‘Poor Timothy!’ Charlotte settled into the chair she always occupied in the drawing-room, to the left of the fire. The light from the long-paned windows fell on her neat grey hair and the side of her face. One of them would die first, Odo had thought again in the night, as he often did now. He wanted it to be her; he wanted to be the one to suffer the loneliness and the distress. It would be the same for either of them, and he wanted it to be him who had to bear the painful burden.
Sitting forward, on the edge of the sofa, Eddie felt better when the gin began to glow.
‘Refreshing,’ he said. ‘A drop of Cork.’
The day Mr. Kinnally died there were a number of them in the flat. Timothy put the word out and they came that night, with Mr. Kinnally still stretched out on his bed. In those days Eddie used to come in the mornings to do the washing-up, after Mr. Kinnally had taken a fancy to him in O’Connell Street. An hour or so in the mornings, last night’s dishes, paid by the hour; nothing of the other, he didn’t even know about it then. On the day of the death Timothy shaved the dead face himself and got Mr. Kinnally into his tweeds. He sprayed a little Krizia Uomo, and changed the slippers for lace-ups. He made him as he had been, except of course for the closed eyes, you couldn’t do anything about that. ‘Come back in the evening, could you?’ he had requested Eddie, the first time there’d been such a summons. ‘There’ll be a few here.’ There were more than a few, paying their respects in the bedroom, and afterwards in the sitting-room Timothy put on the music and they just sat there. From the scraps of conversation that were exchanged Eddie learned that Timothy had inherited, that Timothy was in the dead man’s shoes, the new Mr. Kinnally. ‘You’d never think of moving in, Eddie?’Timothy suggested a while later, and afterwards Eddie guessed that that was how Timothy himself had been invited to Mountjoy Street, when he was working in the newsagent’s in Ballsbridge, on his uppers as he used to say.
‘As a matter of fact,’ Eddie said in the drawing-room, ‘I never touch a beer.’
Timothy’s father — so thin and bony in Eddie’s view that when he sat down you’d imagine it would cause him pain — gave a nod that was hardly a nod at all. And the mother said she couldn’t drink beer in any shape or form. Neither of them was drinking now.
‘Nothing in the gassy line suits me,’ Eddie confided. It wasn’t easy to know what to say. Timothy had said they’d ask him to stop for a bite of grub when they realized he’d come down specially; before he knew where he was they’d have turned him into the birthday boy. Odo his father’s name was, Timothy had passed on, extraordinary really.
‘Nice home you got here,’ Eddie said. ‘Nice place.’
A kind of curiosity had brought him to the house. Once Timothy had handed him the keys of the Rover, he could as easily have driven straight to Galway, which was the city he had decided to make for, having heard a few times that it was lively. But instead he’d driven as directed, to Baltinglass, and then by minor roads to Coolattin. He’d head for Galway later: the N80 to Portlaoise was what the map in the car indicated, then on to Mountmellick and Tullamore, then Athlone. Eddie didn’t know any of those towns. Dublin was his place.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, addressing Timothy’s father, lowering his voice. ‘D’you have a toilet?’
Charlotte had years ago accepted her son’s way of life. She had never fussed about it, and saw no reason to. Yet she sympathized with Odo, and was a little infected by the disappointment he felt. ’This is how Timothy, wishes to live,’ she used, once, gently to argue, but Odo would look away, saying he didn’t understand it, saying — to Timothy, too — that he didn’t want to know. Odo was like that; nothing was going to change him. Coolattin had defeated him, and he had always hoped, during Timothy’s childhood, that Timothy would somehow make a go of it where he himself had failed. In those days they had taken in overnight guests, but more recently too much went wrong in the house, and the upkeep was too burdensome, to allow that to continue without financial loss. Timothy, as a child, had been both imaginative and practicaclass="underline" Odo had seen a time in the future when there would be a family at Coolattin again, when in some clever way both house and gardens would be restored. Timothy had even talked about it, describing it, as he liked to: a flowery hotel, the kitchen filled with modern utensils and machines, the bedrooms fresh with paint, new wallpapers and fabrics. Odo could recall a time in his own childhood when visitors came and went, not paying for their sojourn, of course, but visitors who paid would at least be something.
‘You’ll have to ask him if he wants to stay to lunch,’ Charlotte said when Timothy’s friend had been shown where the downstairs lavatory was.
‘Yes, I know.’
‘I’d fix that toilet for you,’ Eddie offered, explaining that the flow to the bowl was poor. Nothing complicated, corrosion in the pipe. He explained that he’d started out as a plumber once, which was why he knew a thing or two. ‘No sweat,’ he said.
When lunch was mentioned he said he wouldn’t want to trouble anyone, but they said no trouble. He picked up a knife from the drinks table and set off with his gin and tonic to the downstairs lavatory to effect the repair.
‘It’s very kind of you, Eddie.’ Timothy’s mother thanked him and he said honestly, no sweat.
When he returned to the drawing-room, having poked about in the cistern with the knife, the room was empty. Rain was beating against the windows. The fire had burnt low. He poured another dollop of gin into his glass, not bothering with the tonic since that would have meant opening the second bottle. Then the old fellow appeared out of nowhere with a basket of logs, causing Eddie to jump.
‘I done it best I could,’ Eddie said, wondering if he’d been seen with the bottle actually in his hand and thinking he probably had. ‘It’s better than it was anyway’
‘Yes,’ Timothy’s father said, putting a couple of the logs on to the fire and a piece of turf at the back. ‘Thanks very much.’
‘Shocking rain,’ Eddie said.
Yes, it was heavy now, the answer came, and nothing more was said until they moved into the dining-room. ‘You sit there, Eddie,’ Timothy’s mother directed, and he sat as she indicated, between the two of them. A plate was passed to him with slices of meat on it, then vegetable dishes with potatoes and broccoli in them.
‘It was a Thursday, too, the day Timothy was born,’ Timothy’s mother said. ‘In the newspaper they brought me it said something about a royal audience with the Pope.’
1959, Eddie calculated, fourteen years before he saw the light of day himself. He thought of mentioning that, but decided they wouldn’t want to know. The drop of Cork had settled in nicely, the only pity was they hadn’t brought the bottle in to the table.
‘Nice bit of meat,’ he said instead, and she said it was Timothy’s favourite, always had been. The old fellow was silent again. The old fellow hadn’t believed him when he’d said Timothy was off colour. The old fellow knew exactly what was going on, you could tell that straight away.
‘Pardon me a sec.’ Eddie rose, prompted by the fact that he knew where both of them were. In the drawing-room he poured himself more gin, and grimaced as he swallowed it. He poured a smaller measure and didn’t, this time, gulp it. In the hall he picked up a little ornament that might be silver: two entwined fish he had noticed earlier. In the lavatory he didn’t close the door in the hope that they would hear the flush and assume he’d been there all the time.
‘Great,’ he said in the dining-room as he sat down again.
The mother asked about his family. He mentioned Tallaght, no reason not to since it was what she was after. He referred to the tinker encampment, and said it was a bloody disgrace, tinkers allowed like that. ‘Pardon my French,’ he apologized when the swearword slipped out.