The Marriage Bed

by Regina McBride

  “She continued to meet with him in the field. When he asked her to marry him she told him she would if they could think of some way to appease her mother. My grandmother had always been impressed by wealth, so my mother thought that my father’s money might help, but she knew it wasn’t enough. My father bought her the house in Kenmare, which to him was an architectural curiosity. The altar and nave within the abbey were still intact. A house with a church right at the heart of it! My mother thought maybe my grandmother would love this house, and come and live there with them.

  “But she refused. It was a terrible falling out my mother had with her mother and sisters. My aunt Ethna was pregnant at the time and lost the child, and this was blamed on my mother’s terrible rebellion. And then everything fell apart. Ethna’s husband left her. Moyna never found a husband. My grandmother accused my mother of having thrown off the balance of nature.”

  “Those things weren’t her fault!” I cried.

  “My mother says they were,” Bairbre said. “She explained to me that things had to be set right again. She’d devastated her mother and ruined her sisters’ lives. Within a year of her marriage, my grandmother was on her deathbed and wouldn’t see her, but my mother begged so vehemently that she at last agreed. My mother begged her forgiveness before she died. You see, she’d been her mother’s favorite, the one she had placed her heart upon. My mother could not bear to have fallen so far. To have lost her mother’s love. My grandmother told her then that the only possibility for redemption was if she had a son or a grandson who she groomed into a priest. She had to carry on the ecclesiastical family. My mother promised her on her deathbed that she would. And only then did my grandmother allow my mother to kiss her.

  “That day when I was eight, Deirdre, my mother told me that my becoming a nun bonded the two of us. That it was a kind of marriage, a union of the spirit between us. She spoke of the silent dialogues among angels.

  “I felt a kind of joy I can hardly describe. A kind of joy, Deirdre, that I would almost die to experience again.”

  How many nights was it that Bairbre and I met like that? Maybe ten or twelve, and Bairbre underwent a change those nights. I could see it in her, during the hours of prayer in the chapel; her pull upon me had lessened and I began to understand that at the back of her longing for me was the memory of that day of closeness to her mother.

  “I learned that day that I was capable of making my mother happy,” she had said to me more than once. And she’d asked the air one night, “Will it come again like that? Yes, it has to! I can smell the promise of it when I’m near her. It’s there. If only I could find my way back to it.”

  The last night that we met on the ruined stairs, it was raining and we huddled together under the bit of roof that remained on the tower, our faces pressed to the dead creeper on the wall. The story of that day she was eight had become now the only story she wanted to tell.

  The battlement door opened, and the light from a cagework lamp blinded us. I made out Sister Carmel’s figure and soon could identify her disapproving face afloat over the brightness.

  We were lectured the next morning about the danger of particular friendships, and our nightly meetings came to an end.

  So a year passed.

  A few days after my eighteenth birthday, I was filing out of the chapel among the other novices after Vespers, when I saw Mrs. O’Breen standing in the courtyard in the evening light. Bairbre, having seen her as well, rushed to her. Mrs. O’Breen embraced her.

  I continued on my way with the others when Mrs. O’Breen called out to me, and I went to them. “I’ve come to congratulate Bairbre, of course. I just wanted to congratulate you as well, Deirdre.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “I’ve spoken to Sister Carmel and I know that most of the novices are going home for a last visit. I’ve received her permission to bring you both to Kenmare for a few days before you take your vows.”

  Bairbre said nothing, her eyes lowered, all expression erased.

  “Unfortunately,” Mrs. O’Breen said, “Manus cannot be here this week. He has to remain in Dublin. So it would be just the three of us.”

  Bairbre looked up, her face altered at this news. “This is a very important time for Bairbre and me. I want to have a celebration before the ceremony.” And though I knew her mother’s interest in me made Bairbre uncomfortable, she was shivering with excitement and seemed moved by her mother’s words and said that she would very much like to go.

  They both turned their eyes on me.

  Without speaking, I nodded my head. Mrs. O’Breen told us that a coach would be dispatched to pick us up the next day.

  It wasn’t until I was in my cot that night that dread began to course through me. Dread at the heights my hope might dare again to take me.

  The next day after Bairbre and I arrived, we ate a meal with Mrs. O’Breen, then enjoyed a solitary walk on the property. Bairbre’s spirits were up, her face flushed and mobile. She chattered on about this novice or that, about the ceremony itself and the crimson cowl we each would wear as new brides of Christ. Cells were being prepared for us in the Mother House, and Bairbre said she hoped ours would be next to each other’s.

  But being there with no hope of seeing Manus was an agony to me.

  In the evening Mrs. O’Breen led us to a little altar she had created in the woods, frail cables of lanterns looped and moored to branches, tinkling and swaying in the balmy breeze. We stood in a clearing under the luster of the moon. A silent serving woman who had accompanied us lit a fire until it was banked high and red, then disappeared through a dark opening in the trees.

  “The Soul,” said Mrs. O’Breen, looking at Bairbre, “unhindered by the body tends naturally toward God. He who is the center of all existence.” She gestured weakly at the sky. “God’s yoke is sweet and light.”

  As Bairbre lifted her hands and looked to the sky, I saw Mrs. O’Breen look at her from the corner of her eye, and for that flash of a moment the world slowed down and I saw that her heart was not in this. She was doing this for effect and more for Bairbre’s benefit than mine.

  But Bairbre’s elation was real. I guessed that this ritual was an old one between them. A smoky hiss rose into the air when Bairbre turned, as if on cue, and tossed frankincense into the flames.

  In the bedimmed radiance, Bairbre’s eyes fixed themselves dreamily on her mother’s face.

  Mrs. O’Breen gave us each a rosary, then went to her knees. When Bairbre followed suit I did as well, and we spent the next hour in prayer, a faint sickness sighing in my heart.

  In the middle of the night, unable to sleep, I got up and, carrying a lamp, moved through the dark halls until I found the staircase and descended. Down one long corridor I came into a kind of library, where family photographs were displayed on a shelf. I held the lamp to them, searching for an image of Manus, but I soon realized that these were pictures of the dead, some very old, archaic photos on metal and glass; daguerreotypes, even. The most modern one was of a teenage boy in a priest’s collar. Though his face was less equine, Tiernan bore a striking resemblance to Manus. As I gazed into his eyes, which were piercing and prominent and more closely set than Manus’s, the air grew suddenly frigidly cold, and an intense sadness infused me. I backed quietly away, then turned with a start, afraid of what might be behind me. On my way back to my room every shadow terrified me.

  I hid under the covers in the bed, my mind working wildly around the idea of Tiernan’s ghost.

  Deeper into the night, still huddling stiffly in the bed with my eyes squeezed shut, I heard galloping footfalls, which came to a stop outside, and the unrest of a winded horse below. In a little while there was noise on the stairs and I heard a man cough, his footsteps pass my door.

  I knew that Manus had arrived unexpectedly. Relief overcame me and exhilaration, which rendered the previous hours remote and as unreal as something dreamed.

  Ten

  Early the next morning I wandered into the g
ardens and along the grounds, looking up at the house, raking the windows for a sign of Manus, but I saw no one looking out.

  Hearing the nervous neigh of a horse I turned and saw Manus coming toward me, drawing after him a black stallion, very tall with a white star between its eyes. Its coat glistened as if it had just been brushed.

  “He stands sixteen hands. His name’s Ivanhoe,” Manus said. He jumped onto the horse’s back, and it danced sideways, fighting the bit and stretching the rein. I moved away.

  “Come up,” Manus said to me.

  I was surprised at the request.

  “You’re not afraid,” he said. “You’re not.”

  He reached out to me and, sweeping me high, pressed me between himself and the horse’s neck. Before I had a chance to breathe, we were galloping, wet sod flying from the horse’s feet, the three of us one creature. I sustained the impact in my teeth and bones, bent forward, squinting against the wind. We were on the beach, along the white stretch and into the tide, the horse losing traction, struggling to regain it. The sting of the sand on our faces. Manus cried out like an unfettered child, letting loose raucous screeches on the wind.

  At last he pulled the reins, and, slowing Ivanhoe to a winded canter, we returned to the grounds of the great house.

  As he lifted me down, still breathless with exertion, he said, “I’m going to be a wayward man! I’m going to run off to the Continent!”

  I laughed, quivering with excitement.

  “Will you come with me?”

  “What about your future in Dublin?” I said.

  “I’ll chuck it!” he cried out, happy with himself. I smiled and he held my eyes.

  “You’ve nothing on earth to lose at all, have you?” he asked.

  I cringed, thinking they were cruel words, but there was a zest to the way he looked questioningly at me, as if it were a state he envied.

  “Not a thing to lose but this absurd rag on your head. This veil,” he said and pulled it off.

  I was quaking, a gust of cool air rushing me so I felt the wet state of my own skin. I backed inadvertently against the horse, which stood solidly with its face down in the grass grazing, hot from running. One of its muscles twitched against my side.

  Manus reached out and touched my hair, a look of wonder on his face. “You’ve wild hair,” he said. “I could no more get a comb through it than I could get one through Ivanhoe’s mane.” He gestured with his chin toward the horse.

  We had caught our breath, but I could still hear his, though it was slower now. Ivanhoe’s massive body stood between us and the house, obscuring us from view. Manus looked into my face. I had a sudden feeling of transparency, and the profound sensation that he could see the truth of me, no matter the contradiction I presented. I felt a shock of love as his face moved close to mine. A shared euphoria encased the two of us together. Our two mouths touched softly again and again, and I felt as if my body were comprised of hundreds of subtler bodies thin as veils, but concentrated, all ignited and brushing at each other.

  He took my hand by the wrist and pressed my palm to his pants. I started at the warm, taut thing I felt there. But he seemed to know by the willing tension in my hand, or maybe by what he saw in my eyes, that I was not going to shrink from it. His own hand detached from mine and hovered near.

  We heard the noise of skirts on the damp grass and flew apart. Manus began unharnessing the horse as I walked off in the opposite direction, struggling for composure.

  “Deirdre,” Bairbre said.

  I turned to her. “I’ve never gone so fast on a horse. I thought I’d fly off!”

  With a distressed expression she searched my face. “Your veil!” she cried.

  “It flew off. I just barely clutched it in my hand.”

  Manus bent down and grasped it from the ground, then threw it at her. She watched his face. I saw his upper lip shimmer and tense, but he kept his eyes off me, then tugged on the horse’s reins and drew it roughly from its grazing.

  “What are you doing here?” Bairbre cried.

  “I’m home for a few days,” he said and then led the horse away.

  Bairbre looked at me strangely. “You’re sweating.”

  “It was a rough ride, didn’t you see?”

  “I saw from the window, but then I lost sight of you.”

  “We went to the beach. I thought I’d fly off and break every bone in my body!”

  “He’s wreckless!” she said angrily.

  I wanted to defend him but held back.

  I went with her a long way through mud and brambles and ditches, following her on black earth still wet from the morning rain, and squelching underfoot. The farther we got from the house, the more I struggled not to turn and look back at it.

  From the clearing where we finally stopped, the house appeared to rise out of the sea. I could hear, faintly, the screeching of cormorants and shearwaters circling it like they might a ship far from land.

  I sat down on some stones, folding my veil in my lap. She grabbed it suddenly. “Put this back on,” she demanded.

  I held her eyes, vacillating between anger and guilt. I took the veil from her and began arranging it on my head.

  “Our hair will be cut at the altar, swept away, and kept in a gauze bag, saved to be buried with us when we die.”

  “I know,” I said.

  After a silence she blurted, “Why did you ride the horse?”

  “I don’t know. It just happened.”

  “I wish we had not come,” she said.

  I struggled to respond appropriately, but I could not climb free of my voluptuous confusion. I squeezed and pressed at the drapery of my skirt.

  When lightning flashed in a bank of gray clouds, we set off again for the house.

  “I miss the convent,” she said as we walked. When I made no response she looked at me expectantly, but I remained silent.

  Bairbre and I ate a small meal together alone at the grand table.

  “Will you draw my portrait, Deirdre?” she asked as the servant cleared the dishes.

  “Yes,” I said.

  She instructed the serving woman to bring drawing paper and a charcoal pencil. Bairbre surprised me by taking off her veil and loosening her hair with shaking hands, spreading it over her shoulders.

  She sat very still and I drew, anxious from wondering every moment when Manus would appear.

  She watched me uneasily. I carefully smudged the charcoal to make the denseness of her eyebrows, the beginning of her hairline, the shadow at her temples.

  “This is a sin for a nun,” she said.

  “What is?”

  “Dwelling on the faces we keep in this world.”

  I stopped drawing, thinking she had changed her mind about the portrait, but she held her posture, staring past me, given to contemplation. I drew slowly, trying to capture Bairbre, but I was too weak to stop myself from searching out all features similar to her brother’s. Now and then her lips moved and I heard words, though barely audible; a prayer to the Blessed Mother. And I saw how she struggled to make the prayers shield her, as she had once shielded herself from me with the psalms.

  The closer I looked, the more I could find Manus’s face in hers. I stared at her mouth, laboring over the upper lip in the drawing. She emitted a sadness, as if she sensed that the closer I looked at her, the less of her I saw. She seemed to me now, forgetting herself, lost.

  I paused with my pencil and said, “When I first saw you and your family in church I thought of you as a Trinity. God the Mother, God the Son, and You are the Holy Ghost.” A darkness washed over her face.

  It grew very dim in the room, but neither of us made a move to turn on a lamp. I continued to draw and she to sit, as if it were the portrait keeping us there.

  “I’ll never have a child at my breast,” she said to me suddenly.

  “Neither shall I,” I said.

  But in that moment I somehow knew, as she did, that this would not be true.

  She stood a
nd looked ambivalently at the drawing, which revealed a sad, almost desperate, look to the eyes. She reached for it and rolled it up.

  “Where’s my brother?” she asked the serving woman, who said that Manus had left the grounds and would likely not be back until evening. Bairbre sighed and seemed relieved at the news, while I tried to hide my disappointment.

  She invited me to go with her to the chapel, but I said I was tired. She watched me ascend the stairs. I remained on the landing, hidden from her view until her footsteps sounded far away and I heard a door open and close again. Then I moved along the corridor as quietly as I could, looking for Manus’s room, but none of the rooms I peered into offered any sign of him.

  In a separate wing, I saw Manus’s riding boots set out before a door left ajar, which opened onto a room with a massive bed, the headboard carved like a great cathedral door, the top of it pinnacled like the facade of a city.

  The shirt Manus had worn during the ride lay negligently tossed at the foot of the bed, one sleeve hanging over the side. I approached the bed slowly and touched the shirt, bringing it to my face, smelling it, kissing it.

  There, too, also lay a thick draftsman’s notebook, which I opened, leafing through page after page of blueprints; complex and with tiny voluminous notes in the margins; calculations for houses and buildings drawn in very fine blue pencil. Some drawings belabored the interiors of rooms, details of walls converging with a ceiling or with a floor. I opened upon a fanciful-looking drawing of a castle, white birds flying out of its open windows. A tiny human figure stood beside it, revealing the structure’s enormity. In each subsequent drawing that followed this one, the scale of the castle increased, the human figure beside it tinier and tinier; the birds from the windows were reduced to specks.