Claire Kilroy: The Devil I Know

‘Don’t you?’ the historian persisted when I failed to answer.

‘Yes,’ I admitted.

‘Desperate, the devastation they wreaked. It is nothing short of diabolic.’

At this word, the birds stopped. The secret creatures in the undergrowth stopped. The very air, I tell you, stopped. I looked up. The historian and I stood alone on a spotlit stage, waiting to say our lines. We had been waiting to say them for years.

‘I know who you are,’ he said softly.

‘That was another Tristram St Lawrence.’

‘No. That was you.’

‘I thought I was dead.’

‘You are now. The family line has come to an end.’

Down the hill, where the whitewashed trees opened onto the expanse of gravel, the castle had begun to keen. The historian lowered his head as a mark of respect. Bearing this news had afforded him no pleasure. If one thing stands out about my miserable tale, it is this: that it has no winners.

The historian squinted at the setting sun. I was stricken by an overwhelming sense of things coming to an end, of the torch being passed on, or not passed on, just extinguished. ‘It’s getting late,’ he told me, barely telling me at all. ‘It is time to leave the garden.’

I found myself at a loss and looked about frantically. Quite what I was searching for, exactly, I still do not know, and I possibly never will know, but I felt certain that I was forgetting something, that I was leaving some critical belonging behind, some vital possession without which everything, everything, everything would go awry. I appealed to the historian. ‘Now, you mean?’ I asked him, panic surging up my throat. Doom, doom went my heart. ‘Do you mean we’re leaving now?’

‘Yes, now, I’m afraid.’

I was afraid too. Afraid and unprepared. I glanced up. The sky was rapidly dimming.

He guided me to the exit — or was it the entrance, and if so, the entrance to what? — and he extended a crooked hand when we reached the crooked stile. ‘After you,’ he said, but I refused to move, just dug in like a petrified animal. Doom, doom . ‘What about my mother?’ it occurred to me in a wild flash of hope. ‘Does this mean I’ll see my mother again? Will my mother be waiting for me there?’

‘Your mother ?’ The historian rolled his eyes in derision. ‘No, you fool, of course not.’ Whereupon my back buckled into a crooked spine and I was propelled by force through the stile. When we were both on the other side I heard it, heard them.

Tocka tocka .

Deauville had come to collect. A debt must be settled. That is the nature of a debt. The Devil linked my arm and we began the descent. I closed my eyes but my eyes would not close. They would not close. I tried and tried. I’ll keep trying. I must keep trying. I can only keep trying. I am afraid of what I will see.

I wish to thank the Arts Council of Ireland, An Chomhairle Ealaíon, for their generous financial support during the writing of this novel.

Claire Kilroy's debut novel All Summer was described in The Times as ‘compelling… a thriller, a confession and a love story framed by a meditation on the arts’, and was awarded the 2004 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. Her second novel, Tenderwire , was shortlisted for the 2007 Irish Novel of the Year and the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. It was followed, in 2009, by the highly acclaimed novel All Names Have Been Changed . Educated at Trinity College, she lives in Dublin.