Long Goodbyes Read Free Page B

becoming engrossed as he spoke of the history of the house, its estate and the terrible years of famine in the mid-nineteenth century. The images evoked by his words filled the room and our imaginations readily supplied any detail upon which our host declined to elaborate, no doubt to spare my sensibilities.  
    The British government’s half-hearted attempts to redress the crisis caused by the potato crop failures, he told us, had been a complete disaster and as a consequence the poor began to starve in great numbers. Benjamin spoke of the local landowner at that time, a Sir William Kenton, who was an absentee landlord for much of the year; he was a man in any situation not much given to generosity, and he exacted high rents from his tenants in spite of their dreadful poverty and showed little mercy when debts were unpaid. He was not, Benjamin related, a popular figure.
    ‘And he was the owner of this estate?’ I asked, I confess with fascination.
    ‘He was,’ Benjamin replied, taking a thoughtful sip of whiskey. ‘And he was also my great uncle - I am sorry to say,’ he added with a frown and a shake of his head.  
    ‘And folk were made homeless? Left to wander in their weakness? Whole families with young children?’ I was scandalised. I confess I had not studied the history of Ireland so thoroughly as to understand the nature of the appalling crisis.
    ‘Homeless?’ Benjamin shook his head. ‘Such shelters as the poor had in those days could scarcely be called homes. Hovels, more like. But yes, they were forcibly evicted.’
    ‘But surely Sir William would not have allowed such terrible things to happen on his doorstep?’ I was leaning forward in my chair, hoping that Benjamin would recount at least some small act of charity. But I was to be disappointed.
    ‘They would come to the door every day - thin, pathetic skeletons as they were,’ Benjamin said. ‘And he would turn them away. Which was why, among other reasons, he was eventually set upon and beaten to death.’
    ‘How ghastly,’ Jack said quietly. ‘But a deserved end, no doubt.’
    ‘And an inevitable one,’ Benjamin nodded. ‘But to this day no one knows who was responsible. The authorities, such as they were, had more to concern them than the murder of a British aristocrat, and a most unpopular one at that.’
    ‘It’s a terrible picture you have painted, Mr Benjamin,’ I said. ‘I shall not be able to get those poor folk out of my head.’
    ‘You see now why we prefer to leave the house and all it stands for in the past. Forgive me. I did not mean to upset you,’ Benjamin said.
    ‘But we did insist, after all,’ Jack said. ‘Think nothing of it. Jenny and I have seen terrible things ourselves over these last two years.’
    Mrs Benjamin, who had been listening attentively but with rather an uncomfortable expression, broke her long silence - I believe with the intention of lifting our sombre moods a little.
    ‘Come,’ she said. ‘Enough of this depressing talk. These events, terrible though they were, are over now, and life here has changed for the better. Before we allow you two to go home I insist on a game of backgammon.’
    ‘That’s a lovely idea,’ I said.  
    So we concluded our evening with the Benjamins on a much more buoyant note. But as I shaped my body to Jack’s that night and allowed my mind to drift in that nether world between wakefulness and sleep, the images Benjamin had conjured would not leave me; they hovered, just out of reach, like thin, accusing spectres.  
    When I awoke suddenly with a start in the wee, small hours my nightdress was damp with sweat. I lay quietly against the pillows for what seemed an age, turning over Mr Benjamin’s story in my mind, watching the full moon hover between the undrawn curtains like a king’s orb in the black, Irish sky.

chapter three

    I have tried to remember precisely when Jack began to change. I think perhaps it began the evening after the dinner with Mr and Mrs