Shannon (47 page)

The old abbey offered as much peace as a man could want. Vincent never found it. He leaned on the wall, looked in, and felt no comfort or joy.

Killing Squirt had helped, but he knew that by tomorrow its good effects would have worn off. Europe's diet had been rich; the war had spoiled him.

Two children came running down the slope, laughing and chasing, a boy about ten and a younger girl. They waved shyly and Vincent waved back; he beckoned and they approached.

“Is this the famous Clonmacnoise?”

They giggled and nodded.

“And how much do you know about it?”

The girl, bolder, said, “Are you another American?”

Another? Another?

The boy said, “My father and mother know all about the abbey. They're teaching us.”

Vincent followed them up to the house. Graciously, Lena Mullen received him. Soon the family would all sit down together to eat. Would he care to join in? Laurence arrived at the head of the long board with the family ranged either side and the two servant women at another table.

In much the same generous and hospitable way as they did with all such visitors, they began to talk to Vincent: the tradition of Saint Kieran, the towers and high crosses of the monastery, the charms and legends of the place.

A notable difference could be observed, though, between this visitor and the previous lone traveling American pursuing his Shannon ancestors. This one disturbed the Mullens. His dark eyes swung from Laurence to Lena but never rested on the children.

Lena said later, “Didn't he seem to suck up all the air in the kitchen? The children didn't like him.”

Vincent asked questions as any traveler might: How long does it take to get to Athlone? Where do you recommend that travelers stay? When he inquired whether many Americans came through, the Mullens told him proudly that the abbey attracted people from all over the world. He then asked them whether he himself seemed an unusual traveler— a young American, traveling alone, searching for his roots— not typical, perhaps?

The Mullens still blanched with shame over the fracas that Robert had endured. They could barely speak of it to each other, and they had sent forth messages that on no account was any member of the republican
forces to call upon them ever again for anything. When this American asked his question, they felt the surge of awkwardness. Laurence took the denial route.

“No, you're unusual, I have to say that.”

And Lena added, “Most young men would prefer to be off at sport or the races or something.”

But Vincent had seen the furtive glance between the couple and the lowering of the eyes in each. He knew such responses from people in his daily line of work, people to whom he then showed the error of their ways. So he dealt with the Mullens as he dealt with those circumstances; he allowed a silence to fall as he looked from one to the other. They didn't know where to look.

They scarcely said goodbye to him. The children, with their natural sixth sense, watched from a hidden vantage point as this big frightening man wheeled his bicycle from the yard.

Some days later, the Mullens abandoned for the time being all their traditions of hospitality. Just before lunch, a motor bicycle roared into the yard. The children had gathered at the kitchen table and were about to dive toward the door when Lena intervened.

“No! Back to your places!” She looked at Laurence, her eyes saying, Deal with it. We've had enough visitors for one summer!

Laurence went into the yard as Sevovicz unwound himself from the saddle. Before the archbishop could say a word, Laurence spoke.

“Ah, sorry to say we've a bit of a problem here at the minute. We can't manage any visitors.”

“But,” said Sevovicz, fumbling for his Portroe letter from the nuns, “I was assured of a welcome.”

“Ah, we'd love to, sir, but not today. Give us a week or two.”

Sevovicz managed to retain Laurence long enough to ask one more question. “Did you have a young American visitor recently? Tall fellow, handsome?”

Laurence physically recoiled. “Oh, God,” he said. “Oh, God!”—and he walked briskly from the yard, back into the house, and closed the door.

A
fter writing his memoir, Robert seemed to leap forward— freer in himself, less jagged in his walk, easier in his talk. Memories began to flood back, and he recounted them to Ellie as soon as they surfaced. He told stories of childhood, of school, of the house in Sharon with its scallop-shell cartouche at the door— but almost never a memory or mention of war.

A fresh energy and force came to him. He took a new interest in his own appearance; he responded faster to everything around him. Sometimes it seemed almost as if he were seeing the house and its furnishings for the first time; he'd touch a chair's fabric or scrutinize a painting; he returned again and again to
The Falls of Doonass
by Currier and Ives.

If he lapsed, it only lasted a short time, and he never seemed to go so far away as he used to and not for as long. One day he came downstairs from one of his absences, as Ellie privately called them, and apologized.

“I wish I could stop this— this—”

She waited. Nothing came. “This what?” she asked.

“This— vanishing,” he said.

“Is that what it feels like?”

“Yes.”

She said, “It'll stop. Now I want you to whip some cream. Here.” She handed him the whisk. “You can lick the whisk when you're finished.”

Their riverside strolls became livelier every day. He asked questions about who owned the fields, what breed of cattle were grazing, was that tree a beech or an oak? His sense of humor began to return; he laughed at her conversation, her copious wit.

Remembering his enjoyment of the Shannon Pot trip and Dominic's legend— of which Robert spoke almost every day— Ellie planned another outing, this time north along the river.

Once more they set out early. On the way she briefed Robert by singing—”Oh, say can you see?”—but he didn't join in.

“I know why you're not singing with me,” Ellie said. “Because I have a voice that'd crack an egg.”

Robert laughed and laughed. “What has ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ to do with where we're going?”

“We're going to visit the grave of the man who wrote it.”

He struggled. “Francis … Francis … “

She waited; she waited for some minutes.

“Scott Key,” he said. “Francis Scott Key.”

Ellie said, “He wrote the words. My fellow who's buried up here— he wrote the music.”

She knew her countryside well and contrived to keep Robert as close to the river as possible. Within her amateur grasp of psychiatry, she hoped that seeing again the places he had already visited would further help his memory.

The grass in the old graveyard came up almost to their waists.

“Who was he?” said Robert.

“A journeyman harper,” Ellie said. “He used to go from house to house, playing his harp and entertaining people. In some houses he used to sleep with his harp, so that it wouldn't go out of tune in the damp rooms. Maybe that's why he never got a wife.”

They trudged around, peering at gravestones, rubbing inscriptions with moss to make the names discernible.

“D'you know what any great Irishman once considered the height of
life?” Ellie said conversationally. “A strong chair, a good wife, and a sweet harp.”

“I don't know whether it would be safe for me to sleep with a harp,” he said. “I toss and turn.”

“Carolan was this harper's name,” she said. “Turlough or Turlock. Carolan or O'Carolan.” She added after a pause, “You enjoy sitting in my father's chair.”

“My father has a chair like it,” Robert said.

“Carolan was blind,” said Ellie. “He rode a white horse, and it led him across the countryside. They said he could compose a concerto in a minute.”

Robert grabbed a handful of tall grasses and tried to pull them away from a gravestone.

“So,” said Ellie, in a summarizing voice, “we don't want the harp and we're happy with the chair.”

“What was the third?” Robert grunted at the sturdy grasses of County Roscommon.

Ellie said, “Think back. See if you can remember it.”

Robert thought aloud. “A sweet harp. A strong chair.” He chuckled. “A good wife.”

“But you're a priest,” Ellie said.

He, thinking aloud, said, “Am I still a priest?”

She enumerated. “You don't say Mass. You don't hear confessions.”

“The word
vocation
keeps ringing through my head.”

“They tell us that nursing is a vocation,” said Ellie.

“I met a nun,” said Robert, “and she made butter as though it were the most important thing in the world.”

“To her it was.”

“I met a man who loves trees, even though he cuts them down. And a man who made boats,” he said. “He stroked the wood of the boat the way I imagine a man must stroke the hair of the woman he loves.”

Ellie's heart leaped. “Well, there you are. Vocation. My mother always said that marriage is a vocation— and she was married to a man with a vocation, a doctor.”

They fell silent for a time but continued to harass every bit of greenery in Kilronan graveyard. Ellie descended on ancient headstones, ripping out long grasses by the sheaf.

“I think this is it,” she announced, finding a suitably aged stone that had listed forward. “He died in the seventeen hundreds, so it'll be an old tomb.”

They could not decipher a single word of the inscription and went to sit on the graveyard wall. Ellie swung her legs like a child.

“You didn't answer my question—” she began, but he jumped her.

“I've been thinking about it since you asked.” Robert chewed a stalk of grass. “Here's my answer. From the age of ten, I never thought about anything other than being a priest. Imagine, ten years old. And now? Well, now what?” He paused.

She didn't look at him.

Not faltering from the steady flow of words that he had been using he said, “I have no understanding of anything else. I've loved being a priest. But it has confined me. I mean— I know nothing else. I have no idea of how a man marries. Of what he does, how he behaves within marriage. Of what marriage, as a man practices it, must mean to his wife.”

“You could always guess,” she said, wondering how to keep down the noise in her head and her chest, the noise of excitement, the noise of fear that this might not be true, the noise of hope. “And I could always correct you— if you asked me.”

“Well … “ He paused, and it became the longest pause of her life. “Well,” he repeated, “if I'm to ask anybody, don't you think I would have to ask you?”

Only a very few close friends knew that Ellie Kennedy swore like a longshoreman. That night, lying in bed, she swore over and over to herself. Through the adverbs and adjectives the questions stuck out:
What did he mean? What could he have meant?

She parsed the crucial sentence:
If I'm to ask anybody, don't you think I would have to ask you? Was he being genuine, meaning that he doesn't know? If I'm to ask. Did he mean ask about marriage? Or did he mean, ask me to marry him? Or is he being a typical man, hedging his bets, sitting on the fence, stringing me along? No, that can't be right; why would he string me along when there's not even a string yet? Oh, God, should I have just put my arms around him? Has he forgotten how to be a priest? But if he has, what else died inside him?

And then she swore off a silent volley.

While they were away for the day in Kilronan, a man bicycled along the shores of Lough Ree. He rode very steadily and with little exertion. Everything about him exuded determination and confidence.

For his journey on this warm day Mr. Vincent wore an expensive blue cotton shirt with short sleeves, under which his biceps bulged. His beige slacks, of light gabardine, had been secured by bicycle clips around his argyle socks. He wore strong outdoor shoes, the cleats of which helped to grip the pedals of the bicycle.

Nobody blocked his path that day— because nobody else happened to be using it. One man stood looking at the lake and smoking a big pipe, a personable man who nodded in a friendly way. Mr. Vincent looked at him, thought about making an inquiry, but rode by; at that moment he had no wish to chatter.