As the gardens expanded, the curious began showing up at the gate, total strangers sometimes, then came the busloads during Pilgrimage, to see what Madelaine Kavanagh had done. What she had done was to take nothing and turn it into something. That was the first time he witnessed that particular kind of miracle.
He was twelve, maybe thirteen, and reading Les Misérables when he found a line that would help him in the cheering-on:
The patch of land he had made into a garden was famous in the town for the beauty of the flowers which he grew there.
Proud, he had gone to his mother, carrying the open book. ‘Look, Mama. Just like you.’
In an unforgiving north light from the wash-house window, she read the words he pointed out with his finger and nodded a little and smiled. He saw something then, for the first time-the lines in her face, and the unbearable thinness of her eyelids, blue and transparent as a moth’s wing.
He looked out to the flowering beds of Broughadoon and gave thanks for her life, then crossed himself and prayed for this household, his cousins on the road in the Flying Fiat, Henry and Peggy in the house with the swept yard on the road from Holly Springs…
‘Reverend.’
He turned to see Liam at the kitchen door, and made a gesture toward the dining room wall. ‘Well done, Liam.’
‘Seamus and I washed out th’ rollers around one o’clock this mornin’. Then the other walls looked so bloody grim, we’re after paintin’ th’ whole business when time allows. I hope you passed a good night.’
‘Good enough, thanks.’
The clock in the library chiming the quarter hour.
‘The painting came from our family quarters down th’ hall, ’t was hangin’ above our couch these last years.’
‘Not a Barret,’ he said.
‘Not a Barret, no.’ Liam joined him. ‘But Father loved it, nonetheless. He was a man after a nice touch to clouds, said most artists weren’t up to the job of th’ human hand or th’ heavenly cloud.’
‘Agreed. No signature, I see.’
‘It wasn’t so unusual for the time, leavin’ off th’ signature.’
‘How do you feel about having it on public view… the possibility of…?’
‘This was always th’ wall for hangin’ his favorite paintings-he seldom hung them at th’ house ’til they had a good run here. I was after bringin’ the baskin’ whales from the library, but Anna said ’t would be too violent a scene for guests at their food.’
‘Very thoughtful.’
‘Blood on th’ water an’ all.’
‘Yes.’
‘But ’t wouldn’t seem right without something there, something he enjoyed. So.’ Liam shrugged. ‘I like to believe… I have to believe…’
‘That it will be safe?’ The nail that sticks up gets hammered down, his father liked to say.
‘Yes. Our money goes back into th’ business for now, there’s none to be raked off to extra insurance. Will you have your fry?’
‘Think I’ll wait. I’ll finish my coffee, then maybe a run. How far around the lake, by the way?’
‘You’d not be back ’til th’ moth hour.’
‘Settles that. Any word?’ He hadn’t asked last night.
‘None. Corrigan’s working with Tubbercurry to see if there’s a connection to what happened here.’
‘Do you believe there’s a connection?’
‘I have a hunch, yes, about Slade, just some gut feelin’ I can’t explain. Whatever th’ truth, I feel better he’s under lock an’ key.’
‘Did the Gards do any looking around up the hill? Since the property adjoins…’
‘They did. Thought the lane could have been a flight path, but found nothin’ a’tall. Queried Mother an’ Seamus yesterday-an’ Paddy, of course, when they caught up with him, he’d been in Dublin. Nothin’ to be learned there, as I could have told them.’
‘I suppose Corrigan thought of contacting art dealers.’
‘He says they’ve sent a teletype to th’ Garda in Belfast, Dublin-places with th’ big dealers, he says. His personal guess is that it might have gone over to England; they’re seein’ what can be done with that.’
‘I was wondering about Slade’s bank account, if there might have been some large deposit.’
‘All looked into. All a dead end. ’t is a right cod.’ Liam rubbed his eyes.
‘Sorry about Anna and Bella having to suffer the fair incident.’
‘Ah, Bella. Eighteen goin’ on forty.’ Liam heaved a sigh. ‘Seems a hundred years since I was eighteen.’
‘What were you up to at eighteen?’
‘Runnin’ wild as bindweed.’
He had been eighteen during what Walter once called ‘Tim’s sport with Peggy Cramer.’ He had been wild enough himself.
They looked out now to the massive beeches. A bird dived by the open doors.
‘The poker club says they’re leaving us tomorrow for Italy.’
‘Righto.’
Anna came up the path, not glancing their way, and entered the lodge by the door to the kitchen. He would stir himself, get a move on, but for the languor in his bones.
‘Rev’rend.’
In Liam’s voice, an anguish barely expressible.
‘Sometime, if you could… if you might possibly be willin’…’
A silence gathered between them; Liam’s breath was ragged.
‘Willing?’ he said at last.
‘There’s a thing pressin’ me like th’ Black Death.’
‘Would you like to talk?’
‘I would. Yes.’
Since a boy, he’d been called out of himself by the needs of others. He’d never known what to do with that until long after he became a priest.
‘We could do it now,’ he said.
‘Th’ travel club is off to Sligo today for shoppin’-no breakfast, they said, they’re after savin’ their calories for Italy…’ Liam ran his fingers through his hair, anxious-‘so there are no frys to be made but your own…’
‘Cynthia’s good for a while, and so am I.’
‘Still and all, there’s th’ shutter by the front door that wants th’ hinge since spring, an’ turves to be hauled up…’
He set his mug on the sideboard, saying nothing. He was willing to let the matter drop.
Liam appeared edgy. ‘Feels strange to think about just walkin’ away when th’ notion strikes.’
He nodded.
‘But…’ Liam’s smile was sudden, unexpected. ‘I guess I remember how.’
‘The trick is to put one foot in front of the other,’ he said. He hadn’t realized until this moment that Liam Conor’s smile had a way of improving the air at Broughadoon.
‘I’ll tell Anna,’ said Liam.
A bright and pleasant morning with a grand, soft day predicted. That’s what he would write if he were keeping a journal.
Twenty
‘We hauled these stones one at a time, on a sled behind Billy th’ horse.’
They sat on a gob of limestone, one of three deposited along the shore.
Liam slapped his arm. ‘Bloody August and th’ midges are out in hordes. My father used to blow pipe smoke into my hair to give me a bit of relief. He always liked a smoke by the lough; we had some of our best talks right here.’
‘What did you talk about?’
‘When I was a wee lad, about fish. After bein’ confirmed, about girls. Before he died, we talked about fish again-not fishing, but fish; their feeding habits, and how it seems they have th’ human understanding at times, that sort of thing. I liked that.’
He had no access to this sentiment. As a boy, he wasn’t allowed to fish, and when he was old enough to do as he pleased, he lacked the yen. The only lasting image of the sport had come from his Grandfather Kavanagh’s counsel on what to do when you catch an eel. One of several tactics cited was to grab hold of it, cut its head off, and skin it. Another was stuff it under a bucket and lift up one side-when it sticks its head out, sit on the bucket. This kind of talk had put him off the notion of catching anything wet and slippery.