‘Cassie Fletcher,’ she said, extending her hand.
‘Tim Kav’na,’ he said, taking it.
She eyed his collar. ‘Father or rev’rend?’
‘Father in the States, reverend here. Dr. Feeney says you’re the one for the job.’
‘I’ve done th’ same for my da and a few others.’
He liked this bony, wryly attractive woman with the dry palm and fierce handshake.
‘I hope you don’t mind th’ look of a hematoma, ’ she said. ‘We must keep the covers off it.’
‘I’ve seen a few.’
‘She rested well enough last night, but the pain is fierce even with th’ meds. She’s after seein’ you but it musn’t be long, Rev’rend.’
‘I won’t stay.’
‘She’s had a bad go, comin’ home only yesterday from hospital an’ all.’
‘Of course.’
‘Just a warnin’-the tremors have begun and th’ nausea. There’s worse ahead but we count our blessings today.’
She led him by Paddy’s closed door, and into the darkened room.
The sight of her was jarring-the splint, the cast, the grossly swollen leg with its hellish purpling, the anguished plea in a face grave with shock.
The old Lab came to him and sniffed his pant leg.
‘Mrs. Conor.’ He wanted to touch her, it was instinctive, he always touched the suffering, but her injuries were many. He stooped and scratched Cuch behind the ear.
‘Is it you, then, Rev’rend?’ Her voice a vapor.
‘It’s Tim Kav’na, yes.’ He pulled the chair close to the bed, sat down, saw the tremoring in her fingers where cast and splint gave way.
She did not look at him, but stared at the ceiling. ‘I have one question and one only.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Can I do this?’
‘You can do this,’ he said. ‘With God’s help.’
‘I do not seek nor expect help from God. Keep him out of it. Answer me. Can I do this?’
‘As for keeping God out of it, you’re asking the wrong person. With that in mind, however, my answer is yes. You can do this.’
‘Are you lying to make me feel cozy, as they say?’
‘I don’t believe anything could make you feel cozy just now, least of all a lie.’
She flinched, said something in Irish, licked her dry lips. ’Tis a brutal punishment being unable to lift one’s arms, unable to dress oneself. One must do one’s business in a pan and shout for another to scratch one’s nose.
‘Nor is there anybody to comb my hair in a sensible fashion. Think about it, Reverend, and tell me how you would feel in such a case.’
‘With so little to comb, Mrs. Conor, I’m hardly the one to ask.’
She closed her eyes against him. ‘You’re a difficult man.’
‘You’re a difficult woman, enormously stubborn, from all I’ve observed, and full of grit-just two of many reasons I believe you have what it takes to do this.’
She caught her breath. ‘A scalding pain,’ she said. ‘My God.’ Sweat shone on her face.
He stood to leave, whatever professional poise he had, shaken.
‘Water,’ she said.
A glass of water with its bent straw was on the bed table. His father, his mother, his Grandpa Yancey, his grandmother, all had sought the bent straw in their suffering. He held the straw to her lips, she sucked, and nodded it away.
‘One glass of gin and ’t would be over, this wretched nausea and trembling like an ould woman-they say it’s the instant cure…’
Her unbound hair was dark against the pillow, the streak of silver more startling than he remembered. She was panting now, her words hard-won.
‘… but I thought to combine all the torment into one living hell. One doesn’t wait for sunshine and roses to do a hard thing, Reverend. I know how to suffer; I have suffered all my life. Life is but one long suffering.’
‘Sometimes we grow too fond of our suffering, ’ he said. ‘We count it too dear and it becomes exquisite, the holy of holies.’
‘Answer me again.’
He met the pale ferocity of her gaze, measured his words. ‘You can do this.’
Fletcher was waiting near the door. ‘You’re white as any sheet,’ she said, raising an eyebrow.
‘Scary business.’
‘Oh, aye. Tell me about it. But that’s nothin’. That’s your comedy show you just had, compared to what we’ll see this evenin’.’
‘I wouldn’t have your job.’
She raised the other eyebrow, grinned. ‘Nor would I have yours, Rev’rend, believe me. Not with all th’ antics your Church is up to in th’ States.’
That was his laugh for the day.
Seamus was waiting in the kitchen.
‘I spoke hard to her, Seamus.’
‘Joseph an’ Mary,’ said Seamus, stung by this.
‘I don’t know why, exactly.’
‘What did ye say, for all that?’
‘I told her she was stubborn, enormously stubborn.’
‘Aye, an’ you told th’ God’s truth, it’s just that your timin’ was off.’
At Broughadoon, he changed clothes, ran along the lake path, but no time for the Mass rock expedition. Back at the lodge, he shared a late lunch with Cynthia, their bed a picnic blanket.
He gave her the full report from Catharmore. ‘Your turn now,’ he said. ‘Tell me everything.’
‘I’ve been thinking how we’ll never have this time again, that it’s come to us as a gift, though maybe we don’t know how to open it.’
‘I think we’ve opened it and we’re unsure of the contents,’ he said.
She laughed, spooned crème fraîche into her bowl of fruit.
‘You’re an amazing woman, Kav’na. But I worry about you. No tears, no lashing out at the unfairness of life. You’re a better man than I am.’
‘Oh, but I did go nuts, Timothy, the day you and Liam went to the lough I completely lost it, but there was no pleasure in it. Remember me, sweetheart? I’m the girl who tried to take her own life. Since then, life has looked pretty good-I’ve learned that, if nothing else. Besides, I’ll probably never do this again, loll about like the queen of the Nile. I’ve surrendered to it; it is what it is. I can’t even apologize anymore, to you or anyone else.’
‘That’s an achievement.’
‘And I’m not sorry at all to miss days of popping in and out of hotels, packing and unpacking. ’
‘It’s the long confinement I worry about. You’re not the woman for it.’
‘I have company all the time. Anna, Bella, and now Maureen, our honey in the rock, and Irish poets from the sixth century to Seamus Heaney-Between my fingers and my thumb, the squat pen rests…’
‘That’s everything you have to tell me?’
‘And there’s the wonderful view of the lough and the dear old beeches for company, and think of all the sleep I’m getting.’
‘Yes, but is that everything?’
‘As soon as we get home, I’m going to start another book.’
He took her hand and kissed it.
‘That’s my girl,’ he said.
When he delivered the tray to the kitchen, he heard the fiddle. Close by, he thought, listening. In the lodge. Yes. The music was coming from Ibiza.
He went up to the library and rifled through a stack of magazines. A cover feature on the Irish rose garden. Worth a look. He wondered about his own roses in their double-dug beds at the yellow house, and the many he had planted at Lord’s Chapel. What havoc had the beetles wrought? And the black spot? Had Mitford gotten enough rain?
‘I don’t need to know,’ he said aloud.
‘I beg your pardon?’
He turned around and looked behind him. It was the writer with the cloud of hair, hidden by the chair wing. He saw a lap with a book in it, her feet in the odd shoes.
‘Sorry,’ he said, embarrassed. ‘I’ve been driven to talking to myself.’
‘And what drove you there?’ she asked.
‘Ease and indolence. I’ve done next to nothing for days on end!’
‘I should like very much to be driven somewhere, anywhere, by Ease and Indolence rather than Stress and Striving. I’m just off a book tour. A grueling business.’
‘I’m sure. Mystery? Romance?’
‘Both. Romance is, after all, a mystery.’
‘I’ll say.’
He wondered if he should get up and go around where they could talk face-to-face. But he rather liked looking at roses climbing a stone wall in Kerry while speaking with someone he couldn’t see.
‘Is that Tim, the clergyman?’ The sound of pages turning.
‘It is. And is that Lorna Doolin, Irish-American from Boston, born in Houston?’
‘The very same.’
‘Your niece is a wonder.’
‘Honor student. Plays the harp. Raises corgis. Now busy cataloging the flora and fauna of Lough Arrow.’
‘Good gracious!’
‘You’re from the South.’
‘Mississippi. My wife is from Massachusetts.’
‘Do you like being married to a Yankee?’
‘I do,’ he said. ‘This particular Yankee, anyway.’
‘I married a Yankee once.’
‘Aha. Here to do some fishing?’
‘Heavens, no. Here to escape the rigors of reading my reviews. They’re mixed, to say the least. Are you a fisherman?’
‘Never got the hang of it.’
‘I must take my niece out tomorrow with a ghillie-she has the most insatiable curiosity. I, of course, shall be entirely out of my element. All I’ve ever done is muck about in words-except for two years of managing an inn in New Hampshire. If you ever wish to give yourself a bad back, irritable colon, and possibly a stroke, well, then, manage an inn. I’m off for a walk.’
He heard her close the book, lay it on the table. ‘It’s been lovely seeing you-in a manner of speaking.’
‘Yes, yes, very pleasant.’ He stood, hoping to shake her hand or something civil, but she was already across the room and entering the stair hall.
Catharmore’s complaints were writ large on every face at Broughadoon-Anna, Liam, Maureen, Bella, William, all were quiet as they went about their tasks in the evening. Liam was sobered yet again.
In a move, he presumed, to restore jollity to the Broughadoon board, Anna seated all guests together at dinner: the three generations of Sweeneys, the author, the niece, and himself. But he was the sore thumb, unable to withdraw his thoughts from the family’s concerns. He realized he didn’t feel like a guest anymore. He left the table before dessert orders were taken, and went into the kitchen.
‘May I give a hand?’
‘Ye’re an oul’ dote!’ said Maureen, as if she’d been expecting him. ‘Ye could help with unloadin’ th’ dishwashers, as the next course gives us another load.’
Anna looked up from arranging the dessert tray. ‘’t would be a féirin,’ she said.
No one was pushing him out, or requiring him to remain a guest. Yet every string was taut, he could feel it.
Liam jiggled something in a pan on the Aga. ‘I’m finishin’ the dining room paint job tomorrow, if you’d care to join me. Around noon, if you’re about. An hour or so, an’ it’s done.’
‘I’m in,’ he said.
Out there was the world, in here was something better.
At two-thirty in the morning, the knock came. He knew without being told.
‘I’ll be right down.’
He dressed in the bathroom, and picked up his prayer book on the way to the door.
‘Stay,’ he said to Pud.