The All of It: A Novel Read online

  Her voice dropped. She put her head back and looked off, through the wall, far, far away, to a point, he thought, beyond distance. Her fervency of detached attention affected him in a way he had for years unaccustomed himself to, and he sat mute, in a paralysis of involvement, as might a man who hears a call from the dead and desires passionately to answer but cannot, being caught unready, and too amazed, and too glad for belief.

  “Of course,” she said at last, breaking the long silence, startling him, “of course, it wasn’t the first time I’d been to the top of that slope, but always before I’d stopped there at the high point and but looked out over the reaches with the idea of their being beyond my range. It’d never crossed my mind, I mean, to venture further, down into the next valley and up the yon after-slope, on and on. Just knowing as I did how thick the spinneys were between the hills, so dense in places the sheep couldn’t make through them, why that alone would still the notion. So the thought of us going on, that we could be that bold! Well, like I said, it made my heart turn over….

  “I looked to Kevin to see if he was dumbstruck too, but he wasn’t. Not at all; only tugged at my hand like he was pulling me back, and that confused me for a second, but then he explained that now, as we were out of sight of the house, we could set a slower pace for ourselves, though within reason, he was careful to say, we ought to keep moving along. I asked him how long he figured we’d be at getting around Killybegs. That was the same, you see, Father, as asking him how long we’d be in the hills, only I put it that way to keep the sting out of the question…. He said he wasn’t sure. By nightfall, did he think? I asked him. He said he hoped so, but he couldn’t promise: there was too much he didn’t know about how rough the going would be. But then he said there was one thing, though, he could tell me for certain: that whatever was before us, the worst was behind us! The way he said it, so sure, and—” she hesitated, searching in her way for just the word she wanted, “—and sporting-like, as is said—I can’t tell you how it put the starch back into me, Father, how it made the future seem real to me again.” A smile lit her face. She said shyly, alluringly, “It was thrilling.”

  “Indeed,” he said warmly, “indeed! To think of it, the two of you so young, taking on the world like that!”

  “Fifteen and fourteen!” she exclaimed in a blend of wonder and triumph, then laughed. “But as is said, Father, babes and ditherers’ll take on anything.” She laughed again but quietened suddenly, was soundless and still, simply sitting there as if she were alone; as if he were not present. Under her high, white brow her eyes, veiled in pensiveness, were immense.

  “Enda?” he spoke at last.

  She started and made a gesture with both her hands as of closing a drawer, and, straightening her back, impersonating attendance, said, “That’s the all of it, Father…. The rest you know.”

  “Oh,” the priest in him all but shouted, “but I don’t.”

  She looked surprised, then—he saw it happen—touched, by what in his outcry she mistakenly took as a zestful yen and appeal for details of her and Kevin’s adventures, and before he could put her straight—before he had a chance to collect himself and put together the track of questions he must, as her confessor, have the answers to—she, flushing with pleasure at his interest, said deeply, “Oh, Father, I could hold you here a year telling you all the particulars of what happened to us over the next months!”

  And again, before he could open his mouth, she led: “We were so green, you know—hardly born, as you might say, in terms of what we knew of the world. And our having never known anybody to speak to other than ourselves, we were shy and timid as hares. But our being timid, it worked for us, kept us geared and wide-awake every second: we didn’t want anything to pass us by, you see, for fear we’d miss something in the way of a lesson we could use later on…. The first time we found ourselves in a big crowd—we landed in Donegal Town on a Saturday morning—we couldn’t believe the excitement of it, all the people moving about in the square, bent on themselves and what they were up to, paying no mind at all to us. We kept telling each other not to gawk—their clothes, you know, and their ways! And the talk they had in them!” She smiled broadly. “You can imagine how it was for us, Father.”

  He nodded, and, having made the decision to let her go on, he asked, “Did you work? Tell me how you got along.”

  Her face grew serious again. “It was Kevin’s wits that got us through…. We stayed anxious about our leaving traces of ourselves, so we kept going, went from Donegal Town to Sligo, on down Calloony way, all in stages, of course, a few miles one week and a few the next. We stayed nights in the ruins of old places and sometimes in shepherds’ huts; Kevin had a keen eye for ones there’d be little likelihood of our being caught in. Every few days, he’d go into whatever town we were near and ask if there was any work to be had. ‘Anything for a bit of a wage,’ was the way he came to put it. Saying it that way made it sound like he’d settle for the lowest figure, and as there’s always somebody up to doing something, he regularly got taken on for an odd job with an end to it, carting, mending fences, whitewashing, this or that or the like, and being Kevin, he’d always do a tap more than was expected of him, so the extra penny came his way more often than not…. It wasn’t till we got to Ballymote that we settled in for a bit.”

  “Oh? Tell me, Enda.”

  “We came on a grand place, one such as you’d see in a picture…. We took the morning to skirting it about. It had rows of out-buildings, Father, and stables, a greenhouse, too, and of course the main house, grand, as I said, and, well, you know, for a place like that, as Kevin let out to me, hands was needed. By noontime, Kevin’d made up his mind that we should go together to the gate-keeper’s lodge and see if there might be work for us as a pair. If it proved out for us, he said, it’d give us a chance to catch our breath. But before we went to ask, he took off for Ballymote town and bought a curtain ring for my finger, had the part you put the thread through filed off so it’d look like a wedding ring. You can see—” She held out her left hand with the eagerness of a child showing off a treasure. “I’ve never had it off,” she said, and, not taking in his attempt to speak: “Mid-afternoon, we got ourselves to the gate-keeper’s lodge, scared half to death of course at our boldness, but hiding it as best we could…. There was a door open…. It was early on in the spring by then, and the day was a fine one, so we were seen from the inside before we could knock. It was Mrs. Cronin saw us, a nice woman she was, but of course, us being strangers, she was cautious, asked us what we wanted, eyed us, you know, as you would tinkers. Kevin, though—you wouldn’t have known he had it in him—he spoke right up, said we were looking for work, that we were willing to take on anything, and might she know if help was needed on the place. I could tell she thought well of Kevin that he was so direct and all at the same time he’d taken his cap off to her. She told him the estate manager was the only one who attended to such matters, but if we cared to wait, we could sit out on the porch bench while her boy went up to ask Mr. Dunne. It was Mr. Dunne was the manager, she said. Kevin thanked her and said surely we’d wait. She went to the back of the lodge, and we heard her tell her boy to go find Mr. Dunne and ask him was he interested in seeing a pair seeking work.

  “To be frank with you, Father, I didn’t expect anything to come of it, but in a while a man came down the lane in a car, mind, and got out and told Kevin he was Mr. Dunne and what were we looking for in the way of work? We were both on our feet before him, or course, but it was Kevin did the talking, giving out to him that we’d do whatever was needed of us, that we weren’t afraid of tackling any sort of honest job. Mr. Dunne was good about the way he gauged us, didn’t look at us like we were sheep or anything like that. I have to say about him that he wasn’t a man who’d ever set himself up in a way that’d make a person feel small. But still and all, he wasn’t one for giving out something for nothing, either. He was firm, firm, from head to toe. Firm and up front, as Kevin put it to me later. He asked us
our names and I saw him look at my hand. ‘You’re married?’ he asked, and Kevin said we were. ‘New-married?’ he asked, then smiled and said he could tell we were from the look of me blushing. I was hot from the lies, from everything else too, but of course he knew none of that. ‘You’re how old?’ he asked next, and Kevin put out he was eighteen and me seventeen. Mr. Dunne took that down without a blink. Then he told Kevin that it being a busy time of the year he could use an extra hand but he’d have to warn us, the owner of the place was very particular about workers on the place, so any shirking or misdeeds wouldn’t be tolerated. Then he told us it was Sir Edward Spencer owned the place; him and Lady Charlotte. English they were, he said. He went on to say he’d have to set us up over the stables; there was an empty loft-room there, he said, and how did that sound to us? Kevin said it would suit us fine and that if we could but be given the chance, we’d not let him nor the owners down. Mr. Dunne said well, we looked to be worth the chance, that he’d give us a few days’ try and then he’d ‘revisit the issue.’ Those were his words—I’ll never forget them—that he’d ‘revisit the issue’ as to our staying on. Then he pointed to the car and told us ‘Get in.’” She smiled. “I was already overcome by his taking us on, and of course the car!—it all but finished me. Kevin and myself, we’d never been that near to one before, let alone ride in one, and I told Mr. Dunne so, and of how the very thought of it was enough to send me up a pole! It was the excitement that made me blurt out like that. Mr. Dunne, he looked at me…. I mean, until then, he’d been mostly taken up with Kevin, but after I spoke out about the car, he seemed to settle on me, and then—then he turned to Kevin and told him, ‘It’s a pretty girl you picked for your wife.’ It tore through me, his saying that…. Of course,” she mused, “a woman always remembers her first compliment.”

  “Of course,” he smiled. “Go on please, Enda.”

  “Well, Mr. Dunne told us again to get in the car. Kevin shouldered our pouches and I saw him wet his lips the way he would when he was full of dread, but, I don’t know, for myself, the minute I was on the seat I couldn’t wait to feel how it would be when we were off and going—it taking us, you know. The speed and all. And it was wonderful, of course. Beyond me to tell of! The trees—there was a great long avenue of them; beech, they were—we railed past them so fast they came together in my eyes. It put me laughing, I loved it so!

  “When we stopped, I just sat, stunned, you know, not thinking of where we were or of Mr. Dunne, just gone over with the joy of the ride. Mr. Dunne, though, he brought me back, asked me, ‘So you liked it, Enda?’ and I told him full-hearted that I did, that as long as I lived I’d not forget it.”

  He allowed himself the image of her young and, in the confusion and charm of her excitement, radiant. He added to the image a docile afternoon sun that warmed her hair….

  “Father?”

  “I was thinking of your pleasure in the ride,” he responded hastily.

  “Mr. Dunne gave me three more before we left the place,” she boasted, “but that first one, well, like I said, it’s beyond me to tell how I loved it.”

  He arched his brows: “You stayed how long on the place?”

  “Near three months…. Mr. Dunne came to speak of Kevin as ‘his other right hand.’”

  “And did you work too, Enda?”

  She nodded. “I started very low on the ladder, at laundering, but in a bit the housekeeper; Mrs. Bowler, a queer one, but fair enough to us girls that did our work well, she put me to being one of the cook’s helpers. I never gave her cause for worry, did everything just as I was told and never raised a tongue about the hours…. When I say she was queer—she’d line us girls up to give us, you know, our orders for the day, and always, somewhere along the way, she’d get in a word about her notions of what she called ‘one’s station in life,’ meaning of course ours, not hers. She’d a bit of a pinched face, very like a marten. Haughty. Stuck on herself, as they say.” She smiled. “The people of the world, Father: the variety!”

  “Indeed,” he laughed, “variety is the right word.” Then: “What caused you to leave the place, Enda?”

  She frowned. “It’s hard to put into words, Father…. It was both of us wanted finally to go, not just Kevin, you shouldn’t suppose…. It was several things, starting with the fact of there being so many people forever at our elbows. That, and that all our hours and steps were spelled out for us, that we were told, you know, every move we were to make. And the bells!” she spat out the word.

  “Bells?”

  “All manner of them,” she replied vigorously. “The one rung mornings at half-five in the stable-yard to get the men up and going and again at noon sharp for their dinner-break and again at six, six being their quitting time, and inside the house, every minute, the mistress or guests—there were parties of guests forever coming and going—setting off bells and chimes and gongs, the maids tearing up and down the staircases and through the halls seeing to the answering of a fresh summons before there’d been a chance to finish with the errand of the one before it.”

  “Frantic,” he murmured sympathetically. “And the other reasons you left? They’d be ones of a deeper, personal sort, I’d suppose.”

  She let her eyes be still in his gaze, then stated weightedly, “They were.”

  “Tell me, Enda.”

  She didn’t waver: “Mostly, it was the way things that were new to us kept coming at us, no end to them, and—I don’t know—after a while, it wore on us.” She paused, briefly considering, then qualified with: “I have to say, I don’t mean things as things so much; once we were shown the use of something that was new to us, its purpose, you know, that was that as far as we were concerned…. What I’m talking of had more to do with ourselves—” She fidgeted; then, in a rush: “that we were outlyers.”

  He let her rest on the word, until: “You see, Father, the others, they’d all been raised on the place or close by to it and, well, they were thick, you know, in that way people are who’re known to each other right down to their socks. Some of them,” she hastened on, “were even knit by blood—cousins, and the cook an aunt to the head gardener’s wife—ties like that. But kin or not, like I said, they were that thick.” She emphasized her point by entwining her fingers.

  “Ladled from the same pot of broth, as my mother used to say.”

  “Aye,” she nodded, unsmiling, going on: “They’d talk, you know, on and on about what they’d done together as kids, games they’d played and how one’d tricked the other, and all manner of celebrations and affairs they’d been in on, picnics and parties and sings and dances and the like, and who’d first walked out with who when they’d got to an age to think of such things and”—she raised her chin—“Kevin and myself…well, you know, Father, of our childhood, its irregularities as you might say, and being from the reaches how all we’d ever known for company was ourselves and our dad—” She lifted her shoulders in a concluding way, waited, then: “The worst for us was when we’d be sitting with them, invited by them, and they’d go into what Kevin came to call their ‘private gaggles,’ when something—we’d never have the least idea what—would set them off onto wigwagging and making faces, not a word of sense having passed between them, you understand, and us sitting right there, simple to what they were going on about….” Her mouth tightened: “It kept us forever awkward,” she finished.

  “As indeed it would,” he said. Then, risking the insinuation: “It must have served to drive you and Kevin in on yourselves, closer together—”

  She stayed him with a responding look that combined sorrow and futility. “Mostly,” she said hollowly, “it served to hurt our pride.”

  “That too, of course,” he said with a clumsy repairing haste, ruing deeply the venturing which, he could tell, had damaged her belief in his understanding. Fraught, he made a movement with his hands as of erasing, then plunged on with: “They must have been curious about you and Kevin, were they not?”

  “At first,” she ans
wered flatly, looking off.

  “Plied you with questions, did they?”

  “At first, like I said. The girls with me more than the men with Kevin.”

  “Naturally,” touching a finger to his forehead, “they’d have wanted to know when and where you first took notice of each other, and how soon you were married after you first walked out together. That kind of thing.”