C & I are swamped beyond our Mortal Energies yet she vows she has never been happier nor have I. May God have Mercy on us in this impossible Calling.
In turning the November pages, he found a scrap of paper folded in half. He liked finding the odd scrap in old books; he recently came upon a list of his mother’s in the devotional she wore to tatters. Qt milk 5 lbs potatoes cake flour 1 coconut Ovaltine
The few words had startling power-he had tasted her coconut cake, smelled the Ovaltine in her cup.
The ink on the scrap was more faded than that of the journal entries, and the handwriting distinctively different. He put the flashlight to the task.
My dearest F, I found this in my reading last evening of Mr. Dickens’ Little Dorrit, Uncle’s last book purchase before his passing. It reminds me of you.
12 December
By dint of unstinting Sacrifice amongst the People, Caitlin has been obliged to take to her bed-She has forged her own Lenten season through an exhaustion both utter and complete-I have not watched over her properly-am sick at heart for the frightful turn in her Health-She hardly sips Tea. She gives until there is nothing left in her store-I now know that it is I who must mind her store. The eldest child of O’Leary the Shoemaker, a scantling of a Girl just turned fourteen, comes to address C’s needs while I’m about the business of Doctoring-as well as minding the labors of twenty men as Wether permits. To have the fine Surgery in the basement of the new house will be a Blessing beyond telling to us & to the People.
The shocking lore about Dr. Wilde reaches even to these Remote Quarters-if a man is paying his due portion of service under God he should have no time nor even spunk to sire an Infant in every cabin as all say of him-Tis the heartless and self-serving fool who would add to the world more mouths to be fed in these desperate times.
Father Dominic has delivered the Host today on his mare Fiddler, finding ice still moored in patches along the bleak Road-ice on the Lough thinning somewhat-have brought our seven Red Hens inside lest their few Eggs be frozen-am thankful that C finds the hens an amusement though young Aoife is not amused in the least. As A has no shoes to equip her in this wether-(I am reminded of the proverb)-we have paid her father to fashion a pair with great haste.
Prior to Tuesday’s mild Thaw I had broken a slab of ice in Adam’s watering Trough on nine consecutive mornings.
A grinding hard Winter.
He laid the journal on the table and got up and cranked the window shut, petitioning God for the grace to adopt a more agreeable attitude toward the day at hand. With Fintan and Caitlin O’Donnell making themselves useful, who was he to carp about a card game?
He eyed in the far corner of the room the carton of books they’d schlepped across the Pond. They were both fearful of being stuck without a decent book, and who knew they would find everything from Virgil to Synge on the shelves of a fishing lodge?
Returning to his chair, he opened his notebook, uncapped his pen.
‘… longest.’
You and Peggy are faithfully in our prayers. Will write again soon, reporting the outcome of said ruckus.
God be with you, my brother.
Timothy
He folded the letter with the watercolor, licked the envelope he’d rounded up, laid on more Irish stamps than were probably needed, checked his watch.
Six-thirty; the sun had been up for a half hour. He wanted coffee.
He also wanted soda bread with local butter, and rhubarb compote cooked to perfection on an Aga the color of a fire engine.
That was the trouble with vacations. At home, he was perfectly content with cereal and a banana, or the occasional poached egg. Here, he was ravenous from first light onward and eating like a field hand-while his sole exercise consisted of tossing around a shoe, no pun intended.
He glanced at his wife, burrowed like a vole into the bedclothes and as dead to the world as any teenager. ‘A clean conscience,’ she said when he made envious remarks.
He dressed in waterproof running gear and stepped out to the hall, greeted by a zephyr of cooking smells from downstairs.
While Cynthia read last night, he’d used the kitchen phone to call the erstwhile secretary who served during his years as Mitford’s working priest. Then, when he retired, she didn’t. Known by some as the Genghis Khan of church secretaries, she was Velcro that wouldn’t unstick.
No, he couldn’t remember his cell phone number, because he never called it. And no, he couldn’t remember his PIN number or even if he had one.
But yes, she would try to reach Dooley and get the phone number from him, and yes, she would take care of calling the phone company ASAP, but keep in mind that she’d be put on hold ’til she was old and gray, as if she had time to waste, thank you, didn’t he know she’d been rooked into organizing the Bane and Blessing at Lord’s Chapel this year, and if it was all the same to him, would he bring her a really nice souvenir, her preference being a vase from Waterford?
If anyone could get the account unplugged, it was Emma Newland, who would go after Sprint like Turks taking Cairo.
No Pud in the wing chair; he was disappointed.
He placed the outgoing envelope in the box on the sofa table, and took a minute to examine the sepia prints of the fishermen. Boats in the background, no houses yet built on the opposite shore, a black Lab seated in front of the lineup of men in boots and tweed, their catch on display at their feet-all looked particularly happy, he thought. Perhaps one day even he would cast a line, send it singing over the water…
In another photograph, two boys in shorts and sweaters and buckled shoes, the taller one sober, the other smiling and shy, each with a large fish in one hand and a net in the other, most likely Liam and Paddy. He wondered which of the men was their father.
‘Rev’rend.’
He started.
‘I heard back last night from Corrigan.’
He saw that Liam hadn’t slept well.
‘No matches to Slade’s prints. No evidence to warrant a search of his place.’
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Somehow, it felt too easy.’
‘But they’re sending a Gard to question his whereabouts the other night.’
‘Thanks for the update.’
‘You’re going out?’
‘Need to get the heart pumping.’ As if recent events hadn’t done the job. ‘Back in half an hour, maybe less, it’s still raining.’
‘Take care,’ said Liam.
‘Don’t worry about this,’ he said. A useless comment in the world’s view, but thoroughly scriptural and all he had just then.
In the entrance hall he pulled the hood over his head, tied the drawstring, and stepped out into the misting rain. The path to Catharmore was almost completely engulfed in fog. He jogged across the gravel and around to the garden bench, where he warmed up before beginning his measured lope down the path to the lake.
Someone had said that in Ireland there’s no such thing as bad weather-only the wrong clothes. He was prepared. In his hood and jacket, he was as hidden as a turtle in its shell, yet he felt more at one with the rain than if he were naked to it. Halfway along the path, he stopped running and lifted his face to its quenching sweetness, opened his mouth to it like a child.