The Mangan Inheritance

by Brian Moore

  Would give me life and soul anew,

  A second life, a soul anew. . .

  My royal privilege of protection,

  I leave to the son of my best affection.

  T.S. Eliot is by no means the only poet to haunt the book and the consciousness of Jamie, but it is his art which walks beside all of the art called up, whether actual, like James Clarence Mangan’s, or imagined, like that of other Mangans.

  Mangan, James Clarence (1803-49), Irish poet and attorney’s clerk, whose life was a tragedy of hapless love, poverty and intemperance, till his death in a Dublin hospital. There is fine quality in his original verse, as well as in his translations from old Irish and German.

  The entry in Chambers’ Biographical Dictionary from 1974, and yet how right of it to speak with that touch of archaic falsity about a true suffering, as “hapless love.” Mangan himself, in “The Nameless One,” was happy to tell of his miseries:

  Till, spent with toil, dreeing death for others,

  And some whose hands should have wrought for him;

  (If children live not for sires and mothers),

  His mind grew dim.

  And he fell far through that pit abysmal,

  The gulf and grave of Maginn and Burns,

  And pawned his soul for the devil’s dismal

  Stock of returns.

  Abysmal, yes, and dismal; the rhyme has something of the demented unignorability of Tennyson’s rhyme of “abysm” with “Zolaism.”

  The first page of the introduction to John Montague’s Faber Book of Irish Verse moves at once from saying that “the true condition of Irish poetry in the 19th century” is “mutilation,” to “Loss is Mangan’s only theme,” this sentence then speaking of castration in a way which is grimly germane to Brian Moore’s novel. But there is another shadowy name which looms unnamedly large in the book, that of the bland charmer who had all the graces which were denied to the poète maudit who yet perhaps was man enough for damnation:

  Oft in the stilly night,

  Ere slumber’s chain has bound me. . .

  The lithe and lying Kathleen sings all of this, with great beauty, at a very important moment of the book. Thomas Moore’s lines are alive as part of the Moore inheritance.

  —CHRISTOPHER RICKS

  1979

  THE MANGAN INHERITANCE

  For Jean, again

  Part One

  The doorbell. Mangan went to the front door, looked through the peephole, then unlocked. The apartment super entered, followed by one of his Puerto Rican workmen.

  “Hi. You have bathroom trouble?”

  He showed them the dripping tap. The super turned it on, then off. “Washer. Something else wrong?”

  “No. Everything else is fine.”

  “How is your missus? I don’t see her jogging on the roof.” The super laughed, recalling this pleasant eccentricity. Mangan looked at him. Didn’t he know?

  “She’s not living here anymore. We’ve separated.”

  “Oh. I am sorry.”

  How did one answer that? Mangan acknowledged sorrow with a nod.

  “I leave now. My man will fix the washer, okay?”

  As he went back to the front door, the super paused and peered into the living room. On its white walls like an afterimage were whiter rectangles where her pictures had been. Rugs and most of the furniture had been removed. Books fell about on the looted shelves. How could the super not know she had gone? Hadn’t he seen the entrails of her belongings heaped on the sidewalk when the mover’s truck did not come?

  As the super let himself out, Mangan called, “Happy New Year.” But he shut the door without replying. Perhaps it was his Christmas envelope? Last year they had given away two hundred and fifty dollars in tips in this building alone. Without Beatrice, Mangan had felt he must economize. But the super had not known that Beatrice was gone.

  Alone in the living room, Mangan moved toward the picture window. Snow fell outside. In the Orient, white is the color of mourning. Snow, the voice of silence, shutting off the city’s sound track. Tonight in many offices the staff will go home early. In others, people will sit on desk tops, drinking liquor from paper cups, eating cocktail tidbits sent in from the delicatessen down the block. Horseplay, office jokes, smudged kisses. Happy New Year.

  For tonight, what should I wear? Do you know what he does sometimes when he’s alone in the apartment, Beatrice told her friend Dr. Hopgood. He goes into the bedroom and spends an hour trying on his clothes. Changing outfits, looking at himself in the mirror. Narcissistic, wouldn’t you say? Or perhaps, said Dr. H., some deeper problem of identity. Beatrice could quote an analyst to suit her purpose. She did not understand rituals. She would never buy worry beads.

  The Puerto Rican workman came from the bathroom. “Finish.”

  “Thank you.”

  The workman, unassailable in his monolingual armor, nodded and let himself out. Mangan remembered that he should call early. They had a class of some sort at nine-thirty, their time. He went into the kitchen for coffee to help him with this.

  “Ridgewood Convalescent, good morning.”

  “May I speak to Mrs. Mangan, please?”

  “One moment, please, I’ll check.”

  “Art therapy. Joan Mangan speaking.”

  “Hello, Mother.”

  “Jamie!” his mother said. “Where are you? How are you?”

  “I’m in New York. I just called to say Happy New Year.”

  “New Year’s is tomorrow,” said his literal-minded mother.

  “Well, I just thought I’d call before the circuits got all jammed up.”

  “Yes, good idea. What are you doing, are you going to a party tonight?”

  “I might, yes.”

  “Do,” his mother said. “This is no time of year to sit alone. Will you be calling your father tomorrow?”

  “No, I wasn’t planning to. I called him on Christmas Day, remember?”

  “Oh, yes, so you did. I must give them a ring myself. I’ve been so busy. I tell you, you should see this place. It’s a madhouse.”

  But it is a madhouse. Still, it was nice that she did not think of it as such. “So, they’re working you hard,” he said.

  “Oh, I tell you. Dr. Edie’s on vacation and Dr. Hollins is all on his own, poor man. Matter of fact, I have a room full of customers waiting outside this minute. But it’s lovely to hear your voice, dear. Thank you for calling me. I would have called you, you know.”

  “I know. Happy New Year, Mother. And God Bless.”

  “Oh, Jamie? When you speak to your father tomorrow, would you say hello from me? I’ll tell you the truth, I haven’t called him because, if I do call, I always get her.”

  “All right,” he said. She had forgotten he wasn’t going to call. She forgets quite a bit, Dr. Edie said. “Goodbye, Mother.”

  “Goodbye. Happy New Year. And Jamie? Next year will be better, you’ll see. You’ll put all this behind you.”

  He hung up and went back to the picture window. Large snowflakes sifted down, blurring his view of the East River and traffic on the Drive below. Mother in her cubbyhole in Santa Monica, California, swiveling in her brown Nauga-hyde armchair, her back to the Pacific Ocean, a phone receiver vised between her shoulder and ear. Beyond, in the big dayroom, people in playclothes waiting for pills and counsel from Dr. Hollins, an old, tall man in steel-rimmed spectacles. Your mother has been a great help to us here. Her art class is very popular. Art is good therapy for our patients. Besides, it’s therapy for her, you know. The Christmas card she sent this year had a Californian motif, two pelicans skimming over a wave, the drawing delicate and graceful, yet with the touch of kitsch that showed in all her work.

  Christmas cards. “You mean you’ve already done them?” Beatrice had asked. At once he was sorry he’d brought it up. He said he hadn’t sealed the envelopes yet.

  “All right, I have an idea. I’ll have a little notice printed saying we’ve separated and that from now on my ad
dress will be the beach house and that you’ll be at the apartment. You could slip the notices in with the cards. It would be a way of letting people know what’s happened and how they can reach us.”

  He thought it a terrible idea but did not argue. Ten days later a package of printed slips arrived in his mail. She had not listed the Amagansett address. The slips read:

  WE HAVE DECIDED TO SEPARATE. FROM NOW ON BEATRICE CAN BE REACHED AT 77 EAST 71ST STREET, WHILE JAMIE WILL REMAIN AT 455 EAST 51ST STREET.

  Turnbull lived at the Seventy-first Street address. That made it final. Mangan put the slips in the Christmas card envelopes and counted them before mailing. There were ninety-seven cards in all. By Christmas morning he had received only forty-six cards in return, by far the largest number of which—thirty-four—came from tradespeople, press agents, and theater professionals with whom Beatrice had dealings, and were addressed to both of them or to Beatrice alone as though the slips had not been noticed. There were seven cards from friends who had mailed early. These wished them both a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. That left three cards addressed to him alone. One was from his mother. There was a card from his friends the Connells bearing a scrawled invitation asking him to come to their annual New Year’s party. And there was a card and a long sympathetic letter about the breakup from his friends Jack and Rosa Hutter. The Hutters were now living permanently in London.

  Three cards. One from a relative, two from friends. He turned around, walked through the living room and into the bedroom, where the window gave on a view of the street. Below, two professional dog walkers came from Beekman Place, small wiry men, their hands bunched against their chests like charioteers as they gripped the several leashes of the pedigreed pets they were paid to exercise. The dogs, excited by the snowfall, tried to gambol and wrestle and race. The walkers, moving side by side, held them to a fast walk, turning and turning in the small culde-sac of East Fifty-first Street which ended at a flight of steps leading down to the East River Drive.

  “But why not Beekman Place?” Beatrice had said. “Of course we can afford it. Anyway, this isn’t Beekman Place, it’s East Fifty-first Street. Where else are you going to get a view of boats passing by when you wake up in the morning? And a location like that is an investment. If we buy an apartment there, it will never go down in value.”

  She meant, of course, that it was her money. He could use it, but it was her money, made by her. Her presence on a Broadway stage now brought her a weekly salary of four thousand dollars, and on the rare occasion when she acted in a film she was paid ten times that amount. She had insisted on joint savings and checking accounts. She said money shouldn’t be allowed to come between people. But it was her money. There was no getting away from that.

  In the street, a brown Mercedes sports car rushed recklessly out of Beekman Place and braked to a stop below his window. Kevin, the doorman on duty, came from under the street awning, bent-backed as he fumbled with the clasp of a large umbrella. As the door of the Mercedes swung open, a snow flurry gusted up, obscuring Mangan’s view. Tiny tendrils of water trailed diagonally across the windowpane. He heard a noise behind him and, turning, reentered the living room to find that the day’s letters had been shoved under the door jamb. He sifted them with the toe of his loafer, then bent and flipped a few pieces of mail over, reading the addresses. All were for her. He did not pick them up but moved on into the kitchen to pour his fourth cup of coffee that morning. Last week, leafing through an anthology, he had come upon some lines of Byron’s.

  Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart,

  ’Tis woman’s whole existence.

  He picked up the coffeepot. By Byron’s standards, he was not a man. He poured coffee and at that moment the doorbell rang loudly. He expected no one. He went to the door as to an intruder and through the tiny, wide-angle lens of the peephole, distorted like a figure in nightmare, discerned his runaway wife. His heart hit. He unlocked the door.

  “May I come in?”

  Wordless, he beckoned. She advanced as though onto a stage, her face assuming the smile which was so much her shield that it came on her unbidden, even in moments of anger. Smiling, she became the Beatrice Abbot who was known and admired by thousands of people she had never seen, a woman by no means a beauty, but attractive, with blond hair cut in a simple bob, nicely offsetting her large brown eyes. Even now, in her thirties, she emanated a pubescent charm and fostered this illusion by dressing in simple clothes—a tweed skirt, a shirt, and, sometimes, a cashmere sweater. Today, however, to Mangan’s great surprise, she wore elegant knee-length boots of polished cognac-colored leather, and a long and very beautiful dark mink coat, its rich gloss beaded with melting snowflakes. On her head (she who never wore a hat) was a Cossack shako of the same fur, and while her brown cashmere dress was one he had seen before, it was ornamented by an extraordinary necklace of turquoise beads, large as pullets’ eggs. “Happy New Year,” she said. Was she being sarcastic? Looking at her, he surmised not. “And how have you been, Jamie?”

  “All right.”

  She smiled at him again, then moved center stage into the living room, opening the beautiful coat, resettling it on her shoulders like a cape. “I thought of phoning to ask if I could come, but I was afraid you’d say no. So I just got in the car and drove over. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Got in what car?”

  “It’s Perry’s.”

  “And is that his fur coat?”

  “His Christmas present to me.” She pirouetted as though modeling the coat, then sat down in the one easy chair which remained in the living room. “So,” she said. “And how was your Christmas?”

  “All right.”

  “What did you do?”

  “What do you care?”

  She sighed, leaning back in the chair, head lax, booted legs outstretched, looking for a moment like some youthful Regency buck. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It would be nice if we could manage not to fight with each other.”

  He walked to the large window and sat on the long window bench facing her, his hands gripping his kneecaps. Eliot’s lines came into his head:

  Who is the third who walks always beside you?

  When I count, there are only you and I together

  But when I look ahead up the white road

  There is always another one walking beside you.

  In the three weeks since she left me another one walks always beside us. “What did you come for?” he asked. “Did you forget something?”

  She ignored this. “Weinberg’s been trying to reach you all week. Have you been away?”

  “No. I just didn’t feel like talking to him.”

  “Well, there’s a problem. I want to go away for a few weeks. But Weinberg says that before I do, you and I should talk about the divorce.”

  “Where are you going?” At once he regretted asking. What did it matter where she was going?

  “Perry’s family have a place in Jamaica. I thought we could stay there until my rehearsals start at the Kennedy Center.” She stood, letting the fur coat fall back on the chair. “Do you mind if I make a cup of coffee?”

  “There’s some on the stove,” he said, eying her as she went into the kitchen, her gait slightly unsteady in the unaccustomed boots. The boots would be Turnbull’s taste. For a moment he imagined her booted and furred, riding crop in hand, flogging Turnbull’s bony naked rump, he squealing in pain and joy. Behind him the expanse of windowpane began to chill his back. He heard her jiggle the percolator and then she came out of the kitchen, a full coffee mug held carefully in her right hand as she settled herself again in the chair with an easy, isn’t-this-fun gesture he’d seen her use on strangers. Was he now just a stranger? He turned to stare out the window, saw the river cold under a whited sky. In its choppy gray channel a bulldog tug moved upriver, hauling a funerary file of garbage scows.

  “Weinberg’s idea,” she said, “is to go for a no-fault divorce. He feels that would be by far the best for bot
h of us. I don’t know. I’ve no opinion. I’m just repeating what he told me to ask you.”

  “Ask me what? If I’ll go for a no-fault divorce?”

  “Well, remember we sort of decided that day—the day I told you—that I’d take the beach house for now and you’d stay on here?”

  “You decided it. Not me.”

  “All right. But you know what I mean.”

  He thought of the printed slips she sent to be put in with the Christmas cards. The utter deceit of all that. Anger made his voice hoarse. “You never had any intention of living in the beach house,” he said. “You moved straight in with Turnbull.”

  “What does it matter?”

  She was right, of course.

  “Look, let’s not lose our tempers,” she said. “One thing. I want you to keep this apartment. I’m ready to sign it over to you. Completely. I’ll keep the beach house. Okay?” She smiled then, a forced smile, the smile of one who is being more than generous. He could almost hear her say it. More than generous.

  “No, it’s not okay,” he told her. “Payments and maintenance on this place come to thirteen hundred a month, in case you forgot. And now that you’ve left me, I can’t afford that. Last month, for instance, I made four hundred dollars. And in November I made twelve hundred. That was a big month for me. Besides, you own both places. We bought them with your money.”

  “Your money, my money.” She kicked out her legs, her heels thudding on the parquet floor. “Tell you what. I’ll make the monthly payments here for, say, two years. After that you can continue them, or if you feel like it, you can sell the apartment and keep the proceeds. The thing is, we spent seven years together and this breakup is because I want out. So I’d like to be generous with you. What’s the matter? Did I say something funny?”