Anna also had the Worried Look-it was going around.
‘How did you rest?’ she asked.
‘Well enough,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry you were called out.’
‘A hard night.’
‘Yes.’
‘Not for me, for her.’
Will you go up? he wanted to say. Will you forgive her and go up to her? But he said nothing.
Back in the room with the tray, sitting in his accustomed chair, he realized a certain contentment, after all. The coffee hot and strong, the juice sweet and cold, their breakfast modest and good. And at least for now, their room a refuge, not a confinement.
They read together the Venite, exultemus Domino, prayed for those at home and those in the two households of this place and time.
She took the journal into her lap, then, and read to him, both of them happy in whatever way they could summon.
8th Day of Advent 1862
Frigid
Adam & Ltl Dorrit getting their Winter corn & through C’s insistence, each a blanket into the bargain
I must wonder to whom Uncle’s generosity would incline. To the Union would be my thinking, & even Sukey, formerly a slave, would place her allegiance there. On those days when C & I wish to be serving in Philadel we look about us & know we have undertaken the right course.
Rose McFee’s infant double-greatgrandtr stillborn, though we did all we could. When I passed the long mirror this morning, I was astonished to glimpse my father looking back. I felt an instant’s joy at seeing him, then realized the truth.
The lad arriving ten days hence-Michael & Kathleen the following week by train.
The Bride is set upon producing the finest Christmas Feast of her fortysome years tho we have yesterday reduced her allotment for Provisions. She gives me a Warring look & says she has made do all her life, twill be nothing new, & if she is carried to the grave for the extra work required to stretch this miserly sum, she will do it nonetheless as a matter of personal pride-end of sermon.
C said in November that Padraigin would want money for the lending of his sister-in-law’s son. He would not put it that way, C said, but would somehow seize this opportunity which he has regrettably done. Three-hundred pounds he’s asking, desperate was his word, for a debt owing on his business.
If you do not send the money, C says, I believe he will not send the lad.
I considered offering less but this smacks of playing cheap with a human soul. Indeed it is small payment for the pleasurable company of a lad who daily entertains my thoughts.
C insists that the wallpapering can wait. The time has come when we cannot have everything we wish whereas with Uncle we might have had wallpaper & the lad’s visit, together. These days we must make choices, a reasonable thing in this life when so many must choose between filling their bellies or the bellies of their children, between meat or broth, between one room or none.
9 December
A bitter evening with smoking turf due to heavy winds
My hand trembles to write that I have been to the Mass Rock in a falling snow & received what I believe to be a message from God.
I would describe the experience as a warming sensation about the heart coupled with a light head, during which I closed my eyes & saw before me a commission of just three words printed in thick letters on a severely white paper. I have said nothing to C & feel a terrible urgency to act upon the commission. It may be that I am going a little mad, I do not know-I am both frightened & overjoyed.
A fair, temperate day, cannot keep track of dates-perhaps 11 Dec
Keegan, I say-we are sitting at the door of the carriage house, each of us peeling an apple with our pocket knife-how are you taking to the Married life?
There is a long silence. With the point of his knife he scratches his grizzled chin.
Well enough to get by, he says at last.
I say nothing. He is a talker & will say more if I remain silent. But he does not say more.
Only well enough to get by, is it?
She likes to commandeer things, he says. Meself at th’ top of th’ list.
I thought that was what you found appealing-that she would take charge, keep you in tow.
He gives a bitter snicker.
And I believe you said she makes you laugh.
Haw, he says. She’s bloody sober as a nun now we’re tied. All work an’ no play now she has me in her pocket.
He cuts a piece of apple & stares off into the woods, his jaw clenched.
He turns suddenly to me, on the boil now. An’ a monstrous pack rat, he says, the like of which we’ll never see again in this earthly life. Last night when I went to climb in my spot by th’ wall, there sits a dishtub of dinner plates broke in a hundred pieces, which she’d turned up in Balfour’s dump hole. Move th’ bloody dishtub, I say, & let a man get his rightful sleep. There’s nowhere else to put it, she says. And where will you put meself, if you don’t mind me askin’? Hang yourself up on a horseshoe nail, she says.
With that, I have my opening. I can hardly believe such good fortune.
You’ll soon have space in plenty, I say. I am moving my pharmacopoeia into your quarters on Wednesday morning at first light. Running up and down stairs to my books is a waste of valuable time-I’m having Jessie sweep out the cabin for you.
I say this mildly, as if we are talking pork prices.
He looks as if he hasn’t heard aright.
Wednesday, I say. Early, of course, to get ahead of the patients.
Keegan is at once shocked by the suddenness of the announcement & fearing the outrage of his wife.
But she dotes on bein’ in the big house, he says, his voice rising.
Of course.
Wouldn’t like walkin’ over in rain or foul weather of any kind, or at night when th’ bastes are out.
He is throwing down the gauntlet now.
Oh, yes, there’s that, I say, sanguine.
I refuse to remind him of the cabin’s many fine qualities-two spacious rooms, the broad hearth, a chimney that draws sweetly.
I stand & toss my apple core to a clutch of chickens scratching about in winter weeds. Well, then, I say, Wednesday morning it is for moving my library down. You’ll need to be set up in your new quarters by late Tuesday, with everything taken away from here so Jessie can sweep out.
He is aghast.
But I must go to Mullaghmore on Thursday & back on Friday, he says, as if such tasks in a row are too weighty for him.
I walk across to the house, dismissing his complaint. My knees are weak as pond water. I have never been so forthright with him, a problem born of cowardice. I had just arrived here when we met & befriended one another-he became an intimate to whom I told much & from whom I learned a great deal about country ways. Then I hired him & money entered into it, switching matters to the business side & formenting unease between us.
I find C in the Surgery, making the table ready, pulling out the stool for young Mick Doolin who will be coming up the lane about now with his fierce young Collie. There is a fire on the hearth, the tea kettle singing.
Is it done?
I nod to her.
There, she says, I’m proud of you.
I feel at once a child & do so relish the feeling.
I hope we won’t taste her displeasure in the Christmas pudding, she says.
She’s too proud for that, I say, as if I know the truth which I do not.
She has the serious look on her face. The lad must have his pony, she declares. Brigid Collins tells me Willie has got himself a pony from Connemara, a mare but a year old & pulling a red cart.
The thought of this makes her smile.
Since our discussions of altered income, I had planned to forgo the pony. Her goodness is a nourishment to me.
As Little Dorrit is now well-broke to the old carriage from O’Keefe, I shall send her to Mullaghmore with Keegan & ride Adam out to Sullivan the Mason on Thursday. Then we shall see about Willie Collins.