Four Letters of Love

by Niall Williams

  ‘Don’t say too much now to your father. He’ll be tired.’

  Muiris opened the door with a swing and was inside before his wife could meet him in the hallway. ‘Well, are the men home?’ His face in the kitchen doorway was a red moon tilting and joviality flushed his expression to the point just before laughter. He touched his son’s shoulder and squeezed it.

  ‘Well, what did she say? Was she astonished?’

  ‘They’re tired from the boat, let them eat.’

  ‘She nearly fainted. Didn’t she, Nick? Nearly passed out in the shop.’

  The laughter escaped through every pore of the Master, it bubbled freely out of him and he sat down to hear more.

  ‘Nearly passed out?’

  ‘She did. Nearly. Nearly dropped on the floor when she saw me. Ran up and kissed me. Told her about your man here and she kissed him too. Good job there was nobody in the shop.’

  ‘Good job.’ The father nodded, and feeling with a little surprise the tears tilt out of his eyes.

  ‘Not that there’s ever anyone in there I’d say. We didn’t see one the whole time. Did we, Nick? Not a single customer.’

  ‘They ran when they saw you in there, maybe,’ Margaret cut in and lifted the dirty dishes above them to the sink where she could hold her lip with her teeth and wait to see if her husband caught the scent of hopeless love. Look at him, she thought, glancing back at Nicholas while her son passed fragments of the story to his father. Look at him, look at the pale washed-out look of him as he sits there, as if all the blood and feeling of him were elsewhere. Look at the half-bowed head, the forward stoop in his neck, the way his lips seem to quiver on no words and only the roses in his nostrils hold firm the picture of her.

  ‘Every day?’

  ‘Every day. She said he could either take care of the shop himself or close it, she didn’t give a damn which, she was coming out with us.’

  ‘Good girl.’

  ‘She can drive his van. We went out to Oughterard.’

  ‘My God.’

  ‘Didn’t get back until . . . Some times we had, didn’t we, Nick?’

  ‘Any talk of her . . . Might she be thinking of making a visit anytime soon? Did she say?’ Muiris had let the image of his daughter swoon up before him, and with it the sweet fantasy of the family all being back together, complete, unified and isolated, beyond the press of time. The sentiment of it was like a spring river on which he whooshed along, an involuntary passenger of the feeling.

  ‘You boys go on and let the Master have his tea. Ye can talk later. Go on. Let ye get tidied up. Had they no water for washing in Galway?’

  Margaret ushered the men from the room and set the table before her husband.

  ‘What did you ask them that for? Isn’t she only gone? Isn’t she only married and you’re asking is she coming back? Making a right fool of yourself, that’s what you’re doing.’ Her voice was sharp and in pieces, as if the silence she had kept in her mouth were a plate of glass and was now spat out in shards. She brought the teapot and put it before him. ‘You went into Coman’s, of course.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘You didn’t even think to come home to see them.’

  ‘I knew you’d want your interrogation first.’

  ‘I didn’t ask them anything. What was I doing only praying that he wouldn’t be coming back in a wheelchair? What have I been doing the past five days, only that? You’re the one who wanted him to go and see her. You’re the one who couldn’t wait.’

  ‘Will you stop?’

  ‘And do you know why? I know why. Because you thought it would bring her back. I know the kind of fairytale thing you think . . . I know . . .’

  ‘What’s the matter with you? For God’s sake, Margaret, what . . .?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She caught her lower lip between her teeth again and held it this time, harder. You see, she thought, you open your mouth for a second and everything flies out. She turned away from her husband and rubbed at the greasy pan while he drank his tea and felt the effects of the whiskey slip from him. He was like a balloon losing gas behind her and as she looked out at the blue beaten sky she regretted having been sharp. She took from the Stanley oven the apple tart and cut him a deep triangle she dribbled with cream; not too much to stop his heart.

  ‘Here. The apples are still a bit sour.’

  ‘Lovely. I’m sure it’s delicious.’

  His eating softened the room between them, and after a little while he said: ‘Margaret, you don’t mind if I bring the two of them to Coman’s with me for a bit of the evening? People’d like to see Sean and we can’t keep him hidden away. You could come yourself.’

  ‘No.’ She let the lip go an instant. ‘You go and enjoy yourself. Don’t be too late with them, will you?’

  ‘Of course I won’t.’ The Master stood up and backhanded pastry crumbs from his lips. ‘That was a delicious tart, Margaret Gore,’ he said bringing her the empty plate, ‘as usual.’

  She did not know what time it was when she heard the men’s footsteps returning on the garden gravel, but the stars were brilliant and the sea was sleeping. She read the crunch of their footsteps like morse and knew that gaiety not gloom was bringing them home. She lay awake but turned from the door so that when her husband at last came into the bedroom carrying his shoes he judged her asleep and said nothing. When he sat on the side of the bed a waft of whiskey and smoke rose and crossed her to the window. Margaret lay absolutely still and tried to read in the final moments before Muiris fell soundly asleep if he had guessed what was wrong with Nicholas. But she could not tell. When she whispered to Muiris some minutes later she got no response and so slipped from the bed, standing a moment to look down at him in the starlight, a curled figure still in his trousers and vest, a hand dangling over the edge of the bed as if to pick up dreams.

  Margaret moved out of the bedroom and stood in the dark hallway. The cold of the floor rose swiftly and she pressed her toes down against it, walking slowly quietly forward until she was just outside the door of the visitor’s room. He could not be asleep; of this much she was certain. No matter what he had taken at the bar, alone in the room now the scent of the roses would be back in his mind. He would not be sleeping. Holding her breath from giving her away she leaned her face forward to the door, and heard nothing. Nothing. And then the small noise of writing.

  She moved away and breathed. He was writing. Of course he was. She should have known; he was the kind provoked into hopeless words by strong feeling. But this time words would not dilute the feelings, Margaret knew. No, he was fuelling the fire, he was writing a love letter.

  She stole back along the hallway, more certain than ever that Nicholas had fallen hopelessly in love. When she came into the bedroom her mind was already flicking through the myriad possibilities of what she could do. She lay herself delicately like fine china back into her nestled place in the blankets. But she could not sleep. She knew Nicholas was not sleeping, and now all she had to figure out was if Isabel was. As she watched the stars turning she imagined she saw the hopelessness and grief of all romantic love, the sorry and tarnished fable of moonlight and rapture spinning down into the unremitting and grey disappointment of every day; how the glamour flashed so briefly and the cheats of beauty and promise and courage and youth rang like mockery beaten off the shallow stars. She felt the impossible yearning and sorrow from the room down the hall. She felt it as if it were her own and was not surprised when there were tears on her cheeks and the air was thick with the bitter perfume of broken rose stems. She knew the pages Nicholas was writing as if it were her hand across the paper and the longer the night drew on the more clearly she knew that he was still writing, still looking out the window at the blind sea and imagining the face of Isabel. She swallowed lumps of regret like purple blossoms, but not for a moment did she let herself imagine this might lead to happiness. It could bring nothing but grief, and Margaret Gore must do everything she could to lessen it by stopping it as quickly as pos
sible. She resolved to lie awake in the bed as long as Nicholas was continuing to write. But some moments before Cian Blake opened the first door on the island to look out on the pre-dawn sea, she slipped without help into a soft and pink dream and was lying there smiling when Nicholas finished the first letter to Isabel and went outside and down to the shore to wait for Mrs Hurley to open up the post office.

  2

  Margaret had awakened with a jump. Quite literally. There had been a castle and a narrow high window and someone below. But the jump woke her and she had turned to Muiris to find that his bloated and unshaven face seemed to have swallowed whole the dazzling face of his youth; it was nowhere, but she had met it in the dream and stepped out of bed with a peculiar unease. The day was already blowing and the boats in the harbour knocked and squeaked with discontentment.

  It was only when she stepped out into the hallway and saw Isabel’s room door open that her heart quickened. Where was he? The bathroom was empty, Sean was still sleeping. And the kitchen? No, he was gone. She hurried back to Isabel’s room and went inside. Without a moment’s hesitation she threw herself into a frantic search for the letter but couldn’t find it. Everything else was as it should be; he was not gone, even the pen and paper were there by the bedstand, and the faint but persistent odour of fallen apples, but the letter. What time was it? Where had he gone to?

  ‘Muiris!’

  She turned the moment the answer came like a cannon shot to her brain and she was back in her bedroom throwing off her nightgown as the Master stirred himself. He lifted his head a fraction to see her naked by the window and lay back imagining himself in a painting by Rubens.

  ‘Muiris, get up, we’re late. Wake up, do you hear me?’ She lifted a cold hot waterbottle from the floor and let it flop on him.

  ‘Jesus!’ He cried out as if struck, but kept his face in the pillow.

  ‘Make your breakfast. I’ve to go out. Do you hear me?’ He made no noise and Margaret scanned the room for something else to throw on him, finding his shoes and tossing them in the general direction of his back as she went out the door.

  It was two minutes to half past nine. The day was blowing in her face as she slipped out the little gate and headed directly across the cobbled way for the post office. A flock of gulls was wheeling on the wind like escaped newspaper. The smoke from O’Leary’s plumed sharply eastward and made it seem the sky was sitting low on the island, as if the gods had come down and were assembled in the invisible, pressing the pillow-clouds with their great thighs and gazing down at the Master’s wife hurrying out to try and stop Fate itself. She wasn’t sure yet what she would do; it was a letter, she knew that, and she must somehow intercept it without Nicholas knowing. It was what a mother had to do. It was right and vital; it was the only way she could hope to halt the progress of a doomed and hopeless love that could bring nothing but grief.

  The wind carried Margaret to the post office, barely allowing her to breathe as it gusted in her face and brought with it the smells of salt waves and frying eggs from Coman’s. The bell above the door jingled when she entered and she stepped inside to nobody. Then, from inside her kitchen the slow weighty voice of Aine Hurley called blindly out to her:

  ‘There in a minute.’

  It was a minute the gods had not counted on, and it gave her time to peer in over the small counter and see there on the small table scored with scribbled additions and myriad inklings of thumped stampings a first letter of the morning, addressed to Isabel ni Luing in Galway.

  ‘Ye’re all out early this morning.’ Aine Hurley appeared with flecks of toast in the corners of her mouth. She was chewing softly as she reached the counter and waited until she had finished before allowing herself any business. She was sixty-two years old and had buried two husbands, a fact she carried with her as if in testament of her own hardiness and longevity. Haste, she reckoned, had killed both of ’em, and she was obliged to make up for it by a slow and careful manner, handling each moment of her life several times before letting it go.

  ‘Now, Margaret.’ She looked across at the Master’s wife. ‘What’s the news with you? We had your visitor in with us already.’

  ‘Well, that’s it actually, Aine.’

  ‘I was hardly even in the kitchen, he was knocking the door.’

  ‘He had a letter . . .’

  ‘Rushing about, do you see.’

  ‘He gave you a letter.’

  ‘No good, I told him. You can’t be rushing around here.’

  ‘No.’

  Margaret waited while the sea sighed.

  ‘He posted a letter all right.’

  ‘That’s why I came over, Aine. It’s to Isabel, and he was supposed to leave it open for me to put something in and he forgot. So if you could give it back to me. I’ll just take it home and bring it back again to post this afternoon.’

  ‘Forgot something?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was a long beat, a flickering moment as if a hand were pedalling an upside bicycle of Time and the minutes spun in freewheel. Then Aine Hurley turned and looked behind her at the letter on the table.

  ‘That’s because he’s rushing, d’you see? Dublin man of course,’ she said. ‘Two countries, Tom always said, Dublin and here. Only pretending to be the one.’ She flapped the envelope once and nodded, handing over the letter and not noticing the sudden lift of the sky, the all but imperceptible changing of the wind as the Gods flew back to wherever and Margaret Gore strode out the door with Nicholas Coughlan’s first love letter in her hand.

  3

  Dear Isabel,

  I write these words not knowing if you will read them. I am in your room and cannot sleep. I can do nothing. I have never written a letter like this before. I don’t even know if it is a letter, but it’s after midnight and I can’t stop thinking of you.

  We returned to the island in the middle of the afternoon. I could hardly speak to your mother when she sat us down in the kitchen. Everything seems unreal now; did it really happen? Have you ever felt something so powerful and intense that in the moments afterward it seems to be part of your skin itself, part of your smelling and tasting and breathing and nothing else exists but those moments, those memories? Here you are with me in your room, here tonight. I write that down and close my eyes and sit and wait and you are here. Past and present at the same time. Here and not here. Here you are standing inside the shop door in the long grey cardigan when we bundled inside, a kind of brightness flooding from you and the way your eyes filled instantly with tears as if a sharp arrow had struck you. I can hardly believe I am writing these things to you; the touch, that first touch that was nothing to you, your hand on my arm as Sean was explaining and you steadied yourself against me and turned and looked at me. That moment has changed everything for me. How absurd and foolish I feel even writing that; I feel like an elephant before a rose. Forgive me. I only have the courage to write these things not fully knowing if I will send them.

  When you closed the shop that first morning and we walked down the street, the three of us, you kept laughing and looking over at me. We bumped against each other; the swaying way you have of walking, of owning the road, and that scent tangling about me. Was it then? I don’t know. I know nothing about why things are or how they come to be. Everything can seem so random and muddied and outrageously planned at the same time. Do a million lives run parallel or are each two singled out to meet? Here you are in these hundred memories in my head and I am lying in your room with the sea all around me. How did this happen? I came here for my father, to find the last part of him from the wreckage of our life, the semblance of some reason as to why and how everything was. And I find myself coming in a door to meet you.

  You. You.

  I wonder how, in five days, could the world change so much? You are more beautiful than anyone I have ever seen. Is that wrong to tell you? I close my eyes to see you even now. And of course it’s wrong. Of course it’s hopeless and stupid and leads into a roundabout road
of nowheres. She’s just married, I tell myself. She’s newly married and in love with him. So where’s the sense of it? Where’s the plan, the order, the rightness of coming together you’re supposed to feel, the touch of inevitability my father liked to call God? I came two weeks late and look what happened. Someone is laughing at me. I know I didn’t cure Sean; it was nothing to do with me, and yet if I hadn’t arrived for the painting, if I hadn’t met him, if, if, if. . .

  See how the pieces fall together even when they belong to different puzzles. Isabel, Isabel. You kissed me on the third night and the pieces flew in the air. On the street with cars passing. Not even hiding. Your hand around my neck and my falling so much further than the distance between your face and mine. I think I swooned, something flew out of me. You said nothing and drew back and then kissed me again, your hair falling across our mouths and your fingers coming to touch my face as if to make sure there was more of me there. I tasted almond on your fingertips and felt for the first time the overwhelming rush and desire to devour someone, to eat and bite and have every part of you, to lose myself and you utterly in that moment on the street and stop the clocks and hold the stars and let nothing be beyond that moment. If only life could be that, could reach a moment and stop there on the instant of ecstasy. But no. The cool air swept across my face and the kiss was over. You said nothing. You stepped back and you took my arm and we walked. Did I dream it? Did we say nothing at all but walk together around by the docks, my mind lost in the falling apart of reason and the huge high tide of desire washing red over everything? It was scent and taste and touch the world was made of, not words. Even when you left me that night to go back to him you said nothing.

  What can I write to you? I write these words to feel your eyes reading them. To feel in that way at least I am touching you and we are linked in the flickering of each letter as I write it down and you gather it up. But I want more. I want to see you. I want to hold you. On Thursday when you met the two of us I thought Sean knew already. I thought it must be painted across my face, or that the thump of my heart was amplified deafeningly as you came to the guest house in the morning and beamed to tell us Peader was looking after the shop for the day and we were heading for Connemara. Do you know I could not breathe when you sat at the breakfast table alongside me and touched my hand? Did you know then? There is such life, such wild gaiety in you that even sitting beside you was like sitting within some fabulous carnival of feelings, a spinning carousel that carried me flying forward in sheer terror and delight as I felt your fingers under the tablecloth travel up my arm.