“We’ve need of one another.”
At her words, he suffered the immediate mix of the rescued: shyness; want of confidence; awe at deliverance; relief; speechlessness; trembling. In his thumb’s grip, the bible he held seesawed wildly.
She searched him with her eyes. She took a step closer to him—began a gesture, checked it, thencompleted it: touched his face with her hand and spread across the flesh of his cheek the moisture of a tear.
A sudden gust of wind ballooned out the length of his vestments. “You’ll take a chill,” she said.
He had found his handkerchief. “You too,” he told her, wiping his eyes.
“So we’d best be on our way,” she answered.
“Enda—” he began, but, in a new rise of emotion, faltered.
She shook her head. “We’ll not talk more of it,” she said firmly.
“I must—” he told her.
“No.” She stooped and snapped off a twig of heather and placed it on Kevin’s grave. “Come now,” she said.
They walked slowly, descending the cemetery hillside carefully, skirting headstones and crosses and clumps of gorse. The sheep that earlier, timid of the mourners, had skittered away were straggling back, grazing again.
“ Them ,” she spoke with a tender tolerance, “they don’t know.”
On the level ground of the road, he opened the car door for her, then went around to his side and took his place in the driver’s seat. He started the engine and set the car in motion.
“If I were younger, I’d learn to drive one of these,” she said. “But it’s too late now…. Besides, it’d be a waste, Kevin having got that three-speed bike for me but a year ago.”
After that they spoke no more until he made the turn off the main road onto the valley lane leading to her house. Halfway down it, he told her, “I’m going salmon fishing tomorrow. It’s the last day of the season.”
“You only chance then.”
He nodded.
At her house, she let herself out of the car. The wind got at her hair again. She told him, “I’ll be at early Mass Sunday as usual. And tomorrow, Father, you’ll surely have the luck at your fishing.”
He’d not turned off the engine. “I mean to try,” he mustered.
She placed the car door against its clasp, then put her thigh to it, that way to close it as gently as possible.
In the rearview mirror he saw her, standing and waving, watching him out of sight.
Eleven
F IVE O’CLOCK: ONLY half an hour left before half-five, half-five being the hour he’d set for himself for quitting the beat and going back to the Castle to account. Folly, to suffer out the full time. No question, though, that he would: go on casting; go on desiring. Nothing to be done about the desiring, whitely chastened now though it was. Every aspect of every minute of the entire day—rain without surcease spilling out of the black and liquid sky; sloughed, fierce sweeps of wind; the swollen, silt-ridden, ever-swiftening river; the torturing midges; the ghosting mists like amorphous shifts of sorrow—all had acted in perfect scheme to chasten desire. Nought, though, can ever fully dry the angler’s heart of it.
Why not then the Hairy Mary? Nothing would come of it, but were Seamus to bring it up as an “if only,” he’d be able honestly to silence him. In the course of the afternoon, given the hopeless conditions, he’d tried a range of lures, selecting them almost solely on the basis of their fluke value: Black Fairy, Abbey, Night Hawk, Silver Wilkinson, Warden’s Worry…. So really, at last, why not the Hairy Mary?
Bending to shelter it from the rain, he opened the fine, fleece-lined fly-case he wryly called the Declan de Loughry Treasury, the title appropriate for its containing the bulk of his worldly wealth, the exotically beautiful, delicate simulations of insecta and hexapoda being expensive— dear , to the point of a gasp—especially to a priest whose monetary worth was what you might elegantly describe as being the polar opposite of
At her words, he suffered the immediate mix of the rescued: shyness; want of confidence; awe at deliverance; relief; speechlessness; trembling. In his thumb’s grip, the bible he held seesawed wildly.
She searched him with her eyes. She took a step closer to him—began a gesture, checked it, thencompleted it: touched his face with her hand and spread across the flesh of his cheek the moisture of a tear.
A sudden gust of wind ballooned out the length of his vestments. “You’ll take a chill,” she said.
He had found his handkerchief. “You too,” he told her, wiping his eyes.
“So we’d best be on our way,” she answered.
“Enda—” he began, but, in a new rise of emotion, faltered.
She shook her head. “We’ll not talk more of it,” she said firmly.
“I must—” he told her.
“No.” She stooped and snapped off a twig of heather and placed it on Kevin’s grave. “Come now,” she said.
They walked slowly, descending the cemetery hillside carefully, skirting headstones and crosses and clumps of gorse. The sheep that earlier, timid of the mourners, had skittered away were straggling back, grazing again.
“ Them ,” she spoke with a tender tolerance, “they don’t know.”
On the level ground of the road, he opened the car door for her, then went around to his side and took his place in the driver’s seat. He started the engine and set the car in motion.
“If I were younger, I’d learn to drive one of these,” she said. “But it’s too late now…. Besides, it’d be a waste, Kevin having got that three-speed bike for me but a year ago.”
After that they spoke no more until he made the turn off the main road onto the valley lane leading to her house. Halfway down it, he told her, “I’m going salmon fishing tomorrow. It’s the last day of the season.”
“You only chance then.”
He nodded.
At her house, she let herself out of the car. The wind got at her hair again. She told him, “I’ll be at early Mass Sunday as usual. And tomorrow, Father, you’ll surely have the luck at your fishing.”
He’d not turned off the engine. “I mean to try,” he mustered.
She placed the car door against its clasp, then put her thigh to it, that way to close it as gently as possible.
In the rearview mirror he saw her, standing and waving, watching him out of sight.
Eleven
F IVE O’CLOCK: ONLY half an hour left before half-five, half-five being the hour he’d set for himself for quitting the beat and going back to the Castle to account. Folly, to suffer out the full time. No question, though, that he would: go on casting; go on desiring. Nothing to be done about the desiring, whitely chastened now though it was. Every aspect of every minute of the entire day—rain without surcease spilling out of the black and liquid sky; sloughed, fierce sweeps of wind; the swollen, silt-ridden, ever-swiftening river; the torturing midges; the ghosting mists like amorphous shifts of sorrow—all had acted in perfect scheme to chasten desire. Nought, though, can ever fully dry the angler’s heart of it.
Why not then the Hairy Mary? Nothing would come of it, but were Seamus to bring it up as an “if only,” he’d be able honestly to silence him. In the course of the afternoon, given the hopeless conditions, he’d tried a range of lures, selecting them almost solely on the basis of their fluke value: Black Fairy, Abbey, Night Hawk, Silver Wilkinson, Warden’s Worry…. So really, at last, why not the Hairy Mary?
Bending to shelter it from the rain, he opened the fine, fleece-lined fly-case he wryly called the Declan de Loughry Treasury, the title appropriate for its containing the bulk of his worldly wealth, the exotically beautiful, delicate simulations of insecta and hexapoda being expensive— dear , to the point of a gasp—especially to a priest whose monetary worth was what you might elegantly describe as being the polar opposite of
Similar Books
