Chapter 8 #3
Enda is up in her place on the roof, watching Eugene down below.
He checks over his shoulder once or twice before working the handle of the pump, then inserting the very tips of his fingers into the gush.
The silver of the water meets the gold band of the ring he wears on his thumb and she sees him shiver with the shock and pleasure of it.
She smiles to herself. She knows, and he knows, that if Tomás catches him doing this, he’ll come over and remove Eugene’s hand from the handle, telling him not to waste water, it’s a precious element.
But Eugene loves the pump, the cold flush of it, the draw and sucking motion of the handle, the first few dry gulps before the water appears.
Enda sees no reason why he can’t play with it: the child has little enough to make him happy.
She is just about to call down to him, Good on you, Eugene, you carry on there, when it occurs to her that her position up here, near the wisped and fragmenting clouds, might be like their mother’s.
Is Phina somewhere among or above them, watching, observing, unseen?
Enda knows that if it were at all possible, it would be what her mother would want: she would refuse Heaven, turn down the everlasting, if she could remain close to them.
The thought that Phina could be nearby, unable to reach them or communicate, is so harrowing that Enda has to push the spiked ends of the thatch into her palms. She thinks she will swing her leg back over the ridge and make her perilous, sliding descent—she’ll go to Eugene and see what way he is—when she hears voices coming up the boreen.
Two of them, rising and dipping in what sounds like a dispute.
Eugene, below, drops the pump handle and scurries away, towards the donkey, and Enda realises that Eugene had recognised the voices before she did. It’s Tomás and Liam, coming up the hillside, engaged in a row.
“All I’m saying is—”
“Listen to me, now—”
“You never, not even once, pay attention when—”
“Hear me out, for the love of—”
Enda shifts so that she is lower to the roof as they round the corner of the house. Tomás steps in front of Liam, forcing him to a halt.
“I—I beg of you not to do this. It’s that damned padre who’s put all this nonsense into your head. You mustn’t shut yourself away in that place just because of what he’s said, do you hear me, you could—”
“Da,” Liam says, with quiet menace, “I am going to the novitiate. It is what I want, what I have always wanted. I will become a priest, with or without your blessing and—”
“I have no argument with the idea of faith, you know that. But can you not put your faith in what is beneath your feet? The rocks under the earth, the inexorable shift of soil down a mountainside, the pull of the moon on—”
“Da—”
“And when we die, we surrender our bodies to the earth and we become earth. It is the end of one story but the beginning of another.”
Liam sighs and covers his face with his hands. Enda can see that he wants to push past Tomás but is holding himself back from doing so.
“You have your beliefs,” he says, through his fingers, “and I have mine. We will both of us need to respect that—”
“Do you recall the day we found the well?” Tomás’s voice is so soft that Enda has to strain to hear it. “What a day that was. And do you remember—”
“What I remember,” Liam says, with sudden violence, pulling his hands away, “is being terrified. Of you. Of that place,” he stabs a finger towards the copse, “of everything. I was a child. A child. And you left me there, on that hillside, in the rain, abandoned me, discarded me, like a—like a—” He gives an inarticulate noise, half sob, half scoff.
“There’s no point in discussing this,” he mutters, sidestepping his father and walking off. “No point at all.”
“I said that you’d sail the wide oceans,” Tomás calls after him. “Do you remember that?”
At the doorway to the house, Liam pauses, his head bowed. “I do and I still might. God’s work can be done all over the world, to spread the word of—”
“I have something for you, son.” Tomás strides towards him, fumbling with something in the inner pocket of his jacket—Enda sees the white flash of paper in the gathering dusk.
“Your mother and I talked of this, before she passed, and it was what she thought was best, the priesthood was the last thing she wanted for you. The idea of you emigrating would break my heart, as it would have broken hers, but if you must leave us, we would rather see you on a boat than walled off from the world with the Jesuits and—”
Liam has taken the papers and is turning them over in his hands. “Permission to emigrate,” he reads, in a wondering tone.
“And money for your passage, to Québec.” Tomás indicates, pointing. “It’s all set up. I sent instalments in your name. We thought you might—”
Liam is shaking his head, refolding the pages, trying to hand them back. “Da, this is madness, sheer madness. You can’t spare the money for this. I’ll not be going, I’ll—”
“No need to make up your mind now. Keep it all by you,” Tomás says, sliding the papers into Liam’s jacket pocket.
“Your mother…your mother always said that there was a thirst in you, a curiosity, and she thought…we thought this would…A vast country it is, thousands and thousands of square miles of good fertile soil. There are forests so high you can’t see the tops of the trees, with huge rivers cutting through them, and mountain ranges like nothing we have here.
And you know what else? There are no viscounts, no landlords sapping the lifeblood of the country.
Imagine what a young man of your talents could make of it.
Consider the idea, won’t you? Think it over. ”
A moment later, the haggard is empty, almost as if this conversation had never taken place, Liam vanished into the house, Tomás up the slope to walk the field.
Eugene reappears from wherever he has been hiding and he stands at the pump, staring after his father.
Enda rearranges her legs and slides down the thatch, coming to land with a thud near the door.
Eugene doesn’t turn, just flaps a hand towards her in greeting, which makes Enda wonder if he’d known all along that she was up there. She comes over to stand beside him, following his gaze, to see what he’s looking at. The hill, perhaps, or the fast-scudding clouds, or the V of curlews overhead.
“Will we work the pump?” Enda says, because it is the least she can offer him. “I’ll keep watch for Da.”
The days elapse both quickly and slowly. Twelve days until Liam goes, then ten, then six, then three, then the morning of his departure is upon them.
Liam wakes in his pallet under the thatch for what he knows will be the final time, Eugene curled into a ball next to him. He will leave today. It is very simple: he will rise, he will tie his bootlaces, he will open the door, he will step outside, and then the leaving will be done.
He turns his head towards Eugene and sees that his brother, too, is awake and following with his finger the path of a slater as it crawls up and down the inhospitable terrain of their rumpled blanket.
Liam croaks out a good morning, and Eugene says nothing, watching the grey armour-plated back of the insect as it toils up a gulley of wool.
Liam reaches out and flattens the incline with his fingers and the slater rushes forward but when Liam looks back at his brother, expecting Eugene to be pleased, he finds that the boy is regarding him with a penetrating, intent gaze.
Instantly, Liam is swamped by guilt, as if he ought to be begging his brother’s forgiveness for what he is about to do. He tosses back the blanket, as if to free himself from this feeling, and rises, lifting his clothes from the stool, smoothing them down.
The leaving, now it is here, needs to happen quickly. He cannot delay. If he remains a moment longer with Eugene, his quizzical gaze and the wanderings of the insect, Liam thinks he is in danger of wavering—he might offer to stay.
He kneels, winding his rosary into his fingers, pressing his hands together, finding the stirring words of the matins prayer, at the forefront of his mind: All the earth doth worship thee, the Father everlasting, to thee all angels cry aloud, the heavens and all the powers therein.
Afterwards, he stands. He touches the rafters above his head.
The girls and Eugene are down in the kitchen, getting out plates, stepping around each other.
He watches for a moment: the smoke from the sullen morning fire, the oblong of light coming in from the half-door, Eugene kneeling to blow on the embers, Rose slicing bread at the table, Enda fetching butter from the press.
His instructions are to take nothing with him, for he is embarking on a new life, and what little he will require in the way of worldly things will be provided.
He turns, surveys the low space of the loft where he has slept every night of his life since he was ten years old: the girls’ bed, the blanket chest, the wicker chair.
He folds his spare britches and jacket and lays them on the stool for Eugene; his woollen hat he places on Enda’s pillow; on Rose’s, he leaves his handkerchiefs, edged by the hand of their mother.
His certificates, his papers, his schoolwork, all record of his life up to now, he tucks under the pallet: he has no need of them but cannot bring himself to commit them to the fire.
He tells himself quite clearly that this is the last time he will be here, that his life is now God’s, that he is leaving, but at the same time he finds he cannot believe it.
Surely he’ll be back here tonight, laying himself down on this pallet next to his brother.
That he might live anywhere else, with anyone else, that this chapter of his life is over, makes no sense.