‘Her day off yesterday was spent practicing, so I’m giving her today. We’re going busking tonight at the Tubbercurry Fair.’
‘Busking.’
‘Playing the old music for whoever walks by or will listen. Setting out the hat. A lot of musicians do it.’
‘How far away?’
‘Thirty-five kilometers. Bella is isolated here, she needs to be among friends, other musicians. She’s after going alone, but I’m going with her. ’t will give us time together.’
‘Always a good thing.’
‘Seamus and Maureen will stand in with Liam at dinner. Seamus has many holiday hours due him by law. He’ll spend a few with us over the next days, though Lady Agnew will not approve.’
‘Lady Agnew.’
‘Sorry. It’s what Paddy calls his mother, after the original painting by Mr. Sargent.’
‘If I know my cousin, he’ll sleep the day away, Cynthia and Katherine are going off to Sligo for hair appointments, and I’ll be no trouble. Perhaps you can get a break.’
There would be no good time to tell her; he should do it now. ‘I haven’t talked with Cynthia about this, Anna, but I think we should…’ He hesitated.
‘Move on?’
‘Yes.’
‘’t is what I would do in your place.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Please don’t be sorry, you’ll get me started on all the apologies you’re owed, and we’ll be at it a fortnight.’
He was wilted cabbage. If he sat on that bench, he would not get up.
‘Would you like your fry now, Reverend? Cynthia says your diabetes…’
‘I would, yes. Thank you.’
She walked toward the kitchen door, leaving her trug among the iris.
‘Anna,’ he said.
She turned. He saw the exhaustion in her face, in the slump of her shoulders.
‘I believe there’s a silver lining in this.’
She made no response and went in.
Why couldn’t he keep his trap shut? He did believe that, but there was no proper solace in him-why did he strive to dredge up the skills of priestly consolation which he’d apparently lost or never had?
He sat on the bench, weighted by all that had happened. And why had it happened, anyway? He’d gone on maybe five vacations in his life. The very word had for decades been foreign to him. There’d been a couple of summers at Walter’s in Oxford, an occasional summer in Pass Christian as a boy, the long-ago trip to England, and of course the initial visit to Broughadoon. That was it, unless his honeymoon counted as a vacation. But why this upheaval in what should be a refreshment? And, Lord, why the ankle business into the bargain? This was, after all, Cynthia’s birthday gift. And what about Anna and Liam, who had most to suffer in this monstrous snare? They were good people…
He realized he was whining; that these were the very questions put to him unceasingly during his years as a priest. Why me? Why her? Why us? Why them? Why now? Why then? Endless.
It was nearly eleven when he woke from a nap and found his wife sitting beneath the open window in her green chair, dressed and reading the journal. He sat up on the side of the bed. ‘I think we should leave tomorrow with Walter and Katherine.’
There was a long silence. His heart beat dully; his legs felt like a couple of pine logs.
‘A terrible thing has happened,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘In the journal, I mean. I saw your bookmark, it’s just ahead.’
‘Don’t tell me.’ He had zero interest in another terrible thing. ‘They offered us the Vauxhall, I could have taken you around a bit, driven you by a castle or two. I hear there’s a car park close to Yeats’s grave, you could have made it over without any trouble.’ She didn’t appear to be listening. ‘Lunch at a pub, even-we might have done that.’
She was staring at the wall above the bed, at the print of sedge warblers in a thicket of reeds.
‘Did you rest?’ he asked.
‘Sort of. Ready to get something done with my hair-I’m tired of standing in the shower on one leg like a heron.’
He left the bed and dressed quickly. ‘Coming down?’
Her mind was still elsewhere, she looked perplexed.
‘Coming down, Kav’na?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Do we agree we should leave?’
‘Probably. I suppose so. Yes.’
He checked his watch. ‘They’ll be arriving anytime.’
‘Have you told Anna or Liam?’
‘Anna.’
‘What did she say?’
‘That she would do the same.’
‘Where will we go?’
‘I called around before I brought your tray up. Emailed Dooley, by the way. Talked with a four-star inn in Sligo, but no dining and nothing on the ground floor. Two hotels were booked solid-high season, as you know. I’ll make more calls this afternoon; we’ll rent a car, of course.’
‘Do you think you can do it, the driving on the wrong side?’
‘I will do it,’ he said.
His cousin was true to form. Knocked out and ready for a decent sleep, Walter gave him the so-called cousin’s kiss, joined him in exclaiming the Kavanagh family motto, and hied to the room until dinner. He watched him climb the stairs, feeling strangely moved, even startled, by his cousin’s evident aging in the years since Walter served as his best man. To his mind, his first cousin had always been twelve years old-the only kid he ever knew who could make straight A’s and just as handily make short work of anyone who bullied him.
Katherine was also true to form. After a bit of washing up and two cups of Conor coffee, she slid back behind the wheel of the rented Fiat and was off like a shot. His wife waved from the passenger window.
Pud followed him into the lodge. In the kitchen, he sat at the pine table where the family took their meals, and ate the lunch left for him. There was the sense of being in the wake of a storm-but for occasional birdsong through the open windows, the place was as silent as stone.
Having found the number in his notebook, he dialed his distant cousin Erin Donovan who, on his previous trip to Sligo, had hosted the tea at which most of the liquid refreshment was ninety-proof.
‘Hullo, everyone. Don’t look for me in Killybegs ’til August thirty, I’m in Ibiza-no phone, no email, no worries, have a great summer!’ That place again. He didn’t leave a message.
Using Anna’s list of recommendations, he rang a couple of innkeepers-both jovial as all get-out, but no availabilities. Then, bingo, a double room with in-house dining and a spectacular view of the ancient cairn on Knocknarea, available tomorrow night only. Walter and Katherine would have no problem with driving them to Strandhill, where he would rent a car and find the wits to make further plans. He took out his credit card and booked the room.
He looked at Pud; Pud looked at him.
He changed into shorts and a T-shirt and in ten minutes was headed down the lake path at an easy gait. The very air was a lough, a deep swim of moisture and heat that moved like silk against his bare flesh. Things were shifting forward now-a room with a view, a new outlook; he felt the release of it. He was running along the shore near the hut when he glimpsed something moving in the reeds. A white swan pushed out upon the breast of water, soundless, the elegant, curved neck repeated in the looking glass below. ‘Hey,’ he said under his breath. ‘You’re beautiful.’ As with rainbows, he counted the sight of a swan a good omen.
He hung a right past the hut, Pud at his heels. Slapping midges and pouring sweat, he pushed through the woods, hopeful that Ireland was as free of ticks as of snakes.
As he reached the stone wall, he heard the distant mourning of the fiddle. Bella had gone before him to the Mass rock.
Pud growled, then barked.
‘Reverend Kav’na?’
He turned, startled. Liam’s detective connection, who had been on the scene last night-a stocky fellow with a bulbous nose and heavy eyebrows, wearing what appeared to be a wool suit over a turtleneck.