Jan Karon - In the Company of Others

‘I’m cookin’ tonight an’ much to do…’

‘We won’t be long.’

They sat on the garden bench in the mild and seamless afternoon.

‘William is not your father,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘You can let it go.’

‘How do you know this?’

‘I asked your mother.’

‘But she lies, my mother.’

‘She wasn’t lying about this. William isn’t your father.’

Liam spoke in Irish, crossed himself, shaken.

‘The visit when Paddy saw them together-there was no real intimacy between them. She led him to believe there would be, and they arranged a meeting. She brought along your dad’s old Purdey and fired off a shot. She aimed to kill him, she said, but he dodged and ran.’

Liam stared at him in a kind of dazed wonder. ‘He ran; she would have killed him.’

In the library, he glanced at the sepia anglers, wondered once more if one was Liam’s father. No matter. Knowing who was not seemed solace enough.

In their room, he saw the look of despair on his wife’s face. Too long, this sojurn, too long. He went to her and kissed her forehead.

‘Good news,’ he said. ‘You have a portrait commission.’

She looked at him, wry and disbelieving.

‘Evelyn Conor. She says she wants to be painted at her worst.’

‘That’s a new one.’

‘Payment is a pearl ring in a white gold setting.’

‘I love white gold,’ she said, listless. His own melancholy was one thing; hers quite another. He could hardly look at it.

He told her about Evelyn seeing the portrait of William and finding it well done; told her how they had laughed, and Seamus, too.

She showed no interest in his gazette. ‘I can’t pretend anymore,’ she said. ‘I cannot bear another minute of this dreadful thing sticking up in the air.’ Tears. He was grateful.

‘Feeney’s coming tonight. Let’s press him to move ahead to the boot if reasonable.’

She put her head in her hands, wept. ‘Why?’ she said.

His wife never asked why. She seemed always to know why without having to ask.

‘I’ll have dinner with you in the room tonight. We’ll order champagne!’ He was in the Pete O’Malley mode, desperate.

‘Tea,’ she said, blowing her nose.

He would fetch it at once.

‘Earl Grey,’ she said.

He should book Aengus Malone for the airport trip, reunite him with the hat on the antler. ‘Put on your Darling Robe; I’ll read to you when I get back.’

She looked wistful. ‘I’m going to miss all the dead people we’re reading about,’ she said. ‘They seem so very alive.’

O’Hara delivered this morning three beds of good quality-fires laid.

The lad came to us with a pasty look & has eaten little; Fiona desperate to provoke his appetite.

We will not according to our early plan delay the surprise of Brannagh until Christmas Eve, for that leaves such little time for the lad to enjoy the truth. Willie Collins brought her over this morning & away Eunan & I go in the red cart, bundled against a piercing cold. I do not tell him the pony is his, but plan to withhold this surprise until after we finish our calls.

Is she a beauty, then, lad?’

Yis, he says.

Tis Ireland’s only native breed, the Connemara. They say Spanish horses swam ashore from sinking ships & bred with our mountain ponies. In Brannagh, we have the best of horse & pony together.

He is quiet as any mouse.

Easy keepers, the Connemara, I say. Willie Collins tells me they needn’t the fancy diet to stay strong.

He does not look at me, nor at Brannagh, but into the long distance. We are silent for a bit-the wind is getting up.

Can we stop in to see her, he says at last.

We’ve no time, I say. We must keep to our appointed rounds. If a doctor says he’s coming, he comes.

Now your Brannagh, I say… (I realize I have let the badger out of the bag & hurry along to distract him)… is a full fifteen hands high & can do anything at all from hunting to driving to carrying heavy loads, but- & this, lad, is a very fine feature-tis her grand intelligence & big heart she’s famous for.

He has not heard me.

Eunan? I say.

Yis?

His eyes are bright, too bright, I think. I put my hand to his head & find it burning. Something tells me not to wait.

Tis your own pony we’re driving, I say. And a merry Christmas to ye.

I hand the reins to him & he is unbelieving.

Take the reins, lad, & do as you’ve seen me do.

Brannagh stops in the lane.

Ah, now, she wants the taste of the whip. Give it to her on the flank like this.

I demonstrate the flick of the whip & say, Giddyap, ye little brute.

But I have given the lad too much at once-too much joy, perhaps, & too much to do with taking the reins & learning how to sting the lovely flank of his Brannagh.

20 December

The lad took only broth last night & that very little. We suspected a type of influenza. C put him to bed & said prayers over him. When I went in to wake him this morning he was not in his room. We commenced a search throughout the house including the upper floors, then out to the carriage house where we found pony & cart missing.

I saddle Adam & meet Fiona & Keegan on the path from the cabin. They have not seen him. I ride along the lake road but do not find him. I call in at several cabins but he has not been sighted. Then the Clooney lass says she watched pony & cart go by while emptying their chamber pot. She threw up her hand in greeting she says, but he did not appear to notice & was going at a trot.

As E would not know how to find the O’Leary cabin, I dismiss this train of thought & continue my search. At a little past noon I return home in a state of frenzy & spy pony & cart coming up the lane. Tis O’Leary the Shoemaker & the lad delirious with fever.

We live in a country rightfully terrified of the many fevers that court us. O’Leary is furious & demands I keep the boy from their door.

My God, he weighs nearly nothing, is less heavy than my heart as I carry him in to C.

21 Dec

Late evening

The lad very ill.

At her insistence, we move him into C’s chamber on a cot. We tremble to name it, but given the symptoms, are pressed to believe the worst-Typhoid Fever. Tho it prevails in the autumn, it may occur in any season & in epidemic proportions.

We are treating it as such & burning the soiled rags & bed linen. Though possible to receive the poison by inhalation, it is most frequently passed through the urine, stool, & vomitus of the victim. I have mixed a solution of Chloride & lime in which the same must sit for an hour before being emptied into the Trench Keegan is digging. The two porcelain bed pans are scalded after each use & stand for an hour filled with the solution.

Fiona sensing danger & fearing for her life but willing to keep after the bed linens. As reason returns, we realize we cannot continue burning good linens, & will instead let them lie for some time in a strong antiseptic after which they must be boiled. Keegan to maintain a fire under the iron pot in the carriage yard.

We keep him well away from Jessie for the unborn infant’s sake & from Keegan who goes among the neighbors. We have not spoken the name of this wracking Fever, but have nonetheless sworn our household to secrecy. Cleanliness is the sermon we repeatedly preach to Fiona.

Aconite our principal drug with Specific Echinacea, Jaborandi & others as useful-Hydrochloric Acid for the sores of tongue & lips. I am ever at the pharmacopoeia for any wisdoms unknown to us.

Jessie admitting she gave the lad direction to O’Leary’s cabin, not knowing his intentions. He harnessed the pony badly, yet well enough-I am struck by his native intelligence & his strength to perform such a task.