William H. Hallahan - (5 page)

All day, brilliant sunshine alternated with sudden black clouds
that would rise out of the sea and send sharp showers dancing. Then
the returning sun would raise tendrils of mist from the stone walls.

Often a man would be seen far ahead, walking on the curving
bending roadways, but when the car caught up, the figure would be
gone.

"Ah, it's a haunted land," Aunt Agnes said with a grin.
"Strange creatures are always about."

Kathleen and Aunt Agnes were back at the cottage for tea about
four o'clock, when the priest with the dog appeared again.

Agnes had brought out an old family Bible full of genealogical
material and Kathleen was making notes from it. The only sound came
from the steaming kettle. Kathleen was thinking how peaceful it was.
The cottage had a magnificent view of Galway Bay.

In the deep window ledge potted geraniums grew, stunning touches
of red in the shining whitewashed room, filled now with sunlight.

As Kathleen transcribed notes from the Bible, the two women talked
of the women of Ireland and of that flawless Irish skin with a blush
of red in both cheeks.

"Comes from the rain and the moisture," Aunt Agnes said.
"And that's where the arthritis comes from too. The damp."

Kathleen glanced out of the window just as the red-haired priest
went by, the large white mastiff at his side. He glanced once at
Kathleen and she felt again the painful loneliness.

"Oh!" she exclaimed to Agnes. "There goes that same
priest with the dog."

Agnes jumped up and dropped the slice of buttered bread from her
hand. "Where?"

"There. Beyond the old tree."

Agnes ran to the window. "Ah, Kathleen," she said.
"You're drawing a long chalk."

"No. I saw him." Kathleen doubtfully rose and went to
the window. There was no one on the roadway--no man, no dog. "He
has red hair." She faltered. "I must have imagined it. But
I could have sworn--" She looked at Agnes and knew intuitively
that Agnes had seen him too.

Agnes murmured two words to herself. "The Magus."

And that night in a pub not far from the cottage, she received
another shock.

The little bar was packed with relatives. It was an old place in
time-dark wainscoting and smoke-dark ceilings. There were the
familiar odors of peat and animal dung and cattle and loam and
tobacco and stout and lager, and the sound of talk and laughter and
the scraping of muddy boot soles on the bare wooden floors.

They crowded around Jim as though they couldn't get enough of him.
They were telling him all kinds of family stories and gossip,
disputing each other's versions as they went, and he told them
stories about their American relatives that made them grin at each
other.

They also talked of banshees and fairies and pookas and laughed at
themselves and said they didn't believe a word of the old stories,
but there were always the crossed fingers held behind the back and
the tapping on wood, and more than once Kathleen saw one of the women
pitch a pinch of salt over her left shoulder into the peat fire.

And they sang songs for her and Jim, and Jim wrote down the words
and vowed he would sing them in Uncle Sharkey's pub on Third Avenue
in Manhattan.

That's when they found out that Jim had a fine singing voice. A
cousin went for his accordion and returned on the run, still
strapping it on. Jim sang "The Rose of Tralee" for them to
loud applause and then they wanted him to sing some American songs,
ones that they didn't know. So he sang "Shenandoah," much
to their delight, and they made him sing it over and over until they
all had it by heart.

In that happy din, Kathleen was sitting by the fire to chase the
chill, talking with the women about babies 'and drinking more tea,
when an eight-year-old girl called Teresa put her guileless hands in
Kathleen's lap and said, "Will you name the baby Brendan if it's
a girl?" and two older girls behind her giggled with glee.

And as Kathleen laughed too, she felt another twinge, a sharp one,
and for the first time fought back panic.

"They say you have the second sight and ail," said the
girl.

"Who says I do?"

"Ah, they're all talking about it, me ma and the others. Do
you have the second sight?"

"I don't know. What is it?"

"You can see things no one else can. You can see into the
future and you can see pookas and fairies and hear the banshee and
you can see the Magus, they say."

"The Magus." Kathleen put her hand on the girl's
coal-dark hair. "What's the Magus?"

"He's a--why, he's the Magus. . .a spirit that looks like a
priest with red hair and a big dog with big teeth that comes around
if you don't go to bed when you're told."

"Have you ever seen him?"

Teresa shook her head. "Oh, no, no. Only if you have the
second sight."

"What does the Magus do?"

"Why--he just goes around, that's all."

"Is he looking for something?"

Teresa looked at the fire for an answer. "Dunno. He just is,
that's all. They say he lost his map and can't get home until he
finds it. Did you ever hear the banshee wail?"

"No. Doesn't the banshee wail when someone dies?"

"Yes." Teresa shuddered and giggled.

"Did you ever hear the banshee wail, Teresa?"

The little girl shook her head. "Only if you have the second
sight. No one else can hear the banshee. And she only wails for
important people--kings and such."

"I hope I don't hear her."

"You probably won't. You have to be pure Irish to hear the
banshee."

"Well, I'm pure Irish."

"No, no. You're a Narrowback. You're from America."

"Oh, I see."

"Can you sing a song for me? Something American with Indians
in it?"

"They do go on, missus. The children, I mean." He was a
man in his late fifties, slight with thinning hair and a kind face
and whiskery eyebrows.

Kathleen smiled at him. "Are you from the bus?"

"Oh, yes, missus. The bus." A load of Irish tourists had
crowded into the already packed pub and had immediately fallen into
conversation with Jim's relatives.

"Are you all off somewhere? On a holiday perhaps?"
Kathleen could not help smiling at his mirthful face.

"Yes, missus. We're all from a little village up the way a
bit. We came to see the Burren here in County Clare. We were thinking
about going out to Arans but the water was too rough. So we visited
some of the old churches. You might say we're amateur
archaeologists."

"Do you farm for a living?"

"Oh, no, missus. I'm a schoolteacher. I teach mathematics and
Irish history."

"Just Irish?"

"Is there any other kind?" He smiled at her again and
the mirth was infectious. "Are these all your relatives,
missus?"

"Yes."

"You could start your own pub."

"In a way we have. The pub keeper is my husband's third
cousin."

"Dear God. An Irish gold mine. It's better than a rich wife."

He turned his head and looked down at the corner of the bar. Some
of the men from the bus and the bus driver himself were talking
politics in a huddle around an old man who spoke to the beat of his
own forefinger. Each time he finished a sentence they would all raise
truculent eyes to scan the other faces, then return again to the
finger.

"There will be a quarrel soon if we don't leave," the
man said.

Kathleen smiled at him. "Is this pub on your archaeological
tour?"

The man, she realized, was quietly laughing at her question. "What
a fine idea. I must make a note of that--a tour of all the historical
pubs in Ireland." He nodded at a woman chatting with the pub
keeper. "Mrs. Garrity needed to use the public loo--and we all
came into wait for her."

Kathleen smiled at him. "But wasn't that some time ago?"

"Depends on whose watch you're using. I'd say we haven't been
here half long enough. Everyone's in a hurry these days and old
Ireland is in her winding sheet We're all very American now.
Narrowbacks we've become. No more time for the amenities or for fun.
Japanese factories all over the place. Everyone getting cars.
Builders' estates all over the country. Suburbs. In Ireland, suburbs.
Dear, dear God."

"I saw you listening to the little girl's talk of the Magus.
Do you know something about that?"

"Oh, yes, missus. The Magus is an eternal wanderer. He's
looking for a map that will take him back where he belongs."

"Back? Back where?"

"Don't know, missus. They say when he finds it, it will be
the end of the world."
 
 

She got to bed at last. The women had started it; they said the
color had drained from her face and she had to rest for the baby's
sake, and finally they made Jim take her back to the cottage. That
broke up the whole party, and pretty soon there was the sound of
slamming car doors while other people ghosted away on bicycles.
Inside, the yawning pub keeper counted the take in his till. A grand
night entirely.

Then she lay in her bed while Jim, who was keyed up, wrote letters
home. "Only four more days," was the last thing he said to
her as she drifted off to sleep.

It had been a long day and she had made herself overtired, and as
sleep claimed her her mind swarmed with the cries of the shrike, the
babies' tombstones, the Magus, the unsettling talk of the second
sight and the banshee.

It was late, maybe three in the morning, when it woke her the most
unearthly shriek of grief she'd ever heard. Extraordinarily loud,
outside the cottage. Even the loudest call of the shrike was just a
faint suggestion of it. She turned her head and looked at Jim. In the
streaming moonlight he was sound asleep.

The shriek came again. The terrible grief in it made tears spring
to her eyes as the voice fell away into a low keening sob. It sounded
as though it was closer. Jim never stirred.

Again it sounded, right under her window, a numbing, piercing cry
that trailed off into a keen again. She slipped out from under the
quilt and went to the window.

In full moonlight, below on the roadway, a gaunt woman with a
starveling's face, unkempt hair, bare feet and a tattered gown raised
her head and looked grief-stricken into Kathleen's eyes and emitted
another heartbreaking cry. Then she stepped into the shadows of a
tree. She was gone. As Kathleen settled down in the chair to watch
for her, the first labor pangs doubled her over.
 
 

Agnes came up just after the water broke.

"She'll never make it to the hospital," she told Jim.
"Dear God, it's quick. She'll have it right here in this bed."

Kathleen tried to sit up. "Hospital. We have to get to the
hospital."

"You'll be a mother long before you get there, darling,"
Agnes said. "Lie back. I've delivered many a baby in my time.
More than two dozen were born in this bed alone."

Kathleen cried out with pain and pulled her hair.

"Easy does it," Agnes said, studying her watch. "Go
with the contractions. You have to help."

"Who died?" Kathleen asked suddenly.

"Who died where?" Agnes asked.

"Here. In the house." Kathleen felt the cry of pain torn
from her throat. There was a prolonged series of contractions now. "I
heard the banshee wail."

Agnes nervously went to the window and looked without hope for the
doctor.

Brendan Davitt, weight six and a half American pounds, arrived
twenty minutes before the doctor did.

Dr. Dunn was a smiling, red-faced man. "What was your hurry?"
he asked Kathleen. "You should have waited to have him in the
hospital. Did you know Ireland has the finest maternity hospitals in
the world, bar none? It's true, thanks to the Irish Sweepstakes."

They put Baby Brendan naked on the quilt beside his mother and
examined him.

"Oh, he's beautiful, Kathleen," Aunt Agnes said. "Tan
as toast. Curly black hair like his father."

"He's a Davitt," said Jim. "Look at those feet."

"He should be baptized quick as spit," Agnes murmured.
"I never heard of a banshee wailing at a birth before."
Aunt Agnes held the baby in her arms. "Welcome to the world,
Brendan Davitt. God knows, you will need all the luck you can get."
 
 

Kathleen lay in the bed for five days. She had plenty of milk, and
Baby Brendan took it in greedily as if he were in a race to grow up.
The doctor visited her every afternoon, and Agnes came in and out all
day as though she was watching for something. In the afternoons she
took tea in the bedroom with Kathleen. And each afternoon she raised
the question of baptism with Kathleen.

"When I get up," Kathleen insisted. "What is the
rush? He's in good health, isn't he?"

Aunt Agnes would only lapse into silence.

One afternoon, after tea, Aunt Agnes stood on the stair landing,
holding Kathleen's teacup to the sunlight, trying to read the leaves.
And Kathleen saw her.

"What did you see?"

"Hmmmm?"

"In the cup. My tea leaves. What did you see?"

Agnes sat on the edge of the bed. "I knew a woman once in
these parts who had the second sight and she would read tea leaves
and she showed me a little about it. And for fun I can see some
things, but these leaves, I can't read them. And I shouldn't even
tell you about it for fear of frightening you. But, well, your
baby--there's shooting stars and these great upheavals in the
universe. Some momentous event and I'm not competent to read it.
Maybe you can. . .you've the second sight. Do you have any sense of
seeing the future?"

"I don't have the second sight."

"Yes, you do. You just don't know it."

Kathleen turned her face away and sobbed. "I saw the baby
impaled on a thorn by a butcher-bird."

"Oh, dear God."
 
 

It was difficult to say who first thought of the monastery. Or
even why. It just became accepted that the monks would baptize
Brendan Davitt. And one fine Sunday, a few days before the Davitts
flew back to America, several carloads trooped to the monastery for
the baptism.