Maureen patted a couple of wing chairs angled toward the hearth. ‘Your poor ankle wins th’ prize of th’ front row.’
‘You’re a dote,’ said his wife. ‘Will you sit with us?’
‘Aye, with pleasure, and thank you for your comp’ny.’ Before he could give a hand, she drew a chair from the game table and sat next to him. ‘There’ll be fifteen of us this evenin’-like family.’
‘It’s my guess,’ he said, ‘that you had something to do with our surprise.’
‘Aye. For many years now.’
He found the disorder of her teeth compelling, in a way; her smile was more engaging for it.
Anna had disappeared; Liam and Seamus served coffee.
He nosed the dark, fragrant brew, took a sip-full-bore, precisely the way he liked it. At home he played it safe, drank the eunuch decaf every evening; here, he rolled the dice, and so far had slept like a log. He’d been hooked on coffee from an early age; had searched for decades since for anything remotely similar to what his mother perked in a beat-up pot on the woodstove that stood alongside the electric range. Often with a grind of wild chickory root, it had the heedless taste of the campfire, something of backbone and daring that he could never replicate.
The club took the sofa; the anglers nailed favorite wing chairs; William and Seamus assumed their posts at the checkerboard; Liam sat nearby, distracted.
Anna entered from the stair hall as the mantel clock struck a quarter ’til nine, and stood before them on the hearth. Because he was accustomed to seeing her in clogs and work gear, her frank good looks in a green dress gave him a kind of jolt. He saw in her face the softening that follows earnest confession.
‘With the exception of my departed mother, Roisin, I cannot think of anyone I’d rather share this special evening with. All of you here tonight love life and its many possibilities, just as they say my mother did.’
She spoke slowly, measuring her words. ‘’t is a rare gift you’ll be given this evening-a wondrous thing of heart and mind and soul that we can’t completely understand, for it comes of God alone.
‘Ladies and gentlemen…’ Her voice broke; she lowered her eyes briefly, looked up again. ‘’t is with great honor and joy that I give you… my daughter, Bella Flaherty.’
Bella strode from the hall and stood where her mother had stood. She gazed for a moment above the heads of her audience, brought the fiddle up, rested it beneath her chin, poised the bow. Her body was rigid, every energy concentrated.
She drew the bow across the strings in a single long, piercing note. Lifted the bow, laid it again to the strings, sounded a note that shimmered in the air, fragile as a moth.
He took Cynthia’s hand.
The music came at them abruptly, and with such raw force that he was rocked back in his chair. Raging, wounded, feverish music, with the volume of a dozen fiddles at work in the room. He looked at his wife, who sat with her mouth slightly agape; glanced at Maureen, who covered her mouth with her hand.
God above, he thought. The unleashed spirit of the music had something in it of unchecked risk and gamble; perspiration gleamed on Bella’s face, half turned from them to her fiddle. He closed his eyes to sharpen his hearing of the music, was astounded again by its flash and intensity, backed by the drumming of William’s cane on the floor. It was a wild ride with no roll bars.
The piece ended suddenly. There was a long, stunned silence-then, an explosion of applause as Bella looked without expression above their heads.
‘’t is th’ trad music she plays, like her father,’ said Maureen. ‘’t was a hard one, that, with what they call th’ tongued triplets.’
‘Brilliant,’ he whispered.
Bella looked at William. ‘Daideo, this is for you.’
William gave a nod, crossed himself.
She placed the fiddle under her chin, raised the bow. Then came the grieving music, pouring over them like a vapor, like a shroud. He was standing by the fresh mound in Hill Crest, alone at his mother’s grave, wondering how he could go on.
Cynthia glanced at him, wordless.
Now the music was no longer the shroud, but comfort to the ones surviving, pleading with their sorrow, ending with promise.
Their unhindered applause poured into the silence left by the voice of the fiddle. He was moved that anyone so young could interpret wrenching loss, then remembered the child removed to Lough Arrow at the age of four.
His nerves had come alive, he was fully awake in some hidden place in himself that he hadn’t remembered.
Maureen leaned to him and whispered, ‘’t will be Bonny Kate comin’ up, mebbe, or Dear Irish Boy, if she takes th’ notion.’
He clasped Maureen’s hand with its leathered palm, raised it to his cheek. ‘Well done,’ he said.
‘She’s not my own blood, but she’s my babby for all that!’
‘Aye,’ he said.
Bella turned her gaze to Maureen. ‘Mamó, this is for you.’
Then, something he could only define as anointed-with her bow, Bella Flaherty called forth music of sweetly fluent temper; tenderness found its opening and was transformed into something akin to yearning, or longing; he heard in the notes the drone of the bagpipe. Maureen wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
If they could hear this back home, he thought, where countless Irish had immigrated all those years ago, where the color of the old speech lingered, and the old tunes resonated still…
Applause, then, and Maureen throwing a kiss to the fiddler.
‘Will ye sing with me, Mamó?’
‘Oh,’ said Maureen, her breath gone at the idea.
‘Will ye?’
Maureen flushed, looked at him, at Cynthia. ‘Jesus, Mary, an’ all th’ saints… I wasn’t expectin’…’
‘Please,’ said Cynthia.
‘’t would be a féirin,’ said Anna.
‘Th’ Nightingale, then, and God help an’ oul’ woman.’ Maureen rose from the chair and joined Bella.
William looked disapproving. ‘’t is a tune of the English.’
‘They borrow from us, we borrow from them,’ said Bella. ‘Niall plays it.’
‘Niall,’ said William, with obvious distaste.
At the opening notes, Maureen closed her eyes, tilted her head, and joined her dusky voice with the music of the fiddle.
As I went a-walkin’ one mornin’ in May
I met a young couple who fondly did stray
An’ one was a young maid so sweet and so fair
An’ the other a soldier and a brave grenadier.
An’ they kissed so sweet and comfortin’ as they clung to each other.
They went arm in arm along the road like sister and brother.
They went arm in arm along the road till they came to a stream
An’ they both sat down together to hear the nightingale sing.
From out of his knapsack he took a fine fiddle
An’ he played her such merry tunes that you ever did hear
An’ he played her such merry tunes that the valley did ring
An’ they both sat down together to hear the nightingale sing.
Hers was a face which had been fully lived in, he thought, and while he was no fan of aging, it had done a grand work on Maureen McKenna. Bella turned from them to the woman she called grandmother, bending low into the croon of the music.
… an’ if ever I return again, it’ll be in the spring
An’ we’ll both sit down together an’ hear the nightingale sing.
An’ they kissed so sweet and comfortin’ as they clung to each other.
They went arm in arm along the road like sister and brother.
They went arm in arm along the road till they came to a stream
An’ they both sat down together to hear the nightingale sing.
They rose to their feet, even William, applauding, cheering.
‘Give us another!’ cried William.
‘Do, Mamó.’
‘Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye!’ said William.
‘You know I can’t sing it for bawlin’ me eyes out. What’ll it be, then?’ she asked Bella.
The fiddle answered.
Maureen laughed, nodded to the fiddler, and sang.
I’ll tell me ma when I go home
Th’ boys won’t leave th’ girls alone.
They pull my hair, they stole my comb,
But that’s all right ’til I go home.
She is handsome, she is pretty,
She’s th’ belle of Belfast city.
She is courtin’, one, two, three.
Please won’t you tell me, who is she?
Albert Mooney says he loves her.
All th’ boys are fightin’ for her.
They rap at th’ door an’ they ring th’ bell
Sayin’, Oh, my true love are ye well?
Out she comes as white as snow,
Rings on her fingers, bells on her toes.
Ol’ Jenny Murphy says she’ll die
If she don’t get th’ fellow with th’ rovin’ eye.
Let th’ wind an’ th’ rain an’ th’ hail blow high
An’ th’ snow come shovelin’ from th’ sky…
Bella tapped her foot, bore down on the tune, and circled back to the opening lines.
‘But that’s all right ’til I go home!’ The music ended on a high, comic note that gave them all a laugh.
Maureen stood unmoving for a moment, spent and breathless. Seamus bowed to the fiddler and then to Maureen. William thumped his cane, and all the rest put in their money’s worth.
The concert was over. Bella lowered the fiddle and bow. A smile played at the corners of her mouth.
‘Brava! Brava!’ yelled the club, as Bella disappeared along the stair hall and Maureen returned to her chair.
‘Thank you,’ he said with feeling. ‘Well done.’
He wanted it all to happen again, the music had flown so quickly. They had been given rage, mourning, hope, laughter-and joy-they had also been given joy.
Cynthia was embracing Anna, Anna was kissing Maureen, Seamus was slapping William on the back.
‘What did you make of that?’ asked his astonished wife.
‘Camp meeting.’ The finest half hour of camp meeting he’d ever seen, and he’d seen a few.
He embraced Anna with great feeling. ‘There,’ he said.
‘There,’ she said, laughing through tears.
‘Will she come back and join us?’
‘She gave us all she had just now.’
‘Rev’rend,’ said William, who was dressed to the nines in a sport coat and tie, ‘have an Irish whiskey, ’t will be good f’r ye.’
‘How good for me do you think it might be?’ he asked.
‘’t will give ye a good laugh and a long sleep,’ said the old man.
‘A very attractive benefit, but I’m going to hold off. However-before I go home, William, we’ll have a shot of the Irish together, just you and me.’
‘At Joe Kennedy’s or Broughadoon?’
‘Broughadoon. I’ll challenge you to a game of checkers.’
‘Done, sir,’ said William.
Maureen handed around a tray. ‘If you won’t slake th’ thirst, have a sweet, then.’
‘I’ll pass, and thank you. God’s blessing on you, dear lady, you’ve helped raise a young genius.’
‘She’s not a bad girl a’tall, Rev’rend, not deep down. As for m’self, I was a very bad girl.’
‘I’m not believing that.’
‘You should have seen th’ tricks I was up to with th’ lads hereabout-there was a Daniel, a James, two Roberts, an’ a Paddy-an’ all after marryin’ me. I turned my mother’s hair white as any fleece. A willful scut I was.’
‘I can’t imagine…’
‘Aye, an’ save your tryin’; I’ve done my confessin’ an’ he’s put the all of it as far as th’ east is from th’ west.’
‘What happened to change things?’
‘My oul’ mother prayed for me, and m’ grandmother, to boot.’
‘That’ll do it,’ he said.
‘I lived forty happy years with Tarry, an’ niver a bitter word between us.’
‘Now, Maureen,’ said Anna.
‘Ah, well, one or two is all. So you see, Rev’rend, there’s always hope, for I don’t think I came out too badly, thanks to God in ’is mercy.’
‘Amen,’ he said. ‘You were wonderful tonight. ’
Maureen laughed. ‘’t wasn’t only th’ guests got a surprise out of th’ evenin’.’
He glanced up then and saw Liam, standing by the sepia photographs as if dazed, his face wearing the flat, pasty look. They made eye contact; Liam lifted his hand in a gesture which he didn’t understand.
He excused himself and went to him. ‘What is it?’
Liam grasped his arm; they walked along the hall and into the dining room.
‘The Barret,’ whispered Liam.
But there was no Barret.
Except for the sconces and two empty picture hooks, the wall above the sideboard was bare.