Dr Matt Coumer could hardly believe his ears. The man who stood before him, as far as he knew, was the sanest and soberest in the parish. Matt had known him for most of his life. Gerry Severs lived in a small cottage by the river. He lived alone since his wife Pegeen had slipped away on him. That was the way Gerry, with his quaint turn of speech, put it whenever he was asked how his wife died. ‘She slipped away on me’, he would answer mournfully and then he would move hastily on lest further elaboration be required.
Matt had risen to his feet the moment Gerry entered his surgery.
‘Well Gerry?’ Matt asked as he proffered a hand to the young man. Not that much younger he thought, seven years, no more and no less, twenty-five years since he taught him how to cast a line and what a pupil he had been! He could land a fly in Matt’s extended cap as they fished either side of the river.
‘Sit down and I’ll take your blood pressure.’
When Gerry failed to respond to the offer Matt countered by assuring him that there wouldn’t be any charge.
‘It’s not blood pressure that’s troubling me.’ Gerry vacantly studied an anatomy chart on the wall opposite and searched for the opening words which would eventually disclose his unusual dilemma. Should he begin by telling his friend that his late, lamented wife Pegeen had been the scourge of his life from the day he had married her, that she had reviled him, spat on him, even beaten him, yes beaten him and savagely at that and that he had never reacted physically, never once. He had accepted every taunt and every jibe with resignation in the hope that she would change back into the gentle girl she had been before they married.
‘I know all about Pegeen if that is what’s troubling you or,’ Matt paused, ‘at least enough about her to know that you have suffered more than your share in your marriage.’
Gerry without turning felt for the chair he knew to be somewhere behind him. Locating it he gratefully sat and waited for the sudden giddiness which had visited him after Matt’s revelation to disappear.
Matt sat behind his desk and waited until some of Gerry’s composure returned. After a decent interval he informed his friend how some of Gerry’s neighbours who chanced to be patients of his had asked him to intervene.
‘She’s a street angel and a house devil’, one of Gerry’s elderly neighbours had been the first to mention Pegeen’s vicious behaviour. Others would follow before Matt decided to move. On that afternoon several years before as he and Gerry were fishing Matt asked him if all was well in his marriage.
‘Couldn’t be better,’ Gerry had answered breezily.
‘I’m told,’ Matt would not be deterred, ‘that there are serious rows.’
‘A marriage without a row is like an egg without salt.’
It was the light-hearted way his friend answered that eased Matt’s worries and, of course, there was the fact that neighbours exaggerated especially when they had nothing better to do.
Then one March morning earlier that year when the river was in flood, Pegeen stood barefoot on a parapet and threw herself into the swirling waters below.
‘Christmas was her worst time,’ Gerry spoke matter-of-factly. ‘There was never a Christmas dinner but there was no scarcity of abuse. She heaped it on all through the twelve days and I took it.’
The disclosure was followed by a long silence.
‘How long is she dead now?’ Matt wondered if it was the right question.
‘Nine months and three days,’ came the forthright answer, ‘and I’ll tell you this Matt, I’ve never had such peace or at least I never had such peace until last night.’
‘What happened last night?’ Matt asked anxiously.
‘I saw her,’ came the prompt reply.
‘You saw Pegeen?’ Matt prompted.
‘That’s right,’ from Gerry.
‘Tell me about it.’ Matt studied his friend’s face for signs of instability, anything that would tell him about his mental state, studied the averted eyes for tell-tale indications of derangement and his hands for tell-tale jerks or contractions. There was nothing whatsoever to suggest that Gerry was anything other than the same, solid citizen he had always been.
‘It was about half-twelve,’ Gerry recalled, ‘I could not sleep so I took a stroll down by the river. On my way back I felt a cold shiver all over my body. I often heard about cold shivers but I didn’t believe about them until last night. A cold shiver is a nasty visitor but it’s not as bad as an unnatural tremor because that’s exactly what I felt shaking hands with me next.’
‘An unnatural tremor you say?’ Matt savoured the expression.
‘Exactly,’ Gerry went on, ‘and on top of that I felt as if somebody had tugged at my coat but when I turned around to have a look there was nobody there or at least nobody near enough to have touched my coat. The nearest person to me at the time was a female standing under a lamp-post. My heart missed a beat Matt because she was dressed exactly like Pegeen.’
‘How far away was she exactly?’ Matt asked.
‘Forty yards to be exact,’ Gerry answered without a moment’s hesitation, ‘and I ought to know because I played centre forward long enough to know the distance. It was then I started to shake all over. I was like a cob-web in a breeze and when I lifted my left leg to get out of there fast it wouldn’t move and neither would my right leg. I was stuck there. Then a black cat came slinking out of the shadows and he passed by where the woman stood or ghost or demon or whatever because I didn’t know for sure who it was at that stage. As the cat drew near the power returned to my legs but by then a courting couple had entered the square and a car also drew up close by so I felt the terror quenching itself inside of me. I said to myself I’ll have a look at this woman because I’m Gerry Severs and if you ask anybody in this town what sort of bloke I am they’ll tell you I’m as sound as bell metal and that I don’t spin yarns. I made my way towards the dame under the pole but when I drew near to her she turned her head away. I couldn’t make out her features but then the lights of the car shone full on her face and the next thing you know I was staring into her two weepers. It was Pegeen. One minute it wasn’t her face and the next minute it was and when her features were exposed by the car lights there was no doubt in my mind. The blood drained out of my body and the whole square seemed to start going round in a circle. I found my balance deserting me and the sight seemed to leave my eyes. Then I began to stagger and then I fell out on my face and eyes. Look, there’s a bump on my forehead and there’s a cut on my poll.’
When Gerry came round he was sitting in a chair in the kitchen of a neighbour. The courting couple had seen him lying on the ground and had seen the woman walk away and had partially revived him, enough to be able to drag him to the nearest cottage in the laneway which led from the square to the river.
Matt leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes in concentration as Gerry proceeded with his tale. Satisfied that there was no mental problem and that Gerry had been the victim of some minor hallucination which might well have been induced by the flashing car lights, he prescribed some sedatives and told him he would expect him to call around the same time on the morrow. ‘And by the way,’ Matt went on, ‘I will expect you to join my wife Maggie and myself for Christmas dinner, that’s if you’re free on the occasion.’
‘Oh I’ll manage to fit you in,’ Gerry laughed, grateful of the offer because he always felt at ease in the presence of Maggie Coumer and Matt was a trusted friend of long standing. That night Matt told the whole story to Maggie.
Normally he would never disclose the contents of any exchanges whatsoever between his patients and himself but Maggie was herself a professional having qualified as a nurse many years before. ‘There’s no doubt but that Gerry saw a girl but there’s also no doubt she could not have been his wife because if you remember it was I who laid her out when her body was recovered and it was I who helped coffin her and she was as dead as mutton you can take it from me. I’ll make a few enquiries tomorrow and I’ll get to the bottom of this as sure as my name is Maggie Coumer.’
That night Gerry slept soundly thanks to the sleeping capsules which his friend had given him. In the Coumer household the good doctor and his partner whispered into the morning, careful not to awaken their three young children in rooms nearby.
‘I remember years ago,’ Maggie recalled, ‘to have been sitting in the commercial room of the Manklefort Hotel in Dublin with my brother Thady and his girlfriend. The lights were low at the time and we could barely make out each other’s faces. The lights had been dimmed on the instructions of the night porter who warned us to keep our voices down because members of the garda síochána were on the prowl for illegal patrons. Shortly after he left, a passing car threw its lights through a gap in the window curtains. A shaft of this light fell on my brother’s face and suddenly his features were transformed into those of my father who had died the year before. If I didn’t know better I might have imagined that he had returned briefly from the dead to be with us. Then the lights were gone and the image disappeared. I remember I had never been so lonely after that brief glimpse of his face.’
‘Well you’re not lonely now.’ Matt gently placed his arms round her and drew her close.
On the following evening after Maggie had questioned all her sources she placed her findings before her husband. He neither hummed nor hawed until she had put the facts before him. It was her wont to persevere with all her narratives without pause and instead of being bored or disinterested as some might be, Matt found himself well informed at the end of the proceedings and entertained as well.
Maggie never lingered over her revelations no matter how interesting or how salacious they might seem. Matt would settle himself at the outset and on this occasion he was well pleased for she was a woman who never lied. Of course he would have to admit that he found a certain unique musicality in her voice that he found in no other. There was also a deep warmth and never, that he could recall, had there been the least stridency or harshness. It had occurred to him on a number of occasions that it might be his affection for her that made him feel so enraptured. Still he remained convinced that an independent adjudicator would give her full marks if there was a competition for housewives’ tales.
She had, apparently, discovered the identity of the mysterious woman whose face in the car light had brought about Gerry’s fainting spell. The woman was a first cousin of Gerry’s late wife Pegeen and had returned home to her native parish a few short days before in the hope of meeting the man for whom she had pined since the day her cousin had married him. She had not come home for the funeral as she felt that it might have been an intrusion on her part and besides there was the protocol involved. If Gerry’s affections were to be successfully transferred from his late wife to that wife’s cousin then a period of at least six months should be allowed to pass. Consequently she had postponed her return until she could bear her burden no longer. She had been mortified when Gerry had collapsed after her face had been revealed to him. She had hoped that he would stop and chat or even take her in his arms but that had been a wild dream or so she admitted.
‘What I propose to do,’ Maggie confided to her husband, ‘is invite her here for Christmas dinner and allow herself and Gerry to renew their relationship. I know, I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say that it wasn’t much of a relationship to begin with but my answer to that is that you cannot quench a love that burns as brightly as Noreen Meeke’s and, on the other hand, Gerry will die from loneliness if he doesn’t find a partner soon.’
Maggie folded her arms as she waited for her husband’s appraisal. It must be said here, however, that there were many in the town who regarded Maggie as a consummate busy-body and a fully-fledged meddler. There were others, and this body included her husband, who saw her as an incurable romantic and an amateur matchmaker whose only aim was to bring lonely people together in holy wedlock. By way of arbitration Matt took his wife on his lap and kissed her gently as he complimented her on a fine afternoon’s work, ‘for,’ said Matt, ‘you have accomplished two important things. You have solved a mystery which might well hang over us for many a year and you have sown the seeds of love. What more could you do on behalf of the ignorant and the lonely, on behalf of all the unfulfilled in love and knowledge? How blessed I am to have for a wife such a wonderful creature.’
Maggie beamed and blushed although she was well aware that her husband often used flowery language when he paid homage to her.
Christmas dinner at Coumer’s was a rare success. Noreen Meeke was an instant success with the children and Gerry, always a favourite, added to an afternoon of unpremeditated joy. By the time the Christmas and New Year festivities ended the relationship between Gerry and Noreen was on a firm footing.
Although both were people who might be fairly described as reserved they were soon linking arms in the streets and boreens of the parish and by the time the first salmon started to run before the beginning of the fishing season there was talk of a Christmas marriage. The good doctor and his friend Gerry were unusually successful, landing a ten- and twelve-pound salmon respectively with two-and-a-half inch blue minnows. The water was right for the colour and the size of bait and on the second day of legal fishing Gerry landed a second fish with the same lure. This salmon was presented to the parish priest Canon Coodle, himself a retired fisherman but now too elderly for the vicissitudes of flood-waters and gravelly streams. Long tradition obliged the first angler who bagged his second salmon of the season to present it to the parish priest. In cases where the angler might be in need the canon always paid the going rate but Gerry would not countenance financial reward.
‘Tell the canon to say a prayer for me,’ he informed Mrs Hanlon after she had accepted the fresh fish on her master’s behalf.
‘I’ll do that Gerry,’ she had promised, ‘and I’ll say one myself as well.’
The spring and summer went by and in the middle of September Gerry found himself gainful employment in Folan’s timber-yard. Shortly afterwards he became engaged to Noreen Meeke and a fortnight before Christmas, to the day, the pair were married free, gratis and for nothing by the legendary Canon Coodle himself.
‘Don’t forget in my obituary,’ he wagged a cautionary finger at his friend Matt Coumer, ‘to tell them about the eighteen-pounder I landed in Shanowen the very day after I was made canon of this parish.’
Matt promised the outstanding catch would be resurrected for the occasion but added the rider that should roles be reversed the nineteen-pounder he bagged at the Black Stick on his second day out must not be excluded. It was not the first time it occurred to the canon that anglers were inordinately proud of their catches and why wouldn’t they be he thought defensively to himself when the average weight of a spring fish was roughly eight pounds.
As Christmas drew near the love and compassion, often buried out of sight in men’s hearts, began to flow so that by the time Christmas Eve came round there was an unmistakable air of goodwill and generosity all over the parish. The dour became cordial, the gripers grew cheerful, the grim grew gracious and so forth and so on until it seemed that a Christmas of untold joy was at hand. Every household radiated happiness, except one.
It had come to pass that Noreen Meeke the blushing bride of Gerry had ceased to blush, the laughter to which she had been addicted before she married vanished from her lips after marriage. In short Noreen was anything but meek and poor Gerry who was surely entitled to his fair share of marital bliss became once more a martyr to the matrimonial state. She had begun to natter early one morning as he dressed for work. The morning was dark and gloomy enough as it was without the addition of human woe to drag it down further. Gerry said nothing. He went to the side of the bed and he kissed his babbling bride to silence. Afterwards he went straight out the door to his place of work at Folan’s timber-yard. He prayed that by the time he returned for his lunch she would be her old self once more but it was not to be.
There was no lunch but down from the room came a powerful verbal barrage which made Gerry believe for a moment that his late wife had been reincarnated. Trembling he opened the bedroom door and was gratified to see that it was his new wife who occupied the bed from which she was still holding forth. All the abuse wasn’t directed at Gerry although it would be true to say that the greater portion of it was. She excluded none of his friends or neighbours reserving the choicer profanities for Matt and Maggie Coumer but most heinously of all she announced in a powerful voice that the flames of hell were not hot enough for Canon Coodle, his housekeeper and the two curates, a quartet, incidentally, on whom until this time nobody had laid a hard word.
Vainly Gerry tried to calm her. He spoke with the utmost tenderness and reassured her of his undying love. He spoke of the wonderful Christmas they would have and of the happy times after that. He endeavoured to calm, cajole and canoodle her but all his physical efforts were rejected and all his blandishments fell on deaf ears. he spent his entire lunch break with her. That evening Matt paid her a visit and prescribed some medication.
At ten o’clock that night, without a word to anyone, Gerry betook himself to an ancient water-keeper’s lodge above the river bank. It was situated about two miles outside the town and was hidden from every approach by dense natural growth. he made several journeys during the course of the night and early morning until he had accumulated sufficient clothing and utensils to meet his needs. He prepared a fire from some timber and tinder he had brought with him. He slept until noon and when he had breakfasted he spent the remaining day-light hours walking along the river bank. He had brought his rods and lines and lures with him on his final journey to the lodge. He would spend the weeks ahead preparing his fishing gear.
In the course of time Noreen recovered fully but she never mentioned her husband’s name or responded to queries about his welfare. If one was to judge by appearances one would have to conclude that no happier soul existed in the parish. She was well pleased with her deserted wife’s allowance and declared it to be more than adequate.
Gerry, for his part, collected his dole money by arrangement from a small shop where he would purchase all his wants for the week. The shop stood near a cross-roads about a mile from where he resided but it might as well have been a hundred for the terrain was rough and dangerous and a resort of badgers whose rooting and grunting could be heard all night. Compared to the verbal broadsides of Noreen Meeke the sounds of the wilderness were music to Gerry’s ears. Any salmon he bagged was taken to the crossroads shop which acted as an agency for a Waterford city fish buyer. Gerry ignored the other anglers who fished the waters contiguous to his domain. When saluted he grunted an acknowledgement and no more. On a few occasions from the undergrowth he spotted Matt Coumer circling the lodge but he never emerged. He blamed Matt’s wife for landing him in a second disastrous marriage and wanted no more to do with her. He allowed his beard to grow and grow it did down to his naval, grimy, grey and gruesome. He became known as the Hermit of Scartnabrock.
After ten years in the wilderness he eventually fell foul of the wet and the damp and brought pneumonia upon himself. When he failed to appear for several days his friends Matt Coumer and Sergeant Ruttle went in search of him. He lay gasping his last breath on a damp bed when they found him. He managed a smile when he recognised them. It was a smile that touched Matt to the very quick of his being.
The funeral was poorly attended save for the salmon and trout anglers who fished the river from source to mouth year in, year out. They carried the coffin on their shoulders from the church to the grave-yard where Canon Coodle spoke of the kindness Gerry had shown in his healthier days to younger anglers and to strangers who were not well versed in the ways of the river. The canon spoke of Gerry’s attachment to all rivers great and small and explained the influence the river had on himself especially when the dead man and he fished together in the past. He spoke about the tributaries which brought their own special flavour to the river. He spoke of the different tunes the river sang depending on the highs and lows of the ever-flowing waters. He explained how the river never sang the same song twice, how the casual listener might easily be duped into believing that river-song remained the same for days on end until the floods came or the waters dropped in dry seasons to rock bottom. This was not the case at all he told them. There was a subtle difference every day guaranteed by the ever-changing flow. He explained how Gerry knew these things and he told how he himself could never pass a river without stopping to inspect the water and listen to the particular tune of the river in question. Afterwards the anglers went to their favourite watering hole where they toasted the dead angler and drank their fill in his memory.
Noreen never attended the funeral. After a month she packed her bags and returned to England where she married a man who passed by a great river every day but never looked at it. That then is the sad tale of the Hermit of Scartnabrock who so unsuccessfully fished in the waters of matrimony but managed to land a few whoppers in the river of his dreams.