"I had someone come in for a while, clean the place," he said, answering the question I hadn't asked. "But I got rid of her. Too much money; it's easier just to keep it closed up."
"You should rent it, live somewhere else, in the city maybe."
Dougal peered at me for a second, as if looking for some hidden meaning in what I had just said. Then he laughed, a short, sharp, barking laugh.
"I have to be here now," he said.
He took me right through the house to the back room, overlooking the water. I remembered it well; a broad, sunny room, the width of the house, windows all around. Many-paned French windows opened onto a broad deck, with a sand beach beyond, the blue stretch of the bay from wall to wall.
Now of course it was black dark outside, just a few lights across the water, and a streak of white moonlight painted over it.
The room was hot after a hot day. The French windows were all shut up, but a screened window to one side let in a little breeze off the water.
Dougal bent over and flicked on one small lamp in the corner; it barely threw enough light to keep us from barking our shins on the furniture as we found chairs and broke open the bottles.
"I don't like a lot of light," Dougal felt the need to explain. "Hurts my eyes."
I was not sorry for the shadows myself.
Dougal ignored me as he focused on removing a bottle of bourbon from the bag, unscrewing the top and pouring the brown liquor into a tall glass with squint-eyed precision. He gulped half the glass in a piece, held still while the bourbon ran into him, then sat back and turned to me.
"It's good to see you here, John. After all these years."
"I never thought I'd be in this house again," I said honestly.
"You remember that party?" Dougal asked. "The graduation party?"
I did. I had every reason to remember it.
"Angus was there," Dougal said. "That was just before Angus shipped out."
I remembered Angus, the oldest brother. He had joined the Marines, came back to dazzle us with his dress uniform, his short hair and iron posture. Then they shipped him to Vietnam. He never came back.
"My poor parents. That took the heart out of them, first Finn, then Angus getting killed," he said. "It was like they became old people over night. Even the admiral.
"But Angus was still with us for the party. That was a great day, up to the end, anyway. The last great day."
"Nothing was ever the same after that, was it?" I said.
Dougal didn't answer. He stared angrily out at the moonlight on the water.
"They're all dead, now, you know. The family," he said. "I'm the last one. This is my house now."
"It's the same with me, Dougal," I said. "Not that my house is anything to compare with this place."
He snorted. "This place. I'd burn it down if I could. I should. Just burn it."
"The admiral's house?" I was shocked. "Why would you even think of doing that?"
"Too much pain," Dougal said. "Too much pain, too many memories."
We sat in the dark, in silence, for a long time. When he spoke again it was as if he was allowing me back in to a conversation that streamed constantly through his head.
"You remember my other brother? Finn?"
Foolishly I had been hoping to avoid talking about Finn. But what else was there to talk about, in that house? I nodded without speaking.
"I never liked Finn," Dougal said.
"I never knew him," I said. "Not really." Finn had been younger than us, the youngest brother. He would have been around sixteen I guess at the time of the party, almost seventeen.
"He was always gunning for me. Nobody else could ever see it, they thought I was imagining it, but he was always trying to needle me, undermine me. I think he wanted to pry me away from dad. Not that dad ever paid much attention to any of us.
"Anyway, I couldn't really stand him. But I would have left it alone if it hadn't been for Jeanne."
"Jeanne Cary?" I asked.
"Uh-huh," Dougal said. "You remember her?"
I nodded; I didn't trust myself to speak.
"Sure you do," Dougal said. "Anyone would remember Jeanne Cary." He fiddled with his glass, filled it up again. "I loved her, you know."
"So did I. Everyone loved her."
"Not like I did. I never loved anyone like that, before or since. My whole soul was bound up in her every movement. I didn't even know I had a soul, before. Jeanne took it and never knew she had it. And she wouldn't have cared if she had known.
"Oh, she was nice enough to me, not a bitch, I mean. Not cruel at all. We even went out for a while, but it wasn't real. It was like she was doing me a favour, to not hurt my feelings. I could tell it didn't really mean anything to her.
"That was not the way she felt about Finn.
"I knew there was something between them, right from the first. Finn was younger than she was, barely a kid. but they had known each other all their lives, since they were little. They had always gotten along, I guess, and as they got older that deepened into something beyond friendship. I could see it; I hated to see it, but I did. That should have been me.
"But what could I say? He was my brother. It wouldn't have done any good anyway. So I kept my feelings to myself.
"But at the graduation party, when I saw her there, laughing, flirting, talking to Finn, I couldn't stand it. There was something around them, a force field, something between them and the rest of the world. They were together, and all the rest of us were out here, on the other side.
"I don't even know if they understood it themselves, in any conscious way. But I could see it. And it made me crazy.
"That day at the graduation party, I kept coming across them. Not in any kind of compromising position, I mean, not making-out or even holding hands. Just standing there, talking. But I could see it, the energy between them, the way they looked at each other. They were together. I couldn't take it."
Dougal paused to take a drink. When he stopped talking you could hear the waves breaking on the beach outside. The bay had always been part of the admiral's house for me, almost an extension of it. There were no lights on the deck, but the moonlight touched up the shape of things and spilled across the water, so that you could see the silhouettes of neighbouring houses, boats tied up nearby, a distant line of houses on the other shore of the cove, hunched up in the dark with a few lights burning.
"You know those islands across the bay?" Dougal asked. "The barrier islands. You can see them easily in daylight, green bars on the horizon. They're only about, I don't know, four miles away." Dougal looked toward the islands, invisible in the dark, sipping at his bourbon.
"I went up to Finn, pointed to those islands.
'"Think you could swim to those islands?'" I asked him. 'Little brother?'
"He looked at me, a little up and down look like he couldn't believe I was really that lame.
" 'Sure,' he said.
" 'Well come on then.'
" 'What, right now?'
" 'Right now. Unless you think you can't,' I pushed him. 'Unless you don't have it.'
"I knew he was a punk swimmer, no stamina. I also knew that Jeanne was right there, talking to someone else, but well within hearing. She was looking over at us, frowning a little. I knew she was about to come over and come between us, so I pushed Finn harder.
" 'Come on, little brother, if you can,' and I turned and ran and dove into the water, without even taking my shirt off.
"He was right behind me, like I knew he would be.
"We were both a little drunk by then, I guess. We swam out across the cove, into the big part of the bay. It had been a warm day, and the bay was pretty calm, dead still. We tore it up.
"After a while I pulled up and looked behind me. Finn was still coming on, a little further behind now. I could just see the house, and the beach. I couldn't make out the people; I doubt they could see us at all.