Jan Karon - In the Company of Others

‘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 that 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 à 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.