Away

by Jane Urquhart

  “My father worked on the bridge out there,” Aidan said, waving his arm towards the south, “and once when they were sinking a piling they came to some bones, and then more bones, and more bones. They’d found the mass grave, you see, where thousands of us were thrown. Everyone working on the bridge was Irish, so it was their own brothers and children and wives they were uncovering. They wouldn’t go on with it” – he coughed – “they couldn’t go on with it … no matter what the bosses said. There were fights. Some of the men sat down and wept. No one would turn another inch of soil.”

  He cleared his throat and looked away from Eileen. “They moved the location of the bridge, then, Misters Brassey and Betts.”

  “Out of respect?”

  “There was no respect, Eileen, there is never any respect. You’ve come to the wrong place if you’re looking for that. They did it because the men wouldn’t work and there’s no labour cheaper than Irish labour.”

  She noticed that his right hand was clenched.

  “They pulled a huge rock out of the river the next week and the men decided it should be a memorial. So there it stands – one great Jesus rock and six thousand Irish under it. That’s where my family is.”

  Eileen touched his sleeve. “We’ll change everything,” she said. “It’s in us to change it all.”

  The house was leaking, ticking like a discrete collection of clocks.

  “You think so, do you? McGee was our only hope. He had all our love and he never understood it.”

  “Yes,” said Eileen, “he never understood it.”

  Eileen followed him that day through the dirty, sodden streets of Griffintown. Lanighan’s world – a world awkwardly reassembling itself. People called to the young man from doorways and rooftoops. Some flung him the opening line of a song which he answered in a rich voice, finishing the verse before proceeding down the street. Others shook his hand and told him their troubles. He stopped often, to help women and old men return cumbersome furniture to drenched rooms, or to drag feather mattresses out into the sun to dry. He and Eileen ate on a street corner – a sausage, a chunk of bread – and drank from bottles passed to them through windows. Ragged girls leaning in groups against wet walls whispered and giggled as they passed, and Eileen felt her cheeks grow hot when Lanighan threw his head back and laughed, or, if he was greeted by name, burst into a brief bout of dancing.

  He was a performer, continually on stage before the audience of his world, the most trivial of his gestures scrutinized and adored. Every street he entered changed around him, ripples of response were activated by his presence. Children clutched at his sleeve, gifts were spontaneously offered by adults. No matter the intensity of the small domestic dramas he and Eileen came upon, they were interrupted to allow the larger drama of Lanighan’s presence to shine through. Eileen was bathed in his light, proud to be walking by his side, her skirt brushing the cuff of his trouser leg.

  That night he went to a meeting at the Old Countryman’s Inn and would not allow her to be there with him. “Never have had a woman,” he said, “in our midst. It would spoil the talk.”

  “But I’m one of you,” she said. And when that did not produce the desired effect, “I’ll wear trousers and hide my hair.”

  “Never,” he said, holding it in his hands, “Never, never hide your hair.”

  When he was gone, Eileen wrote a letter to Liam – a letter she would never mail – filling it with sentences concerning love and injustice. “Soon,” she scribbled, “we will go to Ottawa to sit in the House of Commons and listen to the traitor, McGee, who has turned against the cause of freedom for Ireland. It is not only for love that I stay here,” she wrote, “but for our mother and father and all their hardships, and for your children, Liam, and my own. It is with Aidan Lanighan and his brothers that I can help to make the change. If you saw this place, these people, you would want to join us … but, remember, no matter what, I am your loving sister.”

  She folded the paper four times and placed it in a brown envelope. After writing the address she hid it in her case, her hand brushing the cold metal of the pistol she had almost forgotten was there.

  The noise of poverty and despair rose through thin floors from the lower storeys of the house – snatches of angry conversation, a baby’s wail, the sound of breaking glass – while the odour of damp and mould surrounded Eileen and settled on her skin and hair. She did not know how or where to bathe, was filled with dread when forced to visit the reeking privy whose contents had been liberally distributed by the flood throughout the yard. The heavy air was rife with the peculiar smell of smoke from wet cookstoves and unsuccessful fires, a smell not unlike that of decay. Mixed with this was the odour of decomposition from the corpses of several rats who had been trapped in the inner walls of the house when the water had risen.

  Years later smells such as these would remind Eileen of love, these and the strange odourlessness of absence.

  By midnight Aidan had not returned. Eileen had spent the previous hour following the rhythms of argument between a man and woman in the room directly below her. At moments of fierce intensity or soft, tentative approaches to reconciliation she was least able to decipher the subject of the quarrel, as though the intimacy of these contacts allowed no witnesses. In between, however, she recognized threats, warnings, accusations, denials rising to the indistinguishable pitch of chaos, causing sweat to stand in beads on Eileen’s forehead. Finally, at the height of a crescendo of shouted language there was a pause, a silence that was then fragmented by sobbing and the sound of creaking bedsprings.

  Eileen turned her face towards the damp wall and wrapped her thin arms around her body, imagining a clean, dry house for Aidan and herself, a territory free of conflict.

  First they would enter the delirium of the argument so that justice could be achieved.

  Overnight the remaining dampness crystallized in the cold. At ten in the morning Lanighan danced into a room whose walls were covered with a furry coat of frost. Eileen, watching his performance, laughed with relief, his return dispelling her fears, the cold, the wretchedness of the dark night. He pulled her down two flights of stairs to the kitchen of a woman called Mrs. O’Brien who had managed to coax her cookstove to burn comfortingly. A plump matron, she embraced Lanighan and examined Eileen with a mixture of curiosity, empathy, and suspicion.

  “She’s too thin,” she announced, ladling out two bowls of soup, “and you too. Eat something.”

  Lanighan, still hungry after the soup, abruptly left the house to visit a French bakery where he was so beloved by the boulanger he was regularly given gifts of day-old bread and the odd patisserie.

  While he was gone Mrs. O’Brien heated a copper boiler full of water so that Eileen could bathe, and bolted her kitchen door, “So that the rest of the starving tomcats in this place won’t slip in through the cracks.”

  “He’s a fine one,” she said, “out all night and you upstairs waiting for him.”

  “He was at a political meeting,” said Eileen defensively. “With his brothers in the cause.”

  “Oh yes … it’s always the way.” The older woman folded Eileen’s discarded clothes over the back of a chair. “Them and their brothers and their causes, and us always cleaning up after them. Even the likes of him … them and their politics. It’s in every man to waste his time on politics and leave us here to starve.”

  “But it’s to stop the starving that they meet,” said Eileen. “And I will meet with them.”

  Mrs. O’Brien poured more warm water into the tub where Eileen crouched. She turned her back and put the pot back on the shelf. “If you do meet with them it will be the first time they’ve paid any attention to a woman … at least in that regard. The only thing that’s not themselves they pay attention to is the bottle. It’s a terrible marriage, politics and the bottle. Look at old T. D. McGee himself. You’ll have to stand by the stove to dry. There’s nothing here not covered with mould. It’ll be eleven Sundays before anything’s dry enou
gh to put more water in it.”

  Eileen stepped from the tub and walked, naked, towards the stove, leaving glistening footprints on the floor behind her. The other woman eyed her dispassionately. “The likes of you could cause riots to break out amongst themselves, all politics and drinking aside.”

  “I’ve read that McGee takes a drop,” said Eileen.

  “It’s more like an ocean he takes, though they say now he’s given it up. That’ll be the first man I’ve heard of to do so, if, in fact, he has.”

  “We’re going to Ottawa to hear him speak,” said Eileen.

  “You and Aidan?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’ll be taking you with him, will he?”

  Lanighan pounded on the door.

  “I’ll be with him now always.” Eileen buttoned her skirt and began to tie the ribbons on her camisole. “And I’ll go with him everywhere.”

  Mrs. O’Brien raised her eyebrows but said nothing. She crossed the room and unbolted the door. Lanighan presented her with a chocolate éclair which she gobbled hungrily. Afterwards she leaned forward to kiss him and left a bit of whipped cream on his cheek. “Eileen says you’ll be going to Ottawa,” she said slyly.

  “Yes, some of us are going down to hear the old man talk.”

  “And you’ll have to watch out for those friends of yours, that they don’t get their hands on your girl, here.”

  “Oh, the lads,” he said. “They’re all right.”

  Mrs. O’Brien snorted contemptuously. “They’re not all right Mr. Aidan Lanighan, and you know it. It’s every one of them that’s up to no good, yourself included. What would your poor father be saying, him having worked all his life to keep you alive, and you, now, up till all hours with whiskey and politics and never putting in a full day’s work yourself. And preying on girls the likes of this one.”

  “I sew a piece here, a piece there,” he said, ignoring the reference to Eileen. “I’m fast, I’m good at it. The others is tailors as well, and they work when they can.”

  Mrs. O’Brien snorted again. “Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor … what difference does it make when you’ll all end up in jail or hung.”

  Aidan began practising complicated dance steps near the stove.

  “I hope to God,” said the woman, eyeing him with anger and with love, “that I don’t live long enough to see the day when you’ll be dancing like that on the end of a rope.”

  “That,” said Lanighan, “is never going to happen.” He put his arm around the woman’s wide shoulders. “So don’t you worry yourself about it.”

  Mrs. O’Brien softened under his touch, and eventually patted his cheek.

  “Be careful,” she said quietly. “And look out for the girl, too. She’s too thin.”

  “Who is she?” asked Eileen as they climbed the stairs to Aidan’s room.

  “She’s my father’s wife,” said Aidan, “Or, at least, his woman. I suppose you could call her my mother. I think she likes you.”

  “She loves you,” said Eileen. “That’s one thing certain.”

  Their first argument broke into Eileen the way she’d seen a panicked moose crash into the forest in Elzivir Township, totally unmindful of bushes and trees in its path, damaging everything around it. She had become like the woman she had heard through the floorboards; had learned, even in this short time, the symphonic structure of lovers’ quarrels. The theme was the trip to Ottawa, the second movement the pistol which Eileen had believed Lanighan had forgotten. First he had told her that she could not come with him to hear McGee speak, which had caused her to weep and storm for hours while he remained on the other side of the room, blank, impassive, his arms folded. When she had calmed, and they had made love once again, he delicately asked if she had brought the pistol with her to Montreal.

  “I could be searched,” he said, “at any time. I left it with you because of that, but I’ll be needing to take it with me to Ottawa.”

  Eileen sat upright in the bed, agitated by this new piece of information. Three of the men, besides himself, were going, Aidan had told her, and they would meet another two there. All of them had had their weapons seized when they were imprisoned at the time of the Fenian raids, and they dared not get more for fear of raising suspicions.

  “You are Fenians, then?” said Eileen.

  “No … no. Just interested bystanders.”

  “Then why do you need the pistol?”

  “It’s only for protection, Eileen, against bad possibilities. We’re just going to Ottawa to hear what McGee has to say in the House, to get the information first-hand.”

  Eileen scrambled out of bed, dragging a blanket with her. She wrapped it around her body and sat firmly down on her case, refusing to move. “You’ll not get any pistol from me,” she said, “unless I go with you. I want information first-hand too. Besides, if I wasn’t here there wouldn’t be any pistol.”

  “I would have come to Colborne to get it from you. And you are here, Eileen.”

  “You were going to Ottawa before I came here. You were going without the pistol.”

  “I told you, I would have come to Colborne to get it, and anyway things have become more serious since then. You can’t come with us, Eileen.”

  “I walked a hundred miles at night.”

  “With Liam.”

  “I’ll be with you … and you’re in a wagon.” She would not get up from the case, leaned back against the wall, her eyes filling with tears. “Don’t shut me out, Aidan,” she whispered. “I love you too much to be shut out of what you do. We are together now, isn’t it true, forever. I’ll do anything you want … but let me be with you.”

  Lanighan looked at her crouched by the dirty wall. He walked around and performed a few half-hearted dance steps. “Eileen,” he said softly, “you cannot even begin to understand.” He paused, ran his hand through his hair, cleared his throat, and turned towards the window as if making an explanation to the whole world he inhabited. “You cannot even begin to understand what it is that I do. You couldn’t be a part of it even if I wanted you to.” He raised his hand, palm towards her, as if to halt an advance of carriages on the street below. “Which I don’t,” he added.

  “You don’t want me.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You don’t want me with you.”

  “Not for this kind of thing. Not this time.”

  Eileen sat with her back curved, her hands resting on her lap. Rejected, excluded, the mythical journeys she had imagined with Lanighan snatched from her. She wanted his dramas, their urgency, as much as she wanted his body in her arms. She wanted to creep inside him, to be a vital part of his life, his politics. “Don’t shut me out,” she whispered again.

  He sighed, placed his forehead against the wall, his hands in his pockets. “You can’t come with me, Eileen. Give me the pistol.”

  A terrible silence filled the room. The sun, entering through the window, reflected angrily back from the cracked heart of Jesus. Then abruptly Eileen jumped to her feet and ran to where Lanighan stood. “Aidan,” she said, her voice sharp and clear. “Aidan … isn’t it still possible that you could be searched?”

  “Yes … it’s possible.”

  “Then why not let me come with you.”

  “Eileen –”

  “No, listen … I could carry the gun. They’re not likely to search a girl.”

  Lanighan looked hard into her face. “Jesus Christ …” he eventually said, “you’re right, Eileen. I’ll take you with me.”

  She had pleased Lanighan and now would gain entrance to the vibrant centre of his life, be sister to his brothers-in-arms. There would be drama and power, and change would sweep from their love like a cave giving birth to an important river.

  “How beautiful this all will be,” she said.

  “Don’t expect too much, Eileen, we’re only going to hear McGee speak. And the pistol,” he said, “it’s just a precaution.”

  “It will be beautiful,” she said, “
to be with you among your companions and all of us thinking about the cause.”

  “The cause … .” He began, but did not finish, the sentence.

  IN June, dawn comes early to Loughbreeze Beach, lifting light with little difficulty over the flat eastern horizon of the Great Lake, just beyond the peninsula of sand that swallowed Esther’s father’s doomed hotel.

  At this moment the midnight shift at the quarry stops for coffee: the machines rattle, purr, and are silent. It is an enchanted time. Men in dusty work clothes, whose passions, during other parts of the day, are focused on all-terrain vehicles and fast food, stroll up to the edge of the man-made crater, their styrofoam cups warming their hands, and look out over the calm water. They think about young women who are sleeping. They push their hardhats back and let the new sun touch their foreheads.

  A crow outside the south bedroom awakens in a tree where he has always lived and begins to explain the dawn, the coming day, the previous night, the currents of the lake, the nature of the wind, which – though absent now – will soon stop dreaming and start moving everything it can. Esther has never slept through the bird’s strident announcements. But on this, the last morning, she has not slept at all.

  She rolls over in the old sleigh-bed. Her hips ache and one hand feels numb, as if it has been taken from her, or as if a gift she held in it has been permanently removed

  In her mind there hovers the face of an old lady – a replica of her own face which floats now on the square, white pool of the pillow. In this family all young girls are the same young girl and all old ladies are the same old lady.

  There were evenings, Esther remembers, usually in summer, when her mother and her Grandmother Molly, her aunts and great-aunts would drink sherry and review the family deaths. The aunts would have spent the long, hot afternoon under the poplars, having left behind stifling farm kitchens further inland to inhale the air above the lake and gaze at the colour blue. Sons and husbands would have stayed on the inland farms, active in bright fields, the skin on their faces having been furrowed over the years by sun. Esther’s father would sit at a desk in a far corner of the parlour, pretending to busy himself with a complicated tangle of family accounts, dreaming of his ruined houses.