A breeze lapped the reeds. He looked for the swan, but didn’t see it.
‘Before he got too sick to walk about, we came down to this stone for th’ last time. He was quiet that mornin’, just lookin’ at th’ lake, th’ mist was risin’ off it. Then he said…’ Liam looked away. ‘He said, Beauty is enough.
‘He said it as if talkin’ to himself. The idea seemed to please him. But I’m no philosopher-to tell th’ truth, I don’t know what he meant.’
‘Fathers are good at saying things we can’t understand. My dad’s last words were, He was right. I’d spent a long time by his bedside, talking of a God he never professed to know or care about, then drove back to school, believing he’d pull through. A man named Martin Houck came in after I left, an old enemy who caused our family much suffering. He spent a few minutes with my father and begged his forgiveness. When a nurse went in later, Dad was dying; he spoke his last words to her. Did he mean Martin Houck was right? Did he mean I was right? Did he mean God was right? One hopes for the latter.’
They watched two ducks dive onto the water. ‘Scaup,’ said Liam. Small waves purled against the shore.
He was quiet, at peace, waiting for Liam. ‘We must give th’ travel club a right send-off this evenin’,’ said Liam. ‘They’ve been dotes.’
‘That they have. Anyone else coming in?’
‘Not for a few days. We’re five percent over last year, but probably losin’ ground now, given th’ look of things in th’ news.’ There was the gray in Liam’s eyes.
‘Who’s coming?’
‘A woman from the States, and a niece or nephew, don’t remember which. Writes books, she says. I don’t trust people who write books.’
He didn’t remind him of Cynthia’s calling.
‘When th’ book comes out to th’ stores, there’s yourself in it lookin’ like an eejit, but with a fictitious name to keep th’ solicitors off.’
‘You’ve found yourself in a book, then?’
‘Not m’self, but it happened to Toby Gibson who lets cottages in Wicklow. They made him into an English lord durin’ the evictions-had ’im done in by an Irish gardener who sticks a hayfork in ’is ribs. Modeled th’ lord after Toby, clear to his waxed mustache an’ th’ receipt for his mum’s soda bread.’
They made small talk as Liam gathered courage.
‘Given what’s on your plate, I wouldn’t worry about showing up in a book.’
‘Aye, but I worry about everything, Reverend, ’t is a curse. On the other hand, Paddy worries about nothin’ a’tall. You said you have a brother. Are you anything alike?’
‘We’re definitely alike in our faith, in our taste for poetry-anything more remains to be seen. He’s a half-brother. We haven’t known each other long, scarcely two months.’ He saw the decaying barn outside Holly Springs, saw himself climbing the ladder to the loft, shouting Peggy’s name, busting a gut to find her, trying not to step on rotten floorboards that would eject him into the cow stall below, out of earshot of any living soul and maimed for life. Sixty years would pass before he discovered why his mother’s maid had left, saying nothing to anyone. He’d been devastated by the loss, unsure of himself without Peggy’s measured way of reining him in or letting out the rope, always at the right time; she had been his second mother.
Liam gave him a sharp look. ‘If I don’t say it now, ’t won’t get said. The only place I know to start is at th’ beginnin’.’
‘The best place.’
‘I’ve never confessed to a Protestant.’
‘I confessed once to a Catholic when I was a young curate; thought I might be struck by lightning. He was a wonderful man. Confession is for reconciliation with God, it has little to do with denomination.’
The muscle of Liam’s jaw clenching. ‘’t is likely William is my father.’
He wasn’t expecting this.
Liam raised his voice, as if he hadn’t been heard. ‘Anna may be my sister.’
‘Why would you think that?’
‘I remember th’ oul’ people sayin’ you could tell whose young was whose, by eye color.’
‘I’ve heard that. It’s not scientific.’
‘Brown and blue make blue. Mother’s eyes are brown-William’s are blue and so are mine.’
‘Ah, but brown and brown can also make blue, and your father had brown eyes-if the portrait I saw is accurate. The eye color business is wildly uncertain-the only thing you can count on is that blue and blue make blue.’
‘My Christian name is th’ diminutive of William.’
‘There’s many of both in this country,’ he said, feeling a mild nausea.
Liam’s anger flared, a third party suddenly between them. ‘An’ here’s a known fact-William came home to Lough Arrow nine months before I was yanked bawlin’ into th’ world.’
Liam appeared to want something of surprise or condolence. He could give neither.
‘He’d never say so to me, but one of his claims to fame is bein’ swain to my mother when she was a girl-and who’s to say he wasn’t at it again when she was a married woman with Paddy just six years old an’ his ears big as pitchers? It appears I’m livin’ under th’ same roof with a man who makes me a villain in th’ eyes of th’ law an’ a heathen in th’ eyes of th’ church.
‘But th’ worst of it is, th’ man I loved as a father is but a man who raised an’ provided for me an’ talked to me about life as if ’t was a good thing instead of th’ bloody terror I see it as bein’.’
He’d heard the sound before, the upheaving of rage and grief long hammered down, loosed in a crucifying howl he found chilling. Liam pressed his hands to his face, sobbed.
There was no saying, It’s all right, you aren’t making love blood to blood, your father is one of the sepia figures in a photograph, perhaps the one in tweed knickers holding aloft a brown trout. He had no right to say what Anna had told him. Indeed, there was no saying that at all, for the truth, if that’s what it was, could be more mocking than the lie.
‘Jesus, Joseph, an’ Mary.’ Liam wiped his face with the palms of his hands. ‘I knew William an’ my mother had feelin’s for each other when they were young. I knew she hated his guts because he left an’ never came back to marry her. He was a proper stuke about all of it, or maybe he knew he was dodgin’ a bullet by stayin’ away. But nobody ever said he’d been back to Lough Arrow nine months before I was born.’
‘The nine months could be a coincidence. Where did this information come from?’
‘A couple of years ago, someone William knew in th’ past turned up at Jack Kennedy’s. He was askin’ about William, said he’d driven to Lough Arrow with William many years before. He remembered th’ date because his twin nephews were born while he was stoppin’ here.’
‘What do you know about the person who said this?’
‘Nothin’ more, he was passin’ through to Belfast. Paddy said when he heard it from Jack Kennedy, he flashed on a memory from when he was six years old, said the scene sprang on him clear an’ sharp as yesterday. He remembers comin’ on th’ two of them, Mother an’ a man on a bench Father set in th’ woods. He remembered th’ scar on th’ man’s temple, he said, an’ the odd nose.
‘Th’ man had his arm around Mother, he said, an’ they were talkin’. Somethin’ about goin’ away to Dublin an’ he would give her a fine house. She laughed an’ said she already had a fine house an’ that’s when Paddy marched up an’ demanded the arm be removed from his mother at once or he would knock th’ man’s head off. Paddy was forward like that-I would have run like a hare an’ brooded on th’ shock of it.’
‘You believe Paddy was telling the truth?’
‘Paddy’s ever stickin’ th’ blade to somebody, he’s like our mother in that. But I have a feelin’ I can’t shut away, that he was tellin’ th’ truth.’