Scarlett (89 page)

Many people came to visit Scarlett in the long convalescent weeks after Cat was born. Colum almost daily, Kathleen almost every other day, her big O’Hara men cousins after Mass each Sunday, Molly more often than Scarlett liked. But Mrs. Fitzpatrick was always there. She brought tea and cakes to the visitors, whiskey and cakes to the men, and after the visitors left she stayed with Scarlett to hear the news the visitors had brought and finish off the refreshments. She brought news herself—about the happenings in the town of Ballyhara and in Trim—and gossip she’d heard in the shops. She kept Scarlett from being too lonely.

Scarlett invited Mrs. Fitzpatrick to call her “Scarlett” and asked, “What’s your first name?”

Mrs. Fitzpatrick never told her. It wouldn’t do for any informality to develop, she said firmly, and she explained the strict hierarchy of an Irish Big House. Her position as housekeeper would be undermined if the respect accorded to it was diminished by familiarity on anyone’s part, even the mistress’s. Perhaps especially the mistress’s.

It was all too subtle for Scarlett, but Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s pleasant unyieldingness made it clear to her that it was important. She settled for the names the housekeeper suggested. Scarlett could call her “Mrs. Fitz,” and she would call Scarlett “Mrs. O.” But only when they were alone together. In front of other people, full formality had to be maintained.

“Even Colum?” Scarlett wanted to know. Mrs. Fitz considered, then yielded. Colum was a special case.

Scarlett tried to take advantage now of Mrs. Fitz’s partiality to him. “I’ll only walk down to Colum’s,” she said. “He hasn’t been to see me for ages, and I miss him.”

“He’s away on business and you know it. I heard him tell you he was going.”

“Bother!” Scarlett muttered. “You win.” She went back to her chair by the window and sat down. “Go talk to Miss Piles.”

Mrs. Fitz laughed aloud. By the way,” she said as she left, “her name is Mrs. Keane. But you can call her Miss Piles if you like. You’ll likely never meet her. That’s my job.”

Scarlett waited until she was sure Mrs. Fitz wouldn’t catch her and then she got ready to go out. She’d been obedient long enough. It was an accepted fact that after childbirth a woman recuperated for a month, most of the time in bed, and she’d done that. She didn’t see why she should have to add three more weeks to it just because Cat’s birth hadn’t been normal. The doctor at Ballyhara struck her as a good man, even reminded her a little of Dr. Meade. But Dr. Devlin himself admitted that he had no experience of babies brought by knife. Why should she listen to him? Particularly when there was something she really had to do.

Mrs. Fitz had told her about the old woman who had appeared, as if by magic, to deliver Cat in the middle of the Halloween tempest. Colum had told her who the woman was—the
cailleach
from the tower. Scarlett owed the wise woman her life, and Cat’s. She had to thank her.

The cold took Scarlett by surprise. October had been warm enough, how could one month make so much difference? She wrapped the folds of her cloak around the well-blanketed baby. Cat was awake. Her large eyes looked at Scarlett’s face. “You darling thing,” said Scarlett softly. “You’re so good, Cat, you never cry, do you?” She walked through the bricked stableyard to the route she’d used so often in the trap.

“I know you’re there someplace,” Scarlett shouted at the thicket of undergrowth beneath the trees that bordered the tower’s clearing. “You might as well come on out and talk to me, because I’m going to stand right here freezing to death until you do. The baby, too, if that matters to you.” She waited confidently. The woman who had brought Cat into the world would never let her be exposed for long to the cold damp in the shadow of the tower.

Cat’s eyes left Scarlett’s face to move from side to side as if she were looking for something. A few minutes later Scarlett heard a rustling in the thick growth of holly bushes to her right. The wise woman stepped out between two of them. “This way,” she said, and stepped back.

There was a path, Scarlett saw when she got near. She’d never have found it if the wise woman hadn’t held back the spiny holly branches with one of her shawls. Scarlett followed the path until it disappeared in a grove of low-branched trees. “I give up,” she said, “where to now?”

There was a rusty laugh behind her. “This way,” said the wise woman. She walked around Scarlett and bent low under the branches. Scarlett did the same. After a few steps she could straighten. The clearing in the center of the grove held a small mud hut thatched with reeds. A thin plume of gray smoke curled upward from its chimney. “Come in,” said the woman. She opened the door.

“She’s a fine child,” said the wise woman. She had examined every aspect of Cat’s body, down to the nails on her smallest toes. “What have you named her?”

“Katie Colum O’Hara.” It was only the second time Scarlett had spoken. Once inside the door, she’d begun thanking the wise woman for what she’d done, but the woman had stopped her.

“Let me have the babe,” she’d said, hands outstretched. Scarlett had passed Cat over at once, then kept silent during the detailed examination.

“ ‘Katie Colum,’ ” the woman repeated. “ ’Tis a weak soft sound for this strong child. My name is Grainne. A strong name.”

Her rough voice made the Gaelic name sound like a challenge. Scarlett shifted on her stool. She didn’t know how she should reply.

The woman wrapped Cat in her napkin and blankets. Then she lifted her and whispered so quietly in her little ear that Scarlett couldn’t hear, even though she strained for the words. Cat’s fingers caught hold of Grainne’s hair. The wise woman held Cat against her shoulder.

“You would not have understood even if you had heard, O’Hara. I spoke in the old Irish. It was a charm. You have heard that I know magic as well as herbs.”

Scarlett admitted she had.

“Perhaps I do. I have some knowledge of the old words and the old ways, but I do not say they are magic. I look and I listen and I learn. To some it may be like magic that another sees, where he is blind, or hears, when he is deaf. It lies largely in the believing. Do not hope that I can do magic for you.”

“I never said I came here for that.”

“Only to speak thanks? Is that the all of it?”

“Yes, it is, and now I’ve done it and I must go before I’m missed at the house.”

“I ask your forgiveness,” the wise woman said. “There are few feel thankful when I enter their lives. I wonder you don’t feel anger at what I did to your body.”

“You saved my life and my baby’s too.”

“But I took life away from all other babes. A doctor might have known how to do more.”

“Well, I couldn’t get a doctor, or I would have had one!” Scarlett closed her lips firmly over her quick tongue. She’d come to say thank you, not to insult the wise woman. But why was she talking riddles in her raspy scary voice? It gave a person gooseflesh.

“I’m sorry,” said Scarlett, “that was rude of me. I’m sure no doctor could have done any better. More likely not even half as well. And I don’t know what you mean about other babies. Are you saying I was having twins and the other one died?” It was certainly a possibility, Scarlett thought. She’d been so big when she was pregnant. But surely Mrs. Fitz or Colum would have told her. Maybe not. They hadn’t told her about Old Katie Scarlett dying until two weeks after it happened.

A feeling of unbearable loss squeezed Scarlett’s heart. “Was there another baby? You’ve got to tell me!”

“Shhh, you’re bothering Katie Colum,” said Grainne the wise woman. “There was no second child in the womb. I did not know you would mistake my words. The woman with white hair looked knowledgeable, I believed she understood and would tell you. I lifted the womb with the baby, and I had not the skills to restore it. You will never have another child.”

There was a terrible finality in the woman’s words and the way she said them, and Scarlett knew absolutely that they were true. But she couldn’t believe them, she wouldn’t. No more babies? Now, when she’d finally discovered the encompassing joy of being a mother, when she’d learned—so late—what it was to love? It couldn’t be. It was too cruel.

Scarlett had never understood how Melanie could have knowingly risked her life to have another baby, but she did now. She would do the same. She’d go through the pain and the fear and the blood again and again to have that moment of seeing her baby’s face for the first time.

Cat made a soft mewing sound. It was her warning that she was getting hungry. Scarlett felt her milk begin to flow in response. What am I taking on so for? Don’t I already have the most wonderful baby in the whole world? I’m not going to lose my milk fretting about imaginary babies when my Cat is real and wants her mother.

“I’ve got to go,” said Scarlett. “It’s close to time to feed the baby.” She held out her hands for Cat.

“One more word,” said Grainne. “A warning.”

Scarlett felt afraid. She wished she hadn’t brought Cat. Why didn’t the woman give her back?

“Keep your babe close, there are those who say she was brought by a witch and must be bewitched therefrom.”

Scarlett shivered.

Grainne’s stained fingers gently undid Cat’s grasp. She brushed her soft wisp-covered head with a kiss and a murmur. “Go well, Dara.” Then she gave the baby to Scarlett. “I will call her ‘Dara’ in my memory. It means oak tree. I am grateful for the gift of seeing her, and for your thanks. But do not bring her again. It is not wise for her to have aught to do with me. Go now. Someone is coming and you should not be seen… No, the path the other takes is not yours. It is the one from the north used by foolish women who buy potions for love or beauty or harm to those they hate. Go. Guard the babe.”

Scarlett was glad to obey. She plodded doggedly through the cold rain that had begun to fall. Her head and back were bent to protect her baby from harm. Cat made sucking noises beneath the shelter of Scarlett’s cloak.

Mrs. Fitzpatrick eyed the wet cloak on the floor by the fire, but she made no comment. “Miss Piles seems to have a nice light hand with a batter,” she said. “I’ve brought scones with your tea.”

“Good, I’m starving.” She’d fed Cat and had a nap and the sun was shining again. Scarlett was confident now that the walk had done her a world of good. She wouldn’t take no for an answer the next time she wanted to go out.

Mrs. Fitz didn’t attempt to stop her. She recognized futility when she met it.

When Colum came home Scarlett walked down to his house for tea. And advice.

“I want to buy a small closed buggy, Colum. It’s too cold to go around in the trap, and I need to do things. Will you pick one out for me?”

He’d be willing, said Colum, but she could do her own choosing if she’d prefer. The buggy makers would bring their wares to her. As would the makers of anything else she fancied. She was the lady of the Big House.

“Now why didn’t I think of that?” said Scarlett.

Within a week she was driving a neat black buggy with a thin yellow stripe on its side, behind a neat gray horse that lived up to the seller’s promise that it had good go in it with hardly a mention of the whip ever needed.

She also had a “parlor suite” of green-upholstered shiny oak furniture with ten extra chairs that could be pulled near the hearth, and a marble-topped round table large enough to seat six for a meal. All these sat on a Wilton carpet in the room adjoining her bedroom. No matter what outrageous tales Colum might tell about French women entertaining crowds while they lounged in their beds, she was going to have a proper place to see her visitors. And no matter what Mrs. Fitz said, she saw no reason at all to use the downstairs rooms for entertaining when there were plenty of empty rooms upstairs and handy.

She didn’t have her big desk and chair yet because the carpenter in Ballyhara was making them. What point was there in having a town of your own if you weren’t smart enough to support the businesses in it? You could be sure of getting your rent if they were earning money.

Cat’s padded basket was beside her on the buggy seat everywhere Scarlett went. She made baby noises and blew bubbles and Scarlett was sure that they were singing duets when she drove along the road. She showed Cat off at every shop and house in Ballyhara. People crossed themselves when they saw the dark-skinned baby with the green eyes and Scarlett was pleased. She thought they were blessing the baby.

As Christmas came nearer, Scarlett lost much of the elation she’d felt when she was freed from the captivity of convalescence. “I wouldn’t be in Atlanta for all the tea in China, even if I was invited to all the parties, or in Charleston, either, with their silly dance cards and receiving lines,” she told Cat, “but I’d like to be somewhere that’s not so damp all the time.”

Scarlett thought it would be nice to be living in a cottage so that she could whitewash it and paint the trim the way Kathleen and the cousins were doing. And all the other cottagers too, in Adamstown and beside the roads. When she walked over to Kennedy’s bar on December 22 and saw the shops and houses being limed and painted over the almost-new jobs done in the autumn, she pranced with delight. Her pleasure in the neat prosperity of her town took away the slight sadness that she often felt when she went to her own bar for companionship. It sometimes seemed as if the conversation turned stiff as soon as she entered.

“We’ve got to decorate the house for Christmas,” she announced to Mrs. Fitz. “What do the Irish do?”