A Man in a Distant Field (36 page)

He could not contradict her. The prospect of entering his makeshift bed feeling as he did was about as unpleasant as anything he could imagine. Past Leenane, up to the top of the
Harbour where the Delphi road left the main road snaking through the Partry Mountains to Westport, and along a short distance to Marshlands. Parking the car, Una gathered up the baskets and vasculum and let them into her house, immediately lighting the lamps.

“Declan, I'm going to fill the bathtub for you and leave you in the kitchen while I sort out my plants upstairs and begin to press some of them—after I've changed into dry clothing, of course. And I think if you look through the carton of Grandfather's clothes, you'll find a nightshirt. It will be clean, if considerably mended.”

She quickly brought the fire to life, put the kettle on her range, and left to change. Returning, she lifted a zinc tub from its hook in the scullery and placed it on a mat near the fire. The reservoir on her stove provided steaming jugs of hot water for the tub, and she kept adding cool until it seemed a comfortable temperature. Opening a cupboard, she brought two towels, which she put on a stool drawn up to the tub along with a bar of soap and a sponge.

“And now, my final act before attending to my plants, will be to make you a hot whiskey to drink while you soak! I have no lemons, I'm afraid, but cloves and a little sugar?”

It sounded wonderful. Once the mug had been placed on the stool with the towels, well within reach of a bather, Una went upstairs. The room was pleasantly warm. Declan removed his wet clothing and draped it over a drying rack lowered from the ceiling by the fire. He eased his body down into the water, sighing as he did so. It had been so long since he'd had the opportunity for a real bath, relying as he did on his basin and cloth. He took a small drink of his whiskey and closed his eyes. The last time he had immersed his body in water was at Oyster Bay when he'd bathed in the sea, sitting on rocks the sun had warmed before the tide came in. His skin tingled as he remembered the chill of that water and the gauzy haze that formed when the heat of the rocks met the cold tide.
Listening, he could almost hear the Neil children laughing over in their cove and the curious ravens
tok, toking
as they watched him from the trees (
for sorrow, for joy
). He saw Rose naked in the tide, and he remembered Eilis bathing their daughters and filling a tub for him too after he'd dug potatoes until his back ached. He could hear her murmuring to the girls in the other room as he soaked his muscles. The room was filled with ghosts! Children far and near, a wife, even the lost men camped by the mass rock in blinding rain ... Opening his eyes, he reached for the sponge and soap and began to wash himself, lathering his neck, what he could reach of his shoulders and back, between his legs, the sad skin of his knees. All the grime and weariness of rebuilding his house, walking back and forth to Leenane for supplies, alone on the road like any beggar, of walking with Una over the hilly shoulders of the Maamturk Mountains, everything was sloughed away by the washing. The layers of his old self, the man who had cursed God for the actions of those soldiers, who had ridden to North America in the hold of a boat, who had travelled by train from the eastern seaboard to the West Coast where he had found a house, a dog, a difficult peace, the self who imagined his heart had become small with bitterness, washed away with sweet soap and water.

He stood up in the tub, surprised at how wrinkled his fingers had become, how pale his flesh. He towelled himself off. The nightshirt had been hung by the fire to air, and Declan pulled it over his head. Despite its mendings, it was very grand: soft white cotton, very full, sheaves of tawny wheat embroidered on the placket. He sat in one of the comfortable armchairs and sipped the remains of his drink.

He heard Una come downstairs and called was there anything he should do with the water?

“Nothing tonight, Declan. In the morning, you can help me drag the tub to the door. Luckily it has a plug in the side to empty it so I drain it out in the yard. Now, was it nice?”

“Ah, Una, like heaven itself. And the whiskey is a fine caution against pneumonia.”

She looked at him, smiling. “I remember that nightshirt. My grandmother did the embroidery and my grandfather teased her about it. ‘Wheat!' he'd say. ‘Was there nothing romantic you could have given me on my nightshirt?' She would just laugh. I loved it, of course, because even then I was happy to discover plants in any manifestation.”

They sat by the fire, talking about the day, and drinking their hot whiskeys, and then Una heated some soup, telling him as she stirred it how the plants had survived the drive home from the Bealanabrack River and how she had catalogued them. Declan drank a bowl of the soup and found he could not keep his eyes open. His hostess noticed and showed him to the bed in the box room where the harp was kept. Linen sheets and billowing eiderdown put him to sleep almost immediately.

At first he didn't know why he was awake. He located himself: no, not at World's End, not in the turf shed, alas no longer wrapped in Eilis's arms as he so often dreamed, faint memories as he worked himself backwards in his state of disorientation; then he sat up in bed, listening. Someone was crying. It must be Una. He got out of bed and allowed his eyes to adjust to the dark. Her room was on the other side of the main room, and he made his way to her door. A few coals of turf glowed in the darkness. “Una,” he called softly, “are ye all right?”

“Oh, Declan, I'm so sorry to have woken you. Open the door, Declan, and come in. I'll light the lamp. Unless you can't bear to hear a woman weep and want only to return to your bed, and I shall quite understand if you do. There, the lamp is lit.
No, I'm not all right, although I'm not ill or anything. I woke and felt so desperately lonely, as though I might never be happy again. I keep wondering if I've made the right decision, coming back to Marshlands. Seeing you in my grandfather's nightshirt, I was filled with memories of my childhood here when everything was innocent and good.”

She looked stricken, her eyes swollen with crying. The room was bathed in soft light, and Declan could see that her bureau was covered in photographs, her walls held framed portraits of her family, including the grandfather who'd owned the night-shirt; Declan remembered him from childhood, a kind man who rode a tall grey hunter. He stood by Una's bed and felt helpless at her sorrow.

“My cousins and I rode our ponies to far lakes and hills without a single worry apart from how to explain that our pony had cast a shoe and we'd never noticed,” she said. “We all expected to do grand things. We were raised to expect that, I suppose, so how did I get to be this age without any accomplishments? No child, no real role in my community, not even a pair of wolfhounds to walk with and care for. I can't help but think that my grandparents must be so disappointed in me, wherever they are.”

“Disappointed in ye, Una?” asked Declan as he sat on the edge of her bed. “Ye are so alive and so brave! If they could have seen ye encountering the problems of the car on that forsaken road, their hearts would have been bursting with pride. As for accomplishments, well, what are they anyway? Ye think ye have done the things that yer life leads to so, and then it all disappears in the wink of an eye, taken by fire. Aye, and a child ...” his voice trailed off in sadness.

“Oh, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to remind you ...”

He looked up. “Of course ye didn't. But the book plan, surely that is something good. Putting down what is known about dyes and cures. Yer grandparents would be mightily proud of ye,
particularly if they could see the drawings of all the homely things I walked by a hundred times and never noticed.”

He was stroking her head. She was lovely in lamplight, her hair down and curly from its earlier soaking. She reached up to touch his face, her fingers suddenly electric on his skin, and then they were kissing. It was a long kiss, containing the yearning for lost partners, arms emptied of lovers' bodies, one mouth unblessed by another for years, and when Una broke away to ask, “Do you think this is a sin?” Declan could only reply, “I never dreamed kissing ye would be so right.”

And then he was holding her fiercely in his arms, not for comfort, as he had held her by the mass rock while she wept. She was not weeping, she was kissing him as though she was hungry for what his mouth contained, and she moved his hands to the inside of her nightdress where her breasts waited, full and soft, their nipples rising to his fingers. She smelled of rain and tasted of cloves and just faintly of whiskey, as he thought he must, too. He could not believe he was being held by her, her hands gently guiding him so that he was entering her, having forgotten the utter sweetness of a woman's body, its rich temperatures, its weathers. Her body was responding as he could not have anticipated, her arms were wrapped around his hips and she was pushing his buttocks forward with her hands so that he was fully within her; they were moving under the coverlet as though they had loved one another for decades. When he could not wait any longer, she suddenly broke her mouth away and shuddered against him, her belly damp with sweat.

When he could breath again, and when his heart had quieted within the cage of his chest, Declan asked, “Una, what have we done?”

“Do you really need me to tell you?” she laughed. “I want to assure you, though, that this is not what I intended when I suggested you stay here for the night, if that is what you're thinking.
But I will confess something to you. When you comforted me on the high rocks this afternoon, I realized that I have fallen in love with you. All my talk about the divisions in our country, and I fall in love with a Catholic man who farms his land. That is an example of practising what I preach, would you not agree?”

“But love, Una? How could a woman like ye, with yer education and yer family, say that ye've fallen in love with a man who has only ever taught country children their sums and dug turf and hoed his potatoes, come summer?”

“You are simple-minded, Declan, if you honestly think that is all you have done. I have fallen in love with a man who is decent and intelligent and who has shown me that he believes in honour in a way most men could never understand. Besides, I have always wanted to learn Greek and I am counting on you to teach me. Tomorrow let's begin with the alphabet!”

“And that collector of lilies, Una? Ye have no plans for him, are ye telling me this?” He would not tell her that he had fervently hoped that she had not given that man a gift at Christmas, that his own book of plants she had wrapped for him was kept under his pillow—for protection, he'd have said if anyone had seen it, but he remembered the sting he had felt when she'd mentioned the fellow in passing.

“Declan, I believe you're jealous! My mother has mentioned him in letters, hinting that he would not say no to an invitation to come to Ireland to look for lilies. Well, I don't imagine he would be satisfied with our simple wild garlic or the three-cornered leek. But do you know, I cannot even remember his name. Higgins, perhaps?”

When he woke again, the body of a woman against his back, he thought he was dreaming. It was like being in the canoe, every nerve ending alive, and the divisions between the living world and the other world blurred. He thought he could hear music, but taking a moment to gather his wits, he realized it was the
Erriff River rushing down to meet Killary Harbour. He began to ease himself out of the bed when Una woke and kissed his neck.

“Will I make us a cup of tea?” he asked, stroking her hand.

“I am perishing for tea,” she replied, lifting the weight of her hair from the pillow.

Walking back later that morning to Delphi, in sunshine, for the rain had lifted to show the Mweel Reas in blue air with their white peaks glittering, Declan made up his mind to offer his teaching services to the National School for the next year. He had been adrift, and if not now at anchor, he at least felt that he wanted his feet on dry ground, a reason to rise in the mornings, his days filled with purpose, an occupation. The idea of a book of the townland and beyond had settled into his mind and he saw its potential for bringing together families, generations, village people and those of the outlying farms. He remembered his mother telling him that some women could coax beautiful dyes out of simple plants and that she wished she knew how, for she'd colour the old tea towels something other than grey, there being entirely too much grey in the world. The Kelly children at the school: Declan remembered that their grandmother had worked in the woollen industry in Leenane as a dyer, and he knew the woman was still alive, though she spoke not a word of English. Well, there was the beginning. Perhaps.