In the late fifties, you see, we had begun to buy up little plots wherever we could find them. Farmers with their bags packed ready to leave for England, desperate to take what might be offered. We borrowed, counting on the economic tide eventually turning in our favour. We handed over the criminally small payments to those boys heading off, asking was there anyone else around in the market. If we were given a tip, we went straight there, arriving at the next deal with cash in our pockets. Some slammed their door on our insult. But others took it, ready to trade in their farming life for that of barman or labourer or miner. I often wondered, did those hands that pocketed our cash ever ache for the touch of the soil as they held the smooth glass or the cold concrete or the dusty coal of their new lives? At night in their dreams, did they move with the rhythm of a scythe or reach to calm the hind of a cow before milking?
The canniest move I ever made, not that I knew it back then, was buying that strip of land on the outskirts of Dublin, not far from the airport. It was in the sixties, got it for buttons. Little did I know how high its value would reach as time went on. I sold it for a small fortune in the end. Prime zoned land. My intention was to keep it in pasture but when I realised what kind of gold my cows were standing on, I decided to dangle it out there, to see who’d bite.
‘This is ridiculous, Maurice. Would you not call a halt to it?’ Sadie complained at me one evening over the bidding war that had ensued. ‘It’s shameful, that amount of money being talked about. It’s only a couple of fields. Kevin can’t believe the madness. He says the country is heading for a crash, with this Celtic Tiger.’
Well, you can imagine how I took that.
‘Is that what he says now? You can tell him the next time he calls from his ivory tower over there that I will in my arse call a halt to it.’
‘Please don’t curse in my house.’
‘Listen, if those boys want to keep raising the stakes and battling it out, I’ll not stop them. No matter what little Lord Fauntleroy has to say about it. And tell me, will you be objecting when the sale buys you that new kitchen you want?’
‘You’ve enough money already to buy new kitchens for the whole of Rainsford. And don’t be calling your son that, he deserves better from you.’
In the end I lied. Told her they’d offered €500,000 below what I actually got. Her heart and her conscience, nor yours for that matter, couldn’t have taken the truth. But I’m sure my father and Tony danced a jig, the day the money finally landed in my bank account. Pure magic, son.
And as for all the Dollard land that lay over our boundary wall? I was twenty-one when the hearse drove Hugh Dollard to his chapel. I stood in line on Main Street with the town. They were all out, their heads bent in reverence to the man most of us had served at some stage or another. The town hushed as his coffin made its way through the corridor we’d formed. When it came within inches of me, I turned one-eighty, to face O’Malley’s butchers.
‘Shame on you, Maurice Hannigan,’ Mrs Roche said, after the procession had passed.
‘I’ll not be made a liar of,’ I answered, ‘and don’t look at me like you never cursed them like the rest of us over the years.’
‘Your mother would be disgusted if she knew.’
‘Oh, she knows, I told her that’s what I was planning,’ I said, muscling my way down the street, through the onlookers, who one by one, began to hear news of my crime as it trickled down the line. What I hadn’t said was that my mother had made no reply when I told her earlier what I was going to do. She’d simply handed over her list of messages and turned back into the house in silence.
‘Have you no respect for the dead?’ Roche called after me, playing to the crowd, encouraging them to join her in my condemnation.
I stopped and turned to her.
‘You blessing yourself as he passed isn’t going to make them treat you any better, Mrs Roche. They’ll still pay you the same pittance for the washing.’
‘You’re nothing but a scut. Someone will put manners on you one of these days, Hannigan.’
‘I look forward to them trying,’ I said, bringing an end to our public debate, turning once again for home.
‘You’re not a patch on your brother. He knew manners.’
I didn’t look back to her final and cruellest blow but stretched myself as tall as I could and strode away. When out of sight, I closed my eyes. She was right, Tony was by far a better man than me. I didn’t like to think of him up there despairing and ashamed of his brother.
‘I couldn’t pretend, Tony,’ I offered in my defence, mounting my bike, with the few messages under my arm and pedalling my way home.
Even before he’d died the Dollard fortunes had been slipping. Some said it was gambling, others bad investments. To me, it was payback. By sixty-three we’d already bought Moran’s land, then Byrne’s and finally Stanley’s, until my land surrounded Dollard’s on three sides. Slowly, I began to eat into theirs.
The strategy for buying their land was the same as with any other man. Offer low. But with them, it felt extra exhilarating. Invariably, the price I paid was paltry. Every couple of years they sold off a little more and each time my offer got lower. Until, that is, the last time.
One evening back in the early seventies, I opened my door to a young man I’d never set eyes on before.
‘Good evening, Mr Hannigan,’ he said, with a smile so wide it caused me to wince. ‘I know these things are normally left to the agents, but I felt I had to come talk to you myself about your recent offer on the Dollard land.’
‘And you are?’
‘Forgive me, I’m Jason. Jason Bruton. I’m married to Hilary.’
He put out his hand.
‘Hilary?’
‘Yes, Rachel Dollard’s daughter Hilary?’
Let me go back, son. Thomas’s sister, Rachel, who’d all those years before stood and watched her brother inflict that scar on my face had left the house as soon as she was old enough. Was she even sixteen? I’m not sure. Went off to marry Reggie, some English toff. Not wealthy as it turned out and so they ended up back at the house after a few years with Amelia, the mother, after the Dollard senior died. They had one daughter, Hilary. And this Jason Bruton was Hilary’s husband. When I offered him nothing to this news of who he was, he continued anyway, pulling back his unshaken hand, looking at it to make sure he wasn’t mistaken, ‘as I was saying, this land business—’
‘Business. Now there you have it – business, not charity. Just in case that’s what you’re here for.’
‘Quite. Well, I’d like to call a spade a spade also,’ he said, clearing his throat. ‘Yours is the only offer we’ve received. I could stand here and say we have another buyer. But you are no fool, as is plain. Therefore, I’ve come to ask that you consider bringing up your offer, not of course to the selling price but to one that is more … reasonable.’
‘Well now, Jackson—’
‘Jason. It’s Jason.’
‘And tell me, why might I want to do that?’
‘May I come in, Mr Hannigan? To talk this over further, in private,’ he said, looking about him as if my house was right in the middle of a housing estate.
‘You may not,’ I replied, pulling the door in closer behind me, emphasising my position and ensuring Sadie might not overhear.
‘I see,’ he said, drawing in a considered breath and then laughing. ‘They did tell me this was a waste of time. Rachel and Reggie. And yet here I am, wishing I’d listened to them.’
‘How’s your uncle-in-law?’
‘My uncle-in-law? Thomas you mean. I’ve no idea. I don’t hear much about him. Did you know him well?’ he replied, clutching at whatever straw I was willing to throw.
‘You could say that.’
‘He’s in London. Got married again.’
‘Did he now? Did he murder the first one?’
‘I … I…’
‘Listen, John. You’ve no idea how brave you are to stand at my door asking me for more money for them,’ I said, jabbing my finger in the direction of the house. I paused as we held the other’s eye. ‘Now, unless you’re telling me something I don’t already know about that land, I see no reason why I would “up” the offer.’