Galway Bay (14 page)

Michael had lugged a flat-topped boulder from the high field and set it against the back wall of the cottage at the very spot where I’d first looked down at Galway Bay. Here I settled to feed Bridget, leaning against the cottage wall, my head near the window.

“Your da keeps his promises,” I said to Bridget.

Michael bought the glass with the pennies he’d earned doing scut work in a forge in Galway City. A winter of walking the icy roads into town had been rewarded on the day, a year ago now, when Michael and Owen and Joseph and Hughie carried that two-foot-square pane of glass the five miles from Galway City. They’d laughed like fools over how many times they’d almost dropped it and had given all manner of advice to Michael as he’d hammered out the opening in the wall and brought Galway Bay into our cottage.

“A powerful man, your father,” I told my baby as she sucked strongly. I sang to Bridget as I watched the distant waves. Some scrambled to reach the land, bunching up together, while others rolled slowly toward the shore.

With these far waters to soothe me, I could bear to remember . . . Máire.

Da and Michael had gone up to the Scoundrel Pykes a week after Captain Pyke had ridden away with Máire. But when they asked to see her, the old Major set his dogs on them and threatened arrest and worse if they ever dared trespass again. Then Owen Mulloy heard from the Pykes’ coachman—Máire would contact us. Wait. We did.

I’d been stiff with Owen Mulloy and all the Rahoon people up here during that first autumn. I couldn’t forget Tessie Ryan: “These are your tenants, Major Pyke, your tenants.” And Máire sacrificed because of her. Tessie had come crying and caterwauling to our fire, “I’m so sorry, forgive me,” all the while taking in every dab and detail of our cottage. She’d spread the news of our rush stools and iron pot before the tears on her face dried. Only for her bringing little Mary her daughter with her had I let her in at all.

Though Owen Mulloy and the others tried to make us welcome, giving us loads of potatoes and helping Michael dig a pit to store them, they wouldn’t stand against Tessie and condemn her. Tessie could easily turn on one of them. Her eye caught every break in behavior and put the worst possible interpretation on it. “Too sick for Mass was Maggie Dolan? Then why did I see her under the fairy tree at Ward’s, crouched down like she was putting a piseog on her neighbor’s field?”

Then Tuesday the week before Christmas that year, Owen brought a note from Máire. I was to come alone that afternoon, when the work was done and the place quiet.

The sun had already set when I arrived at the Scoundrel Pykes. Dark early this day, the shortest of the year. Hide in the stables, she’d said. I waited an hour, getting colder as the wind knifed through the spaces in the wall. Michael had built a snug, warm place for Champion where every stone fit tight together and room had been left for the forge if the road was ever built.

Finally she came.

“Máire, Máire,” I called softly into the dark, and my sister, always so defiant, had collapsed into my arms. “Go on, Máire,” I said. “Cry, cry it out.”

She stopped at that, pulled away, and stood before me, big-bellied yet somehow smaller, her cloud of curls flat against her face. “They haven’t broken me yet, Honora. If I let the tears start running, I’ll not be able for them.”

“Do they hurt you?” I asked.

“Strike me, do you mean? They wouldn’t dare. Not when they’re convinced I’d murder them in their beds. Come into the kitchen.”

“I couldn’t,” I said.

“It’s all right. That’s why I sent for you. The men are away.”

Our whole cottage would fit into one corner of this kitchen, I’d thought. The Pyke house, bigger and older than the Lynches’, felt like a fortress. Could have roasted a side of beef in the hearth, but no fire blazed there. Only a few clods of turf smoldered under a hanging pot.

We sat in front of the little smokey fire. I told Máire that Mam and Da had gone to Father Gilley and the Lynches, trying to get her rescued.

“But . . .” I stopped.

“But what?” asked Máire.

“They, well, they . . .”

“Turned a blind eye?” she said. “Why not? Landlords have been taking advantage of girls for generations, and it’s only that the Scoundrel Pykes claimed me on the public street and put the deed in front of them that any notice at all was taken.”

I couldn’t tell Máire that Tessie Ryan and her chorus had put it out that Máire went willingly and Father Gilley didn’t disbelieve them.

“I’m coming home with you today,” she said.

“Máire, I’m so glad. Will there be bother about it?”

“Not at all. The young Captain’s off with his regiment, and the old Major will be in Dublin through Christmas and the New Year. And the Mistress—well, come with me to meet the Mistress.”

Máire led me through rooms stuffed with chairs and tables muddled together—a real meascán, a mess. Only the dining room with its square table and sideboard seemed in good order.

“Look.” Máire pointed to a framed drawing hanging on the wall.

I read the title: “The Irish Frankenstein.”

The sketch showed Daniel O’Connell as a mad magician bringing to life a monster labeled “Paddy” with the face of an ape, horns growing from his head, and a clay pipe in his monkey mouth.

“That’s from a magazine called
Punch,
” Máire said. “The Major points it out to guests and goes on and on about O’Connell awakening the savages—us.”

“Us?”

“Us—the Irish—the apes. Honora, old Major Pyke had some professor fellow eating here who went on about how the Irish aren’t completely human. They made Thaddy, the stableman, come in from the yard. This professor took out a tape and measured the distance between Thaddy’s forehead and his chin. He said it was the wrong amount of inches and that Thaddy was closer to a gorilla than a man.”

“That’s crazy,” I said, and giggled at the thought of such foolishness.

“It’s not funny, Honora. That’s the kind of talk I have to listen to.” And then the laughter spurted out from her, too. “If you could’ve seen the look on poor Thaddy’s face—and the professor going on about inches and quarter inches, angles and planes.”

I turned away from the drawing. “And to think, that was in a magazine and people paid money for it.” I shook my head. “Ah well, the Bold Dan will turn the tables on them, wait and see.”

I followed her through more dark rooms smelling of damp, up a winding stairway, then down a hall into a bedroom lit by a kerosene lamp.

“Mistress, someone’s come calling.”

Sarah Pyke, the wife of the old Major, the mother of Captain Robert, lay stretched out on a couch, her dress falling over the sides and her head propped up on pillows, snoring.

“Is she sick?” I whispered.

“In a manner of speaking,” Máire said quite loud. “She can’t hear us—sound asleep.”

A tall looking glass took up one corner.

“Have a look at yourself,” Máire said.

There I was, all of me. “I never saw my whole self before,” I said. “I had no idea I was this tall.”

Máire came and stood beside me.

“I tower over you, Máire,” I said.

“An illusion,” she said. “I’m so pregnant, I look short.”

“I’m pregnant, too.”

“I can see. You’ve bosoms at last.”

“I do,” I said, looking at myself. “Though my waist and hips are still narrow. And my belly hasn’t swelled much. I’m only two and a half months.”

“Your breasts will get bigger,” Máire said. “Mine pull my shoulders down.” She stood slumped and flat-footed. Not like herself at all.

I’ll rouse her, I thought. I pointed to my breasts. “Michael said he liked them even when they were smaller. He said he could fit one in each of his hands, and then squeeze so gently and . . .”

I rolled my eyes at her in the mirror, and she laughed and said, “Honora,
I’m
the hussy in this family.”

And I said, “Michael told me he fancies my brains
and
my bosoms, so there.”

I stuck my tongue out at her image in the mirror and she did the same, until we were making funny faces at each other and laughing louder and louder.

“Who’s there?” Sarah Pyke—awake. “Have you come from the Palace?” she said to me.

“No, ma’am, from Bearna.”

“But,” Máire said, “she’s brought a message from the court, Mistress.”

Sarah Pyke smiled. “I knew it. I knew she’d invite me.” She turned to me. “She greets me so graciously when I ride out in the park each morning. The paths are so straight, all paved with crushed white stones.”

“And where’s that, missus?” I asked.

“The park, of course,” she said impatiently. “Hyde Park. That’s where I see the young queen. She comes by in her carriage, and every day she tells the coachman to stop. She greets me, and always says the same words: ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Having one child, one son, is quite enough. No one would expect you to endure more.’”

“And right she’d be,” said Máire.

Sarah Pyke closed her eyes.

“She’s away in dreamland,” Máire said. “Poor critter.”

But Sarah Pyke opened her eyes. “I need more medicine,” she said.

“You’ve had your dose, Mistress,” Máire said.

“I need my medicine! Now, girl!” Sarah Pyke sat straight up. “No insolence from you!”

“I’m going, Mistress. That’s what I came to say. My time is coming. My child is due.”

“I had a child. One—a son,” she said.

“You did, surely. Now, a wee nap and you’ll feel so much better.”

But the woman was trying to stand. “My husband knows I need my medicine. He left a bottle for me so I’d have plenty while he was away. He is away, isn’t he?”

“He is, ma’am.”

“Good, good. Send me my maid.”

“I will. And you understand, don’t you? I’m going.”

“Go. What do I care? Go.”

Máire had her bundle tied up in her room behind the kitchen. “Let’s get out of this place. Think of Christmas here!”

“Will the Mistress be all right?” I asked.

“Her maid—somewhere about—is an Englishwoman who’s well in with the old Major and happy to keep the Mistress sleeping or silly.”

“What about her son?”

“Robert? The soldier laddie? It’ll be months before he’s back. He wasn’t one bit pleased when he found out I was to have Johnny’s child. He won’t come after me. He’ll just find some other girl.”

“But, Máire . . .”

“Nothing we can do. Let’s go.”

Máire’s baby had been born the next day. She’d held tight to the Mary Bean that protected women during childbirth—that oval, brown bean with a cross inscribed in it by nature that Granny had found on the beach near Ard. Máire found special strength in the Mary Bean, she said, because it came from the sea where her Johnny rested.

She named her baby Johnny Og. A big, healthy fellow.

“Look at his face, let Annie Leahy question you now, Máire,” I’d said.

“What?” asked Mam.

“I’m just saying he’s the spit of Johnny Leahy.”

“I’ll just slip over to get Annie now,” Mam said.

“I don’t want her, Mam,” Máire said so fiercely that Granny and Mam stopped and looked at each other.

“Not for a few hours,” I said. “Let Máire sleep.”

“Best indulge her,” Granny said. “We wouldn’t want to give the fairy woman a chance to steal into her.”

Mam had said nothing. After Joseph’s birth, a fairy woman had taken Mam away and Granny had a hard time calling her back from fairyland. Women were most vulnerable the day after giving birth.

“Annie can see him on Christmas Eve at the chapel,” I said.

“Father Roche, the new priest, could baptize him after Midnight Mass. Wouldn’t that be lovely?” Mam said.

“Father Gilley stays at his parish in Galway City now, so we needn’t worry about him,” Granny told Máire.

Michael and I had sat with Mam, Da, Dennis, Joseph, Hughie, Granny, and now Máire—the whole family together in the chapel, delighted with the newborn baby in Máire’s arms.

I smiled at the Mulloys. Christmas. Peace on earth.

But then who walked out on the altar—only Father Gilley himself. He didn’t bother to say
Introibo ad altare Dei
but roared out, “How, on this holiest of nights, do you dare to defile this sanctuary?”

I’d been leaning over, smiling into the baby’s face, not really listening. Some sinner was being admonished. Poor soul. I’d glanced up to see Tessie Ryan and Annie Leahy, turned around, staring at our family and shaking their heads.

Then I realized. “It’s us, Michael,” I’d whispered. “He’s going on about us.”

“Not us,” said Máire. “Me.”

“Scandal—giving scandal to the parish—sullying all that’s pure with your shamelessness. Dragging your family into your sin. . . .”

Most of our friends and neighbors kept their heads down, their eyes on the floor. Father Gilley had denounced other sinners, but never as he was doing now. Though not a word against that devil the old Major. He feared the Scoundrel Pykes. Landlords.

If Máire had sat there humbly, Father Gilley might have shouted himself around to demanding that she confess her sins and then forgiven her. But Máire interrupted his rant by standing up, holding tight to her child. She looked straight at Father Gilley. He stopped. Máire still had a chance. If she’d sobbed, said, “Oh, Father, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I was forced. This is Johnny’s son, the last bit of Johnny Leahy left in the world. The only place his quick smile, his courage, his ease with nets and sails will be expressed and extended—Johnny’s baby.” But Máire had said nothing.

I was the one who got up and spoke into the silence. “Father, this is Johnny Leahy’s son,” thinking I could make Father Gilley see sense.

Then Michael stood with us. Murmurs from the pews: “Johnny’s child, of course it was Johnny’s child.” Annie Leahy got up, trying to see the baby.

Then Tessie spoke. “How do we know that? No one who saw the Pearl climb up on Captain Robert’s horse would believe she hadn’t met him before—who knows how many times, and—”

I turned to look her in the face. “Tessie Ryan, everyone in this chapel knows what Máire did, she did for me. And she’s come back now. She’s with us.”

Father Gilley pointed toward the door of the chapel. “Get out, you sinful women.”