The party was over-the caffeine had caught up with him.
He had fallen asleep around midnight, trekked to the bathroom at three, and woke himself snoring at four. Awake at his usual hour of five, he wrestled briefly with the notion of getting up and unpacking their book carton, then slept again and dreamed. He watched his hands break the whole-grain loaf-look on the heart by sorrow broken, look on the tears by sinners shed-smelled the sour yeast as crumbs scattered onto the fair linen. The dream wheeled to the stone arch of Sewanee’s Heaven’s Gate and the sight of an old school chum-he threw up his hand-but no, it was Dooley, his mortal flesh radiant in a patch of light. Dooley at Sewanee!-so he hadn’t gone down to Georgia with all those peaches and incinerating summers. A great happiness came to him, he called Dooley’s name and woke himself.
He wondered if he’d disturbed Cynthia, but no, Rip Van Winkle was having at it.
Disgusted with the whole affair, he threw off the covers and made himself useful-splashed his face, shot the insulin, prayed the Morning Office by the floor lamp Maureen installed, then took the leather-bound journal in his lap and opened it to the placement of his bookmark. A cumbersome piece of work, this, not for casual reading at the beach.
The bulb blazed like the headlight of an eighteen-wheeler; he could see the weave of the linen in the yellowed pages.
14 June 1862
Have returned from Dublin to find matters here in utter ruin.
Unable to write these last days for the sick shame & rage I suffer at the upheaval in both home & worksite. C exhorts me to allow the fury to subside before I act-I cannot believe it will ever subside.
In my absence Balfour came to our Cabin & sought to have his way with A. Keegan was fishing & C had been at the garden-she said she felt some dull heaviness on her heart & hurried to the Cabin where she found A weeping & backed into the chimney corner fearing for her life. Balfour drunken & demonic-threatened A with worse if she cried out-C brandished the poker at him, not watching her words & drove him off the place. A heavy blade to us all. At the Mass Rock again pleading God’s wisdom in how this unforgivable act should be avenged. I confess savoring the notion of putting him down with a single shot to his heart in which is housed a roiling nest of vile intentions. Have sent by Keegan an urgent letter of appeal to Father Dominic seeking prayer & counsel.
I remember my mother saying There’s nothing so bad it couldn’t be worse & thus Danny Moore has disobeyed my warning & betrayed our trust in his character. While I was away he told a stone mason of the higher wage he receives & the men went to pieces about it. Danny beaten & brutally kicked-theres one for yr bloody stump, they said-the worksite sundered by petty thefts.
A sullen & bellicose group now working away with no one confessing the blame. Keegan had broken up the violence toward Danny & suffered a crack which dislocated his jaw-though re-located it troubles him yet We have given the boot to two perpetrators-Keegan & I anxious for what unemployed men might do in retribution, even our own Irishmen in such a case. Have sent Danny off the job until further notice, not wishing to rush to judgment in a matter which concerns the wellbeing of seven people. His mother in complete agreement & as stricken by his action as by the loss of wages to their household. I take the matter as a grievous lesson for future dealings.
Some evictions going on east of us. When we think we have seen the last of this blasphemy the Enemy once again raises his head.
Holy Mother of God have Mercy on the Souls of all Your people in this Wild & Remote Region.
18 June 1862
Both Father Dominic & Caitlin advise me to do nothing. It is outside all convention that I refrain from avenging wound to my household. Balfour may forget the incident altogether, says Fr Dominic & C agrees.
As no possible good can come of confronting Balfour at this time, I am willing to receive counsel asked for.
Having disabused myself of the notion to put a bullet in Balfour- & confessed this impulse to Fr Dominic-I now harbor the continual image of slapping his face so violently as to send him reeling-in this waking dream, I have seen the snot & blood issue from his nose like a shot. He stumbles backward & falls onto the stone floor of the entrance to his stables thereby cracking his skull- & is dead within minutes. I am haunted by the face of his daughter appearing at the doorway as this murderous incident occurs.
Such grusome images so interfere with my Supplications that I am continually pleading God’s forgiveness. Seventy times seven is a hard lesson to be learned.
I seldom write here of those lost to Death under my care, for C & I have done all in our might to save them.
God have mercy on the soul of Connor Gleason age 46 without kith or kin to mourn his passing.
1 July
Blistering heat, no rain in near two weeks
I had begun to believe we were well rid of him but he came again today-the snake in the Garden. He was all hail fellow well met & I decided to leave it at that. There has been rumor of fever outbreak in cabins some distance from here though I have seen no vestige of it in this Region. This rumor breaks out on occasion like a case of measles. Balfour made it clear to me that he wanted no contagion brought on land contiguous to his. As I do not consider the fever an actual threat, I agreed that I would not treat patients here with any true sign of yellow fever.
As I looked at him on his unfortunate mount, I confess I was murdering him with my very eyes. He went away without getting down & without the usual foul jollity with our men. Twas as if he knew the violent cast of my thoughts & was in a scramble to be gone.
May God give us faith & strength to finish the race here.
4 August
Warm, humid, rain in afternoon
In gratitude for the completion of the house & stables & in honor of the coming Feast Day of the Blessed Virgin I sent funds to Fr Dominic for the repair of the Church roof & other pressing needs. I am greatly relieved to thus thank Almighty God for the new home to which we have moved these last days. Twill be comfortable indeed if we can improve the kitchen firebox which smokes the plaster far along the stair hall. A great dither for the women.
Following Mass on Thursday 14, Fr Dominic to come and give us a proper blessing. All neighbors hereabout invited to share in a Feast. We shall have a crowd numbering that of the Roman legions.
C scoured the countryside & found five able women to man the cooking with herself & Aoife-Keegan has got us a labor force to roast the pig, the sheep & goats. Irish whiskey & barrels of Guinness (Keegan and I in disagreement about # of barrels) will be offered & that’s the end of it. Although I am loth to do it given their recent behavior, have sent word to the workmen to attend with their wives & children. Danny Moore’s family eager to come. Twould be wrong to keep them away but have warned him that the men will not suffer him kindly. The incident he caused has taught him a sobering lesson. He came to me hat in hand, proposing to play the Fiddle for the occasion & offering further entertainment by his sisters who sing the old songs in harmony. I am reminded that such as soothes the savage breast may be balm to the recent fury.
Keegan & I abroad these last weeks checking the quality of livestock & fowl raised for us for this occasion. I look at a fat ewe to be roasted & it is coughing. Keegan, I say, tell Paddy O’Reilly we will not pay for his ewe, it is coughing like a man. That’s what sheep do, he says in his dry way-they cough.
He thinks I have been ruined by American living.
Keegan teaches me how to buy a pig. I tell him I do not need to know how to buy a pig as he will buy any pigs in future. He says it is good to know what to look for in man or beast.
He recommends the eyes be animated & the ears upright. He contends the neck must be thick & deep with a ‘graceful arch.’ Thin skin is wanted in a ‘lively’ shade of pink. The two raised for us meet these high standards & I regret the eating of them rather than the breeding-Padraig McFee will keep one of them on til frost & cure its meat for our table. In any case, I walk away feeling we have got our money’s worth from McFee.
Have had the notion of transplanting wild Lilies to the Mass Rock-I saw the scene vividly in a dream & smelled their scent.
I am at last able to keep this Journal well hid-each evening when I have done with scribbling it is put away where no one however clever might find it. I could not keep it so private at the Cabin.
Aoife stitching herself a Frock these last evenings. I see she is not wearing the shoes made upon her father’s last, as I hoped she might in our new surroundings. She vows she prefers the bare feet in nearly all wether.
She has somehow wormed her milking stool into the parlor where she sits with her cloth and needle. In dying light from the west window I observe her face-it is unusually pensive & I try to imagine her thoughts-thoughts perhaps of a suitor? or some jollity she shared with her sisters on their monthly visit? Perhaps she imagines herself in this new gown the color of ripe peaches mulled with cream- & conceives the way the lads will catch their breath in their throats & speak too loudly among themselves when she passes.
He raised his head and listened for a moment to Cynthia’s breathing, and the rattle of beech leaves beyond the window. In the deep shadow of their room were gleaming sheets of thick paper, heavy with images. She had stood the watercolors on the chest of drawers and leaned them against the wall to dry. In the afternoon, he’d twice pulled off the road for her to sketch the landscape-but she asked to go back to the horse chestnut, and the only subject making it to the top of the chest was the loaf-shaped outcrop of Beann Gulban.
9 August
Very warm day; full moon-war news from America deeply agitating
Keegan not himself these last weeks-whistling one minute & the next silent & gaping as if struck by a vision of The Blessed Virgin herself.
C suspects he is in love. I cannot imagine
Keegan in love.
C has written out the list of dishes to be served & I transcribe them here for my own good pleasure when in ould age I sit by the hearth enjoying the hospitality of beard & pipe. I shall be astonished to read of the great strength with which God equipped us to do all that has been wrought at Cathair Mohr.
I have asked for Roast Swan which many find delicious, but C will have none of it-I will not devour beauty, she says, twill bring doom upon us. Aye, Keegan says, siding with her, we have doom enough without looking for it. I remind them both that all is beautiful, even the fine pig we’ll be roasting, but I have lost this dubious battle.
She reminds me that since we arrived from Philadelphia well over two years past we have delivered forty-seven Infants into this sere & indifferent world, thirty of whom survive & flourish & will likely be among us at the Feast. Twill be a proper blessing to hear the laughter of children about the place.
Twenty roast Geese
Twenty roast Hens stuffed
One hundred Hens Eggs boiled hard
Forty loaves Bread
Two hundred Yeast Buns
Ten pounds Goat Cheese
Ten pounds Cow Butter
1 roast Pig
1 roast Mutton
2 goates
4 bushels Potatoes roast in ash
2 bushels Beans with pork hock
20 mix berry Pies
20 apple Pies
3 tubs bread pudding
20 gallons Goat Milk (from Aiden Marsh)
I am reminded of the mammoth iron kettle by New York brazier John Trageser which we have stored in the stables. It is capable of holding two grown men & came to Uncle by way of a debt owed him. I declined to sell it for it is very novel indeed & Keegan will have the men fashion a kind of tall sawhorse from which to suspend the kettle above the fire. C & Keegan & I discuss how it might be used & agree on Fish Stew. We are quite merry at the prospect of such a wondrous thing as the Great Kettle having its part in the Great Day.
Keegan argues we need not do so much, but God has done so much for us, how can we not joy in seeing the pleasure of those who have near nothing at all? Rose McFee swears she will dance like a Hare to have such a fill of her ancient belly, though I wager it holds but a cupful.
Give or take a few, we expect two hundred men, women & children. The lawns shall be trampled to bits from the coming & going of the people & the cooks at the spit & the digging of the pit for our meate. We give thanks there is nothing yet in the lawns to be ruined save two young Beeches and a wild Bilberry. Horticulture is a decided weakness-I have no Eye nor learning for it yet do not wish to hire someone for the planning if I might by the grace of God do it myself. C & I agree that we did not come here to be the Lord and Lady of parterres nor to run great herds of any beast.
Keegan in Sligo for remaining provisions, including cut-rate tin plates & bowls from which host & guest alike will sup. Keegan does not approve the Expense of the afore-named items as he says they will not be used again. Oh but they will, I say, they will be used again when we gather to celebrate the liberty of the Irish people from centuries of Mayhem & Treachery. Before he turns his head away I see the look on him- perhaps he is not so hard against this notion as before.
Keegan does not mince words-he says the Missus O’Donnell must have a woman of all work if she is to manage such a pile as Cathair Mohr. I confess I still carry the burthen of a Cabin mentality which disposes me to count A as help enough-unless we were to entertain Society which I cannot imagine doing with the roads in their present condition. I continue to prove my indifference to C’s needs, thinking her capable of anything. Keegan’s counsel is well-taken & I will be applying for such when I am next able.
Uncle’s furnishings arrive by boat tomorrow at Dublin, to be loaded onto wagons and transported to Lough Arrow in time for the Festivities. What would Uncle say at the sight of his handsome carpets, paintings & many books displayed in a house such as God Himself and Uncle’s own fortune have provided? Arriving also will be Uncle’s carriage which I shall make use of daily. As it is a fine city carriage, we have but to countrify it a little-making it road worthy for such Regions as these.
We run to catch up with our plenteous blessings.
10 August
Rain at first light
Balfour’s man arrived at noon with a basket of fly-bit hares & a sack of bruised apples. I had not thought for a moment that Balfour might show himself at the Feast. Yet when I saw his offering on the cart bed, the thought of his intentions spread within me like a poison.
I handed these so-called neighborly provisions off to Keegan who gave the lot of it a hard look & handed it off to Fionn Connelly who is setting up the great Spit. Take this off the Place, he told Fionn.
Rain throughout the afternoon and into the evening.
11 August
Fairing off
I was called out last night to deliver two infants into this world-one from each of two sisters occupying the same Cabin at some distance from Cathair Mohr. Infants lusty & mothers hale. A girl named Biddy & a boy named Colm. I have once before seen how the close confinement of two women can spawn the conception & delivery of infants at the same time-it is a puzzling sort of contagion.
The new fathers who have scarcely a rag of flesh on their bones brought forth a mite of whiskey kept back for Fr Dominic and myself as looking ahead to this occasion. The lads are brothers both hardworking and these are their first born. They have promised to be at the Feast for they can get the loan of a pony & cart from their grandfather. As C was suffering one of her headaches, she sent A to ride with me as nurse. With naught but natural instinct, A proves herself competent & steady.
It is a time in this Region of few desperations-Besides the Melancholia which is ever doing its devilish work among a famished people stripped of land, tis but a sty here, a bit of pus there, bowels that refuse to move or move too freely-the very sorts of things my old mother enjoyed. I remember how she slit the throat of a Hedgehog which she commanded me to capture & bring to her in a sack-the creature was rolling in fat for the spring & summer had been especially wet & lush and I had often seen him outside his Burrow at the moth hour surveying the land. He sniffed the air like a lad whose ploughing is done for the day & appeared to lack nothing but a pipe for his contentment. Yet for all his seeming leisure he was cunning as they come & hard to run to ground. All this commotion so Mam might render his fat to be rubbed inside the ears of the numerous deaf in our Region. When the deed was done & a crock of it put up, off we go in the trap with the crock between my knees. We went round to young & old with the hearing problems & before God, Mam succeeded with this measure on several occasions-not with the stone deaf but with those having something left to recover.
How dearly I recall our rounds to the sick & poor, & Ourselves hardly better off than they-She was thinking of others always. When she passed, my brother Michael wrote to say there was a wake such as this part of the County had never seen. It wrenches me yet that her Death from Pneumonia was sudden & no way for me to attend her last hours. My father set out a grand portion of whiskey for all who came to pay their respects & many twists of good tobacco as well for he knew that Generosity would be pleasing to her.
I must go again to her Grave before winter. Though it broke my young heart at the time, I honor the sacrifice of her third son to Uncle-it was no easy letting go for either of us, though my Father was proud to see me off to America & into the fostering care of a rich relative. I remember sobbing into my pillow the night before-me a strapping lad of seventeen- & then the brothers verily pushing me onto the boat thinking Thank God its him & not us leaving every common thing we know to live in a strange land & suffer the cruelty of learning from Books.
I remember how Mother regretted not getting round to do more & how she often said, If I had my life to live over I’d have a strong young mare & saddlebags full of nostrums & herbs of great variety & I would go over hill & dale til all were cured, but I’m only a small Woman with a small pony. She saw the enormity of the need-it snapped & gnawed at her like a feral thing. Father would say, A little fire that warms, Bessy, is better than a big fire that burns.
On the approach of the Blessing of this house and land & the Grand Feast to follow,
I remember my mother who set the little fire in me & when the fevers & the infant deformities & the crucifying amputations come & I suffer the grave inadequacy of my resources, I remember the little fire that warms & am able to go on.
Elizabeth (Bessy) O’Donnell, b. County Cavan 1773, d. County Sligo, 1823
It was an unfamiliar odor, layered in the way perfumes were said to be composed. He sniffed the air of the closed room-definitely a top note of fried bacon, his Mississippi nose wouldn’t mistake that, then a middle note of something sharply caustic, maybe shellac, and bringing up the rear, the smell of coffee.
O’Donnell’s journal was definitely growing on him. He laid it on the table by the chair and eased to the armoire, creaking only one floorboard. Pud stuck his head from beneath the bed skirt.
‘Timothy? ’
‘Good morning, Sunshine.’ It was his mother’s and Peggy’s old greeting at the top of the day.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Dressing.’
‘What time is it?’
He picked up his watch, squinted in the gray morning light. ‘Gaining on six forty-five.’ He shucked his pajamas into Maureen’s basket.
‘I loved yesterday,’ she said.
‘And another grand, soft day predicted, according to William.’
‘I’m glad you got the reservations done.’
By the skin of his teeth. ‘Coffee’s on.’
‘Did you sleep?’
‘Well enough.’ He found the knit shirt folded in the drawer, shook it out, pulled it over his head.
‘I feel so guilty being able to sleep.’
‘As you should, Kav’na, as you should.’
‘What are we doing today?’
‘Maybe out to Easkey-stone houses abandoned during the famine, a broad expanse of gray sea, a view to Donegal on a clear day. Just the ticket for artists, it seems to me.
‘Or there’s a castle in Collooney. Gardens. Ancient trees. Only a few stairs in to lunch.’ He zipped his trousers, buckled his belt. ‘There’s Lissadell House, of course, they say Yeats enjoyed the place. However-too much walking, would be my guess.’
She yawned. ‘I’m trying to think.’
‘Anna said she forgot to mention roads up the side of Ben Bulben-very rough tracks with sheep galore and turf fields. A dash on the primitive side, but great views, and the Vauxhall could make it.’
‘I love the primitive side.’
He took the comb from his pocket and ran it through what was left of his hair-felt the stubble on his chin, regretted the incessant bother of shaving.
‘I like your pictures of Ben Bulben,’ he said, pulling on his watch. Worn from the long day, she had forgone sketches of William last night, rescheduling for this evening.
‘There’s something benign about it,’ she said, ‘the way it broods over the landscape, but I couldn’t catch it. Of course, I never can really catch what I’m after, just fragments, like when small clouds break away from big clouds and little shreds go floating off. I get the little shreds.’
‘Little shreds are good.’
He sat on the side of the bed; Pud shot from his quarters as if squeezed forth by the sag in the mattress. ‘You remind me of something Washington Irving said about traveling-in Spain, I think it was.’ He eased his bare feet into his loafers. ‘I copied it out for you years ago.’
‘Umm,’ she said, burrowing in for another round of sawing wood.
‘Let others repine at the lack of turnpike roads and sumptuous hotels and all the elaborate comforts of a country cultivated into tameness… but give me the rude mountain scramble, something, something, something, that gives such a true game flavour to-in this case-Ireland. There you have it, and thank heaven, no senility yet.’
She was drowsing into sleep. He leaned toward her side of the bed and touched her cheek. She had added true game flavour to his life, a fact which he didn’t take lightly.
Going down the stairs with Pud at his heels, he might have whistled, but didn’t want to wake anyone.
In the dining room, he identified the smell-the wall above the sideboard was freshly painted. A picture in oil, smaller than the Barret, hung between the sconces.
He filled his coffee mug-hair of the dog-and squinted at the figures of three men fishing in a broad, dark stream overhung by trees rendered in the taste of the nineteenth century. Above the trees, an illumination of silvered clouds-he was finicky about clouds, these were up there with Constable’s. He leaned forward, adjusted his glasses. There, nearly invisible on the shadowed bank, a spaniel and a wicker hamper. No signature.
A fresh start, then; life goes on. Good for Liam.
He took his coffee to the open French doors, now relieved of yellow tape, and wondered what he would write at the top of today’s entry if he were keeping a journal. A mild morning, mist rising. In the early light, he saw Anna at the flower bed farthest from the lodge. Stooped and intent, she reminded him of his mother and the gardens she wrought from Mississippi clay.
After Peggy disappeared, he had been the one cheering his mother on. He had fetched her tools, helped her dig the holes, joined her in the endless battle against leaf minors in the allée of century-old boxwood. All this under the strain of his father’s view of gardens as time-wasting indulgence-Matthew Kavanagh had been known to walk as if blind by a newly planted bed of astonishing possibility.
As the gardens expanded, the curious began showing up at the gate, total strangers sometimes, then came the busloads during Pilgrimage, to see what Madelaine Kavanagh had done. What she had done was to take nothing and turn it into something. That was the first time he witnessed that particular kind of miracle.
He was twelve, maybe thirteen, and reading Les Misérables when he found a line that would help him in the cheering-on:
The patch of land he had made into a garden was famous in the town for the beauty of the flowers which he grew there.
Proud, he had gone to his mother, carrying the open book. ‘Look, Mama. Just like you.’
In an unforgiving north light from the wash-house window, she read the words he pointed out with his finger and nodded a little and smiled. He saw something then, for the first time-the lines in her face, and the unbearable thinness of her eyelids, blue and transparent as a moth’s wing.
He looked out to the flowering beds of Broughadoon and gave thanks for her life, then crossed himself and prayed for this household, his cousins on the road in the Flying Fiat, Henry and Peggy in the house with the swept yard on the road from Holly Springs…
‘Reverend.’
He turned to see Liam at the kitchen door, and made a gesture toward the dining room wall. ‘Well done, Liam.’
‘Seamus and I washed out th’ rollers around one o’clock this mornin’. Then the other walls looked so bloody grim, we’re after paintin’ th’ whole business when time allows. I hope you passed a good night.’
‘Good enough, thanks.’
The clock in the library chiming the quarter hour.
‘The painting came from our family quarters down th’ hall, ’t was hangin’ above our couch these last years.’
‘Not a Barret,’ he said.
‘Not a Barret, no.’ Liam joined him. ‘But Father loved it, nonetheless. He was a man after a nice touch to clouds, said most artists weren’t up to the job of th’ human hand or th’ heavenly cloud.’
‘Agreed. No signature, I see.’
‘It wasn’t so unusual for the time, leavin’ off th’ signature.’
‘How do you feel about having it on public view… the possibility of…?’
‘This was always th’ wall for hangin’ his favorite paintings-he seldom hung them at th’ house ’til they had a good run here. I was after bringin’ the baskin’ whales from the library, but Anna said ’t would be too violent a scene for guests at their food.’
‘Very thoughtful.’
‘Blood on th’ water an’ all.’
‘Yes.’
‘But ’t wouldn’t seem right without something there, something he enjoyed. So.’ Liam shrugged. ‘I like to believe… I have to believe…’
‘That it will be safe?’ The nail that sticks up gets hammered down, his father liked to say.
‘Yes. Our money goes back into th’ business for now, there’s none to be raked off to extra insurance. Will you have your fry?’
‘Think I’ll wait. I’ll finish my coffee, then maybe a run. How far around the lake, by the way?’
‘You’d not be back ’til th’ moth hour.’
‘Settles that. Any word?’ He hadn’t asked last night.
‘None. Corrigan’s working with Tubbercurry to see if there’s a connection to what happened here.’
‘Do you believe there’s a connection?’
‘I have a hunch, yes, about Slade, just some gut feelin’ I can’t explain. Whatever th’ truth, I feel better he’s under lock an’ key.’
‘Did the Gards do any looking around up the hill? Since the property adjoins…’
‘They did. Thought the lane could have been a flight path, but found nothin’ a’tall. Queried Mother an’ Seamus yesterday-an’ Paddy, of course, when they caught up with him, he’d been in Dublin. Nothin’ to be learned there, as I could have told them.’
‘I suppose Corrigan thought of contacting art dealers.’
‘He says they’ve sent a teletype to th’ Garda in Belfast, Dublin-places with th’ big dealers, he says. His personal guess is that it might have gone over to England; they’re seein’ what can be done with that.’
‘I was wondering about Slade’s bank account, if there might have been some large deposit.’
‘All looked into. All a dead end. ’t is a right cod.’ Liam rubbed his eyes.
‘Sorry about Anna and Bella having to suffer the fair incident.’
‘Ah, Bella. Eighteen goin’ on forty.’ Liam heaved a sigh. ‘Seems a hundred years since I was eighteen.’
‘What were you up to at eighteen?’
‘Runnin’ wild as bindweed.’
He had been eighteen during what Walter once called ‘Tim’s sport with Peggy Cramer.’ He had been wild enough himself.
They looked out now to the massive beeches. A bird dived by the open doors.
‘The poker club says they’re leaving us tomorrow for Italy.’
‘Righto.’
Anna came up the path, not glancing their way, and entered the lodge by the door to the kitchen. He would stir himself, get a move on, but for the languor in his bones.
‘Rev’rend.’
In Liam’s voice, an anguish barely expressible.
‘Sometime, if you could… if you might possibly be willin’…’
A silence gathered between them; Liam’s breath was ragged.
‘Willing?’ he said at last.
‘There’s a thing pressin’ me like th’ Black Death.’
‘Would you like to talk?’
‘I would. Yes.’
Since a boy, he’d been called out of himself by the needs of others. He’d never known what to do with that until long after he became a priest.
‘We could do it now,’ he said.
‘Th’ travel club is off to Sligo today for shoppin’-no breakfast, they said, they’re after savin’ their calories for Italy…’ Liam ran his fingers through his hair, anxious-‘so there are no frys to be made but your own…’
‘Cynthia’s good for a while, and so am I.’
‘Still and all, there’s th’ shutter by the front door that wants th’ hinge since spring, an’ turves to be hauled up…’
He set his mug on the sideboard, saying nothing. He was willing to let the matter drop.
Liam appeared edgy. ‘Feels strange to think about just walkin’ away when th’ notion strikes.’
He nodded.
‘But…’ Liam’s smile was sudden, unexpected. ‘I guess I remember how.’
‘The trick is to put one foot in front of the other,’ he said. He hadn’t realized until this moment that Liam Conor’s smile had a way of improving the air at Broughadoon.
‘I’ll tell Anna,’ said Liam.
A bright and pleasant morning with a grand, soft day predicted. That’s what he would write if he were keeping a journal.