Miss Emily (15 page)

“A
RE YOU TRYING TO CHARM A SUP OF TEA OUT OF ME
, D
ANIEL
Byrne?”

Daniel is back at the Homestead to look over the Squire's horses. He goes from place to place, seeing to animals, and is much in demand if Moody Cook is to be believed.

“I'd murder a drop of tea, Ada,” he says, standing in the door-frame in such a way that I cannot see his face for the light behind him.

“Come in.” I take the pearwood caddy to the table, then to the stove; from there I start rooting around for a big cup, all aflutter because he is here. “Back from your gallivanting,” I say, to cover that my head is addled.

“There's little gallivanting in it. The work is hard, and I have that eejit Crohan hanging out of me night and day. He has my heart broke.”

“Patrick Crohan? We saw him at the circus. And at Mass.” I do not mention Crohan's Christmas-night visit to me in the kitchen; something holds me in check, for I do not want to alarm Daniel or cause trouble with his employer.

“The very man. He's from the back of Godspeed at home. Tipperary or somewhere like it.”

“My mammy is from Tipp. All her people are from Killusty near Fethard.”

Daniel wrings his cap in his hands. “Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean anything by that. Tipperary is tremendous, I'm sure.” He sits suddenly at the table. “Crohan is a consequence, that's all I meant. He trips over himself, does things arseways. Ah, he's bewildered. Half the time I think he's been to Conkey's Tavern before he comes to me. His own uncle knows he's no use.”

Daniel drops his head, and neither of us speaks. Placing the milk jug near his hand, I find I want to pet the knuckles and the sprouting of light hairs on them. I would like to run my fingers across the little hillocks and feel their bony strength. I linger for a moment.

“Crohan comes here sometimes to do bits and bobs for Mr. Dickinson. He's a bit of a quare hawk, right enough. There's something off with him. He's pushy, maybe.”

“He's as mad as a brush if you ask me.” Daniel grins up at me and passes his arm around my waist. “How have you been keeping, Ada?”

I slip away from him, in terror that Miss Emily or, worse, Mrs. Dickinson will come in. Sitting opposite Daniel, I fold my hands around my teacup, then remember myself and take it by the handle with my fingers.

“I'm grand,” I say. “I think I upset Miss Emily, though, and I haven't seen hide nor hair of her since. Not alone anyway. She'd normally be under my feet in the kitchen most of the day.”

“What happened?”

“It was nothing, really. I interrupted a private scene. A conversation. I don't know. She barked at me.” I twiddle the edge of
my apron, for I am still trying to fathom why she got so annoyed. “It's not like her to be snappish.”

“It'll blow over, I'm sure. No one could be angry with you for long.” I look up, and Daniel holds my gaze; he offers me his hand across the table, and I reach over and let him hold mine. His skin is warm and rough, the skin of a hardworking man. “Will I get to see you at all?”

“I have New Year's Eve off. The family are going across to Mr. Austin's house for the day.”

“That's marvelous. We'll do something. The snow is melting— we could take a long walk together.”

“I'd like that.” He lets go of my hand, swigs his tea and rises. “Don't think bad of Miss Emily,” I say, feeling guilty for complaining about her. “She's not altogether well this weather.”

Daniel settles his cap over his hair, salutes with one hand and is gone out the door as quick as he came in. I clear the table and run my finger across the place where his mouth met the rim of the cup. I put my lips to that same place and drink back the lukewarm dregs of his tea.

It is mild for late December, and the sun hangs low and orange in the sky. Daniel said he would come for me, and I stand outside the Homestead, sweeping my eyes up and down Main Street to try to catch sight of him as he approaches. That way I can settle myself before he sees my face. He makes me giddy. Even thinking about him sends my chest into a spasm. I taste the day's weather on my tongue and feel glad it is not too cold.

There are old leaves on the pathway, and I am wondering if I would have time to get the broom at them when a buckboard pulls up and stops at the bottom of the steps. The horse paws the
ground, and I glance at the driver, thinking he has stopped at the wrong place. I look again when I realize it is Daniel himself. He hops down, dragging the cap from his head.

“I'm sorry it's not a buggy with a hood and all, but it was the best I could do.”

“Well, it's lovely,” I say, going toward the trim carriage and wondering if it is safe.

“I'm glad you like it. I know a wainwright in Holyoke, and he gets me to try out his new gigs and carriages, to make sure they're sound.” Daniel slaps the horse. “And this is Betty, the sweetest mare in all of New England.”

Daniel rubs her flank, then lifts me by the waist into the seat and gets up beside me. He pulls a blanket over both our legs, clicks at the horse, and we trot on. The mare has hard, sleek withers and a reckless tail; I hope that she will behave.

“Where are we off to?”

“I thought I might take you out to Mount Norwottuck.”

“Do you mean to climb it?”

Daniel laughs. “Not at all. It's a couple of miles to the top. We'll just go and look. See what we can see.” The buckboard springs under us, and the horse trots gaily along. “You'd think she'd been waiting for this all her life—to take two jackeens out to the sticks to gawk at a hill.”

I laugh and slip my arm through his elbow crook. The wind in my face is sharp, and I don't even mind that my cheeks will be as ripe as plums by the time we get to the mountain.

Daniel croons to the horse on the jaunt out, cajoling and mollycoddling her. “Great girl,” he says. “Hup, Betty, hup. That's it, hup now. You're a smasher, Betty.”

He goes off into another place when he is at that—talking to horses; I hear him with the Squire's horses. It is as if nothing exists
but him and the animal. I don't mind; I am happy as a brooding hen sitting next to him, feeling the heat of his long body against mine. And I like to see the countryside unfolding before us, as if it were put there for our pleasure. I ask him if he has ever driven the Dickinsons' cabriolet, and he says he has. I tell him I would love a go in it, to enjoy its creamy insides and peep from its oval windows.

“Maybe someday we'll have a carriage like that,” Daniel says, and I am made quiet by this remark.

Mount Norwottuck is a sloped triangle rising out of the valley in a stand of small mountains. Daniel stops the buckboard, and we sit and look across at it.

“It's lower than Slievenamon,” I say, “but beautiful all the same.”

A lid of cloud hovers over the mountain range. The hills themselves are navy, and white with snow, too, richly dark and bright against the sky and cloud. I think it would be nice to be at the top, breathing the thin air and lording it over the valley. Whenever I climbed Slievenamon with Mammy or Granny Dunn, I felt like a queen looking down over Killusty, Lough-copple and Kiltinan Castle perched on the banks of the Clashawley, and far off to Fethard, closed inside its high walls.

Daniel twists his body toward me. “What do you miss about home, Ada? About Ireland?”

“Apart from my family? I suppose I miss Dublin itself, its dirty din. I miss Tipperary, too. My granny's place, the peace there.”

“I miss the Liffey, the stink of it.”

“Me, too. I used to swim in it.”

“Did you, now?” He scratches his head. “I miss the sea. It makes me itchy or something, not being near the sea.”

“I miss the way people
are,
too,” I say. “You know, people from Dublin are freer than the people here—they don't fuss as much. Dubliners are open. They talk more.”

“They laugh more, too, if you ask me. Some of the ones here are wound very tight.”

“But they are good people, too. They live well. We can all learn from that.”

“You cannot take on their ways, Ada. It is impossible to become them.”

“I know. That's not what I meant.”

“They are themselves and we are ourselves, there's no getting around it.”

I listen to Betty's slow munch-crunch on grass and watch her toss her mane. I think about Miss Emily and what a conundrum she is. She can be wound tight, like Daniel says, but she is free, too, in many ways. Well, in any case her mind is free. I remember the word I heard her murmur to Miss Susan—“forevermore”— and wonder what she meant by it. Betty whinnies, breaking into my thoughts. I turn to Daniel.

“I didn't know my own restlessness until I got here. I seemed to calm down inside myself once I was settled.”

“I know what you mean, though it still feels strange to me. Everything. The air.”

“After seven years? Surely not?”

“It does, even after all this time.”

“You'd like to go home, then?”

“Maybe. Sometime. If I could.”

I look around at the snow-patched grass and the mountains, at the clouds scuttling across the sky. It is lonely here, I think. It feels lonely to not know a place well, to be away from the beauty of your own area. It is green here, green in a way that I do not welcome,
because it makes me heartsick for Tigoora and for Mammy's home in Tipperary, Granny Dunn's tiny house above Killusty.

“What is it like, the part of Dublin you're from?” Daniel asks.

“Tigoora? What do you mean, what is it like?”

“Is it a town?”

“No, it's country, but near enough the city. Not like my mammy's first home, in Tipperary, where my aunt and uncle are from, too. They all lived under Slievenamon.”

“Slievenamon. It's such a lovely name. Tell me what it means, Ada.”

“It means ‘women's mountain.' It's very peaceful there. Very safe.” I shiver a little and pull my coat snugly around me.

“You're cold,” Daniel says.

“The way it is, we're in America now,” I say, more to myself than to him. “We have to make the best of it.”

“And we have each other.”

“We do,” I say.

Daniel jumps from the buckboard and helps me down. “Let's walk.”

We link arms and stroll a pathway under trees. The grass there is just letting go of frost. The blades stand like white spears, and I toe them with my boot to better see the pearls of frost that still cling to them. Huge trees form a canopy over the path ahead of us, and I wonder if we should turn back, in case we trespass onto someone's land.

“I took the pledge, you know, Ada. Father Mathew's pledge,” Daniel says, stopping suddenly and looking down at me. “I tasted wine once and didn't like it. So that was that. I'm for total abstinence, like the good Father said.”

“It's a pity there aren't more like you.”

“It's Adam's ale for me. That alone.”

“Adam's ale?”

“It's what they call water sometimes.” He fidgets with his coat button. “I have a bit of money put by, you know, Ada. A nice lump of money.”

“It is always wise to save, Daniel. Yes. ‘Sow frugality, reap liberty.' Isn't that what they say?” I look up into the bare branches of the trees and wonder at their size. “Everything is bigger here,” I murmur.

Daniel stops walking and turns me to him by the shoulders. “Do you know what I'm telling you, Ada?”

“I think so,” I say, my neck and chin starting to scald. I look up at him, at his face so serious.

“Grand,” he says, and drapes one arm around me so that we can walk on. He seems lighter in himself having spoken, though my heart jigs in my chest.

“It's after getting bitter,” I say, hawing on my cold hands.

“It is. We'll go back.”

We daunder toward Betty. Daniel lifts me up into the buckboard and gets up himself. When he settles the blanket across us, he leans over and puts his mouth to mine. I feel his soft tongue pressing between my lips, and I open my mouth wider to let him in. We sit and kiss, and all sorts of feelings come over me. Between my legs swells, and I want to mold every part of myself into every part of Daniel. I put my fingers to his face to feel the working of his jaw and to hold his mouth even closer to my own. His tongue is so soft, so fragrant, that I would happily have him swallow me whole. Every move of his mouth only makes me want to kiss him more. He licks my teeth, sliding his tongue over my gums, and I nearly rise out of my seat with the sweetness of it. I forget about the cold, about what he has suggested to me, about Miss Emily and work and the whole lot. I kiss Daniel and he
kisses me, and all there is in the world is our two mouths, our two tongues, our closed eyes, our hands holding the other's cheeks. We break away, both panting a little. We smile and turn our faces, then look again. Daniel takes up Betty's reins, clicks his tongue, and says, “Walk on.”