The Sin Eater(35)

‘I didn’t know there was a chess set in the house, did you?’ Nina was saying.

‘No,’ said Benedict. Then, ‘D’you mind if I shut myself in my room for an hour or so? I ought to sort out some of my holiday work for next term.’

He managed to reach his room before Declan’s claws sunk all the way into his mind, and before Declan’s misty, wild Irish world – the world that did not exist – pulled him down once again.





ELEVEN


Ireland 1890s


It was not until Declan and Colm were nineteen that their dream of leaving Kilglenn suddenly became possible.

Colm’s mother died just before his twentieth birthday, and he told Declan that there was no longer anything to keep him in Kilglenn. ‘And I’ll have to move out of the house anyway.’

‘Why? Isn’t a man’s house his own forever?’

‘Yes, but the house wasn’t my ma’s in the first place,’ said Colm. ‘It was rented and the black-hearted landlord won’t let me have it in her place. He says he had enough rent arrears from the Rourke family to last him a lifetime. But I don’t care, and anyway Fintan’s letting me have the shack for the time being.’

‘You can’t live in the shack,’ said Declan, horrified. ‘It’s falling to pieces. It’s a shanty house. A tumbledown hut stuck on top of an earth mound.’

‘It’s either that or the hedge behind Fintan’s Bar,’ said Colm carelessly.

‘But you can’t live there. Listen, I’ll talk to my father – you could share my room and—’

‘I could not share your room, or anybody else’s room. I’m not taking charity, not even from you,’ said Colm angrily.

‘All right, the shack it is,’ said Declan. ‘When will you move in?’

‘Tomorrow. If I’m not gone by midday the evil landlord says he’ll carry me out bodily.’

‘Let’s make sure you’re gone before that then. Will we take a few things from the house to make the shack a bit more homelike?’

‘Yes, and we’ll do it before the villainous English landlord gets his claws on anything,’ said Colm.

‘You sound as if you’re about to revive the old Kilderry Rebellions,’ said Declan.

‘If the Wicked Earl of Kilderry can fight the British, so can I.’

Between them they made the shack as comfortable as they could, but, as Declan said to his parents that night, it was still a one-room cottage on an earth mound.

‘And damp as a river, I shouldn’t wonder,’ said his mother, and went off to look out a couple of blankets, because even that rascal Colm Rourke could not be allowed to freeze to death in a tumbledown hut that Fintan should have pulled down years ago. Declan’s father said he would help knock a few nails into the ramshackle roof of the place to help keep out the rain.

‘Ramshackle’s the word,’ said Mrs Doyle. ‘That whole family was ramshackle, and the worst of the lot was Romilly Rourke, for if ever there was a Giddy Gertrude—’

‘Does Colm ever hear from her?’ asked his father, because if Declan’s mother once got started on the giddiness of girls they would not have their supper until midnight.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘I don’t hold with girls stravaiging off to London,’ said Declan’s mother, coming in with the blankets. ‘It’s a wicked place, London. Colm won’t hear from that hussy again.’

But as if in mocking irony, the very next week Colm did hear from Romilly.

‘I’ve had a letter,’ he said, as he and Declan sat in the shack. They had whitewashed the walls and tacked up some curtains Declan’s mother had donated, and Colm had said Declan was to treat the place as his own. If, for instance, there was a girl he ever wanted to bring here . . .

‘Some chance,’ said Declan, grinning, but he liked the idea of having this place as a kind of second home where his parents would not know what he was up to. He and Colm knew they would not intrude on each other’s privacy.

It was raining and Colm had built a fire in the tiny hearth. They were sprawled on the battered couch and there was a rag rug in front of the fire.

‘I’ve brought some of Fintan’s whisky,’ said Declan. ‘That’ll keep out the cold even more than the fire, although Fintan made me swear on my immortal soul I wouldn’t tell anyone he sold it to me. What with me only being nineteen and not supposed to buy alcohol.’

‘Did you tell him your immortal soul was already in pawn to the devil anyway, on account of Nick Sheehan’s sins?’ asked Colm.

‘I did not. Just as you didn’t tell anyone you have the sin of Nick Sheehan’s death on your own soul,’ retorted Declan.

They looked at one another.

‘We’ve never talked about it, have we?’ said Colm. ‘All these years, and all the good friendship, and we’ve never once talked about that day. Whether we ought to have done something different or whether we could have got him out. Or,’ he said, very softly, ‘whether we ever confessed to any of it.’

‘Do you want to talk about it now?’

‘No,’ said Colm, not looking at Declan.

‘Nor do I. Can I hear what Romilly wrote or are you going to brood on sin all afternoon?’