“You’d have to hear something about me, about the boy I was,” Martin began, resignation in his voice. “My mother’s last ... her last born, her last hope. There were seven of us, three girls, then three brothers and ten years later, me, a sickly child, pale and thin, wracked with asthma ... There in Rosturra, I was often kept home by the fire and the window while my mates ran to play.
“My mother’s was a hard life. She kept the garden and the fires and dug the peat herself, kept us mended and clean, baked the soda bread in the coals of the hearth. My Da wasn’t afraid of work. As the old joke goes, he was happy enough to lay down beside it and sleep. He could fiddle with the best and knew all the old tunes. Ah, he did love music ... almost as much as he loved the pub. Every evening, he’d strike out for the village, or to Woodford or sometimes go all the way to Portumna, anywhere there’d be music ... music and drink. He would take me with him, Ma begging and pleading to leave me home, not to torture me with the smoke-filled rooms which made me cough and wheeze all the next day. But I wanted out and he needed ... a helper.
“He started me on the bodhrán so I could keep time for him, using the last of his pay to buy it. I remember my mother crying into the morning hours, begging God for a recipe to make soup from a goatskin drum.
“I’d pick up this man’s whistle off the table or that man’s flute and I learned to play along. One night when I was maybe eight or nine, a man came in with a squeeze box, the first I’d ever seen. His fingers could fly over the buttons. He sat with me in a corner, after I’d stared and stared at the thing, and showed me how to play it. He was Lily’s grandpa.”
Martin adjusted his chair, the legs scraping over the stones as he pulled it nearer the door. “Do you have time for this story, Vincent. I can feel it growing over-long already.”
“Please. I want to hear.”
“Are you sure you won’t come out?”
“I am ... fine to stand here. To listen.”
“Well, then ... Where was I ... ah, yes. Lily’s grandpa. Turned out the Burkes lived in walking distance of me, just back of the hill beyond the three fairy trees. Ma would sniff whenever I said I was going over, but I wanted my lessons from Old Evan. Lily’s pa was Young Evan ... though it would be years before I would meet him ... or her.
“‘Twas about this time that Ma started in on me with her dream, because the last of my brothers had married and she had no priest in the family. That two sisters were nuns mattered not a whit. I was her last hope. I owed her, she said. Only I could save her.
Ma hated my father. The fighting in the house was ... terrible. And it was true ... He’d drink up whatever he managed to earn and then he’d drink up the dole. She would materialize on the stairs, take one look at him lurching through the door at midnight, leaning on my young shoulder and turn, crying, flying to her room. Then surely twice a month or more, he’d solemnly vow never to return to drink ... ‘Hear me out, Missy,’ he’d cry, ‘I feel a great change coming. I’ll not be going to the pub again.’”
“I heard you say that, my first night here,” Vincent said.
“Did you now? Well ... I heard it often enough. Whenever I’m angry with myself, when feel like I could ... be a better man ... I make my father’s promise. He meant it, every time, though he was a wee bit short on the follow through.
“One night he went out, leaving me home. They found him of a morning, drowned in a ditch of foul water. Stumbled in drunk, they said, and never crawled out. They found this very concertina, lying in its case in the high grass, safe and dry. Old Evan said Da had traded his fiddle for it that night, for me, for my birthday.
“But you wanted to hear about Lily ... and I do love to speak of her. I will get there, I promise,” Martin said, pausing for breath. “I could use a drink myself. Are you thirsty, Vincent? You could come out and sit with me.”
“All righty, then,” Martin said, when Vincent did not answer. “I’ll just go on with my story ... So it’s just me now with Ma in the house. Me sick half the time, though my health improved, gone to Old Evan’s the rest; her working to try to get me sponsored into seminary since we had no money. Only Maynooth would do ... in Dublin ... She made it her quest and she succeeded.
“Then ... home on holiday, I was leaving Old Evan’s house, twenty two years old and nearly through seminary. A rickety cart pulled up and it was Young Evan driving. And then ... an angel climbed out. Lily. Long black hair curling over her shoulders down to her waist. Ivory skin like wedding satin. She had her skirt hitched up, baring her knees, and there was mud up to ‘em, from where the cart had stuck and she’d had to get out and push. She laughed at me when she swooped by and said ... something ... which I couldn’t hear for my heart pounding.
“And so we had the summer together.
“I was terrifically shy with her and not a little bit stupid. We’d walk together and stand under the fairy trees, talk for hours, about music and art and books and my ... calling. She let me talk on end of theology, which I loved and espoused and most certainly still did not understand. We never exchanged one kiss. I never even held her hand as close as she stood to me.” Martin’s voice trailed away.
“Lily didn’t play an instrument but she had a lovely voice. She would sing and I’d try to follow her on the flute, but I found it hard to breathe steady enough to play. Do you know what I mean, Vincent?”
“Yes.”
“Good. You’re still awake. Checking up, I was.” Martin laughed softly. “I learned to play a song that summer, Love in the Endings. It is a happy tune, but a contradiction. I played it tonight, in fact. I never gave a moment’s thought to the days passing, but the time came when I was to leave. It hit me then, what it was I’d be doing if I went on with it.
“I told her I’d give it up, begged her to marry me. But she said no, that I had to be sure, because I’d talked about it all those days and had been promised to it all those years. And there would be my mother, dead of shame on no road to heaven. And so I left for school. Twice that year, my sister came to visit me, bearing Lily’s secret letters. I had to read them right there and give them back to her. I wasn’t allowed such ... dreams.
“Ma turned poorly that spring and I went home. Though Lily had tended to her, faithfully, every day, Ma dismissed her, railed against her even. She layered the poison shell around my heart, keeping me close for days, voicing her ... requirements ... of me.
“But when I finally saw Lily, that shell shattered with love. She was all I wanted and I told her that. That day, under the hawthorn tree, I did kiss her. ‘Twas so ... sweet ... and ‘twas the only kiss I ever had from her.
“I vowed I would go with her to her family after I told my mother our news. You can imagine, can’t you, the wail and the gnash? I was my father, made over, she said, sent from bloody hell to ruin her life. And, oh, the humiliation I would heap and not just on her, but on Lily as well, known forever and wide as a drúth, the harlot, who beguiled the priest ...
The hour came when we were to meet. I walked out to her. She put out her hand ... and I ... hesitated.”
Vincent released a breath, one he scarcely knew he held within. “Is that the end?”
“The memory breaks my heart. It takes some effort to get through to the other side yet I never want to lose it. You understand that feeling, don’t you, my new and secret friend?”
“I do.”
“She turned from me and picked her way over the rocky hillside. A ways down, she looked back. She gave me ... one more chance, but I was paralyzed. The embarrassment to her ... my fears, the consequences ... I believed I’d ruin two worlds, hers and my mother’s. How could that be love? She disappeared along the path and I was on the bus to Dublin that afternoon.
“Ma died the next year. We buried her with the stole from my ordination vestments. Lily came to the funeral bringing Francis McDermott, a strapping lad home from America to sell the family farm, introducing me as her grandpa’s finest student. She gave me her hand and I took it this time. It was cool and soft, and she was kind. She married him soon after and moved to New York.”
“Is that the end?”
“Yes and no. Vincent, life has a strange magic to it. Years passed. I was sent to a succession of tiny parishes along the western shore where the old music and language thrive. One sister and all my brothers moved to America, to New York, every one to this very neighborhood. One day I took a call. Two brothers were gravely ill. They wanted me to come and then I didn’t want to go back. It took proper begging and pleading family hardship, but I wangled a post at this church. My brothers lived only a few houses down, and my sister, within a few blocks.
“But what of Lily?”
“Woodlawn was a thriving Irish community then. Lily lived here too. Francis had joined the police force and was advancing. She had two children after a half dozen miscarriages and a still birth. Francis was a fine husband, a loving father. She had good friends. She was happy. She told me this herself. I was, after all, her priest.
“Then one fall day, I was raking leaves when a police car slowly rounded the corner here and parked at her door. The officers settled their hats before they walked up, two abreast, and I knew ... Francis had been killed. Her girls were fourteen and ten. Four years later, she came to me one afternoon and told me very calmly she had uterine cancer, asked me to watch over her girls for her, see that they had all they needed. Her last day on earth, she gave me her hand again. She was gone and I am still here. Not a day ends but I say to myself ... if only.”
Vincent searched for a response, but his mind was wordless and his heart, as fragile blown glass.
“Tis a sad tale, isn’t it, Vincent?”
“Yes.”
“Will you take advice from such a foolish man?”
“I want to hear it.”
“We are given gifts in this life, my friend. Precious, fleeting gifts. When she holds out her hand, ‘tis rude not to take it.”
Vincent sagged against the wall, his breath staggering from him in waves. A sharp pain creased his palm and he opened his clenched fist, the ivory rose warm, enduring and rugged there, marking him, delicate velvet cast in sterner stuff. 2 Catherine ... her words in his memory ... “I’m not afraid” ... her gift ...
“Ah, Vincent. “Tis like buying a round, taking a turn. Surely you will give me a story now.”
“A story?”
“Something about you, where you live perhaps, your home? Is it far from here?”
“It is ... at some distance.”
“Will you go there tonight? Does ... someone wait for you; is she ... worried?”
“Worried?” Vincent loosed the sense within himself always open to her. “No. Not worried. She ... misses me.”
“You say that with some surprise. Is this love ... new to you?”
“Yes. And no.”
“Giving me back my own words, are you? You are a man of great mystery, indeed.”
“It is ... complicated. Inexplicable. Forgive me, Martin. I ... cannot say more.”
“I have one more question for you, Vincent. May I?”
“I will answer ... if I can.”
“Will you come back?”
“To this place?” He could hear Father’s reply to that ... seal it, leave it, or risk ... everything. “Yes,” he answered, certain that he would.
“Good. Good. The hour grows late. Are you sure ...?”
“I’m sure. Please do not worry.”
“This has been ... a most unusual experience, one I dare say I never expected. It has the feeling of a gift, don’t you think? I’ll play you away now. And Vincent, don’t you worry. Your visit will be our secret and I’ll leave the doors ... locked.”
A dancing song began and Vincent stepped down into the stairwell, pulling the trap door closed behind him. The music covered the quiet click of the latch and followed him, befriended him, along the winding passage back into his world.
________________
Lily? Martin silently questioned the stars. Did you send him to sit with me in the night, to bring that story out of my heart’s locked box? A man surely, but with the voice of an angel, a soul whisperer.... Is there some truth I need to see? A dark messenger with pale wing? The fairies at midnight? With a deep sigh, he rose from his bench and said aloud. “Ah, what a dreamwalker I have become!” He placed his palm flat against the door, heart high. “I’ve been listening long to your girl, Lily, to your glimmerin’ girl. Until tomorrow night, my love, until then ...”
________________
“Vincent!” Mouse popped up from a crouch at the outskirts of their camp. “You’re late! Your watch. Worried about you.”
My watch ... He groaned inwardly, chastising himself. I fell asleep as good as Above; I gave away my presence. I forgot my duties ...
“I’m here now, Mouse. I’m sorry. Am I so very late?”
“Only a little. Not like you!” Mouse peered at him, a question in his eyes. “Want me to stay with you?”
“Go on to bed. You’ll need your rest for tomorrow.”
“Don’t mind.”
“I’ll be fine.” He urged Mouse along with gentle pressure on his shoulder.
“Mouse!” Vincent called out softly, just before he disappeared into the shadows. Mouse turned expectantly. “His name is Martin. Lily is a lost love. Missy is his mother.”
Mouse returned, wonder spreading across his features. “You found out! How?”
“I talked to him.”
“Talked? Tell, now!”
“Tomorrow, while we work.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.” He hesitated, then plunged ahead. “And Mouse, would you ask...my relief...to come a little early tonight, perhaps an hour early?”
“Sure, Vincent,” Mouse shrugged. “We pitch in.”
Vincent slumped against the wall, exhausted, searching for a focus to bear him through the hours until he could sleep. From a niche in the stone, he retrieved a book, one that Mouse left behind, face down and open. He turned a page and then another, chuckling at the discovery. A surprise, and yet not...Mouse could have written the lines himself.
Sun sets, bell sounds, the mist.
Headwind on the road, the going hard.
Evening sun at cold mountain.
Horses tread men’s shadows. 3
And there was a marker ... a note with his name inscribed on it.
Father sent a message. Catherine visited tonight.She is well. She misses you.
click HERE for Chapter 15
_________________
Love in the Endings Reel - It is a happy tune, but it is a contradiction....
The Pride of the Bronx Reel - I'll play you away...
(1) William Butler Yeats. The Indian to His Love. 1889.
(2) William Shakespeare. Julius Caesar. Act III, Sc. ii.
(3) Ching-an. Over King Yu Mountain with a Friend. from The Clouds Should Know Me by Now: the Buddhist Poet Monks of China. 1998.
0 comments:
Post a Comment