by Anne Doughty
I went back to the window and watched a few small yellowed leaves fall from a weeping birch near the house. Everything had gone very still. It was not the ominous stillness you feel before a storm, rather it was a pause, a point of rest between the last of the day and the dewfall of evening. Shadows were lengthening across the grass and somewhere close by a blackbird was protesting. As I watched, I saw the leaves begin to sway on the delicate, mobile branches of the birch, the larger pink and gold leaves of the chestnut trembled, fluttered, began to move more positively. The evening breeze gathered strength. As I watched it ripple across the fields of pasture, far away, on the grey ribbon of road, a glint of movement caught my eye. I was sure it was Patrick.
‘Go on,’ Patrick said, as we heard Mrs Brannigan bang the front door behind her. ‘You were telling me about the Hopi.’
‘Was I? It must be the wine. Do you really want to hear about the Hopi?’
‘What you mean is that you’re not sure you aren’t boring me. Well, you’re not.’
I always thought candlelight was supposed to soften the features and add a romantic glow. Well, that wasn’t true either. As the dusk expanded, he had lit the candles. In their sharp light, his face was stronger, more defined. Even when he laughed, as he did now, there was an angularity, a harshness I had almost forgotten. I remembered how after our very first meeting I had gone home to Mary and said how lonely it must be for him to be so old and not married.
I watched him now as he took away our dinner plates and brought us the generous portions of apple pie Mrs Brannigan had left ready on the sideboard.
‘Well, I do go on rather,’ I confessed. ‘You shouldn’t encourage me.’
‘I happen to enjoy listening to you, for a variety of reasons. Now, go on. Or I won’t give you any coffee.’
‘Where was I then?’
‘You were just making a distinction about a wave.’
‘Yes. I was saying that if you see a wave as best described by the word “slosh” then you see something different from a person who would describe it as “wave”.’
I went on to try and explain how the language you speak shapes the way you see the world. He folded his napkin, leaned back in his chair and watched me. I still found the way he did this rather disconcerting. I could never be sure he wasn’t seeing things about me I didn’t want him to see. Not so much because I wanted to keep them hidden, but because I didn’t know what they were myself.
‘Mmm. . . interesting. I can see why the idea appeals to you, but I can’t see the link with Paddy and Mary.’
I had to laugh, for at that moment, I couldn’t see it myself. As I sat trying to put together again what I’d set out to say, I became aware of myself, sitting in a pool of candlelight, surrounded by the darkened rooms of the old house, and the wide spaces of the shadowy countryside beyond the undrawn curtains, under the dark eyes of a man who could see things in me I couldn’t see for myself.
‘I think I’ve decided that words mean so much more than any dictionary says they mean. What we say and how we say it is such an important part of us. In a way it shapes us. The reason I can understand Paddy and Mary so well is not that I can guess what their words mean, I can guess at what they want them to mean. So you need to be able to understand people before you try to understand what they are saying. And that doesn’t sound very logical, does it?’
‘Perhaps not. But you may have a very sound intuition. Often you can’t get at what you really want to say, till you’ve ruled out what doesn’t seem relevant.’
‘Like knowing what you don’t want being halfway to knowing what you do want?’
‘Yes. Exactly. Who was it said that?’
‘You, actually,’ I replied, laughing.
‘Did I? Well, it’s certainly not original. When did I say that?’
‘Long time ago, the day you took me to the Burren. You showed me a plant that doesn’t like lime. Remember?’
I was going to say ‘and then we went and walked on the beach at Drennan,’ but I stopped myself.
‘Do you like cognac?’
‘I don’t know,’ I replied, turning round to him. ‘I’ve never had any.’
‘Your frankness, my love, is quite disarming,’ he said lightly as he polished two enormous brandy goblets.
‘If those are for the cognac, I’ll have to have some. I couldn’t bear to miss drinking out of one of those.’
‘I thought you’d like them. There are only two left, I’m afraid. They’re rather old, from my mother’s family. Shall we take our coffee to the sitting room or have it here?’
I hesitated. There was something about the large, formal sitting room that made me uneasy, although, like the rest of the house, it had some lovely old furniture. In the daytime, with the French windows open to the south-facing garden, and bowls of flowers everywhere, it was fresh and pleasant, but at night, even with a bright fire, I found it gloomy and rather oppressive.
‘Or we could take it up to the study if you like,’ he offered. ‘That’s what I usually do when I’m on my own.’
‘Yes,’ I agreed immediately. ‘Let’s do that.’
‘Can you take the tray, if I have the perc? Then I can turn lights on as we go.’
I followed him into the hall and heard the click of a switch.
‘Damn. Bulb must have gone.’
He looked across at me in the dim light filtering through the fanlight above the front door. A large clock ticked at the foot of the stairs and the wind rustling the leaves of a chestnut on the edge of the drive made a sound like the sea. I was aware of the press of darkness all around me. Suddenly, I felt so lost, so desolate, once more a stranger in a strange place. Everything normal and homely and everyday had been swept away. I was marooned in a life so different from my own that I had forgotten how to speak, or to walk, or to do any of the ordinary things of life.
How long I stood, unable to make any move, I don’t really know. I only remember walking carefully upstairs and treading cautiously on the rugs spread over the polished floor outside the study. Patrick followed behind and pushed the door open for me.
‘Good Lord, look at that’
My hands were still shaking as I put the tray down. The room was so full of silvery light there was no need for a lamp. Beyond the window where I had stood so long, awaiting his homecoming, a full moon was rising over the low hill to the west of the stand of trees. The grass was as white as if there’d been a frost
We stood side by side at the window, watching the enormous pale disc rise clear of the gentle curve of the hill. I was so sharply aware of Patrick beside me, the empty room behind me. Moonlight was supposed to be so romantic. And surely being alone in an empty house with the man you love was supposed to make you excited and happy. A scene like this at the Curzon Cinema would have the violins in a frenzy. But when it happened to you in reality, it wasn’t like that at all. Perhaps, long ago, I might have expected it to be, but I had learnt to be wary of what other people expected. It was so very likely to turn out differently for me. Faced with the moonlight, all I felt was small and alone, the bright world out beyond the window a cold, unwelcoming desert. I was grateful when Patrick moved away.
‘Coffee,’ he said briskly, as he switched on lamps and stepped back again to draw the curtains.
I poured the coffee while he lit the fire. As the flames leapt up and the fir cones crackled, I smelt the perfume of woodland in autumn. He crouched patiently by the flickering flames, waiting for the right moment to add dark squares of turf. In the light of the fire, his face looked drawn. I wondered if he too saw the world as bleak and hostile.
He brushed turf dust from his fingers and took the cup I held out to him. We sat in silence, staring at the leaping flames. Gradually, as I watched, I began to feel easy again. I leaned back in my chair and looked round the room. The glow of lamplight and firelight were just as I had imagined them. Secure, mellow and inviting.
‘Do you like it then?’ he asked, as I sniffed my cognac.
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‘When one doesn’t know what to expect, it’s difficult to decide, isn’t it?’
He nodded and moved forward to open up the fire. It blazed and sparked, and I caught the acrid tang of turf, a smell I love so much. Perhaps because it always brought back memories of Uncle Albert and the only truly happy part of my childhood. Once again, unbidden, came the thought that next Saturday night I would be back in Belfast, far away from turf fires and lamplit studies and this man who had come to mean so much to me.
‘Elizabeth?’
His voice broke softly across my thoughts, his eyes were full of concern.
‘What was it, Elizabeth? For a moment you looked so incredibly sad.’
‘I was thinking of Belfast. . . of going back. . . of not being here.’
I looked hard at the play of flames reflecting in the polished wood. I couldn’t talk about going back and go on meeting his eyes.
‘You’re fond of my study, aren’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I said, dropping my eyes to my coffee, because I could not trust them not to fill with tears. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever known a room I liked half as much as this.’
‘And I have never known a woman I have loved half as much as you.’
I looked up, startled to hear him say at last what I’d known for a long time, and yet immediately reassured by the way he’d said it.
‘And in the story books, it would all end happily ever after, wouldn’t it?’ he went on, watching my face closely.
‘With moonlight and gypsy violins, of course.’
‘Naturally.’
The tension between us relaxed momentarily. I was amazed by the calmness of my own voice, just as I had been that awful morning when I had said no to George. I felt anything but calm. Elated, because he had finally said he loved me, but anxious also, because I didn’t know what that love might mean for me. What would happen if I were to confess how I felt about him? What indeed did I feel? All I could do was stare into the fire and keep silent.
‘I meant to say earlier that I liked your dress.’
I glanced up, surprised. It was such a conventional remark, it would have seemed awkwardly out of place had it not been for the particular way he said it.
‘Thank you.’
‘It makes you look yourself, Elizabeth,’ he continued, more assuredly. ‘A lovely but vulnerable young woman. Which is a good thing indeed, my love. If you looked less young or less vulnerable, I might only do what I’ve wanted to do since that evening on the beach at Drennan. I’d ask you to marry me.’
‘Marry me?’ I repeated the words as if they were in a foreign language.
‘Yes. It’s something people agree to do, if they’re convinced they love each other,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Though that’s a difficult enough little word at the best of times and marriage isn’t always the best answer, even if they do.’
‘But you think I’m too young anyway,’ I said, feeling a hurt that did not seem quite reasonable.
‘Yes, but not in the way you mean,’ he said, shaking his head and leaning forward in his chair to take my hands in his.
‘Some things I know about, Elizabeth, not because I’m wiser than you, but only because I have had more years to observe, more time to reflect on all the things that have happened to me. If I asked you to marry me and you were to agree, I’d have taken away your freedom, your opportunities, your chance to decide what sort of a life you really want for yourself. I can offer you one life, one love, but it is only one of many possibilities, some of which you might never guess at at this moment. It might not be the one you would choose, if you considered those other possibilities. I want you to have real choice.’
‘And what if I were to choose the life you offered me?’
At that moment, I felt such love and tenderness for him I’d have married him then and there, even though I had yet to admit to myself that I loved him.
‘If that. . . well. . .’
He hesitated and moved his chair closer to mine.
‘Elizabeth, if you love someone, love the person, and not just the idea of being in love with them, you want what is best for them. Trust me, my love. I’ll be here next summer, and the one after that, and the one after that. What you cannot know is how loving you has changed my life. You’ve brought back a joy I thought had gone for ever. It would be a poor return, if I took away your freedom just when you’ve found it for the first time. Does that make sense?’
The tension eased. So like him to use a phrase that was part of our private language. I smiled at him and nodded silently. I had thought for one moment he was telling me he knew best, but the look in his eyes told me it was far more complex than that. What he was saying was clear enough, and yet I found it hard to accept that he was prepared to set aside his own wishes for the sake of mine.
‘I want you to choose, Elizabeth, but I won’t be going away until you do.’
‘But what if you fall in love with someone else?’
‘Then I would have to come and tell you, just as you would have to tell me if you see a future that has no place for me. What is important is what we have now.’
‘And in the meantime? Between now and the future, what then?’
‘Whatever makes you happy, my love,’ he replied. ‘Your wish will be my command.’
He bowed formally over my hand as he had on the cliffs at Lisara when he had asked me to go exploring with him. There was a touch of irony in his voice and a hint of laughter in his eyes as I smiled across at him.
I stood up suddenly and walked to the fireplace, aware of the tension in my body and the fact that I had been listening so hard I had barely been breathing. One foot had gone to sleep. I laughed and told him so.
My eyes flickered round the room I had come to love and came to rest upon the man who sat watching me. He had given me so much already. I felt poised, as if I stood at the entrance to some other world. Once again, just like that evening on the beach at Drennan, I had a real choice. Patrick had offered me his love and I could accept him as friend, lover, or husband. I understood at last that feeling of relief the first time he’d held me in his arms, the relief at having choice, knowing I was free to make whatever decision was right for me.
I knew now that I did love him. Indeed I was sure I had loved him for some little time. What I also knew was that he had taken away the anxiety I had had that I didn’t really know what love was.
Chapter 19
The Limerick bus was vibrating noisily as I climbed up the steep steps and settled myself beside a window, misty on the inside and streaked with raindrops.
‘Right-oh, Mick.’
The conductor reappeared from stowing my suitcases and parked his sandwiches on the dashboard. With a final judder we moved slowly forward.
I waved to Michael Feely, who had insisted on staying to see me off, but he was busy waving to someone at the back of the bus he probably thought was me. He had been consistent in his confusions right to the end.
‘Now, Mr Feely, you must tell me how much I owe you.’
‘Ah, sure, we’ll say ten shillings.’
‘But what about my lunch and the journey out on the day I arrived?’
‘Ah, sure that’s all included. Amn’t I glad to be of service. I’m lookin’ forward to yer book and indeed I’ll be glad to assist you when you return for good.’
I settled back in my seat and let the relief pour over me. I hadn’t wanted to leave, the goodbyes had been hard and painful, but at least now they were over. The bus gathered speed, the driveway to Patrick’s house flashed by so quickly I caught only a glimpse through the pouring rain and the droplets on my window. No matter. I was as unlikely to forget that house as I was to forget Patrick.
He had offered to drive me to Limerick or to Dublin, but I had said no. I could not bear the thought of parting in some public place, so we had said our goodbye last night in his study. I had chosen to leave Lisara as I had come, with the aid of Michael Feely.
I smiled to myself as t
he sodden green fields streamed past, the damp autumn leaves by the roadside whirling in the turbulence of our passing. Michael Feely had been a memorable part of my time in Lisara. During our last two weeks together, Patrick and I simply assumed that no matter where we went, he would be there to see us go or observe us coming back. I should have guessed he would assume I’d be coming back for good.
Mary and Paddy would enjoy the Feely story when I wrote and told them. The green fields misted again as I thought of them standing together at the gate. Two big tears plopped onto my jacket to join the large spots of rain already there. Leaving them had been almost as hard as parting from Patrick. Paddy had stood at the door watching for Feely’s taxi a good hour before he was expected, while Mary wandered round the kitchen distractedly as she made a packed lunch for me. She was in tears when I put my arms round her. Then Paddy clutched me to his stubbly chin and I nearly cried myself. It was all I could do to promise that it wouldn’t be long till I was back and go on waving all the way down the hill.
I took out my hanky to mop myself up, but it was dirty from wiping the window of the bus, so I tried the other pocket, found a freshly ironed one and then remembered it held a sprig of heather from one of the flowering tubs in Sean O’Struithan’s courtyard. So many souvenirs, I thought, as I transferred the precious fragment to my diary before I wiped my eyes.
Michael Flannigan had made me a set of rush crosses and Mary-at-the-foot-of-the-hill had worked me a sampler with all the stitches used by the local knitters. Patrick had guessed I’d be taking home far more than I’d brought and insisted on buying me a trim, blue weekend case as well as the books he’d found for me in the best bookshop in Limerick.