The Red Men Read online

  THE

  RED MEN

  Patrick McGinley

  To

  Mary Kate

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  A Note on the Author

  Chapter 1

  On the eve of his seventy-seventh birthday Gulban told his four sons that he wished to see them in his room at eleven the following morning.

  ‘He’s made a will at last, that’s what it is,’ said Joey, the youngest, as they waited outside his office. ‘That sickly runt of a solicitor has been coming and going like a wasp after jam for the last fortnight.’

  ‘Maybe he’s throwing a surprise party,’ said Cookie. ‘And not one of us has bought a present.’

  ‘He was never one for style and appearance,’ said Father Bosco, the eldest son, who was curate in a seaside town forty miles away.

  Jack, the second eldest and their father’s favourite, said nothing.

  ‘I hope he’s made a will,’ Joey went on. ‘We’ve been waiting long enough, haven’t we, Jack? The question is: will he leave the hotel, shop and farm to just one of us or will he divide the estate? The hotel to Jack, the farm to Cookie and the shop to me. I’d certainly settle for that. Father Bosco has given up his claim to the things that are Caesar’s. All he can reasonably expect is the old man’s blessing. What do you think, Jack?’

  ‘I think you’re a loud-mouth.’

  ‘Jack’s the favourite,’ Joey said to Cookie. ‘He can afford to play it cool. The youngest son has nothing to lose. By tradition he’s reckless, radical and irresponsible. Is it possible that Gulban in his old age might prefer the spark of rebellion to the po-face of responsibility? Though he doesn’t despise money, he’s a despiser of bourgeois values.’

  Gravelly voices raised in mutual congratulation made them turn to the affronting wood of the door. Mr Looby, the solicitor, emerged with a mahogany-coloured briefcase which bore the initials ‘LJL’ in italic on its side. He smiled at each of them in turn and glided smoothly but creakingly towards the lobby.

  ‘That’s a good sign,’ said Cookie. ‘We’re all in business. If the estate were going to only one of us, he wouldn’t have wasted a smile on the disinherited three.’

  ‘It’s possible that he’s simply amiable and good-natured,’ said Father Bosco.

  ‘We know you’re not allowed to think evil, Padre, but Cookie can and so can I. Jack never thinks evil. He prefers the half-way house of cynicism – second-hand wisdom heard at its loudest in the flea market.’

  Gulban pulled open the heavy door.

  ‘All present and correct?’

  ‘All present and weak from waiting,’ Joey replied.

  They filed into their father’s office and made for the four straight-backed chairs that had been placed in a row before his desk. Jack, like Gulban, was dark-haired and solid-looking. The other three were red-haired, light-boned and somewhat boyish, as if they belonged to a younger generation than Jack. Father Bosco sat upright, tall, spare and stiffly remote; Cookie sat sideways with a hint of unease and uncertainty; and Joey, looking fiery and fiercely critical, perched on the edge of the chair in a state of readiness for any battle of wits that might ensue.

  Gulban went round behind the desk on which lay a ledger, a calculator and two ragged piles of invoices and statements. He turned and looked at his sons, then eased himself slowly into the leather-covered armchair. He was stocky and broad with a subsiding pot-belly that nestled beneath the high waistband of his trousers. Bristly, black hair darkened his ruddy face and sprouted in tufts from his ears and nostrils and from under his open shirt collar.

  ‘If hair makes a man,’ thought Joey, ‘Gulban is superman.’

  ‘Today is the longest day of the year,’ their father began. ‘Today I’m seventy-seven, and though I’m still in good nick, a long day’s work takes more out of me now than it used to. The truth must be faced: I won’t be around for ever. One of you must take over from me, and must do not just well but better. I’ve thought of a plan which Looby describes as “irregular”. He overstayed his time trying to persuade me to make it “regular”. He has known me for years. He should have known better than to try to make me change my mind.’

  The four sons listened with arms folded. Joey’s eye was fixed on a little tuft of black hair on the tip of his father’s nose. Cookie was concentrating on the toecaps of his shoes beneath the desk. Jack was staring at the pile of invoices and Father Bosco was gazing upwards at the white cornice of the ceiling. Though the windows were open, the air in the room was still.

  ‘We Herons have a proud and courageous history. Your great-grandfather had four sons: Owen, Andy, Conall and Den. Times were hard on this headland then. When the old man died, they sold the place and took the boat to America to set up as pedlars in the Midwest. They were strong, good-looking men. Soon their fame spread before them, not just in their wake. They lived by their cunning, they never carried a gun. They were known as the Red Men because of their ginger hair.’

  Joey stifled a yawn and glanced at Jack who was listening as though he’d never heard a word of this tired old litany before.

  ‘Owen and Andy were killed in a train crash, and when Den died of consumption, Conall packed his bags and came home. He bought a little shop below in the village. It was only a huckster’s, but with skill and graft he made it into a paying concern. Like me he got married late. I was the only son, I inherited before I had turned eighteen. As you know, I didn’t rest on the family laurels. I made the shop into the best store in the barony. When I was forty-two, the worst was over. I found time to get married and the four of you were born.’

  ‘Tell us more about the Red Men, Father.’ Cookie mimicked the smile of a child demanding a favourite bedtime story. His father continued as if he had not heard.

  ‘While you were only youngsters, I bought this hotel. It was then called Matlock House. I could have called it Heron House. Instead I renamed it House of Heron, because I wanted people to see not just stone and mortar but the family and its head as well.’

  ‘Were you thinking of the House of Atreus, Father?’ Cookie gave a side-glance at Joey.

  ‘Never heard of it. My education was less expensive than yours.’

  ‘He was thinking of the House of Rothschild,’ Joey suggested.

  The other two brothers kept silent. Father Bosco seemed to be praying for patience, while Jack looked as serene as if the Lord, in answering the priest’s prayer, had confused one of them with the other.

  ‘The hotel is what gives us Herons our position and reputation. Without it we’d be village shopkeepers. Yet the shop, as your grandfather might say, is our pork barrel. What we make there, we spend here. And that, my sons, is not what I call business.’

  ‘It’s what the preacher calls vanitas vanitatum,’ Cookie smiled. ‘Don’t you agree, Father Bosco?’

  ‘Intellectual vanity is worst of all,’ said the priest.

  ‘It costs less,’ said Joey.

 
‘It costs nothing,’ Cookie emphasised.

  ‘The foundations I’ve laid are solid,’ Gulban continued. ‘They’ll bear a lot of extra weight. The business must grow. The hotel must be made to pay its way. Whoever inherits will have his work cut out. What we need is imagination and the courage of the Red Men.’

  ‘The Red Men are dead,’ said Joey.

  ‘Now you four are the Red Men. What I seek from each of you is proof that you are worthy of the name. Jack, like me, is dark-haired, but he is more industrious than all the Red Men put together. Has he got their business brains? We must find out. The rest of you have the hair of the Red Men, but have you got their practical intelligence? That’s something else I must find out, and until I do I shall continue to keep an open mind.’

  In the vastness of the outside day a cuckoo called twice and stopped abruptly. Silence smote the immobile air. Joey and Cookie turned to the open window. Jack and Father Bosco looked frozen in their separate responsibilities. The cuckoo called again, unwinding the stricture of tension in the room.

  ‘Looby wanted me to appoint one of you as my heir today, but I’ve decided that each of you must feel that he’s had a sporting chance. The lucky man will take over from me on my next birthday.’

  ‘I don’t know why you wanted me here,’ Father Bosco said.

  ‘You may have left us for what you say are higher things. You’re still my son, though. You must be in with a chance like the others. Whether you take it or leave it is up to you.’

  He lifted his blotter and uncovered four brown envelopes with a name in pencil on each of them. Then he handed them out across the desk, the first to Father Bosco, the second to Jack, the third to Cookie and the last to Joey.

  ‘No need to open them now. Each contains a cheque drawn on my account. Each of you has got the sum I think he deserves. You can do with it what you like. You can squander it or invest it, you can even put it away in a stocking. We’ll meet again in this room on my next birthday. You’ll present your accounts and I’ll declare the winner.’

  ‘It’s a foolish and wayward thing to do,’ said Father Bosco. ‘It will only lead to rivalry and disappointment. It may even lead to dishonesty.’

  ‘It’s meant to bring out the best in you,’ said his father.

  ‘Will we have to return the money and what it’s earned?’ Jack spoke for the first time.

  ‘No, the principal and the interest, if that’s how you look at it, will be yours.’

  ‘Will the man who shows the biggest increase win?’ Jack pursued.

  ‘No, that would be taking too narrow a view.’

  ‘Will the man who shows the smallest increase win?’ Cookie asked.

  ‘That might favour you, I know. It would nevertheless be irresponsible.’

  ‘How are we to know what to do?’ Jack asked.

  ‘It would be easy if I said, “Turn each pound into three.” You must think for yourselves, as if I were dead. One man will invest with caution and earn a modest dividend. Another will invest boldly and perhaps make a killing. A third may use the money for self-indulgence. The fourth may use it to create something new.’

  ‘Give us an example,’ said Joey.

  ‘You’re interested in science. You might invent a new valve for lavatory cisterns to replace the ballcock, which is even older than me and a great deal rustier.’

  Cookie gave a nervous laugh and Jack looked genuinely puzzled.

  ‘Do something daring, something only you would think of. Ask yourselves, “If one of the Red Men got his horny hand on this cheque, what would be his first thought?” All I’m trying to discover is which of you has the true genius of the Herons.’

  ‘I can’t accept money for such a purpose,’ Father Bosco said. ‘I don’t believe that money is the measure of all things.’

  ‘Then give it to the poor,’ said his father. ‘If they haven’t changed, they won’t be too squeamish to accept.’

  ‘Supposing Father Bosco gives his share to a tramp, will he still be in the running?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Of course he will. Isn’t that the beauty of it?’

  ‘It’s not possible to weigh such different uses one against the other,’ Joey told him.

  ‘It is for me. At my age the mind is no longer cluttered. Everything is crystal clear. Any further questions?’

  When no one replied, Gulban got up from his chair and said, ‘Cookie, you’re our Tennyson and our Gibbon rolled into one. When you come to write the history of the Red Men, I want my seventy-seventh birthday to be known as the Day of the Talents.’

  Cookie guffawed with reckless incredulity. Joey touched Father Bosco’s sleeve and whispered, ‘Now you know where you are. With your knowledge of scripture, you’re bound to have a head start on Jack.’

  They trooped out of the room looking sheepishly at one another, as the oak door closed behind them.

  ‘Day of the Talents, my foot,’ spat Jack. ‘It’s the Year of the Talents – all three hundred and sixty-six days of it.’

  He stuffed the brown envelope in his hip-pocket and made straight for the stairs and his bedroom.

  ‘Are you staying to lunch?’ Cookie asked Father Bosco.

  ‘I never eat lunch except at weekends, only breakfast and a light dinner.’

  ‘I hope they’re hot dinners,’ said Joey.

  ‘Hot in winter, cold in summer.’

  ‘How you must hate the summer, the cuckoo, house martins and bikinis on beaches. How you must look forward to the arrival of the barnacle goose.’ Joey looked up at his brother’s high, bald forehead.

  ‘Come on, Bosco, let’s have a drink at least,’ Cookie smiled.

  ‘I’ve got to get back. He brought me here under false pretences.’

  Cookie and Joey walked with him to the car park by the side entrance. He was straight in the back and thin about the shoulders. If he were even one inch shorter, he wouldn’t look so utterly alone in the world, Cookie told himself.

  ‘Do you think he’s sane?’ He turned to the priest.

  ‘I don’t think he’s wise. For a start he’s being unfair to Jack. He’s the only businessman among us. He could run a chain of hotels and still find time – ’

  ‘For women?’ Joey suggested.

  Ignoring him, Father Bosco got into his Fiat, a possession of which he was inordinately proud. He loved the dry sound of the engine starting on frosty mornings. He would tell his parishioners that there was no better car on hills, and when driving alone, he would often say aloud, ‘Come on now, Sally, that’s the girl.’

  ‘You mustn’t over-indulge in humility, Father Bosco,’ Joey smiled. ‘You have as much right as Jack to call yourself a Red Man. You run a red car and you’re closer to a red hat than Jack will ever be, even allowing for disappointment in love and a late, late vocation.’

  ‘Some things are sacred, Joey, which is just as well. If there was nothing sacred, there would be no sacrilege and you would lack an occupation.’

  He turned the key in the ignition. The engine fired at once, and with a formal wave he shot through the gate, narrowly missing a stray ram.

  ‘He almost made soup,’ Joey laughed.

  ‘Even if he had, he’s in too much of a hurry to eat it. I’m surprised he doesn’t get ulcers.’

  ‘Our Father Chrome-Dome is almost as serious as Brother Jack.’

  ‘You shouldn’t make fun of him. As a priest, he’s got to turn the other cheek.’

  ‘I wasn’t making fun. I’ll bet any money he’ll be a cardinal before you’re a professor. He’s only thirty-three and he looks like a Prince of the Church already. He’s even going bald in precisely the right place, and he combs back what’s left in case you should miss the apostolic forehead. If it had a lantern and a cross on top, it might have been designed by Michelangelo.’

  ‘He’s a man of simple pleasures, is our brother. What he likes best is tearing from here to town in forty-five minutes. He’s right about Jack, though. He’s been slaving here since he was sixteen.
If industry is to be rewarded, he should get it.’

  ‘He will get it,’ said Joey. ‘All this talk about talents is a cod, Gulban taking the mickey and keeping Jack on tenterhooks for another twelvemonth.’

  He pulled the envelope from his pocket and shook it.

  ‘You don’t seem to be in any hurry to open yours,’ he said to Cookie. ‘Perhaps we should open them in secret.’

  ‘Jack went to his room to open his.’

  ‘He’s so serious about everything: the hotel, the shop, the farm and his middle-aged women. He can’t get enough work and he can’t get enough sex. What’s to become of him?’

  ‘Is he serious about Pauline?’ Cookie glanced quickly at Joey. The scar on the left side of his brother’s face screamed at the easeful day. Cookie looked down at the loose gravel of the driveway and prodded a pebble with his shoe.

  They stood on the steps of the front entrance facing the torque-shaped village among the flat fields below. The hotel was built on a rise overlooking the sea to the north and west. In front was a straight, blue-metalled road, beyond which rose a long hill that sagged in the middle with one white cottage at its foot. The road ran westwards down to the village, and after a U-turn back eastwards round the other side of the hill.

  South of the village stood a white, flat-roofed house set in an acre of ground surrounded by a high red brick wall. From the village you could not see the house because of the wall, but you could see both house and grounds from the hotel, dainty and symmetrical and somehow pathetic in their isolation. The house had been built by a landscape painter called Bugler and was now the home of his middle-aged widow and only daughter Alicia. A schoolmaster who was in the habit of visiting Mrs Bugler christened it Fort Knox, and the name stuck. Like the hotel itself, it was an alien object in an austere landscape of fenced fields and open sheep pasture where winter gales ensured that only the hardiest trees survived. Today, however, there was hardly a breath of air. The whole headland lay serenely in a kind of sensual contemplation of the sky, the sea and the haze on the horizon in between.

  Joey said that he was going down to the shop. Cookie entered the hotel’s glass-roofed porch which Pauline had turned into a greenhouse of exotic-looking plants in earthenware pots. A Frenchman and his wife were asking the receptionist why there was no mutton on the menu though the hills around were white with sheep. Cookie smiled and escaped upstairs to his narrow bedroom at the back.