Jan Karon - In the Company of Others

‘I hadn’t a car and couldn’t get about for work-I heard that Catharmore was looking for someone to cook and clean. Da said, don’t speak th’ name William Donavan in that house, and I didn’t, and I was taken on. Lough Arrow was the terrible opposite of Dublin, I suppose-Bella hated it here, there were no children about, and she was very lonely. Until she entered school, my da watched out for her during the day. I was working up th’ hill from early morning ’til late afternoon, and at Broughadoon at night. ’t was my dream to turn th’ wreck of it into a fishing lodge to make us a living, so I didn’t give Bella the attention she craved. She was but six when she took up the fiddle; ’t was her boon companion and she was brilliant at it, it came as natural as the waxing of the moon.

‘She left to live with her father when she was twelve. I couldn’t stop her, Reverend, it’s what she wanted, she was fierce to do it. She and Niall have the bond of music, which is her life-but I never forgave myself for letting her go.’

‘God gave me a boy to raise,’ he said. ‘We’ll talk about it later, I hope, but I tell you now that it’s not too late-no matter how deep the wound.’

She wiped her eyes with the bandanna. ‘I’ve lived for years thinking it’s too late. Too late for Bella and me, too late for Liam and his mother, too late for… too late.’

‘Never,’ he said. ‘Please know that. When did you leave Catharmore?’

‘I continued working up the hill after Paddy and Seamus came. She wanted me to stay because I did very personal things for her-washed out her undies, altered her clothes to keep them in fashion, moved her jewelry around to various hiding places in the house-sometimes but a step ahead of Paddy, who was after selling it.’ She lowered her eyes. ‘I don’t know whether I should tell you everything, Reverend. I want to tell you, but it is so frightening to tell everything.’

‘I understand.’

‘Each morning at first light, I pray the Lord’s Prayer, and often the decade of Sorrowful Mysteries-but Liam and I stopped going to Mass long ago. He gave up so much that reminded him of his father, and when I moved here, I told myself it was the work that was on me seven days a week. Liam says we’re more than lapsed, Reverend, we’re fallen altogether. As a girl, I wished so terribly to satisfy God…’

‘A good Scot named George MacDonald said God is impossible to satisfy but easy to please.’

‘I think I’ve forgotten how to do pleasing things-except for our guests.’ She looked away from him. ‘All these years, there’s been no one to… to…’

‘Hear your confession?’

‘Yes. Confession was always important to me, I was schooled in a convent and took it seriously as a girl.’

‘Confession brings pardon and peace,’ he said. ‘We all need it. St. John says, If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.’

‘It’s all right then, to speak…’-she seemed dubious-‘my heart?’

‘God asks us to do it. But you know I can’t grant you absolution.’

‘I know. But you’ll hear me?’

‘I will.’

‘Liam’s mother was always after the gin, and sometimes she would be… out of her head with me. She never cared for me, though I worked very hard for her. By the time she learned who I was, she had come to depend on me, but despised me even more for what she called my wicked deception in not telling her I was William Donavan’s daughter.

‘Liam used to come home at the weekends, and I fell in love with him altogether-I couldn’t imagine how he turned out to be such a lovely man with such a deep spirit-he’s like his father, they say. She was always angry with Liam for his admiration and love for his father-she wanted her boys to love only her. And yet, she couldn’t feel love, Reverend, she couldn’t feel anything at all.

‘She hated me for loving him-Paddy says she could never get on with women who love her sons-but I wouldn’t let her hurt me, I shut myself from her so coldly that I hardly had any feelings left. I turned my own heart to stone.’

She rose from the table and walked to a window, her hands plunged into the pockets of her loose dress. ‘Sure, she had a terrible blow when she was young, a tragic accident in her family, but that’s no excuse, Reverend, for inflicting her outrage on others, it doesn’t give one license…’ She turned to him. ‘Not at all.

‘I held myself away from Liam for more than a year; it was a torment to us both. I held myself away because…

‘My da met Evelyn McGuiness in Collooney, when he was just a lad trying to earn his way as a boxing champion. It was a brutal sport, and he was very brave and hardworking and determined to make something of himself, a boy with hardly a shoe to his foot. At the time he met her, he was just beginning to get a leg up, as he says, and was soon traveling all over Ireland, then England, and up to Scotland. When they fell in love he promised her he would come home again and marry her. And he did come home again, but ’t was seven long years that had passed, and she had seen two sisters and her mother die a horrible death and no one to turn to in her grief. She had married Mr. Conor-Mr. Riley, we all call him-and they had a son, Paddy. She had been nursemaid at Catharmore to Mr. Riley’s first wife who died of cancer.

‘She was very bitter towards Da for not coming for her as he promised, and he was bitter towards her for not waiting, though heaven knows he had handled matters in a gormless way. So off again he went to Dublin, and then, some while before he married my mother, he came back and… there was something between them. Da would never say what, he refuses to talk about it, but Paddy thinks…’

She wrung the bandanna in her hands. ‘Nine months later, Liam was born.

‘And so I held myself from Liam. ’t was agony to find myself in love with my halfbrother-’t is against the church and against the law, a misbegotten thing. And yet I loved him so, I thought I couldn’t bear the pain.

‘To his mother, I was but a lowly servant girl, just as she’d been when she worked for Mr. Riley’s first wife. For Liam to love me was a deep sting to her, and because she couldn’t hurt me with her tormenting, she tried to hurt Liam, instead. One night when she was very drunk, she told me something that was-in its way-as…’

Her face colored with an old fury. ‘She told me Mr. Riley wasn’t Liam’s father.’

‘She confessed to you, then.’

‘But ’t was another heavy blade entirely. She said Liam’s real father was Mr. Riley’s business partner… someone who came here for fishing parties.’ She caught her breath sharply. ‘He’s in the pictures in our library, God help us.’

She came and sat at the table. ‘I don’t know if it’s true, there’s no way to know. She often said crazy, mindless things.’

‘Why do you think she told you this?’

‘I think she believed I would tell Liam in one of the dreadful fights he and I had in those days. But of course I would never tell him such a terrible thing.’ Her voice shook with the trembling in her. ‘The truth is of no importance in the end, Reverend, because Mr. Riley loved Liam very much. I’m sure he never knew he wasn’t Liam’s father.’

‘How did you feel about what she said?’

‘I felt suddenly free… that maybe it was all right for us to love, maybe it was God’s way of giving us permission.’ She drew in her breath. ‘I decided to take the risk.

‘I left Catharmore and Liam came with me, and we were wed in the library with the roof nearly gone above us. He began helping me resurrect Broughadoon. He worked so hard and is gifted in so many ways; ’t is all because of him that we have such a lovely place.’