In the Company of Others Page 4

  He was surprised, but pleased. 'Why, yes. I'd like that.' Something in the air was released. 'What time?'

  'I'll just get your wife's fry out to you, and we can muddle along in the old Rover in a half hour or so.'

  Muddling along in an old Rover was precisely what he'd like to do.

  He felt a certain satisfaction toting the tray upstairs. Even as a child, the act of being useful had pleased him.

  He balanced the heavy tray along his left arm, turned the knob, eased the door open. 'Room service,' he announced, pushing the door shut behind him.

  She turned from the window and smiled. She looked happy; it was his favorite of her looks.

  He wasn't surprised to see her in the ancient robe that nobody in their right mind would schlep across the Pond. Chenille. In tatters. Hanging together by threads.

  They had been married only a few months when she brought it out of its rightful concealment, and paraded in the thing. He thought it was a joke and roared with laughter--not a good idea. He noticed a spring in her step whenever she wore it; she called it her Darling Robe.

  Not that he needed some filmy lace business; no, please, he was an odd duck who thought flannel sexy if his wife wore it, this was another story altogether. Hadn't Peggy preached him a blizzard of sermons on 'goin' ragged'? Hadn't that been among the worst of sins in those days, to go ragged even if there had been a crucifying Depression and another horrific war and the cotton crops failing?

  She was beaming at him. He forgave the robe and set the tray on the footstool by the green chair.

  'Why didn't you tell me?' she said.

  'Tell you ...?'

  'How beautiful it is here.' She sat in the chair and pulled the robe about her ankles.

  'I tried. But Ireland requires another language.'

  'I was remembering the trip to Hawaii with my parents, I was nine years old. I wanted to stay inside for long hours. The beauty was so intense and unrelenting, it woke a pain in me.'

  'Let's don't be waking any pains here.'

  'I read a poem once--The beauty of the world hath made me sad, This beauty that will pass ...'

  'Now, now,' he said in his pulpit voice.

  She looked up, laughing. 'I think the poem may have been written by an Irishman.'

  'That figures.' He removed the plate cover with a flourish.

  'How amazing,' she said. 'The yolks are the exact color of my favorite crayon in first grade. Thank you, sweetheart.'

  'In the absence of your morning Observer, I bring a report from the outer realms.

  'It's fairing off to a grand, soft day.

  'The Barret is a beauty.

  'The eggs are laid on-site.

  'The sausage is from a local farm, ditto the butter. And there was a big row in the kitchen.'

  'Who?'

  'Liam and Anna.'

  'About what?' She thrust down the plunger of the French press.

  'I don't know. It was all in Irish.'

  'I wish I could have heard it. What does it sound like?'

  'That's a hard one. Maybe like burning turf smells--strange, powerful, from the gut of prehistory. I understood only one word. Bella.'

  'Italian for beautiful,' she said, pouring the coffee, 'and a perfectly good word for this breakfast. I'm in heaven. Which is the blood pudding?'

  'There,' he said, pointing.

  She peered at it. 'I wonder how it's made.'

  'First, take two liters of blood.'

  She burst into laughter. 'You can't scare me.'

  'Don't I know it,' he said.

  'What sort of blood?'

  'Curiosity killed the cat.'

  'Do you mind if I stay in the room 'til dinner?'

  'Not at all, I thought you would.'

  'Will you be bereft without me?'

  'Ha! I've already received an invitation.'

  'To go fishing?'

  'My dear girl, in a few minutes' time, I'll be muddling along in a Rover possibly as old as the megaliths. Off to Riverstown with Liam, back after lunch. Need anything?'

  She forked a sausage, waved it in the air. 'I have it all. Go and be as the butterfly.'

  It was their old mantra; he relished hearing it.

  In the bathroom mirror, he examined the scruff on his face. Nothing much he could do about it until the power came on. He stood back and ran his hand over the stubble, unable to remember going a day without shaving. Well, maybe once or twice when he had the flu.

  He realized he was whistling as he went down the stairs.

  Five

  'None but Seamus will be stirrin', poor divil. He's th' butler at Catharmore--always up at th' crack, cooking, polishing, laying fires. God above, th' man's a saint.'

  'Fires in August--that's usual?'

  'We keep a bit of fire burnin' year-round, th' Conors.'

  They were having a shout over the rattle which filled the Rover from front to rear; the scent of last night's rain poured through the open windows.

  'We'll do a quick shot around the drive, then be off.'

  The road was steep, rutted, strewn in places by blossoms of wild fuchsia loosed by the downpour. Fallen trees decayed among brambles at the wood's edge.

  'Most of the house is on th' ruin--still an' all, it looks out to one of the finest prospects in th' west of Ireland.'

  They rounded a curve overhung by rhododendron. The house appeared on a treeless prominence, engraved against a billow of clouds.

  He was unaccustomed to limestone houses. In his rustic view, limestone was the material of stoical municipal buildings with their crust of soot and pigeon droppings.

  'The Conor cabin,' Liam said, ironic.

  He sensed that he was to think Catharmore handsome. He did not.

  'Built by an Irishman in the early 1860s, name of O'Donnell. Thanks to a rich uncle, O'Donnell emigrated to Philadelphia as a lad--medical school, a successful practice, everything a Sligo boy could dream of. Came home to Lough Arrow with his wife in 1859. The hunger years had put th' passion in him for helpin' th' poor at home.'

  'The lintels, the keystones--very striking,' he said. His mother and Peggy had raised him to look for the positive in every common thing. 'A splendid portico.' It was the best he could do.

  'Father bought it when he was fifty-two; moved out from Sligo, where he owned a sizable building operation. Came with an invalid wife who was after havin' th' country air. Then his wife died, and he married her nursemaid.'

  Liam braked for the view down the slope.

  At the foot of the hill, the blade of blue water, slicing through green; the clouds--cumulus, immense, on the move. He instinctively crossed himself. 'Glorious,' he said, genuinely touched. 'A privilege to see it.'

  'The red roof showin' among the trees, that's us at Broughadoon. The specks on the water might be our lads. I put our order in for five bric and a nice pike--this afternoon, there'll be four American women on us.'

  'Whoa.'

  'A book club, they told Anna, that turned off to a poker club.'

  They laughed.

  'But lately 't is a travel club.'

  'Flexibility, that's the ticket.'

  The Rover rattled along the grass circle at the front of the house.

  'The nursemaid was my mother, Evelyn McGuiness. Twenty-some years of age and a ravin' beauty, they say; one of seven raised in a one-room cabin a few kilometers from here. Fierce an' ravishing, my father called her. Th' lord of th' manor made a mighty case for himself, but she says 't was th' fine Irish house she married.'

  Five bays. Windows on the second and third floors blind with interior shutters, as if hiding the rooms from bird and hawk; vines protruding from copper guttering. As they approached the portico, three Labs raced down the steps.

  'That's Roddy th' yellow, Kevin th' chocolate--you met them at th' lodge--and the oul' black fellow's Cuchulain.' Liam braked and dug biscuits from the pocket of his wind-breaker. 'Show y'r manners, ye lazy cods. Ah, Cuch, ye're a good by, yes ye are. Roddy, ye're latherin'
up m' arm, get a grip on y'rself.' He flung a handful of biscuits across the grass. 'Run for it, lads, ye're too fat altogether.

  'There was a garden wall ten feet high,' Liam said as they drove down the hill. 'My brother, Paddy, pulled it down. He can have the place and all th' nuisance of it. I'm happy with my books and my Barret.'

  'There's a senior Barret and a junior, I believe. ' He had read a little about Irish art; the senior was definitely the bigger ticket.

  'This is th' senior. Paddy's after me to sell it, or give it to Trinity College--as if he ever gave two quid to th' place.'

  'You're a Trinity man?'

  'Read Latin and botany at Trinity. Barely half a year was all I could take of it. Too confinin'. When Father died at th' middle of term, I made off for Lough Arrow an' never looked back. Truth is, I grew up wild as bog cotton; took my degree in th' woods and fields.'

  He'd taken a degree of his own in the woods and fields. The sweltering summers of his Mississippi youth had been his favored university.

  'I learned off a few poems as a lad, but a bit of something by Synge is all that comes to mind these days--I knew the stars, the flowers and the birds, the grey and wintry sides of many glens, and did but half remember human words, in converse with the mountains, moors and fens.

  'I excused myself from bein' raised, you might say. I liked bein' in th' open, studying flowers and weeds and bushes and bugs. I was brought up by th' people, really--snagged hares, took 'em to a cottage door for my supper. Was wild as a hare myself--a wonderful childhood. The upbringin' I lacked from my mother, I got from twenty others. I never felt so happy as when sittin' by the open fire of a cottage, listenin' to a story or a fiddle or talkin' to the old people about home cures. Ah, they'd go on about pus and gangrene and bile and deformities of all kinds-- people risin' up from their coffins at a wake, birthin' infants with two heads. Fascinating.

  'I like to think I wasn't a completely bad fellow, for all that. Didn't drown any cats or cut th' tails off dogs, though I did scare th' daylights out of a teacher I tangled with more than once. I pulled a bedsheet over m'self when she was walkin' home at dark, jumped out of th' hedge, and yelled at th' top of m' voice, May th' divil put warts on y'r oul' nose! She was easier on me after that, and I was easier with her--'t was an unspoken pact we had; I think she knew who was under the sheet.

  'But see here?' Liam tapped the right side of his nose. 'A wart. Came there some time later, but made me wonder, nonetheless.'

  They laughed, comfortable.

  'Is primogeniture still practiced here?'

  'Outlawed in the sixties. Ever since he was a kid, Paddy was fierce to have th' house. When Father died, there was no chance of Mother sellin' th' place, though God knows, there was hardly two bob left to maintain it--he was eighty-some when he passed.

  'I did my bit to help--worked as a finish carpenter around th' villages and townlands; at weekends, came home and tried to keep th' place standing. Paddy had graduated Trinity a few years before, joined forces with an ad agency in Dublin and tricked himself out as an art director. Our mother was proud enough--though she was after havin' a doctor in th' family. Then off to London Paddy went, where he became somethin' of a star in the ad business.

  'He lived in London a few years, married twice, divorced twice, made a name for himself. Then off to New York an' puts together his own outfit an' marries again. 't was a smash, th' business, but a bust, th' marriage.

  'When he came home a few years back, he'd just sold his company to some Madison Avenue bucko. He was what any man in Sligo would call rich--but here's where th' cheese gets bindin'. 't was his dream to turn Catharmore into a country house hotel. 't is th' fashion, you know, turning our country houses into hotels.'

  'Helps keep the roof over your head.'

  'Th' place had run down altogether; we thought he'd gone simple.'

  'Catharmore is competition for Broughadoon, then?'

  'Ah, no. He never finished th' job. Mother wanted the ground floor done up first, for a good impression to the guests; and of course th' kitchen had to be done up if you're to feed a mouth in these parts. He cobbled that together with a crew from Dublin, and what's done is grand, I'll give him that, but th' cost was three times th' bloody estimate, an' no place yet for a guest to lay his head.

  'His money was gone, th' wind was whippin' th' tiles off th' roof, and th' drink took over completely. 't was a right cod.'

  The Rover splashing through pools along the lane; in the hedges, rain-washed light on scarlet fuchsia.

  'Broughadoon--is it part of Catharmore?'

  ''t was. Th' lodge would have passed to me, but Mother sold it off after Father died. Maybe a hundred acres in terms of your American real estate. Anna's father bought it.'

  'William.'

  'Aye. He deeded it to Anna when we were married; he has life estate.'

  They were silent for a time.

  Along the verges, a colony of bizarre vegetation--leaves the size of small umbrellas, fruit similar to a pineapple. Scary stuff.

  'Gunnera tinctoria. Th' blasted wild rhubarb. 't is takin' us over.'

  Even the Irish had their kudzu.

  'Meant to tell you I saw deer this morning,' he said. 'A breathtaking sight in the ground fog.'

  'We farm deer for Sligo and Dublin restaurants, and our own tables at Broughadoon. Around forty head these days.'

  'That's roughly the number up to destroying my rosebushes back home.'

  'We get a bit of that, too, th' buggers, but the herd you saw is fenced. I'm also runnin' around eighty head of sheep on land leased from a neighbor, and of course there's th' chickens--some for eggs, most for meat. A patch of bog gives turf for th' hearth, I cut it m'self when I can.'

  'Well done.'

  'In this business, have to paddle like a son of a gun to keep the oul' head above water. Anna makes our preserves, does most of th' cooking, keeps th' gardens, books th' guests, runs th' lodge altogether.'

  Liam glanced at him, suddenly shy. 'A grand woman, Anna--I'm mad for her. I'll never forget the day she threw herself at me, as she says. I thought she loved me, but she wouldn't marry me, for all that. She said no, but there was th' look of yes on her face. 't was like she was boltin' th' door with a boiled carrot.'

  He laughed.

  ''t was a desperate time, I felt I might lose her. Then one day I was walkin' along the oul' cart road an' she was standin' on th' bank, so, and suddenly she just leaps off th' bank, I saw it in slow motion. Just surrenders herself to the air, to me, an' lands in my arms, nearly knockin' me over. An' that was that.

  'She got herself a finer education than my own. Her da sent her to Mount Anville in South Dublin, where th' sisters took a great likin' to her. She has the gift for French and Italian, and a fine way of speakin' her feelings.'

  'We married above ourselves,' he said. 'How many guest rooms?'

  'When I'm done down th' hall, a total of nine. Looks like I'll have to do th' finish work m'self. Nobody wants a day's honest labor anymore. Gave th' boot to a bloody Englishman last week; he had th' skills of an angel an' th' soul of a devil. Could cope to stone like nothin' you ever saw, but couldn't keep his mitts off th' dope.'

  Fields interlaced by crumbling walls. A cow barn with a single blue shutter. 'Ireland is more beautiful than I remember,' he said.

  'By suffering worn and weary, your Mr. Longfellow wrote, but beautiful as some fair angel yet.'

  'You know Longfellow!'

  'No, no. 't was a line my father liked to quote. When he wasn't fishin', he had his nose in a book.'

  'You love his books.'

  'Maybe because I loved him. He was a very fine class of a man. Very devout. We fasted, we confessed, we walked the Mass path. He loved us, though there was none of that touchy-feely stuff the young get nowadays. You knew you were loved and that was enough, you never wanted more. He set me on his lap occasionally, which was closer than I ever got to my mother. I remember being uneasy up there where his whiskers seemed to have
a life of their own.'

  They turned out of the lane to the highway.

  'God above,' said Liam, 'I've gnawed your ear off.'

  'Not a bit. I happen to like stories of other people's lives.'

  'My mouth is a terror, Reverend, and that's a fact.'

  He laughed. 'Listening is one of my job requirements. '

  'My father was a grand listener, I could tell him bits I couldn't tell anyone else. There's something about you that reminds me of him.'

  When they arrived at Broughadoon after two o'clock, he found his barefoot wife enthroned in the green chair, wearing jeans and a sweater.

  'Tell me everything,' she said. 'Then I'll tell you everything.'

  Even in a locked room, she would have something to report.

  'Made the rounds,' he said. 'Saw Catharmore, the big house on the hill. Went to the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. The butcher was a fellow named Cavanagh spelled with a C, who knows nothing about us poor goats with a K. Twinty-foive yares agoo, he said, there ware foor of us in th' village. There'd be soom of'em yet if 't weren't for th' big chains coomin' in.'

  ''t is stirrin' th' Irish in ye,' she said, pleased.

  Actually, he had felt a stirring--some sense of home or consolation that he hadn't expected.

  'Let's see. We bought stamps. Saw a castle in the distance--Liam says castles are a dime a dozen, one on every corner like the American drugstore. Then we had lunch--a turkey sandwich with lettuce and tomato on whole wheat. Drank a pint.'

  'A pint of what?'

  'A pint of what everyone else was drinking.'

  She laughed. 'In Rome.'

  He sat on the foot of the bed, exhausted. 'Okay,' he said, 'your turn. I guess you know the power's still out. They can't send workmen 'til tomorrow, and Liam's fit to be tied. The landlines are down, too, of course, and their computer. Not good for business.'

  'I'm in need of a real bath, but I love the power being out.'

  'You would,' he said.

  'When you left, I ...' She sneezed.

  'Bless you.'

  'I sketched the view from the window. Want to see?'

  'Is the pope a Catholic?'

  She had always been tentative about showing her work to him. She gave over the sketchbook as a child might--abashed, hopeful.