Cold Pastoral (5 page)

“No,” she said agreeably. “But how can I know without asking?”

Josephine hooked up a bit of the sacking to see if the coloured letters were fading out. Seeing a blur of blue she poked it back in the saucepan.

“This is the story they tell, Mary Immaculate. Molly's mother had been out of the Cove and had notions.”

“Like you, Mom? You were out of the Cove for three years.”

“And I'm back without notions.”

“Mrs. Houlihan says you've got them about me, Mom. Every time I pass her door she says something about being raised above myself.”

“Does she indeed?”

Josephine's tone was tart, and she was frowning into the saucepan.

“Yes, Mom? What way was Molly raised above herself ? Never mind Mrs. Houlihan. I hate her mouth. You'd think she was trying to eat it herself. It's so far inside.”

Josephine took the bit of wet stick out of the water and shook it at her daughter. “Haven't I told you to speak no ill of your neighbour?”

“Yes, Mom,” said her daughter blandly. “I'm speaking good of Molly Conway.”

“Well now, Molly Conway's mother always had her children wheeled through the lanes in a bit of a pram! The like of that, now, when she could have given the baby a rock as she went on with her work. A sort of cousin of hers used to push the children round the lanes and into the woods, knowing as well as we all do that the Little People take quickest to children. She…”

Josephine lifted the sacking and had another look at its colour. “Fast colours they put in, and no mistake.”

“Go on, Mom! She was wheeled through the woods…”

“Her mother knew what was needed to protect her children, if she had to have them wheeled. She had that tmuch sense! Every day before setting out she used to put a slice of bread under the baby's feet, in case the fairies made off with the child.”

“Spirit it away?”

“Spirit it away, and no mistake, or take the soul and leave the body. But neither could happen with the slice of bread. That always placated the fairies. But one day the cousin girl got careless like and set off with Molly with never a crumb under her feet. She left the house with a fine bonny child and came back with what you saw this morning.”

Josephine believed it! Her tone implied conviction. Mary Immaculate gave her high childish laugh.

“I don't believe it, Mom.”

“You don't believe in the fairies! Well now, that's something new.”

“I didn't say that,” said Mary Immaculate.

She looked at a long shaft of sunlight slanting through the window, whirling specks and faint flying dust. The light became a luminous hill for the fairies to climb. Spangles, wands, wings and tiny silver bells! Whatever the fairies took they would be sure to make beautiful!

“FORTUNE'S ICE.”

“S
ure, tis a dream of a day!”

From her back door, Mrs. Keilly stepped out in the snow and looked down the ravine. Mary Immaculate ran after her and brought up on one foot, gazing, gazing, with her hands mutely clasped. The whole world was held!

It had rained in the night, frozen lightly in the morning, leaving a magical silver thaw. Enchanted, dazzling, glittering, the village stood covered in a cellophane coating of ice. Glazed ground swept down the valley, up the other side, sparkling with luminous dots. A rich deluge had poured the stardust of Heaven down on the snow. Masquerading as fairy forests, spruce and fir rose in tiers of glass. Where the rain had started to drip it had congealed in light blobs and icicles. The darkly captive evergreens had become Christmas trees with pendent silver ribbons. The junipers fell towards the sun, taken in homage like stricken vessels.

The sea was level, soothed and subdued at the feet of the land.

Mary Immaculate found her tongue, lost in thrall to the delicate day.

“Mom,” she pleaded. “I can't go to school. We're only doing review.”

“You're always reviewin' when you want a holiday.”

“But we really are reviewing, Mom. Please let me stay home.”

With the sun on her head Josephine felt benign. After the long drag of winter the day was like a miracle.

“You're right, child! I don't blame you for wantin' a holiday. I'd be saddle-sore myself in a desk to-day. Run after your Pop, now, and ask him if you can stay home. He grudges the money for your schoolin' if you don't use it.”

Mary Immaculate shaded her eyes and turned her face towards the sea. Far out on the slope Benedict and his train of sons made a dark moving line.

“They're too far, Mom. They're all setting to on the lines and the twines, and then they're going to take the sled to the woods. Pop said the spruce was getting low.”

“And a grand day for haulin' indeed. I don't know about stayin'—”

“Let me stay, let me stay, let me stay! Just this once, Mom. I wish I had an icicle dress and icicle hair to match the day.”

Mary Immaculate danced up and down like a slim streak straining towards the sky. Her feet returned to the ground with the easy balance of children born to walk on ice.

“Powerful cold you'd be then,” said Josephine, practically. Her voice rose to a cheerful screech. “Good morning, Mrs. Houlihan.”

Across from them and a little above, a woman had emerged from a house. Bending to the weight of a bucket, she splashed its contents out on the snow. Clean glimmer became befouled with a grey jagged stain. Mary Immaculate felt a breath of hate for the woman with her dirty water.

“Mornin', Mrs. Keilly. Ain't it frozen now?”

The woman put her bucket on the ground and rested her arms on the glazed pickets of a fence.

“Fair beautiful it is, Mrs. Houlihan. This child is tryin' to stay home from school.”

“You spoil her, Mrs. Keilly, and set her above your boys. And what would she be doin' home from school? Not working, I'll be bound!”

Entranced with a promise of a holiday Mary Immaculate held her tongue. She knew she had a better chance now, since Mrs. Houlihan had criticised her mother. She was right. Josephine answered with a tart edge to her voice.

“And why shouldn't she, Mrs. Houlihan? 'Tis little enough childhood we get in these parts. The Lord never sent this day to give to long division. As it is she romps through her lessons. Do her good to take a spell after the winter.”

“This won't last,” said the woman gloomily. “After the rain 'twill be pullin' and haulin' by night. You'd better run back, Mary, when you see the sky come over.”

The child looked at the woman with a pity as cold and clear as the ice-stroke of the world. Mrs. Houlihan was the ugliness of the beach destroying the beauty of the land and the sea. Her skin was as grey and mottled as the belly of a cod, and her eyes had the same wet look. Her lips were so intimately withdrawn that she seemed to be sucking them herself. Her arms on the picket fence were as flat as two thin boards. Her bones were immodest, poking through the thinnest coating of skin. Mary Immaculate's eyes deserted her ugliness, while Josephine answered with the lightheartedness of the day.

“Land sakes, Mrs. Houlihan, she wouldn't know the weather till it fell on her.”

Mrs. Houlihan puckered her toothless mouth and searched her mind for another hindrance. Finding it she shook her head.

“Those that walk in the woods today will be up to no good. 'Tis a grand day for
them
to come out.”

Mary Immaculate scarcely breathed.

For once Josephine was not dismayed. The day itself was like a Benediction, and she felt as responsive as her daughter. She anwered her neighbour from the sanctuary of her faith.

“And what do you think I've had my doors and windows blessed for, Mrs. Houlihan? Those that leave my house rightly come home again. I see to that.”

Her mother saw to that!

Mary Immaculate stepped stealthily ahead from under her eyes.

Adventure shouted in the air. It was a hair-breadth day and she knew it. Tilting her face to the sun, she felt bathed in a golden wash.

At the same time her body received the tang of the icy world. Ice, heat, diamond-dust snow, blue of the sea and the sky blended tomake a wild alchemy. Every sense was accentuated to a fine awareness. Dazzled eyes saw the world as a dream, nose dilated to invigoration, flesh eased against atmosphere blent of warmth and chill, while parted lips savoured the day in a distillation of taste. A cold clack of voices came from the tops of the trees. The whimpers and the whistles of the branches had changed to a crystal summons.

Josephine stirred with a long sigh. In spite of the day work had to go on. There would be no fairy appetites returning from the fish-room. Her dishes were waiting! She spoke briskly to her daughter, but for a few more moments the briskness only went into her voice.

“Well now, Mary Immaculate, as you've got a holiday you may as well make use of it. I could idle, myself, and no mistake.”

Mary Immaculate turned to run into the house to get her outdoor things. In that position she was taken with the strangest moment of her life. When she was free of it her youth and ignorance relegated it to the realm of queer feelings. When years had spun strangely away and she heard her husband talking about the sensation of arrested time her mind took an instant leap to that morning in the Cove. Like Molly Conway's eyes it could always become a projection on her mind.

A childish Lot, staring back, she was part of the silver thaw. Frozen on her ice-picket fence Mrs Houlihan's chin, nose and brow looked as if the fins of a fish had been joined to give her a face. The wood-pile was a stack of glass spruce. Glazed sawdust by the wood-horse made a pool of yellow on the ground. A bit of wire netting had become a frosted cobweb. The snow sloping up behind her mother threw her figure into hard relief. Glass trees tiered up and made an occasional clearing for a house like a coloured box. Somebody had cut the Cove out of ice and stuck it up in front of her eyes. They were all held and clamped to the ground. Even the trees had stopped the dry clack of their stiffened branches.

Captive as the Cove, Mary Immaculate saw her mother. Her hair was fair and oily round a face scorched from the kitchen stove. Her cheeks were plump and loose, sagging away from bones and muscles. Her lips were soft and open to the air, revealing even teeth needing attention. In the glare of the sun the cavities were black-edged, like the sombre line of a Mass-card. Her body was plump, unconfined in the hips and the bust. Both had the same globe-like lines straining at wool. Above the arms the skin was fine and white, but the hands and wrists that had known constant submergence in pails and dish-pans of water looked swollen and red. Mary Immaculate saw what her life had done to her mother. She was not beautiful! Only her eyes commanded attention. Big and black-lashed they looked down the ravine with the rich brown of molasses. She had been a servant! What did it mean to be a servant? A servant was a creature who did other people's work. Hewers of wood and drawers of water. Where had she heard that? From Father Melchior when he had told her of the homely honour of work. Work! That was the Cove! Fish from the traps and the trawls, fish from the hook and the line. Bait to follow the seasons! Fish thrown up on the stage-heads, fish with black backs and silver bellies, fish with goggling eyes. Fish slit with knives, and spurting blood and guts! Fish drying on the flakes, and flies buzzing in a horde. Smell wafting to the land, smell penetrating to the groves of spruce and fir!

Standing like an ice-dream the child was released by her mother's voice.

“Stir yourself now and get off, or we'll both dream the day away.”

Mary Immaculate moved cautiously, feeling that her mother had not noticed a thing. What strange moment had revealed the Cove like that? When the sun and the day came back to her she cast it away. All the recklessness of youth, childish abandon and intense joy of living went into the hop, skip and a jump she made towards the granite step at the back door.

Her clothes were on a hook in the kitchen.

“Mom,” she pleaded, reaching for her woollen cap. “Can I leave off my over-stockings? I'll run lighter without.”

“You'll have to run heavy, then,” answered her mother firmly. “It's only March. Ne'er cast a clout—”

“All right, Mom,” she said agreeably, sitting down on the floor and throwing out a knitted stocking that came up to her thighs.

By the work of her mother's hands she was the best dressed child in the village. From her neck to her toes, her skin to her coat, she was clothed in wool. The wool was coarse, but the garments were fine and beautifully shaped. Josephine increased and decreased in the right places, and her child's clothes fitted smoothly. The wool she had knitted could be measured in miles.

Mary Immaculate dressed with her eye on her mother. Pulling a pair of rubbers on her feet, she looked towards the door and back to her mother again. Josephine's red arm was raising a kettle from the top of the stove. Steam ran over her face as she poured water into a basin stacked with dirty dishes.

The ceremony at the door!

Aloft on its frame rested a narrow shelf bearing a homely altar of the Sacred Heart. In front of the pottery figure stood a tiny lamp with a frosted globe. The tending of this everlasting flame was Josephine's most holy chore. The last thing at night and the first thing in the morning she creaked on a chair and brought the lamp down to her kitchen table. There it was trimmed, polished and oiled, to burn in odourless devotion. Like a florid vestal she was dedicated to its continuity. When the house rocked like a cradle and whistled in its seams and its sills it seemed as if the tiny lamp must be hurled to the floor. Josephine knew that it would not! The Sacred Heart held it up better than any law of gravity! In summer it burned in an imperceptible flame, dulled by the sun. Then Mary Immaculate searched the woods for the most delicate flowers and made an offering to the altar. Under the supporting shelf and all round the door ran a row of brass rings, fastened with an occasional nail. These were blessed! Thus at the door of her kitchen Josephine guarded her family. That they should be sure of a safe return it was necessary to make certain observances.