As It Is in Heaven (33 page)

The easterly winds that were the harbingers of March and were nightly forecast did not arrive in Kenmare. The season was mild
and the earth became tender. The soil moistened as it unfroze and released a sweet scent everyone seemed to have forgotten
from the year before. Old women warned that good weather should not be trusted and wore their thick coats into the town with
the sour wisdom of life's disillusioned. They stood at butcher counters ordering the cheapest cuts of meat, and when the new
season potatoes arrived from Israel they looked at them with scornful downturned mouths and went home to enjoy the thick-skinned
bitter gnarled potatoes that God had spared them in the shed since last July. But for others the softness of the beginning
of March came as a blessing, not a curse. The worst winds that were sent from Finland whispered and diminished over north
Tipperary and did not reach the Kerry mountains. The sun rose in clear skies. Among the lifted spirits of the town Stephen
bought the groceries and things for the house. That he had no skill for carpentry or repair-work did not stop him buying hammer
and nails and screwdriver and gazing fixedly at the closely packed shelves in Donoghue's hardware shop, wondering but not
asking what things were. He returned to the house, where Gabriella was writing a letter to her cousin, and with a determined
kind of manliness, he hammered lumps out of the doorjamb that was loose, and screwed crookedly new screws into the mirror
frame that was falling forward out of the dressing table, and now only toppled backward.

He had moved into Gabriella's life like a kind of deferential giant; he wanted to be useful for her. He wanted to make her
life easier, and in everything he did he thought first of what she would like. In that way in the mild spring days and nights
of that year Stephen Griffin made vanish his own will, and instead shaped his life like a suit of clothes that would fit and
shield Gabriella Castoldi from the brute vicissitudes of life. He fell in love with the idea of being her hero. He imagined
that in all her life she had never come across anyone like him, that the men she had known were a selfish crowd of louts who
had only deepened her grief and furthered the belief that men were weak spirits who sought nothing in women but the banishment
of loneliness and a reflected proof of their own power. I am not like them, he told himself. He looked at the grey shadows
underneath Gabriella's eyes and each day renewed his vow to make her happy. When she awoke he brought her tea in bed, and
not coffee; he lit the turf fire downstairs and turned on the music. When she stayed in the bed and did not get up, he brought
her soapy plates of stiff pasta with a jar of tomato sauce poured over it. He cooked fried eggs flecked with bits of shell
and mistimed the toast so that the butter would not melt.

He had told her of the money he would inherit from his father and that he was not returning to teaching. But he did not tell
her his work was there in the house about her, for even he feared that incredible declaration, and instead stood by her bedside
and smiled the uncertain half-smile of those who are just beginning to trust in enduring goodness.

Meanwhile, Gabriella slowly moved beyond the time of morning sickness. In the soft and tender weather the child grew within
her and lent her a deep and sensuous laziness. She lay in wide bed and felt Stephen wrap around her through the night, and
in the mornings after he had risen she walked her legs into the warmth he had left in the sheets and kept her eyes closed
so that she might linger there forever in the glowing afterheat that was the small proof of a comforting humanity. She had
swift sudden fits of gaiety and high spirits. Noontimes, when the sun flowed as a stream through the window and Stephen peeped
around the door to see if she wanted lunch, she saw the white moon of his face and burst out laughing.

“What is it?” he asked her, stepping a half-step inside the door and smiling like a man who does not see the bucket falling
on his head.

But Gabriella could not answer; she giggled and turned her face into the pillow, laughing, laughing in relief and disbelief,
with the first gradual easing of the tightness in her spirit.

“What is it? tell me,” Stephen said, emboldened by the laughter and the sunlight, and coming forward to the bed to grab on
to her where she was wriggling and he was already tickling her.

“Nothing! Nothing! Stop,
o grido!
Ahhh!”

It became one of the things she loved about him: how she could erase the terrible seriousness of his face, how the pale earnestness
of his expression inspired her to sudden small acts of rebellion. He could not tell the difference yet between her real and
her fake reactions, and as if she was compelled to continually test the strength and limits of his love, she delighted in
teasing him. She watched the instant and deep furrowing of his brow when she told him she had a pain, and only when he had
come to her side to ask her where, did she giggle and point to different parts of her body, moving her hand across herself
in the bed and drawing up her nightgown until her giggling was wilder and Stephen was travelling her with kisses. She was
amazed by him. She did not tell him again that she would not marry him, but the boundaries of the relationship were always
there nonetheless, and in those bright and hope-filled days at the beginning of spring Gabriella danced along them. She asked
for ice cream when he brought her breakfast, then lay back on the pillow and listened to the ignited car engine as a metaphor
of love, while Stephen drove hurriedly into the town for three kinds of ice cream cornettos. In the afternoons she did not
rise, but rolled softly from the bed, believing that the carrying of the child to the sitting room was work enough for one
day and, in thick red jumper and elasticized sweatpants, sat with Stephen to watch one of the many video films he brought
her from Kenmare.

“Do you think it's any good?” he asked her.

“No.”

He stopped the machine and stood up. “I'll go get another one.”

“No, don't.”

“I will. I don't mind.”

“Stephen.”

“I'd be back in ten minutes.”

“I could have killed myself by then.”

“What?”

“Yes. You better not leave me. Ten minutes and I could have …” She mimed an elaborate knife across her throat and rolled her
eyes.

“Gabriella!”

“Or perhaps.” She put her forefinger into her mouth and cocked back her thumb to make a gun. “Bang!” She flopped her head
dead. Then from the side she opened her eyes and looked at him. When she spoke her voice was soft: “Don't, Stefano. Don't
go. I don't need another one now. They are all such rubbish, I shouldn't even watch them, but”—she paused and smiled at how
indolent she was allowing herself to be—“I like to sit here on the couch with you, passing the afternoon. Is it so terrible?”

Stephen stood there, and gratitude warmed him like red wine. “No.” He shook his head. “It's not.”

One afternoon, from the small collection of his things, he brought out the chess set.

“Oh,” said Gabriella, sitting up like a child, “you are going to teach me.”

And so he did. Through the rest of the days of March they lived in the house above the town of Kenmare, dwelling like people
on a private island whose hours are not dictated by the weariness and drudgery of work or the dread exhaustion of spirit in
the tedium of life. They existed as if in another country. They did not hear the news, they did not listen to stories on the
radio or television, of corrupted government or the revealed brutalities of Christian Brothers, of elderly women knocked down
the stairs for the fifteen pounds in their purses, or the scandals and court cases and tribunals that were ceaselessly unpeeling
the skin of the country like a rotten fruit. Instead, Stephen and Gabriella loved and lived in a sweet innocence and ate their
meals and listened to music and played chess. Even when the post office in Kenmare was robbed in daylight and Helena Cox was
struck on the face by a man with a gun as she protested at the counter, the news seemed never to actually arrive in the stopped
time of their world.

  By the beginning of April all but the ash trees were leafed; the wildflowers and berry bushes in the hedgerows moved towards
early blossom and lent the air a seasonal gaiety. Big skies opened and let the light of the high heavens fall down on the
town. Gardens were dug over and seeded. Men got their hair cut and drove in their tractor cabs with the scalped, white-necked
look of plucked fowl. The landscape buzzed. Birds flew down out of the shelter of the trees and shat on the cars beneath the
telephone wires a bright confetti, celebrating the return of April.

At last, after some persuasion, Gabriella agreed to leave the house and go shopping in the town with Stephen. In the comfort
of the bedroom she had grown slightly fearful of the outside. She distrusted her own happiness and imagined that at any moment
the world would crush it. How perfect it was in their own place beneath the mountains. Whatever guilt she felt in seeing Stephen
do everything—washing shopping and cooking—was absolved in the evenings when she took him inside her arms, loving him more
carefully and tenderly now, with the kind of kisses the rescued bestow upon the rescuer. In their weeks together Gabriella
had grown accustomed to this strange rhythm of their relationship. She had allowed Stephen to take over, and banished for
the time being all thoughts of what their future might be. She was, she even admitted, almost happy. Why change anything?
Then, that third day of April, when Stephen told her he was leaving her briefly to buy the fresh rhubarb Nelly Grant said
she would have set aside for them, Gabriella said she did not want him to leave her.

“I won't be long.”

“No, please, Stefano.”

“What is it?”

“Don't go.”

She was sitting on the bed in her nightdress. Her body seemed smaller as her pregnancy grew. She was strangely more frail
the larger she became, as if the part of her that was herself was each day subtracted from and was added instead to the child.
Her face was flushed.

“What is it? What's the matter?”

“I don't know I am foolish,” she said. “But sometimes …”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell me.”

“I feel that it won't last. That something is waiting to happen.”

He sat down on the bed beside her. The brilliance of the April noon was at his back, letting the light fall like infinite
pity into her eyes. She was briefly blinded. Though he asked her what exactly she feared he did not need to. He, too, had
felt the fragile quality of each day and knew the awful expectation of loss that was the most enduring and reliable trait
of his thirty-two years. The difference now was that since the death of his father and his own return to Kenmare, Stephen
had begun to feel he was in a new life. He felt blessed. So when Gabriella curled on the bed and could not quite explain her
fear, Stephen Griffin already understood and imagined, like some delirious saint, that the blessing that had fallen on him
would now protect her, too. He leaned down and stroked her head softly like a grandfather.

“Come with me,” he said. “Come on out. Come down to the town.”

And so she did. They arrived in the town that had already been speaking about them. Gabriella walked linked on Stephen's arm,
her green coat open and the child just visible ahead of both of them. It was not so bad. The sun was warm and welcoming. The
first tourists had already arrived at the wool and tweed shops at the top of the street, and a constant jig and reel music
was blaring out from the loudspeaker set above the shop in a broadcast of authenticity. Beneath the music Germans were buying
bargain sweaters from Michael O'Keefe in his one black suit. He nodded across his dealing at Gabriella and Stephen. “Morning
to you.” His eye caught the curve of the child. “Beautiful today,” he said, and turned back to the Germans.

Stephen and Gabriella went to the bank. The money that he had been willed by his father had not arrived yet. Stephen had little
idea how much it would be after duties and fees, but knew that the sum was substantial. He was living on his savings from
his teacher's salary and needed to transfer his account from Clare and tell the manager the funds would be coming.

The teller asked Stephen his name.

“Just a minute so, Mr. and Mrs. Griffin.”

Moran, the assistant manager, was called from his desk to the counter to meet them.

“Well,” he said, “good morning to ye.” He beamed and reached out a pumiced pink hand. “Mr. Griffin, Mrs.…”

In a moment he noticed the absence of a wedding ring and took a sideways glance away to show that he had not been looking.
“Yes yes. Now, Stephen, isn't it? That's right.”

Moran had, he knew, the gift of weighing situations, and when money was concerned, the balances were never even. There were
always hidden weights, obscured feelings, fears and motives. The pregnant woman without a ring caused him to reweigh the situation
swiftly and temper his approach. So, with his most liberal expression and a face that declared the only and absolute value
in life was hard currency, he took the hand Gabriella offered and shook it once as if it were a wet fish.