It was an open-air party with summer food, corn, clams, beer, women in pale cottons, yellows, pinks, whites. Fireworks breaking the thick, velvet blue sky with shards and spangles of light. The air heavy with salt, wild roses and end of summer nostalgia. It was the beginning of the Sixties, there was a beautiful, charismatic president in office, Vietnam was a world away and America was still gold. The light of that seemed part and substance of the very atmosphere itself. She had sat on the ground and listened to the music and sunk her bare feet in the sand, feeling it sift and swirl through her toes like the touch of dreams, fine and clinging. She watched Jamie, for it seemed half the island knew him. The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker and every female under the age of sixty and maybe a few bold ones that were over. They drifted, brushed and sighed around him like so many web spun butterflies, young ones, lush little eighteen year old nymphets, with sugar floss hair and lips painted bubblegum pink. Bodies at their peak point of nubile perfection. Young mothers, still pretty, with bruised yearning eyes, middle-aged women on the prowl, silken and clawed like jungle cats and old ones who flirted with him like he was a beloved but distant relation. Pamela could not articulate these things but she felt them and knew herself to be only a child in the face of all of it. A child with a foot on either side of dividing earth, neither innocent nor assured, neither infant nor adult. The mirror, like a divining stone, told its own tale. The tale of the awkward duckling, too long of leg and lean of line, who would, when one least expected it, become a swan. But divining stones take discerning eyes and what she saw in the mirror was a gangly, pre-adolescent with braces, bruises and an unruly cloud of hair.
It was enough to watch Jamie—almost. Enough to see him dance and laugh and even, after some coercion, play the fiddle like one possessed. Enough to watch him single out the people who hung back from the fray, who found the shadows their natural companions, and draw them like fearful moths into the warmth of his light. Enough, almost. To accept with a smile the plate of tiny blue crabs and to feign delight in the small glass of beer he brought her. To dance with rough-hewn, silent island boys who would rather be gone into the salt and mist and water of their native land than be holding a miserable half-Irish, half-American not-quite child nor woman in their arms. Enough, almost.
Magic came at the waning minutes of the last hour, when someone played ‘Waltzing Matilda,’ softly, sweetly, bow coddling the strings to draw out the most melancholy, aching notes and Jamie, taking her hand and pulling her from her self-imposed exile on the outskirts of the firelight had taught her how to waltz. Precise, gliding steps, one sliding effortlessly into the next. Dancing there on the edge of the water, where the salt and spume licked at their ankles and tiny water creatures scrabbled about their toes. Letting her feel the pattern, the count of it in her waist and arms. His eyes holding hers, making her feel that this moment was theirs alone, forever. Making, she would later realize, a child who’d had a wreck of a summer feel special. And at the end, when he’d spun her softly out, he’d conjured up an orchid from behind her ear and laid it in her hands, then kissed her forehead and bowed. She’d fallen in love with him, had been halfway there anyhow, the crystal angel had begun it and the dance had sealed it.
He’d taken her home, dropped a kiss on her head and left her there on the porch, alone with the smell of dying, bleeding gold honeysuckle clinging to the air like a lover. Too much she didn’t understand and not enough language to put it into words. Someday, she’d vowed to herself, someday I will know what to do, what to say and then I will make magic for him. Jamie was gone in the morning and she didn’t hear from him again, though he’d left the copy of ‘Les Miserables,’ behind for her, inscribed with the words ‘To island summers, broken ankles and youth that is far too fleeting.’ And then from Wordsworth, he had borrowed the lines, ‘Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven.’
She’d pondered, analyzed and deconstructed brick by brick those words over the years but could never quite make of them what she wanted. What was left of her youth was hardly bliss and came nowhere near approaching heaven. Her father was still worried, still drawn, still tired and only seemed to get more so as time went on. Staff got smaller, so did houses, horses were sold and finally, though he’d hung onto it for as long as he could, the island house went to a family from California. She didn’t care by that point, she couldn’t be on the island anymore; the island had become Jamie for her. Other people had their bibles—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, but she had the gospel of James, Stuart, Kirkpatrick.
Her father died when she was sixteen, Rose had passed away the previous spring of lung cancer and that left herself and the dog. With no money. Her father, once a tough thirteen year old that had disembarked off a ship from Ireland and fought his way up in the New York business world, had died broke. Hit by a car in the street. She’d been numbed by the news, furious at her father’s carelessness and so awash in grief that she hadn’t considered the full ramifications of her situation. Sixteen and alone made her a ward of the state. Vulnerable and by this time beautiful enough to make middle aged men sing to her in the street made her open to all sorts of problems. So she took her clothes, her face and what little chutzpah she could summon up and went to Hugh Mulligan. He gave her a job and one room over the bar. It was enough at the time. She danced with customers at night and learned to defend herself firmly but in such a way that no one got belligerent. Days she taught dance to senior citizens and bored society matrons. Her partner was a Spanish boy named Carlos and together they made a pretty enough sight for people to sign up for several sessions.
What time she had to herself was spent finishing her schooling, not in any formal manner but with books taken out by the armload from the New York Public Library.
Birthdays and Christmases were spent alone, though Carlos brought her a cake on her eighteenth birthday and offered to relieve her of her virginity. She’d refused and he’d shrugged and said she didn’t know what she was missing.
Every penny she saved, eating the least amount of food, taking the produce that stores generally threw out. Accepting the occasional greasy fry-up from Hugh Mulligan. Never wavering from her goal. To get to Ireland and find Jamie. She only hoped it wasn’t too difficult or that he hadn’t left years ago, because if he had she’d no idea where to find him. She didn’t know if he was rich or poor, married or single, with or without children. She only knew that she had to find out for herself. Shortly before her nineteenth birthday in the spring of 1968, she’d paid her way and caught the plane to Ireland.
The angel had begun it, the dance had sealed it. She would find Jamie and know her fate when she saw it in his eyes.
Chapter Six
A Variety of Boys
Did you know that a male elephant’s penis weighs sixty pounds?” Pamela asked sliding her bare-naked and impossibly perfect bottom across a sheet of blue silk.
“Would you quit twitching,” Pat said for what seemed, to both artist and model, the thousandth time that hour, “and put down the copy of ‘National Geographic’, as I don’t want it in the picture.”
“You’re too literal,” she retorted flinging the magazine down and resuming her pose. She was seated in one-quarter profile, facing away from Pat, head turned just enough to present him with the shadow of her features. A half-naked Psyche catching Cupid’s eye for the first time.
“Do not move, I’m working on the fabric now and the folds are just perfect,” Pat said focusing, in a way that wasn’t particularly flattering, on a ripple of material two inches below her left breast. Whatever had possessed her to think being an artist’s model was the height of exoticism had fled in the all too present realities of cramp, chill and unmitigated boredom. Pat was working on the sketches for a surreal variation on Frederic Leighton’s famous milk-breasted Psyche. The results thus far, in Pamela’s view, did little for a woman’s ego.
“Are ye comin’ to hear Dev Murphy sing wit
h the rest of us?” Pat asked, stopping briefly to exchange a dull pencil for a sharp one, “There’s a rumor runnin’ about that Jack Stuart may be there an’ read from his latest work.”
Pamela rolled her eyes, if she had learned one thing since coming to Ireland; it was that Jack Stuart, famed Republican poet, much like God, was always rumored to be everywhere and never did show his face.
“It’s more likely that Christ will descend on a cloud and hand out revisions for the Sermon on the Mount.”
“Blasphemer,” Pat muttered, completely intent now on a milky fold over her ribs.
“Against Christ or Jack Stuart? Both seem to have equal standing in this country.”
Pat gave her a quick, black look. “Not everyone subscribes to that point of view.”
“I know, Republicans tend to place him a little closer to God’s right hand than Christ and those of the Orange persuasion lump him in with a dark gentleman who resides much further south.”
“If ye’d read his work before passin’ judgment—”
“I have,” Pamela said and leaned over to dig in a bag, producing a small black bound, gilt lettered book, “and I liked it.” The cloth fell off her shoulder as she handed the book to Pat, who glared and set his pencil down with a thump. Just then with no warning a head, sublime with short black curls and dark sparkling eyes, popped around the corner. “Lucy I’m home,” it sang and then taking in the situation before it, blinked twice and grinning in a most irreverent manner looked at Pat and said, “Lucy, you got some ‘splainin to do.”
“Pamela,” said Pat grinning just as irreverently back, “meet my brother, Casey.”
“Milk? Sugar?” asked Pat’s brother, holding a pitcher and bowl of the respective items in either hand.
“Neither, thank you,” Pamela said, eyeing the door with great longing.
“As it suits ye,” he said easily and helped himself to a generous portion of both. “Ah that’s grand. I haven’t had a decent cup of tea in five years.”
“Been abroad have you?” Pamela asked inanely, wishing she’d the courage to look down and see if her shirt was right side out and the buttons done up properly.
He cleared his throat and gave Pat an odd look. Pat in turn shook his head almost imperceptibly. “In a manner of speakin’ I suppose ye could say that.”
There was some joke she was missing here and she devoutly wished she’d not let their innate hospitality coerce her into staying for tea.
They could not stop grinning at each other like two very silly Cheshire cats. Brothers obviously, unmistakably in size and color but at this close proximity one could not help but see the differences. Casey was bigger, hewn from harder rock than his brother, it showed in his face, he was granite to Pat’s mica. Limbs, from years or experience, were tighter, harder. Pat still retained some of the loose-jointedness of boyhood, his face still dreamed, his brother’s did not.
Casey turned, dark eyes friendly yet guarded and she realized she’d been staring and he’d felt the stamp of her eyes on his face.
“Welcome home,” she said, the words slipping from her mouth before she even heard them in her head.
“Thank ye,” he held her gaze until she, completely flustered, jumped up from the table and announced in a voice that seemed too loud and foreign to her own ears that she really must be going.
“I’ll see ye tomorrow then,” Pat said helping her on with her coat and looping her bag over her shoulder.
“Nice to have met ye,” his brother’s voice was polite but nothing more.
She walked all the way home, too hot to be confined to a bus, pausing halfway up the tree-lined drive of Jamie’s house to watch in wonderment the moon sitting like a Christmas angel on top of a cypress, a silver crayon cutout against the pale evening sky. Without warning, it looped upside down and she had to step back to avoid falling. She blinked trying to fend dizziness off and put one hot hand to her forehead. She’d best go straight to bed as she seemed to be developing a raging fever.
“Well,” said Casey Riordan to his little brother.
“Well,” said his little brother back.
Casey let out a long, shaky breath and grabbed his brother in a ferocious hug. “Goddamn it’s good to see ye, Pat.” He held him for as long as comfort would allow, closed his eyes and breathed in. It was strange to hold a man in your arms when you’d been expecting a skinny kid who always smelled of dirt and sunshine even when it had rained for weeks. This entity smelled of wood and charcoal, of water and something sweet. It was in this sweetness he found a vestige of the little boy he’d left behind, not knowing it was the scent of a man falling in love. He would regret the oversight later but by then it would be too late.
‘My brother,’ he thought in his heart, though aloud all he said was, “When did ye cut the hair off?”
“Two days ago,” Pat said laughing, “I must have felt ye crossin’ the water.”
“Look at ye,” Casey brushed the pad of one thumb down his brother’s face, smoothing the eyebrow, touching the bone below the eye. It was a gesture so replete with tenderness that Pat turned away, uncomfortable. “When did ye go an’ grow up Paddyboy?” he asked reverting to his brother’s childhood nickname.
“Five years will be a long time,” Pat said eyes turned down and away from Casey’s searching gaze as he collected cups and spoons off the table. “In more ways than one.”
“Aye, it will be,” Casey rejoined quietly and helped his brother clear away the table. “Are ye goin’ te tell me about the girl?”
“Her name is Pamela.” Pat said stiffly.
“Alright then, Pamela.”
“I’ve known her for a couple of months,” Pat said taking two apples from the counter and throwing one to Casey who caught it neatly in his open palm. “She’s at Queens an’ we have a class together.”
“Two months an’ she’s naked in the kitchen? Yer obviously not as shy as ye used to be.”
“She agreed to pose for me; it’s a project I’m workin’ on for art class. We’re friends,” Pat said defensively.
“Aye an’ then what?” Casey asked folding his arms.
“An’ then nothin’. Look ye can’t come back here an’ play big brother like ye were only gone out to get the milk. Ye’ve been gone five years an’ a boy will grow into a man whether there’s bars in front of his face or not.”
Casey nodded, feeling quite weary, the adrenaline rush of being home flooding away and leaving him awkward and feeling too large and cumbersome here in the neat little kitchen that belonged to his brother.
“I expect ye’ll be angry at me Patrick an’ ye’ve a right to it but can we leave it for another day? It’s only that,” he pressed his fingers into the hollows at the top of his nose, shocked that he could still feel tears after all this time, “I’m a wee bit tired.”
“Aye, we can leave it.”
“Thanks,” Casey said, wanting suddenly to be behind a closed and locked door, away from eyes that had always seen too much. It was terrifying not to have eight steel doors, barred and locked, between you and the world. It made him feel tired and much younger than his brother.
“Yer room is ready; it’s the one on the right at the top of the stairs.”
Casey nodded, vocal chords knotting around his throat, desperate to escape the too bright light of the kitchen. It seemed to sear right into his brain, it was that strong. Only later would he realize it had only been the last of the sun coming in through the window.
Discipline, the one thing that had ensured his survival for so long, demanded that he unpack and wash up before succumbing to fatigue. Rituals, small and insignificant, had stood between him and despair while he lived a life apart.
When he finally lay down and closed his eyes, it was his daddy’s face that came to mind and it broke his breath just to see him there. He’d expected him somehow, not in a logical
way, but just the ghost of him in Pat’s face. His brother was his own man now, though, and not a remnant of the father Casey could not think of without anger and bottomless pain.
Tired as he was, sleep would not come, so he lay awake watching night claim the sky through his window. Blue, pale to deep, then indigo and finally black. He got up hours later and hung a blanket over the window; it would serve as bars for now until he felt ready to wake to a sunrise. Freedom, it seemed, would have its own price.
Discretion, thought the Reverend Lucien Broughton, was indeed the better part of valor and the power of dominance was often in the display rather than the fact. Destruction of a country, a race, a people, a way of life was often in the details. These things he held to firmly, they were his credo, one might even say, his religion.
A delicate minx of a man, blue of eye, flaxen of hair, he sat now in the supremely upright position men who are uncomfortable with their small stature will aspire to. Outside the window to his left lay the grounds of Stormont, ostensibly the government building of Northern Ireland, beneath the veneer of gray respectability a Protestant palace for a Protestant state. The road of history in Northern Ireland ran through Stormont, the road of progress stopped abruptly at its doors.
As a denizen of Malone Road drawing rooms and country houses, Lucien Broughton felt himself British by birth, British by destiny. If you needed it, the proof was in the Queen’s head which adorned the stamp, the red pillar boxes that graced the roadsides and the weather which was as cold, gray and invariably dour as any proper British morning could be hoped to be. It was, in his opinion, unfortunate that the rest of Ireland insisted on hanging on to, or off, the bottom of the six states of Ulster.
Fanaticism could not be gleaned by the perusal of his parts, was not even betrayed by a telltale gleam in the eye. He was smooth, unruffled, lucent as a new moon and untrustworthy as a fox in a hencoop.
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