A plane appeared from the south, banking to the right, headed for Dublin. He jumped up and waved his arms frantically. The boat set up an angry rocking and at once he sat down again, feeling foolish and dizzy. The plane was too high, no one would see him, and even if someone did spot him he would probably look like some half-witted fisherman waving hello to the tourists as they flew in.
He examined the outboard motor. He had no idea how to start it. Should there be a key? He turned to Delahaye, and heard himself swallow. Did he have the stomach to search in those blood-soaked trousers again? He crept forward and ran his fingers over the outsides of Delahaye’s pockets. He could feel no key. Maybe Delahaye had dropped it into the sea. A lesson in self-reliance. He sat back once more on the bench. The sun was high now, shining directly on the crown of his head, he could feel the beads of sweat crawling on his scalp like insects. He thought again of those blood-red mites in his Grandad Clancy’s garden.
Delahaye opened dazed eyes and frowned at the sky. He gave a rattly groan and struggled forward as if trying to get to his feet, spoke a string of incomprehensible words in what seemed a tone of irritation, then slumped back into silence and died.
2
Marguerite Delahaye did not like her brother’s wife. She had tried to like her, had tried and tried over, but in vain. This troubled her, for Marguerite-or Maggie, as everyone called her, though she hated it-was a kindly soul and wished to think well of people. However, it was difficult to think well of Mona. Not that Mona seemed to care. There were not many things, it seemed, that Mona did care about. She was what Maggie’s late mother would have called an awkward customer. Still, Maggie kept on trying. Mona was her sister-in-law, after all, and it was her duty to keep up the effort, even if in her heart she knew she would not succeed. In her heart too she suspected that Victor himself found it hard to like his wife. He loved her, that was certain-loved her too much, as Maggie knew to her chagrin-but she was sure it was perfectly possible to be in love with someone without liking the person. Disliking Mona meant that Maggie had to work all the harder at being nice to her. Mona took Maggie’s tribute as she took all signs of kindness and regard: with indifference, or at best a sort of vacant amusement.
Mrs. Hartigan had put a crystal bowl of sweet peas on the table in the hall, and the lovely scent was everywhere in the house, even in the bedrooms and the big stone kitchen off at the end of the corridor behind the green baize door. Maggie, coming down from her room, stopped on the return to admire the flowers, arrayed there in soft sunlight falling in through the transom over the front door. The leads of the transom broke up the light and reassembled it into a bright, complicated shape, like a birdcage.
Maggie loved Ashgrove. She had been coming here with her family every year for as long as she could remember. The house had been old when she was young, yet she had the secret notion that it was somehow accompanying her through the years, keeping pace with her, its most favored visitor. For the rest of the year, when she was not here, she missed the old place, as she would miss a beloved dog, or a friend, even. A pity there had to be so many people in the house. She always made sure to arrive a day or two before the others, and to leave a day or two after they were gone. That was bliss, being on her own. She loved especially to lie awake early in the morning, the newly risen sun striping the counterpane and the house all around her stretching and creaking under the light of the new day. Solitude was her balm. She had never married. There had been offers, but she had wished to live her life in her own way, according to her own wishes and rules, without the interference of a husband.
She had spent most of the afternoon reading in her room, or trying to read, sitting by the window in the faded green armchair, her favorite. The window looked down on a secluded corner of the garden, and now and then she would close her book-Agatha Christie; rather dull-marking her place with her thumb, and watch the blackbirds and the rabbits playing at the edge of the lawn. The rabbits, two or three of them, would venture out from the long grass under the trees, the birds would fly down quickly, and the rabbits would scamper back for shelter; this little game was repeated over and over. She supposed it was not really play, but she liked to think it was.
She had delayed for as long as she could before leaving the sanctuary of her room. Her father was in one of his moods and had deliberately said something to upset Mrs. Hartigan, and of course there were ructions that would go on at least till teatime. Her father had suffered a stroke three years previously and was confined to a wheelchair and therefore was bored and prone to rancorous ill temper, although even in his heyday he had not been exactly of a tranquil disposition. It pleased him to annoy people, to set them against each other. This afternoon it was Mrs. Hartigan’s turn to suffer the edge of his tongue, and having started that particular fire he had then settled down contentedly to warm his hands before it. Mrs. Hartigan kept house for the weeks when the two families were here, and acted as caretaker for the remainder of the year. She was touchy, was Mrs. Hartigan-Maggie suspected she considered herself too good for such menial work-and took offense easily. And of course it always fell to Maggie to smooth her ruffled feathers. Standing in the hall now, still admiring the flowers, Maggie smiled to herself; ruffled feathers, yes-Mrs. Hartigan did look a bit like a plump excitable old hen.
Samuel Delahaye was in the lounge, which was what the main living room had always been called, listening to a program on the wireless. He had parked his wheelchair next to the sideboard on which the set stood, its green eye pulsing, and had his ear pressed up close to the mesh of the speaker; it was one of his amusements to pretend to be hard of hearing. He was a big man, broad-shouldered and barrel-chested, with a swept-back mane of silver hair; Maggie believed he modeled himself on William Butler Yeats-certainly he was as vain as the poet surely must have been. When she had entered the room and shut the door, and before she had spoken even a word, he flapped a hand irritably in her direction, as if she were making a commotion of some sort and interfering with his enjoyment of the program, which seemed to be about bees. He did not look at her.
She sighed. Her sister-in-law was seated on the long beige sofa in front of the fireplace, flipping through a glossy magazine. On a low table before her stood a tall glass of gin and tonic, with ice cubes and sliced lemon; the glass was misted down the sides. The French windows at the far end of the room were wide open onto the lawn, at the far side of which was the stand of ash trees that gave the house its name.
Maggie came forward, and Mona looked up from her magazine. “We thought you must have left and gone home,” Mona said, in her languid way. “Where have you been hiding?”
Mona’s abundant hair was the color of polished bronze, and her skin was porcelain pale. Her eyes were violet, and tapered at the outer corners. The only flaw in her beauty, Maggie considered, was her mouth, a thin scarlet slash that gave her something of the look of a mean and sulky child.
“Oh, you know, I was just pottering,” Maggie said.
“For Christ’s sake!” her father cried from across the room. “Can’t you stop that racket and let me listen?”
Neither woman paid him any heed.
“Has Mrs. H. calmed down yet?” Maggie asked quietly of her sister-in-law. Mona shrugged; she was turning the pages of her magazine again, pausing only to examine the ads with a narrowed eye.
“How should I know?” she said. “The old bitch never speaks to me.”