Niall Williams - As It Is in Heaven

Stephen stood there, and gratitude warmed him like red wine. “No.” He shook his head. “It's not.”

One afternoon, from the small collection of his things, he brought out the chess set.

“Oh,” said Gabriella, sitting up like a child, “you are going to teach me.”

And so he did. Through the rest of the days of March they lived in the house above the town of Kenmare, dwelling like people on a private island whose hours are not dictated by the weariness and drudgery of work or the dread exhaustion of spirit in the tedium of life. They existed as if in another country. They did not hear the news, they did not listen to stories on the radio or television, of corrupted government or the revealed brutalities of Christian Brothers, of elderly women knocked down the stairs for the fifteen pounds in their purses, or the scandals and court cases and tribunals that were ceaselessly unpeeling the skin of the country like a rotten fruit. Instead, Stephen and Gabriella loved and lived in a sweet innocence and ate their meals and listened to music and played chess. Even when the post office in Kenmare was robbed in daylight and Helena Cox was struck on the face by a man with a gun as she protested at the counter, the news seemed never to actually arrive in the stopped time of their world.

By the beginning of April all but the ash trees were leafed; the wildflowers and berry bushes in the hedgerows moved towards early blossom and lent the air a seasonal gaiety. Big skies opened and let the light of the high heavens fall down on the town. Gardens were dug over and seeded. Men got their hair cut and drove in their tractor cabs with the scalped, white-necked look of plucked fowl. The landscape buzzed. Birds flew down out of the shelter of the trees and shat on the cars beneath the telephone wires a bright confetti, celebrating the return of April.

At last, after some persuasion, Gabriella agreed to leave the house and go shopping in the town with Stephen. In the comfort of the bedroom she had grown slightly fearful of the outside. She distrusted her own happiness and imagined that at any moment the world would crush it. How perfect it was in their own place beneath the mountains. Whatever guilt she felt in seeing Stephen do everything — washing shopping and cooking — was absolved in the evenings when she took him inside her arms, loving him more carefully and tenderly now, with the kind of kisses the rescued bestow upon the rescuer. In their weeks together Gabriella had grown accustomed to this strange rhythm of their relationship. She had allowed Stephen to take over, and banished for the time being all thoughts of what their future might be. She was, she even admitted, almost happy. Why change anything? Then, that third day of April, when Stephen told her he was leaving her briefly to buy the fresh rhubarb Nelly Grant said she would have set aside for them, Gabriella said she did not want him to leave her.

“I won't be long.”

“No, please, Stefano.”

“What is it?”

“Don't go.”

She was sitting on the bed in her nightdress. Her body seemed smaller as her pregnancy grew. She was strangely more frail the larger she became, as if the part of her that was herself was each day subtracted from and was added instead to the child. Her face was flushed.

“What is it? What's the matter?”

“I don't know I am foolish,” she said. “But sometimes …”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell me.”

“I feel that it won't last. That something is waiting to happen.”

He sat down on the bed beside her. The brilliance of the April noon was at his back, letting the light fall like infinite pity into her eyes. She was briefly blinded. Though he asked her what exactly she feared he did not need to. He, too, had felt the fragile quality of each day and knew the awful expectation of loss that was the most enduring and reliable trait of his thirty-two years. The difference now was that since the death of his father and his own return to Kenmare, Stephen had begun to feel he was in a new life. He felt blessed. So when Gabriella curled on the bed and could not quite explain her fear, Stephen Griffin already understood and imagined, like some delirious saint, that the blessing that had fallen on him would now protect her, too. He leaned down and stroked her head softly like a grandfather.

“Come with me,” he said. “Come on out. Come down to the town.”

And so she did. They arrived in the town that had already been speaking about them. Gabriella walked linked on Stephen's arm, her green coat open and the child just visible ahead of both of them. It was not so bad. The sun was warm and welcoming. The first tourists had already arrived at the wool and tweed shops at the top of the street, and a constant jig and reel music was blaring out from the loudspeaker set above the shop in a broadcast of authenticity. Beneath the music Germans were buying bargain sweaters from Michael O'Keefe in his one black suit. He nodded across his dealing at Gabriella and Stephen. “Morning to you.” His eye caught the curve of the child. “Beautiful today,” he said, and turned back to the Germans.

Stephen and Gabriella went to the bank. The money that he had been willed by his father had not arrived yet. Stephen had little idea how much it would be after duties and fees, but knew that the sum was substantial. He was living on his savings from his teacher's salary and needed to transfer his account from Clare and tell the manager the funds would be coming.

The teller asked Stephen his name.

“Just a minute so, Mr. and Mrs. Griffin.”

Moran, the assistant manager, was called from his desk to the counter to meet them.

“Well,” he said, “good morning to ye.” He beamed and reached out a pumiced pink hand. “Mr. Griffin, Mrs.…”

In a moment he noticed the absence of a wedding ring and took a sideways glance away to show that he had not been looking. “Yes yes. Now, Stephen, isn't it? That's right.”

Moran had, he knew, the gift of weighing situations, and when money was concerned, the balances were never even. There were always hidden weights, obscured feelings, fears and motives. The pregnant woman without a ring caused him to reweigh the situation swiftly and temper his approach. So, with his most liberal expression and a face that declared the only and absolute value in life was hard currency, he took the hand Gabriella offered and shook it once as if it were a wet fish.

“This is Gabriella,” Stephen said.

“Yes. Yes,” said Moran, looking at the tall figure of the fool. This woman was too beautiful for him. Could it be that she was not with him for his looks? He leaned on the polished wood of the counter, but did not invite them to enter. Moran was a man of a time, and it was a constant irritation to him that it was not this one. In his view, the situation was compromised by the presence of the woman.

Stephen told him of the money that he expected to arrive. Moran pressed his two hands on the counter. He asked Stephen approximately how much money were they talking about.

“More than ten thousand?”

“Yes.”

“More than twenty?”

“More than a hundred.”

“I see.” There was a pause. “A good deal of money then,” Moran said, and waited, and raised and lowered his hands on the countertop lightly as if playing the slow chords of the third movement of Disaster. “You need to come in sometime yourself,” he said, “and we can have a talk about it, what best to do and so on. Sometime when you have a minute, when you can come in when em …” He stopped and nodded a tight smile. He could not say what he wanted to. He could not say: Come in when this woman is not with you. He could not say: This is a matter between men, though he thought it and tried in vain to let his expression say so. Moran offered Stephen the form to sign to open the account in his name, and winced inwardly, watching the fellow push it over to the woman for her to sign, too. The assistant manager looked at her with a pained smile. He endured her with a thin tightness in his lips and harsh judgement in his eyes. He would tell Mrs. Moran about her in the evening. He would reaffirm the main lesson life had taught him: money comes to the coarse and undeserving, and it was his unlucky lot in life ceaselessly to serve and assist those more wealthy than he. He nodded at the two of them. All the greatest fools in the known world, he told himself as he returned to his office, are ruled by the heart and not the head. For them there should be no such thing as money, they don't deserve it.