A Landlord's Life

I met the census woman at the door and explained to her I was not the landlord of the property. It was her third time coming back to the house, to have the forms completed. She had left a note, giving the time of her return, and the guidelines to the information required. One of my nieces shared the house with three other women, all from "the country" as the urbanised regions are still called in Dublin.

The landlord had instructed them to tell census woman that his daughter occupied the house. Being law-abiding women, they were in a bit of a quandary - how do you deny your existence?

Especially, as in their case, two were teachers and spent their days trying to inculcate some civic responsibility into kids from the inner-city. When they invoked that argument with the landlord, he told them: "Well, if ye don't do as I say, ye'll have to move on, so ye will." That's how one of the girls mimicked him .

"As far as anyone is concerned, I have only me own residence in Mayo and I gets no rint from houses in Dublin." For "anyone" read taxman, which they knew was at the back of his obduracy. They had invoked my help to find a way out of their dilemma. We split a bottle of wine and sat in the kitchen, as they regaled me with tales of the landlord.

They thought he was a retired Garda, "from the look of him". What does a retired Garda look like? "Six-foot, big shoulders like a GAA footballer - and a long jaw - and a suspicious look." That seemed fair enough, with the wisdom of the "country girls".

When they took the house, three years ago, he used to collect the rent once a month, from an envelope left underneath the press in the hall. They suspected him of prowling among their personal effects and set a trap for him by taking a polaroid of an underwear drawer.

Sure enough, the clothing had been "interfered with" as a Garda might say in court. "If them census people come back, don't answer the door to them," he instructed his tenants. "If wan of ye does open to them, say ye're friends of me daughter, just visiting, like."

So, at the price of accommodation in Dublin, they were being blackmailed into lying to to the census, which is a criminal offence. He gave them the name of his daughter, but not a PPS number and refused a telephone number for her - if she ever existed, as one of the tenants said.

"Well, if that's the case, and we don't exist, then we should not pay rent. Or we could pay a non-rent on a non-existing house to a non-existing landlord."

It was all terribly Kafka-esque and amusing, but why had they not moved on? Simple: the house was near the schools where two of the tenants taught and near enough to the work places of the other two.

Plus, it was a big plus, the landlord - old-style gombeen man that he was - had not raised the rent in years. So, unusually for Dublin, they were living cheaply, which allowed them to have many short-breaks abroad and spend, spend spend. And have a lot of fun among themselves in the house.

Not the least of which was watching him load up his trailer with spent mattresses and broken chairs, from another nearby house which he owned. Wisps of sheep wool clung to the trailer.

They were afraid to ask if occupants of the other house had been given notice, but the sight resolved the issue.

I gave the census woman the form as duly completed in the daughter's name, explaining she was out of the country on that specific day of the count. I don't suppose it will make much difference to the overall planning for roads, schools, hospitals and the general welfare of the population. But of course, if multiplied by sufficient numbers, it would.