In the Company of Others

by Jan Karon

  'Good to go. Keep an eye on her. Have her see her doctor as soon as you get home.'

  'Will do.'

  'I wanted you to know we'll get an AA meeting out to Evelyn each week.'

  'How will she take to that?'

  'She'll come around to it. She needs the company of others. We all do. Perhaps even Paddy will join us.'

  The knot in his throat. 'You're a good man, James.'

  'You'll come again, the two of you?'

  'We'd like that, yes.'

  He had an itch to speak to Paddy, to make contact, but Paddy wasn't about.

  He went to the kitchen and had a bawl with Seamus and a laugh with Tad. Then they went home to Broughadoon and he settled their tab with Liam and knocked back a whiskey with William, who'd been badly beaten at checkers by Emily.

  Their bags were down before six o'clock the next morning. Aengus arrived at six-ten. With a couple of exceptions, they were leaving with precisely what they'd brought. There had been no crazed shopping trips, no remorses, and a few euros left for their driver, who collected his hat straight off and confessed to coming in third in the dance competition.

  After making a last check of their room, they stood looking out the window to the lough.

  'Sorry you missed your rainbow,' he said.

  'I got to see another type of covenant. Much better.'

  'I hope you're not so jaded by surprise that you can't handle one more.'

  'Never too jaded by surprise, darling.'

  'We're not going home,' he said.

  She gave him a fierce look. She was ready to go home; he had stepped in it with his bloody surprises.

  'Three nights in Dublin's finest hotel,' he said, pedaling. 'In the center of the best pubs in Ireland. A room right next to the elevator. A nice car anytime we want it.' No way could he cancel another reservation. 'The high life, Kav'na, the high life.'

  'And shops, I suppose.'

  'Shops, shops, and more shops, Anna says. We must take something home to Puny and the twins, after all.'

  She smiled. The sun came out in the room. 'And Sammy and Kenny and Pooh and Jessie,' she said.

  'Absolutely. And we mustn't forget Louella.'

  'We can't forget Louella. And Lace and Dooley, of course.'

  'Of course. And Marge, who's half Irish, and Hal.'

  He was flying.

  The luggage was going into the boot when they heard the crunch of gravel. Paddy had walked down with Seamus and the Labs to see them off. Liam and Anna came out, and there was Bella, looking dazed with sleep, and soft, somehow, and Pud--good Lord, Pud with his old loafer, he took out his handkerchief--and William, who wasn't fond of rising before ten, here he was dressed to the nines, and Lorna and Emily in their aprons and clogs, and then Maureen, the Sunshine of Broughadoon. He kissed her on both wet cheeks and she asked if he'd got his handkerchiefs and he said he had.

  He shook hands with Paddy, but no words were exchanged. There was another sort of connection, brief but somehow fluent.

  They had gathered like an inn staff seen in a travel brochure, yet something more--very much more--he, saying Dhia dhuit because it was all he could think to say, and they saying Dhia is Muire dhuit, and Come again please God, and Aengus passing out a new business card citing himself as president of Malone Transport.

  Then they climbed into the car and Aengus closed the doors and turned the key in the ignition, and they were waving through the rear window as the Volvo coughed its way into the lane.

  There was the long bed of the lough, still sleeping in its rising mist, and the low mountains beyond seeming close enough to touch. He handed his wife the other handkerchief, and though they were watering Ireland to beat the band, he realized he was happy in some oddly excruciating way.

  Thanking:

  Joe McGowan; Tommy Gillen; Trina Vargo; Stella Mew; Cassie Swift Farrelly; Diane L. Wright; Reverend Anita Kerr; Peadar Niall Little; the Very Reverend James Ronayne, PP; John McGuinness; Andrew Higgins Wynd-ham; Sara Lee Barnes; Edith Currin and her lovely neighbor, Kathleen Farrelly; the managing staff of Newport House, Newport, County Mayo; Simon O'Hara of Coopershill, Riverstown, County Sligo; Paddy and Julia Foyle, Quay House, Clifden, County Galway (ask for the Napoleon Room); Cromleach Lodge and Country House Hotel, Castlebaldwin, County Sligo; Fiach O'Toole of the Garda Technical Bureau, Sligo Town; Gard Faillon; Gard Riley; the Reverend Father Dennis McAuliffe; Aoife Kavanagh, Irish Georgian Society; Mike Thacker for help in many particulars; John Diven; Karin Wittenborg, University Librarian, UVA; Paula Newcomb, friend and bridge guru; Hunter Smith; Roger Birle; Andrew O'Shaughnessy; Chief Timothy Longo, Charlottesville City Police; Jerry and Rosalind Richardson; our U.S. ambassador to Ireland, Dan Rooney; the American Connemara Pony Society; Jessica Waldman, Questroyal Fine Art; John E. Bishop; Polly Andrews; Roualeyn Cumming-Bruce; Don and Janemarie King; Bruce and Jim Murray; Peter Sweeney; the Reverend Monsignor Chester Michael; Albert and Donna Ernest; Ashley and Steve Allen; Phyllis and Frank Joseph; the Reverend Monsignor Francis Gaeta; Barry Dean Setzer; Brenda Furman; Candace Freeland; Virginia St. Claire; R. David Craig; Randy Setzer.

  Dr. Thomas R. Spitzer, Director, Bone Marrow Transplant Program, Massachusetts General Hospital; David Krese, DDS; David M. Heilbronner, MD; Joann M. Bodurtha MD, MPH; Barbara Post, MD.

  Tim Short, MD; Polly Beckwith Hawkes, FNP; the Very Reverend Arfon Williams, Dean of the Cathedral Church of St. Mary the Virgin & St. John the Baptist, Sligo.

  Special thanks to my editor and valued friend, Carolyn Carlson, who walked with me on the pilgrimage of this work.

  Remembering:

  Matthew and Charity Wilson, my paternal ancestors, who in 1745 emigrated from County Tyrone to Philadelphia, later settling North Carolina's Catawba Valley

  Bessie Bocock Carter (1929-2008), an unforgettable model of wit and gentility, whose maternal line issued from Ballyshannon, County Donegal

  Jerry Burns (1941-2010), friend and former editor of The Blowing Rocket, who published At Home in Mitford serially before its publication in book form

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Thirty-five

  Thirty-six

  Thirty-seven

  Thirty-eight

  Thirty-nine

  Forty

  Forty-one

  Forty-two

  Forty-three

  Thanking:

  Remembering: