Walk the Blue Fields

by Claire Keegan

  The groom unfolds a piece of paper and thanks everyone again, in turn, mirroring his father-in-law’s speech. The bride sits quietly, surrounded by all the men making speeches. A waitress comes round with champagne but she wants none of it. As she sits there, with her hand caressing the stem of her glass, the priest remembers something. It is a clear, resurrected memory that makes him wish he was alone.

  Applause rises when the cake comes out. The bride and groom stand and take hold of the knife. The blade is sunk deep into the bottom tier and the obligatory photograph is taken. Soon after, the cake comes back, cut up on tiny plates, dusted with sugar. Tea is poured, coffee.

  Miss Lawlor reaches out and stuffs a serviette into her handbag.

  ‘A souvenir,’ she says. ‘I must have a dozen now.’

  Again, the priest is handed the microphone. He stands up and says grace without feeling any of the words. Lately, when he has prayed, his prayers have not been answered. Where is God? he has asked. Not, what is God? He does not mind not knowing God. His faith has not faltered – that’s what’s strange – but he wishes God would show himself. All he wants is a sign. Some nights he gets down on his knees when the housekeeper is gone and the curtains are pulled tight across the windows and prays to God to show him how to be a priest.

  Everyone is asked to finish so the tables can be pushed back, the space cleared for dancing. People abandon the ballroom for the bar, the toilets, go out to the beer garden to smoke. At this point, the priest could leave. He could go up to those still sober enough to remember he said goodbye, and shake their hands. In his house, he knows a fire is set. All he has to do is go back and set a match to it. Sleep would tug at him and the day would end. But he must stay for the dance. He will stay to see the dance, then he will go.

  The music begins with a slow waltz. ‘Could I Have this Dance for the Rest of My Life?’ As the groom is leading his bride onto the floor, the hem of her dress snags on the heel of her shoe. She stoops to fix it, blushing. She has taken off the veil so the back of her neck is naked, but for the pearls. When she straightens up, Jackson takes her in his arms. Willingly she seems to go. Lights catch the diamond in her engagement ring. The white shoes follow the course her husband makes around the floor. They circle once, and once again, and then his brother comes out with the maid of honour. He seems light on his feet. The best man may be incapable of speech, but he can dance. The groomsman follows with his bridesmaid. They seem shy, unsure of themselves, of each other. After three waltzes, the music stops and the best man asks his brother if he can dance with the bride. The groom looks at him. Lawlor is standing at the edge of the dance-floor trying to catch the groom’s eye. He will have difficulty, the priest realises, staying out of this, even though he said he must. The groom hesitates but he consents and soon the maid of honour is exchanged for the bride.

  The band picks up the pace, changing to a quickstep. The best man begins the jive. Years back, he won some type of jiving competition, and now he is determined to show his skill. He makes an arch of his arm, and the bride passes under, comes out behind him but she is not moving fast enough for his liking. He pushes the bride into a spin, but when he turns, to spin off her, his hand does not catch hers; instead it catches the string of pearls and when he spins, the string breaks.

  The priest freezes as the pearls slip off the string. He watches how they hop off the polished floor and roll in his direction. One pearl hits the skirting board, rolls back past Miss Dunne’s outstretched hand. She lets out a sigh as it rolls back towards the priest’s chair. He puts his hand down and lifts it. It is warm in his hand, warm from her. This, more than anything else in the day, startles him.

  The priest walks across the dance floor. The bride is standing there with her hands out. When he places the pearl in her hand, she looks into his eyes. There are tears there but she is too proud to blink and let one fall. If she blinked, he would take her hand and take her away from this place. This, at least, is what he tells himself. It’s what she once wanted but two people hardly ever want the same thing at any given point in life. It is sometimes the hardest part of being human.

  ‘I am so sorry,’ he says.

  He looks at the fragile lines in her open palms, at the pearls accumulating. He lifts his eyes back to her face. Lawlor is staring at him but Breen comes up and breaks it.

  ‘How many had you?’ Breen says.

  ‘How many?’ says the bride, shaking her head.

  ‘Aye,’ he says. ‘Have you any notion how many was on the string?’ Breen looks at her and changes. ‘Ah, don’t be crying, girl. Tis only a string. Tis aisy mended.’

  Down at the ballroom door, the groom has caught the best man by the collar. The big hand is tight, the face white in temper.

  ‘You mad bollocks!’ he roars. ‘Could you not control yourself for the one fucken day!’

  *

  Lovely to be out in the avenue again, to leave that terrible music behind. The wind has died and now the trees are still. On a bough, a crow sits watchful. Down the street, a chimney throws white smoke against the sky. The newsagent has closed her door but in the betting shop, a TV light still flickers. The priest pauses at the window, sees there a girl, fast asleep with an open book. He would like to go in and wake her, to tell her that she will get a crick in her neck but he walks on down to the parochial house. As soon as his foot touches the deep gravel, he knows he cannot go inside. He turns back down the street, past the petrol pumps, and heads out the country road.

  So, she is married. For a moment, he feels the possibility of all things new and then it vanishes. He passes the high walls of the convent, then the tubular steel fence of the mart. There’s no pavement now, just the bare road, a fringe of dead leaves under his feet. It is slippery, in places, and he tells himself he does not really know where he is going. He passes Jackson’s gate, the milk cartons left standing in the crate. Every now and then a beast in some field or shed lets out a roar. Many of the cattle in this parish will not be fed tonight. He walks without allowing any single thought to dominate his mind. After a few miles he can hear, under the road, the comforting noise of the river.

  When he reaches the creamery, he turns down Hunter’s Lane. Here, the Blackstairs tower over the land, throwing the fields into strange, blue shadow. Hunting men come down here on Sundays, after mass. They’ve left dead fowl at the house: cock pheasants, ducks, a goose. The housekeeper has hung them, plucked them, served them up on the dinner table. The priest doesn’t like to think of this even though he’s taken pleasure in the meals, the gravy.

  The lane ends where a house once stood, its derelict walls choked in ivy. At the marshy patch where the alders grow, there’s panic on the water, a flutter, and the wild ducks rise. The catkins shiver after them. The priest turns still and looks at the sky for the heron. Never once has he come this way without seeing her. It is asking much to see her again but suddenly she’s there, her slow wings carrying her in a placid curve against the sky.

  Down at the river, the sleepy brown water runs on. The peace is deeper as always simply because it’s still there. On the water’s surface, the reflection of the far bank’s trees is corrugated. A single cloud floats on the sky, so pale and out of place, like a cloud left over from another day. He remembers the snatch of bridal veil on the yews, puts his hand in his pocket and feels it there. He takes it out, lets it fall. Before it touches the water, he regrets it but he had his chance, and now his chance is gone.

  There was a milky fog in the orchard the night she came up to the house. It was All Soul’s, and he was alone in the parlour with the fire blazing. Earlier that day he’d given last rites to a young man at the hospital, then he’d driven back to say evening Mass. It was one of those nights when he felt the impossibility of being alone. He was thinking of the young man, of how he himself was still young. The clock on the mantelpiece was loud. He threw more coal on the fire and paced the floor. She came to get a Mass card signed, for her mother. He asked her to come in, to sit with
him. She had stayed, he felt, so as not to offend him. He never meant to touch her but when she stared into the fire, the priest looked at the white line on her scalp where the dark red hair was parted. He’d reached out simply to feel the heat of the fire on her hair. That was all he had meant to do but she had misunderstood the gesture and reached out to clasp his wrist.

  Always, they met in out-of-the-way places: on the rough strand at Cahore or Blackwater, in the woods beyond the common paths of Avondale. Once, they ran into Miss Dunne on the strand. She was walking towards them and it was too late to turn away but just as they were about to meet, she turned towards the sea. She had not on that day nor ever since given any hint that she had seen them.

  The seasons passed and winter came again. They got away, travelled north to The Silent Valley and stayed in a little guest-house near Newry town. That night, over dinner, she caressed the stem of her glass and told him she couldn’t stand it any longer. If he could not leave the priesthood, she would not see him this way again. They had gone to a heritage park the next morning on the way home, walked backwards through the ages, from Viking yard and house through the crannógs, and wound up at a Neolithic tomb. There, they had stood at the edge of an artificial lake where a crude, wooden boat was half submerged. The water’s surface was thick with dandelion seed. Acold breeze hissed through the reeds but they were silent, locked in the knowledge that nothing again would ever be the same.

  Now, she is married. Tonight, Jackson will lead her to a room and take her dress off. The priest can still see the brother’s cock, the size of it, how he couldn’t get it back into his trousers. He leans over the bank of the river, pulls the heads off a few tall weeds. He should go back to town, get into his bed, but he is unwilling to let the day end. Instead, he walks in the opposite direction, crossing the stiles between the fields. The land changes from coarse stubble ground to bright shoots of wheat. Such a dry winter as they had. Further on, there’s smooth pasture and, all about him, sheep are grazing. So, this is Redmond’s land. He looks up towards the road, sees the roof of the big hayshed. Beside it, sheltered, with blades of light around the blinds, stands a caravan.

  As soon as he sees it, he tells himself he did not come down here for this. The last thing he wants is company but his feet seem, of their own accord, to take him through the pasture. In a sheltered place, beyond currant bushes, a patch of ground is neatly fenced with wooden posts and sheep wire. Drills are set in neat rows, fresh clay on a rake. When he pushes the plain timber gate, it squeals. The priest stands there in the garden for a while, listening. He hears nothing from inside and, feeling confident that nobody is home, knocks on the door. As soon as he knocks, he turns to leave but the door opens and a Chinaman, wearing flip-flops and a loose track-suit is standing there.

  ‘Yes,’ he smiles. ‘Come.’

  The priest backs away. ‘Good evening.’

  ‘Yes,’ says the Chinaman.

  He should not have come but it would be an insult now not to enter the man’s home. Inside, the caravan is shining: a polished floor, a mattress with a stiff, white quilt. There’s the pungent smell of boiled tea, steam from a kettle. A bright light is covered by a shade. Almost everything is white, the plywood painted. There’s a big indented cushion and an open book.

  The Chinaman looks at the priest’s feet. The dirty shoes are an insult here. The priest takes them off and leaves them outside the door, realising, as he does so, that his feet are sore. A stool is taken out. The Chinaman’s hands are quick. He is a lithe man, handsome, moving freely about his home. The priest looks through a perfectly clear pane at the river and feels a fresh stab of envy.

  ‘Yes,’ says the Chinaman. ‘You trouble.’

  ‘My trouble?’

  The Chinaman nods.

  ‘I have no trouble,’ the priest says.

  The Chinaman laughs; he understands this is what people who are in trouble say. He takes a glass from a shelf, pinches dried leaves from a canister, pours boiling water. He fills a glass to the brim, hands it to the priest. It is almost too hot to hold. The leaves float at first then fall slowly and expand. It tastes bitter and burns his tongue.

  The Chinaman stares at him. His eyes are wide open, focused. He folds his sleeves up neatly to the elbow and reaches out to touch the priest. It is three years since anyone one touched him and the tenderness in the stranger’s hands alarms him. Why is tenderness so much more disabling than injury? The hands are dry and warm. When they reach down from his jaw and encircle his throat, the priest swallows hard and stares at a print on the wall. The print depicts a plain, alabaster bowl and its shadow.

  ‘Yes.’ The Chinaman goes to the mattress and slaps it.

  ‘What?’ says the priest.

  ‘Good,’ says the Chinaman. ‘Yes.’

  The priest takes off his jacket and lies on the mattress. He lies on his back but the hands turn him over. His socks are taken off. Thumbs press his toes, his heels and move deep into the soles of his feet. The Chinaman lets out a grunt of comprehension, shifts to the priest’s side and begins, with his hands, to strike him. He starts at his ankles and moves, with infinite patience, up to the back of his thigh. When he reaches his buttocks, he pushes his fists deep into the flesh. The priest feels an urge to cry out but the hands move to the other leg pushing whatever is in his legs into his torso, as though his contents could tip from one side of his body to the other. The priest slowly feels his resistance giving in; it is the old, cherished feeling of his will subsiding. Let the man strike him. It is a strange feeling but it is new. He turns his head and stares at the alabaster bowl.

  Fragments of his time with Lawlor’s daughter cross his mind. How lovely it was to know her intimately. She said self-knowledge lay at the far side of speech. The purpose of conversation was to find out what, to some extent, you already knew. She believed that in every conversation, an invisible bowl existed. Talk was the art of placing decent words into the bowl and taking others out. In a loving conversation, you discovered yourself in the kindest possible way, and at the end the bowl was, once again, empty. She said a man could not know himself and live alone. She believed physical knowledge lay at the far side of love-making. Her opinions sometimes galled him but he could never prove her wrong. He remembers that night in the parlour, her smooth, freckled arms. How she sat on the edge of the bed in Newry town and sewed the button back onto his shirt. The next morning, their last, they had lain in bed with the window open and he’d dreamt the wind had blown the freckles off her body. Later that morning, when she turned her head and looked at him, he said he could not leave the priesthood.

  Now, the Chinaman is manipulating his hands, pulling them back from his wrists until the priest feels certain they will snap. His head is lifted, brought round in circles that get wider. Knees are placed at either side of his head. The Chinaman is dragging something from the base of his spine, from his tailbone, up through his body. There’s something hard that does not want to budge but the hands don’t care. Before he is ready, the priest feels something inside him folding back, the way water folds back from the shore to form another wave – and it crashes from his mouth, a terrible cry that is her name and then it’s over.

  After a time he cannot measure, he slowly sits up and looks about the room. He stares at the Chinaman, at his bare feet, the floor. It is hotter now and he feels hungry. The man is filling the kettle again, striking a match, as though this happens every day.

  ‘Thank you,’ the priest says at last. ‘Thank you.’

  The Chinaman squats beside him with a fresh glass of tea. Here is a man living happily in a clean place on his own. A man who believes in what he does and takes pleasure in the work. The priest must give him something. He puts his hand into his pocket and feels there, Lawlor’s money. The Chinaman bows when he takes it but he does not count the notes. He simply drops it into a brown jar on the kitchen table.

  The priest points at the print on the wall.

  ‘What is this?’ he asks.


  ‘Old,’ the Chinaman says.

  ‘It’s empty,’ the priest laughs.

  The Chinaman does not understand.

  ‘Empty,’ says the priest. ‘Not full.’

  ‘Yes,’ the Chinaman says. ‘You trouble.’

  The priest finds his socks and goes outside for his shoes. The blue night has spread itself darkly over the fields. He pushes the timber gate and listens to the sound it makes closing behind him. He stands there and looks at the world. The spring has come, dry and promising. The alder is shooting out, her pale limbs brazen. Everything seems sharper now. The night has braced itself against the fence posts. The rake is a shining thing, well loved and worn.

  Where is God? he has asked, and tonight God is answering back. All around the air is sharp with the tang of wild currant bushes. A lamb climbs out of a deep sleep and walks across the blue field. Overhead, the stars have rolled into place. God is nature.

  He remembers lying naked with Lawlor’s daughter in a bed outside of Newry town. He remembers all those dandelions gone to seed and how he said he would always love her. He remembers these things, in full, and feels no shame. How strange it is to be alive. Soon, it will be Easter. There is work to be done, a sermon to be written for Palm Sunday. He climbs the fields back towards the road, thinking about his life tomorrow, as a priest, deciphering, as best he can, the Roman language of the trees.

  Dark Horses

  In the night, Brady dreams the woman back into his life again. She’s out the yard with the big hunter, laughing, praising her dark horse. She reaches up, loosens the girth and takes the saddle off. The hunter shakes himself and snorts. She leads him to the trough and pumps fresh water. The handle shrieks when pressed but the hunter doesn’t shy: he simply drops his head and drinks his fill. Further off, the cry of hounds moves across the fields. In his dream these hounds are Brady’s own and he knows it will take a long time to gather them in and get them home.