Brendan Graham - The Element of Fire

Lavelle had been her one constant, steadfast in everything. He laughed and poked fun at how she worried over things, her single-mindedness. Kept at her, forcing her not to take herself too seriously. At first this irritated her, but he didn’t stand for that either, and she found it hard to sustain any measure of annoyance with him, such was his enthusiasm for ‘life to be lived’. And the children liked him. Even Patrick, though he’d never say it, had softened towards Lavelle.

They had all gone on 5 November – ‘Pope’s Night’ – to see the Orange Parades, with their Kick-the-Pope bands. Patrick was agog at the display of anti-Catholic paraphernalia and the aggressive clatter-thump of the lambeg drums, the manic drummers facing each other ‘hoop to hoop’, malacca canes banging out deafening military tattoos.

‘But … they’re Irish too!’ Patrick protested, as Lavelle tried to explain the sashes, hard hats and anti-Irish slogans.

‘They are and they aren’t, Patrick!’ Lavelle responded. ‘Their feet are on the same island as us at home,’ and he laughed, ‘they’ve even stolen some of our jigs and reels and fifed them into marches, though they’ll never admit to that. But their hearts are for ever in England.’

That was the moment, Ellen knew, when Patrick had begun to change towards her ‘fancy man’, as he once called Lavelle. The boy identified with Lavelle’s antipathy towards the Orangemen and their bitter, threatening music. To his credit, Lavelle did not encourage Patrick, make a thing of it, as he could have done. And she noticed it had gone on like that, in little fits and starts that bonded them, without any great scheme being behind it.

Without any great scheme, either – certainly on her part – things had settled into a comfortable pattern between herself and Lavelle. He was as much a part of the neighbourhood of her new life as the Old South Meeting House, spiking the sky across from where she lived, or the Long Wharf, spiking the sea. Like these boundaries of heaven and ocean, always there, securing this exciting New World of hers, so too was Lavelle. Not that she was unaware of his physical attractiveness, the way he sometimes collided with her, would catch her arm, steady her up, and give that grin of his, causing her a momentary embarrassment. Once or twice he held her longer than necessary, startled her by his nearness, said something like ‘Boston life hasn’t softened you yet, you’re still a fine woman,’ then laughed and let go of her just as suddenly again.

At Christmas, after he had dined with them, tramped in the snow, laden with presents for the children and her, she wasn’t totally unprepared when he asked her.

She had gone down the flights of stairs ahead of him, held the door, looking out into the abandoned stillness of Washington Street. No hawkers’ cries, no noise of commerce, the Old South Meeting House cribbed in white. No sound at the Hub of the Universe, only his voice, clear and as impudent as you please, passing her, going out into the dampening snows.

‘You know, Ellen, we should get married after Lent!’

She never answered him at first. Giddy in the moment, she drew back, waited until he was outside, half-turned for home.

‘You know, Lavelle,’ she said, mocking his impudence and laughing, ‘I had the same notion myself!’ And, despite all of her previous resolve, it was out before she knew it.

She watched after him, his boots crunching the snow, the flakes haloed on his head, whistling his way down Washington Street – some old jig-time tune she half-remembered.

In the New Year, little doubts had begun to raise themselves about whether or not she was doing the right thing. She hadn’t remained steadfast for long. Getting married again was against everything she once held; against ‘being true to the grave’. But that was just it – that was part of the old ways. Here in Boston, it was different. After a suitable period of mourning a man and, to a lesser degree, a woman might marry again. Still, it was only three years.

Not that she ever forgot Michael. Not for one single day, nor would she, ever. But she had great ease with Lavelle. He had no fixed notions like some of the other men about where women fitted – mostly in front of a baking oven. Maybe it was his time in Australia, where women tamed the harsh bush as much as the men did. Whatever, there was ease and comfort between them, and she liked his off-the-cuff manner. He granted her respect, but not too much. Even the way he had asked her – going out the door – as if not caring if she had said ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Herself and Lavelle would be a good match.

She had told the children on the following day, St Stephen’s, when she herself was more composed. Mary, she thought, took it well. Patrick less so, but without the level of opposition from him, which she had expected. The excitement somehow catching her, Louisa too joined in, running to kiss her as Mary had done.

By early Lent, she had cast her doubts aside. She had made her bed, now she must lie in it. At times, even, the thought of lying in Lavelle’s bed caused her a shiver of expectation.

Spring saw her preparing for the rites of marriage as precepted by the ever-expanding Archdiocese of Boston. Purity in thought and action,

The Inviolata to the Blessed Virgin …

Inviolata, integra et casta es, Maria … Stainless, inviolate, and chaste art thou, O Mary … Nostra ut pura pectora sint et corpora … That pure our minds and hearts may be …

Nobody ‘forbade the banns’ – read out on three consecutive Sundays at Holy Cross. Each week she sat through their reading, mortified lest somebody would shout out objecting to her intended marriage. Worse still that without her knowing it, some prudish biddy would slink around to the sacristy after Mass and coat the ear of the priest with poisoned whisperings about her. Then she would be quietly summoned, the reading of the banns suspended, she and her children shamed.

When the day finally came, the wedding was grander than anything she could have had back home. Much grander – and in a hotel too. While she was against wasting too much money on frippery, there was a sense of statement, as Lavelle had put it, ‘That we’re not paupers any more. That we’re no longer the Famine Irish!’

So she had relented, rigging the children in new outfits, had cut for herself a dress from a foulard of silk, thin and soft and cream in colour. Lavelle too, hatted, cravatted, looked every inch the fine Boston gentleman. The day itself was a great success and seemed to spin out for ever. As indeed it did – into the next morning. ‘It’s in danger of turning into a wake …’ she whispered to Lavelle, in a private moment, ‘… if it goes on any longer!’

And she had sung, especially for him, ‘ Úna Bhán – ‘Fair-haired Úna’, one of the great love songs, not as she should have, she felt. She hadn’t spoken a syllable of Irish for eight months. Now the words felt clumsy in her mouth so she trimmed the song from its forty-odd verses down to a dozen or so.

Peabody, whom they’d invited but didn’t think would attend, to her delight, if not wholly to Lavelle’s, presented himself for the after-wedding festivities.

‘I might as well close up shop completely if I was observed entering a Roman church,’ he confided to her jokingly. ‘It reminds me, Ellen – it reminds me …’ He started to tell her something after she’d sung, then changed course. ‘That song – what does it say?’ he instead asked.

‘It’s a song from Connemara, two hundred years old,’ she explained, ‘composed for the woman Úna, whose father would not let her marry beneath herself. Being kept from her beloved, she died. He seeing her laid out, remembers her beauty – like the music of the harp always on the road before him. His love for her so great that it had come between him and God. There, that’s all forty verses of it in Irish, in one in English!’ she laughed.