Walls bulged with damp. On the bare boards of the landing a disconnected telephone receiver lay in the dust, separated from its cradle. Sunlight on dingy window-panes cast shadows where the party people had danced, even in the afternoon. Music came from a big brash radiogram and they danced all over the house, in all the downstairs rooms, on the landing, in the hall. They had sat about on the stairs.
In the bedroom that had always been his he pulled the crumpled bedclothes up and covered the untidiness with a bedspread. It was a treachery, of course, his selling the house; he knew it was. A few days before his death, his father had reiterated what so often he had said before: that if desperate measures were called for a few of Shelhanagh’s eighteen rooms could be let, and something made of the attractions of the lake and the surrounding tranquillity; that no matter how Florian wished to live, Shelhanagh would always at least be a roof above his head. ‘Never betray your gift, beau,’ his mother, ignoring practicalities, had earlier advised. For being the child of gifted parents - both of them watercolourists of exceptional skill - it was assumed that he would inherit, in some manner, to some degree, their talent.
Art had been their passion. Their easels and their brushes, their repeated views of the lake, their birds and flowers and city streets, their still-life compositions, ruled their lives and were the heart of Shelhanagh while they lived, and of themselves, and somehow of their marriage. The parties they gave had all to do with this, their guests mostly painters also or in some other way involved in the world of art, the sale of a picture often the reason for celebration.
That Florian would one day have a place in this world was cherished as an expectation. Presumed with unquestioned certainty that its realization would come about, the prediction influenced his childhood, as his parents’ love of one another did, and their kindness. But while accepting good intentions’ generosity, he had his private doubts, his first experience of this occurring on the morning of his fifth birthday.
Receiving the flat, black tin box he’d been given, he had imagined it contained sweets until he folded back the hinged lid and saw the colours. His mother read out the names: chrome yellow and Prussian blue, madder and crimson lake, cobalt and emerald. He got them muddled; they said that didn’t matter. ‘Oh, you can, of course you can,’ they said when they dipped the brush in the water and gave it to him. They showed him how; he splashed and made a mess. ‘Of course you can,’ they said again. He knew he couldn’t.
This morning, going from one half-empty room to another, he found himself, without resentment, reflecting for longer than usual on such moments of spent time, and more reluctant than usual to accept the end that every day pressed closer. He stood in the doorway of the bedroom where his father had died while dressing himself and where - three years before that - his mother hadn’t woken up on her sixty-first birthday. Now, only the wardrobe and the bed remained. ‘Later on we’ll see to the clothes,’ his father had said, gathering together dresses and coats on their hangers, to be given to a charity he never made contact with, unable to bring himself to do it. His own clothes hung beside them now.
They couldn’t help it, thinking the world of him. Florian knew that. Even then he almost had. Other forms of art had been suggested, and still - in spite of each negative outcome - the promise apparently remained, while he himself was aware only of failure. He minded at first, later much less. The house was full of books; he read a lot.
He didn’t mind at all when the fees at his Dublin boarding-school were difficult to find and he had to leave it. An elderly tutor, a Mr Blades, arrived from Castledrummond on a motorcycle every day for a while, until the same difficulty arose again and education ended. Then, or later, Florian might have left Shelhanagh, but he remained.
We do not press him to stay here with us, his father’s untidy handwriting had recorded in an unposted letter. We do not take upon ourselves the right to do so. But why waste a life behind a desk if it need not be wasted? There will be something, we say to one another, and know there will be: one day or another day there will be something. When that is ready to be discovered it shall be, because that is how things are. And he is happy in this house, finding his way.
Florian never did. Instead, what he discovered, not long after his father’s death, was an old Leica camera among the junk in one of the garden sheds. Picking it up, he pondered why, during all that searching the world of art for a niche he might have settled into, photography had not been mentioned. And when he tried the camera, to his surprise it worked.
He photographed Shelhanagh, its disrepair and melancholy atmosphere an attraction that afterwards in his photographs he invariably sought: today he intended to return to the burnt-out cinema where he’d been reprimanded for trespassing.
He completed before he did so the clearing of an attic choked with what had been put aside to throw away and never had been. His dog sniffed about in the dust, before lying down to wait for something better to happen. Not long ago she had gone with him on his photographic excursions, trotting behind his bicycle, but now she didn’t want to. He carried what could be burnt to the bonfire that smouldered in the garden, then threw her tennis ball for her.
‘See you mind the old place,’ he instructed before he left and, lying down again, she beat her tail against the ground as if she understood. Jessie she was called.
4
Ellie Dillahan changed into her blue dress and almost immediately took it off again because the skirt needed to be ironed. She did that in the kitchen and when she was ready, when she’d smeared on lipstick and tidied her hair where the dress had mussed it, she wrote her list. Outside, she made sure the two trays of eggs on the carrier of her bicycle were secure and rode out of the yard with the basket for her shopping hanging empty on the handlebars.
She met no one, and there was still no sign of life at the grey cottage by the signpost, unoccupied since the Nelligans had had to be moved out. A Garda car was drawn up on the main road, as if there’d been an accident, two gardaí measuring skidmarks.
At the presbytery Father Millane himself answered the doorbell, the plump pinkness of his face broken into a smile. He said he’d have to get Mrs Lawlor before he noticed that Mrs Lawlor had left the egg money out on the ledge in the porch, which Ellie had been about to draw his attention to. While he was making sure it was right, he said he’d seen her at Mrs Connulty’s funeral a week ago and said it was good of her.
‘How’re things with yourself, Ellie? The hay looking good, is it?’
Ellie said things were all right. Some of the hay was cut and still lying. It was plentiful this year.
‘Grand!’ Father Millane enthused. ‘Isn’t that grand!’
He often used the word. Noted in the town for his skills of persuasion and an ability to fix things, he it was who laid down the spiritual tenets by which Rathmoye’s people lived their lives, his the voice that fiercely condemned all threats to the orderly Church he spoke for. Respected for his cloth and for himself, Father Millane rejoiced when the news brought to him by his parishioners was good. There was a lot to be thankful for, he regularly asserted; no matter which way you looked at it, that had to be said. This morning Ellie heard it said again; and, believing that she had herself a lot to be thankful for, was warm in her agreement.