The All of It: A Novel (12 page)

Until, as and when,
somehow
, he recovered him
self,
stood
, upright and waist-high in the water, grinning in the full way of an ape,
until
—until Declan de Loughry’s hurled wrath hit him, at which point his face went pale with surprise and terror: “I’m warning you, Seamus, if due to your skill as a so-called ghillie I lose this fish, I’ll murder you! Now listen hard, boy…. I’ll make a last draw-in, and when the fish shows itself again, get under it with the net.
Under
it.
And from behind
, understand?…Make a deep scoop with a
strong hold. Gear
yourself, Seamus!”
—that
order barrelled out:
it
: after which, in ultimate opposing determination, angler and fish strained, in their apartness, fatefully together.

Gleam of belly.

“
Now
, Seamus! For the love of God,
NOW
!”

Thus the netting; thus the kill landed.

And then, as is in clean haste done, the angler’s hammer applied to the critical center of the creature’s brain: one tap.

Removed from the net, it lay in the drenched fern.

It was a cock-salmon, sovereign of years, with a kype the seeming size of a walrus’s tooth.

In a hush, Seamus said, “There’s been none taken this season to equal it.” Then: “You look near fainting, Father.”

“
Do
I, Seamus? Well, if you want the truth, I’ll tell you: were a leaf to fall on me now, it’d knock
me over for all the strength I’ve left in me!” He laughed. “My God, the size of it!”

(Thomas weighed it in at a stunning twenty-four pounds, ten ounces. “And now, Father, if you’ll just hold it, I’ll take a flash-shot—strictly for the Castle’s records, understand.”

It never occurred to him that Thomas would send the developed picture, along with the negative, to the
Irish Times
, and that they would print it five days later, large as life so to speak, for all the world to see, provoking thereby that later note from the Bishop: “Nice to have you the object of such sporting notoriety. Put a bit aside in the freeze against my next visit. I’ll bring the wine….”)

N
OTHING EXAGGERATES A
sense of lonely solitude so much as a long night drive through thrashing rain and dense, culprit fog.

Crouched over the steering-wheel of the old Ford, his head thrust forward, turtle-like, out of his collar, the only sound the sidelong loping strokes of the windshield wipers, he peered ahead through the car lights’ gauzy beam at the narrow, winding road which kept vanishing and reappearing like a dark ribbon in a magician’s hand, seen now, now not, depending on the shift of the fog….

It was terrible the way his splendid excitement had vanished almost the instant he’d left the Castle and started the homeward journey, the lilt and thrill of his great adventure draining from him
suddenly, to be as suddenly replaced by a violent flush of self-pity caused (admit it) by the sorrowful fact that at the end of the long night drive there would be nought for him but the bulk emptiness of the bleak parish-house, its outside walls bleeding with damp, its windows dark, its high, cold rooms devoid of life except as he would enter them only to encounter, going before him in the chilly chambers, the exhaled, ghostly haze of his own breath; that…deadliness, juxtaposed to the powerful vividness of its imagined opposite: anticipation—of a lit window, of a waiting presence, of a voice asking those simple, linking, engaging questions which absence inspires: “How are you?” “How did you fare?” “What was it like?”

Oh, the blanknesses of solitude….

He ought to get a dog, a lively, sensitive puppy he could rear to companionable habits; one that would accompany him on walks and ride beside him in the car, that would sleep next to his bed and wag him awake of a morning, a warm, affectionate, entertaining little dog. He pictured the creature: a smallish terrier, a brindled, charming cairn or smooth-coated brown-and-white Jack Russell, all spiff and prance and independence but ready ever for a petting. “Father Declan’s little dog,” mothers would say of it in a recommending way, meaning it wouldn’t snap when their children stooped to pat it. “’Tis Father Declan’s”: assur
ance that it wouldn’t forget itself and spot the carpet…. Was there anything written against a priest having a dog? For sure the Bishop didn’t have one. Could he think of a sixtyish priest he knew who did? He couldn’t; though Father Patrick Joyce in Galway kept a toothless, stiff, off-putting thing of a cat, a feature of parish-house life you’d be less surprised by in Galway than in Roonatellin, priests in Galway being laws unto themselves…. And of course, there was the obstacle of Mrs. Duggin, who “did” for him as hasty morning-cleaner and washer and (hastier) cook. (He’d try again hinting to her how much he’d appreciate a bit of noontime meat or fish not fried to the consistency of cement, or a veg not boiled to a rag’s limpness.) Mrs. Duggin wouldn’t take to a dog…. He could hear her: “I’m hoovering
hairs
, Father,
dog
hairs,” tousling the thin of her own, her mouth dropped disapprovingly. “It’s not that I’m complaining of the work, the amount of it, but
dog
hairs—”

But must he forever give in to the Mrs. Duggins of the world? forever keep sublimating wishes? as he was this instant sublimating (
burying
, or trying to) the wish (he struck the word
desire
) to share with someone this singular-in-his-life, brilliantly prodigious, gallimaufry twenty-four-pound-ten-ounce day, the bodily fact of it residing in the car’s boot, causing now that worrisome, unhealthy, grinding sound the engine was making (or so, in his angler’s
pride, he fancied the source of the noise to be)….

Innocent, the mere wishing of a mere wish.

The snare—face it—was the wish’s hub, the core-specific: Enda.

His thoughts rested, sunning, on her name, but not for long, the thorn to such repose being guilt. Given his calling, no mortal figure should pose such allure of pleasure and affinity…. That he could even
think
along such lines! That he could ever
feel
so!…He’d end up in one of those quiet, endlessly-corridored church-run clinics for eejit ecclesiastics—as happened in that case there’d been whispers of of a priest down near Limerick who’d not shown himself for Mass, then been found locked in the bathroom, muttering to himself, his ritual-robes scissored to bits and lying in a heap at his feet…. And what form of scissoring would his own aberrancy take before he’d be collected and confined and put to some form of hand-busying therapy—basket-work or counting out potatoes for the noon soup—and when he was better, “coming along,” and could stand the responsibility, watering the potted plants set about in the cloister….

Resist
.

Priestliness performed the thought of the world.

He said it aloud—“
Resist
”—then decided,
chung!
justlikethat, not to.

The ease of it! The lack of struggle! No violent, fanged, explosive impulsion of will—just the de
termination that this once, at the end of this day of days, he would do what he wished to do….

…if
he’d be but
able
to, the damnable fog being a kingly thwarter;
it
, plus the rain and the hap of road-flooding in the Maam Valley lowlands, or rock-slides, or some worse, weirder handicap, such a night being a perfect prescription for all sorts of calamitous, cantrip-like irregularities….

With the best of luck, he calculated the trip would still be a donkey-slow two hours. And supposing he could—did—make it in that time, would there be (ah, the critical question!), at half-nine, a lamp still lit in Enda’s window?

So risk a greater speed; hazard the curves and ditches!

Go it!

Miraculously, he had to stop but once, for a pure-white cow lying in the middle of the narrow road. With the bumper almost touching it, he was obliged to honk it to its feet. Standing, after its clumsy rise, it faced the car and stared at it, opponent-like, a there-to-stay, drenched, slathering, ton-weight hulk. What a face! The wet and slippery smear and sprawl of its nose, the length and thick of its snowy lashes, its great, certain eyes, its lifted, pink-lined ears set on the far extremes of its wide brow, the brow itself so densely unpromising, so very terribly unpromising…. He
laughed. He lowered the window and spoke to it through the rain: “Get on now.
Move….
There’s a dear.” But it stood, massively unheeding. He applied again the brash of the horn…. The creature lingered over a last, solid stare before moving at a slow walk away, its sashaying rump telling of disdain. He watched it cross the gully and go on into the close-lying field, the milk of its mythic hide luminous against the black turf. Then—the work of a moment’s change—the mists, active as moths’ wings, enfolded and absorbed it: gone.

He blinked, guessing at it, immense and spirit-like, traversing the yon, unseeable terrain.

The stopping for it would be something else to share with Enda.

It was a bit before half-nine when he turned from the road onto the lane that wound down the hill towards the sea: towards Enda’s house. If her lamp was still lit, he’d toot the horn; its sound would bring her to the door. If the place was dark, he’d simply go by….

Just after he made the turn into the lane, the rain stopped, abruptly, as it can, like a turned-off faucet. He let the window down and received gratefully a sea-blown draught of fresh air that smelled of brine and distance. The moon and the stars, he reckoned, would be out in a few minutes.

He drove as slowly as possible now, electing the
pace for its quietness and for the sake of the car’s underside, the trough-like lane-bed having been gutted to a worse-than-usual state by the storm’s wash. Three drowsing sheep started and scattered. Before him, between the dripping hedgerows, drowned and dropped fuchsia flowers carpeted the way in scarlet. Some distance before Catherine McPhillemy’s, he dimmed the headlights and rested his foot on the brake: her collie might show itself, crouched, for a nip at the tyres. But he passed without so much as a bark, the dog, like Catherine’s house, being closed up for the night.

Enda’s house, he supposed with a sink of his heart, would be alike: dark; shut and still.

His mind tripped then on the memory of it having been but yesterday—only yesterday!—he’d driven in a retreating way up the lane in the opposite direction. But that had been
after
. After so much: after Kevin’s death; after Enda’s revelations of Kevin and herself; after the provoke and claw of his sin against her; after Kevin’s funeral Mass and burial; after Enda’s tacit forgiveness of him in the witnessing, powerful surround of the cemetery; after…
Afters
to do with the past. And now, had he come to the point of the poet’s final, crucially cresting wave when the future begins, after?

He felt so.

Yet, at the sight of the yellow lamplight coming
from her window, his blood thickened in confusion: he fain would flee.

But, vagrantly, his hand betrayed him: twice—in two spurts—the car horn sounded.

He had never experienced difficulty in leaving people; farewells, being part of a larger plan, had never troubled him. Now, in an anxious torment, he could hardly stand the wait of being greeted.

She opened the door and peered out into the night.

“Enda,” he called.

“Father!” She waved, then grabbed her shawl from its peg by the door and came running. “Father—”

He had opened the car door but remained seated inside.

“Enda—”

She stood at his side, close, her eyes as large and liquid as the rainwater pooled in the yard’s stone-beds, her dark hair loosened like an increase of the scented night.

He felt as jumbled as a bag of rags. “If there’d not been a light showing I’d not have honked,” he began in a clumsy rush, “but as there was—” pausing to catch at a straw of reason: “I’m just getting back from the fishing…. And you, Enda, you’re all right, are you?” his eyes on her as if she were a lesson to be memorized.

She nodded.

“I wanted to make sure,” he went on. “It’s hard for you, I know, being alone—”

“Oh,” she answered, her gaze steady in his own, “being alone’s the least of it. It’s the habits of Kevin and myself I miss. The other, the being alone, one way or another, I’ve been alone all my life. Much as yourself, Father.”

She’d barely uttered the words when the clouds parted. In the sudden spill of moonlight she looked up at the sky and said deeply, “It’s come on fair.”

“Aye,” he answered, his voice bedded, as hers had been, in marvelment.

She tore her eyes from the sky back to him: “But I’ve not asked you, Father, did you have the luck fishing?”

“Oh! Enda!” he broke forth.

“So you did have the luck!” she charged. “Tell me.”

“You’ll not believe me.”

She smiled: “You’re charming me for a joke.”

“A
joke
?” he asked, puffing out his chest. “Did I mention anything about a joke?”

“
Tell
me,” her voice in the fur of a coax.

“I don’t known how to.”

“
Father—
”

He extended his arms: “Twenty-four pounds ten ounces!” he swanked.

“No!” she cried, seizing his hand. “No!”

“I’m telling you…. Twenty-four pounds ten ounces! It’s there, back there in the boot!”

“Lord in heaven!” she trilled, “Just imagine! And everybody yammering on, complaining of how poor the season’s been,
though
,” her brows came together, “Catherine’s niece, Bridie—it was her as married Peter Martin, they moved to Clifden, you remember?—well, Bridie’s sister-in-law’s nephew brought in a fourteen-pounder last week from out of one of the loughs near Kylemore. Catherine told me of it today…. But twenty-four pounds ten ounces!” Her eyes narrowed with glee: “Tomorrow, now, before Mass, I’ll just put the word in Derrick Cavanaugh’s ear. He’ll spread it quick enough, and when it gets to Liam Curley—oh, he’ll give with a cry they’ll hear in Galway, out as he’s been since the start of the season, thrashing every stretch of water in the land! Father!” she crowed, “You’ll be God Himself in the pulpit tomorrow.”

Witched, her eyes met his as laughter consumed them, hoot to increase, rocking her, chair-like, and bending him double over the steering-wheel….

Until, after the roistering seizure, still in the bond of mirth, he looked at her, then away, then back, and in the force of a different gale told her, “You’ve no way of knowing how you’ve capped the day for me.”

“Oh,” she answered in her lit way, “we’re that alike in our needs, Father.”

Emboldened, he said, “There’s no one in the world but you I wanted to see tonight.”

She did not move. Her eyes remained firmly fastened in the clasp of his own. But on her face, in the moonlight, all that was earlier vivid and venturing dissolved of a sudden into a staying, balanced, and vested look which held, suspended in it and between them, all the multifarious wonders of impossibility.

He looked from her, past her, off, into the spilled shadows.

She said to him, “It’s lovely for me that you came by,” studying him. Then, with a tug at her shawl: “But I mustn’t keep you talking all night, tomorrow being Sunday, your busy day,” her eyes still on him, “though, as I’m dying to know all the details of today, could you not come on Monday at tea-time, your duties permitting of course,” still watching him. “I’ll have hot oatcakes,” and, as he still was silent, she challenged him with: “You do like my oatcakes, do you not? You’ve always said you do.”

“I
do
,” he blurted with the sudden heart of a man who has been long at the oars and sees before him, through the mists, the post of a mooring: “You know I do.”

“So we’ll leave it stand for Monday.”

He nodded. “Monday,” he repeated. “And,”
meeting her eyes again, “you’re to have a good bit of the salmon, of course.”

She smiled deeply. “It’ll be a ravishing treat for me.”

She took a step back from the car.

He turned the ignition key. Over the engine’s murr, he said: “Thank you.”

“Ah,” she augmented the drawing-out of the word with a skyward lift of her hand, “it’s as I said, we’re that alike.”