Jan Karon - In the Company of Others

He went up to the library and rifled through a stack of magazines. A cover feature on the Irish rose garden. Worth a look. He wondered about his own roses in their double-dug beds at the yellow house, and the many he had planted at Lord’s Chapel. What havoc had the beetles wrought? And the black spot? Had Mitford gotten enough rain?

‘I don’t need to know,’ he said aloud.

‘I beg your pardon?’

He turned around and looked behind him. It was the writer with the cloud of hair, hidden by the chair wing. He saw a lap with a book in it, her feet in the odd shoes.

‘Sorry,’ he said, embarrassed. ‘I’ve been driven to talking to myself.’

‘And what drove you there?’ she asked.

‘Ease and indolence. I’ve done next to nothing for days on end!’

‘I should like very much to be driven somewhere, anywhere, by Ease and Indolence rather than Stress and Striving. I’m just off a book tour. A grueling business.’

‘I’m sure. Mystery? Romance?’

‘Both. Romance is, after all, a mystery.’

‘I’ll say.’

He wondered if he should get up and go around where they could talk face-to-face. But he rather liked looking at roses climbing a stone wall in Kerry while speaking with someone he couldn’t see.

‘Is that Tim, the clergyman?’ The sound of pages turning.

‘It is. And is that Lorna Doolin, Irish-American from Boston, born in Houston?’

‘The very same.’

‘Your niece is a wonder.’

‘Honor student. Plays the harp. Raises corgis. Now busy cataloging the flora and fauna of Lough Arrow.’

‘Good gracious!’

‘You’re from the South.’

‘Mississippi. My wife is from Massachusetts.’

‘Do you like being married to a Yankee?’

‘I do,’ he said. ‘This particular Yankee, anyway.’

‘I married a Yankee once.’

‘Aha. Here to do some fishing?’

‘Heavens, no. Here to escape the rigors of reading my reviews. They’re mixed, to say the least. Are you a fisherman?’

‘Never got the hang of it.’

‘I must take my niece out tomorrow with a ghillie-she has the most insatiable curiosity. I, of course, shall be entirely out of my element. All I’ve ever done is muck about in words-except for two years of managing an inn in New Hampshire. If you ever wish to give yourself a bad back, irritable colon, and possibly a stroke, well, then, manage an inn. I’m off for a walk.’

He heard her close the book, lay it on the table. ‘It’s been lovely seeing you-in a manner of speaking.’

‘Yes, yes, very pleasant.’ He stood, hoping to shake her hand or something civil, but she was already across the room and entering the stair hall.

Catharmore’s complaints were writ large on every face at Broughadoon-Anna, Liam, Maureen, Bella, William, all were quiet as they went about their tasks in the evening. Liam was sobered yet again.

In a move, he presumed, to restore jollity to the Broughadoon board, Anna seated all guests together at dinner: the three generations of Sweeneys, the author, the niece, and himself. But he was the sore thumb, unable to withdraw his thoughts from the family’s concerns. He realized he didn’t feel like a guest anymore. He left the table before dessert orders were taken, and went into the kitchen.

‘May I give a hand?’

‘Ye’re an oul’ dote!’ said Maureen, as if she’d been expecting him. ‘Ye could help with unloadin’ th’ dishwashers, as the next course gives us another load.’

Anna looked up from arranging the dessert tray. ‘’t would be a féirin,’ she said.

No one was pushing him out, or requiring him to remain a guest. Yet every string was taut, he could feel it.

Liam jiggled something in a pan on the Aga. ‘I’m finishin’ the dining room paint job tomorrow, if you’d care to join me. Around noon, if you’re about. An hour or so, an’ it’s done.’

‘I’m in,’ he said.

Out there was the world, in here was something better.

At two-thirty in the morning, the knock came. He knew without being told.

‘I’ll be right down.’

He dressed in the bathroom, and picked up his prayer book on the way to the door.

‘Stay,’ he said to Pud.

‘I pray th’ worst is over-for th’ night, anyway.’

A barefoot Fletcher appeared in the hall, a wraith in a white nightgown. ‘She’s burned our ears off shouting at God, givin’ him th’ devil if I ever heard it. I was lookin’ for lightning to strike th’ place.’

‘What can I do?’

‘Eileen’s with her, an’ Seamus is up if you’d like tea. I’m telling you, Rev’rend, even with th’ lorazepam, her mind is a steel trap, I’ve never seen its equal in an old lady.’ The nurse drew her hands through her hair, looked at her night-dress, her bare feet. ‘Excuse my getup; round here, we must hit th’ floor runnin’.’

‘Liam said I was wanted. Has she asked for me?’

‘She’s been askin’ for you, yes, we hated to rout you at such an hour.’

‘No rest for the wicked, as we say back home. Perfectly fine. Paddy?’

‘Dr. Feeney packed him off drunk as a lord an’ blubberin’ like a babby. Some gosser from Jack Kennedy’s came for him.’

‘Blubbering because he didn’t want to leave?’

‘Oh, no, he wanted to leave, for all that, I don’t know why he was blubberin’. Th’ drink does that with some, you know.’

‘Dublin?’

‘That’s th’ plan.’

‘Anything else going on?’

‘Until a bit ago, it was weeping an’ gnashin’ of teeth like in th’ book of Revelation-my uncle told me all about the end times, which he shouldn’t have done as I was a nervous child. Talkin’ out of her head, calling for her mum an’ sisters enough to break your heart. And God above, th’ screamin’ she can do. It elevates th’ pain, but she does it anyway, to see how much she can dish out to herself.’

‘How are you getting on?’

‘Even after what I went through with my father, it still scares th’ daylights out of me. ’t is like the devil himself gets loose. But I’m fine, I’m keepin’ up. Eileen goes on short hours soon, her brother’s in a bad way; I’ll be th’ one-armed paper hanger for a time.’

‘Is she sleeping?’

‘She slept for a bit after wearin’ herself out, but she’s awake now, has something to ask you that’s agitating her. If you don’t mind, Rev’rend, I’ll just try an’ catch a wink, as God knows I’ve had none. There’s Eileen if you need her, and Seamus. Overlook th’ smell, we got a bite down her an’ back it came an’ more. We’ll air out tomorrow.’

A single lamp burning. Eileen in a chair by the door, Cuch sleeping. He stepped into the room.

‘Eileen.’

‘Yes, mum?’

‘You may leave.’

The nurse left at once.

‘Reverend.’

‘Yes, Mrs. Conor. I’m here.’ The desperate panting; her reddened fingers thick with swelling.

‘Call me Evelyn. Everything must be simplified now.’

The ghastly leg uncovered. He pulled the chair up and leaned close, as if offering fire to a cold hearth.

‘You can do this,’ he said.

He was gripped by the look of her, as if she were going away to nothing, would be but an impression on the pillow the next time he came. And yet her will was there, he felt the iron of it.

‘I have a question,’ she said.

‘I’m listening.’

‘Something happened tonight.’ Her finger movement rapid. ‘After all the promises to myself that I could do this, I felt I couldn’t bear it, after all. The agony was overcoming; I knew I was dying. I wanted to die. If I could be said ever to pray, then I prayed I would die.

‘But I didn’t wish to pass until I told God what monstrous evil he is and how he had fooled so many but not myself, not Evelyn McGuiness, no, he could not mock me. I emptied myself of my last strength-with everything in me I obliterated him, I erased him from the heavens.’