In the Company of Others

by Jan Karon

  'And Tommy?'

  'We adored him. Tommy smelled of tobacco and all the things men are to smell of, except in a young, bold, laughing way.' She was quiet for a time, then said, plaintive, 'It is very hard to keep the dead alive.'

  Cynthia put down her brush. 'It's very wrong to keep the dead alive, for it keeps us from living truly. You must forgive yourself, Evelyn.'

  'I cannot.'

  'You must forgive God.'

  'I cannot.'

  'You cannot have peace without forgiveness.'

  'I do not deserve peace.'

  'It's what God wants us to have.'

  'Does God ask me what I want him to have? I want him to have pity, to have mercy, and the common decency to give us a life without struggle and disgrace.'

  Cynthia laughed. 'Oh, my. We can forget that last notion. He is formed, himself, of the greatest pity and mercy, but without struggle and even disgrace, how would we ever know him, run to him, seek his refuge? We would not.'

  The panting again. 'I see no reason, anymore, to live beyond this agony. I had thought to be courageous, but courage doesn't matter now, not by half.'

  Cynthia laid her hand on Evelyn's head, silent. Evelyn's tears, wet on her face.

  There was a long stillness in the room. The tears he had witnessed in his life as a priest might plenish a river.

  'Have you ever seen a rainbow over the lough, Evelyn?'

  'Often.'

  'I'm hoping to see a rainbow. Timothy hopes to see swans fly.'

  'One hopes all sorts of things in this life.'

  Fletcher at the door.

  'There's duck broth for you, Missus.'

  'Broth.' A long pause. Then, 'Give me something I can get my teeth into,' she said, fierce.

  The tearing of the sheet from the sketchbook. 'There now, it's done. I hope you like it.'

  He knew Cynthia was anxious to please both Evelyn and herself.

  'Shall I sign it?'

  'Sign it, of course. They tell me you're famous.'

  'Not terribly. Mostly with small children.'

  'Small children,' said Evelyn, oddly wistful.

  Cynthia showed the portrait to her subject, who studied it a long time. 'Yes,' she said at last. 'Yes. Take the ring.'

  'Not yet. I'd like to paint you again, if I may, but we're leaving soon.'

  'I find this taxing, but come tomorrow, then.'

  'What time?'

  'Call first. You'll want to make certain I'm not lunatic and raving, as I've heard them say.'

  They left the bedroom at half-past twelve and went across the hall to the kitchen. He carried the hamper and the tablet of heavy paper with its cunning textures, and the flashlight Seamus was borrowing from Broughadoon. His wife was spent, but encouraged by the morning's work.

  'There you are!' said Seamus, wracking his mustache with the comb.

  'She liked it,' said Cynthia.

  'God bless ye! I'm hopin' she'll take a soft egg with toast now.' The erstwhile butler of Catharmore was beaming, a schoolboy.

  'She's a wonderful, frightening, courageous woman--it will be good to have another chance tomorrow.'

  'Strong tea,' said Seamus, pouring. 'And quiche, just out of the oven. Real men are no longer afraid to eat it, isn't that so, Rev'rend?'

  'Absolutely.'

  'Sit up to the counter, then, an' tuck in. I've made fries for us.'

  'Fries!' said Cynthia. 'I love fries. And you're good to take us to the basement afterward.'

  'We'll go out th' back with no steps, and down th' bank with its easy grade to th' lower quarters.'

  'We're wanting to see Dr. O'Donnell's surgery, ' she said, 'and where he kept his medical library, and of course the concealed room, as he calls it, which he set aside for quarantine. You really must read the journal, Seamus, it's all about this place and the terrors of the old days.'

  Seamus served the plates. 'I don't know of a concealed room, an' God knows, we've terrors enough these days.'

  They laughed, and blessed the food and asked God's peace upon all life within the borders of Catharmore and Broughadoon, and Fletcher called for the egg and toast, and they felt the small triumph, and a certain peace.

  Then, out the back way and down the slope to a badly neglected basement door, swollen with age and damp. He carried the Broughadoon flashlight; Seamus carried a ring heavy with keys.

  'Since th' painting went missin', we've been keen to lock up.' The rasp of the latch; Seamus tugged at the door, tugged again--it opened to the smell of all basements situated near water.

  'Not a pretty sight,' said Seamus. 'Keep your eyes skinned an' watch your step.'

  Cynthia peered into the chiaroscuro of moldering plaster and limestone. 'This is the only door to the basement?'

  ''t is.' Seamus switched on the overhead bulb.

  'Then the patients would have come into the waiting room here . . .' She stepped inside. 'But what a very small room. What do you think, Timothy? Could Edema and Goiter and all the rest have squeezed in here?'

  'Owners change; walls get knocked down, new ones put up.'

  'I think this may be it, it feels right,' she said. A narrow window, the sill crusted with dead flies; walls blackened by damp.

  'That door should open to the surgery,' she said.

  Seamus moved ahead and opened it, and ha! the old fireplace--still there after so many years, and the two windows 'always kept open in summer.'

  'Here would be the examining table,' she said, 'with the little stool beneath, and there would be the table where he kept the skull that Aoife tricked out with the nurse's cap.'

  His wife was entranced, jubilant, the cheapest of dates.

  A stash of windows with broken panes, an open box of men's dress shoes gone green, wooden crates, a headboard with peeling veneer. Heaven knows what bacillus festered here. He covered his nose with his handkerchief, a wimp in the face of venture and discovery, while she explored cracks in the plaster, the cold hearth, the wasted hole of the fireplace.

  They moved along to a room with windows protected by iron bars. He helped her navigate the uneven floor tiles.

  'The bars?' he asked Seamus.

  'To keep thieves out of th' coal, they say. There was where th' chute came down.' Seamus pointed to what was undeniably a pile of coal. ''t was here when we arrived fifteen years ago; we may be near to a time of needin' it.'

  'So Paddy did no remodeling to the basement?'

  'None at all, save for th' heating system an' new plumbin'. You're seein' these quarters with their original fabric, as th' historians say--overhead beams, original; limestone floors, original; walls an' damp, original.'

  They were passing along a narrow hall, lighted by a single bulb that swayed from the pull of the chain. Shadows danced over the stone.

  'O'Donnell hid the door to the room with a bookcase,' she said. 'I can't imagine a rolling bookcase would still be sitting around down here. But the room was along a hall, he said. Is this the only hall?'

  'Ah, no, there's a bloody warren of halls an' rooms, all kept locked in those days. This room for th' cider an' that for th' potatoes, this for th' laundry tubs, that for th' general storage of pecularities.'

  'Such as?' she said.

  'Such as a human skull with yellow teeth, an' a wicker wheelchair with a sheep bell attached. Then there's th' mannequin used for sewin' ladies' clothes--which you don't want to come on in th' dark.'

  'Have you ever seen a bookcase down here?'

  'Not that I recall.'

  'So it's a matter of finding the right door,' she said. 'It was a small room with a window, holding just two cots and a table. Dr. O'Donnell and his wife were very proud of the quarantine room--we're just reading about it.'

  Seamus stopped at a door long ago brushed with blue paint. 'This was Mr. Conor's storage for his fishing tack. He didn't leave it at Broughadoon out of season, they say, for there'd been a theft or two.' Seamus tugged at the door, scraping it along the flagstone. 'But there's no window in her
e, nor any bulb, either, you must go in with a torch to see your hand in front of your face.'

  The flashlight shone on piles of waders, boots, rods, vests hanging on nails. There was the distinct, though faint, smell of fish.

  They moved along to other doors. Behind one, a toilet for servants, dark as a cave. Behind another, shelves of moldering books, accordion files, accounting ledgers. He was the only one to spot whatever fleet, dark thing fled the nest of literature and commerce.

  'Now, here's one with a window!' said Seamus. ''t is where th' boys' childhood things are stored.'

  In the grainy light from a small window, a small room filled with two bicycles, bedraggled; a wooden wagon without wheels; bunk beds piled with twin mattresses; fishing gear; a basketball net on a bent ring; a large box labeled TRAIN; a hat rack with ball caps embalmed in dust. Leaning against the beds, a stack of window louvers, many slats missing, and at their rear, a glint of something that wasn't a louver. He stepped in and shone the light on it, and Seamus was quick to move the louvers, one by one, away from the ornate gold frame.

  In the beam of the flashlight, they saw the fisherman in the boat, and the mountains beyond, and the small cottage with its plume of smoke, and the swan on the morning lake.

  Thirty-five

  Anna had brought in an extra chair, opened the windows to an August breeze.

  He'd told Anna they had important news, yet dropping a bomb into a tea party in Ibiza wasn't his cup of Earl Grey.

  Cynthia took lemon, a cube of sugar, stirred, set down her spoon. 'The Barret,' she said to Anna, 'is at Catharmore.'

  'Catharmore?'

  'We saw it today in the basement, in a storage room.'

  'But that means . . . Paddy.'

  'We thought you should tell Liam,' he said. 'You'll know best how to handle such news.'

  'In a storage room?'

  'Where the boys' childhood things are kept,' said Cynthia. 'Among a stack of louvers.'

  'Any harm done to it?'

  'None we could see.'

  'The Garda,' said Anna. 'The uproar it will bring. Dear God.'

  'Yes,' he said.

  'I can't believe it.' Anna shook her head, took a deep breath. 'It's hard to consider the good news for thinking how Liam will feel. This black betrayal will cap it all. Does Seamus know?'

  'He does,' he said. 'He'll mention it to no one. It will be a hard thing for Mrs. Conor.' The upheaval of a police investigation, inevitable. The news of one son stealing from another, inevitable. The extra drain on Evelyn Conor's diminished physical resources, inevitable.

  'I'm sorry for her,' said Anna. 'I want you to know that. I'm not completely coldhearted.' She looked at her hands in her lap. 'I must think of how to tell Liam--he seems happier just now. I can hardly keep up with all that comes at us--'t is a battering ram at our door.'

  He thought of Fintan O'Donnell and the fruit spoons; how the doctor had quietly removed them from the thief's possession and returned them to his own, with no word spoken. This would be different.

  'I've heard fiddle music a couple of times,' he said, 'as if it were coming from this room.'

  'Yes. I share it now with Bella. Things feel better, if only a little. Thank you both for your kindness, your patience with her, with all of us.'

  'Thank you for your patience with us,' he said.

  'Soon you'll be leaving. It seems you've been with us a very long time.'

  He couldn't help smiling. 'We have been with you a very long time.'

  'I shall hate to see you go.'

  'We will hate to go,' said Cynthia.

  'If you change your mind, you can have your room through next week.'

  'Thanks,' he said. 'We must get home to our son.'

  He wanted to tell Anna that William was not Liam's father, should she have any lingering question. But Liam had talked to him in confidence, and the need to relieve Anna was not his concern.

  He stopped with Cynthia in the library and looked around--at the fine bookcases and worn rug, the chairs with their silent history of sitters from every realm, the fireplace with its eternal flame. 'I'll never forget this room.' He put his arm around her. 'Did you mean it about hating to go?'

  She looked at him, thoughtful. 'Yes.' They hoped to be ready when Feeney gave the word.

  'Has Pud seen the suitcases?'

  'He has.'

  They had no energies left to chat up the Sweeneys and the author and niece at the social hour, nor any joie de vivre for dinner downstairs. They took it in their room, withered as weeds.

  She put on the declining robe; he donned pajamas and, raising a glass of fairly decent port, opened the journal to their bookmarks and read aloud.

  January 1863

  After bitter days of solitude & sickness at Cathair Mohr, the snow melts fast & we have seen three patients. I wonder at the low number; they are uneasy & tell me there are rumours abroad.

  I ride out on Adam, dodging the worst of the mud.

  Inside her door, I remove my heavy coat & hang it on a peg. Her red hen perching on the other chair gives me a menacing look.

  I pull up a stool. What are they saying, Rose?

  They're sayin' ye've a lad sick with Cholera at your place.

  Who is saying it?

  O'Leary got th' word passin', he didn't call it th' Cholera to me, but 't was turned into Cholera by th' time it went round. They say Balfour is comin' to your door with such as th' Health Board.

  I had thought the rumour started when Keegan went four days ago to Mullaghmore to pronounce the lad too ill with food poisoning to travel, & met Padraigin coming this way saying the lad's mother is in Hospital. The poor woman suffers the same evil symptoms we are wrestling with here but Keegan swears he stuck to his story of food poison.

  How is th' lad? she says.

  Frail as any feather, we do all we can. Tis the typhoid fever, but you must swear to say nothing.

  She dips her chin, affirming her honor to me.

  Tis passed to another through feces or urine or vomit, I say, & no need to worry for he is quarantined & I come to ye clean.

  She puffs her pipe, nods. I am pleased to see a makeshift pie sits warming on her hob.

  And you, Rose? Are ye well in this wether?

  Aye, but for th' Rheumatics.

  She holds up her hands, displays her gnarly fingers.

  Keep them warm, I say. Is there anything ye need?

  Mutton, she replies.

  Ye'll have it, I say.

  I go to the peg & pull on my heavy coat.

  Bring him here when he's stout again, she says. I'll boil 'im an egg from Cliona.

  Stout again! My heart leaps. I salute her.

  Bail o Dhia ort, I say with my little Irish.

  Bail o Dhia is Muire dhuit, she says.

  Cliona has not moved from her perch.

  I return home, brooding with an unnamed anxiety. There is Balfour's untidy carriage, fair covered with mud. Balfour & two men--both English--are coming down the steps of the front portico, Keegan stands on the top step, arms folded, looking sour. Caitlin stands in the open doorway, a statue of marble in her white nurse's apron. I do not dismount.

  We have searched your house, sir, says Balfour, the Great Boar Hog in Trousers.

  I say nothing.

  We were informed you have Contagion here, says one of the men.

  I see by C's expression that they have not discovered the lad.

  I trust you are pleased with your findings, I say.

  I rein Adam about, mud flying. At the carriage house, I find I am trembling as if with the ague.

  It happened that Jessie had been sweeping out the upper floor & looked down to see Balfour's carriage in the lane. She alarmed the house so that Keegan & C got the lad well-wrapped & down the stairs to the quarantine room in good time.

  Jessie cleared the table by his bed, chucked it all into a pillow casing & hid it in the laundry. C stuffed his wee dab of clothes behind her bureau. Fiona's sour humour came to marve
lous use--she met the men in the hall & forced them to remove their muddy boots!--this action giving Keegan & C time to roll the bookcase away & get the lad into the room.

  As she tells me this, C is trembling as I had done.

  We put him on the cot, she says, & covered him with the blankets. I asked him not to cry out whatever he did and he did not. They searched the house--what terrifying & wicked little men they were, & yet so very stupid-seeming in their sock feet. If men were robbed of boots with their dangerous heels, wars would cease.

  She clings to me. We must keep the lad there, she says, for they will be back, I can feel it.

  What did you tell them, I say.

  Twas a poor job, but the best I could muster. I said a relative of his had come for the boy & we know nothing of his circumstances. I said he had recovered from what appeared to be food poisoning & was well & able when he left us.