The All of It: A Novel (6 page)

“I don’t see that as being so wrong a thing to have done, Enda.”

“
Don’t
you, Father?” she asked, with an eager, gratified glance, over and back, at Kevin’s body.

“There’s no possible question as to your having earned the money,” he said solemnly.

“So I can put to rest our taking of it, Father?”

“Indeed…. But tell me now, Enda dear,” he urged, wanting her to continue, “Kevin’s plan—I gather it worked.”

“Every step of it,” she answered firmly. “I stripped the settle-bed of its covers and took them out to the shed…. We put up a pouch of food, what was left of the bread on the table and a few tins of sardines and the like, and got together what clothes we’d wear. At the last, Kevin took the money from the cup…. We worked quietly, you know, but even if we hadn’t, our dad wouldn’t have opened an eye, he was that far out. But still, we stayed watchful of any sign of devilment from him…. Finally, Kevin put me through the front door and I locked it from the outside—drew down the hasp, even; then I went around to the rear door where Kevin was waiting, him having locked that door
too, of course. Then we walked through the night to the shed…. Like I said, I’d brought out covers…. We piled up some straw and made a makeshift bed. Stirred up as I was, I hadn’t thought I’d sleep a wink, but—” she laughed gently, “I did,
surely
, for the next thing I knew Kevin was shaking me, saying to get up, it was time we were on our way…. The dawn’d hardly begun to show and it was raining,
winter
rain, Father, you know, very dense and mean. Kevin spoke of the weather, said it was awful for being out in on foot, but, on the good side, it meant there’d be no way our dad could course us if he took it in his head to try. He went on to say that the instant he unlocked the back door, he wanted us to move fast. ‘We’ll skirt Killybegs,’ he said, ‘and once we’ve got around it, we’ll head straight south.’…We were known a bit in Killybegs, you see, Father.”

He nodded.

She made a vague movement with her hands: “Faced with leaving—I don’t know—the thought of it emptied me out, and for a minute I went blank. It was like I couldn’t see backwards nor forwards, if you follow me.”

“I do.”

“Kevin saw me teeter, but he didn’t rush to right me, just shouldered the food-pouch, walked to the shed-door and opened it as wide as it’d go.” She drew a hand over her brow. “I can still draw up,
Father, how he looked, standing there, braced and…narrow, somehow. Out for himself.
Aimed
, as you might say, and in his mind already on his way…. That he would go without me, Father—it was something I’d never considered.” Even now, there was a tinge of awe in her voice.

“And was it that that decided you, Enda?” he asked.

She appeared not to have heard his question. “Kevin, over his shoulder, he told me, ‘If you stay, it’ll be the same as doing away with yourself.’” She drew a breath. “Of everything in the world he could have said to me, that was the clearest, wasn’t it, Father?” She livened: “I knew right away then that I’d go and never look back…. I tied my shawl over my head and said I was ready now. Kevin turned around—looked very sharp at me—then gave me the loveliest smile, the kind, you know, that lives with you…. He was very excited, kept eyeing the house and the sky. Then, like he was on a clock, he said, ‘The time’s come.’ He told me to stay right where I was while he went to the house to see to the unlocking of the back door…. I watched him make his way to it, keeping low, being careful. When he got to the door, he put his ear to it, making sure, you know, of a sound from our dad. The light was poor, but still there was enough for me to see when he set the
key to the lock. Then he waved to me. That was his sign to me to take off. He wanted me to get a start, you see, before he turned the key…. I waved back and cut out as fast as I could in the direction we’d agreed on. The winter grass was thick and matted awful from the rain, very slippery too, and the ground so rutted I didn’t dare take my eyes off it for so much as a second. Just
ran….
After a bit, I heard Kevin coming up from behind. He was breathing ever so hard. When he got even with me, he grabbed my hand, encouraging me, you know, to keep going…. We kept at a run all the way up the first slope, not giving a thought to anything but the getting up of it. At the crown, though, we let up and I looked beyond and”—her eyes widened—“I can still feel how my heart turned over. The hills! They looked to me to stretch forever in front of us, no end to them. And—you know how mist shifts the land about, how what’s there one minute isn’t there the next and the way a valley’ll be lost to you at the same time a mountain-top’ll show itself and it not attached to the earth, how the changes leave you with the sense that there’s no finish to the reaches—”

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.”