Claire Kilroy: The Devil I Know

‘He’s repossessing it,’ Hickey realised, and took off clambering over the debris to jump out the broken window. I listened as he started up another machine and went booting after the repossessed one, and you’ll have read in the papers how that particular confrontation panned out. He was a brave man, Hickey, I’ll give him that. A braver man than me, which is not to say much for him. I could be dead, I realised with a flutter of vertigo when they were both gone and silence had returned to the empty site. I clutched my aching ribs and rocked. Dead, I could be dead. I could be just as dead as the other Tristram St Lawrence. The lucky one.

*

Larney was waiting at the castle gates when I rounded the corner, standing bolt upright against the ribbed column like a Coldstream Guard. I had never seen his body unfurled before, for he had always been the crooked man who walked the crooked mile. As a child, I had believed that the nursery rhyme was about him. I would not have imagined that he could be so tall.

‘Good evening, Larney,’ I said, the lie tripping off my tongue. It was not a good evening. It was a bad one. And it was going to get worse.

‘The young master didn’t come home last night.’

I paused between the gateposts. The Gardaí must have come knocking. ‘No, I—’

‘The young master didn’t come home last night,’ he repeated, cutting me dead.

I looked him over. Something wrong there. More wrong than usual, that is. Stroke? ‘Indeed, Larney, you are quite right,’ I said carefully. ‘I didn’t come home last night. That is most observant of you.’

He squirmed with pleasure, he positively writhed, and I regretted my harsh tongue in the past. All he needed was to be thrown the odd word of praise. He was just a big child, like the rest of us.

He straightened into his sentry’s stance. Remarkable. I had presumed his twisted spine was a birth deformity.

‘There were five men going to church,’ he began, ‘and it started to rain. The four that ran got wet and the one that stood still stayed dry. Why?’

‘I don’t know, Larney: why?’

‘He was in a coffin!’

‘Ah, very good. Well, goodnight, Larney.’ I set off up the avenue. He shot forward to detain me and cleared his throat.

‘The one who makes it, sells it,

The one who buys it, never uses it,

The one that uses it never knows that he’s using it.

What is it?’

‘I don’t know, Larney. What?’

But instead of revealing the answer, he went back to the beginning and recited the riddle again in full. I gazed at the stars while I heard him out. Being civil had only encouraged him. This could go on all night.

When he had finished, I still didn’t know the answer.

‘A coffin!’ he said.

‘Another coffin. Excellent.’ I sidestepped him, but he planted himself in my path a second time because suddenly he had grown uncharacteristically nimble. Uncharacteristically nimble and uncharacteristically bold.

‘There is a coffin,’ he began. ‘The mother of the person in the coffin—’

‘That’s quite enough, Larney. Let me pass.’ I was on a short tether where he was concerned. It took no time at all to reach the end of it.

He sighed as if I were trying his patience and began again. ‘There is a coffin. The mother of the person in the coffin is the sister-in-law of your father’s aunt. Who is the corpse in the coffin?’

‘I’ll say it one last time, Larney.’

‘And so will I,’ he rejoined firmly, looking me square in the eye. I caught my breath at his daring and took a step back. He reached out and placed his index finger on my sternum to stay me, to literally stay me, for I could not move. That crooked finger arrested my progress. ‘Who is the corpse in the coffin, young master?’

‘Take your hands off me.’

‘Who is the corpse in the coffin?’ he repeated very slowly, as if I were the simple one, not he. I looked down at my chest. His fingertip had started to burn.

‘I don’t know, Larney. Who is the corpse in the coffin?’

He left me hanging on his reply, an insect mounted on a pin, before retracting his hand. Once contact was broken, I crumpled into a coughing heap, clutching my ribs although my sternum hurt more. Look. [ Witness unbuttons his shirt to reveal a small oval scar .] He branded me. The Devil’s fingerprint.

‘Get back,’ I gasped when I was able. ‘Get back into your little hovel!’ Larney shrivelled into a twisted form once more and retreated to the gate lodge as fast as his limp permitted, followed by the Jack Russell, which I only noticed then, it had remained so subdued throughout this encounter.

*

I glanced up as I was racing away from him up the avenue to see the castle burning brightly through the trees. At first I thought it was on fire. Every light shone, every door was thrown open. Even the cellar had been breached — lights glimmered up through the grates. A search party had stampeded through each wing and floor. What could they be looking for? Me, I realised. ‘The young master didn’t come home last night.’ ‘The Gardaí were looking for you.’

There was no patrol car parked on the gravel, just Father’s old Polo, but I stopped dead in shock when I crossed the threshold and found what was waiting for me inside. ‘Oh thank God,’ said Mrs Reid, jumping to her feet. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’

Mounted on trestle legs in the centre of the great hall was a coffin. Candlesticks stood on either side of it, twin flames burning. Mrs Reid had been keeping vigil at the head of this coffin. And she had been crying. Her plump cheeks glistened with tears. She opened her arms to embrace me. A set of rosary beads was woven through her outstretched fingers. I held my post by the door.

The lid of the coffin was open. I could not see the corpse inside, not from my post by the door. I did not abandon my post. I looked at Mrs Reid. ‘Who is the corpse in the coffin?’ I demanded of her, as Larney had demanded of me.

‘Pet,’ said Mrs Reid. ‘I am afraid I have some terrible news. Your father…’ She blessed herself. ‘Last night. God rest his soul.’

I was unable to piece these clues together. I looked at the coffin, and then back at her. ‘Who is the corpse in the coffin?’ I demanded again.

‘Come here to me, pet,’ she said, after a brief hesitation. ‘You’re in shock. I have him laid out. Why don’t you come over and see him?’

I gestured at the pillar candles, the row of empty chairs, her rosary beads, the paraphernalia of Catholic mourning. ‘What do you call this?’ I sounded for all the world like Father. Or maybe she spoke first. Yes, I think that Mrs Reid may have spoken first, although I cannot swear to it. I cannot swear to anything, for normality had slipped out of sync.

The details tumbled out of her mouth in no particular order, for she was as disorientated as I was. Mrs Reid and I had fallen into the same pocket of chaos. We were at sixes and sevens in there. ‘I went looking for you as soon as I found him,’ she was saying. ‘I didn’t know what to do. Your bed was unslept in. I couldn’t bring him to a funeral home — he’d have hated a place like that. Dr Chapman said it was his heart. I’ve had the Guards out looking for you all day. I knew something was wrong when he didn’t come down for breakfast in the morning. You know your father — he never slept in. The military past. That’s why I laid him out in his uniform. Right as rain the day before, not a bother on him. It was how he would have wanted to go. I couldn’t have left him in a funeral home. He was born upstairs. So I laid him out myself. At least here he’s with his people.’

Meaning the portraits, I had to assume. The stark truth of the matter was that Father had no people left. The row of vacant chairs only drew attention to the absence of mourners.