A New Song (4 page)

Hope Winchester smiled. She would never say a word to the priest’s wife about his buying more books. Just as she certainly wouldn’t mention to him that Cynthia had dashed in only this morning to buy copies of Celia Thaxter’s
My Island Garden
, and the hardback of
Ira Sleeps Over
.

 

He knocked on the screen door of the small, life-estate apartment in the rear of the town musuem.

“Uncle Billy! Miss Rose! Anybody home?”

He couldn’t imagine the old couple giving a party; his mind was perfectly boggled by the notion. Rose Watson had been diagnosed as schizophrenic decades ago, and although on daily medication, her mood swings were fierce and unpredictable. To make matters worse for her long-suffering husband, she was quickly going deaf as a stone, but refused to wear hearing aids. “There’s aids enough in this world,” she said menacingly.

He put his nose against the screen and saw Uncle Billy sleeping in a chair next to an electric fan, his cane between his legs. Father Tim hated to wake him, but what was he to do? He knocked again.

Uncle Billy opened his eyes and looked around the kitchen, startled.

“It’s me, Uncle Billy!”

“Lord if hit ain’t th’ preacher!” The old man grinned toward the door, his gold tooth gleaming. “Rose!” he shouted. “Hit’s th’ preacher!”

“He’s not supposed to be here ’til tomorrow!” Miss Rose bellowed from the worn armchair by the refrigerator.

Uncle Billy grabbed his cane and slowly pulled himself to a standing position. “If I set too long, m’ knees lock up, don’t you know. But I’m a-comin’.”

“Tell him he’s a day early!” commanded Miss Rose.

“Don’t you mind Rose a bit. You’re welcome any time of th’ day or night.” Uncle Billy opened the screen and he stepped into the kitchen. The Watsons had cooked cabbage for lunch, no two ways about it.

“Uncle Billy, I hear you’re giving . . . well, someone said you’re giving Cynthia and me . . . a
party
?”

The old man looked vastly pleased. “Got a whole flock of people comin’ to see you! Got three new jokes t’ tell, you’re goin’ t’ like ’em, and Rose is makin’ banana puddin’.”

Father Tim scratched his head, feeling foolish.

“Y’ see, th’ church give you ’uns a nice, big party an’ all, but hit seemed mighty official, hit was anybody an’ ever’body, kind of a free-for-all. I said, ‘Rose, we ought t’ give th’ preacher an’ ’is missus a little send-off with ’is
friends
!’” The old man leaned on his cane, grinning triumphantly. “So we’re a-doin’ it, and glad t’ be a-doin’ it!”

“Well, now—”

“Hit’s goin’ to be in th’ museum part of th’ house, so we can play th’ jukebox, don’t you know.”

“Why, that’s wonderful, it really is, but—”

“An’ me an’ Rose took a good bath in th’
tub
!”

He had seen the time when Uncle Billy and Miss Rose could empty two or three pews around their own. . . .

Miss Rose, in a chenille robe and unlaced saddle oxfords, stood up from her chair and looked him dead in the eye. He instantly wished for the protection of his wife.

“I hope you didn’t come expecting to eat a day in advance,” she snapped.

“Oh, law,” said her mortified husband. “Now, Rose—”

She turned to Uncle Billy. “I haven’t even
made
the banana pudding yet, so how can we feed him?”

“Oh, I didn’t come to eat. I just came to find out—”

“You march home,” said Miss Rose, “and come back tomorrow at the right time.”

Uncle Billy put his hands over his eyes, as if to deny the terrible scene taking place in front of him.

“And what time might that
be
?” shouted Father Tim.

“Six-thirty sharp!” said the old woman, looking considerably vexed.

 

His wife went pale.

He felt like putting his hands over his own eyes, as Uncle Billy had done.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know how to say no. Uncle Billy is so excited. . . . They’ve never given a party before.”

“Why in heaven’s name didn’t they let us
know
?”

“I think they invited everybody else and forgot to invite us.”

“Lord have
mercy
!” said his overworked wife, conveniently quoting the prayer book.

They had collapsed on the study sofa for the Changing of the Light, having gone nonstop since five-thirty that morning. He had made the lemonade on this occasion, and served it with two slices of bread, each curled hastily around a filling of Puny’s homemade pimiento cheese.

“I can’t even
think
about a party,” she said, stuffing the bread and cheese into her mouth. “My blood sugar has dropped through the soles of my tennis shoes.”

Ah, the peace of this room, he thought, unbuttoning his shirt. And here they were, leaving it. They built it, and now they were leaving it. Such was life in a collar.

“Timothy, are you really excited about going to Whitecap?”

“It comes and goes in waves. One moment, I’m excited—”

“And the next, you’re scared to death?”

“Well . . .”

“Me, too,” she confessed. “I hate to leave Mitford. I thought it would be fun, invigorating, a great adventure.” She lay down, putting her head on one of the faded needlepoint pillows that had also made it through the hedge. “But now . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“We’re pretty worn out, Kavanagh. This is a stressful thing we’re doing, pulling up stakes. I’ve hardly been out of Mitford in sixteen years. But we’ll get there and it will be terrific, wait and see. You’ll love it. The freedom of an island . . .”

“The wind in our hair . . .”

“Gulls wheeling above us . . .”

“The smell of salt air . . .”

It was a litany they’d recited antiphonally over the last couple of months. It always seemed to console them.

He pulled her feet into his lap. “How about a nap? We’ve got a tight schedule ahead.”

“Tonight,” she said, “Puny helps us clean out all the cabinets. . . . Dooley comes tomorrow evening just before the Watson party, and will have supper with his mother. Then a day of shopping with our threadbare boy and moving him in with Harley, followed by your meeting with the new tenant, and Dooley’s steak dinner. Then, of course, there’s the grand opening at Lucera on Thursday night after we finish packing the car, and on Friday morning we’re off. I don’t think,” she said, breathless, “that we’ll have time to celebrate your birthday.”

His birthday! Blast! This year, he would be sixty-six, and just think—in four short years, he would be seventy. And then eighty. And then . . . dead, he supposed. Oh, well.

“Don’t be depressed,” she scolded. “And for heaven’s sake, dearest, relax. You’re sitting there like a statue in a park.”

“Right,” he said, guzzling the lemonade.

He had noted over the last few days that the late June light reached its pinnacle when it fell upon the brass angel. Because of the exterior overhang of the room, the direct light moved no higher than the mantel, where the angel stood firm on its heavy base of green marble.

He had found the angel in the attic at Fernbank, Miss Sadie’s rambling house at the top of the hill, now owned by Andrew and Anna Gregory. Only months before she died in her ninetieth year, Sadie Baxter had written a letter about the disposition of her family home and its contents. One thing she asked him to do was take something for his own, anything he liked.

As Cynthia rambled through Fernbank seeking her portion of the legacy, he had found the angel in a box, a box with a faded French postmark. Though the attic was filled with a bountiful assortment of inarguable treasures, he had known as surely as if someone had engraved his name upon it that the angel in a box belonged to him.

The light moved now to the angel, to its outspread wings and supplicating hands. It shone, also, on the vase of pink flowering almond next to the old books, and the small silhouette of his mother, which Cynthia had reframed and hung above the mantel.

As long as he could remember, he’d been afraid to sit still, to listen, to wait. As a priest, he’d been glad of every needy soul to tend to; every potluck supper to sit to; even of every illness to run to—thankful for the fray and haste. He’d been frightened of any tendency to sit and let his mind wander like a goat untethered from a chain, free to crop any grass it pleased.

He was beginning to realize, however, that he was less and less afraid to do what appeared to be nothing.

In the end, he wasn’t really afraid of moving to Whitecap, either; he’d given his wife the wrong notion. He had prayed that God would send him wherever He pleased, and when his bishop presented the idea of Whitecap, he knew it wasn’t his bishop’s bright idea at all, but God’s. He had learned years ago to read God’s answer to any troubling decision by looking to his heart, his spirit, for an imprimatur of peace. That peace had come; otherwise, he would not go.

He inhaled the freshness of the breeze that stole through the open window, and the fragrance of oak and cherry that pervaded the room like incense.

Then, lulled by the sight of his dozing wife, he put his head back and closed his eyes, and slept.

CHAPTER TWO

Rose Watson set out what most people would call an outrageous assortment of cracked, chipped, and broken china, including mismatched cups and saucers that teetered atop a tower of salad plates anchored on a turkey platter.

After standing back and gazing at the curious pile with some satisfaction, she decided to flank the arrangement with a medley of soup bowls.

The large plastic container of banana pudding sat on the electric range, bristling with two serving spoons jabbed into its yellow center. For napkins, Uncle Billy supplied a roll of paper towels, which he stood on one end next to the pudding.

“Don’t set paper on a
stove
!” Miss Rose snatched the roll and moved it like a pawn on a chessboard to the kitchen table.

“What about spoons?” shouted her husband. He was fairly benumbed with the idea of having a swarm of people descend on their living quarters, though it had been his notion in the first place.

“Pull out the drawer! They can help themselves.”

He did as he was told, thinking that his wife sometimes had a good idea, and wasn’t half as crazy as most people thought. Mean-spirited, maybe, but that was her disease.

He had tried to read about schizophrenia in the Mitford library, one of the few times he had ever stepped foot in the place. He had looked for the oldest volunteer he could find, thinking she would be the boss, and asked her to lead him to a volume on a disease whose name he could not spell. He had then taken the book to a table and sat and asked the Lord to give him some kind of wisdom about what was so terribly, horribly wrong with his wife, but he couldn’t understand anything the book had said, nothing.

“That’s good thinkin’!” he shouted.

“You say somethin’s
stinkin’
?” She turned and looked at him.

“Dadgummit, Rose, I said—”

“It might be your upper lip, Bill Watson.” She suddenly burst into laughter.

There it was! The laughter he heard so seldom, had almost forgotten, rushing out like a bird freed from a cage, the laughter of the girl he’d known all those years ago. . . .

He stood, stunned and happy, tears springing to his eyes as suddenly as her laughter had come.

 

Father Tim found the china assortment fascinating. He could spot several pieces of French Haviland in a pattern his grandmother had owned, and not a few pieces of Sevres.

At least he thought it was Sevres. He picked up a bread-and-butter plate and peered discreetly at the bottom. Meissen. What did he know?

He certainly didn’t know what to do about the banana pudding. Everyone except themselves had been asked to bring a covered dish, so there was plenty to choose from. Miss Rose, however, stood like a sentinel by the stove, making sure that all comers had a hefty dose of what had taken her a full afternoon to create.

All those cracks in the china, he thought, all those chips and chinks . . . weren’t they a known hideout for germs, a breeding ground? And hadn’t he sat by the hospital bed of a woman who had put her feet under Rose Watson’s table and barely lived to tell about it?

He could remember the story plainly. “Lord knows, I hadn’t hardly got home before my stomach started rumblin’ and carryin’ on, you never heard such a racket. Well, Preacher, I hate to tell you such a thing, but you’ve heard it all, anyhow—five minutes later, I was settin’ on th’ toilet, throwin’ up on my shoes.”

He had not forgotten the mental image of that good lady throwing up on her shoes. He certainly hadn’t forgotten her dark warning never to eat a bite or drink a drop at Rose Watson’s house.

“Fill y’r plates and march into th’ front room!” Their host’s gold tooth gleamed. “Some’s already in there, waitin’ for th’ blessin’.”