In the Company of Others (28 page)

Please understand—she has done nothing wrong. I nearly shout these words. She has been the best of helpers, even assisting us in the Surgery. This is a grave loss to our household.

O’Leary’s wife stands in the doorway, a beaten look about her. The sisters gather in the yard, one holding a baby & shielding it with her apron from the rain.

Then why in God’s name are ye bringin’ her back to make a laughin’ stock of the O’Learys? His voice is rising, his face red as a poker. Has your man Keegan been at her?

My God, no! For God’s sake, we cared for her like our own daughter, she comes back to you better than she went for all she’s learned of housekeeping & proper English.

I despise this pompous remark, as if I were trying to sell him an improved hair comb.

Twas a gentleman’s agreement we had, says he. Twas a livin’ for our family that ye had her sarvice in your fine house. These days there’s naught but a tap here an’ a heel there. You claim she works hard & don’t lie nor steal, yet back she comes like a lame horse. Tis only right ye declare th’ reason for bringin’ her back—Name her offense, or God strike ye blind!

There is no reason I can cite aloud to any man, & especially an hysterical Irish farmer. I hand him the envelope, heavy with coins. He hesitates before he takes it, as if by restraint he might gain pride in negotiating this monstrous affair. He weighs the payload in his hand, looking me in the eye.

There will be more where that came from, I say, sick to death. I will look for her a place hereabout.

There is no place hereabout but Balfour’s & I would not fob her off to a stump of maggots such as that.

Indeed, I say. I shall look further abroad.

I turn to go, for the rain is getting up & scattering chickens & sisters inside.

Could ye have a look at th’ Missus before ye take leave, then, doctor? He pronounces the word doctor with violent distaste.

What’s the trouble I say.

From th’ last babby, he says, as angry as if I had caused the wound to his wife.

I take my bag from the carriage & drenched as any cur pass into the cabin where those crowding the doorway move apart, taciturn & dubious. Aoife is sitting by the cold hearth on the little stool, sobbing, her head in her hands.

Tis a strange thing I do. I stop on the way home at Rose McFee.

Still damp as plaster, I remove my hat & duck under her sill to the one room.

She is seated at the fire in one of her two chairs & is smoking a pipe. I seen ye go by with th’ lass, she says.

Rose, I say. As God is my witness, I never touched her.

Aye, she says. I believe ye.

I am judged, I say, for what I did not do nor ever would do.

She gestures to the other chair at the hearth & I sit.

Ye couldn’t have kept her, then?

No.

The missus.

Yes. And myself frightened by something wicked in me that I never knew before, I say. I am enfeebled, as if my very blood were being let into a bucket.

Rose, I say, what shall I do?

I am asking a toothless crone who cannot read nor write to tell me how to go forward, I am that weak & stupefied.

Keep doin’ what ye’ve been doin’—healin’ th’ sick & payin’ y’r dues to God above an’ nobody else.

A small thing, her fire with its little heart & heat, but nonetheless I am grateful.

30 November 1863

A stinging cold

C is at her dressing table in nightclothes & a shawl—I sit on the bench at the foot of her bed, wondering why I have come. Her hairbrush cleaves streaks of gray mingled with the old familiar chestnut. I have a moment’s quick desire to go to her & perform the nightly liturgy of brushing, but I do nothing.

If you should die & I am left behind . . . she says, speaking to me in the mirror.

My heart has the dull feeling at this.

Cathair Mohr would be left to Padraigin, she says.

Yes, I say, again feeling regret at this reckless decision & further regret for having not rectified it in some way.

And I would be put out, she says.

Even two years ago, we had thought to live forever. Not so, now. How much I have learned.

Perhaps not, I think not—if you wished to stay on.

If Padraigin were the master of Cathair Mohr, she says, I would not wish to stay on.

You know you will have funds to keep you, I say. You might take a flat in Dublin or go to your sister in Roscommon.

The few times I have considered such a future, I think of her in Roscommon, in her older sister’s cottage with its large garden & many geese & a window seat where she might read & be happy.

She lays the brush on the table & is quiet for a time. I wish to put my arms about her & protect her from such thoughts as these, but I hold myself away.

She bows her head into her hands & covers her face as if shutting out the world.

The boy, the lad, I say. He wants to become a Surgeon.

She doesn’t speak.

His father, I say, will drink himself to death before it’s over, according to Padraigin’s wife.

I am trying to work something out in my mind, though I am not certain what. I get up & walk about the room, uneasy, feeling the weight of it all, all at once—the diminishment of our American investments due to the War in the States—the extremes of our practice in a region so remote—the enormous effort of everything, even to buying breeding stock this morning. I have not been in some time to the Mass Rock, I have let the world come in upon me & now it is coming in upon Caitlin.

Christmas is nigh, I say. Shall we send Keegan for the lad?

She takes the brush in hand once more & looks at me in the mirror.

Send word to Padraigin, she says, that the rooms they used are under repair—we can take only Eunan. Tis true, for I am having the wallpaper put up in those rooms.

I say nothing of the probable expense, as she never spends a bob on anything, including herself.

We’ll have a fine Christmas, I say, feigning enthusiasm. Roast geese & bacon & sausages of our own & the Port that came over from Uncle.

And garlands of holly, she says, for the stair rails. And a fire in the front hall & a Yule log.

She turns on the bench & fixes me in her gaze & then she smiles. I cannot reckon the last time I saw her smile. The air is suddenly quickened & my heart roused from its long stupor—the thought of Christmas becomes real & beautiful to me.

Your sister, I say, would she come?

Fintan! Oh, yes, I think she would. What a wonderful idea. And your brother Michael—would he come?

He doesn’t get about, I say, without Kathleen.

But we shall have your niece, too, of course. How gay it will be!

The wallpaper, I say.

We shall delay it til spring.

And beds! I say, as we have none but makeshift for those quarters.

She thinks & soon says, O’Hara the casket maker!

Of course! O’Hara makes beds for the dead & the living. I determine to see O’Hara tomorrow & post a letter to Michael & one to Padraigin to tell him Keegan is coming.

We must do something for the lad, I say, something grand. A pony or such as that, shall we?

She is laughing. Oh, yes, she says, Yes! And Father Dominic, as well, we must have him out for the Christmas feast.

I move quickly about the room to disguise the trembling which comes from a terrible gladness & desire. I step to the window & look away to the lough bleached by a Winter moon & know I can no longer bear to contain such strong feeling. I go to her & lean down & kiss her yielding mouth & sink to my knees overcome with gratitude. I hold to her & we weep like children with a joy never before known to us.

Some time in the night, he dreamed of a pony.

Twenty-nine

‘Cassie Fletcher,’ she said, extending her hand.

‘Tim Kav’na,’ he said, taking it.

She eyed his collar. ‘Father or rev’rend?’

‘Father in the States, reverend here. Dr. Feeney says you’re the one for the job.’

‘I’ve done th’ same for my da and a few others.’

He liked this bony, wryly attractive woman with the dry palm and fierce handshake.

‘I hope you don’t mind th’ look of a hematoma, ’ she said. ‘We must keep the covers off it.’

‘I’ve seen a few.’

‘She rested well enough last night, but the pain is fierce even with th’ meds. She’s after seein’ you but it musn’t be long, Rev’rend.’

‘I won’t stay.’

‘She’s had a bad go, comin’ home only yesterday from hospital an’ all.’

‘Of course.’

‘Just a warnin’—the tremors have begun and th’ nausea. There’s worse ahead but we count our blessings today.’

She led him by Paddy’s closed door, and into the darkened room.

The sight of her was jarring—the splint, the cast, the grossly swollen leg with its hellish purpling, the anguished plea in a face grave with shock.

The old Lab came to him and sniffed his pant leg.

‘Mrs. Conor.’ He wanted to touch her, it was instinctive, he always touched the suffering, but her injuries were many. He stooped and scratched Cuch behind the ear.

‘Is it you, then, Rev’rend?’ Her voice a vapor.

‘It’s Tim Kav’na, yes.’ He pulled the chair close to the bed, sat down, saw the tremoring in her fingers where cast and splint gave way.

She did not look at him, but stared at the ceiling. ‘I have one question and one only.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Can I do this?’

‘You can do this,’ he said. ‘With God’s help.’

‘I do not seek nor expect help from God. Keep him out of it. Answer me. Can I do this?’

‘As for keeping God out of it, you’re asking the wrong person. With that in mind, however, my answer is yes. You can do this.’

‘Are you lying to make me feel cozy, as they say?’

‘I don’t believe anything could make you feel cozy just now, least of all a lie.’

She flinched, said something in Irish, licked her dry lips. ’Tis a brutal punishment being unable to lift one’s arms, unable to dress oneself. One must do one’s business in a pan and shout for another to scratch one’s nose.

‘Nor is there anybody to comb my hair in a sensible fashion. Think about it, Reverend, and tell me how you would feel in such a case.’

‘With so little to comb, Mrs. Conor, I’m hardly the one to ask.’

She closed her eyes against him. ‘You’re a difficult man.’

‘You’re a difficult woman, enormously stubborn, from all I’ve observed, and full of grit—just two of many reasons I believe you have what it takes to do this.’

She caught her breath. ‘A scalding pain,’ she said. ‘My God.’ Sweat shone on her face.

He stood to leave, whatever professional poise he had, shaken.

‘Water,’ she said.

A glass of water with its bent straw was on the bed table. His father, his mother, his Grandpa Yancey, his grandmother, all had sought the bent straw in their suffering. He held the straw to her lips, she sucked, and nodded it away.

‘One glass of gin and ’t would be over, this wretched nausea and trembling like an ould woman—they say it’s the instant cure . . .’

Her unbound hair was dark against the pillow, the streak of silver more startling than he remembered. She was panting now, her words hard-won.

‘. . . but I thought to combine all the torment into one living hell. One doesn’t wait for sunshine and roses to do a hard thing, Reverend. I know how to suffer; I have suffered all my life. Life is but one long suffering.’

‘Sometimes we grow too fond of our suffering, ’ he said. ‘We count it too dear and it becomes exquisite, the holy of holies.’

‘Answer me again.’

He met the pale ferocity of her gaze, measured his words. ‘You can do this.’

Fletcher was waiting near the door. ‘You’re white as any sheet,’ she said, raising an eyebrow.

‘Scary business.’

‘Oh, aye. Tell me about it. But that’s nothin’. That’s your comedy show you just had, compared to what we’ll see this evenin’.’

‘I wouldn’t have your job.’

She raised the other eyebrow, grinned. ‘Nor would I have yours, Rev’rend, believe me. Not with all th’ antics your Church is up to in th’ States.’

That was his laugh for the day.

Seamus was waiting in the kitchen.

‘I spoke hard to her, Seamus.’

‘Joseph an’ Mary,’ said Seamus, stung by this.

‘I don’t know why, exactly.’

‘What did ye say, for all that?’

‘I told her she was stubborn, enormously stubborn.’

‘Aye, an’ you told th’ God’s truth, it’s just that your timin’ was off.’

At Broughadoon, he changed clothes, ran along the lake path, but no time for the Mass rock expedition. Back at the lodge, he shared a late lunch with Cynthia, their bed a picnic blanket.

He gave her the full report from Catharmore. ‘Your turn now,’ he said. ‘Tell me everything.’

‘I’ve been thinking how we’ll never have this time again, that it’s come to us as a gift, though maybe we don’t know how to open it.’

‘I think we’ve opened it and we’re unsure of the contents,’ he said.

She laughed, spooned crème fraîche into her bowl of fruit.

‘You’re an amazing woman, Kav’na. But I worry about you. No tears, no lashing out at the unfairness of life. You’re a better man than I am.’

‘Oh, but I did go nuts, Timothy, the day you and Liam went to the lough I completely lost it, but there was no pleasure in it. Remember me, sweetheart? I’m the girl who tried to take her own life. Since then, life has looked pretty good—I’ve learned that, if nothing else. Besides, I’ll probably never do this again, loll about like the queen of the Nile. I’ve surrendered to it; it is what it is. I can’t even apologize anymore, to you or anyone else.’

‘That’s an achievement.’

‘And I’m not sorry at all to miss days of popping in and out of hotels, packing and unpacking. ’

‘It’s the long confinement I worry about. You’re not the woman for it.’

‘I have company all the time. Anna, Bella, and now Maureen, our honey in the rock, and Irish poets from the sixth century to Seamus Heaney—
Between my fingers and my thumb, the squat pen rests
. . .’

‘That’s everything you have to tell me?’

‘And there’s the wonderful view of the lough and the dear old beeches for company, and think of all the sleep I’m getting.’

‘Yes, but is that everything?’

‘As soon as we get home, I’m going to start another book.’

He took her hand and kissed it.

‘That’s my girl,’ he said.

When he delivered the tray to the kitchen, he heard the fiddle. Close by, he thought, listening. In the lodge. Yes. The music was coming from Ibiza.

He went up to the library and rifled through a stack of magazines. A cover feature on the Irish rose garden. Worth a look. He wondered about his own roses in their double-dug beds at the yellow house, and the many he had planted at Lord’s Chapel. What havoc had the beetles wrought? And the black spot? Had Mitford gotten enough rain?

‘I don’t need to know,’ he said aloud.

‘I beg your pardon?’

He turned around and looked behind him. It was the writer with the cloud of hair, hidden by the chair wing. He saw a lap with a book in it, her feet in the odd shoes.

‘Sorry,’ he said, embarrassed. ‘I’ve been driven to talking to myself.’

‘And what drove you there?’ she asked.

‘Ease and indolence. I’ve done next to nothing for days on end!’

‘I should like very much to be driven somewhere, anywhere, by Ease and Indolence rather than Stress and Striving. I’m just off a book tour. A grueling business.’

‘I’m sure. Mystery? Romance?’

‘Both. Romance is, after all, a mystery.’

‘I’ll say.’

He wondered if he should get up and go around where they could talk face-to-face. But he rather liked looking at roses climbing a stone wall in Kerry while speaking with someone he couldn’t see.

‘Is that Tim, the clergyman?’ The sound of pages turning.

‘It is. And is that Lorna Doolin, Irish-American from Boston, born in Houston?’

‘The very same.’

‘Your niece is a wonder.’

‘Honor student. Plays the harp. Raises corgis. Now busy cataloging the flora and fauna of Lough Arrow.’

‘Good gracious!’

‘You’re from the South.’

‘Mississippi. My wife is from Massachusetts.’

‘Do you like being married to a Yankee?’

‘I do,’ he said. ‘This particular Yankee, anyway.’

‘I married a Yankee once.’

‘Aha. Here to do some fishing?’

‘Heavens, no. Here to escape the rigors of reading my reviews. They’re mixed, to say the least. Are you a fisherman?’

‘Never got the hang of it.’

‘I must take my niece out tomorrow with a ghillie—she has the most insatiable curiosity. I, of course, shall be entirely out of my element. All I’ve ever done is muck about in words—except for two years of managing an inn in New Hampshire. If you ever wish to give yourself a bad back, irritable colon, and possibly a stroke, well, then, manage an inn. I’m off for a walk.’

He heard her close the book, lay it on the table. ‘It’s been lovely seeing you—in a manner of speaking.’

‘Yes, yes, very pleasant.’ He stood, hoping to shake her hand or something civil, but she was already across the room and entering the stair hall.

Catharmore’s complaints were writ large on every face at Broughadoon—Anna, Liam, Maureen, Bella, William, all were quiet as they went about their tasks in the evening. Liam was sobered yet again.

In a move, he presumed, to restore jollity to the Broughadoon board, Anna seated all guests together at dinner: the three generations of Sweeneys, the author, the niece, and himself. But he was the sore thumb, unable to withdraw his thoughts from the family’s concerns. He realized he didn’t feel like a guest anymore. He left the table before dessert orders were taken, and went into the kitchen.

‘May I give a hand?’

‘Ye’re an oul’ dote!’ said Maureen, as if she’d been expecting him. ‘Ye could help with unloadin’ th’ dishwashers, as the next course gives us another load.’

Anna looked up from arranging the dessert tray. ‘’t would be a
féirin
,’ she said.

No one was pushing him out, or requiring him to remain a guest. Yet every string was taut, he could feel it.

Liam jiggled something in a pan on the Aga. ‘I’m finishin’ the dining room paint job tomorrow, if you’d care to join me. Around noon, if you’re about. An hour or so, an’ it’s done.’

‘I’m in,’ he said.

Out there was the world, in here was something better.

At two-thirty in the morning, the knock came. He knew without being told.

‘I’ll be right down.’

He dressed in the bathroom, and picked up his prayer book on the way to the door.

‘Stay,’ he said to Pud.