by Paul Butler
“Well,” I said after a long sigh, “I suppose I had an instinct about it.”
“A bad instinct, one that will get you into trouble.”
“Yes,” I conceded. The moonlight glinted on a corner of the music box nearest Louisa’s thumb. “I’ll be more careful.” She was right, after all; it was an extraordinary thing to do, wasn’t it? What kind of fool would go for a walk in the dead of night with a stranger, a thief? Father had never been as bad as that, and my mother had never admitted to such foolishness with him. So what if he had a secret key to my memories and my imagination? That made him more dangerous, didn’t it? Then the thought struck me that if my decision had been so indefensible, my conduct so full of lapses and leaks, I had better cover my tracks as quickly as possible.
“Listen Louisa,” I said taking her shoulder and looking into her eyes, “you mustn’t mention this to anyone.”
“Of course not,” she said, slightly hurt. “I’m not a tattle-tale.”
“I know you’re not,” I replied, letting my hand slip from her.
“But you might tell me why these things happen to you and not to me.”
I let out a soft laugh. “You don’t want them to happen to you.” I let my fingers rest on hers and on the music box beneath them. “You have plenty of time for admirers, mysterious presents, and adventures of every kind.”
“People always say that,” she said, exasperated. “It doesn’t mean anything. Next month, next year, I won’t even be the same person. I want things to happen now.” She stared at me a moment, defiant. “Tell me this: if it’s so certain that all these wonderful things will happen if only we’re patient, then why did you go out in the middle of the night with a complete stranger just because he banged on the door?”
I struggled for an answer, shaking my head. “You’re not me, Louisa. You have better chances in life. You’ll meet more people. Travel. People will seek you out.”
“No, they won’t,” she said, opening the music box, easing my fingers off as she did so. “I’m no freer than you. Less so, in fact.” She stared down at the music box as it chimed the melody. “This wasn’t for me, was it?” she whispered staring at the slowly rotating butterfly. She didn’t look up.
“No,” I admitted after a pause. “It was him, the man who followed me home. I looked at it in the shop. I think he stole it.”
Louisa looked up at me. “You see? Who would steal for me?”
Tommy
My stomach swirls with bad rum and stale beer. As the steam rises around my breeches I push myself off the railing again and gaze up at the Cross of the Church of England Cathedral. I’m dizzy, watching it scrape against the thin clouds stretching like wisps of hair over the great dome of the sky.
My hand takes hold of the rail once more and I let my head sink into my chest. One more deep breath and I’m off, chasing up the hill like a gamecock outrunning the bullet. I know well enough by now what happens when blood and this much liquor mingle, and I can feel the blackout approaching. My only hope is to make the stables soon before it happens, otherwise I’ll be found on the streets.
I grab a tree on the northwest corner, or the tree grabs me; we have come across each other so quickly it’s hard to tell. I hold the bark to my face – it’s moist and slimy though the air has been parched and hot all day. The lower leaves tickle my ears and I think that, yes, I can sleep in your embrace all night, dear tree, all night if only I could prop myself up against you. I think of my young lady, young Kathleen of the genteel voice and the learned reading. She, the nobility of Ireland if only she knew it, fallen like me through generations of ruin and slavery, through the English whip and the musket, into ignominious peasanthood. I wanted to go to see her again tonight, but fear and the bottle took hold of me instead. In a way, I’m not sorry. I’ve already got away with so much, and our last parting was too sweet to tamper with.
Time to go. I push myself off again and hurtle into the street, senses scattered on the breeze. Anyone who saw me might think I was too drunk to think. But it’s my body that’s drunk, not my mind. The husk that traps me has gone numb and I can no longer control its limbs. But buzzing somewhere deep inside my head, like a summer wasp in a thicket, is an intuitive sense any judge or politician would envy. I am certain of this even as the hill tips upward to meet me and I’m suddenly face down in the gravel. My strong hands are pushing me up again before I even know it, and I’m confident I still have time. My legs carry me swiftly, keeping me close to the curving wall of the Gower Street Methodist church. I can see myself as others would see me if there were anyone here to see; I am the twilight between man and beast; I am like one of those gimlet-eyed stray dogs, intent but cowering as they scheme for their next crust.
Breathing hard I find I’m clear of the shadow of the Gower Street church. Now I see the Catholic Cathedral rising over the sleeping city, its stones like halo dust, catching the midnight moon. I cross Queen’s Road and start climbing the hill. There are other ways to O’Brien’s stables, but I must climb the hill now while my limbs still obey. A glint of white plays on the arched windows and I imagine an invisible cord drawing me forth into the body of the massive edifice. I almost laugh at the feeling, the idea of a late bid for my decaying soul, and I accept the help that I need. A vision has flashed through my mind that makes collapse unthinkable – Kathleen stumbling upon my crumpled, senseless body as she goes about some morning task for her mistress. I will commit myself to piety and penance to avoid such an outcome, at least for the moment.
The wind shifts through the trees and from somewhere near my shoulder I can hear a soft cooing as though a dove hovers there, guiding the way. I stumble into a wall of a house to the right. My elbow bangs the window – hard enough to wake those inside? I hope not – but I struggle to my feet and climb again, the cooing of the dove in my ear.
Reaching Military Road at last, I cross in a ragged circle into the Cathedral courtyard. My feet ache from pain of the cobbles and I wonder why I’m doing this. I just need to head westward straightaway to get to O’Brien’s place, and I’ve spent so much time hating the church of my birth – this very night in the Barley Sickle, I was spitting out my contempt for Catholic clergy and congregation to all who would listen. What would those grinning, nudging sons of Englishmen think of me now if they saw me gazing up to the façade of pale blue stone, eyes watering in some profound yet unknown grief?
I find myself climbing the steps toward the great doorway, my head spinning now like a lost comet. As my hand takes hold of the iron handle, the wall above me changes. I am gazing up at a tapestry of white, silky feathers. This is some new form of transubstantiation, the cooing dove whispers in my ear; I have passed a test set before me and now the gates of heaven will open. Soft fragments of wall-turned-feather descend like snowflakes, spiralling down onto my shoulders as I sink to my knees on the cold stone, my eyes leaking tears of sweet joy. My ears have become muffled by layer upon layer of feathery softness, and the sensation draws me back to a time before memory. I am sinking into a mythic nest of dreams, certain that I will awake to a shining new dawn.
Seven
Kathleen
Even the early mornings were warm now and I was glad it would be cooler inside the great Cathedral. It was decent of Mrs. Stevens, I reminded myself, to encourage me to go to Mass. She made quite a ceremony of my “devotions,” as she called them, and even inflected the word, I thought, with an Irish accent.
“Now, Kathleen,” she had said to me yesterday morning, laying some needlework upon her lap, “tomorrow it is Sunday, and I know you have your own devotions to attend to. Just let me know what time the early service will be, and I and Louisa will be happy to fend for ourselves for the duration.”
Her voice had been hushed and her head tipped to once side, echoing some notion of Catholic piety she may have read about. I sensed she wished to sample the aura of my faith vicariousl
y. Her small eyes were alive to any minor changes of expression on my face and her pink tongue appeared for a brief moment from between her pale lips.
Now, as I climbed toward the Cathedral, catching sight of the arched windows glinting with the risen sun, I could understand her. This was a city of faith. Churches were everywhere. Like crowds of football supporters thronging into the greens and grounds of London, everyone owed allegiance somewhere. Catholics like me streamed up the hill. The Methodists crowded into Gower Street Church below me. The Salvation Army, which I was surprised to find here at all, marched and banged their tambourines through streets in the dark hours of debauchery. It was as though every splinter of Christian faith had converged upon this place to do battle of prayer and observance. It was natural we should all envy each other a little.
When I reached the street I could see a commotion. Many people – men in suits, women in patterned dresses and sober hats – were milling around the entrance as usual, but one thick cluster made up solely of men had gathered on the steps. It seemed as I went into the Cathedral courtyard that they were shielding something from view; I had seen something similar at the races in Dublin when a horse had broken its leg and needed shooting.
As I came close to the steps, there was movement within the clump and a retreating surge. A red-faced gentleman grappled with a dark form that had emerged from within the group. I took a backward step myself, fearing that some injured or sun-maddened animal was in danger of escaping. But the snarling snout and open jaws of my imagination gave way to a hand, gripped tight around the gentleman’s belt and I could see that man, not beast, was the danger.
Two men, one on each side, pounced upon the assailant, levering him from the red-faced gentleman who broke free and stood adjusting his clothing, his back to a small gathering of shocked ladies. Meanwhile the man-beast was subdued; the gentlemen on each side held his arms behind his back while forcing his face to the concrete. Others held down his legs.
Only now, as the ladies walked a wide circle up the steps and through the Cathedral doorway, did I catch sight of a portion of the pinioned man’s face. Following the blue, bulging vein of his forehead to the dark brown eye staring into the ground, I gathered a picture that shook me beyond understanding. It was him – he who had imitated my father’s whistle, he who had talked with me about Huckleberry Finn, he who had annoyed me with his rash stupidity and criminal tendencies. As he twisted and turned to escape the hands of unfriendly strangers, I recognized also the greasy beard, the uncombed hair. In my chest I felt the rising of a wild and unpredictable fire.
“Stop it!” I cried. “Take your hands off him!”
A shrill note sang in the silence. My ears went numb. The gentlemen stared at me with startled, blinking eyes. The world had ceased to turn; only a vagabond pigeon which flapped into the blue above the convent rooftops didn’t seem to know it. Tommy Fitzpatrick’s moist dark eyes gazed up at me from the concrete. Something had ripped inside my lungs, and my breathing was rapid; I realized I must have achieved some volume.
Slowly the universe creaked back into motion. One of the men let go and stood up straight. Another mumbled something. Hands lifted off Tommy’s crumbled clothes like seagulls departing a rubbish dump. The men shuffled off together, joining the few onlooking parishioners at the top of the steps. There was a scornful smile or two from among that group but I didn’t care as I was too angry; angry at those presumptuous, insolent hands, the license the gentlemen had given themselves to manhandle someone they assumed to be inferior, angry at the smug, overdressed appearance of these people and the way they would no doubt kneel and fawn before the altar within, and most of all angry at the now grinning fool, the dishevelled clown, still prostrate at the base of the Cathedral steps.
He winked at me, and it was all I could do not to rush up and slap him.
Tommy
In the heart of a woman, anger is kindling for love. Though her eyes were fiery and her tongue was sharp, in her mind she possessed me already.
“What a pitiful sight!” she proclaimed as I stumbled to my feet. But I saw tears behind the fury, disappointment beneath the contempt. And when she turned to leave me, she walked away from the very building she had climbed all the way up the hill to enter. For me she had changed her plans. She had scolded my assailants and now spurned the opportunity to worship at their church.
“Don’t leave me,” I called out following at a canter and overtaking her. “I have to thank you for taking my part back there.”
She stopped and turned to face me.
“I don’t know why I bothered,” she said, an ocean of resentment swirling in her deep green eyes.
“Let me thank you properly,” I said, feeling suddenly breathless and dizzy. I wondered if I was still drunk. “Let me take you for a walk. It’s such a fine Sunday morning, and you don’t seem to want the Mass anymore.”
She looked to the entrance. “How could I go in there after the spectacle you made of us both? And what kind of a pleasant Sunday walk would I have with a man too drunk to find his own bed at night?”
Inwardly I rejoiced at her words. She was already talking to me like a wife. But I bowed my head in penitence.
“I was searching,” I began, realizing my words were stumbling for a half-truth, at least, and that this might be the way to peel back her anger and expose the tenderness that must lay beneath it. My eyes had fixed upon the Cathedral doorway. “I was searching for something last night.”
When I looked at her, her expression had already changed.
“Would it not be better to do your searching when sober?” she asked calmly, almost softly in fact.
“It would,” I said, my throat suddenly dry, my face avoiding hers. This was a trick wasn’t it? I was surely just reeling her in? With growing alarm I told myself this was the case. But when I felt a warm tear creeping into my eye, I realized that my body’s reflexes had taken over, that I was unable to distinguish between sentiments true and false.
Kathleen was much moved. She put her warm hand over my forearm.
“Let’s go on your walk then.”
I shambled along beside her as we went in a circle beyond the Cathedral, around the grand buildings to the north. I felt shy and strange, the sun spinning through the trees, flickering in my eyes. A bearded man passed us, a merchant from his bowler hat and silk-edged waistcoat; he studiously avoided my eyes and nodded imperceptibly at Kathleen. I tried to imagine how we looked together. Kathleen, in a neat grey jacket and blouse and dark skirt, was the image of a modest, pretty serving girl.
I? My trousers clung in patches to my leg, held by a glue of sweat, and possibly worse. A film of grease matted the hair on my face. My nose had run in the night and I did not possess a handkerchief to wipe it. I was a creature of the darkness forced out into the light and it must have been easy for any onlooker to tell I was out of my element. I knew I should offer Kathleen my arm but I was afraid my scent would repel her.
“So, Mr. Fitzpatrick,” she began suddenly. “Is this a habit of yours?”
“What?” I asked, intrigued by her teasing tone, “is what a habit?
“Sleeping in the open,” she replied. I thought I sensed a note of sarcasm.
I shook my head as though offended.
“Of course not.”
“What do you intend to do about it?” she asked.
“Do?”
“You must have been shocked to find yourself in such a state. Don’t tell me you weren’t.”
“It was . . . I must have been ill.”
There was quiet save for a steady tramp of footfalls. We had begun on the path through fields which would eventually lead to O’Brien’s farm.
“What?” I said when her silence became too much for me.
She looked at me wide-eyed, a smile upon her lips.
“What?” she echoed.
“I said I must have been ill. My father suffered from fits. I have them myself from time to time.”
We tramped along once more. A butterfly fluttered its wings close to my nose. I made to grab it but she stopped me, catching hold of my hand.
“Don’t,” she said. We had stopped. She turned to face me. “Why would you want to harm an innocent creature?”
The butterfly twirled around my head and then danced off into the yellowed undergrowth near a sun-bleached fence post.
“I wasn’t thinking,” I said.
“No,” she said seriously. “People don’t.”
She turned back to the path and we began walking again, more slowly than before.
“Tell me about your father and his fits,” she said.
I wasn’t sure she really meant this, but I saw an opportunity to twist the subject around. There was something in me that needed to be unburdened, and the connection between this young woman and myself seemed to thrive on disclosure.
“My father left Ireland as a boy,” I started abruptly. “It was the darkest year of the hunger – 1846.”