Himself(46)

He speaks with quiet deliberation but Mahony sees impatience in his pale-blue eyes. He has the same mildly startled look about him as his daughter.

‘I’ve brought your tray down to you there.’

‘So I see.’ Desmond looks at Mahony without interest and Mahony looks back at him with a winning smile.

This is the guest from Dublin then.

Desmond sees the long hair and the leather jacket, the stubble and the dirty trousers. He wonders if Mahony smokes drugs up there in his house. He expects they have a load of drugs in the city, on every street corner, in every bar, in every pocket and pipe. All the people are bewildered out of their minds on it.

Mahony sees that Desmond – once a fine figure of a man no doubt – has been ruined by the books. For too long he’s leant over them, like an old toad nursing a fly. And now, like an old toad, he’s bowed of back and thin of leg.

Mahony holds out his hand. ‘I’m Mahony.’

Desmond looks at Mahony’s hand. ‘If you’ll excuse me.’

Mahony, unperturbed, steps over to the bookcase. ‘You have your books in better order than Mrs Cauley; the woman has to summon a windstorm to find what she wants.’

Desmond snorts.

Mahony traces his finger down the spine of a collector’s edition of the work of Thomas Crofton Croker. But when he leans forward to manhandle an antique Lady Gregory from her place on the shelf Desmond almost swallows his teeth.

‘Don’t touch my books.’

Mahony looks up in surprise. Desmond has his arse half out of his chair and his hand clutching the edge of the desk.

Mahony speaks gently. ‘I’m sorry, pal. Look, I won’t touch them.’

Desmond settles warily in his seat.

Mahony smiles. ‘It’s just that I’ve loved books ever since I was a wee boy in the orphanage.’

Desmond stares at him. ‘The orphanage?’

‘Aye, the orphanage.’ Mahony turns back to the bookcase. ‘Where dear old Father McCluskey read to me every Saturday afternoon; I was his favourite you know? He would bring down a book from the cabinet, sit me on his knee and we’d look at that book together for hours and hours.’

Desmond Burke appears to be riveted. Mahony, heartened by such an attentive audience, could even start to believe his own story and forget the fact that the only time he ever went to Father McCluskey’s office was to have nine kinds of shite belted out of him.

Mahony pulls up a stool and sits down at the side of the desk. ‘Then one day, Father McCluskey said wasn’t I the lucky little fella, because he was going to show me the best book of them all.’

Mahony pauses and looks off into the far distant corner of the stable. ‘It was beautiful, bound with leather and on the cover were these gold deep-cut letters that you wouldn’t believe. Real gold surely?’

Desmond shrugs helplessly.

‘And when I opened the pages the paper inside was as thin and crisp as a slice of fresh cloud. And there were all these pictures of temples and Romans and each picture covered by a tissue wisp to keep it nice.’

This was true. There really had been a book of such beauty in Father McCluskey’s office, in a locked glass cabinet. Mahony remembered it well.

On that particular day, just as the priest was getting into the swing of Mahony’s chastisement, he was called away to give Extreme Unction to Mother Maria Consuelo, who’d been dying for twenty-odd blashted years. Father McCluskey had left Mahony behind in the room with the instructions to pull his trousers up and get the hell out. Mahony nodded with hardly a tear in his eye, for after years of walloping, his arse was as tough as footskin.

Mahony had searched in all the unlocked drawers until he found a half pack of cigarettes. He had pocketed them, taken a book from the bookcase and sat down at Father McCluskey’s desk for a smoke.

‘It was a truly beautiful book and I treated it with the respect I would give to Father McCluskey himself.’ Mahony smiles as he remembers how he’d watched a gentle arc of his golden piss fall on the leather-bound cloud-thin pages. ‘So you see, Desmond, I’d only treat your possessions with the greatest of respect. I wouldn’t even breathe on them.’

Desmond Burke sits speechless. He has taken up his fountain pen again and keeps screwing the lid on and off, unaware that he is in real danger of breaking the thread.

Mahony lights a fag. ‘What are you reading about?’

He holds out the pack to Desmond, who shakes his head. ‘History. Folklore. That sort of thing.’

‘Grand so. Is there anything about the dead in all that?’

Desmond looks confused. ‘The dead? In what context?’

‘In the context of them coming back, having a look about the place and then telling the living who did them in?’

Desmond takes off his glasses and hopes that Mahony can’t see his hands shake. ‘I don’t know.’

‘By the way, that necktie looks well on you, Desmond. Very distinguished. The professors at Trinity College wear those when they’re walking about talking to themselves.’ Mahony smiles at him and against his better judgement Desmond Burke smiles back.

‘So let me get this straight, Desmondo, in the story with the bold boy chasing this bewitched hare up the side of the mountain—’

Desmond downs the last of the dry sherry and nods. ‘Yes, “The Fate of Frank M’Kenna.”’