The Lace Makers of Glenmara

by Heather Barbieri

  Holy Orders

  The next day, Kate rode Bernie’s bicycle along the hills of Glenmara. The seat squeaked and the chain needed oil, chattering away like a set of false teeth. It was a woman’s bike, an old-fashioned one-speed, red, with a straw basket in the front, the sort of conveyance associated with elderly men and women all over Europe, though Bernie was far from elderly. Kate guessed she was about her mother’s age. Jerry-rigged panniers held the newsletters that Bernie had run off at the post office, home to the only printer in town.

  The week’s crime blotter:

  Man calls Garda, says his wife won’t stop swimming in the bay; he fears she’s a selkie. Garda says he’s a lucky man.

  Woman says a faerie has enchanted her well; when she tries to bring up a bucket of water, the rope breaks. Garda says she’s usurping the faeries’ property rights and should pay a usage fee. One euro is the going rate, the faerie economy not being immune to inflation.

  When Bernie mentioned she needed someone to help with deliveries that week, there being too much to do in preparation for the rest of the Saint Brendan’s festivities, Kate offered to help. It was a fine day, the azure sky hinting at better things to come. Kate lifted her face to the light, felt the warmth on her eyelids and cheeks.

  As she passed the turnoff to Kinnabegs, a band of children launched mud balls at her from behind a wall. “Hey, stop that!” she cried.

  “Hey, stop that!” they mimicked. “Fecking foreigner!”

  Kate dropped the bike and chased after them. “That was a rotten thing to do!” she cried, only causing them to laugh all the harder. Perhaps they sensed she didn’t have it in her to punish them. They eluded her, rail-thin urchins scampering over the heath and disappearing behind another series of walls. She knew what children were capable of, the thousand mischievous acts that could occur when boredom set in. She supposed she deserved pay-back for the crimes she’d committed in her youth—the prank phone calls and dingdong ditching and random acts of vandalism (such as beheading the neighbors’ dahlias)—though she definitely could have done without a border collie shooting out of a gate a short distance down the road, snarling and nipping at her heels as if he’d like to take her foot off at the ankle.

  “Stay,” she said firmly, then, when that didn’t yield the desired result, went through the litany of commands she knew: “Leave it. Stop.” Nothing worked.

  The dog refused to give up the chase—maybe he only knew Gaelic?—until his owner, sporting the ubiquitous tweed cap and sweater, called, “Go on then, Jack, back to work with you, leave the girl alone,” and to Kate, “Sorry about that, guess he mistook you for a sheep.”

  Thanks a lot, she thought. The dog was Fergus’s opposite, the sort of mutt that no doubt took pleasure in sinking his teeth into the calves of unsuspecting victims. She could have sworn he gave her a malevolent grin as he trotted back to his bovine charges, snapping at their haunches for good measure.

  The landscape was breathtaking, but full of perils such as these at unexpected turns, hidden burrs among the beauty. Much of the terrain remained uninhabited, too rocky or far from the sea to attract development, as hamlets closer to Galway had. She let her mind drift, thinking about new lingerie designs, wishing she’d brought along her sketchpad. Inspiration could strike at the most inconvenient times—in the shower, in the car, on this road—but she was grateful it was with her again, an old companion with whom she was getting reacquainted, pleased to find they could take up where they left off, as if there’d been no estrangement at all.

  She was racing downhill, considering curved seams and embellishments, the wind drawing her hair into a flame, when the tire hit a pothole, nearly wrenching the handlebars from her hands. She felt her weight go forward—oh, God, she was going to end up in the ditch—but somehow she jumped free at the last second, escaping with a lightly scraped knee. She got up shakily, brushed off her clothes, relieved to see she’d lost no cargo in the mishap. The newsletters were still tied in neat bundles, scattered across the road, awaiting retrieval—and eventual delivery.

  She took a moment to catch her breath—she’d certainly had her share of minor misadventures that morning. She should have kept her eyes on the road. She would from now on. She gathered up the newsletters and pushed on, stuffing the papers into mailboxes, some painted with flowers or fish, others a less-imaginative regulation silver or hazard orange. She paused at a crossroads and consulted Bernie’s list: two more to go.

  A van seemed to come out of nowhere, careening around the corner, passing close. A horn honking, hand gesturing, conveying irritation she’d stopped there. She caught a glimpse of a face, the look of surprise they shared: it was the man from the cliffs.

  “Maniac,” she fumed, her frustration spilling over. He’d almost hit her! And to make matters worse, he didn’t even stop to make sure she was all right.

  In his wake, there was only the empty road, a long sigh of dirt and green and crumbled walls and her small, furious self, hurtling through a place so much bigger than she was. She stood up on the pedals, going uphill now, heart beating hard, until her legs were unable to carry her forward. She had to hop off and walk, catch her breath, calm down. Sparks of temper flared, flickered out. The stranger would be in her past soon enough—he already was, wasn’t he?—a character in a story to tell her friends when she went home.

  “When are you coming back?” Ella asked in her last e-mail, which Kate had read at a Dublin café over two weeks ago.

  I don’t know. Despite the kids and the dog and the driver, she was beginning to like it there. Perhaps it was just as well she’d missed the bus after all.

  She’d crested the hill, but others lay ahead, one after another, as far as she could see—and a colorful wagon on the next rise: William. He’d been traveling along a walled lane, so she hadn’t noticed him at first. Her spirits rose. She’d been hoping to see him again. He raised a leather-gloved hand in greeting, recognizing her at once. She glided down the incline, coming to a stop by the wagon.

  “I see you’ve graduated to a bicycle,” he said, as if they’d only stopped speaking moments before, adding, when he noticed the dirt on her elbows and knees, “Took a tumble, did you?” He rummaged in his bag and handed her a cloth and water bottle.

  She told him what had happened as she cleaned herself up.

  “And who said the countryside is dull?” he said, his amusement tempered with a note of caution. “Though you should take care on the roads. Will you be traveling by cycle now?”

  “No, I just borrowed it from a friend,” she told him.

  “So you’ve made friends in Glenmara? I’m happy to hear it. I thought you might spend some time there. Who are you staying with?”

  “Bernie. Bernadette Cullen. I’m helping deliver the Gaelic Voice.”

  “A fine paper. Good someone is trying to keep the language alive.”

  “Do you know her?”

  “I used to come through town and play at the dances,” he said. “She and the other Glenmara girls were fine ones for dancing.”

  “Come back with me—I’m sure they’d like to see you.”

  “No. I’m just passing through. That’s my way. But I’m glad I ran into you again for another reason too: you dropped this.” He held out the golden thimble. “I found it on the floor of the wagon after you left. Must have come loose when you stepped down. Had a bad link. I fixed it for you.”

  “Thank you.” She put the chain around her neck, feeling the reassurance, the metal cool against her skin. “I thought I’d never see it again.”

  “You sew, do you?” he asked.

  “I used to. Not so much anymore.” She thought of the new designs. And yet they were only sketches, a few marks on a page that probably wouldn’t amount to anything.

  “A thimble like that is meant to be used. The time will come. Perhaps sooner than you think.” He snapped the reins. “I have to push on if I’m to make the next village before nightfall. But I’ll be back on market day to
see how you’re coming along.”

  “Soon, then.” She waved until he crested the next rise and was gone.

  Kate had to summon the energy to make the day’s final delivery. She coasted along the road to the church. Apparently the local priest was a subscriber to the Gaelic Voice. As she approached, Kate thought she saw movement in the cottage next to the chapel, a shadow in the window by the door. No one came out to greet her, but she was sure she was being watched.

  She had mixed feelings about her faith. She prayed every night, out of habit, and because some small part of her still believed. She hadn’t gone to mass in a long time, keeping her faith, such as it was, in her own way. She wondered if the priest was as conservative as people said. “Hello?” she called.

  There was no answer, not that she expected one. God worked in mysterious ways, if he worked at all, sometimes the men who served him more so. What good had prayers done her mother? What good had faith? Kate still hadn’t made sense of it. Maybe she never would.

  She tossed the newsletter up the walk. The rolled bundle hit the door and landed on the porch next to a pot of purple pansies. The door opened partway, and the stern-faced priest appeared at the entrance. He wasn’t a particularly large man, but his expression was formidable, his features set in such a way that suggested he rarely, if ever, smiled.

  “You aren’t Bernadette,” he observed, his eyes an overcast gray.

  “No. I’m Kate. Kate Robinson. I came into town Saturday night—” She couldn’t complete the sentence. He was the sort of person who could make you feel as if you’d done something wrong just by looking at you.

  “I am Father Byrne,” he said, adding, “I didn’t see you at mass Sunday morning.”

  Mass. Yes, she’d overslept, branding herself a heathen. Was excessive slumber a cardinal sin? Bernie had gone to the service while she’d been in bed. Not that Kate would have attended anyway. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been inside a church, not that she’d tell him that. Next he’d be asking her when she made her last confession.

  “What brings you to Glenmara?” He didn’t advance beyond the threshold. Didn’t offer his hand or name. He stood as if he had a metal rod in his spine, she below him on the path, holding the bike by the handlebars, wishing to be gone, but not wanting to be rude.

  “I’m traveling,” she said.

  Such a statement usually prompted questions about where she was from, where she’d been. Not from him. “Traveling,” he repeated, turning the word over in his mind like a stone on a beach, searching for what lay beneath. “And somehow you ended up here.”

  “I did.” She felt as if she were being cross-examined, damning herself with everything she said.

  “There’s little in the way of public transport in the area,” he said. “How did you arrive?”

  “On a traveler’s wagon.” She decided it would be best to keep her answers short, in keeping with the brevity of his remarks. She sensed he’d already formed an opinion of her—and that it wasn’t good. Maybe it was her slightly disheveled appearance from the fall she’d taken. She tugged the hem of her skirt, pushed her hair out of her face, to little effect.

  “Indeed,” he said, taciturn as ever.

  “His name is William. Perhaps you know him?” She was annoyed for letting herself be cowed by him, yet felt helpless to change the dynamic between them. He’d made up his mind about her—and a keen, unbending mind it was.

  “No, I don’t. He isn’t one of my parishioners.” He squinted at her. “I surmise that this traveling doesn’t involve attending mass. Or perhaps you’re not Catholic?”

  The sky was a brilliant sort of gray that afternoon, the kind backed with steel, matching the priest’s eyes, as if heaven itself were frowning on her. “I slept in—I’d been on the road for so many days—”

  “Yes, I suppose you were.”

  She shivered.

  “Our climate takes some getting accustomed to,” he said. He did not invite her inside.

  “I come from Seattle. I’m used to the rain,” she offered with a smile, trying to charm him.

  It didn’t work. “I guess that’s some sort of qualification.”

  A silence fell between them, a rook sounding an alarm from the copper beech near the front porch. The priest bore some resemblance to the tree in the uprightness of his carriage, the thin rigidity of his limbs, the creases on his forehead and bracketing his mouth. It seemed to Kate as if both of them, tree and man, towered over her, magnificent, glowering, immovable. She couldn’t bear the scrutiny any longer. His coldness stunned her. She didn’t understand what she’d done to make him so mistrustful. He didn’t even know her, and he’d already passed judgment. “Well, it was nice to meet you,” she said finally. “I’d best be getting back. To Bernie’s. She’s expecting me—”

  “Yes, of course.” He picked up the paper, knocked it against the palm of his hand, once, twice. “I heard she’d taken in a boarder.”

  Nothing, those gray eyes seemed to say, as he gave her a long look, escaped his notice. Nothing at all.

  Chapter 8

  A Cup of Tea & Jealousy

  Aileen always went round to Bernie’s for tea on Mondays at 2:00 p.m. Ginger biscuits or shortbread (sometimes both) served on the Carlton Ware plates Bernie found at a secondhand shop in Galway. Aileen had been there when she bought them last year. The Mikado pattern in cobalt blue. Gorgeous, they were. Orange pekoe brewing, scenting the room, the conversation flowing. She and Bernie never ran out of things to say.

  Remember the time we tried to build a raft and it sank in the bay and we screamed for help, thinking we were drowning, but Richie Greene saved us—and then we realized it was only knee-deep? Knee-deep!

  I thought I’d die of embarrassment.

  Richie Greene always had a thing for you, Ailey.

  Oh, well, that was over and done a long time ago.

  If you say so—

  Remember when you put a mud sandwich in your brother’s lunch, Ailey, and he bit into it, thinking it was chocolate?

  I should have put a worm in it too. Would have served him right. He was a bastard back then.

  Remember when we ran naked down the lane in the middle of the night when everyone was asleep?

  And we jumped into the hedge, because Mrs. Mullen opened her door, thinking she heard a prowler.

  I thought I’d never get the thorns out of my backside.

  Remember when—

  They had their own special history, knew each other better than anyone in the world, better than their families, even, because when it came to families, there were roles to play and expectations and arguments. Bernie didn’t have siblings, only a mother and father who doted on her, the longed-for child, until the day they died. Aileen’s childhood had been more fractious. Once her brother shoved her against the wall in a fight over the radio—he wanted to listen to the football match, she to music. Her mother didn’t come out of her room, let the battle rage, numb to everything in the dark silence of that curtained space. It had been her older sister who pushed them apart: “What are you on about now?” A bruise had already been forming on Aileen’s back. She cried, and not for show. He’d scared the life out of her; he’d grown that summer and they’d both forgotten what a difference that made, the advantage it gave him. Her sister thought they might have to take Aileen to the hospital. “And how will we explain that? How?” her sister asked him. “She spat in my face,” he said. “Right in my face.” And Aileen had. But she never said so.

  She and her brother got on well enough now, well enough to see each other for the occasional major holiday. She and Moira were the only ones left in Glenmara. Moira. Well, Moira was another story. Moira, who resented her and loved her all at once.

  It was easier with Bernie, a lifelong friend who accepted Aileen as she was, who laughed at her jokes and sympathized with her problems, large and small. Aileen could be herself with Bernie, her other self, the self that wasn’t a mother or a wife, just Aileen, Ail
ey, a girl once more, Bernie the link to her past. Aileen depended on those Mondays, on Bernie.

  She noticed the table was set for two, not three. “Has she gone then?”

  “Kate? No. She’s delivering the paper.”

  “If I’d known you’d needed help—” Aileen sometimes pitched in with the deliveries. She couldn’t believe Bernie hadn’t asked her first. She knew the routes, the customers.

  Bernie poured the tea. “I thought it would do her good to get to know the place better.”

  “Why would she want to do that? She said she was moving on.”

  “Yes, but there’s no bus for a week, is there?”

  No, there wasn’t.

  “The poor thing needs a rest anyway,” Bernie continued. “She’s been traveling too long.”

  “You make her sound like a stray animal. Next, you’ll be feeding her Fergus’s dog biscuits.”

  “I can do better than that. No offense, Fergus,” Bernie said, adding, “I wonder if she’s running from something.”

  “I could think of a few things: the police, Interpol—”

  “There’s no need to be so suspicious. I meant memories, not criminal acts.”

  “I was joking,” Aileen said, though she wasn’t entirely. She was beginning to find everything about the girl annoying. Just because her great-grandparents were born in Ireland didn’t mean she could instantly belong here. She was an American, American to the bone, pushing her way into their lives.

  “She’s not a bad person.”

  “It’s hard to say what she is. We don’t know her, do we?”

  “I’m beginning to know her. She’s a good soul, always willing to lend a hand.” Bernie laid the words down carefully as a silver place setting, heavy, shining, true. “We have a connection. We like the same books—”

  “If I’d known she needed a lift out of town, Rourke could have taken her,” Aileen said. “He was off to Galway this morning.”