Niall Williams - The Fall of Light

“No,” said his wife.

A moment held. The water sighed.

“Gather her wet things,” she said then. “I will have food for you both soon.” And she turned and went back to the house and left her husband standing there and studying the ground as if for pieces of the story missing.

Sometime later she crossed up the pathway to the cabin and called in and Teige came to the doorway and welcomed her. She stood inside then and saw Elizabeth and saw the beauty of her and seemed to understand at once that she was some man’s wife, for she looked at Teige and took the wet clothes and asked him if he thought they would be going soon.

His judgment was impaired and he told her no.

“Eat and then sleep so,” she said, and took the clothes and went off back down the path.

And they did. They slept before the fire in that small stone cabin while the morning after the storm lightened outside. They slept in fits of dreams and shuddered sometimes like things fearful. Their legs lay entwined.

They woke with the sounds of the children playing. Elizabeth turned in Teige’s arms and she studied his face. She put her fingers in his hair and traced his brows and closed his eyes.

“He will come after me,” she whispered.

“He’ll never know where to find you.”

“He will,” she said.

They lay there. The yelps and cries of the children rang out. Smoke in slow ascension twirled inside the chimney. Neither of them moved. They lay still and were as creatures white and bare and beautiful fallen from another dimension.

In the noon they rose and Elizabeth came out by Teige’s side and saw that ancient site of church and tower. She saw the town across the water which seemed nearer than she had hoped and nearer than their night sailing had suggested. And she said to Teige: “He could almost see us.”

“He will not look. He will think you are gone to Cork or Dublin or finer places than this.” And he smiled and put his arm around her.

Outside the tower on a stone trestle sat Teige’s father and his mother. Francis Foley had awoken ten years younger than he’d slept. His face had dropped from it weariness and doom, and his eyes were lit. He stood up when he saw the lady.

“This is Elizabeth,” Teige said.

“Elizabeth.” His father held out his hand.

“She is to be my wife.”

His mother took Elizabeth’s hand and then to her son opened her arms and he leaned over and she embraced him. “She is very beautiful,” she whispered, “I know.”

“We’ll start on the cottage for you tomorrow,” the old man said, and smiled. Then he sat down again by his wife’s side and took her hands as if as guarantee against the world sundering again.

It was the first day of the new. Storm cleansed, green, and tranquil, the island lay in the waters as an idyll or the vivid dream of Francis Foley years before. Boats sailed again along the Shannon. The traffic of white sails or men at oars proved the world moving, but to the two Foleys, father and son, it seemed to be moving only out there, away from the island. They were each likewise gifted a pure innocence that morning and were like men under some enchantment in which time did not pass and loveliness endured. Teige walked with Elizabeth about the island and the children of the BoatMac came along and they gathered the red and orange wildflowers of montbretia and the feathered plumes of late purple loosestrife. They sang singsong chants. They chased and ran away and Teige and Elizabeth sat down on the grass and kissed and then lay back and watched the vaulted blue sky.

They were lying so when the children came running again.

“Come, come! Mommy says come! There is a boat coming.”

Teige took Elizabeth by the hand and they ran then across the fields down to the raft house by the shore. Mary BoatMac was standing there with her husband. Approaching steadily across the estuary was a long boat and in it sitting grim and purposeful were the sheriff and three constables, the wronged husband in a plum suit, and the red-haired youth Pyle.

There was a moment in which they all stood and watched, in which the slow and steady action of the oarsmen seemed in some world not this wherein the laws of force and motion did not apply and the boat not coming closer. It was like a picture or a scene posed, the little crowd on the headland and beneath the blue sky with white clouds the figures of Law approaching.

“Quickly, you must go quickly.” It was Mary who spoke. She turned to Teige and shook him by the arm until he looked at her and broke from his disbelief that they could have found Elizabeth so soon. “You have to go,” she said. “They’ll be here. Take them,” she told her husband, “Mac, take them across the island to the boat. Go up to the tower with them and tell Mr. Foley. Go! Go on, go quick,” she said, and as they turned to go added, “God bless ye.”

They ran up the beaten path that was soft and muddy after the rain. Teige took Elizabeth by the hand, and with the shambling stride of one unused to dry ground, BoatMac hurried behind. They went up past the long grass and the jumbled bushes of blackberry and the brambles wild and scented. Birds flew up. As if the world were freshened in the aftermath of the storm, all the natural wonder of the island seemed like a thing charged, alive, emanate from some source secret and holy. There was a tang in the breeze. Late blossoms of that season that had survived yet held the last bees, and these hummed the air. The beauty of that landscape in all its detail, what sights and sounds and smells, all of these registered with Teige Foley as he ran and were to be there in some part of him still years later, when he would recall running across the island a last time.

Francis Foley stood from the stone bench when he saw them coming.

“What is it?” he asked. “Teige, what is the matter?”

“There are constables coming. They will say I stole a horse. There will be a man who is Elizabeth’s husband.” He stopped and drew his breath.

“Teige.” His mother held out her hands to him. He came to her and she embraced him. She held him a long time. “Go,” she said. “Go and be happy.”

He stood and she gestured for Elizabeth and she held her, too. “Do you love my son?” she asked her in a whisper, and what answer she received was not heard, but she embraced the young woman hard and then released her.

Teige faced his father. “I sent the horse back last night. They will find it. It’s—”

“Teige.” His father stopped him. “Teige,” he said again, and said it slowly and burdened the sound with such tenderness that no single vocable seemed capable of carrying such or no word as dear to him then as the sound of his son’s name. “I will beat the heads of any of them that walk up here,” he said. “I will let none stop you. Go.” He reached his hand and laid it on Teige’s shoulder.

And then they were gone running. They ran across the island with BoatMac coming behind them. They ran to the place where the boat lay upturned on the far shore, and this they righted and slid it down the weeds and mud into the water. And then BoatMac held the boat while they climbed inside it and he pushed it farther into the water and then climbed in himself and took the oars and pulled away. And they did not see Francis Foley stride down the path to the other shore and meet there the little party of the wronged and the righteous. They did not hear his booming voice as he called out damnations against those who trespassed there or accused his son in the wrong. They did not know that the sheriff would say the youth Pyle had given them reason to suspect Teige and that Pyle would grin and the plum fellow alongside would scowl with pale effete manner and show his distaste at this discourse with rabble such as these. Nor would they know that Francis Foley’s ire would burn then and he would say he had answered all queries and that even had his son taken the horse and the woman, it was no more than God’s own will, for any could see the kind of man this was. And the sheriff would perhaps in secret agree and stand back and instruct the constables back into the boat and say they would return if the horse was not found. And the plum fellow would cry out that the island must be searched for his wife, and his voice would be high and thin in a timbre that would be mocked in games by the children later. His cries would go unanswered and at last he too would get on board and all would sail away, in gloom and dismay as they had come, the youth Pyle with crooked grin looking back all the way.