When All Is Said(55)

Maybe, I’d have been happier if you’d been a gobshite. Chip off the old block. Then maybe I could’ve talked to you. Feck it, son, you really pulled the short straw with me. A cranky-arsed father who can’t read for shite.



* * *



Two years ago, my plan hatched, I made a list of all the things I needed to do. I began to sort them into stuff I could do that day, the next week, the next month, and so on, you get the picture. All that organising fuelled me, pumping me up so much that I nearly left the house in my pyjamas one morning. That would have been great now, wouldn’t it? Walking down Main Street in my Dunne’s best. It was only a matter of months after your mother’s funeral. Only for the mirror over the hall table, I would’ve done it, too. I halted my gallop long enough to go get dressed, then make a cup of tea and a half slice of toast at the kitchen table where I’d spread out my lists.

My list for that day read:

1. Estate agents

2. Emily/coin

I walked into the hotel an hour later. My hand in my pocket, turning the coin over and over. You see, despite Molly’s insistence I give the thing back six years earlier, I still hadn’t managed it. That day, however, I was determined to tick the box. But as I stepped into the foyer, I had the strongest urge to turn and run. A small part of me seemed unwilling to give the thing back at all. Somehow, it felt as much a part of me and my history as the abdicated King or Hugh Dollard or Thomas, for that matter. It had, after all, lived with me longer than any of them.

‘Are you wondering who that is?’ Emily’s question confused and startled me. I hadn’t realised that I’d stopped in front of that picture of Rainsford House of old, again – the one with the mystery man I still couldn’t place.

I turned to look at her, resting my eyes on her profile for a moment, buying myself a little time before what was to come.

‘I know it’s one of your lot alright, a Dollard I mean, the nose and the long face,’ I said eventually, my finger gesturing lazily in its direction.

‘It’s Thomas’s father.’

‘Really? I always thought of Hugh Dollard as a heavier-set man, fuller in the face.’ She didn’t answer me but looked away from the picture quickly, like she regretted starting talking about it in the first place.

‘And to what do I owe the pleasure, Mr Hannigan? You don’t usually join us for breakfast or for anything for that matter,’ she said, smiling at me. ‘You’re looking well.’

Emily pointed me in the direction of one of the seats in the foyer but I kept on to the bar. I made my way to a table far into the corner of the lounge. Well, I had to be careful, you never knew who might be about listening in, despite the early hour. I sat and rubbed a hand over my chin wondering where to start.

‘We have a bit of unfinished business, you and me,’ I said, ‘well, me and your family, I should say.’

‘I don’t like the sound of this. Are you finally calling in the loan?’ she asked, sitting opposite, looking fierce worried.

‘It’s nothing like that. No, this goes back even further.’

I tried to order the words jumbling about in my head. But they scurried about like a pack of frightened sheep, not one of them brave enough to take the lead. I eyed the bottle of Bushmills on the shelf and wondered would it be rude to ask at this hour. But I thought better of it. I could hear my fingers drum the table and, in the distance, the pots and pans clattering in the kitchen behind the bar. The odd time a silhouette passed the frosted window of the door. I looked at Emily one last time as she shifted in her seat, her hands clasped together under her chin, leaning eagerly forward, elbows on the table, waiting for me to finally spit it out. In the end I simply reached into my pocket and set the coin free at last. King Edward VIII sat on the table in front of her.

I watched and didn’t watch her, if you get me, kind of half-watched, glancing every now and again at her silence and her eyes as they darted between it and me. My hands did a merry dance between my pockets and the curve of the table. My lips pursed and started some mad airy whistling. I felt as much of a gibbering wreck as the day I stood in Berk’s line up when the coin first went missing. Emily finally picked it up and gave it a good once over.

‘But this, this…’

Her eyes turned on mine.

‘Aye. It’s the original. The one Thomas lost.’

‘Oh dear God!’ She dropped it and it bounced under the table. Emily shot up to standing as if she’d touched a live cable. She kept staring at the spot where it had been and backed away. Her hand to her mouth, lost to me. I’d have happily left right there and then. Skipped out of the place never to see it again. But, you see, that’s the thing about here, isn’t it? This bloody place, it keeps reeling me back in and I keep letting it. After a bit she came forward a little, then backed away again. Her own private waltz.

I reached to retrieve the coin. Not so swiftly as the first time a Dollard dropped it. I held on to the table with one hand and stretched my other under, my fingers wriggling about trying to locate it. I knew if I had to resort to kneeling, there was a danger of my never getting up again, at least not with any dignity. Arthritic knees. When I brushed against the metal, I grasped it and put it back, dead centre on the table.

‘It was me that took it. I’ve had it all these years. It wasn’t a deliberate plan to rob it, Emily.’ My eyes looked for her. ‘I didn’t even know what the bloody thing was or that it was valuable. It was simple, childish revenge, that’s all.’ I waited to see if she would offer me anything in reply but when she remained silent, I gave it another go. ‘He wasn’t the nicest of men, Thomas, back then…’