The Devil I Know

by Claire Kilroy

  It was made of wood all right, a grainy greyish oak, but the face of Jesus didn’t hold a candle to the one I had seen in the dark. That face had even fleetingly alchemised into that of my mother and we were together again. The face on the cross that the garda produced was rudimentary, and yet when I closed my eyes and ran my fingertips over the notches, the sweet countenance appeared once more. It just goes to show. What precisely it goes to show – what precisely the whole sorry mess goes to show – I cannot yet say, none of us can yet say, other than that it demonstrates the power of two interrelated and potentially disastrous variables regarding the impossibility of certitude on the one hand and the infinite pliability of the human imagination on the other. One can never truly know where one stands, and yet one can be adamant about that position.

  I put the crucifix into the drawer of the nightstand and pushed it shut. The garda looked disappointed. I should perhaps have given the relic its day in the sun after centuries spent nailed to an underground wall, but I was done with all that Higher Power stuff. A piece of wood wasn’t going to save me.

  *

  I woke one . . . I was going to say one morning, but there was no telling whether it was day or night in the priest hole. I thought my eyes would acclimatise, but there was nothing to acclimatise to. I couldn’t see my own hand. It is terrifying to wake in true darkness. I woke because something had crashed to the ground out in the passage. This was followed by a curse, a big mucker curse – Ah fer Jaysus’ sake – and then a second object clattered to the stones, betraying a level of incompetence and general clumsiness uncharacteristic of M. Deauville. Evil incarnate did not accidentally knock things over. Evil incarnate was deft.

  I jumped to my feet and got a hammer blow to the crown of my head from the low ceiling. I managed to slide the wooden panel across before slumping through it and passing out.

  I came around to a blaze of light. The garda flicked the torch beam at the mouth of the priest hole to establish that it was empty before speaking into his lapel. ‘Lads,’ he began in a high-pitched voice, then cleared his throat and started again, an octave lower: ‘Lads, I think I have him.’

  The torch returned to my face. ‘How are you getting on there, sir?’

  All authoritative now, doing his best to sound professional because he was just a big schoolboy underneath the uniform, jubilant at being the one to have found the fugitive. They’re all big children, essentially, the Gardaí, and although that may sound like a criticism, I intend it as praise of the highest order. It is the greatest compliment I can pay my fellow man. The ones who were never childlike are the ones you have to watch out for. The ones who have mastered their emotional impulses. The ones who are cold. Strip the place of valuables while you still have a chance. The garda’s face lit up at having found me and it was a heartening thing to see, and then it was a disheartening thing, because I realised that my own life was to be empty of such innocent triumphs, empty of clear-cut achievements, empty in general. No I found him! moments for me, because I never found things, I only lost them. Anyway. Back to the question.

  ‘How are you getting on there, sir?’

  Stunned, was the answer. Too stunned to recognise that I was stunned. I was lying on my side unable to raise my head from the stone floor. Grand, Garda, I tried to respond, but nothing came out, so I blinked up in friendship at him, wagging my tail like one of the setters to say, Boy am I glad to see you! Or at least I lay there thinking that I was wagging my tail because I was seriously confused by the wallop to the skull. But that is by the by. Now that this whole protracted palaver is coming to an end, I find that I can’t keep from blurting random incidental stuff, like the bore at the cocktail party who, sensing that he is losing you, takes a firm hold of your sleeve and keeps talking, only faster.

  ‘Are you Tristram St Lawrence?’ the garda enquired for the record.

  I wagged up an affirmative.

  ‘Aidan,’ he said into his lapel, ‘we’re going to need an ambulance.’

  He helped sit me up against the wall – ‘Jesus, your hands are freezing’ – and unbuttoned his jacket and draped it over my shoulders. It is the moments of kindness that stand out. Perhaps because there have been so few of them. I am not asking for sympathy. I am not asking for anything. I am just saying that it is the moments of kindness that stand out.

  The garda shone his torch into the priest hole. We both watched in fascination as the beam of light excavated its dimensions. So that’s what it looked like. A coal bunker.

  ‘Were you on your own down here the whole time, sir?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, and then, ‘no.’ I lowered my head in embarrassment. ‘Actually, I’m not entirely certain.’ Tears sprang from my eyes, forming pale channels in the centuries-old grime that coated my face, as I was to discover some hours later when I met my reflection over a metal hospital sink, although it wasn’t the grime that made me recoil. The grime could be washed off.

  The guard patted my shoulder. ‘Not to worry. We’ll have you out of here in no time.’ I suppose he thought I had lost my mind. And I suppose I had.

  The sound of other voices reached our ears. I managed to master my tears, which was a relief to us both. The intimacy had been awkward. I have no talent for it. Neither did the guard. ‘Help is on its way,’ he repeated more than once, reassuring himself as much as me. Help was blundering down the passage, bumping into the objects the guard had already knocked to the floor, sending them scudding across the flagstones until they came to rest, whereupon Help tripped over them again. The garda winced. ‘We’re up ahead, lads,’ he bawled. ‘And would ye in the name of God take it handy! Those are priceless antiques.’

  Back to me. ‘Do you think you could get to your feet?’

  I nodded.

  The garda hooked my arm over his shoulder and raised me up, but the legs were dead under me so he lowered me back down. It’s frightening how quickly muscles wither. It’s frightening how quickly everything withers; your mind, your world, your life. ‘Just relax there, Mr St Lawrence. They’ll be here any second.’

  ‘Tristram,’ I offered, a name which inevitably sounds more formal to an Irish ear than mister. Castler, I should have told him. Me name is Castler, how’s the form? A saucepan lid or shield or some such thing hit the floor spinning, a shimmering metallic crescendo at which the garda apologetically shook his head. We looked into the darkness in anticipation. I was expecting a whole SWAT team to come bursting around the corner, the amount of noise they made, securing the exits, flinging me to the ground, barking at me to keep my hands where they could see them, but in the end it was just a straggle of rank-and-file officers, cobwebs snagged on the peaks of their caps.

  *

  I think you probably have the rest of the details on record from here, Fergus – the ins and outs, the ups and downs, the twists and turns. There is not much more I can add. Carted out on a stretcher, squirming at the sun, bruised, ragged and shivering, smeared in grime. I’ve been found in worse states. It used to be the order of the day. And then M. Deauville rescued me and I owed him my life. The ambulance was waiting in the courtyard. So was Mrs Reid. I heard her before I saw her. All I could see was the sky.

  ‘Is he alive, Guard? Oh God, tell me he’s alive!’

  Her face projected above me as if peering into my pram. Her eyes shot to the top of my head and she covered her mouth with her hand. The rosary beads were still threaded through her fingers. ‘Sacred Heart of Jesus,’ she whispered.

  ‘What?’ I touched my head but found nothing amiss – no dent, no blood, no crack. ‘What is it, Mrs Reid? What’s wrong with my head?’

  Mrs Reid lowered her eyes to look into mine. ‘Nothing, pet,’ she reassured me, and squeezed my freezing hand for emphasis. ‘There’s nothing wrong with your head. There is not a thing in the world wrong with your head, do you hear me?’ Then she started to cry.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Reid.’

  ‘I thought you were dead, love.’

  ‘That was an
other Tristram St Lawrence.’

  She looked up at the garda through her tears. ‘He’s not a bad boy,’ she petitioned him, still clutching my hand. ‘He’s not a bad boy. He’s just . . . well, look at him, Guard. Sure you can see yourself. He’s very troubled.’

  *

  Some hours later, I met my reflection in a mirror over a metal hospital sink. It wasn’t the sight of my chimney-sweep face that made me recoil. It was my hair. It had turned white, and not a gleaming helmet of silver like Father’s, but chalky white. Just like that, in a matter of days. Look at me. I’m an old man. All washed up. Barely forty.

  The garda had coffee waiting for me in a polystyrene cup. ‘Not the standard you’re used to, I’m afraid,’ he apologised as he handed it over. I smiled. Nobody knows what I’m used to.

  ‘So what are the charges?’ I finally asked when he began making noises about taking his leave. The doctors wanted to keep me in overnight for observation. The guard could hardly slap on the cuffs there and then.

  He had been about to place his hat on his head but he lowered it and frowned. ‘The charges?’

  ‘Yes. What have I been arrested for?’

  ‘You haven’t been arrested, Mr St Lawrence. Your housekeeper reported you as a missing person. And now you’re found.’

  ‘I see. So when am I going to be charged?’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. That’s why I’m asking you. Economic treason?’

  ‘That isn’t a crime.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  The garda put his hat on. ‘I don’t think so. But I can check?’

  ‘Would you mind?’

  He left the room and I waited for him to get back to me. I’m still waiting. Everyone is still waiting. That was eight years ago now.

  ‘Thank you for your time, Mr St Lawrence. That concludes matters.’

  Do you think? Not for me it doesn’t. Nothing can conclude matters for me. I figured that while I’m here, Fergus – while I am back in the country for this brief spell to answer your questions – I might as well pay a visit to the castle before departing these shores again. See what became of it sort of thing. It could be decades before I return again, if I ever return at all. I have no idea who even owns it any more, or whether anyone even owns it. It may languish still in that holding pen created by the Irish State for all I know, that portfolio of unsaleable property generated by the doom – I mean, the boom; impounded like a stray in the dogs’ home begging passers-by to take pity on it. Good home wanted for a good home. One careless owner. I am afraid to ask. I am afraid to ask what became of my castle. Why am I smiling? Because I’m sad. Because it’s sad. Because I don’t know what else to do with my big stupid mouth.

  It was a dry, brisk, bright afternoon when I finished giving my evidence. I recounted the exchange with the garda in the hospital (‘Pray charge you with what, noble sir?’ ‘Why, you jackanapes, with economic treason!’) and that was the end of that. The stage hook appeared to haul me off. A clerk led me out and a cavity opened within. I was yesterday’s man.

  I did not immediately leave the court building but instead sat brooding on the headmaster’s bench in the public area. There was a clue I must have neglected to impart, a damning detail to nail the case once and for all and finally make someone pay, but no matter how I wracked my brains I could not put my finger on what that incriminating particular might be.

  I took out my phone and searched for the next available flight back to Mumbai. There was nothing until the following evening. It was Easter and the airlines were booked out. A whole afternoon to kill and no notion of how to kill it. The Devil makes work for idle hands. For trembling ones too, for hands with the DTs. I booked a room in an airport hotel.

  I set off on foot up the Quays along the silver Liffey. riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. Do you remember? It used to be written on the tenner back when we still had our own currency.

  On O’Connell Street preparations were afoot outside the GPO for the celebration of the Centenary of the Easter Rising. One hundred years since the Proclamation of the Irish Republic and our sovereignty had been hocked. It was Holy Thursday and the panic-drinking was already under way, what with the pubs shutting to mark Good Friday. It would get messy on the streets of Dublin that night.

  I caught a northbound train. In case you haven’t already rumbled me, I am unable to drive. I’ve gotten through my whole life making that admission to no one. I may as well get everything off my chest while I’m on a roll. The Dart passed Hickey’s construction graveyard before pulling into the station. I could hardly believe my eyes. It was all still there: the tombstone blocks with their gaping doorways, the building rubble, even the forlorn tower crane, untouched except by vandals and the elements. The Claremont site had been neither levelled nor completed but simply abandoned, stranded as it had stood the day all the money ran out, a war memorial. The show apartments were occupied but already betraying symptoms of their slipshod construction: cracks running the length of the façade, mossy stains weeping from the gutters, the bloom of rust beneath each balcony. In place of the Maserati carrying a surfboard was a neon Dyno-Rod van, its crew rodding the sewers.

  Access was still via the construction gate, the grand entrance depicted on the sales brochures having failed, like everything else, to materialise. Hickey’s Portakabin was still there, crushed like a can of Coke, and my paint-spattered chair was no doubt in the vicinity had I the heart to look; I did not. The thirteen storeys of his eleven-storey hotel were draped in tattered netting like a famine refugee. I keep saying it was Hickey’s hotel, but it was mine too. I was equally responsible, equally irresponsible. Scum was spray-painted at periodic intervals along the perimeter hoarding.

  I crossed the road to the ribbed columns of the castle entrance. Sir Tristram has passencore rearrived.

  The iron gates were open. That threw me. I had presumed I’d find them chained shut, that I’d have to scramble over the orchard wall. I passed between the pillars and braced myself for the trip-trap crabwalk of Larney. My blood fizzed like anaphylaxis. It ionised in my veins.

  Nothing. Still as a rock pool. As chilly and silent too. I pushed my way through the glossy shrubbery to the glade in which the gate lodge stood. Windows were broken and roof slates missing. A buddleia sprouted from the chimney stack and the garden was a poisonous ragwort thatch. I hadn’t laid eyes on the place since my childhood, about a thousand years before, and although I had been dragging my weary carcass around ever since, I did not think I could find the strength to drag it much further. The gatekeeper’s cottage was a derelict wreck and so was I.

  Something was coming over me. It was taking hold. I had never known exhaustion like it. I laboured up the avenue in search of Mrs Reid. I had no right to expect to find her sitting at her kitchen table as if nothing had changed, but I did, and on some level I still do. For a full eight years, the figure of Mrs Reid had been sitting at her kitchen table in my mind’s eye, a refuge for my thoughts when a refuge was needed, which was often, a night light during the many bad dreams. The mind needs to preserve chambers of sanctuary and she was mine. But her net curtains were torn and the padlock clamping her door shut had streaked the paintwork with rust. I am ashamed to say that I have no idea what became of Mrs Reid. It did not occur to me that she would be evicted upon the seizure of my assets. Never thinking of others; that was me all over then. All of me, all over then.

  Equally, and oppositely, I did not expect to find M. Deauville’s brass plaque, his tarnished calling card, still on display by the front door, but then, who was left to remove it? Not a soul. The castle was gaunt and deserted. They say it has a ghost now. I would like to join him. At times I think I already have.

  My key did not fit in the lock. That was a kick in the teeth.

  I went around the back. The castle was boarded up like the rest of the country. A carpet of
bindweed had smothered the sunken gardens. I paused at the tradesman’s entrance but continued around to the vandal’s entrance and climbed through that instead, seeing as I was the biggest vandal of them all. They had pulled off the plywood boards and broken the catch on a sash window. Cider cans littered the parquet floor like autumn leaves.

  The interior was suspended in gloom. I flicked a light switch. The power had been disconnected. It hardly mattered. I didn’t need lights. There was nothing left to bump into. The furniture had been removed. I made my way along the corridor, throwing open door after door. The silverware, the china, the paintings, the books in the library, the bookcases themselves: gone. The marble fireplace bearing the family motto had been prised from the great hall, exposing an aghast and toothless mouth. I gaped at it and it gaped back. Qui Panse. Not any more. Strip the place of valuables, Edel had warned me. Why am I still banging on about her? No one is listening any more.

  In the rhododendron gardens, the invasive common species had prevailed. Father had culled the ponticums annually, identifying them by marking their barks with a slather from his pot of white paint while they were in flower, but the collection had been left unattended for so many years that the specimen varieties had been choked. I closed my eyes and raised my face. Spring sunlight shimmered down on me through a canopy of translucent new leaves. It was on a sunshot day in early summer that I had found Edel here, or she had found me, and all these years later I could still see her picking her way through the showy blossoms like a woodland fawn. The garden path up which she led me had long since been swallowed by briars. I would never find that dell of bliss again, if I ever really found it in the first place. She is up in the house on the edge of the moors, I am told, still trying to make the sums add up. Hickey signed it over to her and then she threw him out. The last I heard he was driving a taxi.