7:15 a.m.
Warm, clear day predicted
Broughadoon
Dear Henry,
Up later than usual-having coffee at our table by the window and taking advantage of the rare quiet moment around this place.
There’s nothing so bad it couldn’t be worse, say the Irish, and turns out they’re right. After the shock and nuisance of the cupboard business, comes the theft of a valuable painting from the dining room while guests and staff gathered in the library, innocent as babes.
Appears to have been lifted off the picture hooks and ferried out the side doors to the garden, with no footprints to be found anywhere on the property (due in part to a considerable amount of pea gravel around the lodge). No tire tracks in the lane leading to the main road. It’s as if the picture, valued at roughly 350,000 in American dollars and largely uninsured, was taken up in the air.
The Gardai (or perhaps it is Garda, I can’t seem to get it straight) swarmed the place. Photos taken-a rogue’s gallery if you ever saw one-four guards, a detective, and a video of all interviews with guests, etc., keeping the lot of us up past one in the morning. I slept so poorly that I rose at the usual time just to have the misery over with, and prayed the Morning Office-you, Peggy, and Sister faithfully in my petitions. Fell asleep in the chair and reduced the deficit by two hours.
C and I haven’t discussed it yet, but I’m all for packing up and getting out of Dodge when W and K, who arrive at eleven this morning, depart tomorrow. They could drive us to Sligo or thereabout and surely we can find a room in a pleasant inn or hotel-I will do some phoning after the breakfast rush clears the kitchen. Another few days and we’ll be done with this most recent Long and Unlovely Confinement.
You and I should learn to fish, Henry, it would give us something to talk about in our dotage. The sport appears to hold its fans in thrall, they can’t get enough of it-they’ve been known to depart this mortal coil promoting fishing with their final breath. All our anglers out this morning at sunrise, ready to go again full throttle.
Have been adopted by yet another dog-this fellow a Jack Russell of the Pudding variety, long in the tooth like the rest of us, but up for anything. He sleeps under or on our bed, depending on circumstances.
We plan to read the southern writers again when we get home-Flannery O’Connor for one, to look at what happened to the great Irish literary tradition as it traveled across the Pond and slipped under our Magnolia Curtain. My guess is that it wasn’t greatly transformed, which is a good thing.
A fine library at my fingertips, yet have cracked only two covers on its many shelves-a journal kept by the builder of the house on the hill above, and an old volume in which I found this observation of the Irish by Edmund Campion, martyred 1581:
‘The people are thus inclined: religious, franke, amorous, irefull, sufferable of paines infinite, very glorious, many sorcerers, excellent horsemen, delighted with warres, great almes-givers, surpassing in hospitalitie… They are sharpe-witted, lovers of lerning, capable of any studie whereunto they bend themselves, constant in travaile, adventurous, intractable, kinde-hearted…’
So there you have in a nutshell the Gaelic side of our heritage. Though written in the 16th century, the description isn’t much out of fashion would be my guess.
Never waste a crisis, said Albert Schweitzer (I think it was Al), but what the kind-hearted people here will do with this latest brouhaha is beyond me. I don’t know much, but I do know this: I will never open a lodging for guests, it is 24/7 and hell to pay to make a bit of heaven for other people.
Take care of yourself and do all that the doctors-and Peggy-tell you to do.
Dhia dhuit, my brother,
Timothy
He had glanced at the nearly bare dining room wall and seen the darker rectangle of paint which the Barret protected against fading. He’d chosen to sit with his back to the sideboard while having breakfast and writing the letter, thus hiding from view another sight he didn’t care for: a barricade of yellow tape across the doors to the garden.
He walked to the library, Pud at his heels, dropped the stamped envelope in the box at the sofa, saluted Malone’s hat in the entrance hall, and stepped out to a shaft of birdsong. He stood for a moment, imagining glaciers lumbering through these regions, carving out what they pleased-valleys, coastlines, mountains, lakes, the astonishing Ben Bulben.
Anna was at her flower beds, crouching among the iris with a pruner.
‘Good morning, Anna.’
‘Good morning, Reverend.’ She didn’t look up.
‘Did you rest a little?’
‘A little,’ she said. ‘And you?’ Not looking up. A rooster crowed beyond the beeches.
‘Well enough. Liam?’
‘He’s out with the sheep, the damp has started a bit of foot rot. He likes tending the sheep.’ She turned to him, her eyes red with the little sleep. ‘It takes his mind off things.’
She dropped spent blooms into a trug; there was a close scent of catmint and lavender.
‘I believe Dr. Feeney would be prescribing a real day off for you.’
‘With all due respect to Dr. Feeney,’ she said, ‘he has never managed a guest lodge. One must keep a pleasing front no matter what comes, and be full of smiles into the bargain. There’s always a scrap one can pull from the deep.’
‘Always a scrap, yes.’ Like the rest of the human horde, he had pulled many a scrap and would doubtless pull more. ‘Counting ours, you’ll have had nine frys this morning.’ He didn’t envy her the labor of it.
‘And box lunches for our anglers and ghillies. But I’ve seen the lean days we were building our business, when there were no frys to be made a’tall at Broughadoon. I’ll take th’ nine over the none.’
He wanted to ask if her roses were troubled with black spot and beetles, as were his, but… ‘If there’s anything I can do…’
She stood and handed him a stem of iris, the bloom golden in color. ‘Thank you for hearing me yesterday; ’t is a great gift to be heard. You really listened, and your prayer-I shall always remember it. I felt I was starving unto death, and it fed me.’
He lifted the curved petals to catch a scent he’d favored since childhood. ‘Something from Macbeth came to me in the night-give sorrow words; the grief that doesn’t speak whispers o’er the fraught heart and bids it break. Thank you for trusting me.’
‘I feel sad for Liam, ’t was the truest link to his da, that painting. Such value can’t be appraised nor replaced and the books are small consolation.’
‘Yes.’
‘’t is in a way like losing his father again. And the final blow is that we hadn’t insured it properly. Loss upon loss. We had meant to…’
They were silent then, looking toward the lake.
‘There’s never any privacy, really, in keeping an inn, even when one lies in one’s own bed. Personal life and possessions are so blended into the business, there’s no telling where one stops and the other begins. One is ever in the company of others.’ She looked at him. ‘But it’s what we love, of course, and one pays a price always for what is loved.’
‘Yes.’
‘In the end, the guest sees everything, it’s all so… intimate; I wish we could protect you from that.’
‘A pet occupation of the Enemy is to distance us from intimacy. Such intimacy is a sacrifice for you and Liam, but a gift to us.’
The cloud moved off her face, she nearly laughed. ‘You’re a very different sort of man.’
‘There,’ he said, laughing.
‘There,’ she said, somehow relieved.
‘The Mass rock-we read about it in the journal. Is there a chance of seeing it?’
‘Past the fishing hut and into the wood a half kilometer. You’ll have a stone wall to climb over. ’t is in a grove, hard by a beech with a limb looking like an elephant’s head. You’ll see the doleful eye and the long trunk.’
‘I saw the anglers going out.’ He had no idea why he was forcing conversation on this stricken woman.
‘The club wanted to sleep in, but the ghillies were paid in advance and so they’re off to get their money’s worth. As for the men, they invited themselves to tag along with the ladies, they’ll be leaving us tomorrow.’ Anna gave him a half-smile from the deep.
He saw movement along the lake path-a man with a camera emerged from the bushes.
‘Garda,’ she said. ‘They’re everywhere.’
He should go about his business and leave Anna about hers. He was glued to the spot, brainless as any eejit.
‘Da wants you to have use of the Vauxhall-if you’ll take the use of it. A terrible old thing, the Vauxhall; still and all, ’t is safe enough to take you round to see th’ beauty.’ She drew off her work gloves. ‘We’re gormless not to have thought of it before.’
‘You’re kind. Thank you.’ He didn’t want to say that the anglers weren’t the only ones having their last day. ‘I regret that the uproar took some of the shine off what Bella did for us. It was a great privilege to hear her.’
‘Her day off yesterday was spent practicing, so I’m giving her today. We’re going busking tonight at the Tubbercurry Fair.’
‘Busking.’
‘Playing the old music for whoever walks by or will listen. Setting out the hat. A lot of musicians do it.’
‘How far away?’
‘Thirty-five kilometers. Bella is isolated here, she needs to be among friends, other musicians. She’s after going alone, but I’m going with her. ’t will give us time together.’
‘Always a good thing.’
‘Seamus and Maureen will stand in with Liam at dinner. Seamus has many holiday hours due him by law. He’ll spend a few with us over the next days, though Lady Agnew will not approve.’
‘Lady Agnew.’
‘Sorry. It’s what Paddy calls his mother, after the original painting by Mr. Sargent.’
‘If I know my cousin, he’ll sleep the day away, Cynthia and Katherine are going off to Sligo for hair appointments, and I’ll be no trouble. Perhaps you can get a break.’
There would be no good time to tell her; he should do it now. ‘I haven’t talked with Cynthia about this, Anna, but I think we should…’ He hesitated.
‘Move on?’
‘Yes.’
‘’t is what I would do in your place.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Please don’t be sorry, you’ll get me started on all the apologies you’re owed, and we’ll be at it a fortnight.’
He was wilted cabbage. If he sat on that bench, he would not get up.
‘Would you like your fry now, Reverend? Cynthia says your diabetes…’
‘I would, yes. Thank you.’
She walked toward the kitchen door, leaving her trug among the iris.
‘Anna,’ he said.
She turned. He saw the exhaustion in her face, in the slump of her shoulders.
‘I believe there’s a silver lining in this.’
She made no response and went in.
Why couldn’t he keep his trap shut? He did believe that, but there was no proper solace in him-why did he strive to dredge up the skills of priestly consolation which he’d apparently lost or never had?
He sat on the bench, weighted by all that had happened. And why had it happened, anyway? He’d gone on maybe five vacations in his life. The very word had for decades been foreign to him. There’d been a couple of summers at Walter’s in Oxford, an occasional summer in Pass Christian as a boy, the long-ago trip to England, and of course the initial visit to Broughadoon. That was it, unless his honeymoon counted as a vacation. But why this upheaval in what should be a refreshment? And, Lord, why the ankle business into the bargain? This was, after all, Cynthia’s birthday gift. And what about Anna and Liam, who had most to suffer in this monstrous snare? They were good people…
He realized he was whining; that these were the very questions put to him unceasingly during his years as a priest. Why me? Why her? Why us? Why them? Why now? Why then? Endless.
It was nearly eleven when he woke from a nap and found his wife sitting beneath the open window in her green chair, dressed and reading the journal. He sat up on the side of the bed. ‘I think we should leave tomorrow with Walter and Katherine.’
There was a long silence. His heart beat dully; his legs felt like a couple of pine logs.
‘A terrible thing has happened,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘In the journal, I mean. I saw your bookmark, it’s just ahead.’
‘Don’t tell me.’ He had zero interest in another terrible thing. ‘They offered us the Vauxhall, I could have taken you around a bit, driven you by a castle or two. I hear there’s a car park close to Yeats’s grave, you could have made it over without any trouble.’ She didn’t appear to be listening. ‘Lunch at a pub, even-we might have done that.’
She was staring at the wall above the bed, at the print of sedge warblers in a thicket of reeds.
‘Did you rest?’ he asked.
‘Sort of. Ready to get something done with my hair-I’m tired of standing in the shower on one leg like a heron.’
He left the bed and dressed quickly. ‘Coming down?’
Her mind was still elsewhere, she looked perplexed.
‘Coming down, Kav’na?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Do we agree we should leave?’
‘Probably. I suppose so. Yes.’
He checked his watch. ‘They’ll be arriving anytime.’
‘Have you told Anna or Liam?’
‘Anna.’
‘What did she say?’
‘That she would do the same.’
‘Where will we go?’
‘I called around before I brought your tray up. Emailed Dooley, by the way. Talked with a four-star inn in Sligo, but no dining and nothing on the ground floor. Two hotels were booked solid-high season, as you know. I’ll make more calls this afternoon; we’ll rent a car, of course.’
‘Do you think you can do it, the driving on the wrong side?’
‘I will do it,’ he said.
His cousin was true to form. Knocked out and ready for a decent sleep, Walter gave him the so-called cousin’s kiss, joined him in exclaiming the Kavanagh family motto, and hied to the room until dinner. He watched him climb the stairs, feeling strangely moved, even startled, by his cousin’s evident aging in the years since Walter served as his best man. To his mind, his first cousin had always been twelve years old-the only kid he ever knew who could make straight A’s and just as handily make short work of anyone who bullied him.
Katherine was also true to form. After a bit of washing up and two cups of Conor coffee, she slid back behind the wheel of the rented Fiat and was off like a shot. His wife waved from the passenger window.
Pud followed him into the lodge. In the kitchen, he sat at the pine table where the family took their meals, and ate the lunch left for him. There was the sense of being in the wake of a storm-but for occasional birdsong through the open windows, the place was as silent as stone.
Having found the number in his notebook, he dialed his distant cousin Erin Donovan who, on his previous trip to Sligo, had hosted the tea at which most of the liquid refreshment was ninety-proof.
‘Hullo, everyone. Don’t look for me in Killybegs ’til August thirty, I’m in Ibiza-no phone, no email, no worries, have a great summer!’ That place again. He didn’t leave a message.
Using Anna’s list of recommendations, he rang a couple of innkeepers-both jovial as all get-out, but no availabilities. Then, bingo, a double room with in-house dining and a spectacular view of the ancient cairn on Knocknarea, available tomorrow night only. Walter and Katherine would have no problem with driving them to Strandhill, where he would rent a car and find the wits to make further plans. He took out his credit card and booked the room.
He looked at Pud; Pud looked at him.
He changed into shorts and a T-shirt and in ten minutes was headed down the lake path at an easy gait. The very air was a lough, a deep swim of moisture and heat that moved like silk against his bare flesh. Things were shifting forward now-a room with a view, a new outlook; he felt the release of it. He was running along the shore near the hut when he glimpsed something moving in the reeds. A white swan pushed out upon the breast of water, soundless, the elegant, curved neck repeated in the looking glass below. ‘Hey,’ he said under his breath. ‘You’re beautiful.’ As with rainbows, he counted the sight of a swan a good omen.
He hung a right past the hut, Pud at his heels. Slapping midges and pouring sweat, he pushed through the woods, hopeful that Ireland was as free of ticks as of snakes.
As he reached the stone wall, he heard the distant mourning of the fiddle. Bella had gone before him to the Mass rock.
Pud growled, then barked.
‘Reverend Kav’na?’
He turned, startled. Liam’s detective connection, who had been on the scene last night-a stocky fellow with a bulbous nose and heavy eyebrows, wearing what appeared to be a wool suit over a turtleneck.
Corrigan held a wallet open to his credentials. ‘I hardly recognized you out of your collar, Reverend. Guess you don’t need to see this.’ He closed the wallet.
‘You gave me a start.’ Pud still barking.
‘May I ask what brought you into the woods?’
‘Looking for a Mass rock on the other side of the wall. Anna Conor gave me directions.’
‘My grandfather had a Mass rock on his place, called it an altar rock. ’t is sometimes found in a pair with a hollowed-out stone for a font. Do you know the history?’
‘Not entirely, no.’ He squatted and gave Pud a rub behind the ears.
‘Our priests used them in secret to conduct Mass. When th’ English were after exterminatin’ th’ Catholic church altogether, there was a price on the head of every priest-they were hunted like fox.’
‘How may I help you, Detective Corrigan?’
‘Merely wondering what you were about, Reverend. It seems all this began the night after you and Mrs. Kav’na arrived at Broughadoon.’
‘Correct.’ The poker club had done their own arriving before things began-but he said nothing.
‘Seen anyone about the place on a bicycle?’
‘Only the bicycle on the main road which we discussed earlier.’
‘Would you call yourself an art lover?’
He stood again. ‘Most definitely. My wife is an artist.’
‘Do you collect art?’
‘Hers.’
The fiddle keening in the long distance…
Corrigan smiled, ironic. ‘Were you familiar with the work of the senior George Barret before coming to Ireland?’
‘Enough to know his importance in Irish art history.’
‘Exiled himself to England.’
‘Yes.’
‘What are your plans for the remainder of your holiday?’ Corrigan had closed his wallet, was kneading the leather between his fingers as if by long habit.
‘We’re leaving tomorrow.’
‘I believe you were booked for several days yet.’
‘We were. But the recent business of the man in the armoire followed by last night’s distressing episode is hardly fodder for a pleasant holiday.’
‘Most unfortunate. And where would you and th’ missus be headed tomorrow?’
‘To Strandhill, I can’t recall the name of the place.’
‘I’ll get the name from you before we leave. You’ll be around?’
‘I will. Anything else, then?’
‘Not at the moment.’ Corrigan wiped his face with a handkerchief. ‘Close.’
Was there no seersucker to be had in the Eire, nor open collars? ‘If you’ve done with me…’ He headed for the wall.
‘No one over the wall, I’m afraid, ’til the Garda have a chance to get in and make a sweep. Cheerio, then.’ The ironic smile, and over the wall went Corrigan himself, as if he owned the place.
He retraced his passage through the woods and up to the lodge, then showered, dressed, and went downstairs, hearing in some distant quarter an electric drill. He poked around the library until he found a volume of Synge’s plays, and soon after sitting in the wing chair fell soundly asleep.
He heard the crunch of gravel in the car park, the slamming of the Fiat’s doors, voices. Thirty minutes of shut-eye had helped.
‘Did I snore?’ he asked Pud.
Cynthia careened in on her crutches. ‘We need to talk,’ she said. Through the open front door, he saw Katherine digging around in the trunk of their rental car.
From the throne of her chair, his wife told him everything.
‘I cannot believe, not even in my wildest imagination, that you would ever, I repeat, ever have allowed me to ride in the same car with your so-called Stirling Moss. It is a grave discredit to the memory of Mr. Moss to compare him with a perfectly crazed, lawless, and out-of-control imposter.’
‘Okay, okay,’ he said, holding up a hand in surrender. ‘Your hair looks great.’
‘My hair,’ she said, ‘is standing on end. Why did you ever, I repeat, ever think I’d be willing to tool around an entire country with this person at the wheel?’
He knew the feeling.
‘Are you out of your mind?’
‘A perfectly good question,’ he said.
‘As for the jolly plan for us to travel together in the same vehicle when my ankle is knit-never. You should have seen the face of the shop owner when she opened the door and Stirling pulled the car practically up to the washbasin.’
What could he say?
At six-thirty, Katherine appeared at their door in her bathrobe, pleading sudden and utter exhaustion, and reporting Walter still incoherent. They wouldn’t be down for dinner, they were having it in their room, please forgive-but they’d be up at the crack, ready for a lovely long chat at breakfast before heading over to the ruin of the family castle and off to the cemetery for a gravestone rubbing and then down to Connemara, though heaven knows they’d love to stay and help the Garda solve the mystery of the missing painting, and what a scramble their long-awaited trip to Ireland had turned out to be for all concerned, proving once again that truth is immensely stranger than fiction.
On Katherine’s heels had come Corrigan, nosing out the name of the inn at Strandhill, and then Feeney, on his way home from the free clinic he’d pulled together two years ago.
Feeney showered praise on the patient who had obviously resisted every temptation to rile the ankle by witless conduct.
Following dinner, they declined the trifle or chocolate torte and opted for coffee at their table.
‘I can’t do it,’ she said.
‘Can’t do what?’
‘I can’t leave.’
‘Can’t leave?’
‘Because these people mean something to me. They need us.’
‘But we can’t be providence for other people, Kav’na. Oswald Chambers says that’s one of our hardest lessons-learning that we mustn’t interfere in other people’s lives.’ There wouldn’t, after all, be a checkers game with William…
‘I’m not trying to be their providence, I’m their friend. Bella needs someone, Timothy-someone who isn’t her overworked mother or Maureen. It’s not that I’m in any way better than these two good women, not at all, it’s that I was once as frightened and frozen as she is.’
‘But this is a vacation,’ he said in something akin to his pulpit voice. He’d never see the Mass rock or finish Fintan O’Donnell’s journal or row her to the forested island in the middle of the lough, but so be it.
‘What is a vacation, anyway? Two or three weeks of sucking up every good thing for yourself? And even with all that’s happened, I love it here. It feels in a way like home, like family. You know I never really had a family. Just my parents and myself in this sealed envelope, each of us desperate to break the seal. I don’t feel our stay is over yet, something isn’t right about leaving.’
‘But what can you do if we stay?’
‘About what?’
‘About anything.’
‘I don’t think I’m needed to do anything except be here.’
He said to her what Anna had said to him. ‘You’re very unusual, Kavanagh.’
She shrugged, laughed a little. ‘I remember sitting on the big stone in the schoolyard with my teacher one day, it was fifth grade. Everyone had gone and we were waiting yet again for Mother to come for me. Miss Collins asked if it made me sad for my mother to forget me. I said it made me sad that Mother herself felt forgotten.
‘She looked at me and touched my hair and said, Cynthia, you are most unusual. I was afraid that being unusual wasn’t good, then she said, And that’s a good thing. Sometimes I think Miss Collins might have been my first taste of God.’
She sipped her coffee. ‘Besides, I’m not interfering any more than you interfered by hearing Anna’s testimony.’
‘She asked me to hear it.’
‘And in a way, they’ve asked me to be here, to stand with them… though of course they haven’t said that in so many words.’
His wife had a mind unlike any he’d ever encountered, a fact he blamed, if any blaming were to be done, on the nature of artists in general. Her instincts often raced ahead of his own to the quick of things.
‘My work is going so well now-the best in years. I’d like to tough it out, Timothy-live it out, pray it out, paint it out.’
‘This trip is your birthday gift, not mine. All I want is to do what’s best for you.’
‘But what’s best for me right now is what’s best for them, I think. Don’t you see?’
He did see. But it angered him.
In the library, which he was coming to account as the central nerve center of the universe, Seamus and William were at the checkerboard, the Labs by their feet; a couple of club members sat at a game table, having coffee with Tom and Hugh.
‘Hey, y’all!’ Tammy threw up a hand, jangling the redoubtable bracelets.
‘Pull up a chair,’ said Debbie, ‘we’re just shootin’ th’ bull.’
‘Thanks. Maybe later.’ He couldn’t shoot the bull right now if someone gave him cash money. ‘Come,’ he said, offering his arm to his wife. ‘I’m taking you out.’
She eyed him, solemn, then laughed. He saw the forgiveness in her, and laughed back. Caving to the siren call of dispute was the last thing they needed.
‘Look,’ she whispered, as they stepped out to the garden.
In the last of the light, the silhouette of two people who had been quicker on the draw.
‘Busy bench,’ he said.
‘Shall we go in and start a jigsaw?’
It was definite, then, engraved in stone-they would not be leaving. One didn’t start a jigsaw without hope of seeing it through.
‘I have a call to make.’ He expected to pay for the room in Strandhill, an expense accountable to a birthday made happier. But there would be no accounting of such expense. A couple from Kerry had called, said the inn-keeper, and would be thrilled to get the room- been to your Philadelphia, saw the bell, deposit refunded, and thanks very much.
He scrawled a note for Liam and Anna-Would like to stay as earlier planned, hope our room remains available, Tim-and left it on the enormous slab of limestone that served as the kitchen prep station.
On the way to the library, he suddenly remembered seeing Bella on a bicycle the morning after their arrival. He hadn’t meant to lie to Corrigan-until now, he’d forgotten that brief glimpse entirely. Besides, that was days ago, so how could it have anything to do with last night?
At the puzzle table, four pieces out of five hundred already fitted together to form the hindquarters of a ram lying among a flock downhill from a thatched cottage. He studied the image on the box lid: In the foreground, a young man and woman on bicycles, pedaling home from the turf field with side baskets loaded. The woman wore a bandanna over her hair; the man, a beat-up hat slanted at a rakish angle.
He sat with her and looked for border pieces; he liked to start with the borders. She Who Would Start Anywhere the Notion Struck busied herself with turning pieces face-up.
‘For a moment,’ she said, ‘I thought it was Anna and Liam on the bench, but of course Anna isn’t here tonight.’
‘Not to mention that they never sit down.’
She slid another piece onto the ram.
‘I hate it when you do that,’ he said.
‘I wonder who it was.’
‘It was Pete and Moira.’
‘Surely not.’
‘Trust me.’
They were picking up steam with a portion of thatched roof when Pete and Moira breezed in and stationed themselves by the hearth.
‘Ta-da-a-a!’ Moira alerted the assembly at the top of her voice.
Pud woke up and looked about.
‘We have great news, everybody!’
He noticed the high color of Moira’s face, the necktie with the fishing-lures pattern sticking out of Pete’s jacket pocket.
‘So that’s buzzer fishing,’ said Cynthia.
Pete looked dazzled, or perhaps dazed. ‘You’re not goin’ to believe this.’
‘Way not,’ said Moira. ‘We can’t believe it ourselves.’
‘Troth, ’t is a guessin’ game,’ said William, who didn’t appear to care for guessing games.
‘Wait, wait, don’t tell us,’ said Debbie. ‘You’re goin’ to meet in Atlanta and see how things pan out!’
‘Or,’ said Lisa, ‘Roscoe is flyin’ up from Dublin?’
‘Try again,’ said Pete, rocking on the balls of his feet, grinning.
Nobody tried again; they were dumbfounded.
His wife leaned to him, whispered, ‘Moira said she wouldn’t go out with him if he was the last man on earth. What happened on that bench?’
He didn’t know, but he and Cynthia were next in line to check it out.
‘Get on with it,’ said Hugh.
‘Okay, okay,’ said Pete. ‘Ready?’ he asked Moira.
‘We’re cousins!’
Tom whistled. Pud barked.
‘My great-great-grandmother Margaret on my daddy’s side,’ said Pete, ‘went with a crowd of O’Malleys from Sligo to Tyrone, where she married a Tommy O’Beirne-’
‘O’Beirne bein’ my maiden name,’ said Moira. ‘And Tommy bein’ my great-great-grandfather-it’s in our old family Bible plain as the nose on your face: Tommy O’Beirne of County Tyrone to Margaret O’Malley of County Sligo, emigrated 1869 to Boston. I used to study all those names when I was a little kid, I loved that stuff. So I just called Atlanta and my daughters looked it up in th’ Bible, and ta-da-a-a, I was right!’
‘Oh, Lord,’ said Debbie. ‘This is way too much.’
‘And,’ said Moira, ‘since Pete is cousins with Hugh and Tom, maybe, just maybe I’m cousins with them, too.’
The din grew in volume and pitch. William thumped his cane. At the anglers’ request, Seamus brought forth a tray of Guinness.
Amused, they worked part of the thatch, two sheep, a bit of hedgerow, as one by one the exhausted club made their way to bed.
‘I’m callin’ it a day, too,’ said Hugh. ‘We’re up with the roosters and off to Strandhill first thing in the morning. Tim, Cynthia, sure great to meet you, hope everything goes slick as grease from here out.’
‘Ditto,’ said Pete. ‘Hope you’ll come over again next August, same time, same station, we’ll help you finish your entry in th’ guest register.’
Back-slapping. Hand-shaking. Laughter.
Hugh handed him a card. ‘Give me a call if you’re ever in Annapolis. Got a nice guesthouse with a pool, you’d be welcome.’
‘It’s been a pleasure,’ said Tom. ‘Here’s a little something to remind you of this rough crowd.’
Tom deposited a fishing fly in the palm of his hand. ‘Connemara Black. Might come in handy someday.’
‘Why… this is beautiful. Thanks.’
‘Tied that myself. That’s a feather off th’ crest of a golden pheasant, that’s black seal fur right there, an’ th’ beard hackle’s off a blue jay. You can use that for sea trout or salmon.’
‘Great,’ he said, ‘Thanks again.’
Tom gave him a serious look. ‘That’s your classic pattern for that fly.’
‘God be with you,’ he said, shaking Pete’s hand.
‘Dhia dhuit,’ said O’Malley. ‘As for my Irish, that’s th’ whole kabosh right there. Take it easy.’
He held on to Pete’s handshake, feeling an odd regret. Somehow, he and Pete O’Malley hadn’t finished being together in the same place at the same time.
The library was empty. Strangers had come into their sphere, shared a connection, and vanished into the remainder of their own lives. The anglers had been like a wallpaper pattern that took some getting used to, followed by the realization that one had grown fond of it.
They went to the garden and sat looking up into the great hall of night. The laughter in the library had been relieving; an ice floe had melted. Her bare shoulder fit neatly into the cup of his hand.
‘There is no light in earth or heaven,’ he quoted, ‘but the cold light of stars; and the first watch of night is given to the red planet Mars.’
She mused. ‘Not Yeats.’
‘Longfellow. Tomorrow, Ben Bulben, Yeats’s grave, and lunch in a good pub. We’ll go out every day and see the sights, but never anything to stress your ankle.’
She was off in that world of hers. ‘You know how the Irish say nothing’s so bad it couldn’t be worse?’
What could be worse than the painting being stolen? He didn’t want to think about it.
Even in the dark, he could see the flash of her smile. ‘How about this, instead? Nothing’s so good, it couldn’t be better.’
She turned to him and kissed him. Then kissed him again. He thought it might be the scent of the golden iris, but it was the fragrance of wisteria.
On their way through the library, she turned off to the powder room and he discovered Pete in a wing chair.
‘Guess I’ll be sittin’ up awhile. I never drink coffee at night-then on these fishin’ trips, I start rollin’ th’ dice.’
‘It’ll catch me, too, before it’s over.’ He sat in the chair facing Pete.
‘I’m always rollin’ th’ bloody dice-with alcohol, women, business, life in general.’ Pete furrowed his brow. ‘I’m goin’ home an’ call my wife.’
‘Glad to hear it.’
‘All I can do is call. As for seein’ her, that’s up to her. Out on th’ bench, Moira talked me into it. Before I found out we’re cousins, I was comin’ on to her, Reverend, I admit it. I put my hand on her leg, I mean, what did I have to lose, us leavin’ tomorrow and all that? Touch me again, she said, and I’ll kill you. Can you believe it?’
‘I can believe it,’ he said.
‘So we got to talkin’ about me being such a badass, and what was my problem, anyway, and first thing you know, I’m bawlin’ like a baby, because she’s right. I’d been wanting to have another shot at things with my wife, but I didn’t have th’ guts to go to her, hat in hand. I’m not wired that way.’
‘You love your wife?’
‘It’d be a flamin’ lie if I said I didn’t.’
‘Let her know it,’ he said. ‘I’ll pray for you.’
‘I need it. I’m goin’ to try, I swear to God. I’m tired of bein’ th’ bloody walkin’ wounded.’
‘While you’re at it, stay in touch with the one who wired you. We’re all wired for love, all wired to go hat in hand if that’s what it takes.’
Pete looked at him, looked away, sighed.
‘Talk to him about everything, Pete-your wife, your business, what ails you. One of his jobs is to listen.’
Cynthia was making her way out of the powder room.
‘Nothing to lose,’ he said.
They stood; shook hands again, embraced.
‘Next year,’ said Pete.
‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘I’m open.’
He made the slow ascent of the stairs with her, carrying the crutches. As they reached the landing, he heard someone below.
‘Reverend?’
He couldn’t see Liam’s face in the shadowed hall, but the despairing tone of his voice was familiar.
‘Could I see you when Cynthia is safe in your room? It’s extremely urgent.’
‘He’s after disproving my edit of the Irish proverb,’ Cynthia said under her breath. ‘Trust me.’
He did trust her-as well he might. While playing the fiddle at the Tubbercurry Fair, Liam said, Bella had been approached by a drunk who became obscene and aggressive. Jack Slade had appeared out of nowhere and brutally stabbed the man. Slade was being held without bond, Anna was with Bella at the Garda station in Tubbercurry-could Liam come at once.