‘Missus Evelyn McGuiness Conor,’ boomed Seamus, ‘the Reverend Timothy Andrew Kav’na.’
The heavy doors were closed behind her.
She was petite, erect, severe, with the piercing gaze of the portrait nearly intact. He bowed. It was a completely involuntary gesture, and very slight, but she recognized it at once; it had been a good thing to do.
She extended her hand. ‘Mister Kav’na.’
‘Mrs. Conor.’ So she was skipping the reverend business. ‘Thank you for having me.’ He pressed her hand lightly-he might have captured a small bird. ‘I was just admiring your portrait.’
‘Thank you for coming, Mister Kav’na. It isn’t every day we can round up a fourth.’ She leaned on her cane.
‘I’m afraid you’ll find me a very lame duck.’
‘You’ll make up for it with interesting conversation, I’m sure. As for the portrait, it was done in this very room, by an Irishman-after Mister Sargent’s rendition of Lady Agnew of Lochnaw.’
‘And very well done, indeed.’
‘Mister Conor and I had lately returned to Catharmore from our honeymoon on the Amalfi Coast. I was twenty, but my waist’-she smiled thinly-‘was eighteen-like your Scar-lett O’Hara, I’m told. Let us be seated, Mister Kav’na.’
He offered the smile he relied on when parishioners commented on his sermon and he realized they’d heard something entirely different from what he’d said.
Evelyn Conor walked stiffly across the room with the aid of her cane and sat in a high-backed chair by the fire; at her direction, he occupied the end of the sofa to her right. She was a woman of considerable beauty even now, though better than sixty years had passed since she sat for a painter who knew what he was about.
Her long hair was loosely bound at the back of her head and dark, still, though with a wide streak of silver above what his mother had called a ‘widow’s peak.’ Her cheeks were palely rouged, her long-sleeved black dress simply cut; she wore no ornament. He could not imagine this woman clambering up a stepstool.
‘Because of my fine nose, the painter wished to render me in profile after Mister Sargent’s Madame X. But my husband and I preferred to realize our money’s worth by having it done straight on.’
‘A wise decision.’
‘That is my late husband’s portrait above the door.’
‘A very agreeable-looking man. Liam speaks of him with affection.’ He hadn’t meant to say that.
‘Liam speaks eagerly of his father, but scarcely mentions his mother. I don’t suppose they’ve told you I’m dying?’
‘They haven’t.’
‘They never do. It’s left to me to do the telling.’
‘I’m sorry to hear it.’
‘No use to be sorry. We must all go sometime. ’ She briefly drummed the chair arm with her fingers, gazed past him.
‘But death is not important, Mister Kav’na.’ She gave him a fierce look. ‘It cannot frighten me, for I have been purified by suffering.’
He didn’t know where to step with this.
‘Doctor Feeney and Father O’Reilly will be late. I trust you have some expertise at making drinks? Our man is occupied in the kitchen.’
‘Of course. What sort of drinks, Mrs. Conor?’ Nothing with small umbrellas or fruit, definitely not.
‘Gin and tonic for myself. Would you be up to it?’
‘Absolutely,’ he said, shooting from the sofa.
At the table, he adjusted his bifocals, stooped, peered at labels on the several bottles, located the gin. Two bottles, different labels. Tonic very handy, no problem. A small dish with wedges of lemon and lime. Glasses in two different sizes.
‘What measurements do you prefer, Mrs. Conor?’
‘Two to one, thank you.’
‘Would that be two of tonic?’
‘Of gin, Mister Kav’na.’
Maybe he should use the short glass.
‘And what label, if I may?’
‘The green label, if you please.’
The English were known to lay off the ice, but perhaps that custom didn’t extend to these shores.
‘Ice, Mrs. Conor?’
‘No ice, Mister Kav’na. The ice is for you; I’m told Americans enjoy the curious habit of watering down perfectly good spirits.’
‘Let’s see. Short glass or tall?’ He had expected a root canal, and he was getting it.
‘Have you never done this, Mister Kav’na?’
‘Not really.’
‘The short glass, as you so quaintly put it.’
‘Almost done-lemon or lime?’
‘Lime, thank you.’
‘Coming up.’ He let out his breath, which he realized he’d been holding, and stirred the drink with a silver muddle.
‘No stirring, if you please. It bruises the gin.’
This was no root canal, after all; it was brain surgery. He managed to deliver the thing, with a napkin.
She looked up at him, raised an eyebrow. ‘Do you teetotal, Mister Kav’na?’
‘No, ma’am, not at all. I’m a sherry man.’ He felt the perfect fool for saying it. A sherry man.
‘Sherry,’ she said with distaste. ‘An English habit.’
Spanish, too, he might add.
‘You’re in Ireland, Mister Kav’na, you can’t go about as dry as the bones of Ezekiel.’
‘Cheers,’ he said, terse. The morning with Anna had hardly quickened his regard for Evelyn Conor.
‘Slainte!’ She lifted her glass and turned to a contrivance by the mantel, pressing a button.
Seamus’s voice boomed into the room. ‘Yes, mum.’
‘Do we have sherry in some remote quarter?’
‘Oh, yes, mum, we do, indeed. Only a moment. ’
Why couldn’t he be like everyone else instead of standing out like a sore thumb? But he’d never been like everyone else; he’d always stood out like a sore thumb.
‘I enjoyed my tour of your handsome rooms. The entrance hall is a great tribute to classical form-a privilege to see it.’
‘It is an Irish house.’
‘Yes.’
‘Historians tell us that Catharmore was a fine school of architecture. Doctor O’Donnell had access to a few very skilled men, who tutored a legion of the unskilled. Many trades were learnt here.’ She drank with evident thirst.
‘Have you read O’Donnell’s journal?’
‘I have not. I admire him for what he accomplished, but find his ramblings tiresome. A very inward-seeming man, in my view.’ She dabbed the corners of her mouth with the napkin. ‘I trust you and your wife are enjoying your stay.’ She appeared to lack interest in his reply.
‘We’re enjoying it very much, thank you.’ He glanced at his watch-he was needing backup.
‘In your Protestant religion, sir, I hear there is great distress.’
‘Well, of course, we have the same religion, you and I, Catholic and Protestant-we both believe in the divinity of the Christ, the head of the Church, the one who entered into death that we might have life. As for great distress, I believe it is fully shared between Catholic and Protestant.’
The Great Distress. He would have to remember that.
‘And to what do you account such disarray?’
‘Disobedience, Mrs. Conor.’
‘The Protestants were in disobedience against the Irish for more than seven centuries. What do you say to that, Mister Kav’na?’
‘I say that we were gravely mistaken.’
‘The Irish are suddenly quick to forget. I shall not forget.’
‘I feel the need is not to forget, but to forgive. Where there is forgiveness, the heart of stone becomes a heart of flesh.’
‘I’ll thank you not to preach to me.’
‘I was not preaching, Mrs. Conor, I was making an observation out of my own experience.’ To be precise, out of his father’s experience of unforgiveness, and the calamity it caused on all sides.
She drank, appeared abstracted. ‘I dislike late arrivals.’
‘The rain,’ he said.
The realization had begun when he took her hand, and now came all of a piece-he had known Evelyn Conor for most of his life. Nearly every parish had one, though he couldn’t recall that any had been so proficient at the acid tongue. He was reminded, too, of his father’s lacerating coldness, which rendered Evelyn Conor’s behavior somehow familiar; the thought that they had met in other times and places, shared some sort of past, was oddly relieving.