Tom raised his glass to the room. ‘May the most we wish for be the least we get.’
‘Hear, hear! Slainte!’
‘Oh, give me grace to catch a fish,’ said Pete, ‘so big that even I, when talkin’ of it afterwards, may have no need to lie.’
‘Slainte!’
‘Slainte here, slainte there,’ said his wife, definitely in the spirit of things.
‘To look for a moment on th’ serious side…’ said Debbie.
‘As if there isn’t enough of that in the world,’ said Hugh.
‘… I have a question-what is work? I mean in th’ true philosophical sense.’
‘The true philosophical sense.’ Hugh looked blank. ‘Beats me. I haven’t hit a lick at a snake in three, maybe four weeks.’
He pitched in his two cents’ worth. ‘According to your man Oscar Wilde, work is the curse of the drinking classes.’
‘The answer is simple,’ said Moira. ‘Work is for people who don’t know how to fish.’
Laughter all around.
Pete raised his glass. ‘No offense to you, Tim. In your callin’, you’re fishin’ twenty-four/seven.’
‘Righto,’ said Hugh. ‘You’re off th’ hook in a manner of speaking.’
‘I’ve got a great idea,’ said Pete. ‘How about we all get together again next year, same time, same station? I’ll bring Roscoe.’
The door from the kitchen swung open-Maureen and Anna, flushed from the heat of the Aga, entered with William, who brought up the rear.
‘Hullo, everyone,’ said Anna. ‘We’re just going in to arrange the chairs. Enjoy your dessert, and please come along when you hear the bell.’
‘Need any help with th’ liftin’?’ asked Pete.
‘We’ve three strong backs for ’t,’ said William. ‘’t is your job to lift th’ fork.’
‘Th’ bane of my days,’ he heard Anna say as the trio walked up the hall. ‘I can do nothing with it this evening, nothing at all.’
And there was William saying, ‘’t is beautiful hair ye got from y’r own mother, Anna Conor. Stop aitin’ y’r face about it.’
At the sound of the bell, they left their tables and trooped to the library, happy to see the small fire poked up and lamps gleaming against the dusk.
Sixteen
Maureen patted a couple of wing chairs angled toward the hearth. ‘Your poor ankle wins th’ prize of th’ front row.’
‘You’re a dote,’ said his wife. ‘Will you sit with us?’
‘Aye, with pleasure, and thank you for your comp’ny.’ Before he could give a hand, she drew a chair from the game table and sat next to him. ‘There’ll be fifteen of us this evenin’-like family.’
‘It’s my guess,’ he said, ‘that you had something to do with our surprise.’
‘Aye. For many years now.’
He found the disorder of her teeth compelling, in a way; her smile was more engaging for it.
Anna had disappeared; Liam and Seamus served coffee.
He nosed the dark, fragrant brew, took a sip-full-bore, precisely the way he liked it. At home he played it safe, drank the eunuch decaf every evening; here, he rolled the dice, and so far had slept like a log. He’d been hooked on coffee from an early age; had searched for decades since for anything remotely similar to what his mother perked in a beat-up pot on the woodstove that stood alongside the electric range. Often with a grind of wild chickory root, it had the heedless taste of the campfire, something of backbone and daring that he could never replicate.
The club took the sofa; the anglers nailed favorite wing chairs; William and Seamus assumed their posts at the checkerboard; Liam sat nearby, distracted.
Anna entered from the stair hall as the mantel clock struck a quarter ’til nine, and stood before them on the hearth. Because he was accustomed to seeing her in clogs and work gear, her frank good looks in a green dress gave him a kind of jolt. He saw in her face the softening that follows earnest confession.
‘With the exception of my departed mother, Roisin, I cannot think of anyone I’d rather share this special evening with. All of you here tonight love life and its many possibilities, just as they say my mother did.’
She spoke slowly, measuring her words. ‘’t is a rare gift you’ll be given this evening-a wondrous thing of heart and mind and soul that we can’t completely understand, for it comes of God alone.
‘Ladies and gentlemen…’ Her voice broke; she lowered her eyes briefly, looked up again. ‘’t is with great honor and joy that I give you… my daughter, Bella Flaherty.’
Bella strode from the hall and stood where her mother had stood. She gazed for a moment above the heads of her audience, brought the fiddle up, rested it beneath her chin, poised the bow. Her body was rigid, every energy concentrated.
She drew the bow across the strings in a single long, piercing note. Lifted the bow, laid it again to the strings, sounded a note that shimmered in the air, fragile as a moth.
He took Cynthia’s hand.
The music came at them abruptly, and with such raw force that he was rocked back in his chair. Raging, wounded, feverish music, with the volume of a dozen fiddles at work in the room. He looked at his wife, who sat with her mouth slightly agape; glanced at Maureen, who covered her mouth with her hand.
God above, he thought. The unleashed spirit of the music had something in it of unchecked risk and gamble; perspiration gleamed on Bella’s face, half turned from them to her fiddle. He closed his eyes to sharpen his hearing of the music, was astounded again by its flash and intensity, backed by the drumming of William’s cane on the floor. It was a wild ride with no roll bars.
The piece ended suddenly. There was a long, stunned silence-then, an explosion of applause as Bella looked without expression above their heads.
‘’t is th’ trad music she plays, like her father,’ said Maureen. ‘’t was a hard one, that, with what they call th’ tongued triplets.’
‘Brilliant,’ he whispered.
Bella looked at William. ‘Daideo, this is for you.’
William gave a nod, crossed himself.
She placed the fiddle under her chin, raised the bow. Then came the grieving music, pouring over them like a vapor, like a shroud. He was standing by the fresh mound in Hill Crest, alone at his mother’s grave, wondering how he could go on.
Cynthia glanced at him, wordless.
Now the music was no longer the shroud, but comfort to the ones surviving, pleading with their sorrow, ending with promise.
Their unhindered applause poured into the silence left by the voice of the fiddle. He was moved that anyone so young could interpret wrenching loss, then remembered the child removed to Lough Arrow at the age of four.
His nerves had come alive, he was fully awake in some hidden place in himself that he hadn’t remembered.
Maureen leaned to him and whispered, ‘’t will be Bonny Kate comin’ up, mebbe, or Dear Irish Boy, if she takes th’ notion.’
He clasped Maureen’s hand with its leathered palm, raised it to his cheek. ‘Well done,’ he said.
‘She’s not my own blood, but she’s my babby for all that!’
‘Aye,’ he said.
Bella turned her gaze to Maureen. ‘Mamó, this is for you.’
Then, something he could only define as anointed-with her bow, Bella Flaherty called forth music of sweetly fluent temper; tenderness found its opening and was transformed into something akin to yearning, or longing; he heard in the notes the drone of the bagpipe. Maureen wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
If they could hear this back home, he thought, where countless Irish had immigrated all those years ago, where the color of the old speech lingered, and the old tunes resonated still…
Applause, then, and Maureen throwing a kiss to the fiddler.
‘Will ye sing with me, Mamó?’
‘Oh,’ said Maureen, her breath gone at the idea.
‘Will ye?’
Maureen flushed, looked at him, at Cynthia. ‘Jesus, Mary, an’ all th’ saints… I wasn’t expectin’…’