to a room full of silent questions where Brian had prepared the breakfast and the tea. She felt as though she had been betrayed by something she could no longer imagine. In her dreams, sometimes, she dived into green and her fists clutched dark, wet curls. But once she was pregnant even these dreams visited her less and less. Before leaving the island she had placed the little circle of black and red-gold hair inside the case for a pocket-watch from which the timepiece had been removed, and now this lay, undisturbed beneath her undergarments in the upper right-hand drawer of a chest. Sometimes, when she was arranging laundry, or searching for a garment, the cold surface of metal touched her hand and she remembered, but she closed the drawer again and turned her back to the wall of her house that was nearest the ocean.
In the evenings Brian continued to teach her as though she were one of the children at the school.
She knew English, it being encouraged on the island by the priest who believed it was necessary for any kind of advancement. He had even, in his leisure time, taught a handful of the boys to read and write in this language; it had never occurred to him that a girl might need this skill. During the time, however,that Mary had been known for the curse or the gift of eloquence, it had sometimes been English words that sprang to her lips – often thoroughly confusing the adults who happened to hear her. But most of the time her speeches were composed of a combination of this relatively unknown language and Irish Gaelic, leading to the supposition, on the island, that her announcements were aimed at no one in particular and need not be paid attention to at all.
Now it was the shape of the English words that caught her fancy, their silence on the slate after the deliberate noise of putting them there. She said to her husband that they were like a collection of sticks and stones tossed up on a beach. He told her then of the game one plays with an unbroken paring of an apple, tossing it over the shoulder, and the shape it makes on the floor forming the first letter of the name of the one you will marry. But they did not attempt this, knowing B’s and M’s to be an unlikely outcome of such a venture.
Finally Mary was able to read aloud and copy lessons from a Schoolbook filled with simple rhymes intended for children. There was something in the clean music that brought to her traces of songs and poems she herself had made during her last months on the island – songs she had remembered and forgotten at the same time. They made her pause in her reading sometimes, and look towards the window and the sea.
But the repetition of the lessons, in time, robbed them of their strange significance. Soon she was able to recite:
I saw a ship a-sailing,
A-sailing on the sea.
And Oh, it was all laden
With gifts for you and me.
There were comfits in the cabin
And apples in the hold.
The sails were made of silver,
The masts were made of gold.
without recalling a foreign shore spilling from a pale hand. And finally she was able to write the word “away” on her slate without looking up and around to determine whether its awful power had caused the calm solidity of the evening to disintegrate and waves to wash over the cabin.
By the time the baby, Liam, was six months old, she had learned so many words that she carried on her studies on her own. The book she liked best was
Easy Lessons in General Geography
. On its maps she was able to see the island of Ireland shrink in comparison to the other, larger land masses, and her own island, Rathlin, disappear altogether from some representations of the world. She examined, with astonishment, engravings of deserts, jungles, and mountain ranges, exotic beasts that jumped or thundered through life in vast inland territories, birds too huge to fly, mice too huge to scamper, and strange human figures dressed as birds or beasts themselves. She learned that there were thousands of different
In the evenings Brian continued to teach her as though she were one of the children at the school.
She knew English, it being encouraged on the island by the priest who believed it was necessary for any kind of advancement. He had even, in his leisure time, taught a handful of the boys to read and write in this language; it had never occurred to him that a girl might need this skill. During the time, however,that Mary had been known for the curse or the gift of eloquence, it had sometimes been English words that sprang to her lips – often thoroughly confusing the adults who happened to hear her. But most of the time her speeches were composed of a combination of this relatively unknown language and Irish Gaelic, leading to the supposition, on the island, that her announcements were aimed at no one in particular and need not be paid attention to at all.
Now it was the shape of the English words that caught her fancy, their silence on the slate after the deliberate noise of putting them there. She said to her husband that they were like a collection of sticks and stones tossed up on a beach. He told her then of the game one plays with an unbroken paring of an apple, tossing it over the shoulder, and the shape it makes on the floor forming the first letter of the name of the one you will marry. But they did not attempt this, knowing B’s and M’s to be an unlikely outcome of such a venture.
Finally Mary was able to read aloud and copy lessons from a Schoolbook filled with simple rhymes intended for children. There was something in the clean music that brought to her traces of songs and poems she herself had made during her last months on the island – songs she had remembered and forgotten at the same time. They made her pause in her reading sometimes, and look towards the window and the sea.
But the repetition of the lessons, in time, robbed them of their strange significance. Soon she was able to recite:
I saw a ship a-sailing,
A-sailing on the sea.
And Oh, it was all laden
With gifts for you and me.
There were comfits in the cabin
And apples in the hold.
The sails were made of silver,
The masts were made of gold.
without recalling a foreign shore spilling from a pale hand. And finally she was able to write the word “away” on her slate without looking up and around to determine whether its awful power had caused the calm solidity of the evening to disintegrate and waves to wash over the cabin.
By the time the baby, Liam, was six months old, she had learned so many words that she carried on her studies on her own. The book she liked best was
Easy Lessons in General Geography
. On its maps she was able to see the island of Ireland shrink in comparison to the other, larger land masses, and her own island, Rathlin, disappear altogether from some representations of the world. She examined, with astonishment, engravings of deserts, jungles, and mountain ranges, exotic beasts that jumped or thundered through life in vast inland territories, birds too huge to fly, mice too huge to scamper, and strange human figures dressed as birds or beasts themselves. She learned that there were thousands of different
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