Exit Unicorns

by Cindy Brandner

  “Can I help ye, Father,” said a distinctly polite yet quite unfriendly voice from the vicinity of the overhanging yew hedge directly in front of him. Then a figure stepped out into the roadway and Father Terence McGinty—who prided himself on the one hundred sit-ups he did each morning and night, and the yoga he had practiced without fail for the last four decades of his life, taught to him by a wizened old Indian on a Tibetan hilltop as many decades ago—thought his heart had taken an attack. A ribald limerick flitted through his head instead of the prayers he’d thought would come at this moment. It was through a haze that he felt strong hands grab him and seat him gently on the grass.

  “Are ye alright then, man?” the apparition in front of him asked.

  He nodded, not trusting himself to look again at the too familiar features.

  “It’s just that, well,” he smiled weakly, “’tis nothin’ lad.”

  “I imagine it’s just that I look a wee bit too much like my grandda’,” the boy said with some amusement.

  “Aye, ye could say that,” Father Terry agreed responding to the smile.

  “Father Terry?” the boy asked, but the question was only slight, the answer already quite certain in the boy’s mind.

  “Casey?”

  “Aye.”

  “How—how—” he stuttered weakly.

  “I’d know ye if I’d run into ye on the streets of Calcutta, my daddy’s descriptions were that strong. An’ I’ve my own memories.”

  “An’ yer daddy?” he asked hoping the boy did not hear the hope that trembled in his words.

  “Six years gone now,” Casey said, eyes gentle.

  “I didn’t know,” he felt a spectacular old fool, collapsed in the lane and receiving such news as this. But then there was never a great deal of dignity to be found in grief. Brian, his Brian, gone.

  Terry took a long, shaky breath, willing his heart to slow, taking from memory the picture of a child, a dark-eyed boy full of bumps and bruises, rushing from one scrape to the next. There were no traces now in the face above him of the mischievous, burr-ridden child, who’d galloped pell-mell into everything. It was Brendan with minor alterations. There was the same ruthlessness in the face despite the charming smile and the same brute strength, reined in barely by force of intelligence and a will of iron.

  “Aye, ye’ll have given me the helluva shock,” Terry said putting a trembling hand up to his face and searching for a calming breath.

  “Will ye come in an’ have a cup of tea with us?”

  “Us?” Terry asked accepting the lift up off the ground the boy offered.

  “Aye, us,” was Casey’s unenlightening reply.

  Terry usually visited the Riordan cottage twice a year, in the spring to open the windows and air it out and at the onset of winter to batten down the hatches. He never lingered, afraid always that if he so much as sat down for a moment the memories would swamp him. It was a comfort to be in it now though, with a fire crackling merrily in the hearth, tea on the boil and Brian’s son moving within it with grace and expediency. He was so like Brendan that Terry had to squelch the desire to sit him down and catch him up on the last thirty years. Much as he had to squelch the desire to ask for a whiskey in place of the tea that steeped in a little blue and white teapot in front of him. He needed the courage it provided, false or not, before he could ask what had happened to Brian.

  Casey, in a way that was typical of the Riordans, saved him the trouble.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t get hold of ye when Daddy died but I was feelin’ so badly for myself that I didn’t spare a thought for anyone else. An’ then I went to prison an’ I just couldn’t write. But Pat found this some time ago goin’ through Daddy’s things an’ I brought it down for ye.” He slid a crumpled bag across the table.

  Terry opened it and withdrew a letter, still sealed, yellowing a bit with age and a small carving of a boat, the gray-hulled curragh they used to spend many quiet hours in. So Brian had remembered and had tried in this small way to apologize. “I think,” he said, not quite able yet to meet Casey’s eyes, “I’ll read it later.”

  “It was quick an’ he likely never knew what hit him,” Casey said, pouring out the tea.

  “Pardon me?” Father Terry said.

  “Daddy’s death, it was a bomb.”

  “That transparent, am I?” Terry gave a half-hearted smile that did not make the journey to his eyes.

  “No,” Casey replied quietly, “it’s only I knew ye’d be wonderin’.”

  “Thank you,” Terry said just as the door swung open and amidst the skirl of cold air stepped a girl. Us, eh? He smiled broadly; the Riordans had the damnedest luck with women.

  “Pamela, this’ll be Father Terence McGinty, he was my Grandda’s best friend an’ an honorary member of the Riordan family, what there is left of it,” he smiled ruefully and the girl stepped forward, rain beading in tiny crystals in her hair, face flushed with the cold and damp.

  “Pleased to meet you,” she said, dropping a bouquet of pine boughs, pungent and sharp with rain, onto the floor by the peat shod. Product of the seedlings Brendan had brought back from the States forty years ago, now grown to adulthood and outlasting Brendan by many years.

  “’Tis my pleasure surely,” Terry said and extended his hand. She returned his grip firmly, meeting his eyes squarely. He blushed under such a frank gaze; here was him seventy years and then some, still knocked sideways by a girl’s beauty. There was some nonsense, he supposed, that a man never outgrew.

  “I was thinkin’ perhaps, darlin’,” Casey began with a careful glance at Terry, “that we could ask Father Terry to marry us?”

  There was no mistaking the surprise in her face. “Now you mean?”

  “Not this exact instant but in the next few days if possible.” He turned to Terry, “Would it be possible?”

  “If ye have a license, I suppose I don’t see why not. ‘Tis a bit unorthodox but then yer family isn’t exactly notorious for stickin’ to tradition. A few days to tell yer relations an’ anyone else ye might want to witness the nuptials—”

  “There isn’t anyone,” the girl said quietly, meeting Casey’s eyes in a look of pained understanding then smiling softly, almost shyly, “there’s just the two of us.

  The windows in Terry’s house were not lit and Peg, knowing this could mean only one thing, hesitated to go in. Though they had supper together every Tuesday night, she knew tonight was different. It was the wind that finally goaded her to the door; it came off the sea in great sheaves, tearing the breath from her lungs. At her age, it was no longer romantic to get soaked and catch your death, as generally it was too literal to do so.

  Terry didn’t answer her knock, so she let herself in, took off her wet things and stepped into the kitchen. It was silent as the grave and twice as dark. She cursed mildly as her good foot hit the corner of a coatstand and tipped it over with a great roaring crash.

  “Turn a light on before ye bring the roof down on us both,” came a dry voice from the midst of the darkness.

  “Bloody old fool, sittin’ in the dark,” she grumbled, waving her hand to and fro above the sink in a vain attempt to locate the pull for the light.

  “Little higher,” said Terry’s voice seeming to move up and down in the darkness.

  “Well if ye can see it, ye damned old scarecrow, then turn it on yerself.”

  The light came on a moment later and Peg expected to find Terry giving her the odd stare he always did when she failed to accomplish simple things. Instead, he just looked old and very tired.

  “Well I hardly need ask, do I? Ye’ve been down to the cottage then?”

  “Aye, I’ve been down,” he replied and sat down heavily on a chair.

  “Well then, who was it?” she asked her throat suddenly tight and dry.

  “Wasn’t the ghost of himself come back to haun
t us, though I must admit it did seem so for a minute.”

  “Did it?” She sat as heavily as he had, wanting to scream at him to hurry and say what he had to tell and on the other hand wishing she still had the legs to fly out the door and into the wind.

  Terry stroked the old, satiny top of the table under his hand, the long-boned fingers swooping in perfect rhythm, back and forth, back and forth. It was oddly soothing and yet Peg, having known this man all but ten years of his life, knew that it was not comfort he was deriving from it.

  “What is it, Terry?”

  He closed his eyes so she could not read the strange irises as she’d become so accustomed to during their long chats.

  “Brian’s dead,” he said finally, “I never even guessed, all those summers that passed an’ still I was waitin’ for him te come an’ gaze at the stars with me, te fish on fine days an’ te tell me that his boys had long ago left this country. We’d of had a fine time of it over that then wouldn’t we of?”

  “Oh God, Terry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know.” She reached across the surface of the worn table between them and patted his hand awkwardly, in all the years she had known him it was only the second time she’d touched him in comfort and the last time had been for her own, not his.

  He looked her bluntly in the eyes. “Aye well why would ye have known? He was only Marie’s son to ye an’ nothin’ more.”

  “Aye, well perhaps I should leave ye to yer grief,” she said quietly, gathering up her strength to stand and head for the door.”

  “Dear God Peg, I’m sorry, I’d no right to say such things to ye, please don’t go off, I don’t think I can be alone just yet.”

  “It’s alright ye old fool, I’ve said worse things to ye durin’ the passin’ of the day. I’ll fix us a bite then, a man yer age can’t be runnin’ on tears an’ the drink alone, don’t look at me that way Terence McGinty, I’m not such a teetotaler that I don’t know the smell of whiskey anymore. Sit, ‘twon’t be much but it’ll fill the hole,” she said getting to her feet and hopping rather nimbly over to the sink. Fifteen minutes later, her dress covered in a white apron, she was up to her elbows in potato and carrot peelings, water boiling merrily on the Aga, bread sliced and piled on an old Wedgewood saucer and cold roast from Terry’s Sunday dinner cut to papery thin slices.

  When everything was on the table, butter running clear down the mashed potatoes, baby carrots from his greenhouse steaming, and tea steeping on the sideboard she said, “Perhaps I deserved what ye said Terry but I am sorry, no I did not know Brian but I didn’t have a right to then, did I? The fact remains that he was Brendan’s only surviving son an’ if ye think that doesn’t hit me in the chest like a knife, ye are more a fool than I’ve always believed ye to be. Ye’ve not said so much but I can occasionally read between the lines an’ I know that he was more son to ye than if ye’d had yer own blood. Now man ye’ve got to eat somethin’.”

  He did manage a bit in the end and two cups of tea to wash it all down.

  “Who’s in the cottage then?” Peg managed to ask mildly enough, but he saw that the hand she stirred lemon into her tea with shook like it was palsied.

  “Brian’s oldest son Casey an’ a girl.”

  “A girl,” she said almost managing to fake a noncommittal interest.

  “Aye, a girl, one that makes a man mourn his lost youth, but then the Riordans always did have a taste in women that’d make the angels writhe with jealousy.”

  She could not suppress some small smile of pleasure at that. So her vanity had not completely deserted her as yet.

  “Aye well beauty is fleeting an’ so is love, as we’ve both cause to know Terence McGinty,” she got to her feet slowly and cleared the table all too aware that she was confirming the truth of her statement with every step.

  “They want me to marry them,” he said and she could feel his eyes on her back, watching for a reaction.

  “Do they, then? Well are ye goin’ to do it?” she asked clanking dishes in a rough fashion.

  “Well I thought perhaps it was time. I’ve buried a lot of Riordans but I’ve never married one. I’d like to be present at a happy ceremony for a change. So I’ve said yes. I thought perhaps ye’d come along as a witness.”

  “Did ye? Kind of ye to presume,” Peg said sharply, banging a pot with unnecessary force onto the counter. She stopped and fought for a deep breath, hands stilled in hot, soapy water. “Is he so very much like him then, Terry?”

  “Aye, he is, as near as one man can get to another, in ways big an’ small.”

  “I don’t know if I can bear it,” she whispered, but Terry with ears like a bat heard her.

  “Well that will be your burden Peg.”

  ‘Aye, it will be mine,’ she replied, but only to herself.

  They cleaned up the remnants of dinner in silence, Terry retreating to his sitting room after she’d refused his offer to walk her home. Undoubtedly, the old fool would sit and watch the stars all night to keep communion with the son he’d never had.

  Peg left for home, lifting her face to the wind and inhaling the salt, sea and smell of winter that the air was lashed about with.

  If wishes were fishes

  And tears swam like rain

  Dropping into rivers

  Of memory

  Then I would bid my grief

  Goodbye

  And watch him walk

  Over white waterfall

  Without a backward glance.

  She’d read that in a little book of poems recently and liked it. She would have dearly loved to leave her grief behind as well. Even, sometimes she had thought, if it meant having Brendan erased entirely from her memory. Now though as old age sat upon her shoulders squarely and unforgivingly she thought perhaps the memories were worth the price of grief and that whoever had written that poem was still very young indeed. Grief, she thought to use a term that was being bandied about all too frequently these days, was about as real as the human experience ever got. Unlike joy, grief was pure. Joy came with the taint of a small demon whispering in your ear of the black clouds coming to mar the blue sky. Joy was a state of superstition, grief was absolute. If she didn’t know much else in this world, she knew that absolutely and purely.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Macushla

  It took two days to make all the arrangements, which consisted only of a license and finding two witnesses. Father Terry had given his congratulations without reservation and yet Pamela had sensed a certain sadness about him, a resignation almost since the announcement of their intent to marry. She knew why and was determined to pointedly ignore the doubts about the wisdom of this venture. If love could fix the ills of the world then surely it could stop Casey from walking the road to destruction that he was currently on. That love had not indeed cured many ills, and that her own corner of the world had been bent on self-immolation for the last eight hundred years was not something she cared to look at too closely, if at all.

  On the evening before the wedding, a strange figure came thumping up their path. Casey had nipped into the village to fill a last minute list and, Pamela suspected, to see if he couldn’t procure a good bottle of whiskey. Pamela therefore, eyeing the scarlet coat, the purple skirt, the green shoes, the fiery red hair and the formidable black oak cane that the woman was adorned with, opened the door with some trepidation.

  “I would be Peg,” the apparition announced very matter of factly, “will ye be standin’ there with yer mouth hangin’ open or could I hope for the hospitality of a cup o’ tay?”

  “Of—of course,” Pamela stammered and stood aside as Peg came in bearing her cane as though it were a royal scepter and the tatty green of her skirts the finest silks in a sultan’s harem.

  “P’raps the Father will have told ye I’m to witness yer nuptials tomorrow, and I thought I’d like to acquaint meself with the bride an’ groom first.”r />
  “Of course,” Pamela replied wishing she could stop staring at her odd guest and yet finding herself unable to.

  “Have a look then, I don’t mind, Jaysus but I ought to be used to it. When I was but a slip of a girl, like yerself, I was the prettiest girl in all of Connemara, the min stared plenty then I tell ye. And now I’m the village oddity, old one leg Peg they calls me, fergitting and in the main not knowing that in me day I was Margaret MacBride, fairest in the land. Lost me leg in a train accident, too damned drunk to git off the tracks if the truth be known but I let them’s that wants to, think I’m a figure of tragedy, gives me a certain stature that alcoholism wouldn’t.”

  “Indeed, “ Pamela said feeling precisely as if Peg had whacked her upside the head with the beautiful black oak cane.

  “Not much in the way of a talker are ye, girl? Well I suppose with a face like that the min don’t much care if ye can talk or not. No matter, I can talk plenty an’ then some for the both of us, jist ask Father Terry and he’ll tell ye so. Many’s the hour I’ve near taken the ear right off the man, though to be sure it’s his own fault for listenin’ so well, a rare talent, that is listenin’, not so many people do it nowadays. But that’s enough about me. I’ve come to give ye marital advice and seeing as tomorrow is fast on its feet I’d best get on with it. Ah,” she sighed and actually stopped to sip the steaming cup of tea Pamela placed before her “yer tongue may not be energetic but ye’ve a rare hand with a cup o’ tay, that’s something to be certain. Now where was I?” She drummed one scarlet nailed hand on her forehead as if she would beat forth the thoughts that eluded her.

  “Advice,” Pamela said meekly.

  “Advice?” Peg asked and looked at her as if she’d no idea what on earth Pamela was getting at. “Well I’m not sure why ye’d ask the likes of me fer advice but here’s a piece I’ve always held with, redheads should never wear pink. But thin ye’ve hair as black as coal so it hardly seems a matter for ye to worry about.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind,” Pamela replied, deciding that she’d never met anyone so instantly delightful as Miss Margaret MacBride.