The Bright One (21 page)

Molly thought that if she could make a wish it might be for a telephone, but even in her wildest dreams she knew it would not happen. Now that the Christmas gift money had been spent – and there she had felt an obligation to Patrick and Colum not to let it disappear into the household purse – things were at their tightest. There was no work on the land for James. All he could get now was the occasional night on the boats, and there was not much of that. He had work for the next few nights, taking the place of one of the three-man crew who was laid up with bronchitis.

Paddy Ferris, the third member of the crew of which Seamus O'Loughlin was the skipper, knocked at James's door in passing and they walked down to the harbour together. Molly saw them off. She kissed James, smiled at Paddy. ‘God go with you both!' she said.

‘See you in the morning,' James said.

‘I am not liking the look of the weather,' Paddy said to James as they walked. ‘Would you not say 'twas a sneaky wind?'

James gave an easy laugh. ‘Not at all, at all! 'Tis no more than a fresh breeze!' Wasn't Paddy always a cautious man, he thought? Afraid of his own shadow.

Breda, helped by her mother, spent the evening at her dressmaking. ‘I wish we had a decent sewing machine!' she said as the thread snapped for the third time.

‘If wishes were horses, beggars would ride!' Molly said. ‘Anyway, haven't we done enough for one evening? We'll have a cup of cocoa and go to our beds.'

It was the middle of the night, she was sound asleep, when the storm woke her, the wind howling in the chimney. She lit the lamp and looked at the clock. Two-thirty-five. She was wide awake now. How could she not be; the storm was raging, the rain lashing against the window, and behind it all she could hear the heavy thud of the waves as they broke on the strand. It was the sure sign of the highest of seas, that lying in bed here, in the shelter of the house, you could hear the thundering of the sea and the beating of the waves.

James! Where was he? How far out? Was he already on his way home?

She got out of bed, put on a coat and her slippers, and stared out of the window. There was nothing to be seen, thick blackness, no light anywhere, the rain driving in squalls, the wind thumping in fury against the house.

There would be no more sleep tonight, not while the storm raged and James was somewhere out there in the thick of it. She left the bedroom, looking in on Breda, who was fast asleep, on her way to the living room. You had to be young, Molly thought, to sleep so soundly.

She stirred the fire and filled the kettle. Her thoughts were all with the men in the boat. So small it was, and off this coast the sea so high and treacherous and the storms so sudden. But Seamus and Paddy were experienced men, she told herself. Hadn't they been on the boats since they were boys? And James himself was no fool at it.

All the same, there was no way she could go back to bed yet. She picked up Breda's sewing and began to stitch the hem, the needle jumping in her hand with the thud-of the waves.

She had almost completed the full circle of the hem when she realized that the storm had subsided and the wind had dropped. The sea was now hardly audible. That was the way of it. It frightened you almost to death and then ceased on the moment. It was cruel all right. But now everything was all right again, and she was quite desperately tired.

Yawning, she went back to the bedroom – Breda had slept through it all – put out the lamp and thankfully crawled into bed.

She fell asleep at once, and knew nothing more until she heard a loud knocking at the door, for all the world as if someone had been trying to waken her, with no success. She put on her coat and ran to open the door. The garda stood there. Her heart leapt in her body with fear.

‘What is it?' Her voice came out in a whisper. ‘It's James, isn't it?'

‘Yes,' the garda said.

She had known him all her life and now he seemed not to know how to look at her.

‘He's . . . he's dead?'

‘No! No, Molly!' He was full of relief at being able to contradict her.

‘No! It was an accident. They've taken him to the hospital. Get dressed, and I'll go with you.'

‘Step inside,' she said. ‘I'll not keep you a minute. I must tell Breda.'

She was amazed, both then and afterwards, at her own calmness. It was as if someone else had taken over and everything she did and said was automatic.

Breda had already wakened. What the violence of the storm had failed to do, human voices, hardly raised, had accomplished.

‘I want to go with you, Mammy,' she said when Molly gave her the news.

‘No. You stay here, Breda. If I'm not back within the hour, then you can come to the hospital. Don't worry,
dote
, 'twill be all right.'

Seamus and Paddy were both at the hospital when she reached there. James lay on the bed, the sheets tidy and tight-stretched over him, his hands lying outside the covers. His eyes were closed, and except that his face was too pale he might have been asleep.

‘He is deeply unconscious,' the nurse said. ‘He was so when he was brought in.'

Seamus moved out of the way so that Molly could take the chair beside the bed. She took James's hand in her own and stroked it gently, murmuring his name. The nurse shook her head.

‘He doesn't hear you.'

‘He must! He
must
!' Molly said urgently. ‘He must know I am here, even if he doesn't speak!'

‘That's something we can never tell,' the nurse said. ‘Sure, there is no harm in believing he does!' Even if he doesn't, she added to herself.

Molly turned her head and spoke to Seamus O'Loughlin.

‘What happened?'

He shook his head.

‘'Tis not easy to know. We had turned for home, the storm was too much for us. The cleat broke loose, ripped off in the gale. The boom fell, swung round, and hit your man. At least, 'tis how it must have been. We did not see it happen. You could hardly see a thing before your eyes. The water was breaking green.'

‘'Twas I found him lying there,' Paddy Ferris said. ‘And it could only have been but a moment later, or wouldn't he have been washed overboard?'

‘He could have been killed, but he was alive,' Seamus said. ‘Unconscious, but hardly a mark on him. The boom is smooth. It doesn't cut. We carried him into the wheelhouse and wedged him there against the storm.'

While he was speaking, Father Curran, who had been summoned by the ward sister, came into the room, closely followed by Breda.

Seamus and Paddy rose to leave.

‘Do not go,' Father Curran said quietly. ‘He needs the prayers of all of us.'

Quietly and smoothly, he administered the Last Rites. It was not until she heard the prayers for after death that Molly realized that James had left her for good.

But for me, Molly thought, it is darkness.

Afterwards, Molly had no clear memory of the twenty-four hours following James's death. She did not recall getting home from the hospital; probably Seamus or Paddy, or Breda, had brought her. She remembered nothing of how James was brought home, or who laid him out in the brown habit, in the bed where she had slept with him, made love with him, borne their children, for more than twenty-six years.

Someone must have seen to these things; have put the crucifix in his hands, placed the candles at the four corners of the bed, tied the black crêpe bow on the outside of the house door. Someone must also have sent telegrams to Dublin, to Akersfield, a cable to New York. Everything had been done that needed to be done.

Perhaps I did some of it myself, she thought. If so, she had no recollection of it. Her mind, for those hours, was a black, blank screen. She knew, though, that she had neither cried nor raged. She knew that because everything was still locked inside her like a great ball of lead.

When she began to notice things again it was to see the neighbours arriving to pay their respects. They came through the door in ones and twos. If they had brought a contribution of food or drink they placed it on the table, but at that point they did not speak to other neighbours already sitting in the room. For now they nodded silently to Molly, though some would say, ‘'Tis sorry I am for your trouble,' and make their way to the bedroom. Whenever the bedroom door was opened there was the faint clicking of rosary beads, the murmur of prayers.

On leaving the bedroom they would, as a matter of courtesy, sit and take a cup of tea with her, or a glass of whatever was going, and perhaps a slice of cake. They offered sympathy and talked about whatever was suitable to talk about in the circumstances. Most of them had known Molly all her life, and James for many years.

‘He was a grand man!'

‘I mind him when he came first from Galway. Wasn't he the handsomest young man you ever saw?'

‘How old was he, I mean now?'

‘He would have been forty-seven in the summer. But still young to me.'

People took their leave, others came. She grew tired of hearing the same phrases, answering the same questions. He was young, fit, virile. He was my husband, my friend, my support in life.

‘'Tis a gate I have been through myself,' a neighbour said. ‘Himself was taken young, and me with babies. 'Twas a long time ago now, but I don't forget.'

Breda, though Molly knew she was heart-scalded, had been obliged to go back to work. Luke could not manage on his own. Indeed, Molly had encouraged her to do so, she was too young for all this and, more than any of the others, she had adored her father. I shall always have a bit of James in Breda, Molly thought. 'Tis not just that she looks like him, but she has always had his brightness. She did not wish to see that dimmed.

Kieran and Kathleen would arrive in Kilbally tomorrow, and both would stay until after the burial. Moira and Barry would come the evening before the burial and return to Dublin as soon as it was over, since they were leaving Peter and Teresa behind in the care of Mrs Devlin. Teresa was not yet six months old, but Moira had given up the task of breast-feeding her, though Mrs Devlin said wasn't that foolish since 'twas the sure way not to conceive another child, to be nursing one already. Moira knew of a more certain way, but it was not something to be said to her mother-in-law. Josephine, too, was coming from Akersfield. She had telephoned the post office to say so.

It was Breda who sorted out where they would all sleep. ‘Moira and Barry at Great-grandma Devlin's; you, me and Kathleen in the big bedroom here. Auntie Josephine with Grandma Byrne and Kieran on the sofa here.'

Molly was not sure that she liked the thought of Kieran bedding down on the sofa – after all, was he not soon to be a priest? – but it was the best that could be done unless he went to a neighbour, and she wanted him under her own roof; she needed him.

By the evening before the funeral they had all arrived, including Josephine, who had had a terrible journey from Akersfield because of the weather.

‘The worst in living memory!' she said. ‘You never saw such snow. If I hadn't lived in Akersfield I'd never have been able to get a train. According to the wireless, everything up in the dales is at a standstill.'

‘It was good of you to come,' Molly said.

‘And did you ever think I would not? My own sister?'

‘You have been more like a mother to me,' Molly said. More like a mother than her true one had been, she reckoned.

In the evening they followed the coffin to the church, where it would remain overnight. Molly's worst moment came when James was carried out of his home. That, she thought, was her final farewell. Goodbye, my lovely James, she said in her heart. Nothing she would have to bear the next day could be as bad as this.

And so it was. The prayers in the evening, the Requiem next day, the procession to the graveyard, in which it seemed the whole of Kilbally joined, washed over her like the waves of the sea. Wasn't it bitterly cold, they all said, with the wind from the north fit to cut you in two? She had not felt it.

She was submerged, and did not surface until, leaning on Kieran's arm, she stepped back into her own home. It was then it came to her that life from now on would be a different life, and she would have to be a different person. There was no going back to what had been. She had to start again.

Someone, she thought it must be Kathleen, had put the bedroom to rights. The candles were gone, the bed linen changed, everything dusted and polished, and the window opened in spite of the cold. Molly looked at the bed, noting that someone had replaced the usual two pillows with just one, and that in the centre. Would she ever sleep easy again in it, she wondered?

Back in the living room, she asked Kathleen: ‘Did you do the bedroom?'

‘Yes, Mammy. With Breda's help. We put all Dada's things on the top shelf in the closet until you felt like sorting them.'

‘Thank you. It was thoughtful of you both,' Molly said.

After dinner, Moira and Barry took the train for Dublin. ‘We have to get back to the children,' Moira said. ‘Teresa is all right, but Peter is a handful!'

‘Come and see us in Dublin, both of you,' Barry said to Molly and Breda. ‘You'll be very welcome.'

‘I suppose he is quite nice, really,' Breda said to her mother.

‘What do you mean by that?'

‘Nothing, Mammy!'

The next day Kieran and Kathleen left, but Josephine had announced her intention of staying on a day or two longer.

‘I'd like to see you settled,' she said to Molly.