The Brothers' Lot - Kevin Holohan [72]
What could have possessed him to cycle all the way out to Howth on a day like this? He could have taken the train or telephoned and arranged for Marcus Madden to visit him in the comfort of his office. Oh no, he had to get on his bicycle and drag all the way out to Howth Head!
Still, Father Sheehan had decided that the revision of The Life of Venerable Saorseach O’Rahilly should be done as speedily as possible, and Father Mulvey was not in the habit of arguing with his superior, particularly when he was showing a lot more enthusiasm for this case than any of Mulvey’s previous investigations.
After twenty yards of stiff ascent up Howth Head, Mulvey gave up and dismounted. He peered up the long winding road and began to push his bike. He noted with irony that the wind had died down now that he was no longer cycling. The rain fell in a gentle yet drenching mizzle. He consoled himself with the sweet smell of gorse that came to him from the gardens of the nearby houses.
He stopped outside a small ramshackle cottage distinguished from its tidy neighbors by its overgrown garden and rusted gate. He consulted his notebook: this was it. He pushed open the protesting gate and leaned his bicycle against the inside wall. Scraping his boots on the flagstone in front of the house, he knocked authoritatively yet respectfully on the low wooden door, a trick only Jesuits and a handful of Holy Ghost Fathers could pull off.
After a prolonged silence, Father Mulvey knocked on the door again, this time imbuing it with holy urgency, a feat beyond even the most gifted of Holy Ghost Fathers. He jiggled his keys and waited.
Next he moved to the small window in the front of the cottage and peered through its dirty glass. Inside he saw a small dining table covered in opened cans, dirty plates, and empty stout bottles, but no other signs of life. He pushed his way past the rambling rose that grew wild around the front and side of the cottage and peeked through another window. Now he saw a smaller room. The filthy desk was covered by more empty cans and the shards of a broken whiskey bottle. Opposite the window Mulvey could make out the fireplace, and in it a pile of ashes on which sat a couple of half-burned books and charred papers.
“Hopeless!” muttered Mulvey to himself, and stomped back to the front of the cottage.
“You’ll be there all night.”
Mulvey jumped at the harsh guttural voice and looked around. Above him, in the branches of the gnarled apple tree, sat a young boy. He looked no older than eight. Mulvey found it hard to believe that such a docker’s voice had emanated from this tiny frame, but so it seemed to be. The boy was calmly picking his nose and watching Mulvey with a mix of mild interest and barely concealed disdain. He left his nose alone and moved on to scratching at his scalp through his close-shorn red hair.
Reaching the conclusion that Mulvey was either hard of hearing or just plain thick, the boy restated his assessment of the situation: “I said you’ll be there all night. You’re looking for Madser Madden, right?”
Mulvey saw the boy speak and heard the voice but still could not get over the incongruity of the two. He drew himself up to his full height and put on his best imperious face: “And what precisely do you mean by that, young man?”
“Won’t be home for hours.”
“Is that so?”
“Down the boozer by now.”
“That is no way to speak of your elders, young man. You should show more respect before I take you down out of that tree and put manners on you!”
The boy fixed Mulvey in a sneering gaze as if defying him to make the first move. “I’m just saying it’s dole day and you’ll be here all night or you can go down to The Wharf and get him there. If and you wait it’ll be closing time and he’ll be footless when he gets home and he might shoot ye. It’s no skin off my nose.”
With that the boy scampered through the branches and dropped down on the other side of the wall and was off.
“Come back here, you young