The Crooked Branch (24 page)

She cried out because she knew she was going to drop, and she was in terror for the baby. Katie’s head snapped up and she saw Ginny tilt; she lurched fast across the room to lift Raymond out of his mother’s arms. Ginny gripped the back of a chair, and then Father Brennan was beside her, his arm around her waist, holding her up. He helped her to the settee, and she crumbled into it.

He sat down on a chair across from her, and leaned forward. He started to speak, but Ginny waved her hands to stop him. Whatever he had to say, if he didn’t say it, then she wouldn’t know.

“No,” she said.

“Ginny . . .”

“No! No.”

He shook his head, folded his hands in his lap. His face was awful stern, but his eyes were wet.

“No no no.”

“I’m sorry, Ginny.”

She folded her body down over her knees, and wrapped her arms over her head.

“Michael is gone, Ginny. He’s gone. He went quick and peaceful.”

Everything fell out of her then, every good thing that had ever been. It all came up into her throat and stopped beating. Her breath wouldn’t move in her lungs. The keen that came in at her breast was too big to unleash. It was trapped. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. There was a violent stillness in her.

“He didn’t even know you weren’t there,” Father Brennan was saying. “He slept into his death. It was peaceful.”

She rocked. Something elemental rocked her. Back and over, on the settee, back and over. Like a baby in a cradle she rocked. And then that same something elemental breathed for her, it kicked in at her lungs, and she gasped loudly for air. She rocked.

“He’s gone to God, Ginny,” Father Brennan was saying. “Michael’s in a better place now. He’s with Thomas. There’s no suffering. No famine in the kingdom of God.”

His hand was on her back, and she wanted to wrench it off, to slap it away. But she couldn’t move. She could only rock.

In a moment, Ginny was aware of Mrs. Spring in the room. She heard the woman’s high and watery voice. She heard her say Michael’s name. Her baby boy’s name. And then she heard Roisin as well, beside Mrs. Spring, begging a moment’s privacy, leading her out, and out. Ginny flew at her.

“You! You told me to stay!” Ginny screamed, and her voice was like something beastly. Demonic. “I should have gone. I should have been with him.” She was suddenly on her feet, and the air was strangulating around her. “You told me to stay.”

And then Father Brennan’s hands were on Ginny’s elbows, and he was sitting her down, and she was rocking again on the settee, and she could see Katie’s shoes, the black toes of her shoes, and she could hear a clatter and a clink as the girl set the teacups down on the table before them. Ginny lifted her head.

“Where is my baby?”

Katie swallowed and stammered, “I . . . Roisin . . .”

“I want my baby!”

And now the teacup was in Ginny’s hand, and now it wasn’t, because it was airborne, flying, and the streak of tea came liberated from it, and hung in the air like a hot, black splash, and now the teacup wasn’t a teacup anymore, because it smashed against the wall. And now it was all in pieces. It was all in pieces.

•   •   •

And then they were in the yard, by the stables, and it was twilight, and it was warm. June.

“What is the date today?” Ginny asked.

“The date? Why . . . ?” Father Brennan was asking.

But Seán was there, and he broke in. “It’s the twenty-fourth of June, Ginny.”

“The day . . . June twenty-fourth.” She nodded. She wanted to remember it. The day Michael died.

Roisin was gone, she was disappeared, she was vanished. Katie and Mrs. Spring stood by the back of the carriage. Katie was still and stared at her shoes, but Mrs. Spring was swaying from side to side. She was wringing her hands. Raymond was bundled into his mother’s arms, and he not knowing anything was different in the world. Just an ordinary day. Father Brennan climbed into the carriage, and Seán was there at Ginny’s elbow, to help her up.

Mrs. Spring stepped forward, clapped her hands vigorously in front of her. She shook her head primly, pressed her thin lips together. Ginny felt the woman’s effort, her vicarious grief. Her eyes were dreadful.

“I’m so sorry,” Mrs. Spring whispered, and then she embraced Ginny, and Ginny barely registered the clinch, but she heard Katie gasp behind them.

Mrs. Spring squeezed Ginny’s hand then, and leaned down over Raymond’s face, to leave her perfumed kisses along his nose and forehead. She started to draw back, but then she stopped herself. She clutched Ginny’s elbow.

“You could leave him with me,” Mrs. Spring said, her voice low and forceful. “I could mind him for a few days. You’ll have your hands full. You’ll have so much to . . .”

Ginny started, and pulled away from her. She answered her directly. “Mrs. Spring, I can
never
be parted from a child of mine again.”

“But think of his health,” Mrs. Spring said, stepping in even closer to Ginny and the child. There was a panic about her movements. “Think of the
fever
, Ginny. Don’t bring him to that place!”

Ginny stepped back and handed Raymond quickly into the carriage. Father Brennan took the baby, and Ginny watched as Alice Spring’s arms followed him up. Her soft, delicate hands fluttered in the air and hung there, beseeching.

“I thank you for your kindness, Mrs. Spring, but I belong with my children,” she said quietly. “And they with me.”

Mrs. Spring stayed where she was in the yard, while Seán closed and fastened the carriage door. Ginny didn’t look back as the wheels began to roll and crunch over the gravel. She didn’t see Alice Spring standing there, beside the stables, her arms still stretching after them in the twilight.

•   •   •

There was still light enough to see the cottage when the carriage crested the hill approaching, and it glowed out faintly white against the dark riot of green in the fields. The potato crop was thick and tall, and the western sky hung still and purple above it. In the yard, Maggie’s cairns were enormous. The cottage looked tiny between them. Defenseless. How had she left her child here? How had she left them?

“God forgive me,” Ginny whispered.

“Ginny, there’s nothing to forgive,” Father Brennan said. “You did what you had to do, for your children. There was no sin in it.”

“I abandoned them, Father.”

“You did the very opposite.”

“Michael . . .” She shook her head.

“He might only have died sooner, and more wretchedly, if you had stayed.”

But his words were useless to comfort her. She was ruptured, entirely. The cottage door was standing open, but then the road wound downhill, and they descended behind the ridge at the bottom of the lower field. The height of the rock wall overshadowed them.

“How will I ever tell Ray?” Ginny said, as the carriage stopped beside the lower field.

Through the gate, she could see them, her daughters: Poppy and Maggie stood together at the top of the ridge. They were so tall, the two of them. They stayed there as their mother opened the gate. They didn’t run to greet her as she imagined they might. Seán and Father Brennan hung back and waited, awkward around the carriage behind her.

“We’ll give you a few minutes,” Father Brennan said.

And when she turned to look, Seán was picking some imaginary grass from the spokes of the back wheel, and Father Brennan was studying the rusted hinge at the gate. As Ginny approached the crest of the hill, Raymond wiggled in her arms, and Poppy broke from beside her sister to run to her mam. Ginny dropped down to her knees, and caught her youngest daughter heavy against her shoulder. She was big. She was so big. Her golden curls had thickened and dropped; the ringlets hung down to her shoulders. Ginny stroked the back of her head, and she could feel her small body trembling. Poppy wrapped her legs around her mother’s hips, and Ginny struggled to stand, holding the two of them now, Raymond and Poppy both. Maggie had scampered away, down to the cottage door.

Poppy tucked her head under her mother’s chin, and her voice piped out of her, softly. “I thought you weren’t never coming back, Mammy.”

Ginny gripped on to her so tightly then that she nearly crushed her. “I’m sorry, love. I’m sorry.”

“Michael died, Mammy,” Poppy said. “We tried to make him better, but he was sleeping with the rash and the fever, and then he died.”

Ginny nodded her head. She breathed. She quivered. But she couldn’t answer her daughter. At the cottage doorway, Maggie blocked her path, her face hard and her arms crossed in front of her. There was no greeting here for Ginny, who stooped to set Poppy down. Maggie’s eyes glittered, but the rest of her face was fixed—all the roundness was gone out of it. She was all tough and rigid lines. Her mouth was entirely straight, but she lifted her chin as she spoke.

“I suppose you want to see him, now that he’s dead.” She was like an angry little sentry in the doorway. “My brother.”

“My son,” Ginny reminded her. She looked at her daughter evenly, and shifted Raymond’s weight in her arms. “I know you’re angry, Maggie. I know.”

Maggie’s face grew darker, stormier. “You shouldn’t have left us.”

“I know, love,” Ginny said. “I made a mistake.”

She thought about touching Maggie’s chin. She longed to feel the softness of her daughter’s face beneath her fingers, but Maggie turned away, leaned her back against the doorjamb. She still wasn’t letting Ginny in.

“I didn’t know what else to do,
mo chuisle
.” Ginny didn’t bend down to her. She wouldn’t, until she knew her daughter was ready. “I know now I shouldn’t have done it, I should never have gone. Maggie?”

Maggie dropped her arms and looked at her mother. The hardness in her little face was only a veneer, and Ginny could see through it, to the tenderness behind. At last, she bent down, and drew her face close to Maggie’s.

“You don’t have to forgive me, but you are my daughter,” she said. “And that is our boy in there. He is
ours
, do you understand me?”

Maggie nodded, and when Ginny reached for her daughter’s tough little fingers, Maggie didn’t pull away. The warmth of her hand was like melting butter against Ginny’s palm. Together, they stepped into the cottage, and then Maggie flitted quietly into the sleeping room by herself.

Maire was inside by the fire, her shoulders sloping down, her chin folded low. Her back was to the door.

“Maire,” Ginny said, but her daughter didn’t turn to face her. “Maire.”

Poppy was sitting on the stool inside the door. “Will you hold your baby brother?” Ginny asked her.

Poppy smiled up at her mother, and bounced.

“Now you have to sit still, love.”

“I will.” Poppy held her arms out, and Ginny placed Raymond in them. His eyes locked onto his sister’s face at once.

“Hallo, baby!” Poppy sang. “What’s his name?”

“He’s called Raymond.”

Poppy looked up. “Like Daddy?”

“Like Daddy. Hold on to him tight, now, love. Don’t drop him.”

“I won’t, Mammy. I have him.”

Ginny bent and kissed her golden head, and then she turned to Maire, who was still sat on her haunches at the fire. Ginny touched the back of Maire’s shoulder, and her daughter winced. Ginny moved around to Maire’s side, went down on her knees, and drew in close to the fire so she could see her daughter’s face. Maire wasn’t a girl anymore. There were bald tears in her eyes, and she wouldn’t look at Ginny.

“I’m sorry, Mam,” she said quietly. And then her face stretched and contorted, and she drew her hands up to her cheeks, and the tears came running through her fingers. “I’m sorry, I thought I could . . . I did everything, I . . .”

“Maire, stop!” Ginny gripped her by the two shoulders, and turned so they were facing each other. “Maire, look at me.”

But she wouldn’t. She covered her face with her two hands, and she sobbed. She collapsed her body all into Ginny then, and Ginny mothered her.

“Oh, my brave girl,” Ginny said, “this is not your fault. Do you hear me?”

Behind them, Poppy’s eyes widened, rimmed with tears.

“Mammy, why is Maire crying? Why’re you crying, Maire?” Poppy said.

“Because she’s sad,
mo chuisle
,” Ginny answered.

“But Maire never cries.”

Ginny nodded. “I know, love. How’s the baby? What do you think of your baby brother?”

“He’s gorgeous, Mammy. Look! He’s sucking my finger! Look at his little gums, Mammy!”

Maire’s cries were growing soft and measured now. Ginny pulled her daughter’s hands away from her face, and they knelt together in front of the fire, their knees touching. Ginny lifted her apron to dry her daughter’s face, and Maire shuddered in front of her. Maire shook her head.

“Everything was working so well,” she whispered, and Ginny could hear the choked grief in her voice. “We did everything. Did you see the field? The crop? Michael was so steady and smart. You’d have been so proud of us. And then this . . .”

She leaned over again, the hands over her face. She dropped her head into her mammy’s lap, and she wailed. It was the sort of cry Ginny hadn’t heard out of her daughter since she was a baby, and it split her right open. Her grief now was for her daughter, what had she done to her daughter? God above.

“It’s all right, Maire,” Poppy was saying, while she tickled Raymond’s chin. “When Michael gets born again, he can go back in Mammy’s belly, and then he’ll be a baby.”

“Do you know any songs you can sing for little Raymond?” Ginny asked, and Poppy went off dutifully on a lilting tune.

Ginny leaned over Maire and rubbed her back.

“I’m so proud of you, Maire. This doesn’t change any of that. There was nothing you could have done. Father Brennan said it was famine fever.”

Maire sat up again, from Ginny’s lap, and she wiped at her damp cheeks. She looked over at Poppy and the baby, and she tried to collect herself. She breathed deep.

“But why
now
?” she said. “When we were almost through it? You could’ve come home—do you see that crop out there? Daddy could’ve come home.” She looked up at the ceiling and breathed deep, back into her shoulders.

“Here,” Ginny said, standing up, and helping Maire to her feet. She put her arms around her daughter, and held her close. Maire was nearly as tall as her. “Come and meet your new brother.”