. Maybe they know this place is vacant and they’ve squirreled the key from somebody, been here earlier and left the door unlocked for me. Maybe they’re somewhere else in the house and can’t hear the doorbell; these old houses have very thick walls. Let me test the place.

  I stepped forward, soft as a cat—not easy to do with hobnailed boots. A second step, wobbling a little as I tried to stand on one foot. Why so cautious? Because there’s something not good here. A third step, steadier. I picked up speed. Three, four, five more steps; silent and striding now, I reached the first door, the one on the right, under the staircase, the door that, I felt sure, led to the cellar. I tried its handle: no yield.

  By now I was two or three strides from the door on the left, which I had guessed to be the dining room. Ahead of me I could clearly see the top panel of the stable-style back door. If I lived here, I’d put on new hinges.

  As I reached for the porcelain-egg doorknob at my left hand I heard a noise, an echo with a metal heart. Today I know what it was; back then I didn’t: the safety catch on a gun. I stopped, looked around.

  Two things happened at once, and fast. From the doorway behind me that I had found solidly locked, a man stepped into the hall, aiming a gun at my head. And the doorknob in my hand was wrenched from inside by another man with a gun.

  I recognized both of them. They had been pallbearers in the Limerick funeral. Now, with their weapons and their eyes, they gave me no choice. I stepped into the room. Which contained two surprises: a long dining table—and Jimmy Bermingham. Sitting on a chair, eating a sandwich, he looked as though he dined at this table every day of his life.

  “Well, now, Captain, howya doin’? I hear you were looking for me.”

  Think, don’t feel; play it cool. Smile. And keep it natural.

  “I wasn’t, Jimmy.”

  “Well, now you’ve found me.”

  “Looks like that, Jimmy.”

  “Why weren’t you looking for me, Ben?”

  “I was busy, Jimmy.”

  “Yeh, we guessed.”

  Different clothes today: a natty suit, Prince of Wales check; a white shirt; a navy paisley tie. He wore a black coat, again draped over his shoulders like a cloak, his hands and arms free.

  “Sit, Ben.”

  I perched a haunch on the edge of the long, solid table.

  “What have you been up to, Jimmy?” I asked.

  “You’ll have to tell me what you want to know, Ben.”

  “I saw a report in the papers that a man had discharged himself from the Mater Hospital dressed as a woman.”

  “And you thought it was me, Ben.”

  Jimmy laughed, and I laughed.

  “I owe you some money,” said Jimmy, and he reached into an inside pocket and handed over cash. “All there. Count it.”

  “There’s no need.”

  “For the flowers, right? With Marian.”

  He looked executive, and he smiled at me, open and friendly, and in some ways more reliable than my memory of him. A man in a tweed coat from a better past now moved into full view. He laid a handgun on the table. I tried not to look at it. Eight more men came in, at ten-second intervals, making ten in all. They all saluted Jimmy.

  It felt rehearsed. I pocketed Jimmy’s money, saying, “I was glad to help.” Then I asked, “So, yes or no: was it you?” He began to laugh. Nobody could resist that laugh, so infectious was it. “I thought so.”

  “Did you ever try to put on a pair of women’s knickers, Ben?”

  “Where did you get them?”

  “They were a nun’s. I found a locker in the hospital when I was looking for a smoke. That’s where I got the idea.”

  I said, “And the rest of the clothes?”

  “Another locker. A nurse’s.” I raised an eyebrow, and Jimmy reacted. “Hey, hold on, Ben, I didn’t go the full whack. I mean I didn’t go for the—” He made a gesture with cupped hands, miming bosoms. “The engineering would have been too much for me. I know how to take one off, but I’d never have managed to put one on.” By now we had all decided to laugh. “And I nearly broke my leg in the high heels.”

  “You see, Jimmy? I was right.”

  He sobered up. “Well, Ben,” he said, “that was then, and this is now. And I’m a little bit sad. We got word, like, that you were talking to people.”

  Men of charisma, I have found, have a useful gift that we often don’t notice: they know how to create silence. James Clare had it. John Jacob O’Neill did it when telling a tale. I’ve seen the same control in leaders. Jimmy, believe it or not, scrawny Jimmy, thin, often uncertain, petulant, sulky Jimmy—he had i
t that day. Perhaps it came from the circumstances, his position of command in a group of several men. Or perhaps he also felt more empowered by their presence. Or both.

  I looked over my shoulder, took a moment to scan the other faces. Most of the men hadn’t shaved for some days, some had red blotches on their skin, one had a heavy blue bruise on his cheekbone. None seemed as fresh as Jimmy; all seemed exhausted and sullen. A few of them fiddled with weapons; three had handguns, one a rifle with a wonderful stock of shiny oak.

  When I looked at them, they tightened their faces—frowns, a scowl, anxiety. Some moved along the table and stood behind Jimmy’s chair. One, who wore gloves and caressed his revolver over and over, stood directly across from me and never ceased to stare at my face.

  And still the silence held. Was I inspired? How was I able to resist breaking it? I looked all around me again—and found that I generated a curious effect. The men behind me, as though wishing to be seen, came forward, until they all stood within my full field of vision.

  Did I feel menaced? Yes—and no. Yes, because if surly armed men are staring at you with a layer of suspicion fifty inches thick, you have reason to worry. And no, because their faces had such warm connection to me. Beyond all the tiredness and latent anger I had seen these faces, too, glowing by firesides. These were the shy men who made sure that my glass was never empty, or who led me back up to the main road late at night with an awkward torch, or who played a tune on a tin whistle in their mother’s kitchen. They had no good reason for standing so menacingly in front of me, but my knowledge of them—and my affection—enabled me to keep cool.

  Jimmy broke the silence.

  “So, Ben? What have you been saying about us?”

  A man on his right, the heaviest of them and the darkest in spirit, cut in.

  “We know why you’re here.”

  I said, “Tell me, then.”

  Jimmy looked, for the first time, a little nervous.

  “I want to hear Ben talk,” he said. “I know what Ben is like.”