John McGahern - The Collected Stories

It had not been easy to face the Sinclairs. He had made clear his own position, and he felt freed. When he got to the bridge, he took the hazel rod from beneath the wall and held it in full view, hiding the book under his coat. He met no one. There were no bicycles against the barrack wall. The policemen hadn’t come in off patrol. He was about to drop in on Casey when he noticed that there was already someone there, a tall young man who was standing in his bare feet against the wall beneath the measuring bar, which Casey was adjusting.

‘You’re the height, all right. A good five-eleven and a half. Now lift your arms till we find out if you have the chest measurements as well.’

‘I’ve them, all right, Guard Casey,’ the young man laughed nervously. ‘But what I’m most afraid of is the Irish.’

‘You needn’t be a bit afeard. I’m one of the few guards fluent in two languages, the best Rosses Blas from the cradle, and I haven’t a quarter use for even one language, so don’t you worry about the Irish.’

The weak sun was going down beyond Oakport Wood. Only the muscling river moved. In another hour the Sinclairs’ car would be crossing the bridge to Charlie’s. An hour after that the Sergeant would come in off patrol. That seemed the whole endless world then.

The burning of Rockingham House stood out from all else in the still-emptying countryside in the next few years. In that amazing night all was lit up, the whole lake and its islands all the way across to the Rockadoon and first slopes of the Curlews, the great beech walk going towards Boyle, the woods behind the house, and over them the High Plains, the light leaping even to Great Meadow. The glass of the three hundred and sixty-five windows shattered. The roof came down. Among the priceless things said to have been lost was a rocking chair that could be drawn as a sleigh, beautifully carved leopards asleep on the armrests, one of three made by the great German craftsmen of St Petersburg for Catherine the Great. All that remained of the front of the house overlooking the lake and islands was the magnificent shell and portals, now full of sky and dangerous in high winds. Only rooms in the servants’ quarters in the part of the basement next to the sunken tennis courts had escaped the fire. Sir Cecil and Lady King-Harmon, who had been much photographed during the week at the Newmarket Yearling Sales, came home at once, and took over a floor of the Royal Hotel.

Talk ran riot. All small suspicious burnings usual to the area were forgotten about: ramshackle farmhouses soaked in paraffin, a candle lit in a tin container above saturated rags and wood, doors and windows secured, the owners off to town for the day. During the six hours it would take the candle to burn down, they’d make sure to be seen in every shop and pub in town, and come home in darkness to find the house blazing in a bright promise of insurance money.

No house had been insured more handsomely than the great house built by Nash above Lough Key. Suspicion and old caste hostility scenting power in the turning of the wheel was enough to rouse the Sergeant to covert but vigorous investigation. There had been carelessness. A house steward under suspicion in a number of cases of arson in Canada had been hired just six weeks before. A wild drunken party had been held in the servants’ quarters the night before the fire, champagne and rare brandies drunk. There had been loose talk. The Sergeant filed all this as preliminary evidence and asked permission to begin formal inquiries. He was warned off at once. Sir Cecil was one of the Councillors of State. When the Sergeant obstinately persisted, he was given notice of transfer to Donegal. This he countered by resigning. He had reached the age when he was entitled to retire on reduced pension. A twelve-acre farm that had once been the nursery farm for the gardens of Rockingham, with a stone house, the traditional residence of the head gardener of Rockingham, came on the market. He bought it and left the barracks. It stood just outside the Demesne Wall, a small iron gate in the wall, and a bridle path led from it to Rockingham House. It was said to have been used by the different ladies of Rockingham when they came to choose plants for the house gardens. The surprisingly exotic plants from as far away as China and India that grew wild here and there on the farm meant nothing to the Sergeant. He bought cows and a tractor, began to send milk to the creamery, put down a potato patch, fought a losing battle each harvest with the pigeons from the estate woods over his rood of oats. It was an exact replica of the life he’d lived as a boy.

A small ceremony in the rose garden of the parsonage at Ardcarne that year would have passed unnoticed even if there had been no great fire. Mrs Sinclair had died in a London clinic after a long illness. She had asked for her ashes to be scattered in the rose garden of ‘the dear house’. The Colonel, his daughter, son-in-law, and two grandchildren brought the ashes from London. On a wet, windy afternoon the daughter released the ashes from the urn. She did it nervously and some of the dust blew back in her face, sticking to her hair and clothes. They all stayed in the Royal that night, and the next day the young family left for Durham.

The Colonel opened the house as soon as they’d gone. But he did not go to Charlie’s that evening. Instead, he went to the Royal, and this he continued to do as regularly as once Mrs Sinclair and he had set out for Charlie’s. The Rockingham woods were sold. Sawmills were set up, and to everybody’s surprise the Colonel became manager of McAinish’s Mill. To begin with, he was unpopular with the workmen, insisting on strict timekeeping, which was in opposition to the casual local sense of coming and going, fining each man an hour’s pay for every fifteen minutes late; but he was fair, and it was said that he came to know as much about the saws and machinery as any mechanic in the woods, and it became the best and happiest of the mills. Though he always remained aloof, there grew an unspoken loyalty between him and his men.

Colonel Sinclair bought a small turkey in Boyle that Christmas Eve. It was all he needed for the holiday. There was fruit in the house, wine, a few heads of lettuce still in the greenhouse. Then he went for a stroll in the streets. Mrs Sinclair had been very fond of this town. It was a bright, clear night, brighter still with the strings of Christmas lights climbing towards the star above the clock on the Crescent. Gerald Dodd, Town Commissioner had gone to join the Rockinghams on the clock’s memorial stone. The Colonel approved but it also made him smile. Surrounded on the stone by the formidable roll call of Staffords and King-Harmons the name Gerald Dodd had the effect of a charming and innocent affrontery. The King-Harmons would certainly not have approved. The Staffords would have been outraged. On the other side of the river the broken roof of the old British military barracks was white with frost. From one chimneypiece an elder grew. Amid it all the shallow river raced beneath the gentle curve of the bridge, rushed past the white walls of the Royal on its way out towards Key. About him people clapped one another on backs and shoulders. The air was thickly warm with Happy Christmases. The Colonel walked very slowly, enjoying the crowd but feeling outside the excitement. He shook hands affably with a few neighbours, touched his cap to the women, wishing them a Merry Christmas. He shook hands with men who worked for him in the mill, but he neither offered drinks nor was he asked.

In the Royal, he caught the page boy in the mirror making faces behind his back as he took off his old Burberry, but he did not mind. He was old and the page boy could do without his tip. He sat alone at one of the river windows and ordered smoked salmon with brown bread and a half-bottle of white wine.