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“Do you take a drink?”

Leading question, not yet Noon but the thread-like purple veins criss-crossing her nose under a pink-rimmed eye suggested strong affirmation was required, “Absolutely, why of course”

Gaze from the drawing room armchair across to a full-length window overlooking formally laid out gardens unkempt. Wide granite steps lead down towards the distant crumbling estate walls that surround this Gothic pile. Not a wasted morning, much better contents than the norm, she’s the remnant of old Connaught money. In shape-shifter mode I’m whatever’s needed to be, the Daniel Day-Lewis of auctioneering; happy, sad, concerned, faithful, surprised, that’s me. If they’re the strong no-nonsense types, that’s me too. If they’re weak, self-pitying, unsure. That’s me as well. No better man, a shoulder to cry on? Why I’ll cry their sorrows with them, loudly and willingly - for auction entries. Whatever it takes.

Faint, that sound. Again.

Click… Clack… Clackit.

From somewhere in the room. But where? Uneven intervals. Each two, three, sometimes four minutes apart. Kept up the chatter though, the dark arts of auctioneering, no corner of my grubby vacant soul left untapped in pursuit. Pitiful. I know. Shoddy even. But it is what it is, no apologies, the auction room Lots don’t trot in of their own accord. 

Took to reading a fair few business books in my day, the ‘how to’ kind. Integrity - key. The showing of honest emotion - not so sure. Doesn’t work when you’re trying to coax in those Lots. Mild deceit, false praise, faked empathy, that tends to work. I live it, I know. Now all this isn’t meant in a bad way, like I’m some sort of sociopath (although that point has been argued). I just mean one must be a realist as regards value and vendor expectation. A hyper-realist. Otherwise you’ll have an auction room full of unsold lots, and what’s the use of that. A fair balance must be reached, for both vendor and bidder. An auctioneer’s job is as much to be a skilled reader of behaviour and needs, to attain this equilibrium, as it is to get in the entries. Anyone can get auction entries consigned in with too high a reserve.

People have different roles in life, some save souls, some heal the sick or send rockets to the moon. Others, they speak with the dolphins, that sort of thing. Mine isn’t. My assigned role at this moment in the world’s history in its certain hurtle towards oblivion long before it’s burned up by the sun is to be a simple country auctioneer. A fellow good at the old chat while pulling dusty things out of dead people’s houses. Am I okay with this, while a killer roams loose, out there, every minute of every hour, every hour of every day, never stopping. Time. Am I okay with this? I’ll have to think about that later, right now the day job beckons, I’m in the middle of a house visit and the lady is for turning.

You see, prospective vendors wouldn’t tend to like you if you told them what they didn’t want to hear. What you might really think about their deceased Great Aunt Mary’s sideboard. That it’s big, a big fat lump of brown that’ll suck the energy out of any room that it sits in, and that they’d be lucky to get e50 for it. Why if you said that, you’d be going back to an empty auction room every evening. No. Instead, words of the lying kind, softly spoken, win the day. A faked appreciation for mass produced turd-brown Victorian furniture is expressed towards the recently bereaved. Words like, “It really is a well-made thing you know, truly lovely. But perhaps best, given how things stand in the world right now taste-wise, that we let the market decide value, let’s place no reserve in the way of the bidding”. Isn’t that kinder, more humane? Much better, don’t you think. This way you’ll get the silver that sits on it too. Which, if we’re honest, is probably worth twenty times more than the sideboard. And the sole reason I’m even considering allowing the near worthless lump of future landfill to be consigned in the first place. Truth be told, I could line the ditches from Kells to Dublin with that sort of furniture, grimace every time I see it. But best not to hurt the vendor with truth. Nope. Just gather up the silver and throw it into the back of the Volvo. That sideboard? Vincent the transport man can come back for it next week. And the brown dressing table. And the brown wardrobe. And the brown dining table. And the set of six brown chairs. And the brown chest of drawers. And all that other heavy Victorian mish mash. If somehow all the world’s turd-brown furniture could be made disappear, I’d do it willingly. But I can’t, so swim through it we must. 

But you know what, could auction prices for brown furniture be any lower? Fun Fact. Last winter myself and my son spent a morning’s hour breaking up a perfectly good Victorian three door mahogany wardrobe for firewood. Had it in a few auctions before the drastic step. Not a bid, and the vendor didn’t want it back. It was either pay e50 to the local dump or break it up for the fire. Cavan bloodline won out. Burned well. Felt a little Hitler-ish, but if it helps it helps. Felt good doing it too, a release. Think. It’s e6 to buy a small bag of kiln-dried softwood in the shops, that burns as quickly as paper. For e50 or less, and a little kicking and pulling, you’ll have yourself the equivalent of ten bags of dried hardwood, that burns for twice as long. A bargain! Take out those jackboots, the hammer, the pincers, get stuck in. 

Anyhow back to the thing. That faint sound. Again.

Click… Clack… Clackit.

We continue to sit, going through the chit chat, our back and forth after a walk through the house. For a woman touching seventy, and who spent most of those in the saddle, she rises easily from a well-worn Howard & Son armchair to get me that drink. She strides from the high-ceilinged drawing room, leaving me alone with my common thoughts. Breathe in the satisfaction of commission incoming as I stand to wander over to the fireplace. Reach out to a porcelain figure on the mantle, a little monkey playing cymbals. Turn it over. Yup, Meissen. Early too. This place full of little gems, the potential auction tally immense. They’ll literally go mad in the West if she allows it, an on-the-premises auction. That's what’s needed. Been years, decades, since a proper house auction conducted around these parts. And I’m the man to do it. A field day, that’s what we’ll have here, a field day, Yessiree a field day. Have to bring her on though, get her to agree, a marquee on the front lawn. That’s what adds the lustre, the financial lustre. I may be shallow but it’s in her own interest too. Our fates must align.

In her absence I think about her as a sort of hologram, and I’m circling it, looking for possible weak points, points of access. Given what’s been said, seen and sensed in our time together it may not be so easy to get what I (we) want. She’s very aware of value, and very non-sentimental. If knives are sharpened on stone she was drawn across granite. Total hardness, no emotional weakness that I can see. Going to have to be hard too, just like her. A match, her twin. And her threadbare clothes show that she either doesn’t care for appearance anymore, or money is hard come by. More likely the latter. She makes do, lives in the present. Has to. When you’ve money you can live in the future, plan for it, see it. When you’ve no money, you need it now, you can only occupy the present. Poverty cancels the future. Right now, she’s just a house full of things and an over-extended bank loan on its last legs. Calibrating, calibrating. But there it is, again. That noise.

Click… Clack… Clackit.

Or is it? Oddest thing, weird to say, but it sounds near and far away. Tinnitus? Could be. Early onset of dementia? Possible. If it is I’ve been going that way for years. Look up to the gilded overmantle, good old proper Irish Chippendale, George II if a day. Crisply carved, original gilding, HoHo bird surmount untouched makes as if to alight. Peer into the opening of the chimneypiece, freestanding within it, an engraved fire grate, Dublin 1780 give or take. Must’ve been put in when the house was built. Can sell that. Doing the math.

Again. That noise. At a much lesser interval this time, does it somehow want my attention?

Click… Clack… Clackit.

Step over to a bookcase by the entrance door. Listen. No creak. No sound.

Listen again.

Nothing.

Move to that full-length window.

Wait some more.

Nothing.

Walk to the center of the room.

Stand still.

Wait.

Within a minute.

Click… Clack… Clackit.

Where is it!

Stand absolutely stock still. Absolutely. Cock my head to the side, challenge the silence.

Nothing.

Is this a tease?

Then. Loudly. Clearly.

Click… Clack… Clackit.

Have you. Far corner, opposite the entrance door. Walk over. Nothing there. Nothing. Just a chest of drawers, placed about three feet in from the corner. Dutch, eighteenth century, shaped form, seaweed marquetry, three long drawers and worth a pretty penny. A few silver framed photographs adorn the top. Herself. In black and white astride various steeds, one in mid-jump, looks like the RDS.

Click… Clack… Clackit.

Doesn’t make sense, there’s nothing there but the chest. And those photographs.

The wall?

Nothing.

Unless.

Put my ear against it.

Click… Clack… Clackit.

Clear as day. 

Now this really is a mystery and I’m no Columbo. Behind the wall? There’s no door, no moulding, no architrave, no handle. No nothing. Just wallpaper on a wall, probably Zuber, French First Empire, flamboyant peacocks prance in a Parisian garden. So nice. Press my ear again. Harder. 

And wait. 

Wait for it.

Click…Clack… Clackit.

From the wall? Has to be a phantom noise, transference of some kind, perhaps poor plumbing or an hallucination of sound. That’d explain it. But then, then an even weirder thing happens. A thing that makes it real. The added pressure of my ear caused the wallpapered wall to press inwards, by just a millimetre. Then two. Finally, three. Spring-loaded, an invisible wallpapered flat panel door. The opening exactly where one strip of wallpaper meets the next. Well, well, well, most clever. Priest’s Hides, not unknown in the occasional Georgian house, little hidden rooms. But this, this is even more concealed. Somebody has gone to a lot of bother.

I step way.

Then.

Click…Clack… Clackit.

Louder. Faster now, in agitated tempo. Sounds like not six feet behind that hidden panel. I breathe. Stay calm. Reach my hand upward, to the revealed thin opening. Curl fingers gently around, to pull slowly at that hinged panel. My head creeps towards the opening, the edge widening. A foul odour emanates. 

CLICK…CLACK… CLACKIT.

The noise, it challenges, Look, Look, Investigate, I Dare You.

No doubt just old pipes echoing. I know it, you know it, we know it, just a warm little boiler room. That must be it, old radiator pipes ticking as they warm and cool. The stench? Why sewage pipes of course, crisscrossing the damp flagstone floor within. No doubt it is, these old houses famous for it. Before I can see, before I can confirm, far sounds echo from the outside hallway, quickening steps. Press the panel back into place and I run, run for the armchair flop down and cross my legs, just, just as she re-enters. 

Looking to the far corner of the room, and then to me, she twitches her nose, a fox threading the long grass. I’m the hare now. Looking up innocently, while leaning further back into the armchair, I make as if to stretch out, bored. Hold the nerve. Casually give her the all-good-on-the-prairie nod. Satisfied of a sort, she settles, and pours us both a healthy glass from a screw-top bottle. The cellar as long gone as the acreage that helped fill it.    

"A punctuation mark for the day, very kind of you”

She nods, and we sip, sizing each up from over crystal rims. Calibration, it’s a two-way street now. The hunter and the hunted.

Click…Clack… Clackit.

The importance of the horse, try to soften her up with this prandial conversational gambit, get the distance. So, we go on about horses. Hunting mostly (exaggeration for my part, terrible at it. Ireland to me is a country made to be seen serenely from the back of a horse, not to gallop madly about killing foxes). Is she divorced? She never said. Perhaps. No boots or newspapers strewn about, no hat or greatcoat hangs on the rail. More likely a widow made young, a man’s touch was long ago in this house. A one-woman show is what we have here. Hard station, doesn’t need saying, but I’m an auctioneer and the commission dangles. Stay on point.

Continue to turn the hologram. What do I need to be, what does she need me to be? We keep sipping, talking, discuss the practicalities. Inching along. Eventually, she agrees to fix a sale date, but won’t allow an on-the-premises auction. Absolutely not, insistent on it. As if she’s got something to hide. Such a shame. But on the bright side, she consents to allowing the house name be used in advertising. That’ll have to do, take it as a win. Warming, she’s warming. She suggests that all the smaller things be removed for a first auction, but to leave the bigger pieces, the furniture, for a later, second offering, after the house is sold. Even better! With a little luck (it does happen) the new owners might buy the furniture in-situ. And for a higher price than I’d get at auction. Makes sense, saves them all that finding and dragging to fill the place themselves. All good, all happy. All go. Money in the bag. We drink another glass as I applaud her attributes.

My mind tries to free itself from the annoyance of the little mystery in the corner. Might there be some other explanation behind that wall, instead of ticking smelling pipes? Curiosity and the cat come to mind. Leave it, stay as you are, be what you need to be to get the contents into the auction room. I’m all nods and smiles as I cast the question from my mind. Yes! How strong, how free she’ll be. The new start, away from here, this damp place, this stale end. Again, I toast her good fortune in deciding upon my services. She gulps now, her third glass of wine. A gulper before noon. Swiftly I follow suit. 

Her thin lips enquire, “Another?”

“Absolutely”

Hold out my glass but the bottle is empty.

She stands, legs wider than before, unsteady she holds the bottle by the neck, “I’ll return momentarily", and makes for the door. 

Sure as the gun it’s all in hand, another potentially profitable morning, but best not have her get totally inebriated before you go. Choose a moment of respectability to leave. No need to say it, but there’ll be no Hollywood ending here. Too late in the day. Proceeds don’t matter. No amount. She’ll just buy a smaller house and keep at the drink before Noon. Same old story, a life passed by. No South of France for her.

Give it the decency of five seconds before heading back over to the corner, to press at that panel. Again, it gives. And again I fold my fingers around the revealed edge, this time stepping fully into the opening. Daylight floods the low-ceiling antechamber, my eyes adjust.                                               

All is revealed. 

My first unholy thought was that I’d stumbled upon some sordid sex game. Do my eyes deceive me do my eyes deceive me, but this is no fourth dimension, this is real. Real as a fatality, blood and bubbles, seen never to be unseen. Extraordinary. Right there, right in front of me. My eyes. A horror. A haunting. An unspeakable spectacle. My stomach turns, flips, vomit rises, hold it in. I look. NO! I did not see this.

For how long I stood I cannot tell you, but I do know what Nietzsche said is true, stare into the abyss long enough and it’ll stare into you.

It did. 

An old oversized wooden nursery cot enclosure, side rails, not high, perhaps two feet. Within, a rubberised padded mat, stained brown with faecal splatter. Lying to one side, an occupant. Hairless, a man, a man not far off my own age, at most a decade. He gurgles, naked except for a ragged cotton sheet tied yellow wet across his worm-like body. Small porcine eyes look up moist into mine. They squint, unblinking, a momentary attempted crossing of the souls. But nothing stretches across that void. Nothing. Nothing. Not a thing. Nothing going on in there behind those eyes, just the basics, human bodily functions. In its hand, a wooden rattle, worn down to the nib. Slowly it turns, Click…Clack… Clackit.

He, who had once come slithering sliding down the gangplank of life wet and pink, now lives hidden within sight of land, but with no means to disembark this womb of the lesser dead.

His eyes tighten now, with the greater effort of incomprehension. They try to study mine. It’s as if he’s never seen a man stood upright. Indeed, any man. His misshapen head, it tilts, then slackens with the effort. The circuit board of his brain simply can’t compute what’s in front of him. Is this real. Then, he breaks the stalemate, growls. His flabby torso quivers as he tries to hold the rattle higher. Cracked lips part, milky saliva runs in angry driblet from the corners of a tooth-pulled mouth. Low the rattle turns, with intent, menace, anger. 

Click…Clack… Clackit.

The show’s over.

I step back, to feel light pressure on my shoulder, fingers. Cold floods my veins, Lord is this my end. I turn. Eyes, not five inches away push into mine. And stare. What to do, what to do. Do nothing. I freeze. She puts her nose closer to mine, and sniffs. Then raises it. She makes her point. Nothing is said. 

Stay in lane Damien, stay in lane, there’s no sign over the door stating what this actually is. Now is not the time Mr. Auctioneer. Surely, surely, it is. This is abuse, captivity, a hiding. But is it? Might it not instead be a holding tight, a saving, a saving from those who might take him away. Her love for him could be everything. Could it. Could it. Could it be, a glory above love. Could it? My nostrils take in the stench some more. Stay focused. Maybe. Maybe. I’ll settle for a maybe.

She lifts her hand, places it on the hinged panel. And pushes. It shuts. Back to darkness.

“So, where were we”

Click…Clack… Clackit.