She sat opposite him, sideways to the table, smoking, and didn’t seem to notice when he slipped the guts of the omelette into the napkin and flicked it under the table to the dog.
“That was very nice. Thank you very much. Were the eggs from your own hens?”
A blue glare. “I bought them in Supervalu.”
Right. Enough of trying to make friends. Fuck it. He was only going to rob her anyway. “It’s getting late. I don’t want to keep you up. I can tidy up here if you just point me to where I’m to sleep.”
“There’s no need to tidy up. It can wait.” The dog had dealt with his leftovers and was now investigating the frying pan. She had left it on the floor for him. Anthony felt his stomach heave. No cooked breakfast for him in the morning, thank you. She stood and it still came as a surprise to him that her posture was better than his, perfectly straight, not hunched over like the doddering old lady he’d expected. She should have looked ridiculous in the fur coat but she wore it as if it were the obvious thing, and so it was for the conditions. He’d have dressed like a fucking Eskimo if he’d lived in that house.
He’d expected to go back to the main hall so he could get his bearings, but there was another staircase, a wooden one that climbed up the back of the house. The creaks from it were chronic.
“I’ll put you in the guest room. The bed isn’t made up but the sheets and blankets are on the end of it.”
“No problem.”
“It may be a little cold.”
“I’ll be grand.” I’ll be keeping busy…
“The bathroom is here.” She indicated a room off the half-landing where they had paused. It reeked of Dettol, which was better than he might have hoped even if not exactly inviting. Anyway, he wouldn’t be committing himself there. Face and hands only. Stripping for a bath was out of the question.
The bedrooms opened off a narrow central hall. His, she indicated, was at the very end of the house, and he went down the hallway counting doors, noting creaking floorboards, marking out his route. Opening the door, he recoiled as if someone had punched him. He would not have thought it was possible for the air temperature to be so low in what was technically a sound structure. The bed was a few inches shy of being a double and looked as if its last occupant had died in it. The curtains on the window didn’t meet in the middle when he pulled them. The bow-fronted chest of drawers listed to one side. The pictures were dismal flower studies, definitely the work of an amateur. This was not a house that welcomed visitors.
He made some attempt to make the bed, laying the sheets and blankets over it. One blanket to protect him from the mattress which was probably jumping with vermin. Two to go over him. And his damp coat over that. He would still freeze. He huddled under them, smoking, reckless of being caught as she would never be able to tell it wasn’t the smell of her own smokes. Usually he would have been worried about falling asleep, but there was no chance of that. He was shaking too much. At least it was no longer raining. He hoped it would stay that way. He had to drive back to Dublin the following day and it would be quicker if the roads were dry. He would boot it the whole way, with the car’s heater knocked up to the max, he promised himself.
When he finally uncoiled himself and slid out from under the blankets, he was stiff. He stretched, rolling his head from one shoulder to the other, shaking out his arms, breathing deeply the way he’d seen runners prepare before fitting themselves into the starting blocks.
“Off we go.” He slipped through the bedroom door into the hallway. It was pitch dark. No streetlights. No moonlight. Just him and his trusty torch, hooded so it only cast a speck of light. He drifted down the hall, silent in his socks, holding his breath as he went past the door of the woman’s room. The stairs were an unknown quantity which he didn’t like, he didn’t like at all, and he took his time going down them, testing each tread before he put his weight on it. Then the hallway, the stone floor cold under his feet but solid, reliable, and he could pick up the pace.
He started in the dining room, playing his torch over the paintings on the walls, the long table, the fine chandelier and the twenty-four matching chairs, before he got down to business. Most conveniently, there was plenty on display that he liked the look of: silver, mainly. Serving spoons engraved with what had to be the family crest, a sauce boat standing proudly on tiny clawed feet, a pair of oval salt cellars with blue glass liners, a silver dish ring decorated with leaves and bunches of grapes. It was hard to stop himself from taking too much. He couldn’t go mad. He had to take enough to make it worth his while but not so much that she’d notice straightaway. He wrapped everything that he took in strips of dusters, brand-new and soft, to cushion them from damage and keep them from banging together when he carried them upstairs. It was a matter of pride to make neat bundles, folding the material intricately. He should have been hurrying but he took his time over it.
In the drawing room he hesitated, suddenly struck by what he was doing, unsettled by the looks he was getting from the family portraits on the walls. Her ashtray was still there, her book over the arm of her chair. She sat in there day in, day out, surrounded by the things that had been passed down to her by her family. Who was he to take them?
Except that why shouldn’t he? She and her family had had the best of everything through at least two Irelands: the one where they were top of the heap and the ordinary peasants were just there to admire them and pay them rent, and the one where the proles suddenly had the power, riding the crest of a wave of prosperity, buying up the old houses and furniture and art as if there would always be money, as if there were nothing but. She had held on to what was hers, even then. And in the third Ireland, the new one, the one where no one had a euro to their name, it was time to share out what there was. Specifically, with him. Why should she keep it anyway? She wasn’t really Irish, Anthony thought, conveniently forgetting the generations of Hardingtons who had lived and died in the house. This was practically his duty as a proud Irishman.
He bagged a handful of snuffboxes, silver and gold, a pair of blue-and-white plates, a Dresden shepherdess of exquisite frailty accompanied by her would-be suitor plucking a lyre, and three of the little Japanese curios. God knows if anyone else would like them but he did, he thought, deliberating over which ones to take. He settled on a dormouse dozing inside one half of a walnut shell, a snake coiled into an evil-looking pyramid and an ivory samurai in full armour, his hands by his sides, his chest puffed out nobly. Six of the miniatures came with him as welclass="underline" pretty girls in low-cut dresses, the sort of thing that appealed to collectors. They were easy to package up.
On his way out, he stopped by the shotguns. Putting his bag down, he lifted one of them off its hooks, feeling the heft of it, the lethal snugness of it against his shoulder, the willingness of the trigger. A thing of beauty. He put it back on the wall slowly, longingly, and winked at the black-and-white photo.
“Fair play, Greville.”
There had been nothing in the kitchen for him – he didn’t touch glass, too fragile – and although he looked into the library, he didn’t fancy it. Dustsheets covered the furniture and the books were locked behind elaborate grating. He didn’t know what he was supposed to be looking for, anyway. And he had a fair bit, he thought, hefting the shoulder bag that contained his night’s work. Time to quit. He ghosted back into the hall and up the stairs, counting them under his breath and skipping the fourth, the ninth, the seventeenth…
Where he came a cropper was halfway down the landing. Seduced by the dim light from the window at the end that guided him towards his room, he had decided he knew his way well enough to dispense with the torch. He had no warning when he collided with something solid, something heavy, something that uttered a long-drawn-out howl as he nosedived into the ancient carpet, tasting the dust of ages and his own very modern blood.