The Pig Comes to Dinner (8 page)

She turned again to the loom. There were the threads not seen before—coarse and brown—worked through the machine. Spread out before her was a cloth, heavy and woven of the same brown thread. She raised her hands away from the loom and took her feet from the treadle. She heard, in the instant, the sound of the harp, touched more it seemed by a soft breeze than the thick fingers of Kieran Sweeney. Metal strings, brass it seemed, were strung in place. Kieran was gripping the harp more tightly, afraid he might let it fall. Both Kieran and Kitty had their mouths slightly open, their breaths held. First Kitty turned toward the stone steps where they opened onto the landing. Then Kieran shifted his gaze to follow hers.

There, just to the left of the stair, stood Brid and Taddy, he slightly forward, she staying closer to the stones behind her. They were bewildered as always, but now it was as if they knew even less the reason they were there or what path would lead them away to a place of peace.

Taddy's hair, light brown, fell to just above his broad, straight shoulders. His body tapered down to the waist. His hands were hard and calloused, but the long fingers still retained a delicacy that could only come from the practice of a great tenderness. But it was his brown, almost black, eyes that defined him as a being most present.

It was as if they were being given more than a single vision, forced to see not only this room and the objects and the people in it, but also some other place, some other time altogether, and they grieved the loss of one, and were perplexed by the sight of the other. Taddy's mouth, small but well formed, was open more in quiet surprise than in preparation for speech. He took a half step backward, so his arm could touch Brid's, and let the side of his mud-caked foot touch what would have been the soft flesh of Brid's right heel.

Brid, too, was filled with wonderment—and sorrow, too— but seemed more frightened than surprised. Her black hair and blue eyes—a blue deep enough to be the purple long allowed only to royalty or to the gods—were in contrast to her pale skin, a color too suggestive of fresh cream to be considered pallid. Her lips were red and moist as if she'd been eating berries picked from the hedges along the castle road. She was slender, and the erect hold of her head and the steady gaze of her eyes, sorrowful as they were, let it be known that there was no weakness in her. The homespun of her dress fell close to her body, forming itself over the small breasts, the compact thighs, and the calfs that narrowed to the trim ankles showing below the hem. She shifted her left foot so it covered the toes of Taddy's right foot. Both their necks were circled with the raw burn of their hangings.

The earth-brown threads in the loom and the cloth now vanished. Kitty stood and moved away from the treadle. Kieran set down the harp. The strings dissolved even as a few last vibrations of his single strumming still lingered in the air. As if to demonstrate a solidarity with his wife—as Taddy had moved closer to Brid—Kieran stepped quietly toward Kitty and let his upper arm press against hers. Together they faced the ghosts.

Kitty didn't know what to say, but said it anyway, the words catching in her throat, resisting, but finally forced out in a half-swallowed sound. “Why are you here?” she asked them.

The question seemed only to deepen their perplexity. Brid made a slight turn toward Taddy, and Taddy drew higher his head. “We are your friends,” Kitty said—but before she could find some ending to her sentence, both Brid and Taddy pulled themselves closer to each other and the fear in Brid's eyes made them widen to a look bordering on terror. She leaned even closer to Taddy.

“Are you Brid and Taddy?”

At the mention of their names, in panic they vanished. Gone. Nowhere to be seen. Kitty and Kieran continued to stare for more than a moment. Then Kitty looked around the landing, at the darkened stones, at the floor and up toward the beams of the ceiling. She touched the loom. “They're gone?” she asked in a near whisper.

“Yes. Gone.”

“I scared them off. They didn't seem to understand a word I—” She stopped, took in a slow breath, and slapped her right hand onto the frame of the loom. “Of course they didn't understand. I spoke in English. How would they know English? I was supposed to talk Irish. But because they're strangers—How stupid can I—”

“In Irish,” Kieran said. “Say the words again. See if they can hear. If they'll come back.”

Tentatively, in Irish Kitty called, “Are you here?” No answer came, no stirring of the air, no manifestation suggesting their return.

In Irish Kieran said, “Tell them we didn't mean to frighten them. Tell them we're from Kerry, the same as themselves. Only say it in Irish.”

“I don't have to,” Kitty said. “You just did.”

But still there was no reply, no movement in the shadows. They waited. Kieran reached down to pick up the harp again, but stopped himself before he'd touched it.

Quickly he straightened. “Our problem is solved,” he said in English.

“Talk Irish.”

“No,” he continued, still in English. “We don't have that—that ‘thing' to worry about.”

“What ‘thing'?”

“When we're together—I mean when we're alone at night—if we do it in English we'll know they won't be anywhere near. They'll be frightened off.”

“Make love in English?”

“To preserve our privacy.”

“How can we make love in English?”

“Why can't we?”

“You can't make love in English. English doesn't have the right sounds. It doesn't have the right words.
You
can't and
I
can't—and we shouldn't even try.”

“But if it guarantees we're alone?”

“It won't work. I can't do it. It wouldn't be love.”

“Then you want them spying on us?”

“No. But if I have to make a choice—”

Kieran lowered himself onto the bench at the loom. “You're right. We can't do it any other way that I can think of.”

Kitty shrugged. “Maybe they'll learn a thing or two.”

Kieran reached over and took his wife's hand. “Instruction is not what I usually have in mind.” A smile that can only be described as a leer spread across his face, bringing his beard close to his eyes. “Shall we show them now?” he whispered in Irish. “Here? See if they show up?”

“Here?” Kitty pulled her hand away, then after a pause during which she held it modestly near her right breast, she quickly grabbed her husband's hand and brushed it against her cheek. Reverting to her native Irish she said, “Well, we could give it a try. But what if they interrupt us?”

“Spiritus interruptus?”

Kitty groaned. “Now you've ruined everything.”

Kieran stood up. “I'll make amends.”

“Irish only. Right?”

“There's no other way,” Kieran answered. After he took his lips away from hers, she said, “And no stopping if someone starts playing the harp.”

And so their Irish splendors began—in the presence of the harp and the loom.

5

T
he merry month of August had arrived and with it the near lifelong requirement that both Kitty McCloud and Kieran Sweeney see and, more important,
be
seen, at the famed Dingle Races. This would be the first time they would be there together. In days past, before their miraculous marriage, their avoidance of each other, and the exchange of invective when they did meet, had provided added sport to the running of the horses. Everyone, of course, had taken sides. Were not the McClouds and the Sweeneys both progeny of familiar if not always respected lineages? No one knew exactly what the ancient quarrel was about, allowing as many certainties of the cause as there were people in County Kerry. Some spoke of a stolen cow, others of a boundary dispute; more than a few assumed the seduction of a wife, the elopement of a daughter. Most subscribed, however, to the charges and countercharges of a Sweeney priest betrayed by a McCloud informant—or, depending on one's familial allegiance, McCloud clergyman's secret escape passage to the sea exposed by a greedy Sweeney, the man captured and hanged. Since these accusations were for crimes beyond forgiveness and redemption, no one could be neutral on the subject. It could not be ignored.

Long years ago, divisions within the community threatened to become permanent, to be passed on from generation to generation, like the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, the Montagues and the Capulets, the Hatfields and the McCoys, rending the community, unraveling the weave of the social fabric, disfiguring the body politic, and distracting the populous from the common cause that required the employment of all their energies and all their resources: everyday survival.

To restore the needed unity, one Father Fitzsimmons, now many years gone, a man of Solomonic bent, spread a series of false rumors, declaring in whispered confidence the truth of each, contending that the story of priests betrayed was a cover-up for a far lesser cause of contention, one that lacked heroics, a more domesticated source that, in their pride, the Sweeneys and McClouds discounted. The good citizens, however, eager to accept any diminishment of a friend or neighbor, took up the priest's rumors and elevated them to gospel status, mocking the Sweeney-McCloud pretensions. In time, the feud became more a cause for amusements than contention—except, of course, between the Sweeneys and McClouds themselves—a local topic that could be called into service should a conversation lag or a television set go out of commission.

The walk from the town of Dingle to the field where the race course had been set up was less than a half kilometer. The morning rain had moved on toward Tralee, and Kitty and Kieran climbed without effort the slow rise of the road, managing not to be killed by those foolish or lazy enough to drive their cars. Intent on provoking comment, they held hands. Today was the last of the four days the races ran. Kitty had argued to go the first day. It was more festive, and the horses would be in better shape, since most of them would be required to run each day, sometimes in more than one race. Kieran, more melancholy by nature, preferred the closing event with its intimation of the end of things. In support of his preference he became an out-and-out Darwinian. Only the surviving horses would run. The spent and the disabled would have been eliminated, leaving for his and Kitty's pleasure only the fittest.

Kitty, after a moment of thought, had accepted his reasoning. She had other points of contention, far more serious. She was convinced that Kieran Sweeney had fallen in love with Brid. How could this man, whose passion and affection had proved to be inexhaustible—even gaining strength and momentum as their days and nights progressed—how could this most stable and honest of men be falling in love not just with another woman but with the ghost of another woman?

To have allowed the thought to even enter her brain was enough for Kitty to question her own stability. Common sense, to say nothing of overwhelming evidence, argued against such nonsense. Yet there her suspicions were. From whence they had come she knew not. When she presented to her oppressed head a lengthy list in her husband's defense, itemizing his show of ardor, his deference to her more stupid whims, his exuberance in her company, his offering of small joys and intimate pleasures, she would find comfort, even assurance, that her imagination was being overactive—as was its wont.

But within seconds she would come to a more sophisticated understanding of these attributes. He was, no more, no less, covering up for his growing delinquency. The increase of ardor was a measure of his infidelity.

The intimations had begun innocently enough. When Kitty and Kieran were planting an herb and spice garden, Kieran had mentioned that Brid would sometimes come when he was preparing their meals. She would sit on a stool in the scullery corner and watch, expectant more than bewildered, yet clearly appreciative of the wonders he would produce. Kitty found this of minimum interest. At first.

Another time, playing their evening game of Ping-Pong—they took full advantage of this particular artifact donated by the squatters—Kieran spoke of finding Brid near the stream, her face mournful even as she smiled sadly at the cows ruthlessly tearing up and munching the reeds nearby. He went on to note that he had paused and watched, not wanting to disturb her. Kitty's subconscious made a note of it.

As they were pruning the orchard, probably too late for a fair yield that year but hopeful for the next, Kieran expanded on the sweet solemnity of Brid's blue eyes during that morning's milking, her stately posture as she sat on a stool, observing the duties she herself had probably done, her muddied feet bare on the flagstone floor. Kitty listened to his words and said, “Ummm.”

Then, as they had burned the pruned branches in an evening bonfire behind the castle, Kieran talked of his pity for the bewildered Brid. Kitty was attentive. He next spoke of the quiet pleasure it gave him to see her obvious affection for the cows, to see her wandering among the animals as they came up the hill from the mire, admitting with a sly smile he was less regretful than before that solutions had yet to be found to effect her departure. Kitty kicked a wayward branch closer into the fire, then plucked an already burning firebrand from the flames, flung it to the top of the pyre, and watched it intently as it was consumed by the flames.

Kieran noticed.

After that, there was no word about Brid. Nothing. It was the silence that gave Kitty full possession of the topic. Dismissive at first, then allowing herself to entertain a slight possibility and then a growing suspicion, she was finally filled with an absolute certainty that her husband was in love with Brid.

Insatiable, what she craved most was still more proof. His silence on the subject was one. Why this sudden avoidance of Brid's name? Another bit of evidence was his increased passion during their lovemaking. This was a manipulated distraction, pure and simple. And there was the time when Kitty had blithely asked, “Do you never see Brid anymore?” And he answered with a word borrowed from Kitty's own vocabulary: “Ummm.”