He spared her the worst of it, more out of cowardice than consideration. He couldn’t bring himself to tell her what had been done to her brother as he lay dying. What would be the point of her knowing that detail? With luck, she would never hear of it – no newspaper in the country would dare print such shocking facts.
What he did tell her was bad enough. As he spoke, he stood by the coke stove in the kitchen, batting his hat against his thigh, while she sat on the straight chair with her ankles crossed and her hands clamped on her knees. She wept without tears, her shoulders heaving, now and then letting fall a harsh, dry sob.
‘But who would kill him like that, sticking a knife in him?’ she wailed softly, looking up at him in a kind of desperate wonderment. ‘He never did any harm to anybody.’ She closed her eyes, and he saw the traceries of tiny blue veins in the stretched, paper-thin lids.
‘I told him,’ she said bitterly, ‘I warned him not to be going to that house, not to be mixing with those people and trying to pretend he was one of them. They only laughed at him behind his back. Colonel Osborne was forever telling people how he allowed Tom to keep his horse in the stables there, letting them think he wasn’t charging him, while in fact Tom was paying him through the nose for the privilege. They’re great at that kind of thing, the Protestants, lording it over us and pretending everything they do for us is a favour, and then pocketing our money without a word of acknowledgement.’ She stopped, and her brow coloured a little. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but it’s true.’
He said nothing. He felt no resentment. Both sides in this troubled country had their cause for bitterness.
A robin redbreast flew on to the windowsill and stood with head aslant, as if to eavesdrop. He had seen a robin yesterday, too, somewhere. It was the time of year for them. Christmas. Yule logs. Holly wreaths. Loneliness.
I, said the Sparrow, with my bow and arrow, I killed Cock Robin.
‘You felt your brother had secrets,’ Strafford said, in a mild and purposely distracted tone, for Rosemary Lawless was just as liable to take fright as the bird outside on the sill. ‘Do you know what they might have been?’
She shook her head, tight-lipped.
‘He didn’t talk to me,’ she said. ‘He used to, when he was young. He was afraid of Daddy – we both were – and sometimes he’d say something about that.’
‘What would he say? – what kind of thing?’
‘Just – oh, just that he couldn’t sleep, thinking about him.’
‘Did your father beat him?’
‘No!’ she exclaimed. ‘He never laid a finger on him. Or on me. He was never violent like that. Only—’
‘Only?’ he prompted.
‘He didn’t need to hit us. All he had to do was look at us, that was all.’ She shifted on the chair, and when she spoke again it was as much to herself as to him. ‘They were very close, you see, the two of them. It was funny. Tommy was afraid of Daddy, and yet he was – yet he was attached to him. There was a bond between them that excluded other people, me especially. They were like – I don’t know. Like a magician and his assistant.’
The robin flew away. Random flakes of snow drifted past the window, swaying as they fell.
Snow falls absent-mindedly, Strafford thought, absent-mindedly.
‘Was that what you meant when you said he was in torment?’ he asked.
She looked up, frowning. ‘What? What do you mean, torment?’
‘You said it earlier, that your brother was in torment. That was the word you used.’
‘Was it?’ She looked at her hands gripping her knees. The knuckles were white. ‘Isn’t everybody in torment, more or less, in this world? My father, too, he must have been tormented, otherwise he wouldn’t have—’ She stopped, still staring at her hands.
Strafford waited, then said, ‘Wouldn’t have what, Miss Lawless? What wouldn’t he have done?’
‘He would have let poor Tom sleep at night, instead of making him worry and fret.’ Her voice sounded faraway and dreamy.
They were silent for a moment, as if at the passing of some dark thing in the air.
‘You haven’t mentioned your mother.’
‘Haven’t I?’ She had begun to rock herself back and forth on the chair. It was a tiny movement, almost imperceptible, in time perhaps with her heart’s metronome.
‘Mammy didn’t get a look-in, not where Tom and my father were concerned. I’m only a piece of furniture, she said to me one day, I remember it. She was standing there, just there where you’re standing now. She was looking out of that window. It wasn’t like today, it was summer, the sun was shining. I was sitting at this table, doing my homework. History. I was always good at history. She was so quiet I’d forgotten she was standing there, behind me, and then suddenly she said it, with no more feeling than if she was commenting on the weather: I’m only a piece of furniture.’
Strafford looked down at her. He had the feeling something had occurred that he had missed. It was something to do with the priest and his father. Something she knew without knowing she knew it. Something she had suppressed.
‘And she’s still alive, yes?’ he asked. ‘She’s still living, your mother?’
‘Yes,’ Rosemary Lawless answered dully.
She said nothing more for a long time, then a sort of shiver ran through her, from her shoulders all the way to her crossed ankles.
‘What am I going to do?’ she said, with a new, quick urgency. ‘What am I going to do, now? They’ll put me out – there’ll be a new parish priest and I’ll have to vacate the house. Where will I go?’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘perhaps you might live with your mother? You know what they say about home, that no matter what happens or what you do, when you go there they have to take you in.’
Suddenly the woman laughed, shrilly, flaring her nostrils and letting her teeth show.
‘Oh, yes,’ she cried, ‘oh yes, where Mammy is, they’d take me in there, all right. She’s in the madhouse, up in Enniscorthy. All are welcome, there.’