didn’t care if it didn’t get me a job. He started asking me words, and then he’d repeat them back and laugh at the way he had to make shapes with his mouth that it definitely didn’t want to make. In no time at all he knew basic words, and it was only a skip and a jump before he could mispronounce whole phrases in pidgin Russian. We’d use it in company to say private things, and when people asked he’d say he had this personal tutor who was teaching him Russian in bed.
The weather changed. Transparent rain fell from a whitish sky that sat low on the hills and wiped out the line of the mountains. A soft trickling sound. Gentle. Our life turned inwards, enclosed by the falling rain. We’d go to bed in the afternoon, and afterwards I would lie with my head on Liam’s belly; the house, our lives, ourselves, cocooned in the quiet rain.
I woke one night and got out of bed and went to kneel at the window. The rain had stopped, and the sky, wiped clean, was black and pierced with stars. In the morning the sunlight was different. Sharper, more defined. And a nip in the thinning air that pinched at your fingers and made you remember gloves. The sky was blue and intense, and the ash held its last yellow leaves to the radiant light. Light caught the filaments woven by spiders; it shone the wet grass and burnished the late gnats afloat in the air like sparks. From the ditches and fields came the dense gleam of light on water.
And there was I, uneasy, out of place, yet hardly caring so long as there was Liam.
Where was I from, what was I doing here, when was I going home?
Alone with Liam, I forgot the questions.
And Liam, never once asking me, letting the reins hang loose, feeding me apples, feeling my breath on his hand.
The sale of the house came through. The papers were signed in March, and the new roof went on in the dry spell before Easter. Everyone helped. Connor brought us the slates from a ruined house on the farm, and one of Liam’s brothers-in-law had sawmill connections and got us a deal on the rafters. The insulation was a cobbling together of leftover stuff from a job on a schoolhouse, while tools and ladders and nails and the like were borrowed or scrounged. It was like that down here—you never just went to a shop and bought something; it all worked on who you knew and what way they’d find to help out.
Liam’s friends were handy enough—artists often are—and they’d have a crack at most jobs provided you weren’t too fussy about the look of the finished item. We weren’t too fussy; we wanted a roof on the house that would stand the wind and the weather and that’s what we got. I enjoyed it—a crowd of us up there, swarming about on the roof in the sunshine, busy as honey-bees. I worked hard alongside the men, and by the end of it I was stronger and fitter than I’d been for years. They accepted me, or they appeared to. I have good hands—always had. They were that way long before the Healing started.
By this time Liam’s family was well aware of my existence. I hadn’t meant them to be—Liam had promised me he’d say nothing—but you can’t hide anything down here, and anyway Connor had caught us. He’d called in one morning early, and there was I, in the kitchen making tea, with nothing on me but Liam’s old woollen dressing gown that I’d washed on him and shrunk down to half its size. I don’t know which of the two of us was the more embarrassed. The only one who wasn’t was Liam, who came in through the back, three eggs from the laying hen in his hand, and introduced us, cool as you please. I turned pure red, and I couldn’t look at Connor; then I scuttled off up the stairs and pulled on my jeans and a sweater. But I didn’t go back down; I stood at the door and listened till the voices ceased and Connor had gone.
When Connor came next he told Liam we were both expected for dinner on Sunday.
I wouldn’t go, though Liam said I was only making things worse for myself.
“They won’t stop asking, you might as well get it over and done with.”
But he went alone. The afternoon was fine, and I meant to go out for a walk but I hung around waiting instead. It was well after six when the car pulled up, and I heard Liam whistling to himself as he closed the yard gate. He came in carrying a pile of bed linen that his mother had sent, and apples and pears from Kathleen.
“Did they ask about me?”
“They did,” he said, dumping the fruit on the table.
“Well?”
“I told them you didn’t like Catholics.”
I stared at him, not believing my ears. He laughed. I shot out of my chair and pummelled him, hard as I could, but he only grabbed me and held my arms pinned to my sides. I swore I’d stay quiet if he let go.
He let go, and I went for him again.
He was wise to me, was Liam; he never once tried to persuade me, but off he would go, and when he came back I was always out of sorts.
“What is it you think they’re going to do to you, Ellen? Invite you to Sunday lunch and call you a whore?”
I was offended; I shook my head stubbornly and wouldn’t answer. At that time living together here was still something that was talked about. Besides, they were Catholics—under the thumb of the Church—their disapproval wasn’t negotiable in my mind. That I was unsure and embarrassed didn’t come into it at all.
Then I ran into Connor one Saturday in Kilkenny when I was shopping, and he said he was due to meet Kathleen outside Dunnes and she would want tea, and why didn’t I come along?
So I did, and Kathleen was plump with short brown hair and warm, direct eyes. We had tea, then we had a drink, and the end of it was that I promised her I’d come over with Liam the following Sunday. At that time Liam’s mother was still alive, and Connor and Kathleen were living in a house down the road from the farm. Kathleen said we should call with them first and she’d show me the house, then we’d all go over together, and that way it wouldn’t be so bad.
And it wasn’t. I liked them, especially the parents. And they made me welcome, for all I was a Protestant, living in sin with their son.
Fixing a house can be a habit you get yourself into. Once you are in it you go on doing it—you barely notice the months turning into years. And you get used to there always being some room you can’t use, some wall being ripped down, some passageway piled with rubble that your foot knows to step over. I never minded in the early days, when the nesting thing was strong on us, but there came a time when I wanted to call a halt. Enough was enough, I said, but Liam couldn’t listen. He loved that house, he never grew tired of planning, and he didn’t mind dirt or mess.
He couldn’t listen, and I couldn’t leave it alone. But then the commissions began to come in, so he had to go into the workshop full-time and let the house be. Liam’s work was beginning to sell, there were new demands on his time, he even began to turn down the building work that he’d always done to bring in some ready money.
Liam was strong and able. People employed him and found that they liked him, so the next time they needed a hand they came looking. Sometimes they didn’t come to the house, instead they’d run into me in the supermarket and ask me if Liam was free. At first the answer was always yes, but slowly it got to be no. I’d been proud of saying yes, but I was prouder still of saying
