Shannon (11 page)

Robert stood for a moment, perplexed. Then he got down to his primary daily task: reckoning the direction ahead. The rain spattered, hesitated, pretended to rain again, ceased. Robert settled his rucksack more comfortably on his shoulders and began to walk. They had told him in the castle that once he had crossed the River Deale— which flowed into the Shannon— he could walk to Limerick by nightfall.

On an unremarkable stretch of road he looked at everything, but mostly at the great river on his left. Within a few minutes he reached a small but handsome stone bridge, beneath which flowed a very fast current. He tracked its course with his eye; he could see that it flowed into the Shannon.
Is this the River Deale? It must be. Too big to call a stream.

In New England he would have said it was a creek, but here in Ireland, proportionate to the size of the country's biggest river, it had the stature of a significant tributary.

He sat on the parapet of the bridge, watched the narrow waters swirling and turning, yearning toward the huge oceangoing flow, and tried to see whether he could discern a fish. The Deale was turbulent to the very edges of its banks that day, leaving no pools where a trout or a pike— or especially a magical salmon— could lurk. So Robert climbed
over a little wall into a field, went down toward the Shannon herself, and stood on the bank. He found himself at a calm reach, with easy access to the actual river. Farther along he could see stiller, darker places, where the branches of trees trailed in the water like ladies’ hands. He sat down to rest.

In a few moments he heard an odd noise, a little bashing sound, and then he saw its source. A thrush was hammering a snail against a stone, breaking its shell to dine on the contents. Robert's first response was to recoil, and then he reached for control of his reactions; this was nothing more than a small bird hunting food. Fascinated, he watched until the shell lay in pieces and the bird flew off with the snail's gray body dangling from its beak.

Robert rose and walked upstream to the first big stand of trees— ash, beech, and a great old willow— and inspected where they touched the water. In the distance, grazing cows lifted their heads and looked worried. Here, the grassy bank overhung the river a little, and he lay down and gazed into the brown pool that swirled beneath his eyes.

He stared for several minutes, but saw nothing more than insects and some tiny, hairy midget fish. Then he saw the telltale puff of mud that a fish's tail stirred from the riverbed.

Taking care not to blot out the sun's light, he put a hand down gently. Not breaking the water's flow, he let his fingers dangle. Slowly, he eased the hand toward the bank's overhang and settled down to wait. He lay in a curious contrast: the heat of the sun on his neck and shoulders, the chill of the water numbing his hand and wrist.

Then he felt it! A clammy something touched his hand but it was a thrilling clamminess, not menacing or unpleasant. Alas—when he grabbed, the fish shot away. Robert lifted himself slowly from the grass, not displeased. His father's face swam into view— they were lying by another stream on another grassy bank, also trying to tickle fish, but that was a long time ago.

Once more he turned to look at the hypnotizing flow. It had, as all rivers do, changed character again, had become mellow before his eyes. He left it reluctantly and returned to the little bridge. Back on the road, he waited for a moment, listening carefully; he heard nothing more than the murmuring waters and the bark of a faraway dog.

Refreshed, he began to walk faster than before, knowing he had lost time. So far, nothing troubled him, but he could no longer see the Shannon; high fields stood between him and the river. His stride came to his aid, and once again the act of walking kept his spirits high. The sun broke through the clouds.

He passed a quiet house with chickens in the yard. Hydrangeas nodded to him, their blooms as big as babies’ heads. The curtains twitched, but it would have taken an expert— or a neighbor— to detect the movement.

Tall, friendly hedges now began to guide the little road, and he walked between them to the top of a hill, from which descended a straight half mile. He stopped in his tracks: Down at the bottom of the hill sat a great creature gleaming like a dragon in the sun.

It glistened, it sparkled— a large automobile, blue as the sky with a white canvas roof. Leaning against it, wearing a hat as big as a cartoon, stood a woman in her Sunday best. She was as fabulous as her car; she was also large, blue, and shiny. From around her head rose clouds of blue smoke— she did not so much draw on her cigarette as drain it.

Robert hesitated. She looked uphill and waved: friendly, welcoming, safe. Throughout the minutes it took him to reach where she stood, he continued to watch her.

When he had gained her side, she stuck out a silver cigarette case and said, “D'you want one?”

He said, “No, thank you.”

“Wise man. You'll never get a cough,” she said. “I'm Miss Maeve MacNulty”

He introduced himself as she ground the cigarette under her shoe.

“Hop in,” she said, and they clambered into the car.

She never asked whence he came or whither he went. As they drove, she glanced at him often, and the car swerved each time. Five minutes into the journey she lit a cigarette while driving; Robert closed his eyes until the car was straight again.

“We won't go near Pallaskenry” she said, a propos nothing whatsoever. “The people there all have insomnia and they never go to bed.”

Robert nodded.

“There's a madman living in that house,” she said, as they drove by a farm. “He carries a tomahawk everywhere.”

They met no other vehicle, they saw no other person, and soon they reached a point where they saw a distant spire.

Counting his term at Tarbert and his night in Glin, it had taken Robert Shannon almost three weeks to travel forty miles. He had walked but a fraction of that, given the rides on the motorbike and now in this extravagant blue car.

Outside Mungret, Miss Maeve MacNulty halted and climbed out, beckoning Robert. At the rear sat two large gasoline cans, staunch as sentries, and she unbuckled the straps that held them. From a compartment she took a large funnel, its mouth wide as a pail. She opened a cap on a pipe and, with the funnel in place, lifted the first heavy can as lightly as if it were a teacup and began to pour the fuel into the funnel.

Robert rushed to take the can from her; he could scarcely bear its weight. She watched closely as he filled the tank. The veil on her hat slipped a little out of shape like a crooked pane of glass. While leaning to peer at the flowing gasoline she lit another cigarette. Fortunately she soon stood back.

“I wanted a car,” she said, “whose color would match my eyes. And it nearly matches yours too.”

Out of a pocket she took a hand mirror. She scrutinized her face, tapping a tooth here, a tooth there, yanking at them.

“Still firm,” she muttered, and explained to Robert as he poured, “I'm very much afraid of losing my teeth. I couldn't do my job if I had no teeth.” She paused, looked in the mirror again, and said, “You didn't ask me what my job is.”

Robert concentrated on pouring.

“Well, I'll tell you,” said Miss Maeve MacNulty. “I'm a matchmaker. I arrange marriages.”

She tugged her blue jacket down over her blue hips and twisted the hand mirror this way and that, seeking every possible view of her face and mouth.

“You also never asked me why I'm going into Limerick. Well, I'll tell you. I'm going to see a widower. He has two hardware shops and a farm over in County Clare. I don't know the first thing about him, except that he wrote me a nice letter asking me to find him a wife; his own wife died four months ago. That's what I like— a man who believes in marriage. Very good for my business.” She tapped a front tooth very seriously and
yanked at it a little. “Women mourn their husbands, men replace their wives.”

Now, on the roadside, Maeve MacNulty began to rearrange her person. First of all, she took off her hat, and parked it on the roof of the car, and stuck the hatpin into her jacket perilously close to her blue pillowed bosom. Next she groomed the edges of her hair, tucking a hank behind one ear and covering the other one.

“This is my good ear”—she pointed to the exposed side—”and I always keep it out. Don't want to miss anything.” She raised each eyebrow in turn as though to test its competence. Then she batted her eyelids and plucked at them— a stabbing grab of thumb and forefinger, a peculiar gesture, rather as a man snatches a fly from the air.

“I always wake up with sand in my eyes if I'm in a low mood. Or do I wake up in a low mood because I have sand in my eyes?”

With a nasal whinny, she plastered her knuckles over her nostrils. “I have cobwebs on my face.”

Then she got back to her teeth again and played the xylophone with a fingernail along the top row.

“D'you know, I always think it a cheek to be arranging marriages when I was never married myself. How can I guess what it'd be like to wake up in the night beside a man who was grunting and kicking? Well, I suppose I could grunt and kick too.”

Robert finished pouring and lowered the can. He raised an inquiring eyebrow and tapped the second can. She nodded; then she fell somewhat still and lowered her head. Robert poured anew.

When she raised her head again, after many seconds, she said, “Do you know why I never married? Well, I'll tell you. I was engaged to a lovely man. Some people have food as their heaven, some have horses. Well, he was my heaven. But he was in the Munster Fusiliers and he died with the rest of the regiment in France. There isn't an able-bodied man left in this country. We lost whole villages of men to that bloody war.”

She bowed her head again. He finished pouring; she looked at his rucksack.

“I'm going to take you to the house of my friend Sheila Neary” Maeve MacNulty rose again from her lonely mood. “She could do with a bit of a lift-up.”

Robert said, “About— about your fiancé.”

She turned, stopped by the earnest note in his voice.

“What about him?”

Robert said, “You can be certain that he died well.”

She looked at him, astonished, and began to bridle. “No, he did not! It was a battle. Awful. He died in the mud.”

“But he died nobly.”

She said, with anger, “How would you know?” And then she reduced the sharpness of the sentence to repeat it. “How would you— know that?”

Robert said, “Men have never been as noble. I was in France too.”

Maeve MacNulty became confused. “Oh, look, I mean—” She stopped. “I don't know how he died. I only know he was a lovely fellow.”

Robert said, “Think of how lucky you were. You knew him better than anybody else.”

She walked away, stood for a moment on the far side of the road with her back to Robert, and then walked back. The engine had been running all this time. As she now seemed without words, Robert took the opportunity to examine the car: the lamps, the grille lined with gray steel mesh, the bulb horn (which she used liberally and unnecessarily on the road), the gleaming spokes.

Maeve MacNulty found her voice. “A Morris Cowley” she said. By now she had brightened again. “They call it a bullnose and that's why I bought it. I like every part of a bull.”

They climbed back in, she sighed without looking at Robert, and they roared away. Once again, she took out her mirror, held it in her left hand, and from time to time glanced at her reflection. As she did, the car swung across the narrow road like a dancer or a drunk. The wind froze Robert and his teeth chattered; now and then she glanced sideways at him again, like some large amorous wardress.

Setting up the network for Father Shannon posed no problems in country places. Towns differed, but not insolubly Limerick had proved a worry. The only large city on the river, a personal touch there would be harder to achieve. Archbishop Sevovicz had fretted: Where would Robert stay? He wrote the most anxious of his letters to the Bishop of Limerick.

He, a resourceful man, knew what to do. From the day Robert had landed in Tarbert, he had sent out scouts, looking for a lone American hiker. And, as the bishop knew would happen, one of them had found him and she now drove him in. But on Limerick's first wide street, Robert caught his breath. The car began to drive through military lines— men with rifles again—and then they encountered a roadblock: a truck, an armored car, men with guns aimed outward.

“Whoo-hoo, there's something brewing,” said Maeve MacNulty and she brought the car to a stop. Two officers in uniform stepped forward and looked at this Martian in blue.

“I'm not a good girl,” she said, with a chortle. “I can't drive past handsome men. What's going on?”

“A military exercise, ma'am,” one began.

“Miss,” she corrected. “It looks serious.”

“All these matters are serious,” said the senior officer.

When feelings are impaired, inquiry falls away. As yet Robert had no capacity for research— and his Boston mentor, though protective as a bear, had not asked essential questions or made basic inquiries about such ordinary matters as food, transport, safety—or politics. Sevovicz had in fact allowed his fragile young ward to walk into a civil war. Bands of gunmen now lurked everywhere in Ireland, the first shots were ringing out, and the southwest was the heart of the fire.

Robert had already been scorched. The dying Edward Dargan defined the war. He and his comrades, the Irregulars, opposed the treaty with Britain. They claimed to be the genuine IRA, and these true-to-their-oath soldiers of the Irish Republican Army would never rest until the British had gone home. For them a border was no success. They had mounted the rebellion of 1916. They had fought the War of Independence to force the treaty. They would not settle for a twenty-six-county “Free State”—how they spat the words!—while there was a six-county British dominion in the north.

And they meant it. If the recent struggle had been bloody, it would pale before this. Old comrades were hunting each other down— even if they had all eaten off the same table, slid from the same womb. Brother was already fighting brother, father would soon kill son, as kinship yet again forged the worst enmities of all.