Spellbound

by Jeanette Baker

  She hadn’t given him much thought. She was lying. He knew her. He felt as if he’d always known her. She fancied herself in love with him. But that would go away once she was gone. He had no doubt it would go away if he asked her to stay.

  The group from Scripps was breaking up now, all Americans, all competent. Even now the shiny, confident look of them set them apart. They worked in shifts, like an organized machine, taking turns on the beach, cleaning birds, skimming oil, relocating sea lions, communicating in the friendly serious language of men and women summoned to a common calling. He was grateful to them, all of them. More than that, he liked them, especially Russ Sanders, the tall American with the friendly smile and a ready wit that reminded him of Patrick.

  He’d been the last to come. There was nowhere else to put him but with Mollie and Emma. Sean knew Mollie would like him. They were the same. It was easier when people were the same.

  Despite his ten-year absence, Sean was an islander. The fatalistic acceptance of a world shaped and purged by wind and rain and a hard-edged sea was in his blood. He frowned, impatient with the direction of his thoughts. It was better this way. In the end they would all go home, and the island would settle down again. He thought of the men without work and the harsh winter to come. Perhaps Mabry was right. Mollie wasn’t one to sit by and let things happen. Perhaps she would leave her mark on Inishmore after all. Knowing her had changed him. He recognized it now. He asked himself more questions, posed more what-ifs in his mind. What it all meant he didn’t know yet.

  Squinting into the meager December sunlight, he could barely see the outline of the mainland. Inishmore had always been home. He couldn’t imagine an existence apart from it, and yet his life was improved when he was away. He stood and walked back toward the sudsing tubs. There was still the oil, three sick children at home, and a play waiting to be finished.

  CHAPTER 20

  Huddled in an Aran sweater, her hands stuffed into the deep wool pockets, her body braced against the force of the wind, Emma stood on the edge of Dun Aengus cliff overlooking the sea. This had become her favorite spot on the island. Strange, how time changed one’s perspective. Thirty years ago nothing on Inishmore had pleased her. All she could think of was the cold, not the crisp, clear cold of a winter night in Boston or New York but a thick, damp, miserable cold, not actually wet but too far from dry ever to feel comfortable.

  All the islanders felt it. They would say, “There’s a wicked damp in the air,” or “My feet are gone damp in my shoes,” but it never appeared to bother them. Only Emma shivered and froze and sought out seats near whatever turf fire was available. Only Emma had worn three sweaters and two pairs of socks and wrapped her babies so tightly their cheeks were always flushed and they screamed in protest.

  She’d hated it here, this stifling, ocean-locked land where one could walk from one end to the other in two hours’ time, where the fog hung thick as gray blankets over the cliffs and the fierce wind reshaped the land almost as quickly as day changed into night. She’d hated the people with their identical blue eyes and their smiling, cordial faces and their placid acceptance of birth and death and all that came between. She’d hated the way they slid into their language, low, husky, guttural sounds that came from somewhere back in their throats and appeared to require no movement whatsoever from mouth and lips.

  Eventually she’d come to hate Patrick, seeing the same face, the same eyes, hearing the same voice that she heard in all the serious, inbred islanders she could ever talk to or befriend. She forgot that once she’d loved him, that his black hair curled around his ears, and that his voice, whiskey-soft and lilting, had charmed her into his arms, his bed, his life. She’d gone away, emotionally at first, pushing him from her in the only way she knew how, with words. They came from her mouth, ugly, blaming, until there were no words left at all. She refused to speak or to eat or to move with any purpose around the small cottage that was Patrick’s home, the home that would never be hers.

  Finally, when he could take no more of it, he told her to leave, without Danny. Those weeks when she struggled between staying and leaving, when her mind hung by fragile threads, when Mabry had spoken in that whispery, crackling voice that froze her with fear, Emma lost what was left of who she was. She’d gone away with Mollie, a baby who had no memory of the island or her father.

  Now it was different. With the advantages of age and wisdom, Emma could see that Inishmore had its own kind of beauty. The scrub, the twisting stone fences dividing the land into patches of green, the sheep thick on the roads, and the churning clouds were part of a disappearing charm that drew swarms of tourists year after year, season after season. Not this season, of course. Winter wasn’t a time when people left their home fires for the wet cold of Inishmore. Winter was a season of silence when fog hung thick over the island and every footstep down the twisting cliff paths was a challenge. A rare, clear day like this one was an occasion to celebrate.

  Emma had left the children with Mollie. They were healing quickly now and sleeping later than usual. She looked at her watch. There was something she needed to do, something she’d put off for weeks, but first she would visit Danny.

  Bordered by stone fences, the road to the tiny church twisted its way down to sea level. The ocean, calm for a change and visible on all sides, reflected blue skies and friendly wind.

  She made her way past the randomly erected grave-stones, hundreds of years old, chipped and precariously balanced, their letters nearly worn away by weather and lichen, to the newer part of the cemetery where Danny lay buried beneath the rich limestone.

  Emma stood for a moment staring down at the mound of dirt that was all that remained of her child, her firstborn. A woman knew nothing of the roiling emotions that came with the birth of a child until that child was born and the tiny warm weight of him was curled against her breast. A woman remembered her first child differently from the others, the soft folds of delicate skin, the whorls of fine hair, the baby scent that lingered on blankets and diapers and towels. There was something about a first child that a mother watched more carefully, paid attention to more fully, accounting for the first smile, the first steps, the first word in a way she never would again. It wasn’t that she loved the others any less, but the first one was her blueprint, her debut to the world.

  Something moved behind her. The barest slip of shadow crossed the pale gray of the headstone. Emma stiffened. She didn’t want company, not here, not today. Everyone on the island knew who she was and whom she’d come to mourn. She waited for the intruder to go away. Instead a voice, a whispery crackling voice, interrupted her. “Dhia Duit, a Emma.”

  Three decades spent on the other side of the world disappeared as if they’d never been. The words came back to her. “Dhia es Muire Diut, a Mabry.”

  “Conas ta tu?”

  Emma glanced at the old woman. “Go maith.”

  “Buiochas le Dia.”

  Her fists clenched. “Why do you say it like that?”

  Mabry fixed her piercing gaze on something in the distance. Emma was about to repeat her question when the woman spoke. “I’ve often wondered if you could tolerate it here with us, even for a short time.”

  “Should it matter?”

  “Everything that happens on Inishmore matters.”

  Emma pushed the air out of her lips in a deprecating sigh, “Most of the world is unaware this island even exists.”

  “If they didn’t know of us before, they do now.”

  “Because of the oil spill?”

  Mabry nodded. “Aye.”

  Emma stared down at the grave. She wanted to be alone. Short of coming right out and saying the words, she didn’t know how to make the woman leave, and so she remained silent.

  “I followed you through the village,” Mabry confessed. “There is something I should say.”

  Emma waited.

  Mabry’s right hand closed over her left fist. “I’m very sorry, Emma. I wish—” She stopped.

 
Emma refused to help her.

  “I don’t make things happen. I only see them.”

  “No, Mabry,” Emma replied coldly, “you predict disasters. People change the course of their lives because of what you tell them.”

  “Is that such a bad thing?”

  “Why not ask if it does any good?”

  “Be fair, Emma. Patrick kept your son from you. I had little to do with it.”

  “You said he would be miserable away from the island. He believed you. Everyone on this island believes you.”

  “You went away and never came back.”

  “Do you blame me for that?”

  Mabry shook her head. “Your mind is your own. No one can make such a judgment.”

  “Patrick made it soon enough,” Emma remembered bitterly.

  “He was a man in a difficult place. Danny wasn’t an easy child, and with no mother to raise him—” Mabry shrugged. “It wasn’t pleasant for Patrick, either, Emma.”

  “He told me not to visit, that no island hearth would welcome me.”

  “Patrick nursed his pain for a very long time. There were one or two who might have taken him on and been a mother to Danny, if he’d shown the slightest interest.”

  “Don’t say he was so in love with me that he never looked at another woman,” Emma said scornfully. “I won’t believe you.”

  Mabry spoke carefully, measuring out her words. “It would be more accurate to say he was disappointed in his marriage. It made him leery of women altogether.”

  “Is that why he’s never remarried?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Has he ever told you that?”

  “Patrick isn’t one to volunteer what he’s thinking, Emma. You should know that.”

  She knew nothing of the sort. Her mouth tightened. It didn’t matter now. But she was still curious. “How do you do it?” she asked.

  “Do what, lass?”

  “How do you know everything before it happens?”

  Mabry smiled. “Why has it taken you thirty years to ask me such a question, Emma Tierney?”

  “I don’t believe in the Sight.”

  “Then you won’t be interested in my answer.”

  “You can’t expect any sane person to believe such a thing.”

  “We islanders don’t claim to be sane, lass,” Mabry said gently. “What I came to tell you was that you were right to go. You didn’t belong here. You don’t now. Not many do, not even those who begin their lives here.”

  Emma wet her lips. The question burned on her tongue, but she refused to ask it. Mabry O’Farrell would not have the satisfaction of rearranging any more lives. “Goodbye, Mabry.”

  The old woman’s mouth turned up in the ghost of a smile. “You can rest easily, Emma. Mollie doesn’t belong here on Inishmore any more than you did. She has the advantage because she knows it.”

  Emma gasped. “How could you know—”

  “No vision brought me such news, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “Then how—”

  “I listen, Emma, and I watch carefully. That’s all the witchcraft I have within me. I need no sorcery to read what is in a mother’s heart after one child has already been lost to her.”

  Mabry did have an odd way of knowing things ahead of time. Emma had read a number of biographies about people like her. Despite her skepticism, her heart lifted. Mollie was safe.

  “What about the children?”

  Mabry straightened, pulling her shoulders back. The smile left her mouth. “They are Sean’s concern,” she said coldly. “I’ll be going now.”

  Emma watched her walk away, a straight figure without a hint of stiffness, dressed in black. A strange pounding began in her heart. “Do you see everything, Mabry O’Farrell,” she whispered, “or is your Sight selective? Can you control it, or does it come over you unannounced?”

  The day was unusually clear. Patrick watched her walk the last quarter-mile up the winding path to the cottage where he’d lived for forty years, where he’d brought her home for the first time, his new bride.

  Looking at her now, moving purposefully up the road with long athletic steps, he couldn’t imagine what had come over him. She was slim and blond and attractive, more so now at fifty-six than when she was at twenty because most women her age were not so well preserved. But the warmth that had once spilled from her smile was gone. She no longer laughed with her eyes. Emma had lost her spark and with it the glow that set her apart.

  Patrick shook his head sadly. For years he’d imagined her as he remembered, a woman unlike any other. But the Emma Tìerney he’d created didn’t exist outside his imagination. Perhaps she never had, or perhaps the stark living on the island to which she could never acclimate herself had changed her into a shell of the woman he’d met, married, and shared two children with.

  What could she want with him, she who avoided even the simplest contact? He wanted to open the door, to meet her in the natural sunlight. No. Better to wait until she knocked. He would invite her in, offer her tea. The small courtesies would relax him, help him forget the last time she was here.

  She knocked firmly. He walked through the kitchen to the door and opened it, feigning surprise.

  “Hello, Patrick.” No hesitation here.

  “Emma.”

  “May I come in?”

  He stepped aside. “Of course.”

  She walked past him into the warm fire lit room. He watched her look around, taking in the same potbellied stove, the oak table and chairs, the sideboard his mother had left him, the modern refrigerator.

  Her voice was awe-tinged, her eyes wide, blue, wonder-filled. “You haven’t even arranged the furniture.”

  He shrugged. “Why change something if it suits you?”

  “For the sake of variety.”

  “I’ve never been one to need variety.”

  Her cheeks flamed. “No. I suppose not. May I sit down, Patrick? I’ve come to ask you something.”

  He pulled out a straight-backed chair from the table. “Will you share a pot of tea with me, Emma?”

  She sat down. “Yes, thank you.”

  She didn’t offer to help, and he was grateful for it. The familiar rituals of boiling water, warming the pot, measuring leaves, and setting out milk and sugar steadied him. She wanted to ask him something, did she? What could she possibly want after all this time?

  Emma had never kept him waiting, and she didn’t know. She drank her tea black without sugar, a preference that made the back of his tongue curl in anticipation of her every bitter swallow.

  “I want you to tell me about Danny,” she said unexpectedly. “I need to know what he was like at the different stages of his life.”

  He stared at her. “Why now?”

  “Nothing is ever right anymore. I can’t rest, and I can’t go home without knowing more than I do. You kept him away from me. That was your choice, not mine.” She spoke clearly, pointedly, her eyes fixed on his. “It was your mistake. This is your penance.”

  “Are you for playing the part of my confessor, Emma?”

  She shook her head. “It’s not you who concerns me, Patrick. I’m a mother, a mother whose child was kept from her. You did that to me. For thirty years I kept silent because of my own guilt. Now I want answers.”

  Emma was hurting, was she? He was no stranger to heartache, most of it on her account. He wasn’t saint enough that the news of hers didn’t please him. Still, he’d loved her once. The past tense of the thought took him by surprise. It was true. He no longer loved her. The moment had slipped by him without his even realizing it. She was Danny’s mother, and she deserved to lay him to rest. “What would you like to know?”

  Her eyes lit up. “What was his favorite color?”

  “He never said anything about a favorite color.”

  “What about his favorite meal, his favorite book?”

  Patrick looked startled. Did women know these things? “I have no idea, Emma. Danny and I didn’t discuss such
things.”

  Her laugh was brittle. “Mothers notice those things, Patrick. They don’t have to discuss them.”

  He slowly chewed a biscuit that he’d set out with the tea. “Perhaps I’ll be of less help to you than you thought.”

  “What was he like in school?”

  “Difficult,” he said without thinking. “From the time he was small, he was always in one scrape or another.”

  “Did he have friends?”

  Did Danny have friends? He hesitated. It came to him, suddenly, that he didn’t want to add to Emma’s heartache after all. “He had a few, although he wasn’t the sort people take to easily.”

  “Was he a good student?”

  He thought a minute. “He was bright enough, I suppose. Reading and figures came easily, but studying didn’t interest him. His marks were satisfactory, but there was never a question of his going on to university. Education would have been the way out,” Patrick said without sympathy. “It’s the way for many who have no desire to live out their lives here. But Danny never wanted out.” He watched Emma chew on her bottom lip. He wasn’t satisfying whatever need she had to learn about their son. How did one account for the life of a child to a mother who’d never known him? Was there a way to do it properly? “The best thing he ever did was marry Kerry O’Malley. She steadied him. He drank less.”

  “Did you tell him that?”

  His mouth twisted. “I didn’t have to tell him, lass. He knew it himself. Besides, who am I to offer advice, a man with no experience at holding a marriage together?”

  She flushed. “You might have tried. You might have said that’s how you knew.”

  He shrugged. Outside, birds circled in confusion, reformed their phalanx, and flew away. “When did you start drinking?”

  He sighed. Here it was, the inevitable question, the one he knew she would ask even though he hoped she would not. “I was always a drinking man, Emma. I put it aside while you were here.”

  “If you did it for me, why couldn’t you do it for your son?”