There was comfort in the drink that Peg had passed to her and she was glad of it, but inside she longed for the luxury of a hot whiskey heavy with the pungent smell of cloves and the tang of lemon. Most of all she needed the comfort of a warm bed and sleep. Nora leaned her elbows on the table, giving support to her weary body. Peg too looked tired, but Nora could tell she had settled in with her drink and still had a way to go before heading to bed. “Do you have the letter my father wrote in reply?” she asked.
“No, girl, I don’t.” Peg took a deep breath. “Matt was some upset by that letter. I don’t know if it was because of the way it was written or because he just felt cast aside or both, but after that it was like he didn’t care no more. He just balled that letter up and pitched it in the fire. He watched until it was nothin’ but ash and then walked out the door. This time I knew he’d be back, but I didn’t want him off roamin’ about by hisself in that state. I called out to him that if he was about to go for a walk, I wouldn’t mind a bit of air myself. Before he had a chance to reply, I had my coat on and was to the door. I could see there was a bit of weather on the way so I grabbed his coat off the nail too.”
He was well ahead of her, setting a fierce pace, not bothering to look left or right. Neighbours, busy with cutting wood and mending nets in preparation for winter, paid no attention as Matt Molloy scurried by, but when Peg appeared shortly thereafter, carrying his coat and in just as big a hurry, they turned from their work and followed her progress until she disappeared over the hill.
She held her tongue until she was out of earshot of the neighbours and then she shouted out to him. “Blessed God, Matt, will you hold on? I was lookin’ for a walk, not a gallop. I’m havin’ a hard time catchin’ up.”
He slowed down then, and waited for her.
“That’s a lazy wind, Matt. Here, put your coat on or it’ll go right through you.” She held out his coat and helped him with the sleeves. Low dark clouds overhead promised rain. She pulled the collar snugly around his neck and began to do up the buttons. “I’ll have to see to that before winter sets in,” she said, noticing the top button was missing. She held the lapels for amoment in an effort to get him to face her, but he was focused on a different horizon and completely unaware of her gentle maneuvering. She tucked one lapel inside the other to make up for the lost button.
He hasn’t changed much over the years, she thought, looking him over. He still wore the same kind of dark suit with a shirt and tie and wool pullover. Over time, the pullover had changed in colour but not style. In the old days it was grey, now it was brown. Cautiously, she looked over the thin, clean-shaven man in front of her. He still had a full head of hair, but the spring was gone from the curls and they were now a lovely silvery grey. He was still handsome, she thought, but today, he looked pitiful.
“Sadie Dolan,” he said suddenly. There was an acute bitterness in his voice. “I should never have had anything to do with her.”
Peg stepped back. “What’s that you said?”
“Mistake after mistake. The curse of my life,” he muttered. Then, stepping to the side, he went around her and set off again over the path.
Peg hurried after him, half running to keep up.
“She came into Dowd’s one day. I served her.” He halted abruptly on the path, causing Peg to bump into him and stumble. He reached out, steadied her. “I was a shop assistant there at the time, men’s drapery.” A fleeting look of wonder crossed his face and his voice momentarily lost its edge. “I can remember seeing strands of red-gold in the dark of her hair. They were glinting in the light as she turned her head. On the spur of the moment I asked her if she’d like to go for a walk, after the shop closed.”
He set off again, picking up the pace, taking long angry strides. “There was no baby there when we got married. I’d been fooled and everyone knew but me.” Then he began blathering to himself in a kind of singsong whine. “Spoiled priest, foolish daddy, hangin’ round waitin’ for the babby. Sniggering little snot-nosed brats,” he muttered angrily under his breath.
“Matt.” Peg had to shout again to be heard. “I don’t know what you’re goin’ on about, but I’m beat out.”
He turned and came back to where she was standing, tapping at her chest with a closed fist.
“It’s no good, Matt. I can’t keep up.” Out of sheer necessity she stepped in closer and took his arm. Feeling the closeness of his body, she realized with a start what she had done but to her surprise, she felt no resistance in him. Glad of the support, she drew closer into the comfort and warmth of his big coat. “You had every right to be angry,” she said reassuringly. He made no reply but she thought she felt his arm tighten momentarily around hers but she couldn’t be sure.
“It seems, Nora, that after that he turned right against his wife: couldn’t even bear to look at her and her swollen belly. When, eventually, the child was born, she, in turn, shut him out. Never let him near his son. That was his punishment. He went and reclaimed his books from the doctor who had kept them safe for him. The books were his refuge. For the next few years there was nothin’ but bad feelings and bitter words between them. Now, when his mother died and they had the place to themselves, things eased up a bit. But, you know how it is. In time, we must reap what we sow.
“Matt.” She began to play with the thin gold ring on her finger. “I want you to listen to what I have to say, just this once, listen, and don’t walk away.” His wife took the seat across from him and placed her hands lightly, one on top of the other, on her lap.
He shifted, sensing danger.
She sat very still, waiting for him to acknowledge her but he keep his eyes glued to the book in his hand as if he hadn’t heard her. She drew in a deep breath. “All my life,” she began, “I … I’ve been pushed around doin’ everyone’s biddin’.” She looked around as if by some miracle help would come from the walls or the ceiling or seep out of the cracks in the floor. “In my father’s house I owned nothin’.” She threw her hands in the air in despair. “Nothin’,” she repeated, her voice rising. “Nothin’, but the few clothes on my back. Sadie had no needs or wants. What could I be in need of? Where would I be goin’? I was just there to tend to the needs of a crooked, complainin’ old man and his miserable son, my brother. I was just a skivvy, twenty-eight years old and not a single offer. I knew I was no great catch and they never let me forget it.”
She leaned over and poked her husband in the arm. “You know somethin’, Matt Molloy? It was my brother sentme to the shop that day to get him a new shirt. He had his eye on a girl in the next town and wanted ‘to put his best foot forward,’ so he said. I heard talk that you were home and that you were workin’ at Dowd’s shop.” She opened and closed her hands as they lay in her lap, as if they were the gateway to someplace deep inside of her.
She lifted her head and looked at the man across from her. “I caught your eye over the counter and in that minute I thought I saw something there. Maybe twas only pity, but it came to me that maybe, just maybe, you might understand what it’s like to be cast aside to be lonely and… well, maybe, maybe, you’d know what I mean when I’d say that, sometimes, in the quiet of evening, I can hear the grass whisper to me below in the meadow or that sometimes in the early mornin’ when–”
The book snapped shut and made her jump.
“My God, Matt! You frightened me, you did.”
“Did she know? Tell me now, did my mother know?”
“Know what? Blessed God, can’t we forget about her, Matt? She’s dead and gone!”
“Tell me.” He still hadn’t raised his head.
“Can’t we just make a life for ourselves and Eamon, and not have her, like a crazed old magpie, forever between us? Forget her.”
“Tell me now.”
“Gentle Redeemer.” Hands flew from her lap. “Wasn’t she abroad lookin’ for a wife for you, soon as you set foot back in the town? Sadie Dolan wasn’t exactly what she had in mind to help her save face, not good enough for Matt Molloy, no, but just the same she had to get you out of the bars and settled down where she could keep an eye on you now, didn’t she? So when she heard I’d been walkin’ out with you and, Lord preserve us, in the family way, that was it.” She paused to take her breath.
He looked at her then, attentive to every word.
“My brother it was, told her,” she announced with a degree of satisfaction. “He wanted me gone so he could make way for a new woman in the house. He had no use for me anymore.”
“But you weren’t, damn it!”
She sighed. “To begin with, I thought I was.” Her voice had dropped so that it was barely audible. “I wanted to tell you straight out. You see, I’d missed twice.” She stole a glance at him but he had turned away. “I was terrified.”Her voice collapsed in a deep sob. “Can’t you understand that? Terrified of my own father and brother. My brother knew I’d missed. I don’t know how he knew, but he knew. Goddamn him, he knew everything about me, even that. When I discovered it was a false alarm, twas he urged me not to breathe a word. He wanted me gone, kept tellin’ me that there was no place for me here and that this was my only chance.”
Pitiful eyes turned to the man at her side. He hadn’t moved.
“Jesus, Matt, is it myself I’m talkin’ to?”
“You still haven’t answered me. Did she know?”
“Of course she bloody knew. They fixed it all, didn’t they?” Her cries hit a peak and then collapsed again into a low rattling sob.
“And you agreed.”
She made no reply, just stared into the dying embers of the fire, making no effort to stop the flow of tears that ran down her face and formed a dark patch on the front of her dress.
He opened his book and returned to his reading.
In a flash, her hand came back, and with a single swipe, the book went flying from his hands onto the hot embers of the fire.
A howl, tormented and pitiful, came fromdeep within him and in a single movement he sprang, ripping apart the very space between them. He was on his knees, his bare fingers poking at the glowing coals. The pile of dying embers collapsed, the book sinking farther into the hot ash. His hand touched a red hot coal and he pulled back, bringing his scorched fingers to the cool wetness of his mouth. Then he was back in again, determined. He got hold of the soft leather cover and pulled his beloved Shakespeare from the fire. It was smouldering and coated with hot, white ash. Desperate, he dabbed at the charred pages, spitting on his fingers, touching the glowing edges, brushing the ash, ignoring the agony of his hand.
She watched transfixed as he battled fiercely with the hot coals to save his precious book. “I was wrong,” she said calmly. “You’re no different from them.”
“Mammy?” The child stood in the doorway that led to the back room, his eyes wide with fright. “Mammy,” he said again, louder this time, his petrified gaze fixed on his father’s face. He began to gnaw on his tiny clenched fist.
They looked at each other, father and son, a long, lost look. He could find nothing to say to the boy. There was nothing to say, nothing to do, so he got up and, taking the charred remains of his book, walked past the child and out the door.
Peg took a deep breath. “When I heard that, the chill inside of me was worse than the chill of that October day on the hill. I never did have a child of my own but …”
Even in the gentle light of the lamp Peg looked pale and dazed. “I don’t know if…” Her voice faltered. “It’s too difficult.” She reached for her drink and finished it in one gulp. “How can we know what goes on in someone else’s head?” It was a question that didn’t invite an answer, so she turned away to speak to the night. “He told me that he wrote from New York one time, asking them to come to America. He said he had money saved for their passage. But he never heard back from them, not the word, and he never tried again.”
“That’s true!” Nora was suddenly alert. “That is absolutely true. I have the letter here in my handbag.” She reached down for the bag by her feet. Where was it? The chair by her coat. She got up. “It was amongst my father’s papers,” she said, rummaging in the clutter of her bag. The light was poor and her hands awkward. Finally she produced the two letters. “This one,” she said, holding on to one and dropping the other back in her bag. “It came from New York; it’s from him.” She slipped the folded single sheet from the envelope and passed it to Peg.
Peg looked at Nora and then at the paper in her hand, her eyes wide and incredulous. Here it was, in his neat handwriting, his effort to make amends. She took her time to read, savouring every word. How typical it was of him, short and to the point: his way of protecting himself. You had to know that, to understand.
“I don’t think Sadie ever received that letter. Somehow her brother Mickey Dolan intercepted that letter and kept it from her. Look at this.” Nora handed Peg the envelope.
The familiar handwriting looked back at her. She touched the letters. Mrs. Sadie Molloy, Ballyslish, Cullen, County Roscommon, Ireland. Her hand flew to her chest, pressing bony fingers against the cloth of her dress in an effort to control the pounding inside.
“Read the back,” Nora urged Peg turned over the envelope. Different handwriting. Nora heard the breathy mumble as she read. “This letter was found amongst the effects of Mickey Dolan. It was unopened at the time.” Peg looked from the envelope to Nora.
“Who wrote that?”
“My father.”
“Your father! You’re sure about that, Nora?”
“Yes, I’m absolutely sure. I don’t know how he got hold of it but it was with his papers when he died, that and the other one from Matt, both together.”
“The brother never even opened it then. Is that what you’re saying? Never even bothered to see what he was keeping from her? Why would anyone do the like of that?”
“Maybe he wanted to hold on to her as his housekeeper. Remember, they were living with him then. I know he never married, never got the woman he was after. An old man in Cullen told me he was a bachelor.”
“My God, you’d have to be some evil to do the like of that.” Peg studied the envelope again. “Evil.” She read the letter once more then slipped the single page back into the envelope. They fitted together perfectly. She looked at it once more and then passed it to Nora. “I knew it was the truth,” she said. “Knew it right in my gut but I’m glad to see it wrote down.”
“Well, my father knew, but obviously it didn’t carry much weight with him. He still decided to shut him out. My mother told me that fear was the reason. She whispered that to me one day shortly before she died, when I tentatively approached the subject of our missing grandfather. ‘Your father was afraid he might turn out to be a drunken old blackguard, like the tinkers. He knew he had a problem with the drink,’ she whispered just before she drifted off to sleep. The subject was never mentioned again.”
There was no reaction from Peg. She had withdrawn into her own world.
“Maybe he was right,” Nora mused to herself. She knew about the tinkers. She had seen them many times and they frightened her. On the Fair Day in the town, they parked their caravans under the street light at the end of the road. It was a noisy busy encampment during the day, with cooking and washing, repairing pots and pans, ragged children chasing each other around the area, but when the pubs closed at night, the fighting and brawling could be heard all over the town. One night, she had watched from her bedroom window as a man took a horse whip to a woman as she cowered on the ground, screaming. The children, huddled together, watched from the half-door of the caravan.
Nora shuddered. “Maybe he was right,” she said to herself.