Bonfire Night 1986 had been a massive letdown thanks to a gale that had blown in from the nearby Atlantic. The night was to be forever referred to as Fadden's Big Fizzle, after the pile of birchwood that steamed out within a minute of being lit.
“Marjan! I'm so glad you're here!” Fiona Athey dodged a trio of nuns, two of whom Marjan recognized as Sisters Agatha and Bea, to get to her. The robust hairdresser was wearing an orange UCLA sweatshirt and her favorite pair of olive green fishing pants, handy for all their secret pockets and folds. Not a fan of feminine accessories, Fiona seemed slightly perturbed by the large plastic earrings hanging from her earlobes. Marjan recognized their shape—husks of yellow corn—as her friend approached.
“You wouldn't believe the mess I'm in, even if I told you.” Fiona breathed heavily, taking one of the trays. “Have a look over there, Marjan, and tell me what you see, now.”
Marjan followed her friend's gaze, past the already crowded refreshments tent, to the middle of Fadden's Field. Planted amongst the dark heather, in two semicircles that repeated themselves for three rows, were the white lawn chairs used for all of the town's meetings. The seats faced an open area marked by round fieldstones. The delineated ground resembled a giant pie or wheel, with its spokes leading to a pyre of spindly kindling.
Marjan blinked, unable to believe what she was seeing.
Tucked firmly atop the pyre, with its legs spread at a forty-degree angle, was a twelve-foot man made entirely of straw and dried nettle. Or what was left of a man. Marjan could clearly see a large hole gaping from his grassy pelvis.
“The Cat's goat,” Fiona remarked drily. “Took a chunk off before I could get my hands on it.” Balancing the tray on one palm, she pointed to a row of elms on the far edge of the field.
Roped to the smallest tree was a long-haired billy goat. Balli-nacroagh's resident boozer and philosopher of no less than nine doctorates, the Cat had recently celebrated what he had claimed as his centenary on earth in his favorite manner, namely getting sloshed on a bottle of strawberry schnapps while grooming his new pet goat, Godot, in the town square.
Godot's sour-faced owner was currently crouched on his haunches next to him, feeding him from a pint of amber drink of which he also partook.
Marjan remained speechless, utterly shocked.
“And after all the work that went into connecting those limbs.Burning man, indeed,” Fiona muttered, leading Marjan to the refreshments tent, where it seemed half the village was also gathered.
The stripy orange and white tent, one of the four used during the summer's annual Patrician Day Dance, was pitched in the field's northwestern corner. A pine table ran along its back width, showcasing Conor's crabapple cider, costing a punt a pint. Silver vats of steaming corncobs, buttered and sprinkled with paprika by Maura Geraghty, the Wilton Inn's formidable chef, were offered as savory sides.
Marjan approached a table piled with goodies. Along with wreaths of entwined hawthorn, gingham-lidded jars of rhubarb-apple jam and marmalade, and loaves upon loaves of Mrs. Boy-lan's brown bread were miniature burning men being auctioned for the cause. Marjan read the cardboard sign next to the mini-effigies: BET ON YOUR OWN BURN! SUPPORT OUR TOWN HALL THEATER REVIVAL!
“Fiona, you continue to amaze me,” she said. “When did you and Father Mahoney have time to put this together?”
“Had the fifth-years at Saint Joe's help during their lunch hours. Didn't Layla tell you?” Fiona straightened a garland of alder and berries that had fallen.
Marjan shook her head. “Layla's got a lot on her mind these days,” she replied. Scanning the sea of heads for her youngest sister, she finally spotted Layla and her boyfriend, Malachy canoodling behind a bale of hay. The two hadn't left each other's sides since meeting up at the train station.
“I know how that is. Emer's been at that Californian school two months now and all I got was this jumper here. Not even a letter to go with it. Teenagers!” Fiona exclaimed.
“How's Emer doing with her studies?” Marjan reached for a tray of cookies, lifting the tea towels off the sweet, buttery nuggets. The cider being poured by Margaret McGuire wonderfully complemented the cookies' cardamom scent.
Fiona popped a cookie into her mouth. “From the little I can make of it, she's taking Los Angeles by storm. Been assigned already to stage-manage the first-years' production.”
“What an honor!”
Fiona beamed with pleasure. “Imagine! A daughter of mine in the theater! Never thought I'd see the day!” The hairdresser stared off into space, briefly reminiscing on the years she had spent gracing the Irish stage.
“Testing, testing! One, two, buckle my shoe … er, there was an old maid from Tuvalu—” A terrifying shriek pierced the air. Godot the goat replied with a plaintive bleat, while the gathered crowd grabbed their ears in similar discomfort.
Father Fergal Mahoney was standing next to the gelded straw man, his hands clutching a microphone, which was connected to a nearby portable amplifier. A sixty-fifth birthday present from Ballinacroagh's premier welcome wagon and organizing body, the Ladies of the Patrician Day Dance Committee, the amplifier was one of Father Mahoney's most treasured possessions. He hardly gave a sermon nowadays without the accompaniment of his Ari 3000.
“Gather around, everyone. Don't be shy. That's it.” Father Mahoney beckoned the crowd toward the semicircle of chairs. “This lad here won't bite,” he said, patting one of the bushel legs. “But I'd keep away from that goat, if I were you!”
The crowd tittered and turned their attentions to Godot and his owner. As a likely response, the Cat narrowed his already puckered eyes and let out a loud and voluminous belch.
Father Mahoney shrugged emphatically. “Fine cider you've got there, Conor. I think the Cat's approval speaks for us all.”
From under the tent, Conor Jennings could be seen raising a pint of the appley alcohol, pleased as punch. He turned to Mar-jan and gave her a big thumbs-up. It had been Marjan who had suggested he use cardamom and nutmeg instead of cloves in his home brewing experiment, a combination that had yielded an effervescent champagnelike drink that was nothing if not divine. Bonfire Night, the Guinness man had informed her only last week, was to be the debut of his lovingly coaxed crabapple brew.
“I'm only going to say a few words tonight,” the priest continued. “The real show is what's going to happen when we light your man here. As some of you may have gathered, we're not only here to raise much-needed funds for a new stage in the Town Hall. Sure, it's the main reason, we're not to forget that and all. That platform we call a theater is a mighty disgrace, a sheer abomination of the altar of the gods— Ahem!”
Father Mahoney paused, reddening. “The spirits of verse, per se, those eloquent angels who look after the theater bards.” He wiped his brow. “Call it what you will, I think our community deserves a better ground for covering the greatest, the mightiest talents of our western land: our poets and playwrights. Synge and Yeats deserve a better fare, you'd all agree with me, I think.”
Father Mahoney stopped again, his pink, expectant face gazing out on his congregation. What he hoped had been a rousing cry for the Arts was greeted only by the sounds of cider slurping and another indignant bleat from Godot: a protest perhaps for not having his own namesake's creator, the great Samuel Beckett, acknowledged as one of Eire's venerable authors.
A professional comedian in a past life, Father Mahoney was terribly close to breaking out his Prince Charles impersonation for an easy laugh. Instead, he soldiered on. “As for the other reason we're all commingling here this day, it's to the credit of Fiona Athey and the Ladies of the Patrician Day Dance Committee. Not only do they work hard all year to bring us the best of entertainment's value for our July holiday but now they are committed to celebrating our greatest Celtic days as well—the important calendar moments our own ancestors, blessed they were, chose to commemorate.”
As Father Mahoney went on to explain the significance of the harvest effigy, which offered its l
ight to stave off the demons of winter months, Marjan moved through the crowd until she reached Layla and Malachy The two hardly had noticed the hubbub swirling around them, so intoxicated were they by their own inflamed hormones. A considerate and shy boy when they started dating, Malachy McGuire had matured into a confident, and at times cheeky, young man. At the moment he had his face buried in Layla's neck, his arms holding her tight around the waist. He was getting quite the liberal university education, thought Marjan. Not that her sister needed much prompting. For her part, Layla was off in a dreamworld, her lips opened, her eyes closed in unabashed ecstasy.
A few passersby cast bemused smiles at the young, smooching couple, adding to the dark looks darting from a group of elderly women. Marjan considered turning away, leaving them to it, but on second thought remained where she was. An image of an overweight monk, the Fat Friar from the Sunday World advertisement, popped into her head. She let out a loud cough. The pair of them looked up with a start, Layla giggling coquettishly Malachy wearing a wide grin, his arms still wrapped around his girlfriend. Marjan smiled back, handing each of them a glistening corncob wrapped in wax paper. “Have you seen Estelle anywhere? Weren't you two supposed to pick her up?”
Layla brought her hand to her opened mouth. “Oh, I completely forgot! She called right after you left. Said she couldn't make it tonight. Her arthritis is acting up again. Said she'll call you tomorrow.” Layla twisted open the top of the papered cob with a guilty look. “It slipped my mind. Sorry Marjan.”
“Did you want me to check up on her?” Malachy assembled his shoulders into a manly stance. “I can borrow my aunt's car and go up there now, if you want.” No longer at home in his childhood house, the young man spent his weekends down from Trinity College at his aunt Margaret McGuire's.
“That's okay, Malachy. The roads are still slippery from the shower earlier. I'll give her a call later,” Marjan replied, her eyebrows knitting with worry. Estelle did not usually let her arthritis stop her from attending a party; this latest bout must have been especially debilitating. When it acted up, which was quite regularly nowadays, the older lady's arthritis could leave her just a shadow of her usual chirpy self.
A gentle ripple of applause filled the air, followed by a quick scrambling for seats. One of the first to settle near the front of the pyre was Bahar, who had been thoroughly captivated by Father Mahoney's pithy speech. Oohs and aahs resounded across the field as Fiona Athey stepped up to the straw man with a lighted match. She paused dramatically before the crowd, waiting for Father Mahoney's nod.
As the flames took hold of the dried grass, Godot the goat gave another bleat from his elmy hideout, mourning his burnt supper, no doubt.
FIVE MILES AWAY, in a hillside cottage, an old lady was wincing in pain. As Estelle wrung the bloody washcloth into the bedpan, she could feel another wave stab the ligaments in her already aching fingers and wrists. She took in a deep breath and counted to ten, uttering a quick prayer to Saint Jude for mercy. If any ailment deserved its own saint, she told herself, then arthritis was certainly top of the list. The pain was nothing new; the changing season always triggered its darkest head. But in the last two hours her fingers had swollen to twice their size, and that was surely a record. It had taken her a whole five minutes to run a clean cloth under hot water and apply it again to the girl's sores.
The mermaid lay perfectly still as Estelle laid the warm compress between her legs. She didn't even let out a cry as a disk of greenish pus seeped from a cut, darkening the white gauze.
Estelle cringed and averted her eyes. It was an infection all right. There was not as much blood as when she had first found her, lying facedown in the sand—an improvement, she supposed—but this infection could mean a turn for the worse. And then, there was the fever to contend with as well. Estelle sighed, returning the soggy washcloth to the pan. She placed it on the bedside table and made her way around the perimeter of the large bed, tucking in the duvet as she went along.
Although she let out a low and breathy moan a few times, the mermaid did not open her eyes. It was as though she was no longer living, yet not passed through that shimmering threshold, the afterlife.
Estelle was glad she had called Dr. Parshaw, even if she had only gotten the nurse at the hospital this late in the day. Once he got her message, he would be right over, she was sure of it. The good doctor would know just what to do about the mermaid's loss. She knew she could trust him.
Estelle had chosen to call the girl a mermaid mostly out of romantic sentiment. It was a fancy prompted not by scales or a fish tail but rather by the girl's extraordinary hands.
At first glance, the young woman's fingers looked normal enough, delicate and pale like the rest of her body. But a second look revealed that they were something marvelous to behold. Linking her four fingers and thumb, right above where the natural base of each digit dipped into the palm, was a sheath of skin as delicate as organza pastry and so pale that, when fanned open, it resembled the fin of an ocean temptress.
The rest of the girl's body was typical of her age, which Estelle guessed to be in her early twenties—so she knew her mermaid fantasy would be remedied once her patient woke from her fevered sleep. If she woke from her fevered sleep, Estelle corrected herself, pacing around and around the bedroom rug in a ring of growing panic. If God would grant just this.
THE RAIN HELD BACK until the flames had reached the burning man's head. Within minutes it had reduced the harvest icon to a pile of smoldering ash, purple plumes swirling toward the starry night's sky. Marjan helped Fiona collect the fold-up chairs as the town's two-man police guard, Sean Grogan and his deputy, Kevin Slattery stood by the dampened pyre, sequestering wayward sparks with all the protocol of a major stakeout. By the time Mar-jan and Fiona joined the rest of the revelers in Paddy McGuire's Pub, the place was packed for the rousing music seisiún.
“Will you have a pint, Marjan?” Fiona asked, as they pushed through the smoky, cheerful pub.
“Some cider, if there's any left. Thanks!” Marjan had to yell over the bustle of the front room. From the back parlor thunderous clapping followed the beat of a bodhran drum, that goaded cry of battle dawns. “I'm just going to make a phone call!” She pointed toward the back of the pub as Fiona sidled up to the long oak bar.
Weaving her way through the crowd, Marjan passed by a plank table tucked under a low alcove. Known to regulars as the Confessional, the spot was a favorite of amorous couples, chosen mainly for its darkened crannies and velvet-curtained nooks. She caught a glimpse of Malachy sitting with Peter and Michael Donnelly in one corner. Wedged in with the lads was Layla, her lips glued to a pint of stout, drinking greedily from its creamy top.
Wonderful, thought Marjan, as a trio of tweed-capped farmers blocked her view. That was all she needed: a hormonal teenager with curious taste buds. It was a good thing Bahar had gone home early; the sight of Layla sipping Guinness would not have gone over well with their more conservative sibling.
Marjan took another look around the busy pub. Quite a few families had gathered under its cozy rooftop tonight. Children of all ages were among the patrons; newborns and toddlers cradled in corners and benches while their parents drank and gossiped about the brilliant but all too brief Bonfire. There was even a carpeted area reserved for young ones to crawl, next to a corner table where a gang of school-age kiddies had set up a house of cards.
It was a time-honored tradition in Ireland, bringing the whole gang out to the local pub for some craic and grub. The bar was an extension of the family parlor, after all, a big living room where loneliness and the constant rain could be cast away for a few precious hours.
Still, Layla should know better than to take advantage of that singular strain of hospitality, thought Marjan, reminding herself to make a stop by the Confessional on her way back.
She slipped past the crowded back parlor and descended a flight of sloping wooden stairs. The Covies, with Conor Jennings on the tin whistle, had just launched into a s
pirited rendition of U2's “With or Without You,” a big hit of the summer charts. At the bottom was a narrow hallway that housed the ladies' loo. One of the many additions to the pub since Margaret McGuire had taken over its management, the restroom had initially caused quite a rumpus with Paddy's male contingent. Generations of drinkers had taken their bathroom breaks in the outhouse beside the beer garden, it was fervently argued, and any woman who thought herself equipped for the stout should be expected to likewise abide. Well aware that the criticisms were fueled by envy over the powder room's soft toilet paper and lavender-scented potpourri, Margaret ignored the comments and went ahead with her renovations.
Marjan slipped a ten-cent coin into the wall pay phone opposite the restroom door. She dialed from memory, easy since she called the number at least once a day.
Estelle finally answered on the fifth ring. “Si?” the Italian widow whispered.
“Estelle? It's Marjan. How are you?” Marjan cradled the receiver closer to her ear as the tin whistle revved through a series of dizzying triplets directly above her.
“Si?Eh, hello?”
“Estelle, can you hear me? Is everything okay?” Marjan raised her voice, not realizing she had also been whispering.
“Hello, Marjan. Uh, sorry I could not come tonight.”
“I was worried it had to do with your arthritis. Is it acting up again? Do you want me to come up and get you? You could stay with the three of us tonight.”
“No, darling, that is okay. I have your lentil soup from yesterday. That warmed me very nice. Oh, so good,” the widow said with a sigh.
“But is it warm enough up there for you? I can send Malachy up to chop some firewood.”
“No, no … you go now and have a good time. I can hear the music. I come to you next week again.”
Rosewater and Soda Bread Page 4
