Jan Karon - In the Company of Others

‘Evelyn and her mother took in washing, did piecework, kept a few hens for egg money; the two sisters were in service to an Englishwoman. It was a hard life in a cabin with a mud floor and no window. Yet it’s the sort of thing the tourists come looking for even today-the famine cabins, the oul’ thatched cottage-a torment to live in the bloody things. Evelyn’s mother was desperate for a better life for herself and her girls and seemed to think William was becoming a rich man out there in the boxing world. She and Evelyn’s uncle put the pressure on Evelyn to find William and somehow force him to marry her.’

‘She was expecting a child?’

‘Still th’ virgin, she says. I tell you all this in confidence, of course.’

‘Of course.’

‘None of this is talked about in the family-Paddy and Liam refer to the issues of her past simply as Mother’s Remorse.

‘And so she has this fierce pressure on her. But how does a young woman in the west country of the 1930s make contact with a roving prizefighter who himself didn’t know where he’d next lay his head?

‘But they kept at her like midges, and one evening they had a regular brawl about it. Evelyn had banked up the fire for the night and pulled their four chairs to the hearth with a wash laid over them to dry. Her mother- Maeve it was-called her names I won’t repeat, and the sisters, who were on their night off from service, sided with their mother. Evelyn did her own bit of verbal damage-it was an unholy thing, she said, there was some physical violence among the three sisters-she trembled like a leaf when she told me this years ago. And so she stormed out of the cabin and went down to the farm pond, thinking she might drown herself like the kittens her mother forced her to dispose of when she was a child. It was a cold night, she said, and she was out in hardly a stitch and no shoe to her foot.’

The distant tapping of Liam’s hammer.

‘I wonder whether to say it, for it makes no difference to the tragedy of that night, but she was kept warm by a neighbor lad-her first time in the arms of anyone other than William. When it was over, the guilt was on her, as you can imagine-a crucifying thing to a Catholic girl trying to better herself in the eyes of God and man, and, also to the point, trying to keep herself unspoilt for the one she hoped to marry.’

Feeney got up and walked to the door, stood looking into the black night. The air was cool, seasoned with the wild scent of summer rain.

‘She felt her life changed forever, ruined in some way beyond what had happened at the pond. She said she forgave her mother and sisters, even Thomas for letting himself be killed, as she put it. She wanted nothing more than their forgiveness, even for her proud ways. She was reminded of how her mother tenderized tough meat by pounding it to shreds with the edge of a dinner plate. She felt her heart ravaged in such a manner, she said, and softened with the need to begin again if Providence would allow it.

‘It was the early hours of the morning when she went up to that airless cabin and opened the door. The fire literally exploded. It was of course oxygen flooding into the buildup of unignited gases. ’t was an inferno.’

He felt the terrible weight of his living bones. The sound of rain dripped into their silence.

‘Her uncle forced her to view the remains. I won’t go into great detail, but fire does a wicked thing to human flesh-it leaves only the blackened torso, very little of the limbs. She was driven nearly mad by the sight.’

‘I can’t imagine what it took to survive this,’ he said.

‘She learned to survive by withholding love, or any sort of human feeling, from everyone-especially herself. Later, that withholding would affect her husband and sons-Paddy and Liam say they have no memory of any tenderness from her.’

Feeney returned to the bench, sat with his hands on his knees. ‘As Liam said, she talks of dying, hopes to die. She thinks it would serve her right, which is why I was gobsmacked to hear her say she wants to live. And yet, faced with the liver business and the very thing she’s been keen to do, she’s terrified.’

He needed to make sense of this. ‘A spark to the laundry and then the chairs smoldering…?’

‘Exactly,’ said Feeney. ‘They may have died of asphyxiation long before she opened the door.’

‘But she opened the door.’

‘Yes.’

‘Her remorse haunts this house,’ he told Feeney.

‘As it does the house above. I’m sorry to tell you all this, but it seems you should know.’

‘I’m glad you told me, it changes things.’ The truth always changed things. He wondered how much more Evelyn Conor had confided to her doctor and erstwhile bridge partner, but he said nothing.

‘You’ve been good medicine for Broughadoon, Tim.’

He had no idea what to say to that. ‘Mass tomorrow. Will Cynthia be up to it?’

‘Good for the soul, bad for the ankle. I wouldn’t pester it in the least if I were you.’

‘Perhaps you’ll give me Tad’s phone number, ’ he said. ‘I’d like to see him before we leave.’ But would they ever leave? If it wasn’t frogs and flies, it was hail and locusts.

‘He’s just off to his brother in Wales for two weeks. His annual August retreat.’

‘Too bad. I’d hoped to see more of him.’

Pud returned, shook himself, followed them into the library to the bookcases with their fluted pilasters, to lamplight and peat burning against the night, to two gray heads bent over the board. The Labs looked up at them, lay down again, slept.

Only a while ago, he’d wanted the comforts of home. Yet now he felt keenly the kind and solemn spirit of this room, and knew again that he was supposed to be here, that the easy familiarity of Fig Newtons could, if only for a time, be sacrificed.

William appeared dubious, distracted; Seamus refired his pipe. The proverbial pin could have been heard dropping as he and Feeney watched the progress of the checkers game.

‘Phone call, Rev’rend.’ Liam gave a high sign from the hall. ‘From th’ Dub.’

‘O’Malley!’

‘Says he has good news an’ bad news.’

He sat at the desk in the kitchen; Liam worked on a laptop at the table; the smell of coffee lingered in the room.

‘Hey, Tim, how’s it goin’ at ol’ Broughadoon? ’

‘We’re missing the riffraff, Pete. Great to hear your voice.’

‘She’s back.’ Pete breathed into the phone.

‘And?’

‘For four days. A trial run. But get this-it’s scarin’ me to death. When I think about it, ask th’ Collar is th’ message I get. I need your help, Tim-I don’t have a clue what to do.’

This was a phone with a cord, which meant he couldn’t go trotting off to another room for the private affair of counseling. C’est la vie-family night is family night.

‘You’re asking me to tell you what to do?’

‘That’s why I’m callin’. I’d appreciate it.’

‘You’re sure of this?’

‘Dead sure.’

He crossed himself, breathed out, dived in. ‘How about doing nothing?’

‘Oh, yeah?’

‘Don’t tell her you’ve changed or finally gotten your act together or everything’s going to be different. That’s what they all say, and then it doesn’t happen. It takes time for good stuff to happen.’

Pete’s ragged breathing was a minor gale.

‘And whatever you do, no flowers, no mushy cards.’

‘You can count on no mushy cards, but I thought flowers for sure.’

‘Don’t do it,’ he said.

‘I don’t get it.’

‘Think about it. You send flowers now, make a big noise, and that’s the end of it, you go back to doing the same old, same old. Best not to say or do anything you can’t live up to down the road.’