He had known for a long time in his head, and knew now in his marrowbones-his spirit was dry as dust. He hadn’t completely realized that ’til this moment. Dry from giving out for months and even years, and failing to take in.
Create in me a clean heart, oh, God, renew a right spirit within me.
It was a prayer borrowed from the psalmist, but too long to sum his great need. It was a breath prayer he was after.
Clean me out, fill me up, please.
Running again. The woods on either side fell away; the lake opened itself to him-gray water devouring gray clouds, immense.
He could see the absurdity, even the comedy of his feeling about the bridge afternoon, see that it didn’t matter enough to be resisted.
Clean me out, fill me up, clean me out…
He drew the smell of water on water into his lungs, felt the fulsome air enter the tissues in a way he’d never experienced, heard his living breath suck in, pump out…
He reached the shore, heart hammering, and stood looking over the great swell of the lough, palms lifted to the rain.
He saw something, then, moving in the heavy mist beyond the reedbeds, someone walking his way and nearly upon him. Probably one of their gung-ho fishing guys. Without his glasses, which would be no better than windshields without wipers, he was clueless. He threw up his hand, didn’t look to see if there was a response, and headed toward the path.
‘Reverend.’
He turned. Anna was wearing a raincoat, the hood pulled close about her face.
‘I hope I didn’t startle you,’ she said. It’s my day off.’
‘Not at all.’
‘Well, then, let’s hope it clears up and gives you sunshine.’
‘Reverend…’
Why harp on this foolishness of having people call him Tim, let them call him what they bloody well pleased.
‘I can’t call you Tim,’ she said. ‘I did it the once to be brave and modern, but I’m not at all modern and certainly not brave.’
‘I’m sure one must be very brave to operate a fishing lodge!’ This was no place for a jocular chat; he wanted coffee.
‘Could we… could I possibly talk with you? I won’t keep you, I’m so sorry to ask. I’ve been wanting… but I didn’t know…’
He saw a kind of agony in her face. ‘Of course. Where shall we…’
‘Our fishing hut just there, in the beeches. God bless you. Thank you. I won’t keep you.’
‘You lead, I’ll follow.’
The hut was a small, parged building with a couple of stone steps to the door and a single room. A table with anglers’ magazines and an ashtray, a few books on a shelf, a candle in a bottle, chairs, a mantel clock stopped at twelve minutes past three. Rain streaked the windows.
‘We could sit,’ she said, anxious.
‘Good idea.’ He untied his hood, shook water from his jacket, hung it on the back of a chair. She hung her raincoat on a hook by the door and sat across the table from him.
‘I didn’t know I would see you this morning, ’ she said, ‘but I was hoping… I’m so sorry to do it like this.’ Tears welled in her eyes.
‘Tell you what-no more apologies. Not for anything.’
She put her hands over her face and wept, silent.
As a curate, he’d tried using words against tears, yet something he thought wise often came out as banal. Later, he learned to be silent, praying.
Rain pecked the roof; she wiped her eyes with the palms of her hands and looked at him. She was brave after all, he thought.
‘I don’t know where to begin.’
‘Begin anywhere.’
‘Yes.’ She was silent again, looking at her hands on the table, palms down. ‘My mother died when I was born. That has always haunted me, I always felt I had to apologize to my father, somehow, and of course there can be no making up for such a loss. I think he loved her, but more than that, I think he needed her, yes, that’s what it was, he needed her. She was a kind and lovely woman, everyone said, very deep-and they say I look like her. There are long days when I miss her; ’t is a punishing want, and yet I never knew her at all.’ She looked at him, appealing.
‘I never saw what was needed to be a mother, I had no model for it. I bungled the job.’ She turned away. ‘But I love my child.’ She wept again, soundless.
He drew a bandanna from his pocket and handed it to her and she took it and wiped her eyes and blew her nose. ‘I’ll wash it,’ she said, earnest. ‘Bella is hurting and I can’t reach her-she won’t let me in. She was angry with me for leaving her Da, she was only four at the time, but a very bright and deep and sensitive four, she begged me to stay with him, but I could not. Niall was very loose with his affections those years we were married, and I couldn’t bear what it was doing to all of us. When Koife-Bella-and I left, we lived for a time in Dublin, but it wasn’t a good place for her to come up, and so we moved here to be with Da in what’s now the kitchen wing. He had bought the oul’ place long ago when Liam’s mother had to let it go. Da had invested his boxing money in a haulage business in Dublin. It did very well-seventeen lorries on the move; in good times, day and night together. When someone bought him out, he came back to Lough Arrow, just five kilometers from where he lived as a lad.
‘I hadn’t a car and couldn’t get about for work-I heard that Catharmore was looking for someone to cook and clean. Da said, don’t speak th’ name William Donavan in that house, and I didn’t, and I was taken on. Lough Arrow was the terrible opposite of Dublin, I suppose-Bella hated it here, there were no children about, and she was very lonely. Until she entered school, my da watched out for her during the day. I was working up th’ hill from early morning ’til late afternoon, and at Broughadoon at night. ’t was my dream to turn th’ wreck of it into a fishing lodge to make us a living, so I didn’t give Bella the attention she craved. She was but six when she took up the fiddle; ’t was her boon companion and she was brilliant at it, it came as natural as the waxing of the moon.
‘She left to live with her father when she was twelve. I couldn’t stop her, Reverend, it’s what she wanted, she was fierce to do it. She and Niall have the bond of music, which is her life-but I never forgave myself for letting her go.’
‘God gave me a boy to raise,’ he said. ‘We’ll talk about it later, I hope, but I tell you now that it’s not too late-no matter how deep the wound.’
She wiped her eyes with the bandanna. ‘I’ve lived for years thinking it’s too late. Too late for Bella and me, too late for Liam and his mother, too late for… too late.’
‘Never,’ he said. ‘Please know that. When did you leave Catharmore?’
‘I continued working up the hill after Paddy and Seamus came. She wanted me to stay because I did very personal things for her-washed out her undies, altered her clothes to keep them in fashion, moved her jewelry around to various hiding places in the house-sometimes but a step ahead of Paddy, who was after selling it.’ She lowered her eyes. ‘I don’t know whether I should tell you everything, Reverend. I want to tell you, but it is so frightening to tell everything.’
‘I understand.’
‘Each morning at first light, I pray the Lord’s Prayer, and often the decade of Sorrowful Mysteries-but Liam and I stopped going to Mass long ago. He gave up so much that reminded him of his father, and when I moved here, I told myself it was the work that was on me seven days a week. Liam says we’re more than lapsed, Reverend, we’re fallen altogether. As a girl, I wished so terribly to satisfy God…’
‘A good Scot named George MacDonald said God is impossible to satisfy but easy to please.’
‘I think I’ve forgotten how to do pleasing things-except for our guests.’ She looked away from him. ‘All these years, there’s been no one to… to…’