“Look here,” he says, showing Maighread and Liam a drain in the floor where it slopes down in the center of the room. “If you decide to let the rain in through the windows above, it will shower down in this area, and go into the drain.”
Maighread laughs. “Oh, Da! Who’d want to come up and sit in here in a deluge?”
He shrugs his shoulders. “I might be inclined to do such a thing,” he says. “And I can imagine your mother doing such a thing as well.”
I catch his eyes, and the look in them suffuses me with warmth.
“Yes,” she says, smiling at me as well. “I can imagine her doing that.”
Wrought-iron benches painted white are arranged throughout, facing off for views of the sky or, from those placed closer to the windows, down at the City.
Manus has settled himself on a bench looking toward the harbor. He leans forward, and I study the lines of his back and shoulders, his profile and his distant gaze. How many incarnations of this man have I seen? He will always be both mysterious and familiar to me, ever transforming like his god of masons and architects, Mercury.
This monument to air and light inspires reverie. Maighread walks reflectively through, unlatches one of the windows and stands with her arms crossed, gazing out. She is womanly and tall, and moves with a guarded grace. Unlike Caitlin’s life, Maighread’s still has not yet decided its shape.
“That boat there!” Manus cries. “That’s the mercantile boat that plies between Dublin and Holland.”
“That boat!” Liam echoes, standing on the bench beside Manus. “I want to go on that boat.”
“We will go on a boat, Liam,” Manus says. “This pavilion can be seen from the bay.”
“We’ll go in a boat, Mammy!” Liam cries.
“Yes, yes, Love!” I answer.
Maighread squints slightly in the breeze then gravitates toward her father and sits on the other side of him, both of their eyes set out on the sea.
“Up here I can really imagine Paris,” she says, leaning against him. This morning at breakfast, Maighread spoke to us for the first time about the school in Paris; about her excitement at the idea, and about her uncertainty.
“There’s the Guinness barge,” Manus says, pointing, and both children look. “And over there, the Liverpool boat going out.”
I wander slowly through the pavilion, running my fingers along the mirrored and mosaicked surfaces until I reach the staircase, small starfish embellishing the banister.
I ascend two or three stairs and stop. While I am in shadow, Manus and the children are lit by the descending sun that glints in Liam’s fair hair and makes bright red the edge of one of his ears.
For a while it is only the wind that makes any sound, carrying in the smell of the sea and causing the chains on the open windows to shiver.
I have learned the names of all the winds but I don’t think they live by any order.
Sensing my eyes on him, Liam turns and spots me on the stairs. He watches in wonder as the wind agitates my skirts. I give him a smile and he answers it by momentarily averting his eyes, then squeezing his lips together bashfully before breaking into a grin.
He turns his attention back to the boats and the water.
Both my daughters and my little son, I tell myself, will make their ways in the world.
The dark begins in the east over the Irish Sea. Ships drift in and away, and in the harbor, an anchored lightship twinkles.
Acknowledgments
Thanks as always to my husband, Neil, and my daughter, Miranda, the two greatest blessings of my life.
Thanks to my agent, Regula Noetzli, for guidance and advice; and for shepherding me to my editor Doris Cooper, whose brilliant, intuitive feedback and unerring devotion have helped me to bring this book to life. I count myself among the luckiest of writers to be supported by the team at Simon and Schuster: Debbie Model, Kimberly Brissenden, Chris Lloreda, Marcia Burch, Mark Gompertz, and Trish Todd. Thank you all.
For help with translations into the Irish I wish to thank Ciaran O’Reilly, ever the sweet and steadfast friend; his mysterious brother, Brendan O’Reilly; and the very fine actor, Andrew Bennett.
I also wish to thank Claudia Bader for sharing with me her bibliography of alchemical texts. For feedback on early drafts of this novel, much thanks to my dear friends Sarah Fleming and Nancy Graham. Much gratitude to Jane Lury for invaluable feedback on the book in a later draft, and for her loving, supportive presence in my life.
And love to Carolina Conroy, magical, mystical Empress of Green.
About the Author
REGINA MCBRIDE is the author of The Nature of Water and Air and The Land of Women and is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Her poems have been widely published in literary journals and magazines, and her book of poetry, Yarrow Field, won an American Book Series Award. She grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and lived for a time in Ireland before moving to New York City, where she now resides with her husband and daugther.
This is her third novel.
The Marriage Bed Page 28