In the Company of Others (30 page)

Is it done?

I nod to her.

There, she says, I’m proud of you.

I feel at once a child & do so relish the feeling.

I hope we won’t taste her displeasure in the Christmas pudding, she says.

She’s too proud for that, I say, as if I know the truth which I do not.

She has the serious look on her face. The lad must have his pony, she declares. Brigid Collins tells me Willie has got himself a pony from Connemara, a mare but a year old & pulling a red cart.

The thought of this makes her smile.

Since our discussions of altered income, I had planned to forgo the pony. Her goodness is a nourishment to me.

As Little Dorrit is now well-broke to the old carriage from O’Keefe, I shall send her to Mullaghmore with Keegan & ride Adam out to Sullivan the Mason on Thursday. Then we shall see about Willie Collins.

The date? God only knows

A pale sun, very cold

I could not help myself. I have bought both pony & cart from Willie, for an offer he could not resist.

I hadn’t thought to sell her, he says, looking aggrieved.

Saying nothing, I hand him the envelope.

He breaks the seal, looks in, removes the money & counts through it.

Jesus, Joseph & Mary, he whispers.

I had given him enough to cover his expenses in seeking another like Brannagh—a name which he says means ‘beauty with hair as dark as a raven.’

Sullivan the Mason hard at work with his helper Danny Moore & nearly done with the job—the bookcase ready for staining. I have said the room is for the storing of trunks and such.

Keegan & Bride gone to the Cabin, C & I feel the monolith resting on us these months is lifted off.

18 December

The lad has come!

He asked for her immediately he entered the hall & burst into tears when told that she went away to her family.

Why, he says, desolate, why did she go away? She liked it here very fine, she told me she did.

Tis her
family
, I say, as if that explained everything.

I thought you was her family, he says.

I do not know how to proceed with this. C takes him in hand & we go to the kitchen where a bale of sweets is arrayed upon a silver tray. Silver for a lad but eight years old!

Fiona stands arms akimbo & beaming down upon him as if from On High. No, we will not taste her displeasure in the pudding, for her Great Pleasure is standing here before us in his suit, the scant sleeve revealing a thin arm as he reaches for a floury scone.

After lunch, he slipped down to his job in the dining room, where Liam did brushwork around the French doors, and window frames, and he rolled the wall opposite the painting.

Warm, humid; birdsong in the beech grove.

They didn’t talk much, though he sensed there was much to be said.

‘The cost of around-the-clock nursing must be affordable here,’ he said to Liam, making conversation.

‘Some of the cost is paid by the state—the better part of it’s paid by Seamus. The oul’ fellow he worked for in New York left a trust to last Seamus his life. No staggering sum, but something to keep him in old age. Paddy was after it pretty hard in th’ beginning, but Seamus got wise and put a stop to it.’

‘A very fine fellow, your Seamus.’

‘He says we’re the only real family he ever had, poor devil, as if’t was a family worth havin’.’ Liam caught his breath. ‘Look, Rev’rend—there’s no way I can ever thank you.’

‘Don’t try. It isn’t necessary.’

‘We’ve never before put anything on a guest.’

‘I don’t feel put-upon. Going up to your mother—it’s what I do.’

‘’t isn’t as if we were your own parish.’

‘Wherever I am, he supplies a parish.’

‘I don’t understand that, you know.’

‘I hardly understand it myself. But it’s okay. Let it be.’

‘Corrigan called. He paid a visit to Slade in prison. Got nothing out of him. No surprise.’

‘Will they continue the investigation?’

‘Corrigan says they’ll keep it open, but . . .’ Liam shrugged.

He stood back, surveyed his work. Done.

Liam’s mobile gave its odd ring. ‘Conor. Yes. Standin’ right here.’ He passed the phone over. ‘Th’ nurse.’

‘Fletcher?’

‘What’s left of me, Rev’rend.’

‘How is she?’

‘Sleeping since we saw you, and at it again all mornin’ ’til a half hour ago. Seein’ spiders on the wall, snakes in the drapes—all real enough to convince Eileen they were there, poor dote. Dr. Feeney’s increasing her dosage of lorazepam, you’d think she was a draft horse th’ way we must pump it into her. But she’s quiet now an’ had a bite of oatmeal without givin’ it back.’

‘Good. Great.’

‘Says to send up th’ Protestant.’

He went to their room for his prayer book, realizing again how much he liked the feel of it in his hand, the wear along the spine.

William sat by the fire, anxious, a manila envelope on his lap.

‘Will she make it, d’ye think, Rev’rend?’

‘I don’t know. She’s brave and stubborn, William. Perhaps—with God’s help.’

‘Ye’re askin’ his help, are ye?

‘Yes. Are you?

‘He wouldn’t be after hearin’ from me.’

‘Why so?’

‘What have I done for him, or for anybody, to tell th’ truth? ’t is best to ask for nothin’.’

‘Yet he gives us everything. For you, a wonderful home. People who love you. Good health.’

‘If I was to get his attention, he might be reminded to take it all away.’

He laughed. ‘Pray for her, William. I guarantee that God would like you to give him a shout.’

William thrust the envelope into his hand. ‘Will you carry it up to her?’

‘The portrait?’

‘’t is.’

‘You’re making a gift of it?’

‘Ah, no, I’ll need it back. I wanted her to see . . .’ William choked up, cleared his throat. ‘I wanted her to see me oul’ face . . . one more time.’ He took out his handkerchief, wiped his eyes. ‘My compliments to her, if you’d be so kind.’

‘You want her to see that you’re still a handsome man, is that it?’

‘No, no, Rev’rend, you’re slaggin’ me now.’

He was going out to the Vauxhall when Liam came around from his work on the addition and spied the envelope.

‘His portrait?’

‘It is.’

‘He’s sending it up to Mother?’

‘Yes.’

‘God above, and him eighty-some. Does it never end?’

‘She’s in a bad way, Liam. Any chance you might go up?’

‘Don’t ask me to do it, Reverend. I don’t want to tally th’ many reasons, but she’s been no mother to me.’

He nodded, walked away. Liam called after him.

‘Rev’rend.’

‘Yes?’

‘Sorry to disappoint you.’ Liam tried to say something more, but could not. He turned and stepped quickly around the side of the lodge.

‘Hold up, Rev’rend!’

William came toward him on the cane.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I don’t suppose I’d be welcome to ride up with ye.’

‘That’s outside my jurisdiction.’

‘I wouldn’t trouble her a’tall, wouldn’t even see her. I’d sit quiet as any mouse in her reception hall, not sayin’ a word.’

‘What would be the point, do you think?’

‘Just to be there, Rev’rend, just to be there.’

‘She’s in no shape for company, William.’

‘No, no, I would wait in th’ hall, which I’ve never laid eyes on these many years. You mustn’t tell her I’m there, no, I wouldn’t do that; ’t would add to her troubles. Just let her see th’ portrait, just hold it where she can look on it a bit, that’s all I’m askin.’

Should he be party to mixing it up with the long darkness between Catharmore and Broughadoon? What could be gained by it? On the other hand, what could be lost?

Thirty-two

‘When I was here before, you had a question.’

In only a few hours, her cheeks had grown more hollow, her eyes more sunken.

‘What was that peace . . . that visited me?’ she whispered.

‘I believe it was God.’

‘We have so little time, Reverend, there’s none available for the ridiculous.’

He said nothing. The old dog snored in his corner bed.

The hematoma was not on view today, but hidden beneath a kind of tent in the bed linen. Her fingers picked at the coverlet. ‘If what you say is true, why would he do such a thing?’

‘Because he loves you.’

‘No one loves me, Reverend. I’ve made certain of it.’

‘I beg to differ. Seamus loves you.’

‘Seamus,’ she said, dispassionate.

‘Liam loves you.’

‘There’s no reason for him to love me, I failed him utterly as a mother. I withdrew from him and let his father enjoy his affections.’

‘Right or wrong,’ he said, ‘I believe I can speak for Liam in saying he loves you. Not in the way we think of love, but in the way of blood to blood, bone to bone. My father was a broken man who treated me brokenly—the same way he treated my mother, and her housekeeper who bore his son. Yet in that bond of flesh which is more powerful than any pain, I loved him with a reckless love that was regularly wounded but never killed. God puts it there, this love we often don’t want, that we war against—yet there it is, all the same.’

The room was being aired; behind the draperies, a breeze shifted the heavy fabric, pushed it out, sucked it back.

‘Why do you come when I call?’ she whispered. ‘What am I to you?’

‘One day you may call and I won’t come. There will be an ocean between us. But call on God and he will come. That’s his job—if called, he shows up.

‘As for what you are to me, I don’t know, exactly. All I know is that you have a need and I’m appointed to fill it however I can. That’s true for me since I was a boy. I have a question for you. Why do you call for me?’

‘Because you have nothing to lose in coming and absolutely nothing to gain, Reverend.’ Sweat shining on her face.

‘Please call me Tim.’

‘That’s a modern foolishness. I despise modern foolishness.’

‘You prefer a more classic or historic foolishness? ’

‘You’re a difficult man.’

‘You’re a difficult woman. But I think we’ve touched on that before.’

The tremoring, her voice shaken. ‘All hope of forgiving and being forgiven is lost.’

‘I tell you this truth above all others, Evelyn—it’s never too late.’

‘The cleric is all about hope—a tiresome feature of your calling. It is entirely too late for me. I haven’t the strength for anything more or even anything less. I am what I am in this wretched husk—an old woman with ills and torments to last the rest of my days.’

‘Now you’re being tiresome.’

A pale ferocity in her eyes. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Speaking always of your torments, your griefs, your many persecutions. The fact is, God visited you, he sought out your company, and you refuse to believe it.’

‘How can I possibly believe such an absurd notion?’

‘You make a decision to believe it. Unlike what you say of me, you have nothing to lose but everything to gain.’

‘Do you know what happened to my mother and sisters?’

‘I do.’

‘I opened the door,’ she said, weeping.

‘You opened the door because you were going back to ask forgiveness, and to offer it. That’s reason enough to open any door, anytime.’

‘I banked the fire, I pulled the chairs to the hearth, I hung the laundry over the chairs. There was the spark to the dry cloth.’

‘You were going back to ask forgiveness and to offer it. Please remember that.’

The draperies sucking in. A thin keening rising from her.

He bent toward her, praying, silent.

‘I was the survivor. Not dead like them, but alive and alone, and yes, beautiful—it was a curse, something my sisters hated me for. I was left to recall every day and night of my life the horror I had seen and the suffering I had caused.

‘My God,’ she said, panting. ‘My God.’

He had an intense desire to touch her, to lay his hand on her forehead, but he held back.

‘Tell me something,’ he said.

‘I have told you everything of consequence.’

‘Tell me whether William is Liam’s father.’

He said it gently, yet his heart pounded. He’d been in such territory before—the territory of the hot spot, the truth that people reserve until last or until never.

She turned her head on the pillow and faced him, ravaged now, beyond defenses. ‘Why are you such a hard man?’

‘I’m actually a pathetically soft man.’

‘Is it important that you know this?’ There was no bitterness, merely a question forwardly put.

‘It is. Things have gotten tangled up; they’ve gotten people tangled up.’

‘A web,’ she said, panting. ‘A snare. If you must know, William was the love of my life.’

He thought of the old man sitting in the reception hall, the inscription engraved on the window pane.

‘I learned to hate him to the same degree I loved him. He was cruel and self-serving. He came home at last when Paddy was six, he thought he might have me again for his own. Nothing mattered to him—not my husband, not my son, not my fine house for which I had surrendered everything, not even my mother and two sisters whom I had lost for all time.

‘I toyed with William then, as he had toyed with me. I led him on, let him think he might take me to himself, that I had no care for my husband or child or anything but his unspeakable ways, the big boxer who’d been to Scotland and had his face bashed in, the man of the hour, the bloody self-serving gamecock of the world.

‘Aye, and he thought he had me, that I was all but done in the oven of his heathen lust. And then I took my husband’s pheasant gun from the cabinet; ’twas a twelve-bore Purdey side-by-side from the twenties. The stock was carved Turkish walnut and Riley was very proud of it. I was the only person allowed to shoot it other than himself, and I was an exceedingly fine shot.’

He watched a certain color return to her face, noted something like a grimace that might be amusement.

‘I took it to the beech wood where I was to meet William for the offering of my body, my flesh—the one prize he had not yet won. I was standing behind a bench Riley had put there, and I see William coming out of the wood, gawping at me like a bloody savage.

‘I raise the gun, then, and fire off a shot, for I intend to kill him and let the vultures take care of the rest. Oh, if you could have seen . . .’ She was suddenly laughing, a raw, hoarse, half-hindered laugh, as if it were wrenched from her like an infant when it won’t be naturally born. On and on, her shoulders heaving, and then the coughing.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘No more.’ He put his hand on her head, felt the heat of her scalp with its coarse silk of hair.

‘I would have killed him,’ she said, plucking at the coverlet, ‘but he ducked as I fired, then did what the spineless do. He ran.’ She looked up at him. ‘I despised him all the more for that. For all his taking it like a man in the ring, for all his standing up to whatever black torment the public demanded, he ran before the fury of a woman. What do you say, Reverend? ’

‘I say I would have run, too. Oh, yes.’

They both laughed now. Hard and long; it hurt his sides.

‘Water,’ she said, and he offered the straw, and she drank a little, and he opened the manila envelope and removed the portrait.

‘I’ve been asked to show you this.’

She lay still against the pillows and examined it with a solemn gaze.

‘The oul’ gallute,’ she said.

He laid it on the table.

‘Who did that portrait?’ she demanded.

‘My wife.’

‘Your
wife
?’

‘She’s an author and illustrator of children’s books. She has a newfound gift for portraiture.’

‘Show it to me again.’

He held it before her, feeling the odd beggar of pride in Cynthia’s achievement.

‘Your wife is very competent. Where is she?’

‘At Broughadoon.’

‘I would like her to paint me in exchange for a pearl ring.’

‘I’ll tell her of your offer.’

‘The setting is white gold. I wish to be painted while I’m at my worst.’

‘A very unusual request.’

‘I wish to see what life has written on my face. It will be for my own amusement. Perhaps there will be something left of the young bride in the portrait after Sargent. Riley loved my beauty, Reverend, all the while looking away from my misery, refusing to see it because it was not lovely, but deformed and carrying me away like someone caught in an undertow.

‘Suffering was all I had and he wanted to deprive me of it, as anyone in his right mind would. He wanted my beauty to be everything, to be all, to be enough.

‘But William would have let me have the sorrow; he was unafraid of it, for he had sorrow himself. Beauty would not have been enough for William; he would have wanted all that I had, all the pain, all that I was, and if we had married, perhaps I could have been healed, relieved in some way I can’t know.’

The draperies stirring, afternoon light shimmering on the walls.

‘What is your wife’s name?’

‘Cynthia. She’s nursing a fractured ankle, but has wanted to see Catharmore.’

‘Show it to me again,’ she said.

She looked at it, expressionless.

‘He’s waiting in your front hall.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Just to be near, he says, not wanting to trouble you.’

She tried to rise, felt a scalding pain, lay back. ‘Tell him to get off my property at once or we shall call the Gards.’

In the kitchen, Seamus gave him a fervent back-slapping.

‘Joseph and Mary! I’ve never heard the like. When has the woman laughed? I can’t recall th’ time, though I remember bein’ much younger.’

Something was shaken off them; they were laughing—cracking up, as Dooley would say.

‘I could kiss y’r bloody hand.’

‘Don’t be doing that,’ he said, bursting into another fit of laughter. Both of them at it again, bending over, carrying on like two pagans.

‘Great God!’ said Seamus, wiping his face with a handkerchief.

‘Yes, Seamus, yes. He is a great God.’

Sober now, the two of them, looking at each other. Tears in their eyes.