The Passions of Emma (16 page)
She remembered, too, how she had come to discover herself that summer, how she had learned all the soft and sweet and tender
places of her body. And the dark, hungry, grasping places in her heart.
places of her body. And the dark, hungry, grasping places in her heart.
Because there had come that inevitable day when he had tried to turn away from her, and she hadn’t the courage or the goodness to let him go. When he had rolled off her and onto his back, flinging his arm across his eyes, his chest heaving, and said, “
Dhia,
” the word ripping out of him more curse than prayer. “We mustn’t go no further. God save me . . . I am going to be a priest.”
Dhia,
” the word ripping out of him more curse than prayer. “We mustn’t go no further. God save me . . . I am going to be a priest.”
The cave smelled of both the sea and the warm, loamy earth. She’d always felt safe in the cave. Out of sight of heaven, where she could crawl inside of him and curl around his heart.
She lay in the dark with her body on fire, yearning and hungry, so hungry. Listening to his breathing, and to the water dancing and bubbling around the rocks below. She lay with her skirts rucked up around her waist, surrounded by the smell of the sea and the earth and of him.
She didn’t know she was crying until she covered him, her bared breasts on his naked chest, and felt the tears splash onto the backs of her hands as she cupped his cheeks and pressed her mouth hard to his.
“Don’t, Bria,” he said into her open mouth, his breath hot, harsh. “Don’t, don’t . . .”
But she did, deliberately and wantonly. Although she still didn’t own him at the end of it, not then. Not until the night of the storm did she truly own him.
But before the storm the land agent came, and he brought the constables with him. He came because the McKenna barley, meant for their English landlord, had gone into distilling illegal
poitín
instead.
poitín
instead.
Mrs. McKenna knelt in the barren yard and watched them cart away all she owned, which was precious little: a stool, straw ticking, an old iron stew pot. The constables had just put a torch to the roof when Mr. McKenna came running, on fire himself from an afternoon at the Three Hens. He tried to attack the land agent with
a
shillelagh
and got shot in the belly before he’d taken two steps with the club in his hands. His blood spilled in a thick red pool and was soaked up by his wife’s skirts, where she knelt in the dirt.
a
shillelagh
and got shot in the belly before he’d taken two steps with the club in his hands. His blood spilled in a thick red pool and was soaked up by his wife’s skirts, where she knelt in the dirt.
In the fields above the sea cliffs was a pagan place made of ancient stones with carved faces. All staring eyes and round, open mouths—the faces had always looked to Bria as if their souls had been stolen. Such was the way Shay looked to her as the two shrouded bodies were lowered into graves scratched out of bare Irish rock. There had been no wood to make coffins with, and no money to buy them. And there had been two graves to dig, for the night before, his mother had walked into the sea, and that morning the sea had given her back again.
And if Bria let herself look now, she could see the emptiness still, all these years later, living deep in his eyes, where once his faith had been.
He had gone out in his curragh, after the burial, even though the sky and seas were black and heaving. She waited on their beach for him while the gale shrieked around her and the clouds collapsed above her head. So afraid she would lose him, she was near blind with it.
He sailed home to her on a white froth of tumbling waves. It seemed he was just suddenly there, bearing her down onto the sea-ravaged sand. The surf roared and slammed into them, pulling at her clothes . . . his hands were pulling at her clothes. His face loomed above hers, his eyes as broken and wild as the waves that crashed over them.
He shuddered, and a harsh sound tore from his throat. “Hold me, Bria,” he said. He lowered himself over her, and his mouth was rough on hers, frantic and hot. The sea breathed around them, raucous and gasping. “Hold me. Please, just hold me.”
Her hands and mouth moved over him, seeking the shape and taste of him. She wrapped her arms around his back, her nails gripping his wet fisherman’s coat, holding him tightly. But she knew what he was really asking for.
“Hush, now, hush,” she remembered herself saying, and the rain poured over her face and into her parted, panting mouth. “I’m holding you, m’love. I’ll hold you forever . . .”
“. . . Forever.”
She hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud until the word echoed back at her from off the Bristol harbor water, still and black and empty in the night.
She felt suffocated with yearning for him, her man, even though in a moment she would get up and go in to him. She would curve her body around his and lay her head on his chest so she could fall back asleep listening to his heartbeat. Just as she had done that night of the storm eleven years ago, that night when she had given him her maidenhead and taken his innocence.
It was strange, she thought, how the memories could pile heavy on your heart like stones and yet be so warm and familiar and comforting anyway. She would make them all again, her memories. Every one of them.
She gathered her feet underneath her, to push her big-bellied, awkward self up, and the baby kicked. It was a hard kick, full of strength and life. She rubbed her hands over her taut, swollen flesh. The spinning calluses on her fingers snagged the cheap muslin of her night rail, but she didn’t notice, for she’d never had a lady’s hands.
She was sure this babe was a boy for she carried him high and forward. She had dangled her wedding ring from a cotton string over her belly, and the ring had circled to the left. And besides, she thought with a sweet-sad smile, Merry had hummed to Noreen, who had told it to her—the fairies had promised there’d be a baby brother in the house before long.
A son for Shay, her gift to him and a fine one it would be, as long as he never found out the whole truth of its conception. But
for her this last child, she knew, was God’s punishment. She just wasn’t sure for which sin.
for her this last child, she knew, was God’s punishment. She just wasn’t sure for which sin.
It was possible, she knew as well, to love both the sin and the fruit of it. She loved this babe already, as deeply and fiercely as she loved Shay and her girls. It was the first of May; by the end of this month he would be born. She would hold him in her arms and rock him, while she felt the sweet tug of his mouth suckling at her breasts.
But the days would come and go, and he would be changed by them. The way the beach was changed by the ebb and flow of the tide. By next summer he’d be playing patty-cake and peekaboo with his sisters. He’d have learned how to eat his porridge by then, although probably he’d still be wearing most of it in his hair. Maybe he’d even be walking a bit, as long as his father was there to catch him if he fell.
The days would have come and gone, and he would be doing all those things, their son. But she would never see any of it.
Because by next summer she would be dead.
F
or so long Emma Tremayne had felt as if her life was being whittled down to a stick, smooth and straight. No notches would be etched upon it but those small ones she would put there herself, living through one day the same as another. Marking time.
or so long Emma Tremayne had felt as if her life was being whittled down to a stick, smooth and straight. No notches would be etched upon it but those small ones she would put there herself, living through one day the same as another. Marking time.
On Monday she played whist with the Carter sisters. Geoffrey was there, and she kept looking at his mouth and imagining how it would feel to trace the shape of it with her tongue . . . there, where it peaked, then dipped, then peaked again. Twice she forgot what was trump.
On Tuesday evening she saw him again. In the basement of Saint Michael’s, where the younger set had gathered to make crepe paper flags for Decoration Day. While the others pretended not to notice, they sneaked out for a walk alone through the graveyard. The moon spilled blue light onto the headstones, and the elms moaned in the sea wind, and this time she felt a roughness in his kiss, a desperation, shocking her so that she pulled out of his arms and ran back inside.
On Wednesday she took luncheon with her cousins out at Hope Farm. They ate turtle soup and scalloped oysters and asparagus, and afterward she walked out to the kennels even though it was raining. But a different man was there handling the hounds.
Thursday evening she attended a lecture at the Lyceum on “Man
as Artist, Michelangelo.” When she returned home she went out to the orangery, and she thought of the morning she’d come here to find that Mama had smashed to ruination her latest work in progress, her “Adam in the Garden Before the Fall”—that morning she had felt as though she’d been smashed as well. She had been so sure that with her “Adam” she’d at last been on the verge of something grand, real, only to lose it.
as Artist, Michelangelo.” When she returned home she went out to the orangery, and she thought of the morning she’d come here to find that Mama had smashed to ruination her latest work in progress, her “Adam in the Garden Before the Fall”—that morning she had felt as though she’d been smashed as well. She had been so sure that with her “Adam” she’d at last been on the verge of something grand, real, only to lose it.
But she knew now she’d been on the verge of nothing but mediocrity. She was glad her work had been destroyed, for it had been no good, not fit to be. She felt as an aching hole in her soul all of what she did not know about life, what she would never come to know. And she wondered how anyone but a god found the courage to try to create truth out of clay.
She promised herself she would never sculpt again.
Now it was Sunday morning, and as she did on the third Sunday of every month, she was delivering food baskets to the poor who lived in Goree. It was the back end of town, a place far from the harbor breezes, of wooden row houses, trampled grass, and wash-hung alleys. On hot days like today, smoke smudged the sky yellow and stank of burnt rubber from the nearby factory.
Someone had told her once that the factory turned out five thousand pairs of boots a year. As she drove past the place in her little black shay, it occurred to Emma that she had never even set eyes on, let alone owned, a pair of Bristol-made boots.
The baskets she gave out were filled with fishballs, brown bread, and beans baked in brown crocks. Molasses oozed out from under the lids of the crocks, and the women held them in their brown, callused hands and looked up at her with faded eyes. “No, no, please don’t,” she would say every time they thanked her. The food came from the church kitchens and she never had any part in its making.
It was unseasonably warm for the first week in May. By the time Emma finished delivering the baskets, the sun beat down on her shoulders, hot and stinging. She was supposed to meet her mother
at Saint Michael’s for the late service, but instead she drove out of town and down the Ferry Road toward Tanyard Woods.
at Saint Michael’s for the late service, but instead she drove out of town and down the Ferry Road toward Tanyard Woods.
It was cooler beneath the trees. Feathery hemlock boughs weaved a lacy arbor above her head. Mayflowers blushed pink among the curling fronds of tobacco ferns. The trees were up to their shins in the ferns.
At the end of the road, the woods opened up and the bay blazed blue. The ferry landing was deserted. A pair of iron jockey hitching posts stood next to the docks. She tied up the shay and walked along the boardwalk that crossed the mudflats.
She paused to watch a pair of snipes peck and stir the mud, their white-striped feathers flashing in the sun. A gust of wind flapped the brim of her plumed hat, startling the birds into flight.
They zigged and zagged across the blue horizon, wing to wing. Until two rifle shots cracked through the air, one almost an echo of the other, and the birds plunged from the sky.
A man came out of the woods and walked across the flats. She knew who it was from the size of him, and the loose and arrogant way he had of moving. He carried a rifle in one hand, and another swung by a strap across his shoulder.
When he reached the place where the birds had fallen, he stopped. She didn’t actually think through the act of putting one foot in front of the other—suddenly she was just there, standing before him.
She looked up at his rugged face with its shattered nose and scarred cheek and startling eyes, then down at the dead birds. Snipes didn’t make much of a meal, but their swift, erratic, dipping flight made them targets that only an expert could hope to hit.
And he had shot off their heads.
Emma’s gaze went slowly from his boots, up the long length of him, back to his face. He smiled, and it was like lightning, his smile—quick and stark.
“If you could just bring those birds along with us, then, I and
certain wee friends of mine would be most grateful,” he said, in his harsh voice that was part growl, part whisper.
certain wee friends of mine would be most grateful,” he said, in his harsh voice that was part growl, part whisper.
“What?” Emma looked from her silk-gloved hands to the dead birds, then back up to him. But he was already striding away from her, back across the mudflats toward the woods from where he had come.
She picked the snipes up by their feet, both in one hand. With the other hand she lifted the skirt of her lemon-yellow organdy dress, then stepped off the boardwalk and into the mud. Only later, when she looked back on this moment, would she wonder what wild and alien courage had possessed her.
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