In the Company of Others

by Jan Karon

  'She hasn't mentioned it.' Unloading drawers, schlepping their jumble--an aggravation he wasn't up to.

  'We don't have an extra room available, but one of the anglers may be willing to make an exchange. I could ask Pete, his room would give you a larger bath and a lovely writing table.'

  'Same view?'

  'Ah, no. Blocked by the beeches, I'm afraid. I've given you our prettiest room, really, with hardly a twig to obscure the scenery.'

  'Thanks,' he said. 'Unless you hear otherwise, we'll stick where we are.'

  'Two of the travel club will be bunking together tomorrow to free up the room for your cousins. That was understood when the ladies booked.'

  'Musical chairs,' he said.

  'Always.' Anna ran her fingers through a reckless mass of red curls. 'Forgive my appearance, Reverend, I've somehow not put the comb to my head this morning. It's as much to keep as the garden.'

  She was a beautiful, big-boned woman, intense and present to the moment, with eyes that appeared to take in a horde of details and sort them at lightning speed. Their eyes met as he lifted the cup and polished off his coffee--she looked worn, conflicted, and for a brief moment made no effort to conceal it. He felt there was something she wanted to say to him--four decades of counseling had honed a certain skill at sensing trial behind the forced smile, the hard jaw, the stiff upper lip.

  'I hope you won't regret not getting about 'til the cousins arrive. There are so many grand places to see--Ben Bulben, of course, and the lovely Knocknarea walk to Queen Maeve's grave, and Lissadell House and Inishmurray Island, and, oh, the Tubbercurry Fair coming ...'

  She went on, dutiful in limning the list. Even if they could get about, he lacked the grit to look at anything grand or affecting just now--the view of the lake was enough. He'd never been much of a tourist, and anyway, he'd seen a lot of Sligo on the previous trip. A day in the library would be a banquet of sorts, with a jog by the lake in the afternoon. He had no idea what to do about Walter and Katherine showing up full of vim and vigor, unscathed, as usual, by jet or any other lag. Bottom line, James Feeney was in possession of their immediate future. If Cynthia couldn't ramble over hill and dale, neither would he.

  He was leaving the dining room when Anna dropped a fork, which hit the wood floor, bounced, and skidded under a dish cupboard. He set the tray down.

  'I'll get it,' he said, dropping at once to his hands and knees.

  'No, no, please,' she said. 'Let me, please.'

  'I can see it, it's right back . . .' He tried to reach the thing, but it eluded him. 'A broom,' he said. Peggy had taught him the efficacy of the broom handle--useful for everything from removing spiderwebs in ceiling corners to adjusting a high-hanging picture on the wall. Anna supplied a broom.

  He retrieved the fork, embarrassed that he couldn't shoot to his feet like a young curate. Halfway up, he took the hand she offered.

  'There,' she said, smiling.

  'There,' he said, handing over the fork.

  They burst into laughter, the nonsensical kind that felt good and didn't strain anything in the process.

  He was passing through the library with the breakfast tray, noting that the fire had been poked up.

  'Yoo hoo, darling, over here. Scooted down the stairs on me bum, then found an umbrella in the stair hall and used it as a cane.'

  There she sat in a chair by the open window, looking up-for-anything. He was foolishly happy. 'You heedless woman.'

  He set the tray on the lamp table and rounded up one of the several footstools and placed the tray on it and shook out her napkin and draped it across her lap.

  'Wait,' he said, ''til your doctor hears about this.'

  'I've just heard about it from Maureen.' James Feeney strode in from the hall with a pair of crutches and propped them against the wall. 'Good morning to all. We have here a very clever woman. Stays off her foot, as the doctor ordered, and still gets about like a field hare. Did you rest?' Feeney asked his patient.

  'Well enough, thanks--the little pills are a godsend.'

  'Sorry to interrupt your breakfast, I'll have a quick look if you don't mind.' Feeney squatted by the chair. 'Have you ever used crutches?'

  'Yes, just recently. And before that, when I was ten years old. I painted one red and one yellow, and added green ribbons.'

  'A harbinger of things to come. I'm told you're a famous children's book illustrator.' He examined her ankle. 'Swollen, inflamed, stiff. All to be expected.' He gave the ankle a slight turn. 'How does that feel?'

  'Not bad.'

  'This?'

  She flinched. 'Ugh.'

  'When you were ten--was it your ankle that put you on crutches?'

  'Yes. The same one. Sprained badly.'

  'And your recent fracture. How did that happen?'

  'Missed a porch step,' she said.

  'I broke my ankle entirely when I was nine. I was learning to fly with my older brother, Jack.'

  'Did you learn?'

  'Ah, no, but Jack did. Royal Air Force. We lost him in France.'

  'I'm sorry.'

  Feeney cleared his throat. 'Yes, well, I recommend you stay off it for at least ten days. You have history with this ankle and must treat it with due regard. Ten days should do the trick, but absolutely no hobbling about or you'll put it in a worse muddle than we have here.

  'As for the other piece of business, I can't recommend you go on the car trip. Sorry. 't would be begging trouble, in my opinion.' Feeney stood more slowly than he'd squatted. 'Practice with the crutches before going full steam, if you will, I'm no good at mending bones. Reverend, if you'd give a thought to our bridge party tomorrow, I'd be delighted. You'll make me a hero in the eyes of our hostess, not to mention the village priest.'

  He looked at Cynthia--she would bail him out; she knew how he felt about bridge.

  'Oh, do go,' she said. 'I'll be so happy staying here with the journal. I'm headed into the mysterious spread of an unidentified bacteria.'

  'You'll regret it,' he said to Feeney. 'I'm no thumping good at it. Believe me.'

  Feeney laughed. 'Our hostess relishes a good slaughter now and then. I should know--I've been the poor pig more than once. Well, then, many thanks, Reverend. See you up there at one o'clock tomorrow.' Feeney gave his hand a first-rate pump and turned to his patient. 'And no more depending on the odd umbrella.'

  The doctor was gone as quickly as he'd come.

  'Dadgum it, Kavanagh. See what you've done with your meddling?'

  'You don't want to go?'

  'Do I enjoy playing bridge?'

  'Well, no. But think how interesting it will be to see the house, you can tell me everything. And of course, look how nice he's being to us. You made him quite happy, I think.'

  'Seems to me he was happy enough to begin with.'

  She asked a blessing she'd learned in childhood, tucked into her eggs, ignored his huff.

  'You won't miss all the roaming about we've looked forward to for nine years?'

  'Eight,' she said. 'It's actually the best of birthday presents, just staying here. No contracts to fulfill, no dear James on the phone gouging a calendar or gift book out of me. And my retired husband off on a wonderful adventure.'

  'That remains to be seen.'

  'I regret it, of course, for Walter and Katherine's sake--all their best-laid plans upset.' She looked at him, appealing. 'I regret it for you, too. Are you terribly disappointed?'

  'Not in the least. Not even a little.' He saw the pain in her face, the stress of last night. His wife was a better man than himself. 'I'll ring them in a few hours; it's the middle of the night in New Jersey. There'll be rooms to cancel, that sort of thing.' Katherine had arranged all details of the car trip.

  'When this ankle business is over, we can visit the family castle and all the other places we've talked about--even Yeats's grave.' With a look of mock severity, she recited Yeats's self-written epitaph. 'Cast a cold eye on life, on death / Horseman, pass by.'

  'Whatever th
at means,' he said.

  Liam hurried in. 'The ESB just arrived. We'll have power before lunch, please God. And I've a grand idea, see what you think.'

  'Say on.'

  'We've an old estate wagon, a Vauxhall. William bought it before we converted to kilometers, makes th' Rover look brand-new. You could practice drivin' up and down th' lane for a warm-up, then venture out to the highway--and if you scrape a fender, there's nothing lost. 't will be a piece of cake. Give it a thought, I'm at the power box if needed.'

  'What a terrific idea,' exclaimed his wife. 'You should do it, darling.'

  Why was everyone after him to be doing? The notion that he might loll about was appalling, he supposed, and this after forty-plus years of running himself ragged. Apparently one must sustain an injury in order to loll unmolested by the well-meaning.

  'Are you out of your mind?' he asked when Liam left the room.

  'Not yet, but I know you. You only think you want to spend a day in the library. You need to get out and about, Timothy, stir your bones. That's what makes you tick.'

  God help him--now he had no mind of his own.

  'All those years wearing out shoe leather on the streets of Mitford--it made you so happy to walk the beat, see your flock, mingle.'

  On the other hand, the fellows in the pub had certainly enjoyed a good laugh over his fear of driving on the wrong side. 't isn't th' wrong side, they howled, har, har.

  'We'll see,' he said. 'And what about you for today?'

  'I'm sticking in this chair, where I can watch all the coming and going.'

  'In the thick of things.'

  'Correct.'

  'So much for Thomas a Kempis.'

  'If you'd please go up and get the journal and my sketchbook and watercolors, and the Patrick Kavanagh poems and the book on the hunger years . . . just bring the whole darned thing, I'll be living out of it for a while.'

  In the room, he looked for the cell phone and charger, pawing through the drawers, his suitcase, her suitcase, his jacket pockets, his shaving kit, aggravated by the amount of plunder they'd dragged over. He'd never be the one sailing through air terminals with a suitcase the size of a Whitman's Sampler.

  Had he even brought the blasted phone? He hardly used it, except for the occasional call home while doing errands in Wesley, but Katherine had insisted he must have it, along with the phone company's international package.

  He was not amused to find the charger cord stuffed into a sock.

  'There you are, Rev'rend!'

  He looked up.

  'Maureen! And there you are!' The open narrative of her face drew him in at once.

  'We're glad to have you an' Mrs. Kav'na.' She set the laundry basket by the door and came to him with a bobbing gait and shook his hand. He liked the feel of her callused palm in his.

  'Maureen McKenna, Rev'rend.'

  'A pleasure to meet you.'

  She put her hand over her mouth like a child, dubious. 'Mrs. Kav'na says I'm to call her Cynthia?'

  'Absolutely, she likes that.'

  'M' husband's youngest brother married a Kav'na from Wexford, and my great-grandfather's second wife was a Kav'na.'

  'Small world.'

  She beamed. 'Did you like my drawin', Rev'rend?'

  'Very, very much.'

  'Maureen, she says, I'm drawin' your inner beauty, an' I says, all th' beauty I've got is th' inner. Then she puts th' oul' hump in m' nose, an' I say, can you erase that off, mebbe? Ah, no, she says, 't is a lovely hump. 't was th' same as lookin' in th' mirror, that drawin'. She made me a gift of it this mornin', 't will go in a nice frame over th' telly.'

  Mere wisps of pale red hair remained on her head, like the Velveteen Rabbit in its age.

  'Did we meet when I was here ten years ago?'

  'Ah, no, 't was th' death of me poor husband, Tarry, that kept us away then.'

  'I'm sorry.'

  ''t is a lonely washin' that hasn't a man's shirt in it.'

  'I'm sure.'

  'But I've never missed a day since. I was with Anna from the first, when she started out alone to fix the oul' place. 't was a ruin, Rev'rend. She was slavin' for Mrs. Conor up Catharmore by day, and us workin' down here in th' evenin' like menfolk.

  'Then Herself gave Anna th' boot an' Liam, God bless 'im, came with her. They were married in th' library with all th' rubble an' plaster lyin' about an' their guests lookin' through th' roof at th' blue sky. I said, 't was open to God an' all 'is angels for pourin' down blessin's on us. Aye, an' they've poured down through bad times an' good, with Anna's gift for pinchin' th' penny.'

  Tears pooled in her eyes. 'Troth, she's a queen, Anna Conor. An' look at me jabberin' when I'm after collectin' your laundry.'

  She held out the basket as one might present the wafer, there was grace in the gesture.

  'Cynthia says send th' shirt you wore on th' plane and your personals; she wants her wee bit in the top drawer, she says.'

  'The fishermen got away early, I take it?'

  'Oh, they did. An' th' ladies an' their ghillies will be out all day to the Lung Valley, so 't was a big fry this mornin'. Everybody was speakin' of th' terrible thing that happened to your lovely wife--please God, it shouldn't ruin her holiday.'

  He deposited Cynthia's offering in the basket and rummaged on the floor of the armoire for his own bit.

  'Mr. O'Malley was searchin' everywhere this mornin' for 'is orange pullover with a hood, but surely nobody would steal such as that, he says. I thought mebbe he sent it down with 'is laundry an' Bella folded it with th' family wash, but 't was no pullover to be found. Mr. O'Malley calls it 'is lucky fishin' shirt, so we're all on th' hunt for 't.'

  'And I've been tearing up jack looking for my cell phone.'

  He delivered the Mobile Library and Snack Hamper to the patient, found Liam, took him up on his offer, listened to a tutorial on the idiosyncrasies of the vehicle, collected the keys, had serious second thoughts.

  Then again, why not? It was a beautiful morning, cool as mid-May in Carolina, and what did he have to lose? He and Walter had talked about Katherine needing a backup driver, just in case. One thing was clear--he did not want Walter to be the backup driver. When Walter looked away from the road, as was his wont, the car veered in the direction of his gaze.

  William sat by the fire studying The Sligo Champion, Cynthia was absorbed in the journal. A true library, he thought.

  'You're looking fit this morning, William.'

  'Same as y'rself, Rev'rend. I hear you'll be takin' a turn in m' oul' clunker--she was a beauty in her day.'

  'I've decided to step up to the plate and drive like an Irishman.' He jangled the keys.

  'Ye are an Irishman,' said William.

  He kept forgetting that.

  ''t is a grand, soft day for runnin' about. Might I go with ye, then?'

  'Why, yes. Of course.'

  ''t isn't th' automatic Yanks are after drivin', she's a stick.'

  'I drive a stick at home.'

  William collected his cane, buttoned his cardigan. 'Your missus says she's comin' along with th' ankle.'

  'She is. Dr. Feeney had a look this morning. She just needs to stay off the foot.'

  'We're ruined entirely by such as that--jumpin' out of cupboards at defenseless women an' all. Anna, she'll make it up to ye some way.'

  'No need. I'll just say goodbye to my wife and we'll be off.'

  He wasn't so sure about this.

  'Okay, Kav'na. I'm out of here to practice driving on the wrong side. Do you need to practice with your crutches before I go? You can't sit there forever without moving around.'

  Through the open window, the distant sound of a bleating sheep. She looked up in the dreamy way she had when her mind was elsewhere. 'It'll be three times in a half century I've raced around on the wicked things; I'll be fine, just set them closer.'

  He set them closer, leaned down, and kissed her. 'Stay off that historic ankle.'

  Anna came in from the entrance hall with a tr
ug of purple iris. 'Da,' she said, anxious, 'are you off somewhere?'

  'I'm goin' with th' rev'rend to help with 'is drivin'.'

  'I need all the help I can get,' he told Anna.

  'Are you sure, Reverend?'

  'If somebody around here would just call me Tim,' he said, mocking the wistful.

  'I've never--'

  'I know--you've never called a clergyman by his first name.'

  'Yes. I mean, no. Never.'

  'Try it,' he said.

  ''tis th' Protestants don't mind th' first name,' declared William.

  She took a deep breath, smiled her engaging smile. 'Tim.'

  'See there?'

  'Put on your ones an' twos an' come with us,' said William.

  'No, Da, I've got my work to do. Go and enjoy yourself.'

  She pressed his hand, he smelled the faint scent of iris. 'Have a good time, then, and come back safe, please God.'

  They crunched over the gravel to a faded green vehicle unlike anything he'd ever seen, and clambered in. William sat with his cane between his knees, expectant.

  He fumbled with the ignition, stepped on the brake, pushed in the clutch, fired the engine.

  A cacophony of shrieks and moans, and they were off.

  He glanced in disbelief at William, who was laughing, and tried to wrench the stick out of first gear into second, but could not; it might have been set in concrete.

  'You got t' torment th' bugger!' William shouted over the roar and babble.

  'Pull back on 't, 't will squawk like ye're strip-pin' it. Are ye heavy on th' clutch? Bear down!'

  He bore down and wrestled the stick into second. Perspiration blew from all pores. Then, the gear grooved into its sweet spot and they were out of the car park and into the narrow lane.

  Green fields furled away on either side of the track, the broad lake gleamed on their right. He got a deep breath, looked at William, laughed.

  'Runnin' like a top!' shouted his passenger.

  The intense green of Ireland had become a cliche, he supposed, with all credit going to the goodness of rain. But it was composed of more, he reckoned, than a plenitude of moisture-- something supernal was ever rising from the core of this ancient land carved by glaciers.

  A goulash of gear rattled on the backseat--hubcaps, spare tires, a jumble of waders and Wellingtons, a jar of nails, a couple of salmon nets.