by Anne Griffin
I gestured for him to move. But he held his ground.
‘Hilary’s away, she said. It’s nothing to worry about.’
‘Well, that’s alright then. Because we all know what a fierce man I am for the fretting.’
‘Ah, Jesus, Maurice. An hour. It won’t kill you. Seven, she said.’
And with that he left my door and opened his own. ‘I’m texting her now that you’ll be there, on the dot,’ he said, hanging out of his open window, his fingers already pressing buttons on his phone. He turned to me with a smile, pushed his last button, winked, and drove away.
I arrived at seven fifteen. The place was busy. There was a bit of activity around the reception desk so it was a while before I came to rest my elbow on it.
‘Is she about?’ I asked.
‘Yes indeed, Mr Hannigan,’ the young man said to me. I hadn’t a clue who he was and was a little taken aback that he knew me. ‘Let me show you the way. If you’ll follow me.’ He had an accent I couldn’t place. He rounded the counter with a big smile. My hands found their way back into my pockets and I followed him. He led me to a wide, expansive meeting room. Long trestle tables were pushed to the sides, leaving one round table in the middle, all set for dinner.
‘If you’d like to take a seat here. I’ll let Miss Bruton know you’ve arrived.’
He held out one of the chairs for me but I waved away his offer. He gave a courteous bow and left.
I sauntered to the table, giving it a good once over. All she was short of was the romantic candles. An envelope with my name on it stood leaning up against the vase of flowers in the centre. I took it up, turned it over once or twice, before replacing it and moving away to the windows to take in the street. I inhaled deeply like I might be able to smell the evening air outside, but what met me was the smell of business. The crisp clean air of efficiency, washed fabrics and hoovered carpets intermingling with the slightest waft of the posies from the table. I watched the cars come and go over the bridge. At the far side of it, I could see two people make their way into Hartigan’s, but I couldn’t place them. To my left, the lights went out in Lavin’s newsagents. I saw the door at the back of the shop that led to his private quarters close, pulling the last of the light out, leaving the place in darkness. The outside of the shop looked naked without its postcards and plastic toys that usually hung from the metal bars of his awning. When I heard the door behind me open, I turned my body a little in its direction, my head to the side.
‘You know I’m a happily married man,’ I called into the room.
‘And a good evening to you too,’ she replied.
I turned back to the road for a minute.
‘Will you be standing over there for the whole evening or might you be joining me?’
‘Robert said nothing about dinner. I’ve eaten already.’
I turned fully to face her now.
‘Well, I’m ravenous.’
She was seated and raised her hand in invitation to the chair opposite. My hands still in my pockets, I walked back and sat like a man waiting for a bus that was about to arrive. I felt her eyes on me.
‘Shall I put you out of your misery, Mr Hannigan, and tell you what this is all about?’ she asked. I shrugged. ‘It’s ten years. Ten years since you gave me … since we went into partnership.’
I hadn’t realised. ‘Is that right?’ I said, releasing one of my hands to take off my cap and run it through my hair.
‘And, given this place is at last turning a profit, I thought it only proper that we should celebrate.’ I raised an eyebrow. ‘Robert tells me you never ask about the place. That you don’t even care about your return, small enough though it’s been over the years.’
I’m not sure what she expected of me. My head struggled with the various words I might offer, but I could settle on none. The door opened behind her and in came a waiter, again no one I knew, with two plates and laid them before us. A second waiter followed with a bottle of both red wine and Bushmills. He poured the red for Emily and the Bushmills for me, leaving the bottles down on the table. Emily smiled at them as she laid a napkin in her lap.
‘Thank you,’ she said beautifully, to the lads as they departed.
‘It’s steak.’ Her attention turned back to me as the rich aroma did a good job at enticing me. ‘I decided against a starter. I thought if I could hold you here for one course I’d be doing well. Please,’ she said, gesturing towards my plate.
I reached for my glass. And drank down a hefty portion, settling myself. I played with the food. I had little room given the scrambled egg Sadie had handed up to me not an hour previously. But it seemed rude not to have something so I cut into the steak. The blood ran from it, the meat near bouncing at the touch. It wasn’t charred to a crisp like you get in some places. I’ll never understand the Irish obsession with burning the goodness out of a good hunk of beef.
‘There’s something there for you,’ she said, breaking the silence. ‘Just this once I wanted you to see what you have done. Open it,’ she added, dabbing her mouth with the napkin and watching me.
I put down my fork, lifted my head briefly and reached for it. Her eager eyes followed my fingers as they fumbled to open it. At one stage I thought she might grab it from me, my progress obviously slower than she’d hoped. Finally, I pulled the contents free. It was a cheque.
‘Our best year yet, Mr Hannigan. That’s your share.’
I looked at her before replacing the cheque in its envelope and laid it down beside my plate. I moved uncomfortably in my chair and then sat back to consider it.
‘I thought you’d be happy. It’s a sizeable amount. I mean I’ve worked so hard and, well, I—’
‘Emily,’ I finally said, ‘this whole thing,’ I said gesturing to the room, ‘the investment, it was never about the money.’ I surprised myself. It was like I was listening to someone else, someone who genuinely didn’t care about wealth. I sat there wondering how I could ever explain the many truths of it all, the motivation behind what I had done ten years prior when I didn’t understand it fully myself. How would it have sounded?… I did it because you reminded me of a ghost.
‘It was the wedding,’ I said, instead. ‘If you’d shut up shop there and then, Kevin would’ve been left without a wedding. I’d never have heard the end of it. Probably would’ve ended up with a bloody marquee in the front garden.’
I smiled at her. She seemed to relax, buying the half-truth of it. She began to eat again and laughed a little, at what I wasn’t quite sure, as she worked through the deliciousness of everything on her plate. When we finished the meal, with which I had surprised myself, finishing the entire thing, I took the envelope and handed it back to her.
‘I don’t want it.’
She took it, considering me and this madness that had come over me. It didn’t seem right to take what had never been expected nor wanted.
‘But you can’t,’ she said, ‘you can’t not take it.’
The waiters arrived once more and her bewilderment disappeared and was replaced by a gracious smile. They refilled our glasses before taking the plates and leaving. She held the envelope in her hand like it was a bad school report she could not bear to open.
‘Listen,’ I said, ‘why don’t you invest that back into the place.’
She lowered it, looking baffled and a little sad. A daughter hurt when her father hasn’t given enough praise for a picture she’s worked so hard on. Well, what can I say, that sent alarm bells going in my head. I was afraid of what I might do or say just to appease her and make her smile that magnificent smile again. I needed to nip my vulnerability in the bud quick smart or God knows what I would’ve bought this time.
‘OK, the truth is someday I may need you to buy my share back,’ I lied, ‘so it would be best all round if you kept that, just in case,’ I said nodding at the cheque.
‘Why? Are you in trouble?’
‘I’m just saying, you never can tell what’s around that corner.’
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nbsp; I watched her and wondered was she swallowing any of this. She laid the cheque down where her plate had been, still looking at it like none of it made sense. I wanted to put her out of her misery, to offer her something she could do for me, to take the weight from her. I thought quickly and in the end this is what I asked:
‘There is something you could do for me, though. In recompense, if that’s what this is about.’ She lifted her head then in hopeful expectation that the puzzle I had presented could finally be solved. ‘You could tell me about why Thomas Dollard lost out on his inheritance because of that coin that went missing all those years ago.’
Her face dropped so quickly that it took me aback.
‘Seriously?’ she asked.
‘Well, yes,’ I said in return. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you about it for years. None of it ever made sense to me.’
She breathed deeply. Took a long sip of her drink and held the glass in front of her for a bit, staring at the remains. I didn’t know where she or her smile had gone and I sat there wishing I’d never turned up at all. I’d been tempted to do just that, of course, to stay at home for once, with the feet up, beside my wife. Nothing seemed more inviting now than an episode of one of those soap operas she watched. I took a gulp of my own drink, still holding my tongue and waiting. After a while Emily put down hers and looked at the table edge, along which she ran her finger. Her nails a deep, rich purple.
‘It’s Edward VIII,’ she continued, her hands now holding her napkin, her fingers running along its folds. ‘Edward and Mrs Simpson, that Edward? It was him on the coin.’
‘Is that right?’
‘As the story goes, they were to mint six coins for the occasion of his coronation in thirty-seven. Apparently on the day he sat for them to get his likeness, not only would he not turn the right way, he demanded they make a seventh, for her, for Wallis.’
‘What do you mean, “turn the right way”?’
‘According to Uncle Thomas, the tradition was that the new heir must sit in the opposite direction to that of his predecessor. But Edward thought his left side the more handsome and so refused point blank to sit to the right. Anyhow, the point is that he bullied the minters and made sure he got his seventh. Apparently he planned to give it to Wallis on the day of his coronation. But of course that never happened. He wanted to marry her you see, but she was divorced. At the time, a King was not allowed to marry a divorcee. So he was faced with a dilemma. He gave up his throne for love in the end. Very romantic, I suppose.’ She trailed off.
‘But how did your family come by it?’
‘Ah, yes, well, there I will have to betray some more of our family secrets. Perhaps I should whisper, sometimes I think these walls have ears.’ She eyed all four, before continuing. ‘Great-grandfather Hugh was a gambler. Poker. Was forever over in London and when there would spend his time in one particular den of iniquity, frequented by one of Edward’s footmen. It was he that told Great-grandfather the story of the disagreement between Edward and the Prime Minister of the time, can’t remember his name. Uncle could tell you. Begins with a B, I think. Balford, Bal—’
‘Baldwin?’
‘That’s the man. Edward it seems had been trying to convince Parliament to give Wallis a lesser title than Queen when he became King, but the PM was having none of it. There had been one final row between the two this one evening after which Edward could not be contained and had flung the coin across the floor of his study. He told the footman to get rid of the thing. But instead, he kept it. Turns out that footman was in debt to Great-grandfather, owed him quite a bit, it seems. And that’s what he gave him, to cover it. According to Uncle, Great-grandfather knew straight away what he held. And what’s more important, that it would be worth a packet in the future. He brought it home and then, well, all that awfulness happened with Thomas when he lost it. Seems he loved it as much as his father. Had a real obsession with all things antique and so would spend hours looking at it, despite how it annoyed Great-grandfather. No one really understood why. I mean Thomas meant no harm by it.’
She paused and gave me a sad smile and continued:
‘Uncle was never right after the disinheritance. He spent the rest of his life trying to find that coin. Not on the grounds I mean, although when he does come home I still find him wandering about looking down at the ground exactly where it fell, apparently. But no, he searches out there in the wider world. He’s kind of lost it, if you understand me. Poor Uncle Thomas.’
It was then she realised who she was speaking to and dropped her eyes because of the sympathy shown to my enemy. I paid it no heed.
‘They never called the guards, the day it went missing,’ I said, ‘never brought the law into it. We could never understand why.’
‘Well, now you know. Great-grandfather could never have risked the scandal. He should never have had the thing in the first place.’
‘The coin that ruined the fortunes of many, what?’
‘If only you knew the half of it.’ Her palm lay on the table, busy smoothing the invisible creases of the perfectly pressed tablecloth. ‘Still that’s enough of the family skeletons let out of the cupboard for one night, I think.’
And then she raised her glass across the table to me:
‘A final toast, Mr Hannigan. To us.’
I smiled and raised my tumbler in return.
I didn’t stay much longer after. And I admit I was eager to be away from the place to consider all that I’d been told. So I rose and thanked her for her kindness before taking to the air and driving myself home.
Sadie was still watching the telly in the front room but I didn’t linger long with her and continued on down the corridor to my bedroom. After a bit of rummaging in the drawer of the dressing table, I pulled out the coin from where it had lain untouched since your Auntie Noreen had got her hands on it a few years back, but I’m coming to that. I looked at the King’s defiant face to consider how far it had fallen from grace: from the splendour of English royalty, to the mediocrity of a County Meath dairy farmer. Sitting on the bed, I twisted it under the light of the bedside lamp to get a good look at him – the King. What did it feel like, I wondered, walking away from everything for love? Would I have done the same, were our roles reversed? I chuckled, as I pictured myself over there, in the splendour of an English castle and him back here, knee deep in muck and hay. It occurred to me, feeling the weight of it in the palm of my hand, that by rights that little beauty might well be considered mine now, given I had effectively bought it by virtue of my shares in the hotel. After a bit I replaced it and made my way to the bed with the madness of it all running around in my head. It didn’t leave me, however, even in my sleep. Its beauty and wealth danced me through stately rooms and cowsheds. Faces I knew, and some I didn’t, drifted in and out of confused scenes I couldn’t remember when I awoke with a start.
‘What is it you want?’ I asked of it, as I closed my eyes for my final few hours’ sleep with Sadie by my side.
I learned a new word the next day: Numismatics. There now. That’s what the man in the antiques shop in Dublin told me was the name for the study of coins. I found this place on the corner of Sackville Row. Barringers, I think it was called. I looked it up in the Yellow Pages. Decided to take a trip, to kill a couple of birds with the one stone, as I needed to throw an eye over the few acres up Sword’s direction.
‘Edward VIII,’ I said, sitting down in front of a man, no older than myself but with a stomach, the bulk of which could have fed a small village, ‘there were sovereigns made. Do you know about them?’
‘Ah, you mean, “the coinage that never was” as they called it in the papers of the day, how could one not?’
By the time I left, William Shaw had not only confirmed the existence and approximate value of the coins but that there was a rumour of a seventh, made more valuable because of its original intended purpose – Wallis Simpson. I didn’t bring it with me of course, didn’t want to start some kind of panic. It lay at ho
me, back in our dressing-table drawer.
‘There is of course no way to be sure if that one exists. Unless it turns up, that is. The other six are all accounted for at this point,’ he told me, with that wide smile of his. He was a pleasant man in a place I hadn’t expected it. I had prepared myself for snobbery and coolness. In the end it was me who’d played that role, while he had been nothing but decent and charming.
‘Who could put a price on that one?’ he said, after I enquired about the value of this possible seventh. ‘A six-figure sum is a given. You see, what will happen is, if it appears, public interest will start to rise, and who knows what price it might fetch by the time the hammer falls. Are you a coins man yourself, Mr…?’
‘Rogers. No, no interest at all. I’m more of a cow man,’ I said.
I took my leave and thanked him for his time.
* * *
I never told Sadie the truth of that night with Emily in the hotel. Never told Thomas’s story. She would have insisted I give the coin back there and then, and that was not my plan. To be honest I wasn’t sure what I would do. In one way it felt like me and the Dollards were quits, having paid royally, if you’ll excuse the pun, for the price of the coin by buying into the hotel and giving the money to a more deserving Dollard. But then again that blasted thing that I hadn’t given a second thought to for years began to niggle at me.
And then one day I was sat in my car thinking over all Emily had told me again, looking down over Molly’s hill as I called it. I had a few places I found myself when I was in need of some quiet time: nooks and crannies or open spaces, where the silence cured me, bringing a bit of peace to my weary head – Molly’s hill was the most beautiful of them. Its rich green fields dipped down into a forested valley below. I sat above in the car on the road, watching Molly move among the grass, running and laughing or sometimes walking and singing. It was her favourite place to find me. In one sitting, I could see her at different stages of her life, as a youngster galloping about or as a pensive teenager sitting among the growth, barely visible, lost in her worries or as a mother herself running after my grandchild. At some stage she would always stop to wave up to me. It was my favourite part. That day, however, no wave came. Instead she sat in the long grass and turned in my direction, holding her arm to her forehead to block out the sun to look at me.