A Light in the Window (41 page)

“Your great-grandfather, Michael, married Glynis Flanagan, and they had Lorna, Fergus, Sybil, Tyrone, Cormac, and Lisbeth. Fergus emigrated to America when he was fourteen and later married Letty Noonan. They had Matthew and Stephen and, of course, Little Betty, who died at birth from the fever.”

“Good heavens! How can you contain all that?” Perhaps if she stayed a day or two, she could make short work of the bag that sat on his closet floor.

“Your uncle Stephen married Katie Crain of Pennsylvania, who, they say, was a great beauty. Walter was their issue. Two years earlier, your father had, of course, married Madelaine Howard of Mississippi, whose great-grandfather served in the senate with Mister Jefferson. Matthew and Madelaine had you, and neither you nor Walter ever chose to carry on the family line.”

Perhaps he only imagined that she said this coolly.

“My great-grandfather,” she said, taking a large bite, “married Gillian Elmurry, who had Reagan, Fiona, Brian, Kevin, Eric, and Inis. Reagan married Deirdre Connors, and they had Allie, Meg, Nolle, Anthony, Stephen, Mary, and ...” He thought she said Joseph. Clearly, it was a challenge to talk with your mouth full while reciting one’s family tree.

“Nolle, as you may recall, flew with Lindbergh on several occasions, before he had Arthur, Allen, Asey, and Abigail.

“Anthony, of course, married Daphne, who had me. I was the only child. In an Irish Catholic family, a laughingstock ...”

“So we are? ...”

“Third cousins.”

“I see,” he said, although he didn’t.

Perhaps it was because he had been up since five o’clock and it was now eleven, but he felt as if someone had just read him the entire first Book of Chronicles.

He cautioned Dooley when he came downstairs on Saturday morning. “There’s someone sleeping in the guest room.”

“I never heard s’ much bangin’ an’ scufflin’ around in th’ middle of th’ night ... sounded like a dern gang of convicts was let loose in there.” His grandfather made over, thought the rector. Dooley Barlowe often woke up as an old man, though he generally went to bed as a boy.

“Who’s in there, anyway?”

“A cousin. From Ireland.”

“Ireland. ’At’s over there in Scotland.”

“Try again.”

“Somewhere in England, maybe.”

“Check it out.”

Dooley looked at the world globe on the rector’s desk. “I was pretty dern close.”

He walked to the office, oddly in step with the throbbing sound of machinery on the hill, and went through his Easter sermon twice. Orating to the rear windows, which showcased the branches of trees in expectant bud, he felt convinced that “All for Love” had been the right theme—he felt the burning fact of its rightness.

He called home at one o’clock and talked to Puny, who had come in to bake an Easter ham. She was shocked to hear there was anyone else in the house.

“She’s in the guest room,” he said. “Jet lag, more than likely. She’ll come down before long, I’m sure.”

“You want me to fix ’er somethin’ to eat if she does?”

“She ate two meatloaf sandwiches last night and drank a half pitcher of tea, but I’m sure she’ll want something before dinner. Oh, yes—she doesn’t eat flesh foods except on Sunday.”

All he got from the other end was a stunned silence.

At three o‘clock, Puny called the office. “You better come home. Your cousin’s still up there, and th’ floorboards ain’t even creaked. I knocked on th’ door at two o’clock—that’s long enough for anybody to be layin’ in bed, if you ask me—but not a peep out of ‘er. She must’ve found that key hangin’ on th’ wall and locked herself in, ’cause I tried th’ knob, thinkin’ she might be, you know ...”

“Whatever. So maybe you should come home.”

Puny was waiting for him at the back door. “She came down right after we talked.”

“Oh?”

“Wanted somethin’ to eat. I fixed ‘er salad and a roll, put it on a tray. She high-tailed it back upstairs, said not to look for ’er at th’ dinner table.”

“She’s pretty trouble-free, I’d say.”

Puny appeared thoughtful, or was it his imagination?

At six o’clock, he knocked lightly on her door.

“Cousin Meg?”

Silence.

Must have eaten and gone straight off to sleep. Jet lag could do that, and didn’t he know? Arriving home from Ireland, his head had felt stuffed with sheep’s wool. For another two days, he hadn’t been able to think straight, and finally, it all ended with the odd perception that everything—and everyone—was more poignantly real than he’d ever known, as if a veil had been lifted from his senses.

After midnight, he awoke to a sound he couldn’t identify. Barnabas pricked up his ears and growled.

He got up and went to the bedroom door, then stepped into the hall and listened. He would know that sound anywhere. It was coming from the guest room. It was a typewriter, thumping along loudly at sixty miles an hour, as if every key were a mallet pounding the floor.

A Royal manual, he concluded, or he’d eat his hat.

He went back to his room and closed the door. If Dooley could sleep through it, so could he.

All over town, green shoots poked from earth still damp from melting snow, and nearly everyone felt a shiver of delight at a certain fragrance in the air.

Easter morning had “turned off fair,” as one villager said, and the various Mitford congregations poured out of church with new hearts.

On the lawn of the Presbyterians stood a wooden cross, massed with blooming vines, fern, galax, and woods moss. Dozens of potted white lilies lined the front walk of Lord’s Chapel, and the Baptists draped their wayside pulpit with a banner proclaiming
Hallelujah!
The Methodists had chosen to peal their agreeable chimes at sunrise.

Uncle Billy Watson, according to the rector, had put the whole spirit of the morning in a nutshell. “I’m about t’ lift off,” the old man announced as he left the churchyard with a sprig of forsythia in his lapel.

Father Tim walked home with Dooley after the eleven o’clock, expecting to see their guest up and about. To that end, he had set the dining room table before the early service, using his grandmother’s Haviland.

He found the ham sitting on the counter, loosely covered with foil, minus a vast chunk from one side. He looked under the lid of the green-bean casserole and saw that a full third of it was missing. A pop top from a Coke can lay in the sink.

He went up and knocked on her door. “Cousin Meg?”

No answer.

He knocked more loudly.

“Right-o.” He heard the bed creak.

“Happy Easter! Wouldn’t you like to have lunch with us?”

“I’ve had it, if you don’t mind.”

He stood for a moment, rubbing his chin. Then he went downstairs, wrapped the ham, put it in the refrigerator, and said to Dooley, “Don’t take your church clothes off. We’re going to Mayor Cunningham’s family Easter dinner, then we’ll visit your grandpa.”

Dooley looked at him approvingly. “It’s about time we went somewhere. We never go anywhere.”

“There’s a first time for everything,” he said, admiring the way Dooley had turned himself out this morning.

“Good heavens, Timothy, who answered the phone while you were out? Tallulah Bankhead?”

“My cousin Meg. From Ireland.”

“She doesn’t sound terribly Irish to me,” Cynthia declared.

“Schooled in America.”

“Um. There for a visit?”

“Yes. She’s a writer.”

“Oh, dear!”

“Doing a book on descendants of the Potato Famine emigrants.”

“Are you one?”

“No, but she says these mountains are full of them.”

“How long will your cousin be with you?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“And how is the city?” he asked, changing the subject.

“Grimy. Intoxicating. Tedious. How’s Mitford?”

“Quiet. Clean. Comforting. And a dash boring, to tell the blessed truth.”

“Boring?”

“Because my neighbor isn’t here. I haven’t had a good laugh since she left.”

She proceeded to tell him a joke so corny that Uncle Billy would have flatly refused it for his own collection.

He laughed, lying back against the sofa cushions, able at last to let go of the week and the intensity of the services and the glory of Easter, which always knocked him winding, somehow.

“There!” she said. “Is that better?”

“Infinitely.” He felt the foolish grin on his face.

“At the end of April, I’m moving out, James is moving in, the book will be ready to go to press, and I’m coming home. For good.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive! You won’t be able to run me off with a stick. Now—guess who’s visiting
me.”

“Palestrina!”

“David. He’s helping pack a few things, and I’m taking him to a play this evening. He’s so handsome and successful and such a comfort to have with me. I look forward to the day when you meet.”

“I look forward to it, also. Have a wonderful evening, and give him my regards.”

“I will. And Timothy?”

“Yes?” His heart was full, yet oddly frozen.

“Philippians four-thirteen, for Pete’s sake.”