The Death of Love

by Bartholomew Gill

  Said Bresnahan to Ward, “Are you coming back to the house afterward? The Chief and Bernie and the Super—”

  But O’Suilleabhain was now by their side, all puffed up with himself. “Yes, you must. You’re—”

  “Hugh Ward.”

  “That’s right. I met you at Parknasilla just before—And then it was you who—” O’Suilleabhain’s voice was too vibrant; his immense mitt came out and engulfed Ward’s hand.

  Said Ward, “I’m sorry to hear about your mother. And your friend.” He turned his head to the open grave.

  “Thanks. Thanks so much. I’ll see you back at Nead an Iolair.” And he was off. The priest had arrived. O’Suilleabhain was definitely the man in charge. Ward now noticed that the press was also in attendance. Photos were being taken, and several journalists were approaching him.

  “See you there?” asked Bresnahan, as her mother began moving toward the priest.

  “If you like.” Ward moved toward McGarr, who was adept at handling the press; Ward could take a lesson.

  “Hughie—how goes it?” McGarr said, smiling to see Ward back in dapper form and at least his face unmarked from his skirmish.

  “I’ve been better. And yourself?”

  McGarr tried to raise his arms. “I’d phone Amnesty International, could I reach the dial.”

  A flashgun burst in their faces, and O’Shaughnessy stepped forward to have a word with the offending cameraman.

  Said McGarr to Ward, “I’ve a present for you from Noreen and me. To celebrate your promotion.” He indicated the pocket of his topcoat. “You’ll have to dig it out yourself.”

  A bottle, Ward thought as he reached down and felt the weight in the pocket. After his experience in the bar at Parknasilla, he didn’t think he’d ever drink again. His hand came up with a tape recorder of the sort that were now used to take notes. It was tiny, slim, and black, and could easily slip into a pocket or a purse. Under the earplug cord, which had been wrapped around the body, was a note from Noreen.

  “Follow the instructions, then follow your nose,” said McGarr cryptically. “You going back to the house?”

  Ward nodded, as he studied what he could see of the note.

  “Ride with us.”

  Said McKeon, “Why, for Jesus’ sake, when the young dodger has himself a driver?”

  Ward turned to McKeon and O’Shaughnessy who, after all, were more senior and should have been offered the Murder Squad command ahead of him.

  “Not to worry,” said O’Shaughnessy. “It’s all part of a grand plan, you’ll see.”

  Before Ward could ask what, the priest raised the cross he was carrying and asked the Three-in-One God to bless His son Thomas and the souls gathered there. Mindful of the snow, which was squalling now, he hurried through the ceremony. A handful of dirt was tossed on the casket, followed by the usual convey of bright, descending flowers, and soon they were back in the cars.

  Said McKeon to Ward, “Was that Nell Power you were chatting up when we pulled in?”

  Ward was trying to peer through the shaded glass of the first car. It was the seating arrangement in the limousine that concerned him.

  “Was it her card she slipped in your pocket?”

  Ward nodded again, and McKeon’s hand appeared in front of him. “She’s more my speed.”

  “Dead slow,” said O’Shaughnessy.

  “Play Hughie the tape,” said McGarr. And to Ward, he explained, “We had it dubbed and the sound improved, in case anything should happen to the one in the machine. Voice-activated. Noreen placed the thing next to the receiver of the baby monitor you put in Frost’s room, and forgot it in all the tumult after the bridge.”

  “The other lucky part is the phone call,” McKeon went on, inserting a tape in the dashboard player of O’Shaughnessy’s car. “It identifies both of them. With a voice match, we’ve been told, it has a good chance of holding up in court. They’ll fight it, of course, but I’m thinking we can get one or the other of them to crack.”

  McKeon adjusted the sound, and through what had become a driving snow storm they listened to the voices of Shane Frost, Gretta Osbourne, and Nell Power in Frost’s Parknasilla suite on the night that Osbourne died. It was as much music to their ears as they could hope to hear.

  When the tape had finished, McGarr turned to Ward, who offered his hand. “Thanks, Chief.”

  “Nothing like a fast start.”

  “Or a slow ending,” said McKeon. “Where is this place? I always knew Rut’ie was a hick, but this is re-dick-i-liss.”

  The line of cars had stopped so the limousine could negotiate the stone walls of the entrance gate. The four men in O’Shaughnessy’s car looked up.

  Because of the snow and the house, which was painted white, they saw only a great swath of ivory mountain bounded by sea and storm sky. In the middle was a long, welcoming band of yellow-lighted windows with jets of fine blue peat smoke spewing from four separate chimneys. The barns, hayricks, and stables, which lay beyond, had been set off in a pretty semicircle, as if dug into the lee flank of the mountain, and on the windward, ocean side a sentinel copse of towering Norwegian spruce stood as a break. Those too were covered with snow, and looked like they had been composed with artistic care.

  Said McKeon, “I always wondered where they got those pretty scenes for Christmas cards. Now I know. Janie—why didn’t Rut’ie ever let on the place was heaven.”

  Janie? McGarr thought. When was the last time McKeon had uttered a euphemism of such delicacy? In the next moment he would be claiming he misspoke himself. “The way Rut’ie explained it to Noreen—all we can see to the left, Rut’ie and the mother now own. All we can see to right nearly back to the village—”

  Three heads followed McGarr’s hand, which pointed in that direction.

  “—is O’Suilleabhain’s.”

  Because of the snow, they could not see that far, but it looked like leagues.

  The breath Ward pulled in was nearly audible. The layout explained so much. Sure, O’Suilleabhain was a big, handsome, and undoubtedly capable culchie, thought Ward. And, sure, his prospects were excellent. But what Ward was looking at here was perhaps the most beautiful—how many? five blinking miles, maybe—of Ireland that he had seen in a long time. Especially under the present conditions. And how could anybody (even the woman he loved and who loved him, he suspected) reject out of hand the possibility of uniting both massive parcels in the only kind of perpetuity that meant anything to the people who lived out here? Hadn’t she explained so herself?

  And there he was, a no-longer-exactly-young man who possessed only a bachelor pad, which was mortgaged to the eaves, thousands of pounds of credit-card debt, and the reputation as a amateur pugilist of note, which would get him nothing but a pat on the back and the probability of an aneurysm at sixty-five. Also, there was the superintendency that only made him realize how much McGarr, O’Shaughnessy, and McKeon had done for him.

  A few minutes later they found themselves in the warm and commodious farmhouse. Ward enjoyed friendly people. He also liked the sense of community, which, as a Dubliner, he had long since learned to do without and which he felt here. Everybody seemed to know who he and McGarr and McKeon and O’Shaughnessy were. Soon they had drinks and were shown a banquet board that was brimming with roasts and hams, potatoes in a variety of preparations, then fresh and pickled things in a number that he had not seen in some time. As well as breads, cakes, and pies.

  Ward also liked understated things that allowed the simple quality of an object to declare its presence. The floor of the kitchen was slate, flagged and solid. Whole inches, Ward thought. Heels fell on it as though landing on the bedrock of the mountain. The woodwork was black walnut. An Aga, such as McGarr had in his own kitchen—but larger, grander, definitely a classic—squatted like a warm, smiling Buddha against an interior wall of the kitchen.

  The furnishings of the dining room, which was crowded with people, and a sitting room and parlor, were motley but solid,
and everybody seemed anxious to meet and speak to him. Bresnahan’s parents had had the sense—to say nothing of the readies—to buy quality. Why had she never told him any of this? He had thought they were…peasants, pure and simple. Did it matter that they were more? Of course not. But—

  McKeon handed him a drink and said, “Well now, Chief Super—am I looking at new eyes as well as a new leg?”

  Ward only set the drink aside; O’Suilleabhain had appeared before them. “So, Hughie—tell us about your career as a pugilist. What was it like? Was it fun or just, you know, the challenge?”

  “Not over yet,” said McKeon. “Hughie’s been known to take shots at yokes bigger than yourself. Last one weighed a couple thousand pounds and was made of steel.”

  “Threw roving punches that traveled at sixty-five miles an hour,” O’Suilleabhain joked, tossing back his rich tangle of black curls and laughing at the ceiling. Which was confidence, Ward decided; O’Suilleabhain was acting as if he had already taken title to the property.

  Saying he just wanted a word with Bresnahan before having to return to Dublin, Ward excused himself. He found her in the kitchen with an apron on, readying further platters of food.

  “Don’t we look domestic.”

  She only glanced at him. “I’ve done the same for you, if you’ll remember. On more than a few occasions.”

  “Practice for this, the real thing.”

  Well, it wasn’t as though you ever told me it was the real thing between us, Bresnahan thought. With you it was always fun and games, and no more. “I suppose you’re referring to my resignation?”

  “Which hasn’t been accepted.”

  “It will be, after a while. Somebody from the Commissioner’s Office will come snooping around, wondering why I’m not at work.”

  Not if the commissioner is Peter McGarr, thought Ward. “Will you tell me why?”

  Bresnahan straightened up and wiped her hands on the apron. “I will, sure.” She was angry at somebody or something, but she didn’t exactly know who or what. “There’s no future in it. For me.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” Ward could see Bresnahan eventually taking command of some high-visibility administrative post. The superintendency of Public Relations or Community Affairs, where being a big, good-looking, well-spoken woman would be a definite plus.

  Her eyes met his, and she blinked, coming at least a little to herself. “I mean, obviously there’s a future for you. You’re young, a man, well known in men’s circles. You’re quick, combative and…impervious. Everybody knows you’re tough.

  “Me? I’m too sensitive.” She shook her head. “To see what you have to go through just to keep yourself from being disgraced.” She sighed and looked back at the platter of food.

  “You mean the Chief?”

  She nodded. “And O’Duffy and the Harneys and the note cards. I think I might have gone back before I read them, but now?” Again she shook the bright waves of her orange hair. “The only civility is what you read in the papers. All the lies about how the government runs. The Dial, the judiciary, and the lot. The rest, the real part is…mayhem. A kind of jungle and dicey. I wouldn’t even know the rules.”

  “I thought that was part of the crack? You know, Bernie’s game. Life as a sudsy, sardonic, upbeat ditty. You play it over enough, you get to know the words.”

  Bresnahan canted her head. Only a few days past she had thought the same.

  “Life under a rock”—Ward looked out through a doorway into the dining room where the other guests were gathered; there, O’Suilleabhain with full smile and laughing eyes was charming a clutch of older women. Or in the shadow of one—“is living a lie.”

  Perhaps it was what had happened at the bridge, she thought. The anger she was feeling. But why should she be angry at Ward? He had done everything he could to save as many people as he could.

  “Couldn’t you hire in a manager, somebody to run the farm while you’re in town? I read they’re putting in a new airport somewhere out here. You could pop back and forth. The place would make a splendid weekend retreat.” Without Rory O’Suilleabhain, he thought; even the self-consciously Irish spelling of O’Suilleabhain’s last name was beginning to bother Ward.

  It was possible surely, but, “Without a steady hand this place will never be the same. It will go down day by day. I’ll run it a while and see how it goes.”

  “You mean the haying and milking, selling cows and buying calves?” Ward asked. “The barns, the house, the fences.”

  Their eyes clashed.

  Somehow Ward didn’t see Bresnahan doing much of that. Not now, not after who she had become in Dublin.

  “I’ve done it before. And well. And I’ll do it again.”

  Ward nodded. “I’m confident you will, but will you enjoy it?”

  Bresnahan again looked away. “I’m not sure I want to be discussing this. Not now.”

  “What about yer mahn?”

  Bresnahan said nothing; she had been waiting for that.

  “You and he…got something going?”

  Blood rose to her cheeks, and their eyes clashed again. “Not in the way you mean.”

  “Please—just look at him. If he isn’t the cat that’s et the big red canary, I don’t know who is.”

  She shook her head. “That’s just Rory. He’s full of life, is all.”

  “Among other vital substances, Ward thought. “Is he the fella you once told me about? The one you said you fell for as a little girl and he kept snubbing you time after time, year after year?”

  Watching O’Suilleabhain working the room, making sure no potential voter escaped without feeling his winning smile, she said, “Yes,” in a small, submissive voice that Ward did not care for at all.

  “Why not now?”

  Bresnahan paused to consider. “I think because of how I changed.”

  Or how Dublin has changed you, for which Ward himself was in large part responsible. The irony made Ward smile, but his eyes were bright and hard. “So?”

  She hunched her broad, angular shoulders and returned her eyes to his. “I don’t know. I’ll just have to see.”

  “You know what I don’t understand? I don’t understand how everything could have changed so completely between us. Yes, your father has died. Yes, you’re bereaved. Yes, his nibs has returned to claim his prize. But whatever happened to us in all of that?”

  “I don’t know myself.”

  “Has everything changed, or do you just need a”—Ward looked wildly around the large kitchen—“break?”

  “I don’t know that either.”

  “Then let me tell you this, since I’ve got to leave. Look at me.” Ward reached for her hands, which were still wet from her kitchen work; he looked into her gray eyes that were no different from the storm sky that he could see through the windows beyond the sinks. “Nothing’s changed for me. Or will. I should have told you this before, but I will always love you. No matter what you decide. I understand you must do what makes you happy. Nothing else will work in the long run.” He thought he should kiss her one last time, but he didn’t want to spoil her relationship with O’Suilleabhain, if that’s what she should decide.

  “No, wait”—Bresnahan tried to hold on to his hand, but the wetness let it slip away—“can’t you just stay for a day or two? We can walk and talk and—I’ll have some of the women ready a room.”

  Fitting on his gloves while staring in at O’Suilleabhain, Ward said, “I don’t know how much more of the lord of the manor I can take. Isn’t there an ounce of sorrow in the son of a—” Ward cleared his throat and tried to calm himself; he couldn’t remember when he had felt so…total.

  “It’s different on a farm. Here you see life come and go on a regular basis. It hardens you.”

  So you think, thought Ward. “Rather like the Murder Squad.”

  Bresnahan tried to smile but couldn’t. “Sure you can’t stay?”

  “Can’t is the word. I’ve a collar to make.”


  She blinked twice, which gave Ward hope. “Really? In the case?”

  Ward reached for his cane, then turned toward the door. “I’d love to tell you, really I would. But since you’re resigned, I’m afraid you’ll have to look for it in the papers. Or on the telly.”

  “Hold on, Hughie,” McGarr called from the dining room., “I’ll ride along with you.” He was then heard to say to Bresnahan’s mother, “I’ve got a colleague who’s being released from hospital in the morning. He’ll need somebody to drive him home.”

  “I hope he’s well.”

  McGarr smiled. “Apart from a bullet in the chest.”

  Horror gripped the old woman’s face, and her eyes sought her daughter’s.

  “Not to worry,” McGarr went on. “He’s been shot and blown up at least twice that I know of, but—can you believe?—he’s not a cat at all but a dog.”

  In the car on the long drive back to Dublin, McGarr issued only one piece of advice. “Paddy Power was right. Women, they’re not like men at all, and there’s no explaining why. Just carry on. Things will work out the way they should, you’ll see.”

  “What about Bernie and Liam?”

  “There’s been some talk of their retiring and setting up a little agency. Insurance work, missing persons, the odd criminal investigation.”

  “And yourself?”

  “I might join them. After—” he was exonerated of all charges and named commissioner, he meant. “Get myself a little place down in the country,” where he would never again allow himself to become fodder for public chat.

  “Take O’Duffy himself,” McGarr went on, as they hurtled up the N-7 in a Garda car with its blue dome light spinning. “Would he have believed, had he been told, that he would be assassinated by the likes of a Mossie Gladden? Would it have stopped him?”

  A few miles passed.

  “Will you be looking up Nell Power?” McGarr asked.

  “Directly.”

  “Good lad. Be sure to give her my best.”

  Several miles later Ward asked, “Do you think the Eire Bank sale will go through regardless?”