12

 

St. Joseph’s Church was at the far end of the village from Daniel’s place. As I walked in for Devotions on Friday the soft misty rain was more like a caress than a nuisance. By the time I reached the middle of Main Street I had joined up with the other people as they made their way to the chapel. It was always a great chance to catch up on gossip, find out who was expecting, who was ill, who was going out with whom, who was moving away to the city, or emigrating altogether.

Eileen McGrath fell in step with me as I neared St. Joseph’s. Any news you wanted to get around the village, all you needed to do was tell Eileen and almost every household would know it before you got to bed that night.

“Well, hello, Delia. Isn’t it grand that you can get away to Devotions? How are things at the Big House?”

She was not subtle, Eileen.

“Ah, I hate to miss my Friday, you know.”

“Indeed. Sure we can count on you to be there always, no matter what’s going on. How’s himself?”

“Mr. Wolfe is doing as well as can be expected, Eileen.”

“Mm. I hear he’s pretty bad. Will he get over it, do you think? “

I wasn’t certain whether she had actually heard that or if she was just fishing.

“He’s grand at the moment. The drugs are hard on him, you know. He sticks close to home.”

“Ah well, he’s always done that now, hasn’t he? And his daughter came all the way from Canada. Then there’s that young one in town looking for her people. By name of Buckley, I hear. Have you met her?”

“Her name is Butler. Yes, she came to the house to talk to me. Sure there’s no help I can give her.”

Eileen was not deterred.

“But the family she’s looking for is Buckley, isn’t it?”

“Yes. But it has nothing to do with us, sure. None of us would have known her mother at all.”

We walked in silence for a while. St. Joseph’s was in sight, so I quickened my step.

“Your sister Maggie, now. She’s been away a while, hasn’t she?”

“She has.”

“Aye. Where is it she is now?”

I was out of patience with Eileen McGrath, but like all gossips she could sniff out reluctance to impart information before a person knew she wanted to keep something to herself and it only made her more determined.

“Still in the home in Dublin where she’s been for over twenty years. Doing as well as can be expected.”

“Ah, yes. She is. She is. I wonder if she’d know anything about this Butler girl.”

“How could she? Sure she was in the home when Iris Butler was born. She’d know nothing. Even if she did, she’d not remember it now anyway. Well, here we are. I wonder what the sermon will be tonight.”

“Father Halloran does such a grand job it doesn’t really matter, does it? I expect it will be about love your neighbour or some such. You don’t have to worry on that score, Delia. Aren’t you great the way you look after the sick.”

“It’s what I’m trained to do, Eileen.”

We were at the church door. I dipped my fingers in the Holy Water font and blessed myself. Eileen McGrath and I went in side by side and took our pews.

Instead of listening to Father Halloran’s sermon, I thought of the first time I met Daniel. I was working on the children’s ward at the local hospital. Instead of the picnics the FitzGibbons held on their estate during my childhood, Daniel now came once a year to visit the children and to read to them. He also gave them each a copy of one of his books. Although we had lived in the same village for most of my life, I’d never actually met him before that I could remember. I’d met his wife and Fran and Jude at those picnics and run into them in the village now and again when we were young. Jude doesn’t remember me, but I remember her, always tagging along with Fran, but keeping in her shadow.

In any event, I happened to be on duty the day of Daniel’s visit to the hospital in early spring of 1967. It was a beautiful spring that year. I remember the scent of lilac as I walked out home after work and the fields bright with bluebells, all the bushes alive with sparrows and linnets.

Of course I had seen photos of Daniel. Indeed for weeks before he came his photo was plastered on every notice board in the hospital. He was, then, about forty-five, a man at the height of his vitality. He wasn’t exactly handsome, but he had that confidence, a sense of who he was, that made him seem so.

The children were crazy with excitement. For once none of them objected to being washed and tidied up. Those who couldn’t get up sat as straight as they could in their beds and those that were ambulatory congregated in the biggest ward where we had wheeled those who weren’t too ill but who were still confined to bed. I was alerted to Daniel’s arrival by the hush that struck the ward. It will never leave my mind, that first moment when I turned and saw him. He stood just inside the door, a smile a mile wide on his face. I was drawn to him right away, at a glance dazzled by the energy that radiated from him.

“Good morning, everyone,” he said.

Nobody answered, the children being struck dumb by the presence of the man who wrote the books most of them had listened to and read just about their whole lives.

“Well, that’s not much of a welcome,” he said. “Don’t you want to hear about the adventures of Wally Wee?”

“Yes!”

A little girl shouted that out, then buried her head in her book, but emboldened by her, all the other kids joined in. A chorus of yeses rained down around Daniel.

He was wonderful with them. He talked to them very naturally. For their part they adored him. He asked all about them and answered their questions with some humour and patience. He read to them for a long time and I was quite moved to see how engrossed they became, the ward, their loneliness and discomforts forgotten.

My job was to escort him to each ward to see the children who couldn’t be moved, many of whom were heavily drugged and often in pain. He was so kind and gentle with them. He read them a story, not too long, and spoke for a moment with each one. As we walked from ward to ward, he asked me about myself. How long had I been a nurse? What did I like about it? When he left I was as enchanted with him as the children were.

The next day he showed up as I was going off duty. He brought a big bunch of lilacs and presented them to me, to thank me, he said, for my work with the children.

“I’m just temporary there,” I said. “It’s not my specialty at all.”

“Doesn’t matter to the children why you are there, only that you are.”

We walked together to the parking lot. He offered me a lift home, which I refused, not wanting to raise village gossip.

“Can I buy you a drink then one evening? We can drive somewhere else.”

I laughed. He knew the small-village gossip mill probably better than I.

“Yes, I would like that,” I said, surprised at myself.

I drove into Limerick in my own car and met him there that first night. We had dinner at a lovely hotel. We just talked about this and that, then we drove home separately.

The next week we did it again, but this time Daniel picked me up at the crossroads along the Limerick road from my house. When he dropped me off there afterwards he kissed me before I got out of the car. It didn’t take too long after that before we became lovers.

As I was remembering this I was aware of Eileen beside me, and though I didn’t look at her once, I felt her curiosity reach out to me like a tentacle. Not for the first time in my life I was thankful that no one could read another’s mind.