Exit Unicorns

by Cindy Brandner

  Mick Bigsby, exhausted civil servant, sometime advisor to a variety of politicians and at present feeling very much like a chicken, sat at a desk, papers scattered in weary abundance, under the calm, dissecting gaze of Reverend Lucien Broughton.

  What he knew of the Reverend was little; a self-taught fundamentalist who’d acquired his doctorate honorarily from the Wilbur Walker College of Christianity in faraway Louisiana. An orator of impressive talent, his voice had been known to shake the walls of many an Orange lodge with the thunder of his rhetoric. Fear of the trampling Roman Catholic hordes was the rock upon which he preached and a solid rock it was found to be even at this late date in history.

  What he felt of the Reverend Broughton was fear—pure, unmitigated, skin-crawling fear. The thing he couldn’t quite put a finger on was why he was here in his, Mick Bigsby’s office, on this early spring day as a faint mist of green was lacing the trees outside.

  “I was given to understand,” began Lucien Broughton, placing one well-manicured hand over the other, “that you were the gentleman to whom I should speak to about a matter which has come to my concern.”

  “Yes,” Mick said, wondering what on earth this man could possibly want his help for.

  “I want to acquire James Kirkpatrick’s seat in the House.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand,” said Mick who was afraid he really did understand.

  Lucien wore a look of saintly patience, “His death,” he paused for effect, “has left a seat open in Parliament, I believe. I was given to understand that an election would be called shortly as it cannot be left vacant.” He spoke slowly and precisely as if to an immigrant just learning the profundities of the English language.

  “Well, yes, but it is hoped by his constituents that his son will fill the gap, left as you say by his,” Mick gritted his teeth, “death.”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong but seats in Parliament are not a matter of inheritance.”

  “Well, of course not, but Jamie, the younger Lord Kirkpatrick I mean to say,” Mick took a deep breath and attempted to sort out his verbs and nouns, “would be a favorite to win.”

  “Are you suggesting,” Lucien blinked twice precisely, “a mock election or had you just planned to hand over the district to this man merely because he is the son of a popular father?”

  Mick put a firm tamp on his temper and answered calmly. “Of course not, it’s only that, and you’ll forgive my saying this, but that district contains an overwhelming Catholic majority and even the Protestant contingent has been very happy with what Lord Kirkpatrick managed to do for them. Housing has been improved and is given out according to numbers and need, the streets have been cleaned up, crime is down and unemployment rates are lower than in any other district in Belfast and the environs have been brought into accordance with the strictest of health codes.”

  Lucien smiled, the chilliest smile Mick had ever seen and said, “I’ve no doubt that Lord Kirkpatrick did an admirable job, however I don’t see how that bears on his son being a shoe-in for the position. Nor had I heard that he was stepping up, as the Americans say, to the plate.”

  “May I be honest with you Mr. Broughton?” Mick asked, lacing his hands together and feeling as if he were breathing ice in, so frigid had the room become.

  “It’s Reverend Broughton,” Lucien replied and though there was calm on his tongue there was no warmth in his aspect, “and honesty is always welcome, one indeed finds it refreshing, water to a fire if you will.”

  “Indeed,” Mick echoed and took a sip of water that seemingly lodged frozen in his throat. It took a most undignified coughing fit to clear it and he emerged watery-eyed and red-faced from it moments later.

  “More water?” Lucien asked, hand solicitously poised over Mick’s water glass.

  “No thank you,” Mick replied hastily, jerking the water glass towards him and slopping its contents on several important documents in the process.

  “I make you uncomfortable Mr. Bigsby,” Lucien said, polished hands once again rejoined on his lap. “Do not deny it, I have that effect on many people. It is my burden to bear and as burdens go a very small one.” His face assumed a beatific air and Mick mused that even St. Francis of Assisi could not have projected such an aura of triumph over torture.

  “Reverend Broughton,” Mick said firmly, “if I may be honest I will tell you that a man such as yourself has very little chance, a snowball’s in hell really, of being elected to parliament in a Catholic district. Perhaps if you looked elsewhere, several terms will be up shortly—”

  “It’s this district I’m interested in Mr. Bigsby.”

  “I don’t understand why you’ve come to me,” Mick said, wishing he’d never laid eyes on the man.

  “To submit my name, of course.”

  “I see, well, there are channels you will have to go through, Reverend Broughton, formalities to be observed etc...”

  “Giving you time to warn the remaining Lord Kirkpatrick that he’d best stop grieving and get in the arena?”

  Mick wondered uneasily if the man was reading his mind.

  “No of course not,” he said and had to admit that the words sounded false even to his own ears.

  “You don’t approve of my entering the race, do you?” Lucien smoothed one faultless eyebrow with a delicate finger.

  “I don’t agree with your tactics Reverend Broughton,” Mick said feeling the ball of ice reforming in his throat, “I’ve always thought the pulpit should be reserved for religion not politics. But it is a free country and you may do as you wish.”

  “You are wrong Mr. Bigsby,” the Reverend Broughton rose from his seat in one unmarred movement, “it’s not a free country, but perhaps someday with the right leadership it might be.”

  “It’s your choice,” Mick said hoarsely, straining to not succumb to coughing until the man was gone.

  “Indeed, Mr. Bigsby, indeed it is.” Lucien performed his chilly smile again and Jack could feel frost spread through his throat and down into his lungs. “Good day Mr. Bigsby.”

  Mick nodded tersely at the man and then as the door closed behind him gave in to the coughing that felt as if it would tear his lungs apart. Later that night he would be admitted to the hospital, coughing blood and diagnosed with a severe case of pneumonia. By the time he returned to his desk six weeks later, Lucien Broughton would be officially standing as the candidate for West Belfast. Unopposed.

  “You are not getting your mouth around it,” Jamie said patiently, as Pamela feeling like an inarticulate lummox, bit her lips in an effort to put some feeling back into them. “Move your chin forward with the last sound,” he made a noise that sounded like the shushing of the tide sliding in over sand, “it’s a very soft language if you’ll allow it to be.”

  “Yeuch,” Pamela said thumping back in her chair in frustration well mixed with equal parts of exhaustion.

  “Perhaps,” Jamie said with the air of an overtaxed diplomat, “that’s enough for tonight.”

  The Gaelic lessons, now grinding into their second week, were not a raving success. Jamie was a patient teacher, Pamela, at first a willing student, became increasingly angry and frustrated as it became apparent that linguistics was not her natural gift. She felt by the end of every evening as if her mouth were filled with thick, cold porridge. Helping him to translate his father’s unfinished work was at best a flimsy excuse for staying under his roof, it was, however, the only excuse she had. Unless one counted the endless number of errands, tasks and odd jobs Maggie, Liz and Jamie seemed to conjure up each day. Jamie’s contributions to her job list seemed the work of an inventive sadist. Today’s inventory had included: mucking out the stables before lunch, typing up a thirty page report on the last meeting of the European Linen Guild and, then, for the icing on the cake, beheading, gutting and cleaning the dozen trout Jamie had caught during a morning’s fish with some
duke or other. She reeked of a heady combination of manure and fish guts, her fingers were stiff and sore and she was completely exhausted and uninterested in the complexities of the Goidelic branch of language. She yawned lavishly, barely managing to summon up the energy to cover her mouth.

  Jamie, rubbing the crease in his forehead, always a sign she’d come to learn, of weariness, turned and gave her a quick, bright smile.

  “Come on let’s go for a walk, clear the spiderwebs from our brains.”

  “Now?” she said stupidly, looking out the windows which, braced by darkness, threw back their reflections and gave no glimpse of the external world.

  “Now,” he replied firmly.

  Thus, she found herself clad in a thick sweater Jamie had dug out for her, picking her way along the headlands that ran beside the Irish sea for some miles. Jamie navigated the rocky terrain as if he’d learned his first steps on a high wire. High wire being an apt description, she thought, trying to not calculate the hundreds of feet that plunged at a ninety degree angle into the water below. It was in just such a calculation, watching the rocks below, rather than the ones beneath her feet, that she lost her footing and with barely a millisecond for a sharp scream, saw the moon-limned sea arc dizzily upwards and closed her eyes in anticipation of a quick, brutal death.

  “You have,” Jamie said with a firm hand on her shoulder, “to watch where you’re stepping up here.”

  “Brilliant advice,” she muttered, eyes closed now in embarrassment rather than fear, “wish I’d thought of it.”

  “Take my hand,” Jamie said patiently. Opening her eyes she did as she was bid, surprised at the warm, dry strength of his hand, long and fine-boned as it was. After another twenty minutes of hard climbing they emerged on a plateau at the summit of the headlands where it seemed the whole world was made of moon-blazed sea. The water swam with light, silver and dancing, gilt and perfect. Standing there on the plateau, earth slipping away on either side, one step from falling and falling endlessly into water, and above only sky, a fragile film between them and the universe that ran, ever and always, away from man, stars fleeing grasping hands and pleading hearts.

  “Dear God,” Pamela breathed in wonderment.

  “Seems possible here,” Jamie said dryly, spreading his coat on the damp rock and indicating that she should sit beside him. She sat and he pulled a thermos of hot chocolate out of a bag, poured two cups and handed her one. She clasped its warmth gratefully, unable to drag her eyes away from the sight before her.

  “I used to come here when I was a boy and imagine what the Irish chieftains felt when they saw English ships coming, if they knew what it would mean or even felt the whisper of what was to come. They managed to evade the Romans by a simple trick of geography and I have to wonder if we wouldn’t have done better in the end if the Romans had been able to make it here.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we would have learned Roman ways, come to hand and heel the way the Saxons once did. We wouldn’t have been so different when change did come, we wouldn’t,” he closed his eyes as if quite suddenly the spectacle of sea and sky were too much, “have been so bloody, inalterably, hopelessly Irish.”

  “Being Irish isn’t any sin,” she said lightly, wanting to pull him back from that dark place he seemed to journey to on a regular schedule.

  “Isn’t it?” He turned and faced her and her breath quite suddenly hurt in her lungs and stomach. He was all gold, in every varying shade and spectrum, in heady darkness and blinding, all consuming light. Gold from bronze to sunlight, from first morning to last blink of day. Gold in his heart and head and hands. A fallen angel cursed by light.

  “Who are you?” he asked softly, eyes pinning her carefully, like a butterfly to a clean, unlined page.

  “No one special,” she said and turned her head away with as much effort as it would have taken to tear skin from bone.

  “That seems as likely as unicorns on the moon,” he said, voice still speculative.

  “Unicorns on the moon?”

  “Aye, it’s what my Daddy used to tell me when a thing was impossible. When I’d ask about God or my mother coming back or any of the thousand other questions a child will ask. He’d say, ‘That’s as likely, Jamie, as unicorns on the moon.’ The problem was that I believed in unicorns and God and mothers who could come back from the far side of the moon. It was my father’s fault in a strange way; he fed me so full of fairy stories and enchantment when I was a child that I believed all sorts of things.”

  “If he was anything like you I’d believe him too,” she said before she could stop to measure the wisdom of her words. “Tell me what he told you.”

  “Well it all started because I was afraid of the moon when I was small. I’d this notion that it could come down and get right in my window at night and I’d just get lost or swallowed up in that light. So my father told me it was a world like our own, only the skies were the color of apricots in the day and plums at night. There weren’t any people, just unicorns, which of course explained why they weren’t to be found on our own planet anymore. See the dark body there?” He brought his arm into alignment with the path of her eyes and she nodded. “That’s Mare Tranquilliatis.”

  “The Sea of Tranquility,” she said watching the great blue shadow that crossed the face of the moon.

  “It was where the unicorns drank and held meetings, where they swam and gazed out at that blue green orb that always rode their horizon and wondered if such a place could harbor creatures of their own ilk. They were ruled by a triumvirate of benevolent creatures, ancient bearded unicorns who went by the names of,” he laughed, “Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo. I can’t begin to tell you how disappointed I was when I found out they were mere humans and that there were no seas on the moon, that it seemed most likely there was never any water there at all.”

  “They were perfect names for unicorns,” she said, “all of them dreamers and your father as well it would seem. He gave you magic, that’s a pretty wonderful gift for a child.”

  Jamie nodded as a small cloud scudded with velvet feet across the moon and left him in shadow for a moment. “I only wish he’d kept enough magic for himself, just enough to stay alive.”

  “Perhaps a sea is a sea even without water, Jamie,” she said causing him to regard her intently once more. “Are creatures that live in our imagination any less real than a man who lives on the other side of the planet or down the street that you will never know?”

  “A philosopher in our midst and one who believes in magic to boot,” Jamie said looking at her as if she were a riddle, one he didn’t quite know how to begin untangling.

  “Kepler once said that we don’t question why the birds sing, we presume they were created for the very purpose of singing and so we shouldn’t ask why the human mind puzzles over the heavens, why we spend a lifetime asking why, even though we know there’s no answer. It’s what we were created for, to ask why to all the questions that have no answers. So perhaps we shouldn’t question unicorns on the moon, perhaps we should just believe in them.”

  Silence held them for long moments after that, a silence that was not fraught with strangeness, nor expectation, nor the need to say vacant words merely to fill space. Pamela wasn’t certain how it had happened or when but she was comfortable in his presence now.

  “When you have the moon, you can’t have the stars,” she said thinking aloud.

  “Hm?” Jamie inquired, reverie disturbed.

  “I was only thinking that when the moon is at its brightest you can’t see the stars as well so for all intents and purposes when you have the moon you can’t have the stars and vice versa.”

  “It’s quite an interesting mind you possess, Miss O’Flaherty,” Jamie said putting the lid back on the thermos of hot chocolate and draining the dregs of his cup. “Do you suppose you’ll ever tell me the truth about how you acquired it?”
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  “It’s simply a part of me,” she said lightly.

  “The story you told me about Nova Scotia and ancient parents, it’s just a story isn’t it? It’s no more real than unicorns on the moon, is it?”

  She looked up at him and found with his eyes on her, there on his lonely hilltop where he’d dreamed as a boy, she could not lie, nor was she quite ready to tell the truth. “No it isn’t,” she replied quietly.

  Creeping back with much more care over the rocks, hand firmly held in Jamie’s once again, she found the nerve to ask a question that had been bothering her for days.

  “Why won’t you take your father’s seat in Parliament?” she asked and regretted it instantly for he dropped her hand, her few simple words having shattered the fragile bond they’d begun to build on the hilltop.

  “Why would you ask that?” His eyes were hard and unflinching in the light, wind blowing strands of gold across his forehead.

  “Only because everyone else seems to be asking it,” she said, the words sounding halt and lame to her own ears.

  “Such as?”

  She swallowed, intimidated by the look on his face. “Such as your friend, the one who came the other day, the one who looked quite ill.”

  “Eavesdropping were you?” Jamie’s voice was pure acid.

  “No, he told me the situation as he was leaving, said I should try to talk some sense into you because he’d no luck in doing so.”

  “I see,” he said tersely, “well I apologize then, but he shouldn’t have told you. It’s all just wasted effort because I’m not going to take it.”

  “Why not?” she asked daring to look him directly in the eye.

  He gave a short bark of laughter. “Did no one ever tell you that it’s not polite to ask all of the questions all of the time?”

  “No.”

  “Alright then the truth of the matter is I don’t have the head for the job. I’d take every problem and injustice home with me and if I couldn’t right it would eat me up. I know I cannot do it, it’s very simple really, I just wish people would believe it.”