by Anne Griffin
‘Uncle, what is the matter?’ Emily passed by me, making her way to Thomas, bringing a momentary distraction, a relief.
‘Your sparkle Maurice, in my pocket,’ Noreen added excitedly.
Releasing her hands from my grip, she proceeded to pound one hand against my chest, while her other rummaged in her pocket. She made no sense, nothing made sense.
‘Uncle, are you alright? You look awful. What’s going on?’ Emily’s eyes followed her uncle’s to where I sat. ‘Oh, it’s you, Mr Hannigan.’
‘That, that … lunatic has taken my coin, Emily. The family coin! She’s a mad woman.’
It amazed me that the man hadn’t recognised me. Not even my name rang a bell. After all those years of beating the living daylights out of me, he hadn’t a clue who I was. My name, my face, had mattered nothing to him after all. For a moment I felt slightly offended, but then realised his ignorance gave me an upper hand. I was ready to unleash the charm. I smiled as I rose and approached this woman of reason who held sway with the brute rearing and snorting behind her.
‘Emily,’ I said reassuringly, ‘there’s nothing to worry about—’
‘Nothing to worry about! I beg your pardon—’ I held up a hand to halt Thomas’s protest.
‘As I was saying, Emily, all will be fine. I merely need a moment with my sister-in-law here and the issue will be sorted. She … if I could just have a quiet word with you over here,’ I suggested, taking her by the arm and leading her to the corner of the bar, beckoning Sadie to take my place by Noreen. ‘As I was saying, my sister-in-law is, what you might say, a little … slow, if you get me, and she has a love of all things shiny, well, actually a love of shiny coins and—’
‘Oh, God, don’t say any more, Mr Hannigan. It’s that bloody sovereign isn’t it? I had hoped he might have left it behind for once. But to my horror I saw him prancing around with it earlier. If I hear one more time about how valuable it is and how we lost and found it, I’ll scream.’
‘Found it?’ I asked, still trying to remain as calm and composed as I could, and no doubt failing, ‘what do you mean found it? You never told me he’d found it.’ I hadn’t meant to give such a forceful response but my head was so confused that I couldn’t help myself.
‘Never mind that now,’ she said looking a bit hassled herself, ‘what do you need to get this thing off your sister-in-law?’
‘A quiet room should do us,’ I said, trying to sound in control, hoping my voice wasn’t letting me down, ‘five minutes tops, Emily, and he’ll have his coin back.’
‘Right, follow me.’
She made a quick stop to explain the situation to ‘Uncle’, which allowed me time to retrieve my wife and Noreen. Before long we three were in the meeting room Emily had used the night of the dinner if I wasn’t mistaken. This time the tables were set up in a U-shape. Fizzy water sat at each placing of ‘Rainsford House Hotel’ stationery. As soon as the door closed, I fell into a chair, like I’d just run a marathon. Hyperventilating, I pulled at the neck of my shirt, trying to release my tie. I managed to get up and open a window.
‘Maurice, oh my goodness, are you alright?’ That was your mother. ‘Oh my Lord! I’ll get help.’ But I held her back with all the strength I had in me.
‘Sit,’ I commanded, opening one of the bottles of water laid out around the board table and taking a seat myself. I gulped at it. I feckin’ hate fizzy water.
‘Sadie, did you tell him who we were? Do you think he has any idea?’ I asked, a bit calmer now.
‘What are you going on about Maurice, who?’
‘Your man, Thomas. The man Noreen took the coin from.’
‘I certainly didn’t say anything. Oh, that’s him isn’t it? He’s your bully from all those years ago.’
‘And that’s his feckin’ coin as well, the one Noreen has in her hand.’
We glanced over to where she sat by the window engrossed by it, eyes for nothing else.
‘But Maurice, did you give the coin back to him? I thought you still had it? That is, despite my feelings on the matter. I always said—’
‘But this is the thing, Sadie, I didn’t give it back. And what’s more, I don’t think he recognises me, ’cause if he did he’d possibly be screaming that here’s the thief who stole the feckin’ thing in the first place.’
‘What do you mean “stole”?’
‘Found, whatever, does it matter?’
‘But, Maurice. This doesn’t make sense. How could he have it, if it’s still up in our house?’
‘I don’t know!’ I blasted back at her, rising to pace the room.
I’d figure out this man’s game if I had to stay there all day, drinking posh fizzy water and listening to Noreen’s damned ‘sparkle, sparkle’ over and over again. It took all of my power not to roar at her as I passed behind her seat of reverence to the bloody thing. I looked down, mouthing a curse at her and it. And that was when I had to grip the back of her chair to hold myself up for fear of falling down. I leaned in closer to ensure that what I thought I saw was in fact the case. In her hand she held two identical coins. I looked and looked at them, as she turned them over. There could be no denying, they were the same. Two gold coins, with the same heads and markings.
‘Noreen,’ I said, when my power of speech eventually returned, ‘there are two coins.’
‘Maurice’s sparkle and Noreen’s sparkle.’
‘Maurice’s sparkle?’
‘Yes, Noreen took Maurice’s special sparkle and now Noreen has her new sparkle.’
‘OK. So, Noreen, let me just get this straight, you borrowed my one from my drawer and then you got the other one from the man outside, is that right?’
Noreen nodded.
‘Noreen’s sparkle,’ she added.
The penny finally dropped and I slouched in the chair by her side with utter relief. Laughing, I wiped the worry away and explained it all to my confused wife. Noreen, I told her, must have entered the hotel with my coin in her pocket, having ‘borrowed’ it again from my drawer and had then come across Thomas parading about showing an exact replica to all in the bar. What a man, I thought. Never to be outdone. Never to admit defeat – he had to get a copy of the thing, well crafted though it was.
‘This one, Maurice’s. This one, Noreen’s.’
She handed over mine, as it were. How she knew the difference, I didn’t know.
‘Now Noreen, you do know you have to give your one back.’
‘Noreen’s,’ she stated, hiding it away from me in the folds of her coat.
I looked to Sadie and recognised the panic. Sadie rounded the table and sat the other side of her sister. Flanked from both sides now we started our negotiations. We walked out of that room ten minutes later with a deal under our belts. The coin was to be relinquished to Thomas in return for Noreen keeping mine, on the understanding that it would always live in her bedside locker in our house, with an additional sweetener of three two Euro coins that we scrambled together between my wallet and Sadie’s purse.
‘Where’s himself?’ I asked Emily, as soon as I found her, twirling his coin around in my fingers.
‘He was around there a moment ago. I see you’ve managed to retrieve it then. I can give it back to Uncle, Mr Hannigan, while you and Mrs Hannigan have some lunch on us. I’ll set you up in the snug. It will be nice and quiet for you there.’ Her face bore the worry of what might happen should we men meet again.
‘I’ll gladly take you up on the offer of some lunch. But, if I promise to behave,’ I said, as charming as I was able, ‘would you allow me the honour of returning this personally to your uncle? It’s important to me.’
She looked at me, searching my face for evidence of trustworthiness. I smiled in return, hoping that whatever my lips were attempting, it was enough to convince her that here stood a man of his word; a man who would not upset the day of celebrations. She didn’t appear wholly satisfied but nevertheless turned to Sadie and Noreen, ushering them into the snug, telling th
em the menu as she went. But as I took my first step to enter the bar to begin my search, she was by my side again, whispering in my ear, laying an urgent grip on my arm.
‘Mr Hannigan, please, that coin has sent my uncle to hell and back. We have had enough torment in this family. If he knows who you are or if you start to taunt him then I’m not sure what he might do. Please, Mr Hannigan, just give it back to him and say nothing else.’
‘Who I am, Emily? What do you mean, “who I am”?’ I asked. Perhaps I hadn’t got away with it after all. Perhaps somehow she knew what I’d done with the coin all those years ago.
‘The land, the … You know what I mean. We don’t need to go over that now. Please, just don’t tell him who you are, just give him back the coin and be done with it.’
‘Ah, I see. The land. I’ll not antagonise him. It would seem there are too many women here that would never forgive me if I did. I’ll be good, you have my word.’
I patted her hand and then removed it from my arm, but held it not letting her go just yet.
‘One more thing though, Emily. What was that bit about your uncle “finding” the coin again?’
She looked at me and I knew from her that she was too tired and exhausted from everything to go into it there and then. And really I should have let her go. But I squeezed her hand, impressing my curiosity just a little bit harder. Her face relented into resignation. She looked around her, then whispered:
‘It’s not the original, not the one he lost, I mean. It’s one of the other six. He bought it about ten years ago. Before my father died. Used his second wife’s inheritance. She divorced him after, when she found out what he’d done. We were forced to borrow, to settle the law suit she’d threatened.’
‘Is that a fact?’
‘I don’t expect you to have any sympathy but he really isn’t well. He’s totally blocked out the truth of it all. Firmly believes the coin he has is Great-grandfather’s original. He’s created this make-believe world in which Great-grandfather was a gent and he, in turn, was the proud loyal son. We never speak of the disinheritance. Perhaps we’d have all done the same given … well.’
She stopped abruptly and closed her eyes on something she seemed unwilling to share. Her hand rubbed her brow.
‘So when I met you that first day,’ I said, calling her back to me, ‘and you told me about the debt, was that because of the loan? Was that why you needed the money?’
I couldn’t help but smile at the irony of it all. I may as well just have handed back the coin there and then and saved myself the bother of investing the cash. Emily studied me, her face becoming serious.
‘Why, would you have had second thoughts had you known it was all because of him and the coin?’ she asked.
I had no answer for her. Not then anyhow. Not even now, if I’m honest.
‘What’s done is done, I suppose,’ I said, ‘but you told me he still looks for the coin when he’s home. Why would he do that if he has one?’
‘I suppose he still lives in hope.’ She gave me a tight-lipped smile.
I nodded and patted her hand, not flinching for a second, and headed in search of Thomas. I simply followed the loud laugh and greying head of hair sticking up above the crowd. I took his elbow without a word, hauling him to one side, away from the man he was speaking to.
‘Dear God man, what in hell do you think you are at?’ he protested, as he stumbled to face me, spilling his wine in the process. His face was old. Up close, I could see a vulnerability, a weariness that caught me. I had expected to feel hate, not pity. His eyes squinted in suspicion, bringing me back to myself. I hardened my stare and raised the coin in front of his face.
‘Ah, at last! I thought for a moment there, I would have to call in the police. Only for young Emily, I would have, I’ll have you know.’
‘She’s not a lunatic or a mad woman.’
‘What? What are you going on about, man?’
‘Noreen, my sister-in-law. She’s not a lunatic or a mad woman and I’ll thank you not to call her that again.’
I concentrated my eyes on his, trying to pour as much hate into them as I possibly could. Tony had always told me no matter what happened, to always look him straight in the eye. I wondered, did he know me now. Did he recognise his handiwork in the scar on my face. Did he see the child turned man capable of tearing him limb from limb. He showed no sign.
‘I have no intention of ever meeting her again,’ he said looking down, trying to maintain some dignity. ‘If I have my way, she will not be permitted in our hotel again.’
There he was – the conceited bully of old.
‘Your hotel is it?’ The blood inside me boiled as I considered telling him just whose hotel it was but then I remembered my promise to Emily to go quietly. Instead, I told a different truth. ‘Yours? And not that of the sweat of your grand-niece. Holding this crumbling place together with luck and borrowed money. Where have you been for the last fifty years? Swanning around Europe, is it? Only for that young lassie and her father before her, this place would be long gone. Yours my arse.’
That left him open-mouthed. I let my eyes linger on him for as long as physically possible before turning to rejoin the women.
Look him in the eye, Maurice, always look him in the eye.
Nothing more was said on the matter through lunch. We left as soon as our food was eaten. But when we got home, Sadie would not let it rest.
‘Can you just not get rid of it to be damned, Maurice? Sure what use is the coin to you? It means nothing to us, when obviously that man is obsessed.’
‘He got the better of me when I was a youngster, but he’ll not do it now.’
‘What are you, ten? Noreen has more sense than you sometimes. Bring it back and tell him you found it on the land a couple of years back or something, and it was only seeing his one today that reminded you.’
‘Right so, and while I’m doing that are you going to tell Noreen that we’re reneging on our bargain? ’Cause I’ll tell you something for nothing – I’m not.’
My hand thumped the table, spilling the tea from our cups into the saucers. We watched the rest of the Sunday game in silence, not mentioning another word about it for as long as she lived. Meanwhile, Noreen sat in her bedroom with her newest treasure, among her many others, oblivious to the storm she had created.
* * *
I’m not a hundred per cent sure what Noreen did with those coins day in day out. Pour them on to the floor, sift through them and then put them back in again, I suppose. She had such a collection. Jar upon jar, full to the brim. At first those jars were very ordinary and then as the years went on they got more refined. Sadie’d often come home from shopping having found some fancy one that she’d wrap, but not before dropping in a fifty-pence piece, or whatever the shiniest one might be at the time.
You loved her obsession. Do you remember when you were small you insisted Aunt No-no got pocket money just like you? You’d give it to her on the Saturday when you got yours. And, of course, at Christmas, there had to be the special trip to Dublin to buy the finest of jars for her. You’d be so proud arriving home with the latest one.
‘Well, now isn’t that grand,’ I’d say, when you waylaid me in the kitchen later that evening.
‘This is the best one ever,’ you’d beam.
And you were right, each year it was. And each year Noreen would not disappoint you and would squeal with laughter, opening her jar and looking inside to see what coin she had. And when you moved away, you never forgot her. It became as much of a pastime for you as for Noreen – the jars and the hunting down of new and different coins especially as you could get your hands on all kinds of interesting foreign ones by then. There was no one like you in her eyes at those moments when you produced some unusual specimen. I often felt my halo slip a little when she hugged you.
When she died, she left us her legacy of almost one hundred and fifty jars. When alive she only ever travelled with her three favourites: an old jam jar h
er mother had given her when she was five; a jar engraved with her name that Sadie had given her on her fiftieth birthday and then finally that one that you and Rosaleen gave her at your wedding. It was a beauty, I have to say: a photo of the three of you on the front of it. You and Rosaleen on either side of her taken on the settee at home in the front room when you got engaged. It was full to the brim of dimes and quarters. You must’ve been saving them for years. And to give it to her at the wedding, that was a stroke of genius. There it sat awaiting her arrival at her place at the top table. We all stood back to watch her reaction. Even the pair of you had slipped in to see it. She didn’t disappoint and hugged you both until you had to disentangle yourselves in order to go back out to make your official entrance.
Of course, we lived in fear of those precious jars breaking. Sadie worried constantly about them and therefore so did I. We were like parents tormented by the loss of a child’s favourite toy, the one they had to have to go to sleep at night. I remember thinking that exact thing when years later, on a visit home from the States, young Adam, who was possibly no more than three at the time, lost his toy duck, ‘Ducky’, a soft teddy yoke, on a shopping trip to Dublin. Will you ever forget it?
‘They rang everywhere they’d been, Maurice,’ Sadie told me when I came in later that evening. ‘But no one had sight nor sound of it. Kevin had to go back up to every shop until he found it down the side of one of those kiddie rides in the shopping centre, you know, the big one on Stephen’s Green. It was like they’d won the lotto, when Rosaleen saw him come in with it. My goodness, I could hardly take the stress of it,’ Sadie said, holding a hand to her heart.
After that Rosaleen scanned the Internet to find an exact replica for fear it might happen again. She never needed it in the end but says now she’ll keep it and give it to Adam when he has his first baby. Well, Sadie thought that was just a lovely idea. But then again there was very little Rosaleen could do that Sadie didn’t approve of. You don’t hear of that much now do you? Mothers and daughters-in-law getting on like that.