In the Company of Others (29 page)

Thirty

‘I pray th’ worst is over—for th’ night, anyway.’

A barefoot Fletcher appeared in the hall, a wraith in a white nightgown. ‘She’s burned our ears off shouting at God, givin’ him th’ devil if I ever heard it. I was lookin’ for lightning to strike th’ place.’

‘What can I do?’

‘Eileen’s with her, an’ Seamus is up if you’d like tea. I’m telling you, Rev’rend, even with th’ lorazepam, her mind is a steel trap, I’ve never seen its equal in an old lady.’ The nurse drew her hands through her hair, looked at her night-dress, her bare feet. ‘Excuse my getup; round here, we must hit th’ floor runnin’.’

‘Liam said I was wanted. Has she asked for me?’

‘She’s been askin’ for you, yes, we hated to rout you at such an hour.’

‘No rest for the wicked, as we say back home. Perfectly fine. Paddy?’

‘Dr. Feeney packed him off drunk as a lord an’ blubberin’ like a babby. Some gosser from Jack Kennedy’s came for him.’

‘Blubbering because he didn’t want to leave?’

‘Oh, no, he wanted to leave, for all that, I don’t know why he was blubberin’. Th’ drink does that with some, you know.’

‘Dublin?’

‘That’s th’ plan.’

‘Anything else going on?’

‘Until a bit ago, it was weeping an’ gnashin’ of teeth like in th’ book of Revelation—my uncle told me all about the end times, which he shouldn’t have done as I was a nervous child. Talkin’ out of her head, calling for her mum an’ sisters enough to break your heart. And God above, th’ screamin’ she can do. It elevates th’ pain, but she does it anyway, to see how much she can dish out to herself.’

‘How are you getting on?’

‘Even after what I went through with my father, it still scares th’ daylights out of me. ’t is like the devil himself gets loose. But I’m fine, I’m keepin’ up. Eileen goes on short hours soon, her brother’s in a bad way; I’ll be th’ one-armed paper hanger for a time.’

‘Is she sleeping?’

‘She slept for a bit after wearin’ herself out, but she’s awake now, has something to ask you that’s agitating her. If you don’t mind, Rev’rend, I’ll just try an’ catch a wink, as God knows I’ve had none. There’s Eileen if you need her, and Seamus. Overlook th’ smell, we got a bite down her an’ back it came an’ more. We’ll air out tomorrow.’

A single lamp burning. Eileen in a chair by the door, Cuch sleeping. He stepped into the room.

‘Eileen.’

‘Yes, mum?’

‘You may leave.’

The nurse left at once.

‘Reverend.’

‘Yes, Mrs. Conor. I’m here.’ The desperate panting; her reddened fingers thick with swelling.

‘Call me Evelyn. Everything must be simplified now.’

The ghastly leg uncovered. He pulled the chair up and leaned close, as if offering fire to a cold hearth.

‘You can do this,’ he said.

He was gripped by the look of her, as if she were going away to nothing, would be but an impression on the pillow the next time he came. And yet her will was there, he felt the iron of it.

‘I have a question,’ she said.

‘I’m listening.’

‘Something happened tonight.’ Her finger movement rapid. ‘After all the promises to myself that I could do this, I felt I couldn’t bear it, after all. The agony was overcoming; I knew I was dying. I wanted to die. If I could be said ever to pray, then I prayed I would die.

‘But I didn’t wish to pass until I told God what monstrous evil he is and how he had fooled so many but not myself, not Evelyn McGuiness, no, he could not mock me. I emptied myself of my last strength—with everything in me I obliterated him, I erased him from the heavens.’

Her quick breath stirring the sour air.

‘There was nothing left then of either of us, I thought I had died. But I had not died, as you see. What I thought was death was a peace such as I’ve never felt or believed possible. It was completely strange to me, and cannot be explained. I knew it had nothing to do with God, for God was dead, I had killed him in retribution for the many killings he has laid upon me. The peace did not pass quickly, as I believed it might. I thought, if this is dying, then I am not afraid to die.’

‘Don’t die,’ he said, simply.

‘There’s no reason to live. I only wished to live as proof I couldn’t be made to die.’

‘You must rest, Evelyn. You must give yourself time to heal.’

She licked her dry lips. ‘I cannot rest.’

‘Is the peace still with you?’

‘No. I did not deserve it, and it left me.’ Tears.

He sat, head down, feeling called out of himself, beyond his powers.

‘Water,’ he said, taking up the glass and bending the straw to her lips. She sucked.

‘So sick,’ she said, turning away.

He took a cotton-tipped stick from the jar and opened the lip balm and dressed the tip. ‘Let me,’ he said.

She opened her eyes to him, and he succored her lips as he had done for his mother. She was too frail to wrack herself like this, it was suicidal.

He stepped to the door to call Eileen, remembering for some reason his mother’s eyelids in death, how thin they seemed, and blue, like the wings of a moth. She had died at home, whispering that the garden gates were closed.

He turned and looked back and saw that she had gone to sleep, her mouth open in the awful gasping.

Wait,
he wanted to say,
you had a question.
He went to her bed and fell to his knees and with his own last strength did what he could in the face of the impossible.

Thirty-one

Without opening his eyes, he reached for his watch on the bed table, squinted at it. Nine o’clock. Unbelievable. He hadn’t slept ’til nine o’clock since when? Ever. He felt robbed, somehow.

There she sat in a chair by the bed as he had done at Catharmore.

‘Good grief, woman, why did you let me sleep the day away?’

‘I was painting you, that’s why.’

‘Painting me?’

She thrust the damp portrait in front of him. He sat up, put on his glasses.

‘Why did you paint me with my mouth open?’

‘Because it
was
open, of course.’

‘No fair.’

‘It was only
slightly
open.’

‘Slightly? It looks like Linville Caverns. You can practically see a stalactite.’

‘I’m not after mouths and noses and eyes and ears, it’s the
likeness
one strives to catch. This is a marvelous
likeness
, Timothy—admit it.’

‘I hardly ever see myself in profile, so I can’t vouch for it.’

‘Oh, please,’ she said, disgusted. ‘I’m trying to
occupy
myself. You were the only person in the room.’

‘We’ll tack it to a fence post in the garden, to keep out the crows.’

‘Wretch,’ she said. ‘What are you doing today?’

‘I’ll bring up breakfast if they’ll still make it for us.’

‘Maureen brought coffee at eight, you were sleeping like a bear cub. I can afford to miss a meal.’

‘Or I could carry you down.’ He didn’t know how, but he would give it a shot. ‘You need to get out of here.’

‘True. But what can I do? Possibly two more days of elevating, then the moon boot and I can start the old hobble . . .’

‘With great caution, Feeney said.’

‘. . . on the crutches.’

‘And then we’ll soon be home.’ A strange feeling as he said it. Weeks in Holly Springs and at Henry’s bedside in Memphis, and nearly two weeks now in Ireland. Home seemed lost in a mist.

She gave him the Worried Look. ‘Do you think it’s good to be called out like that, in the middle of the night?’

‘Of course it’s good,’ he snapped. ‘Sorry. Yes. It’s good.’
I’m all they have,
he wanted to say. ‘You’re still keen to finish the journal?’

‘Definitely.’

He pulled a knit shirt from the armoire, laid it on the bed. ‘Time’s winged chariot is at our backs.’

He gulped the water on his bed table. ‘I need coffee. And a bite of something. Juice, too; I need juice. Anything I can bring you?’

‘Surprise me.’

‘Done.’

‘Your insulin.’

‘Right. When I come back, we’ll hit Fintan a good lick, then I’ll help Liam with the paint job and have a run in the afternoon. What’s going on with Bella?’

‘She’s very winsome, really, and bent, of course, on persecuting herself over what she’s hiding. I do love her, Timothy.’

‘Remember that Feeney’s stopping by to have a look at you this evening.’ He had a look himself—the swelling seemed somewhat diminished. Enough, he thought, enough of this.

In the bathroom, he gave himself the shot, removed his trousers from the doorknob where he’d hung them at nearly four this morning.

‘How was it at Catharmore?’

He tried to find a way of condensing it for her, for himself, but he had no words for how it was.

‘Later,’ he said.

Feeling strangely off-kilter as he went downstairs, he shook his head as if to clear it. Sleeping ’til nine. He was an orderly creature, liking things to go according to custom, to habit. He liked a crease in his jeans, so be it.

And the dream of Henry, of looking into a bathroom mirror while shaving and seeing Henry’s face. It was his own reflection, he knew, yet it was Henry’s face in dark contrast to the white shaving foam. So he, Timothy, was actually a black man? How had he kept this knowledge from himself these many years? What did it mean and how was he to go forward? Was he both Henry and himself in one, or had he become Henry altogether? He felt the fear rising in him, leaned closer to the mirror, looked into his brother’s eyes. Why had no one mentioned this, made him see it? In the dream, something broke in him and he wept, and then the smell of coffee, and the notion that Peggy must be perking it on the stove.

Anna also had the Worried Look—it was going around.

‘How did you rest?’ she asked.

‘Well enough,’ he said.

‘I’m sorry you were called out.’

‘A hard night.’

‘Yes.’

‘Not for me, for her.’

Will you go up?
he wanted to say.
Will you forgive her and go up to her?
But he said nothing.

Back in the room with the tray, sitting in his accustomed chair, he realized a certain contentment, after all. The coffee hot and strong, the juice sweet and cold, their breakfast modest and good. And at least for now, their room a refuge, not a confinement.

They read together the
Venite, exultemus Domino
, prayed for those at home and those in the two households of this place and time.

She took the journal into her lap, then, and read to him, both of them happy in whatever way they could summon.

8th Day of Advent 1862

Frigid

Adam & Ltl Dorrit getting their Winter corn & through C’s insistence, each a blanket into the bargain

I must wonder to whom Uncle’s generosity would incline. To the Union would be my thinking, & even Sukey, formerly a slave, would place her allegiance there. On those days when C & I wish to be serving in Philadel we look about us & know we have undertaken the right course.

Rose McFee’s infant double-greatgrandtr stillborn, though we did all we could. When I passed the long mirror this morning, I was astonished to glimpse my father looking back. I felt an instant’s joy at seeing him, then realized the truth.

The lad arriving ten days hence—Michael & Kathleen the following week by train.

The Bride is set upon producing the finest Christmas Feast of her fortysome years tho we have yesterday reduced her allotment for Provisions. She gives me a Warring look & says she has made do all her life, twill be nothing new, & if she is carried to the grave for the extra work required to stretch this miserly sum, she will do it nonetheless as a matter of personal pride—end of sermon.

C said in November that Padraigin would want money for the lending of his sister-in-law’s son. He would not put it that way, C said, but would somehow seize this opportunity which he has regrettably done. Three-hundred pounds he’s asking, desperate was his word, for a debt owing on his business.

If you do not send the money, C says, I believe he will not send the lad.

I considered offering less but this smacks of playing cheap with a human soul. Indeed it is small payment for the pleasurable company of a lad who daily entertains my thoughts.

C insists that the wallpapering can wait. The time has come when we cannot have everything we wish whereas with Uncle we might have had wallpaper & the lad’s visit, together. These days we must make choices, a reasonable thing in this life when so many must choose between filling their bellies or the bellies of their children, between meat or broth, between one room or none.

9 December

A bitter evening with smoking turf due to heavy winds

My hand trembles to write that I have been to the Mass Rock in a falling snow & received what I believe to be a message from God.

I would describe the experience as a warming sensation about the heart coupled with a light head, during which I closed my eyes & saw before me a commission of just three words printed in thick letters on a severely white paper. I have said nothing to C & feel a terrible urgency to act upon the commission. It may be that I am going a little mad, I do not know—I am both frightened & overjoyed.

A fair, temperate day, cannot keep track of dates—perhaps 11 Dec

Keegan, I say—we are sitting at the door of the carriage house, each of us peeling an apple with our pocket knife—how are you taking to the Married life?

There is a long silence. With the point of his knife he scratches his grizzled chin.

Well enough to get by, he says at last.

I say nothing. He is a talker & will say more if I remain silent. But he does not say more.

Only well enough to get by, is it?

She likes to commandeer things, he says. Meself at th’ top of th’ list.

I thought that was what you found appealing—that she would take charge, keep you in tow.

He gives a bitter snicker.

And I believe you said she makes you laugh.

Haw, he says. She’s bloody sober as a nun now we’re tied. All work an’ no play now she has me in her pocket.

He cuts a piece of apple & stares off into the woods, his jaw clenched.

He turns suddenly to me, on the boil now. An’ a monstrous pack rat, he says, the like of which we’ll never see again in this earthly life. Last night when I went to climb in my spot by th’ wall, there sits a dishtub of dinner plates broke in a hundred pieces, which she’d turned up in Balfour’s dump hole. Move th’ bloody dishtub, I say, & let a man get his rightful sleep. There’s nowhere else to put it, she says. And where will you put meself, if you don’t mind me askin’? Hang yourself up on a horseshoe nail, she says.

With that, I have my opening. I can hardly believe such good fortune.

You’ll soon have space in plenty, I say. I am moving my pharmacopoeia into your quarters on Wednesday morning at first light. Running up and down stairs to my books is a waste of valuable time—I’m having Jessie sweep out the cabin for you.

I say this mildly, as if we are talking pork prices.

He looks as if he hasn’t heard aright.

Wednesday, I say. Early, of course, to get ahead of the patients.

Keegan is at once shocked by the suddenness of the announcement & fearing the outrage of his wife.

But she dotes on bein’ in the big house, he says, his voice rising.

Of course.

Wouldn’t like walkin’ over in rain or foul weather of any kind, or at night when th’ bastes are out.

He is throwing down the gauntlet now.

Oh, yes, there’s that, I say, sanguine.

I refuse to remind him of the cabin’s many fine qualities—two spacious rooms, the broad hearth, a chimney that draws sweetly.

I stand & toss my apple core to a clutch of chickens scratching about in winter weeds. Well, then, I say, Wednesday morning it is for moving my library down. You’ll need to be set up in your new quarters by late Tuesday, with everything taken away from here so Jessie can sweep out.

He is aghast.

But I must go to Mullaghmore on Thursday & back on Friday, he says, as if such tasks in a row are too weighty for him.

I walk across to the house, dismissing his complaint. My knees are weak as pond water. I have never been so forthright with him, a problem born of cowardice. I had just arrived here when we met & befriended one another—he became an intimate to whom I told much & from whom I learned a great deal about country ways. Then I hired him & money entered into it, switching matters to the business side & formenting unease between us.

I find C in the Surgery, making the table ready, pulling out the stool for young Mick Doolin who will be coming up the lane about now with his fierce young Collie. There is a fire on the hearth, the tea kettle singing.