‘No, that man there was Hugh’s younger brother, Timothy. I never met him myself. I simply wondered as you were looking at him for so long if you knew him from all those years ago before he left?’
She looks up at him wistfully for a moment, while I look at her trying to understand what it is she’s actually saying.
‘But hang on,’ I say, ‘Emily’s actual words were – “That’s Thomas’s father.” But now you’re saying it’s Timothy Dollard?’
‘Exactly,’ she replies, her hands shuffling in her lap. ‘You have it all now, Mr Hannigan: our land, our hotel, our shame. Hugh Dollard, my grandfather, was not Thomas’s actual father. My grandmother had an affair with her husband’s younger brother, no less.’
Well, she has me there. I had not expected that. I blow out a gust of air from my lips and shake my head.
‘Thomas never knew that Hugh wasn’t his father,’ she continues after a bit, following my eye to him. ‘He went to his grave believing his father hated him. When the reality was he never knew him at all. My grandmother started her affair with Timothy before she married Hugh. They met the day she came to Rainsford for the formal engagement. Fell for him instantly, apparently. Well, he is handsome isn’t he?’
The handsomeness of men has never been my strong point so I don’t reply.
‘Unfortunately he was a terribly confused young man. Gay, but didn’t fully know it at that point. They continued their dalliance well into the early weeks of the marriage until one day Timothy wrote Amelia a note saying he was leaving for London, off to finally become the man he was. Hugh came home to find his wife passed out on the bed drunk with the letter in her hand. She admitted everything, including the pregnancy. You see, the thing was, the marriage had not yet been consummated. Grandfather had put his new wife’s reluctance to have relations in that way down to a shyness that he hoped would quickly pass. When he realised the truth of it all, he left to track Timothy down. Beat him to a pulp, and told him never to darken Rainsford’s door again. When Thomas was born, Grand-father couldn’t stand the sight of him. Treated him like he was an idiot, his entire life. Grandfather blamed him for every damn thing that went wrong in this God forsaken family. Poor Thomas. No child, Mr Hannigan, no child deserves that.’
I let the applause from the presentations down the corridor distract me from having to feel any pity. But her story is like the wind under the front door, whistling its way through the crevices, getting through the cracks in my skin.
‘The years didn’t make it any better,’ she continues. ‘This house was filled with hatred. Mother was only conceived because grandfather got drunk and, well…’ She looks about the foyer and winces before raising her hand to her mouth. ‘Mother hated living here. Only she and father were penniless she would never have come back. They drank themselves to death, literally. Jason saved me from it all, Mr Hannigan.’
I close my eyes against her words. Blocking out the sorrow of others, refusing them permission to stack on top of my own enormous pile. The weight is exhausting and I feel the need to be gone. And yet I sense there is more to know, as I watch her watching me.
‘I’m not meaning to be rude,’ I say, curious now, ‘but I’m … I suppose, I’m wondering why you’re telling me all of this? Is there a purpose in me knowing?’ Quite right, I think, well said. Let’s get to the point.
She thinks about this for a moment and then says:
‘To explain, I suppose. I know it was you who took the coin.’
‘Look, I’ve been through this with Emily and I—’
‘No, Mr Hannigan. Look, I’m not here to accuse you of anything. I suppose what I’m trying to do in this roundabout way is to right some wrongs, to end the awful loneliness of this place and all it has done to those who have passed through it, including you, Mr Hannigan.’
She gives me a small embarrassed smile. I don’t know what to do, where to look or what to say. So I look at my hands instead.
‘Bricks and mortar can no longer fill the void Jason has left for me here now. I’ve deluded myself for far too long. And since Thomas died, I’ve realised it’s time to leave the awful tragedy of this family behind. It’s time for someone else to take up the mantle.’
Loneliness, that fecker again, wreaking his havoc on us mortals. It’s worse than any disease, gnawing away at our bones as we sleep, plaguing our minds when awake.
‘What is it, Mr Hannigan?’ she asks, watching it written all over my face, the utter hopelessness of it all. She knows. She knows it like I do, its touch, its taste, its smell. It is then she lays her hand on mine. I stare at it, and am surprised at my instinct to want to place my other on top. But it will not move.
‘How have you coped?’ I say, instead. ‘With him dying, leaving you, how have you managed to keep going?’
‘Ah. That. Does one really? That’s more the question. Does one really cope? If I’m anything to go by, then the answer is one doesn’t. Your wife died not too long ago, am I right?’
‘Sadie, yes.’
‘Well, you know then, it’s a living hell. You either choose to live with the pain of it or you get the hell out. I decided to drug myself to the eyeballs and imagine him at every corner and in every room of this place. Fat lot of good that did me or Emily for that matter.’ I feel her hand press harder on mine. ‘And you, you’re still with us so I take it you’ve chosen the former also?’
From the corner of my eye I find her face and watch her lips.
‘You’ve never thought of giving up?’ I ask, so quietly I wonder has she managed to hear my words. I wait to watch her mouth form the answer.
‘Too weak willed,’ she replies, with a smile that transforms her face into something beautiful, ‘it would take a stronger woman than me to bow out of this world.’ She pauses and turns to me, ‘But you didn’t answer my question. What is your secret?’
‘Whiskey.’
She laughs out long and loud. I haven’t a clue why. I never meant it to be funny. I meant it to be true. But still her lips broaden and it’s infectious. My own begin to do the same. Soon my insides are vomiting up the laughter. And we laugh together. Laugh our desperation into the foyer, around the youngsters coming and going. Laugh until it’s robbed our breath. Laugh so we must pinch the tears back from our eyes. Laugh so we must keep hold of the couch as if we’re in danger of falling off. When it starts to subside, we slouch against the velvet back and quieten down, letting our serious heads return.
‘The thing I miss most about Jason is not what he said or did,’ she says, her hand long gone from mine, lying flat against her chest now, ‘it was his very breath, beside me in the room or the next room or somewhere in this place, I didn’t care. It was simply knowing he was there, that meant the world to me. I didn’t need him to do anything other than just be alive. Is it the same for you?’
I look at her and cannot release the words for fear of the tears that might insist on flowing. So I nod my answer. Nod like a mad demented dog. Nod to my knees, to my drumming fingers, down into my very soul. Closing my eyes, I hold back the tsunami and nod.
We are quiet now. And an image of Sadie comes to me. Her kneeling down out the back of the house at her rockery. Her pride and joy it was. And she is trying to get up. Her knees were bad, you see, arthritis, just like mine. She reaches her hand to a large stone and tries to pull herself up but she can’t. She waits a minute then tries again. She looks back to the house but she can’t see me standing at the kitchen window. I wave to her to wait. I wave to say, hold on, I’m coming. But before I leave the window, she has tried again and this time, succeeded.
‘Emily has never breathed a word about your arrangement over the hotel, you know,’ Hilary says, ‘she wouldn’t, she’s a good girl. But I’ve known since the very beginning, the night you offered her the money to save this place. I overheard it all in the office.’