Niall Williams - The Fall of Light

Their grandchildren would pause there to allow the story its own room in the minds of those who listened. And then, at last, they would tell its outcome, how the sheets of snow over the gypsies’ heads had been melted by body heat. The sweat that dropped through the floorboards of the caravans made a river in that mountain pass and carried the snow away upon it. Then when the temperature inside the caravans grew too great, the canvas had been thrown back and the green world revealed. They had survived, and when their bodies cooled and they put on their clothes and looked away from each other with low abashment, there remained the feeling that Finbar Foley had saved them. He walked along the line of them and shook each by hand and kissed them. Then he told them that without horses they could take only the best caravan and that each should put within it what was most precious and the men would take turns pulling it back down the mountain into France.

So they left there, walking out of the blizzard in the cold of dawn, a ramshackle collection of gypsies pulling a single caravan toward the dream of spring. At their head was Finbar Foley, and on the seatboard of the caravan sat the mer-girl Cait, pregnant at last with Foley twins.

Francis Foley and Teige and the young girls Deirdre and Maeve were similarly journeying. They crossed the open green land of Tipperary in the mild weather that followed the snow. The girls sat mute and impassive on the cart, and behind them at a small remove followed the O’Connor dog. When the cart slowed, so did the dog. When it stopped, the dog stood in arrested pose and watched from a short distance and then sat upon the grass verge of the ditch to wait. The young girls did not pay it any heed and seemed themselves, whether by sympathy, grief, or chance, to have acquired their mother’s dumbness. They stared at the road. They ate their food in a trance and were like creatures fallen from another world. Their eyes could not be met. When Teige brought them the bowl of their dinner and was careful to kneel to their level to speak in his softest voice, the girls’ eyes looked elsewhere. In the night Francis told Teige in whispers that they must expect it would take time. They were lying in a field on the blankets they had brought from the O’Connor house. The night sky was starless and the darkness falling in a fine mist. For an hour each had lain there awaiting sleep, listening to the small noises of the night and hearing the dog sneaking closer in the dark.

“It will be a while,” Francis said.

Teige lay and did not move. He was trying to understand how his father knew in the dark that he was not sleeping.

“Yes,” he said at last.

It was a conversation like that, fragments of speech and response separated in the dark sometimes by pauses so long as to make each statement seem the end or beginning, or the inconsequential ramblings of the last awake.

“Those girls will come through it, though.”

The old man paused. His voice was low and edged with desperation. Teige heard him swallow nothing. The soft rain fell on them. In the dark the dog arrived at the cart where the girls were sleeping.

“They seem like birds,” Teige said, “stunned and fallen down in the grass. Why will they not say anything?”

The sky was moonless and the world seemed lost and without light.

“They will,” Francis said after a time. “They will come through.

“They will,” he said after another moment.

Teige said nothing. He knew his father was speaking not only of the girls, but of the terrible plight of orphans that weighed on him, filling the space about him with memories. Where were his other sons? Where was Finan gone? Had he really killed that man? Where were Finbar and the gypsies? What corner was Tomas vanished into, and why had he not returned? Where, oh where was Emer?

“We will give care to them,” the old man said when he had recovered. “We will bring those girls with us to this island, Teige. Yes. We will.”

If he said more, Teige did not hear him, for he fell asleep even as the dog claimed its place on the cart between the two girls and lay with low moans, hunting in its dreams the ghosted scent of its vanished master.

In the morning they moved on again and the dog resumed its place a little ways behind. Teige drove the pony and cart and the two O’Connor girls sat upon it still like the daughters of Lot. The Foleys crossed the Shannon at a bridge and made their way across the County Limerick and into Clare. Sometimes the road they travelled gave way to such mud that the pony could not pull through it and Teige and Francis both had to pull and push, making slow progress with the girls useless to help and the dog watching from the ditch. The farther west they travelled, the higher the mud on the axle of the wheels.

In the late afternoon they came upon a farmer with a black cow in the road. In that season before the beginning of new grass, he was allowing her the poor grazing of the ditch outside his fields. Francis called to him a greeting, and the man acknowledged him with the kind of low-voiced circumspection that seemed habitual there. When he could no longer avoid conversation the farmer asked them where they were going. The old man told him they were heading to the town of Kilkee in the west to see if there was news of his eldest son. The farmer nodded. He placed his hand on the backside of his cow. The cow did not move. She was thin and pregnant and exhausted. The farmer moved his mouth about as if trying to find some difficult word there. He looked over the ditch at the wet fields. He said a sound that was not a word, and then at last brought himself to ask them if they wanted food that night.

They ate in a small cottage that was unlit by any lamp even after darkness fell. There was a shadowy gloom there to which their eyes became accustomed. The woman of the house was robust looking with greying curls that fell down her cheeks. There were the shapes of a half dozen children standing. The O’Connor girls sat amongst them on a bench and ate the potatoes and potato bread and winter cabbage and drank the buttermilk but did not speak. The farmer did not speak either and only made low, guttural noises of response when Francis addressed him. His wife answered instead. She seemed lightened by their company, and it was apparent that the dour farmer had invited the Foleys there as a peace offering against some earlier argument with his wife. He had brought them to disprove his meanness, though he would not burn a lamp.

“You’re like people who’ve seen a lot,” the woman said. “I’ve seen no place but this parish and not even the farthest ends of that.” She glared down the table at her husband, who did not raise his eyes to her.

“We’ve seen enough,” Francis said. “But few places with the charity and welcome of your house.” He looked over at where she was standing by the deal dresser in the darkness. He nodded to her his thanks and was not sure if she saw him or not. The children who were standing along the length of the table had finished eating and were waiting to see what their father might leave on his tin plate. The youngest of them was aged about four. Teige watched as the man sopped milk in a semicircle with the butt of his potato bread. There was a half of it left. He sopped the milk thrice and ate it. Then he took the second half of the butt and circled the hollow of the plate again, although it seemed already dried. This too he mouthed. Then he stood up, stepped back, and went from the cottage. The children scrambled forward amidst the shouts of their mother and found of the nothing he had left crumbs and flakes of food not enough to nourish mice but small trophies to them as they fell at each other and toppled noisily onto the ground. The O’Connor girls watched this in some alarm at first, and Teige saw their faces and motioned them not to be worried. Then the mother of all those children assured the girls too and watched not without glee or pride as that mob of hers, boys and girls alike, tussled and squirmed and cursed and were general entertainment. A short time after, the farmer came to the door. His face was twisted like a rag.