Five
1
On the morning of Isabel’s wedding Margaret Gore warned her husband to behave. The night before, Muiris had met Peader for the first time. There had been a party on the island at Coman’s; it began as a formal dinner with big Padraig furnishing red paper napkins and two sets of cutlery, but quickly dissolved away from the table with the men standing by the bar watching soccer on the television and Isabel looking across empty places at her mother and Sean. There was a lull between the dinner and the dancing. Peader felt awkward amidst the islanders until the drink inside him made them friendlier. Then he laughed more loudly than their jokes deserved and stood in the sweaty company in a thin disguise of whiskey.
Muiris was appalled by him. He seemed such a fool, a big weak fellow with a flabby jaw. Even when the music played he didn’t seem to want to dance; he stood elbowing the counter and looking back as every shy fellow came forward to ask one last turn with the island beauty. When the music was playing the fellow seemed even more morose to Muiris and he had at last stepped forward to determine his character. Through the strains of the fiddling he asked Peader would he not dance. The flabby jaw opened, there was a grin and a shaking of his head. ‘No thanks,’ he said. He lifted a beer glass and looked into the drink until it came to his mouth. What was Muiris to say to him? He felt like beating him on the back with his fists; there was something about him, about his slowness, his grudging presence at his own pre-wedding that made the schoolmaster want to provoke him. Since he had arrived on the island he had shown little sign of love for Isabel. She held his arm, not his hand, and he grinned at passersby. What could she see in him? How could she have chosen him even over Seamus Beg, the small blue-eyed fellow who had sat next to her in the island school, and who was dancing and spinning with her now?
‘You love my daughter?’ Muiris shot the question before he meant to. The two Joyces were playing a reel next to them and Peader didn’t hear.
‘What’s that?’
‘You . . . Come here. Come outside a minute.’
And in a moment while Margaret Gore was wiping a fleck of dust that was grief from her eye, Muiris drew Peader outside into the night. The sudden air made the stars swim. Horan’s blue boat down at the pier seemed to be sitting above the water. It was an instant before it was right again. Muiris blinked and felt the night’s coolness about the back of his ears. This was his moment, he wanted it out now. He wanted an impossible proof from the loutish man before him. He held up his right forefinger.
‘I want you to tell me. I want you to tell me why I should let you marry Isabel.’ He had blurted it out and instantly felt his wife in the night air scolding him. Peader’s face screwed up, he raised his eyebrows for effect and let them land low on his eyes, then stepped back, let a little blow out the side of his mouth, threw the eyebrows again to show he meant it, and stood there grinning out at the sea. He was so surprised by the tone of the question that it took him like an attack. He felt the master’s hand on his arm turning him for an answer and when he looked in Muiris Gore’s face, Peader saw his father there. He flung off the hand.
‘It’s not for you to let me,’ he said, and walked past toward the bar, growing inches of swagger in at last facing down his father.
‘Wait a minute. Will you? Christ, wait a minute.’
Muiris had pulled him back by his jacket and saw the stars twirl and flash into the sea as a hand shoved him back and he fell sideways to the ground. The pebble gravel pressed against his cheek and the sky was huge.
It was not a blow and Peader had not intended to knock him down. He had moved to help the Master up as soon as he saw him fall, but three other men had come out and were there before him. The pub followed them out and commotion spilled around Muiris as he was put standing again. Margaret hurried out to him wearing her mortification tightly buttoned.
‘I’m all right, I’m all right, I just fell. The stones are wet.’
There were a few cracks, the Master and his drink, the advice he must have been giving the Galwayman, and the crowd went back inside.
Margaret Gore knew there was more to it, though she did not dare ask what. That night she and Muiris lay sleepless in bed feeling like the Mother and Father of Doom. Muiris did not mention the incident but turned on his side and stared at the truth that he no longer mattered in the light of his daughter. She was going to marry this man and her father was going to spend the rest of his days nursing the grief of her loss. It was the new blow in a life that had grown used to them. Why should disappointment and failure end now, he thought; no, I am to stand up in the morning and give away the last hope of happiness in this family. She will hate him in a year, hate me for not stopping her, and be always bearing the wound of this choice. But what can I do?
Margaret Gore stirred herself in the bed. They knew they were each awake but lay beyond the possibility of words. For they knew that if they aired their disappointment the wedding would be impossible and Isabel as likely to run off and marry elsewhere. There was nothing to be done but to watch it happen, as if the whole event were some slow motion tragedy full of horror and loss played out time and again on the starlit ceiling as they lay there in bed. Margaret moved closer to Muiris and from behind held onto him. He didn’t turn but moved a hand up to place over her fingers, and they stayed like that, wordless, awake, looking at the darkness ahead while the window, open and uncurtained, let the bitter fragrance of their despair escape into the salty night air.
In the morning Margaret rose first to find Isabel in the kitchen before her. Sean was unwell; he had turned into the corner of his bed and gestured away any attempts to get him up.
‘Well, I’m getting married anyway,’ Isabel told him, going out into the kitchen and feeling the gloominess of the house like weights in her shoes. ‘Morning, Mother. I suppose you didn’t want to get up today either?’
‘That’s not true at all. Your wedding, love. It’s the happiest day of my life.’ Margaret paused for a second; how had she said it? Then she brought her hands together in a clap that was the on button of performance, and said: ‘Now, we have a lot to do, come on.’
From that moment the house awoke and thrummed with the energy of the imminent wedding. Margaret roused Muiris, she laid out his suit and shirt, selected a tie, and then brought him tea in bed. He had slept only since the light had come up and put his feet out on the cold floor as if testing the earth for the first time. Could he stand? Could he walk? Margaret watched him from the bedroom door as he stood by the window.
‘It’s your daughter’s wedding day,’ she said, and gnawed at her lowered lip. ‘You’re not to disgrace yourself.’
Then she was gone to feed Sean, try unsuccessfully to coax him from his bed, move back into the kitchen to meet the arrival of Nora Liathain, her near-neighbour, who had smelled the sour yellow air of despair coming from the cottage all night. She was a widow and delighted in grief. It was company for her when gloom descended on someone else, and it comforted her to know the loss of her husband, the fine Liam, was not the only outrageous sadness God visited on the island. Margaret met her at the door.
‘Everything all right?’
‘Everything’s fine, Nora.’
‘It is. Yes, fine.’ She paused, smelled the air. ‘Big day today. Yes. Yes. Anything you want doing? Will I go in, have a word with Issy?’
‘Do you know we’re so busy, Nora, we can’t even stop for talking.’
‘Is that the way?’
‘It is.’
‘I’ll come over later so.’
‘Grand, Nora. Thank you.’
‘Oh, you’re welcome. Anything now, don’t hesitate.’
‘I won’t. Thank you, Nora.’
She was gone, but there would be others. Margaret knew that the wedding hung on gossamer; and although she didn’t want it to happen she knew her daughter did, and for that reason she gave herself to policing the house from anyone and anything that risked destroying the day. She worked as if in a trance;
as if it was a wedding-by-numbers and her entire volition that blue morning was given over to simply doing the next thing, going to the next number and the next on the preordained plan. It was the only way she could get through it. By the time she was in her daughter’s bedroom, brushing out Isabel’s hair, Father Noel had arrived and was sitting in the kitchen with Muiris.
‘Well, how are we all this morning?’ she had heard his thin voice call as he came in. As she stood now behind Isabel with the brush she was listening hard for whatever Muiris might say and ruin everything. She made the strokes long and slow, craning slightly toward the door, expecting at any second the blow, the priest to come in and face Isabel: Is this true, you don’t love each other?
It was fifteen minutes and she heard the glass put down on the pine table, the squeak of the leather shoes on the flag hallway and the priest’s approach down to the bedroom. He tapped on the door so softly it made it seem an extraordinary intrusion, the bachelor man into the room of the women.
‘God bless.’
‘Father, come in,’ said Margaret.
‘I won’t,’ he said.
He was already in the door.
‘How are we?’
‘Fine,’ said Isabel, but it was lost in the louder ‘Wonderful, Father’ of her mother.
‘Great. Grand,’ he said, and stood, his feet in the doorway and his head leaning in. He kept it there a moment; he had heard of the trouble at Coman’s the night before, there was talk everywhere of the wedding not taking place; rumours of every kind flying about the island; and so he leaned there in the doorway longer than he might, his gentle eyes and soft pink face awaiting the sharp smack of what was really happening. But it never came. And he was grateful. Thank God. How good life was when it went smoothly along like this, he thought. He was able to smile and wave a blessing, then squeak back down the hall and out into the safer air of the Atlantic once again.
‘What did you tell him?’ Margaret asked.
‘I told him I thought the wind was getting up. I’m going to shave now. Is that all right with you?’
‘Did you have a drink already?’
‘What?’
‘I know you did.’
‘I’ll confess it to the priest next Saturday. I’m going to shave.’
The Master walked away and took off the jumper he had pulled on for the priest, letting it fall on the floor at the bathroom door.
‘My life . . . my life is picking up the bits of yours you drop off for me,’ his wife called after him.
He closed the door on her, and held it there until he heard her go back to Isabel. It was a safe place. He ran the hot water and watched his face disappear in the steamed mirror; the dreadful mottled puffiness his skin had become to him, its wrinkled mess, the red bloodiness of his eyes, unlovely, unmarriable now, he thought, and doused the razor. Make something happen, make something happen, was the prayer running around his mind as his hand traced the slackened line of his jaw and the seagulls began screaming outside. They were ahead of rain. He hated rain on Saturdays more than schooldays, and felt it for the children, as if it were a confiscated ball. Still, they’d all be at the wedding. They’d all be there to see this. He moved his finger along the clean shave line and pressed against his cheekbone to feel the hurt of his fall.
‘Ow!’
He splashed up the cold water. He let his face drip back into the sink and then stood there, unable to move away. He was a coward. He was afraid to hurt his daughter. He was afraid to speak out and tell her the man was no good and risk her hating her father for ever. He was afraid of what he thought he should do, and stood there staring at himself in the mirror praying for something to happen that might take the responsibility away from him.
‘Are you coming out?’ It was Margaret calling, sensing the possible weakness and ceaseless in her determination to keep the machinery of the wedding moving forward. ‘Are you coming out today?’
‘In a minute.’
‘You’ve been in there a year.’
‘I have,’ he whispered, hearing her footsteps retreating and turning back to himself at the mirror. You bloody fool, he thought, you bloody fool. Caught like this on this day you thought you’d be so happy. Fecken eejit, who do you think you are? He’s fine. She’ll be all right. She’s made a choice, trust her. You don’t like him but that was only a first impression. What do you know of him? Fellow’d be nervous, out here amongst us. Need to assert himself. Feel we were ganging up on him, judging every move. Put on your shirt. He could be fine, you’ll see.
The mirror answered his shaven face through steam-mist and droplets, but as Muiris turned from the sink and opened the bathroom window he could not let out the feeling that something precious was being stolen out from the very depths of him.
Down in Isabel’s bedroom his wife was listening for the click of the lock and the opening of the door. When he came out she released a sigh and turned it into a cough in case her daughter might suspect how finely the wedding hung in the tense air. She brushed Isabel’s hair as if she were strumming a Lethean lyre of forgetfulness; over and over the brush ran down until at last Isabel asked her to stop. She stood in the room and her mother saw at once how remarkably beautiful she was. Tears started to Margaret’s eyes, her chin trembled, and to stop it she called out:
‘Are you out of there? Are you out?’ She stammered and then rushed from the room as if some inaudible command had been issued.
Morning in the cottage was overwound like a clock; the wedding was at two o’clock. It seemed impossibly far into the future yet sprang forward in sudden jolts, time itself not a smooth curve but full of suddenness, leaps and stillness. It was ten o’clock; Muiris was coming out of the bathroom. It was midday and the bells were ringing the Angelus on the radio as Margaret found a stain on the dress. How could there be a stain? Yet there it was; the dress that had come from Galway lying now on Isabel’s bed unzipped from a plastic suitbag and revealing a clear brownish mark on the right hand side below the hip. It looked like the island.
‘Shit!’ It was Isabel, turning to the window and the slappy sea. ‘Shit.’ If this was a sign she had expected more.
‘We can save it,’ said Margaret, trying to disguise the certainty of the bad omen.
‘Look at it.’
‘Don’t worry, Issy. We’ll get it out.’
Half-past one o’clock and mother and daughter were still bent over the stain, still working with water and vinegar and bread soda and salt. At last, twenty minutes before the ceremony they thinned the discoloration but spread through the fabric an unforgettable air of bitter vinegar that everyone who was in the church that day took for the scent of a doomed marriage. While the women were in the room the father of the bride sat with his mute son in the back bedroom. There was nothing between them but the crying of the gulls and the growing pounding of the restless sea. The bridesmaids, Sheila and Mary O’Halloran, had arrived at the house and stood in the deserted kitchen picking at the baked ham and confirmed in the belief nothing was going to happen. Then time sprang forward; it was two o’clock and Isabel came from her room trailing her mother, the dress immaculate and her brushed hair carrying slivers of light. She was ready. Nora Liathain came across to sit with Sean, feeling comfort amidst the uncleared lumps of his sadness. She pressed Isabel’s hand with bent brown fingers that felt like thorns, and then stepped back to watch the procession begin.
They were to walk from the house to the church. When Muiris opened the door he felt he was letting out the world and his step on the front flagstone was wavering and unsure. His daughter clutched his arm. Margaret walked behind them with the bridesmaids, the little party of brightness going out the door and heading down the stoney way between the walls, their clothes fluttering on the seawind. It was a short walk and not one of them spoke. They moved in a trance, each of them gazing ahead at the stone church and wondering in their own way if something was about to happen. If there was to be a sign, if there was to be something then surely it would
be now.
The wind threw the scent of vinegar and perfume. Muiris felt the bruise in his cheek smart and his daughter’s hand tight on his arm. Did she want him to do something? Did she want him to steer her past the door or through it? He could not look at her and walked with her beauty on his arm like a glorious bouquet that was shortly to vanish. When they got to the church door they heard the music and like a slap felt the hot breath of the swollen crowd. There was a whoosh and a flurry of glances, and the all but inaudible wound of the island hearts breaking as the most beautiful woman amongst them came forward to marry the stranger.
Four Letters of Love Page 19
