What more had I expected from her? To be forgiven for what I’d done to them. For the satisfaction I had felt as each piece of land they lost became mine. For checking the land registry in the county council every year or so to see my name as owner of what once was theirs. Did I expect this young girl, who I imagined as my own not ten minutes ago, to say none of that mattered? That her father’s death could not be laid at my door. I sat there, my whiskey not yet gone, letting the silence, save for the hum of the computer sitting on her desk, fill the room. I swirled the last of the liquid in the glass, and watched it catch at the sides and fall to the bottom, before swirling it again and again and again, like a child with a spinning top, mesmerised by its simplicity. And when at last the time came to either leave, without your surprise holiday, or bite the bullet and reply, I looked at her, took the last of my whiskey and said:
‘I worked here once, you know.’
‘Yes, mother mentioned it.’
‘It wasn’t a particularly nice place. Your great-grandfather Hugh was not an easy man. And as for your great-uncle Thomas … Let’s just say those men knew how to throw a punch. This here, see this,’ I pointed to my scar, ‘that was him.’
‘Oh God.’ Her brief glance and wince at my face was enough to lower her head and to give a sigh that felt more hopeless than any of her words gone before. She raised her fist to her mouth and looked off to a future, I imagined, she neither wanted nor asked for. I saw the tears well and glisten again. It was then that I felt regret for drawing her in on a history that was not really hers, to suggest a blame she had no power over.
‘How much do you need?’ I asked. It took her by surprise as much as it did me. But there it was.
‘How much do I need, for what?’ she asked, slumping back into her chair, wiping at her eyes.
‘To keep this place going. You said you wanted to sell it. How much not to?’
And that’s how it began, my foray into the hotel trade. As simple as that. Robert, the solicitor, was killed trying to get me to reconsider.
‘Are you mad, Maurice? No one’s investing in hotels. Not round these parts anyway. Stick to the machines man.’ But he never turned me.
‘Do it,’ I told him, my fist landing on his desk, frightening the bejesus out of the both of us. Never challenged me again.
Emily, Robert and I have kept the secret of it. Sadie, you and Hilary have never known a thing. But Molly, Molly knew. I told her. I met her not long after the papers were signed. Off out on one of my walks through the fields. She came up alongside me, then ran past me. I’d say she was twelve, nothing more. That is one of the things about her visits, I never know what age she might be. I told her as she twirled about me, her eyes closed, spinning and spinning, laughing with the dizziness. I thought she’d not heard me. But before she left, whirling off into her nothingness again, she smiled and gave me a thumbs up. It was good enough for me.
I hold a forty-nine per cent share of this place. Forty-nine per cent of this stool with a hundred per cent of my arse sitting on it. Forty-nine per cent for this scar on my face, for a robbed childhood and Thomas Dollard, an enemy for life. What would you all have thought the night of the wedding, had you known when we danced on its floors and ate its food and you, the happy couple, slept in its bed, that it was mine. It was my dark, shameful secret. It was nothing to be proud of. Nothing to boast about. Nothing I wanted the world to know. I have stayed away from it, not wanting to be reminded. That’s what me and Emily agreed. I left her to it. The exemplary silent partner.
Emily has steered the place through. Even when the recession hit six years back, she managed to hold her steady. Robert has acted as my agent, allowing me my freedom to remain outside of it. Never allowing it to pull me into its lair.
But as much as my decision has weighed heavily on me over the years, I’ve always felt it has been far worse for Emily. After all, the only person with the potential to be offended on my side was me, and I seemed to be managing it, to an extent. But for Emily, well, that was a different kettle of fish. Surely for her it was a matter of betrayal. Did she feel her father turn in his grave the day she shook my hand? We never really talked about it after. Somehow it felt sordid. This place we found ourselves in was something that perhaps should never have happened had human weakness not stepped in our way. Over the years that followed we kept ourselves to ourselves, just as with our secret. All this time, never speaking about it again, until the day Robert came looking for me.
It was in 2006. Ireland was in the height of the boom. Money was coming out our ears, or so they told us. Personally, I couldn’t have complained. My family was comfortable, more than, in fact. You and Rosaleen had Adam with Caitríona on the way. Your mother and me in our twilight years, working out as well as we might have hoped. So when Robert came waylaying me about the hotel, I didn’t want to know a thing about it.
He’d tracked me down to a farm in Balnaboy where Francie was harvesting a few acres. I’d gone along to check all was going well. Best always to keep an eye. No matter how good your lads are, the odd spot check doesn’t do any harm. I’d finished having the chat with Francie and was heading back to the Jeep at the far end of the field when I saw Robert’s Range Rover pull up. I watched him get out and walk over to my Jeep and lean his back against my driver door. He waved. I didn’t bother to reply.
‘Well,’ I said on arriving within earshot.
‘Maurice. How’s she faring?’
I came up along beside him and stood at my rear door. We remained that way for a bit, looking out on the cut rows. Like a badly shaved head, they were. Tufts sticking up everywhere. But the gold being poured into those trailers at the top of the field was a sight to behold. The yield was great that day. When I saw them fill, grains rushing down the funnel like some powerful waterfall, my heart fluttered a little. Not that it was my own grain. But still, the sight of a yield such as that always gave me a thrill. Robert pulled at a forlorn stalk and started to shred what was left of it. I watched him take it apart until only flakes remained and fell from his hand into the wheel tracks below.
‘Emily was over with me. She was wondering would you call to see her tonight.’
I looked at him, then out at the fields.
‘No,’ I said.
‘An hour. That’s all she wants.’
I watched Francie turn the harvester to begin on another row of oats. Inch by inch the crop was swallowed up. When he was a quarter of the way up the line, I’d had my fill of Robert waiting for me to change my mind and decided it was time to move on. I stood in front of him.
‘Listen,’ I said, ‘that’s your job to talk business with her. That’s what I pay you for.’
I gestured for him to move. But he held his ground.
‘Hilary’s away, she said. It’s nothing to worry about.’
‘Well, that’s alright then. Because we all know what a fierce man I am for the fretting.’
‘Ah, Jesus, Maurice. An hour. It won’t kill you. Seven, she said.’
And with that he left my door and opened his own. ‘I’m texting her now that you’ll be there, on the dot,’ he said, hanging out of his open window, his fingers already pressing buttons on his phone. He turned to me with a smile, pushed his last button, winked, and drove away.
I arrived at seven fifteen. The place was busy. There was a bit of activity around the reception desk so it was a while before I came to rest my elbow on it.
‘Is she about?’ I asked.
‘Yes indeed, Mr Hannigan,’ the young man said to me. I hadn’t a clue who he was and was a little taken aback that he knew me. ‘Let me show you the way. If you’ll follow me.’ He had an accent I couldn’t place. He rounded the counter with a big smile. My hands found their way back into my pockets and I followed him. He led me to a wide, expansive meeting room. Long trestle tables were pushed to the sides, leaving one round table in the middle, all set for dinner.