lived.
The girl brought one hand up to the cool glass, each finger connecting with a teardrop of moisture on the other side. She traced the rain absently, then regarded him with calm eyes.
She is not afraid of me, he thought. I will make her speak.
“Will you not give me an answer?” He was startled by the catch of emotion in his own voice. He waited. In the silence he remembered again his mother’s game. It was played, he knew, by mothers and children all over the county.
“What way are you?” he asked.
A slight smile visited the girl’s face. She looked directly at the man who had been, until this afternoon, a blur to her.
The mother and the priest felt a veil fall between them and the couple.
Wind rattled the door. Brian placed one hand tentatively on Mary’s forearm and asked again, “What way are you?”
Waiting, he placed his forehead on his outstretched arm. His posture embarrassed the priest in its resemblance to impassioned prayer. Abruptly he knew that he had underestimated the extent of his friend’s loneliness.
“Please …” Brian said to the floor whose flags stared blankly back at him. “Please speak to me.”
The priest coughed, and the woman, remembering some distant moment of passion in her own life, turned her back on the scene. Then all three heard Mary’s voice. She had placed her hand on O’Malley’s hair.
“I am here but I am not here,” she said. “I will be your wife but I will not be your wife.”
“You are here,” said Brian. “You can feel the warmth of my hand through your sleeve. I can see the same raindrops as you can, running down the glass.”
She looked at the schoolmaster’s hair and felt the texture of it beneath her palm, sensed the solidity – the actuality – of the body that crouched at her side.
And then she fell weeping onto the schoolmaster’s shoulder. Unbuckling. Beginning to enter the world again.
D URING her pregnancy her longing for beaches diminished, her mind turned inland.
Sometimes this required an effort on her part but mostly the presence of the child in her body tied her to the earth, the cottage, the fire. She knitted small jackets and sewed small shirts, the shape of her thoughts changing with the shape of her torso. Responding to the gentle attentions of her husband, his kindnesses, she was pleased when he began to teach her to read and write. Soon she was able to mark out the English alphabet on a slate and to fashion her own name on the same black surface. The conversations of the men interested her, though she never participated, and this caused her to look forward to Father Quinn’s monthly visits in a way the girl on the island never could have. Quinn, himself, relaxed and relieved, believing he had cured the girl – brought her back with his holy water – and undistracted by the bulk of her present form, was at his most eloquent and didactic. Eventually Mary came to know the Supplement to the fifth, sixth, and seventh editions of the Encyclopaedia almost as well as the men.
Brian managed his two fields and taught the hedge school when the weather and the season permitted the children to attend. He was delighted by his bride; her quiet good nature, her domestic skills, her cleverness. His life was rich; they never once discussed the time that she had been away. Unlike Father Quinn, he believed it had been the strength of his own love that had caused the change in her – that and her removal fromthe island. Her mother, mad with joy at her daughter’s alleged return to the world, sent verbal messages with the passengers on the ferry and, sometimes, a garment for the anticipated child.
At first Mary had searched for the other one. Walking to the cliffs, she had climbed down to the shore by the steep descent known as Grey Man’s Path, mornings, before her husband had awakened. But the sea had shown her nothing but drumming surf and, it being autumn, its coldness had denied her entry. She returned, pale and private,
The girl brought one hand up to the cool glass, each finger connecting with a teardrop of moisture on the other side. She traced the rain absently, then regarded him with calm eyes.
She is not afraid of me, he thought. I will make her speak.
“Will you not give me an answer?” He was startled by the catch of emotion in his own voice. He waited. In the silence he remembered again his mother’s game. It was played, he knew, by mothers and children all over the county.
“What way are you?” he asked.
A slight smile visited the girl’s face. She looked directly at the man who had been, until this afternoon, a blur to her.
The mother and the priest felt a veil fall between them and the couple.
Wind rattled the door. Brian placed one hand tentatively on Mary’s forearm and asked again, “What way are you?”
Waiting, he placed his forehead on his outstretched arm. His posture embarrassed the priest in its resemblance to impassioned prayer. Abruptly he knew that he had underestimated the extent of his friend’s loneliness.
“Please …” Brian said to the floor whose flags stared blankly back at him. “Please speak to me.”
The priest coughed, and the woman, remembering some distant moment of passion in her own life, turned her back on the scene. Then all three heard Mary’s voice. She had placed her hand on O’Malley’s hair.
“I am here but I am not here,” she said. “I will be your wife but I will not be your wife.”
“You are here,” said Brian. “You can feel the warmth of my hand through your sleeve. I can see the same raindrops as you can, running down the glass.”
She looked at the schoolmaster’s hair and felt the texture of it beneath her palm, sensed the solidity – the actuality – of the body that crouched at her side.
And then she fell weeping onto the schoolmaster’s shoulder. Unbuckling. Beginning to enter the world again.
D URING her pregnancy her longing for beaches diminished, her mind turned inland.
Sometimes this required an effort on her part but mostly the presence of the child in her body tied her to the earth, the cottage, the fire. She knitted small jackets and sewed small shirts, the shape of her thoughts changing with the shape of her torso. Responding to the gentle attentions of her husband, his kindnesses, she was pleased when he began to teach her to read and write. Soon she was able to mark out the English alphabet on a slate and to fashion her own name on the same black surface. The conversations of the men interested her, though she never participated, and this caused her to look forward to Father Quinn’s monthly visits in a way the girl on the island never could have. Quinn, himself, relaxed and relieved, believing he had cured the girl – brought her back with his holy water – and undistracted by the bulk of her present form, was at his most eloquent and didactic. Eventually Mary came to know the Supplement to the fifth, sixth, and seventh editions of the Encyclopaedia almost as well as the men.
Brian managed his two fields and taught the hedge school when the weather and the season permitted the children to attend. He was delighted by his bride; her quiet good nature, her domestic skills, her cleverness. His life was rich; they never once discussed the time that she had been away. Unlike Father Quinn, he believed it had been the strength of his own love that had caused the change in her – that and her removal fromthe island. Her mother, mad with joy at her daughter’s alleged return to the world, sent verbal messages with the passengers on the ferry and, sometimes, a garment for the anticipated child.
At first Mary had searched for the other one. Walking to the cliffs, she had climbed down to the shore by the steep descent known as Grey Man’s Path, mornings, before her husband had awakened. But the sea had shown her nothing but drumming surf and, it being autumn, its coldness had denied her entry. She returned, pale and private,
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