by Amy Harmon
“Miss Gallagher?” Robbie called from the foyer. Not Robbie. Kevin. It was Kevin. I tried to answer him, to tell him where I was, but my voice shook and broke. I wiped desperately at my eyes, trying to find my composure, but I was unsuccessful. When Kevin found me in the library, I pointed up at the picture, overcome.
“Uh . . . well, that’s a picture of the Lady of the Lough,” he explained, trying not to look at me and call attention to my tears. “She’s famous around here. As famous as an eighty-year-old ghost can be, I suppose. The story goes that she only lived at Garvagh Glebe for a little while. She drowned in Lough Gill. Her husband was devastated and spent years painting pictures of her. This is the one he kept. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? She was a lovely woman.” He hadn’t noticed the resemblance, proof that people weren’t very observant. Or maybe I wasn’t especially lovely now.
“She never returned?” I whimpered, my voice a childlike cry. Jim Donnelly had said the same thing.
“No, ma’am. She, uh, she drowned. So she never returned,” he stammered, handing me a handkerchief. I grabbed it, desperate to stem my tears.
“Ma’am, are you all right?”
“It’s just sad,” I whispered. I turned my back on the picture. She never returned. I never returned. God help me.
“Yes. But it was a long time ago, miss.”
I couldn’t tell him it was only a week and a handful of days.
“Mr. Cohen told me you lost someone recently. I’m sorry, ma’am,” he added softly. Kindly.
I nodded, and he hovered nearby until I regained control.
“I know what Mr. Cohen said, Robbie. But I’m not selling Garvagh Glebe. I’m going to be staying here. Living here. I still want you to remain on as caretaker. I will raise your salary for any inconvenience that causes, but we won’t be renting out the rooms. Not for a while . . . all right?”
He nodded enthusiastically.
“I’m a writer. The quiet will be good for me, but I can’t take care of this place by myself. I am also expecting . . . a child . . . and will need someone to come in and clean and occasionally cook. I tend to get lost in my work.”
“I already have someone who cooks and cleans when we have guests. I’m sure she would be glad to have regular employment.”
I nodded and turned away.
“Miss? You called me Robbie. It’s . . . Kevin, ma’am,” he said gently.
“Kevin,” I whispered. “I’m sorry, Kevin. I won’t forget again. And please, call me Anne. Anne Smith is my married name.”
I forgot again. I kept calling Kevin Robbie. He always quietly corrected me, but it never seemed to bother him too much. I was a guest that slowly became a ghost, flitting through the halls, not disturbing anyone or anything. Kevin was patient with me and stayed out of my way for the most part. The barn behind the house had been converted into living quarters, and when he wasn’t working, he was there, letting me haunt the big house alone. He checked on me every day and made sure the girl from town—Jemma—kept the house clean and the fridge stocked. When my things arrived from the States, he unloaded boxes and assisted me in setting up a new office in my old room. He marveled at the books I’d written, the languages they’d been translated into, the framed bestseller lists, and the random awards, and I was thankful for him, even though I know he thought I was a little crazy.
I waded out into the lough at least once a day, reciting Yeats and pleading with the fates to send me back. I sent Kevin to buy a boat from Jim Donnelly—I didn’t dare approach him—and rowed it out into the middle of the lake. I stayed all day, trying to recreate the moment I’d fallen through time. I willed the mist to roll in, but the August sun did not cooperate. The beautiful days played dumb, and the wind and the water were silent, pretending innocence, and no matter how much I recited and raged, the lough denied me. I started plotting ways to get my hands on human ashes, but even clouded by desperate grief, I recognized that if the ashes had played a role, it was most likely because they were Eoin’s.
About six weeks after I’d moved into Garvagh Glebe, a car rolled through the gates that were erected sometime in the last eighty years and proceeded up the lane, shuddering to a stop in front of the house. I sat in my office, pretending to work but staring out the window, and I watched as two women climbed from the car, one young and one old, and approached the front door.
“Robbie!” I yelled, and then caught myself. His name was Kevin. And he was mowing the acres of grass behind the house. Jemma had already come and gone. The door chimed. I considered ignoring the visitors. I didn’t need to answer the door.
But I knew them.
It was Maeve O’Toole, old again, and Deirdre Fallon from the library in Dromahair. For whatever reason, they’d come to call, and they’d made time for me once, when I’d needed help. I should return the favor. I smoothed my hair and thanked heaven that I had found the will to shower and dress that morning, something I didn’t always do.
Then I answered the door.
16 July 1922
Anne was right. The Free State Army fired on the Four Courts building in the early morning hours of 28 June, placing field guns at strategic locations and shooting high-explosive shells into the buildings where the anti-Treaty republicans were hunkered down. An ultimatum had been sent to the Four Courts and was ignored, and Mick had no choice but to attack. The British government was threatening to send troops to handle it if he didn’t, and no one wanted Free State troops and British troops fighting alongside each other against the republicans. The buildings occupied by republicans on O’Connell Street and elsewhere in the city were also blockaded to prevent anti-Treaty forces from running to assist the besieged Four Courts. The hope was that when the republicans saw that actual artillery was being used, they would give in and give up.
The siege lasted three days and ended with an explosion in the Four Courts that destroyed precious documents and brought the whole debacle to an end. Good men died, just like Anne predicted. Cathal Brugha wouldn’t surrender. Mick wept when he told me. He and Brugha didn’t see eye to eye much of the time, but Cathal was a patriot, and there is little Mick respects more than that.
I stood in front of the burned-out shell of the Four Courts today. The stolen munitions kept exploding, making it impossible for the firemen to put out the blaze. They had to let it burn itself out. I wonder if all of Ireland will have to burn itself out as well. The copper dome is gone, the building destroyed, and what the hell for?
An agreement was forged in May between the republicans and the Free State leaders to defer the final decision on the Treaty until after the election and after the Free State Constitution had been published. But the compromise devolved before it could gain any traction; Mick says Whitehall got wind of it and didn’t like the sound of a delayed decision on the Treaty. Too much was at stake, too much money had been spent, too much ground covered. The six counties in Northern Ireland not included in the Treaty have descended into bloodshed and chaos. The sectarian violence is unfathomable. Catholics are being slaughtered and run from their homes, and new orphans are being made every day.
My heart is numb to it all. I have an orphan of my own to worry about. Eoin sleeps in my bed and shadows me wherever I go. Brigid has tried to console him, but he refuses to be alone with her. Brigid’s health is failing. Stress and loss have made us all phantoms of ourselves. Mrs. O’Toole has stepped in to watch him when I cannot take him with me.
Mick called two Sundays after Anne disappeared, asking about her health, seeking her counsel, and I had to tell him she was gone. He shouted into the phone like I had lost my mind and showed up four hours later in an armoured car, Fergus and Joe with him, ready to do war. I am no longer equipped to do war, and when he demanded answers, I found myself weeping in his arms, telling him what Liam had done.
“Oh, Tommy, no,” he wailed. “Oh no.”
“She’s gone, Mick. She was worried about you, and she’d written out a warning and tucked it away. I think she intended to giv
e it to me or Joe, hoping we’d be able to keep you safe. But Brigid found it. She thought she was plotting against you. Brigid told Liam, and he dragged Anne out to the lough. Robbie thinks he intended to kill her and hide her body in the marsh. Robbie tried to stop him. He shot him, but it was too late.” I didn’t bother with the whole truth, with all of Liam’s sins. I couldn’t condemn myself or Anne to Mick’s disbelief or burden him with distrust.
He stayed with me until the following day, and we drank ourselves into a stupor. Neither of us was comforted, but for a while I forgot, and when they left, Fergus at the wheel, Joe beside him, and Mick hungover in the backseat, I slept for fifteen hours. He gave me that, and I was grateful for the brief reprieve.
I don’t know if Mick put out a hit on him, or if Fergus carried it out on his own because he was worried about Liam’s volatility, but Liam Gallagher’s body washed up on the strand in Sligo three days after Mick came to Garvagh Glebe. Mick was always pragmatic and principled in the terror he unleashed. I saw him scream in the faces of his squad and threaten them with discharge if they even hinted at a revenge hit. His tactics had always been about bringing Great Britain to her knees, not reprisals. The only time I’d suspected Mick of retaliation was when the Irishman who pointed out Seán Mac Diarmada to British soldiers after the Rising was found dead. Mick had seen the man do it, and he’d never forgotten the betrayal.
We haven’t spoken of Liam Gallagher’s death. We haven’t spoken of many things. Brigid said Anne wrote about an assassination attempt—she remembers something about August and flowers and a trip to Cork—but the pages disintegrated in the lough. It’s not much to go on, and Mick doesn’t want to hear it. He feels responsible for Anne’s death, just another weight he carries, and I cannot relieve him of it, try as I might. Robbie feels responsible too. We are all convinced we could have saved her, and I am devastated that I have lost her. We are united in our self-loathing.
Last week, while setting traps, Eamon found a small red boat in the bog. It had been washed up onto a muddy shelf, and he dragged it home. He found an odd satchel pushed up under the seat, a corked urn and a leather journal inside. Both had been protected from the worst of the elements. He read the first page of the journal and realised right away that the book was mine. The urn and the satchel were Anne’s; I have no doubt. I put the boat in the barn, tying it to the rafters to keep Eoin out of it, and gave Eamon a finder’s fee for bringing his treasures to me.
I puzzled over the journal, trying to ascertain how it could have been inside a bag in the marsh when it already sat high on the shelf in my library. I was convinced my copy would not be there. But it was. The pages of my book weren’t yellowed, and the leather was suppler, but it was there. I held the aged journal in my left hand and the newer one in my right, confounded, my mind tripping and tumbling, trying to formulate a plausible explanation. There wasn’t one. I set them side by side on the shelf, almost expecting one to dissolve into the other, restoring balance and oneness to the universe. But they lay against each other, past and present, today and tomorrow, unaffected and unaltered by my limited understanding. Perhaps at some point, the two books will become one again, each existing in their own moment, just like Anne’s ring.
I walk along the beach every day, watching for her. I can’t help myself. Eoin walks with me, his gaze continually returning to the glassy surface. He asked me if his mother is in the lough. I told him no. He asked me if she had crossed the lough into another place, like he did in his adventures. I said that I believed she had, and it seemed to reassure him. It occurs to me that Anne might have created the stories to comfort Eoin in the event that she couldn’t.
“You won’t go too, will you, Doc?” Eoin whispered, taking my hand. “You won’t disappear into the water and leave me behind?”
I promised him I wouldn’t.
“Maybe we can both go,” he mused, looking up into my face, trying to ease my pain. “Maybe we can get in that boat in the barn and go find her.”
I laughed then, grateful I’d had the foresight to put the boat where he couldn’t reach it. But my laughter didn’t ease the ache in my chest.
“No, Eoin. We can’t,” I said gently, and he didn’t argue.
Even if I knew how, even if we could both follow her across the lough into another time, we could not go. Eoin must grow up in this day, in this age, and have a son who grows up in the next for Anne to exist at all. Some sequences must unfold in their natural order. Of that much, I am sure. Anne will need her grandfather even more than Eoin needs a mother. He has me. Anne has no one. So Eoin will have to wait, and I have promised to wait with him, even if it means I will never see her again.
T. S.
25
LOVE’S LONELINESS
The mountain throws a shadow,
Thin is the moon’s horn;
What did we remember
Under the ragged thorn?
Dread has followed longing,
And our hearts are torn.
—W. B. Yeats
Deirdre had a large canvas bag over her shoulder, and she clung to the strap nervously, clearly standing on my doorstep against her will. Maeve looked perfectly comfortable as she gazed at me through her thick glasses, unblinking.
“Kevin says you always call him Robbie,” she said without preamble.
Deirdre cleared her throat and stuck out her hand. “Hello, Anne. I’m Deirdre Fallon from the library, remember? And you’ve met Maeve. We thought we’d welcome you to Dromahair officially since you’ve decided to stay. I didn’t realize you were Anne Gallagher, the author! I’ve made sure we have all your books in stock. There’s a waiting list for your titles. Everyone in town is so excited you’re living here in our little village.” Each sentence was punctuated with enthusiasm, but I sensed she was more nervous than anything.
I clasped her hand briefly and ushered them both inside. “Come in, please.”
“I’ve always loved the manor,” Deirdre gushed, her eyes on the wide staircase and the huge chandelier that hovered over our heads. “Every Christmas Eve, the caretakers open the house to the town. There’s dancing and stories, and Father Christmas always comes for the children. I got my first kiss here, under the mistletoe.”
“I’d like tea in the library,” Maeve demanded, not waiting for an invitation and veering through the foyer toward the large French doors that separated the library from the entrance hall.
“M-Maeve,” Deirdre stuttered, shocked at the old woman’s impudence.
“I don’t have time for niceties, Deirdre,” Maeve snapped back. “I could die at any moment. And I don’t want to die before I get to the good stuff.”
“It’s all right, Deirdre,” I murmured. “Maeve knows her way around Garvagh Glebe. If she wants tea in the library, then she shall have tea in the library. Please make yourself comfortable, and I’ll get the tea.”
I already had a kettle on; I drank peppermint tea all day long to soothe the nausea that was now my constant companion. The doctor in Sligo said it should ease in the second trimester, but I was almost twenty weeks, and it hadn’t ebbed at all. I’d wondered if it wasn’t nerves more than anything.
Jemma had shown me where the tea service was—a service I’d been convinced I would never use—and I arranged a tray with more enthusiasm than I’d felt in two months. When I joined Deirdre and Maeve in the library, I expected them to be seated in the small grouping of chairs surrounding a low coffee table. They were standing beneath the portrait instead, their heads tipped back, quietly arguing.
I set the tray down on the table and cleared my throat.
“Tea?” I said.
They both turned to look at me, Deirdre sheepish, Maeve triumphant.
“What did I tell you, Deirdre?” Maeve said, satisfaction ringing in her voice.
Deirdre looked at me and looked back at the portrait. Then she looked at me again. Her eyes widened. “It’s uncanny . . . I’ll give you that, Maeve O’Toole.”
“Tea?”
I repeated. I sat down and spread a napkin over my lap, waiting for the women to join me. Deirdre abandoned the portrait immediately, but Maeve was slower to follow. Her eyes ran up and down the shelves, as if she were looking for something in particular.
“Anne?” she mused.
“Yes?”
“There was a whole row of the doctor’s journals in this library at one time. Where are they now? Do you know? I don’t see as well as I once did.”
I stood, my heart pounding, and walked to her side.
“They were on the top shelf. I dusted those books at least once a week for six years.” She extended the cane above her head and rapped it against shelves, as high as she could stretch. “Up there. Do you see them?”
“I would have to climb the ladder, Maeve.” There was a ladder on runners that could move from one end of the shelves to the other, but I hadn’t felt any compunction to climb since moving to Garvagh Glebe.
“Well?” Maeve sniffed. “What are ya waitin’ for?”
“For God’s sake, Maeve,” Deirdre huffed. “You are being incredibly rude. Come sit down and drink your tea before this poor woman has you bodily removed from her home.”
Maeve grumbled, but she turned away from the shelves and did as she was told. I followed her back to the coffee table, my thoughts on the books on the highest shelf. Deirdre poured, making polite conversation as she did, asking me if I was enjoying the manor, the lough, the weather, my solitude. I answered briefly, vaguely, saying all the expected things without really saying anything at all.
Maeve harrumphed into her teacup, and Deirdre threw her a warning glare.
I set my cup down. “Maeve, if you have something to say, please do. You’ve obviously come for a reason.”