Mr. Flood's Last Resort(43)

Outside this strange marine-lit world, life is happening. Buses and cars are driving up and down, people are going to the shops. A thousand million miles away. The Devil’s Triangle has been transplanted from just south of Bermuda; it’s here in West London. At Bridlemere navigational instruments are dashed and logic fails. Watches stop and phones don’t work and inanimate objects are possessed. Even a saint won’t step over the threshold.

And here I sit, locked in a glass room with a cantankerous old giant who might be a murderer, or worse even, but then again he might not be. If he is a killer he might beat me to death with the easel or cut my throat with the palette knife.

Now, why did I wait until I was locked in a fish bowl to ask him questions?

Perhaps because it shows that I trust him not to slaughter me?

He glances up, a quick sharp look under his shaggy brows.

I could believe Renata: that this man finished off his wife and, most likely, a Dorset schoolgirl. I could believe Sam: that I’m the victim of some kind of prank and I should steer clear. I could believe Gabriel: that he doesn’t remember posing for a wintertime photo with a little girl with the same fierce red hair as him.

I could believe Cathal: that Mary suffered with her nerves and defaced photographs.

I could try.

If not for letters traced in dust in an empty bedroom and the slamming doors and the sound of singing. If not for the feeling that skewers my stomach whenever I think about Mary Flood and Maggie Dunne.

“Did Mary get treatment for her nerves?”

Cathal makes a swipe at the canvas and stands back. “She did, thank you. Now will you hold yourself still?”

He can’t object to me moving my eyes, so I examine the painting above the door. I think of the child missing from the painted scene. The caravan door is shut tight. And then I see it, the meaning in the picture.

“What kind of flower is that, the one that Mary is holding?”

He glances at the painting. “No idea.”

“Isn’t it a marguerite?”

“If you say so.”

Would it be anything else? “Does it have a special meaning? It’s a girl’s name, isn’t it?”

He looks at me, his face empty. “It has no meaning. It’s just a flower.”

*

IT IS a strange sensation, being painted by Cathal Flood. Of being measured with an unconscious kind of scrutiny. He peers often through one narrowed eye, frequently grimaces, and sometimes looks amused, his eyebrows shooting up his forehead. But this play of emotions is pre-thought, I’m sure of it. Devoid of consciousness, like the expressions on the face of a sleeping baby.

I wonder how he sees me. “What do I look like, in your drawing?”

“A dark-eyed terrier; keep your mouth shut.”

“That doesn’t sound very complimentary.”

He smiles. “You’ve a look of something that would dig up fence posts if you had a mind to.”

We continue in silence. The shadow of a cloud passes by, dimming the light overhead.

“What about a story?” I ask. “You could tell me a story while you draw me. To pass the time.”

“I could.”

“You could tell me a story about Mary.”

I steel myself for the fallout, for the roaring and pointing. His expression is one of chronic indigestion, but to my surprise it passes quickly.

“The demands you make. No hounding; I tell what I tell.”

“No hounding.”

I wait, listening to the sound of his brush moving with a faint rasp, catching the raised texture of the canvas. He seems to be focusing on the line from my shoulder to my wrist.

“The first time I noticed Mary was at her husband’s wake,” he says.

“Really?”

He nods. “She was a wealthy widow of seventeen who was just after burying a man five times her age. Rumor had it that the old fool had killed himself on top of her.” Cathal smiles grimly. “On account of his exertions.”

“That’s awful.”

“They’d been married less than a year and the whole of his estate went to her. She’d been his housemaid. Of course his children were disgusted; they said she’d put a spell on the old fool.” He looks across at me. “It was her tits that bewitched him.”

“None of that.”

“So the old fool’s family were all there at the wake with these long faces on them having lost their inheritance to the little widoween who was planning on having them packed and out of the house by the end of the day. For hadn’t she seen the way the old man’s children had fleeced him for money?” He pulls a mock-sad face. “Oh, and hadn’t that hurt her? For she had loved the old devil in her own way. Wasn’t that clear to everyone at the wake? With her eyes raw from crying?”

“So what happened?”

“I danced with the little widow, she copped a feel of a brave young man and we were married. Me without a pot to my name, for all my wealth had been lost by my father.” He reminisces. “The big house was sold and we moved to London where we cut quite a dash.” He bows. “I was a catch then, can you believe?”

I smile.

“We were the handsome Floods. She was a queen, with her grave penitent beauty. The upstart daughter of a drunken blacksmith.”

“And you were her king?”