The Mangan Inheritance

by Brian Moore

  “I don’t know the Mangans well at all,” she said. “Where’s the picture?”

  He took out the daguerreotype and unwrapped it. As he put it down on the table beside her, his Doppelgänger’s eyes seemed to gleam in secret collusion. She picked the photograph up and looked at it, holding it close to her eyes. “You say it’s old?” she asked, wiping away her tears.

  “Yes, very old. It’s one of the first photographs ever taken. At least a hundred years old.”

  “It has the look of my husband,” she said. “And of yourself. But it can’t be either of you, can it? I was going to say it might be my husband’s uncle Dan. They say he was the living image of Michael.”

  “You never met him?”

  “Oh, he was before my time.”

  “And what did he do, this uncle?”

  She looked at him in an unfocused way, as though she had not heard him. He poured more gin into her glass and she looked down at it, then picked it up and drank it. When she put the glass down again, she turned her head and stared at him in a way which for the first time made him suspect that she might not be sane. “He was killed, that uncle. He died a terrible death,” she said. “He was a schoolteacher once. And a poet, the same as Michael.”

  “A poet. Your husband was a poet, was he?”

  “He was. He had poems published in many’s the place. Part of his trouble was, he didn’t get the recognition, you know? Not enough. Anyway, he used to say poetry was all that mattered to him.” She seemed about to weep. “But that wasn’t the truth.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She looked at him; then, as though caught in an indiscretion, stood up to leave. “I have to go,” she said. “Dinny will be worried stiff about me. I should have been home ages ago.”

  “No, no, please wait, just a minute,” Mangan said. “I’ve come a long, long way to find this out. You say that both your husband and his uncle were poets. And that they looked alike, they looked like me. Do you have any of your husband’s poems, by chance?”

  But she looked at him as though she had not heard him. “I have to go,” she said desperately. “I must go now.” And turning, blundered out of the kitchen into the dark corridor, her heavy boots loud on the flagstones. He hurried after her, lighting her way with his flashlight. “It’s all right,” he said. “Maybe I can come and talk to you tomorrow. This is all very important to me. Tell me, was it only your husband and his uncle who looked alike, or were there others in the family?”

  “Just those two that I know of,” she said, and went out ahead of him into the dark yard. “I’m sorry now for disturbing you. Drink is not good for me, the doctor said. When I have drink taken I’d not know what I’d be saying. So, you’re not to mind me, sir. I’m sorry, now.”

  The moon slid out from behind a cloud. There was no longer need of his flashlight. She went to her bicycle, switched on the headlamp, and began to wheel the bicycle out of the yard. “Tell me,” he said, coming after her. “Did your husband ever speak of James Clarence Mangan, the poet?”

  But she ignored his question. She wheeled the bicycle through the gate. “James Clarence Mangan,” he said. “He was a very well-known Irish poet.”

  “I don’t know, sir,” she said, in a voice which made him think she was lying. She put her foot on the pedal of the bicycle, preparatory to mounting.

  “Wait,” he said. “Could I come and talk to you tomorrow?”

  “Talk to me about what?”

  “I’m interested in trying to trace that photograph I showed you.”

  “Why do so many Americans come here to look at graves?” she said. “Do they not have graves enough in their own place?”

  “We want to know where we came from. That’s normal, after all.”

  “But it’s what you do that matters,” she said with great seriousness. “If you keep looking over your shoulder, sir, you’ll find things you don’t want to find. Pray to God, that’s my advice to you. God will help you, no matter who you are or what has happened to you. I must go home now. Goodnight and thanks for the drink.”

  “What about tomorrow? Couldn’t I come and talk to you some more?”

  But she had mounted the bicycle and now, pedaling uncertainly, she turned it down the precipitous road. At once the bicycle gathered speed and he saw her grip the handbrake to slow its momentum. The bicycle’s headlamp shone on a double row of fuchsia hedges and then the bicycle disappeared from sight behind the hedgerows. A cloud covvered the moon. In the blackness he shone his own flashlight down the road. But now the road was empty.

  He turned back, going toward the house. Strange old woman on a bicycle, living link to that man who had looked the image of him, link, too, to an older, look-alike uncle of her husband, an uncle who was also a poet, who “died a terrible death.” Poets like me, their legacy a pile of published clippings yellowing in some farmhouse dresser drawer, feuilletons on the editorial page, a sonnet beneath the weekly book reviews, a slim book printed by some minor press. And all of us may be linked to that older, greater poet, the first poète maudit. We inherit his face, his genes, and things we don’t want to look back on. What was it she said? “If you look over your shoulder, you’ll find things you don’t want to find.” Beatrice’s funeral, the massed flowers on the leafy green stage, the duo playing Mozart, the speeches, the absence of her body. Do they not have graves in America? No, we do not.

  He went into the house and made his way toward the flight of stairs leading to the second floor. He went up on loud-creaking floorboards and entered the high, old-fashioned, bay-windowed bedroom. His flashlight found the kerosene lamp on the table and he turned the little wheel which brought the wick up, lit the lamp, then replaced its glass funnel. In the lamplit room, shadows danced off the walls. So Conor Mangan does not own this house. I am here illegally, a squatter in some English absentee landlord’s bed. He looked at the high old bed, rumpled from the morning’s delights. Weary, heavy with all the gin he had drunk, he stripped off his clothes and lay naked on the tousled sheets, watching the shadows cast by the lamp on the high ceiling above him. He had heard light rain on the windowpane and then, just as his weariness brought him to the edge of sleep, saw a circle of light strike against the ceiling, shining up from the yard below. He jumped up and ran to the window and, as he did, heard someone enter the house, a light step coming quickly along the hall. Expectant—it must be Kathleen—he stood facing the bedroom door. The footsteps came up the stairs, and suddenly wary, he bent over, his hands protecting his genitals.

  It was in this strange half crouch that he met Kathleen as she came in at the door, a torn tweed overcoat over her long cotton dress, her hair wet from the rain.

  “Were you not asleep?” was the first thing she said.

  “No. I had a visitor.”

  She had begun to take off her overcoat and paused to stare at him as he said the word “visitor.” “Who?”

  “Dinny’s mother.”

  “What did she want?”

  “She came up here to take a look at me. To make sure I’m not her dead husband returned to life.”

  Kathleen threw the overcoat on a chair. She seemed annoyed. “Did she tell you that?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “About her husband. About Uncle Michael?”

  “No, not exactly.”

  “Did she say anything about me?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure. What would she have said about you?”

  “Ah, Jesus.” Kathleen shook her wet hair out. “How do I know? Where’s the gin?”

  “In the kitchen.”

  ”Where in the kitchen?”

  “On the table.”

  “I’ll get it,” she said. “I need a drink. I had to clear all that bloody mess, bottle and glass and muck.”

  “I’ll get it for you,” he offered, but she was out of the room and down the stairs at a run. He sat on the bed until she returned with the plastic bag and two
glasses.

  “So you gave her a drink,” she accused.

  “Yes.”

  “If Dinny finds that out, he’ll knock her block off. I bet she hasn’t had a drink in years. She was in the loony bin, did you know that?”

  “She said she had been sick.”

  “Sick? She was two years in Our Lady’s—it’s the Cork asylum. Straitjacket and all the rest of it.”

  “When was that?” Mangan asked.

  “What do you want to bother your head with all that for?” Kathleen said. She poured gin in two glasses and handed him one of them. “Don’t you want to go to bed?”

  “I’m just curious. What happened that put her in the madhouse? Was it something her husband did?”

  Kathleen looked at him, then began to unhook her dress. Suddenly she smiled, and as she did she pulled down the bodice to reveal her bare breasts. Smiling, she eased the dress down over her hips, letting it billow out and fall in a deflated heap about her feet. Her smile left her. She shook out her long red hair and looked at him in that downcast, submissive, almost frightened manner which had so entranced him earlier. He stood, staring at her high small breasts, the delicate lines of her long legs, the down on her lower belly, the undulant thighs. It was as though she had decided to silence his questions by invoking the ukase of her body, and as he looked he felt his penis rise, his inquisition forgotten. At once, as though under hypnosis, he assumed the personality of his fantasy, he the master, she his servant, afraid of him, eager to do his bidding.

  “Are you going to do dirty things to me again?” she said, in that soft, fearful voice.

  “I am.” He went to her, took her in his arms, felt her soft flesh tremble against his bare body.

  “Will you beat me?” she asked. “Don’t beat me. I’ll do what you want.”

  “Did the tinker beat you?” he said, easing her back toward the high old bed.

  “He did.”

  “He beat you to make you do dirty things?”

  “He did.”

  “And who else beat you?” he asked, excited and at the same time ashamed of his inquiries.

  “Many’s the one. I’m afraid of you. I’ll do what you want.”

  “Kneel up on the bed,” he commanded her. “Kneel with your back to me the way you did this morning.”

  Submissive, she climbed up on the mattress. As though making obeisance to the foot of the bed, she turned away from him and knelt. She lowered her forehead to touch the sheets, presenting to him her upraised young bottom. He knelt on the bed, his mind tumbling in a spin dryer of inchoate desires. The questions he wanted to ask her, the link to those dead poets, the line of men who bore his face, all these enigmas were forgotten in the siren enchantment of this youthful body stretched out before him. With a moan of pleasure he reached forward to fondle her tender Circean bum.

  Light, and a sound in silence, woke him to the drinker’s instant guilt. He opened his eyes on a ceiling, then closed them as though that one blink were enough to tell him all. He felt her stir beside him as the sound grew louder, a car in low gear coming uphill, passing the house. He heard her start up and jump out of bed. He opened his eyes again and lifted a heavy head to face the day. She stood by the window, naked, bent over, peering out. The car sound diminished as the vehicle went on up the mountain. Then it stopped. Her reddish-gold mane of hair swung in a quick graceful parabola as she jerked her head around to see if he was awake. She raised her hand, warning him to silence.

  He stared, gloating miserly at her naked body. Ill with the gin and weak from the night’s repeated sexual awakenings, he felt an instant avaricious lust to possess her again. She was beckoning him. He got off the bed and went toward her, but as he did he saw that she was alarmed. She had moved to the side of the window, as though afraid that someone outside might shoot at her, and now she signaled him to do the same, indicating that he should look out but with caution.

  At first he saw nothing. The sky above erupted black smoking clouds as though a forest fire burned on the other side of the mountain. Rain lashed the ground, sheeting and squalling across the bare rocks and mossy bogland. And then, as though some invisible hand had refocused the lens of his eye, this blurred picture showed clear detail: the yellow caravan up above on the ridge; his red rental car parked off the road. And in the field beside the caravan a small official-looking blue car, its violet roof signal turning and blinking.

  “Who is it?” he asked.

  “The Guards.”

  “Who?”

  “The Garda. The police.”

  He looked at her and saw, with shock, the state of panic she was in. She turned and ran to the chair, fumbling with her dress as she pulled it up over her hips. “Jesus God,” she said under her breath. She turned to him. “Hook me up, quick.”

  He went to obey her. In a panicky voice she told him to get his own clothes on and stay away from the window. “If we’re lucky,” she said, “they’ll not come in here.”

  “But what’s wrong? What do they want?”

  “How do I know?” She was close to tears. “It must be Con they’re wanting.”

  When he finished hooking up her bodice, she ran to the window again and knelt on one knee, peering out over the top of the sill. “Oh, Jesus, lookit, will you!”

  He joined her at the window and she dragged him down beside her. Together, they peered over the top of the windowsill and saw two uniformed policemen coming down the caravan steps. Between them was the diminutive figure of Conor Mangan holding a yellow slicker over his head as protection against the sheeting rain. The three men walked across the wet field to the waiting police car.

  “He doesn’t seem drunk,” he told her.

  “Thank God for that. He must have slept through. Jesus, when they see the whiskey and food in there, they’ll be sure he lifted something.” She was hunkered down like a child as she spoke, her face drawn with fright. She was shivering. He went to the chair and got her overcoat, which he put around her shoulders. But she did not notice. “What are they doing now?” she asked, huddling down below the windowsill. “But don’t let them see you.”

  Cautiously, he approached the window. The police car backed out of the field, its violet flasher still turning. With a lurch it reversed onto the road, then came slowly down the steep incline. “Have they gone past?” she whispered.

  The police car came on. When it reached them, it swung in at the gate and drove across the yard. He did not need to answer her. As soon as she heard the engine stop, she leaped away from the window like a wild animal and ran, bent over, to the big old wardrobe which stood in the corner of the bedroom. She turned, her hand on the wardrobe door. “Tell them you never saw me. Tell them you slept here on your own. Tell them we were in Skull all day yesterday, just you and me, and be sure and tell them all that stuff was bought with your money. Oh, Jesus!”

  She started in fear as someone hammered on the front door. She jumped up into the wardrobe, pushing her way past the clothes he had hung inside it. She pulled the wardrobe shut, whispering, “Go on down. Go and open!”

  As he left the bedroom and began to descend the stairs, the police again hammered on the front door. “I’m coming, I’m coming,” he said, under his breath. “What’s the rush?” But as he approached the door, his irritation no longer sustained him. What if he told them there was no one here and they searched and discovered Kathleen hidden in the wardrobe? He had not shaved, had a hangover, and smelled of liquor. Kathleen was only eighteen. He had no legal right to be staying in this house. As he opened the front door, he had veered toward guilt.

  The policeman, duck-wet, wearing slicker and leggings, was red-faced, with bright-blue eyes. “Morning,” he said, then shook himself like a dog. “It’s coming down heavy. Mind if I stop in for a minute?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he advanced into the hallway, stamping his boots on the doormat. “Is that your car up there beyond? The Ford Escort?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s a h
ire car, then?”

  “It is.”

  “You are here on your holidays?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have papers on you? A passport?”

  “Yes, of course,” Mangan said, but as he pulled out his passport he brought out, with it, the handkerchief-wrapped daguerreotype. Clumsily he pushed the photograph back into his pocket, anxious, although he did not know why, that the policeman should not see it.

  “So your name is Mangan,” the policeman said, inspecting the passport, then handing it back with a nod. He pointed out into the rainy yard. “Do you see the car there? Do you see the lad in it?”

  In the rain, the car, its violet flasher turning, Conor Mangan’s face like a wet biscuit pressed up against the rear window. “Yes, I do.”

  “That lad says he’s a cousin of yours. Would that be correct, now?”

  “Yes, I think we may be related. But I just met him the other day.”

  “Then you are not sure that you are his cousin?”

  “No.”

  “I see,” the policeman said. “Well, now, he claims that the pair of you spent the day together, yesterday. That you were here and that you went on to Skull. And that his sister was with you, also.”

  Mangan looked at the policeman, who looked at him as though waiting for him to make a false move. “Well, yes. Yes, he was with us.”

  “Will you be prepared to make a statement to that effect if called upon?”

  Glum, he nodded. The policeman took out a thick black-backed notebook and wrote in it. He replaced the notebook in his hip pocket. “His sister, now, I believe she is here in the house with you.”

  “No. No, she’s not here now.”

  “She was here, then?”

  “Yes, but she’s not here now.”

  The policeman pointed out to the car in the yard again. “The lad out there has got the wrong end of the stick, has he?”

  “I believe he has, yes.”

  “Where is his sister now, could you tell me?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know.”

  “But she does live here, I take it?”

  “She lives up in the caravan with her brother, I believe.”