I was thinking of them both when the rambler joined me. ‘Nice old pile, isn’t it?’ he remarked. I turned to him but he kept his gaze on the castle, which, when I contemplated it through his eyes, framed by the boughs of spring blossom, could have been an illustration from a child’s storybook, a fairytale with a prince and a princess and a wicked elf. ‘Desperately sad, really, when you think about it,’ the rambler continued. ‘The first St Lawrence, Sir Amoricus, was a descendant of Sir Tristram, a knight of the Round Table, or so it is alleged. And now it has all come to such an undignified end . . .’
Ah, a local historian. God preserve me from local historians. The things they have written about our family. My door is open to real historians, but a local historian is merely a nosy local by another name. This one carried with him an upturned golf club, and he leaned his weight on its moulded head, a man who was not yet ready to admit to the world that he required a walking stick to get about. ‘Continuous succession to the Barony of Howth remained in the direct male line from 1177. But the final son was a bit . . .’ The local historian spun his finger by the side of his head to indicate a churning brain. ‘A bit funny. You know yourself.’
I did.
‘A tragedy, really. He died recently.’
‘Did he?’
‘Yes. Overdosed in an airport hotel.’
‘When?’
‘Soon. Tonight.’ The historian checked his watch. ‘It is happening as we speak.’
It took me an age to absorb this information. An age, an age. I am still grappling with it. I am floundering to this day. I looked to the historian. ‘Can’t anyone save him?’
‘Like who? There is no one. He has no one left. The hotel cleaners will find his body in the morning.’
‘But he’s not in the hotel room. He’s here. He’s with us.’
The historian shook his head. ‘He couldn’t bring himself to make the journey home when it came down to it. Couldn’t face up to witnessing the damage he’d done, so he went straight to the hotel instead. Locked himself into the room, switched off his phone, knocked back a jar of sleeping pills with the contents of the minibar. A coward right to the bitter end.’
The historian reached forward and used the vulcanised handle of the golf club to raise the shoot of bramble that strayed across our path and hook it back on itself. I marvelled at the offhandedness of this gesture under the circumstances. A man was dying, a young one, barely forty. ‘The benighted fool had squandered everything, you see. Every last farthing and more besides. What past generations had laboured to create, destroyed just like that.’ The historian clicked his fingers. ‘A whole way of life gone. He racked up a debt that can never be settled. But a debt must be settled, mustn’t it? Isn’t that the nature of a debt?’
I lowered my head in shame and noticed that the historian had etched an eye in the earth with the handle of the club. I took a step back. ‘He had notions, the young master. Thought he could make millions overnight. They all thought they could make millions overnight. But that’s the problem with setting yourself up as a little god. You invite the other fella in. Don’t you?’
‘Don’t you?’ the historian persisted when I failed to answer.
‘Yes,’ I admitted.
‘Desperate, the devastation they wreaked. It is nothing short of diabolic.’
At this word, the birds stopped. The secret creatures in the undergrowth stopped. The very air, I tell you, stopped. I looked up. The historian and I stood alone on a spotlit stage, waiting to say our lines. We had been waiting to say them for years.
‘I know who you are,’ he said softly.
‘That was another Tristram St Lawrence.’
‘No. That was you.’
‘I thought I was dead.’
‘You are now. The family line has come to an end.’
Down the hill, where the whitewashed trees opened onto the expanse of gravel, the castle had begun to keen. The historian lowered his head as a mark of respect. Bearing this news had afforded him no pleasure. If one thing stands out about my miserable tale, it is this: that it has no winners.
The historian squinted at the setting sun. I was stricken by an overwhelming sense of things coming to an end, of the torch being passed on, or not passed on, just extinguished. ‘It’s getting late,’ he told me, barely telling me at all. ‘It is time to leave the garden.’
I found myself at a loss and looked about frantically. Quite what I was searching for, exactly, I still do not know, and I possibly never will know, but I felt certain that I was forgetting something, that I was leaving some critical belonging behind, some vital possession without which everything, everything, everything would go awry. I appealed to the historian. ‘Now, you mean?’ I asked him, panic surging up my throat. Doom, doom went my heart. ‘Do you mean we’re leaving now?’
‘Yes, now, I’m afraid.’
I was afraid too. Afraid and unprepared. I glanced up. The sky was rapidly dimming.
He guided me to the exit – or was it the entrance, and if so, the entrance to what? – and he extended a crooked hand when we reached the crooked stile. ‘After you,’ he said, but I refused to move, just dug in like a petrified animal. Doom, doom. ‘What about my mother?’ it occurred to me in a wild flash of hope. ‘Does this mean I’ll see my mother again? Will my mother be waiting for me there?’
‘Your mother?’ The historian rolled his eyes in derision. ‘No, you fool, of course not.’ Whereupon my back buckled into a crooked spine and I was propelled by force through the stile. When we were both on the other side I heard it, heard them.
Tocka tocka.
Deauville had come to collect. A debt must be settled. That is the nature of a debt. The Devil linked my arm and we began the descent. I closed my eyes but my eyes would not close. They would not close. I tried and tried. I’ll keep trying. I must keep trying. I can only keep trying. I am afraid of what I will see.
I wish to thank the Arts Council of Ireland, An Chomhairle Ealaíon, for their generous financial support during the writing of this novel.
About The Author
Claire Kilroy's debut novel All Summer was described in The Times as ‘compelling ... a thriller, a confession and a love story framed by a meditation on the arts’, and was awarded the 2004 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. Her second novel, Tenderwire, was shortlisted for the 2007 Irish Novel of the Year and the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. It was followed, in 2009, by the highly acclaimed novel All Names Have Been Changed. Educated at Trinity College, she lives in Dublin.
By The Same Author
All Summer
Tenderwire
All Names Have Been Changed
First published in 2012
by Faber and Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
This ebook edition first published in 2010
All rights reserved
© Claire Kilroy, 2012
The right of Claire Kilroy to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–28344–6
-o-filter: grayscale(100%); -ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share
The Devil I Know Page 22