The Pig Comes to Dinner (10 page)

“He doesn't interest you?”

“Maybe. As a genealogical phenomenon. The gene pool of Kerry is, as you said, easily able to avoid mutation and replicas do occur from time to time.” She took three steps toward the paddock area reserved for the horses scheduled for the next run. “You coming?”

“I thought you'd be more interested. After all, it
is
Taddy.”

“It isn't Taddy. And even if it were, don't we already see more of him than we might want?”

Kieran shrugged. “If you say so.” She took three more strides away, then waited for Kieran to catch up. When he did, she said, “We've seen Taddy. We've seen Brid. Now can we concentrate on the horses.”

“No. Wait.” Kieran stopped. He let out a guffaw. “There's Brid again.”

“Where?”

“You missed her. She was right over there, by the trailer.”

“Our Brid or another one? There seem to be no end of Brids around.”

“The one from before. With the tank top.”

Kitty took mental note of which part of Brid's anatomy he most readily referred to. The tank top. The breasts. The unblemished flesh. The slender arms. The delicate hands. She was ready to accuse him outright of infidelity, a breach of troth—whatever a “troth” might be. He was in love with Brid. She had all the proof she needed. Her wrath demanded a confrontation: just what was expected of them by their friends and neighbors. The populous was not to be disappointed. Her gathered accusations, her accumulated invectives, her hurt, her cries for vengeance—all were to be unloaded now. At the Dingle Races. For the benefit of strangers and Travelers, too. In front of the jockeys and their trainers, the owners and the bookies. She and Kieran were still close enough to the grandstand to be assured of a worthy audience. Would she strike him? Would she weep? A quick image of throwing herself onto the turf passed through her mind, but she didn't want to get that far into character.

Now she was ready to begin. She would start with a repeat of his phrase, “With the tank top!” but spoken with a sarcasm that would alert him to imminent danger. The words were already on her tongue. She had only to open her mouth and set them loose upon the world. Killer bees. Outraged wasps. Nettle-tongued midges.

Then another thought came to her. The time had come to rid the castle of its ghosts. They had to go. Means could be found—and she would find them. Where they would be sent off to she did not know nor did she care. They would take their bereavements with them, their sorrows and their perplexities. Her marriage would be saved, her savage breast tamed again to the ways of conjugality. No more would Brid and Taddy wander at will—if wills they had. No more would they appear at whim, then dematerialize when it suited their fancy or purposes. They would be free to wander where they would, the two of them, off to whatever haven was reserved for marriage-wrecking ghosts.

Somehow the thought of their wanderings—together— gave her pause. Why should Taddy be included in the expulsion? He was blameless. He was hardly a threat to her connubial expectations. He was content to be in the castle. The pig would miss him. Yes, Taddy could remain. But Brid must go.

Calmed by her rational self, Kitty walked alongside her husband, now taking his hand in hers. A fat man in a black suit, worn to a shine, with a white shirt gone gray with use and a tie marked with evidence of the meals that had contributed to his corpulence, smiled and nodded his approval as they went by. Old Mrs. Fitzgerald with the bright blue eyes said softly as they passed, “God be with you.” Both Kitty and Kieran responded as their upbringing required: “God and Mary be with you.”

Without breaking stride, Kitty, in a voice so lilting that it shamed the birds, said, “Wearing a tank top, was she? I'd forgotten. Didn't she have on a black miniskirt?”

“Did she? I hadn't noticed.”

Oh, the hypocrisy! Kitty was about to return to plan A but restrained herself. Soon all would be well. All would be wonderfully well.

6

A
s was his custom when expecting a parishioner of some affluence, Father Colavin had managed, when Kitty arrived, to be poring over the parish ledger. As was also his habit, he invited her to sit down while he finished one little matter in which he had been deeply involved. He then traced a pen down the columns of the ledger, emitting little gasps and a few groans, but no words. Kitty was treated to this familiar rubric until the good priest sighed, pushed his chair away from the dining room table where they were both seated—he on one side, she on the other, in keeping with procedural etiquette prescribed back in his days in the seminary: when alone with a woman always keep some barrier between the two of you. The reasons were obvious: no vow could survive the lures emanating from the female of the species, or, worse, the woman herself was, by nature, a temptress not to be trusted.

Father Colavin's dining room table was covered with what looked like a large shawl—his mother's?—a relic from his boyhood or even beyond, when his ancestors had come down from Ulster five generations ago. They had since become more the people of Kerry than the people of Kerry themselves. The shawl, with broad strips of brown and maroon and a fringe of gray yarn like thick but exhausted hair, provided some sense of decoration. At the table's center an empty glass bowl intended for fruit completed the attempt at bourgeois display.

What had fascinated Kitty from childhood were the table legs. Thick to begin with, they swelled halfway down to the floor, then diminished to their original circumference, suggesting to Kitty that each had swallowed a melon and been unable to complete the transaction. The chairs had cushioned seats, the embroidered fabric worn down on only one at the head of the table: Father Colavin's. The rest had simply faded, the red of the roses a pale tan and the green of the leaves close enough to this same tan color, hinting that both foliage and blossom were among time's indifferent achievements. The chairs also testified to the priest's solitary life, his loss of that most civilized human ritual, a shared meal. Perhaps the Eucharist—the ultimate meal shared with the Savior himself—was sufficient, even superior, and he felt no deprivation.

There was a sideboard, a repository for the place settings seldom used and the bottle of Jameson whiskey called into service for visiting dignitaries and applicants for weddings, funerals, and baptisms. (Kitty and Kieran had been given generous sips during their nuptial arrangements, a foretaste of what lay ahead when the baptisms and the funerals would be required.) The Cross of Saint Patrick, the Celtic cross with a shortened horizontal beam, was centered above the sideboard, the rest of the wall bare out of deference to this symbol more Irish than the shamrock itself.

Near the door leading to the pantry were the expected pictures of the Sacred Heart aflame with love and the Blessed Mother, her exposed heart pierced with the daggers of her seven sorrows.

On the other side of the doorway were framed photographs, yellow brown by now, of the priest's parents, the man uncomfortable in a high stiff collar, the woman, born Fitzgibbons, looking rather pleased with the lace around her neck and the brooch worn at her throat. The windows opposite the sideboard were curtained with a sheer gauzy cloth; the drapes were velvet, a plush amber, held back by braided cords that might have done previous service as the belting for a bathrobe. The rug underfoot was so thin and the weave so worn that it was constantly being crumpled by the least movement of anyone's foot.

Father Colavin folded his hands on the table top, looked wearily at Kitty, and said, “You'll have to forgive me. There's the roof and none but the devil to mend it.”

Kitty had learned from experience that the priest was not coercing her into making a contribution but offering her a bargaining chip. She was there to ask a favor. Few came to see him for reasons other than to complain about the music, the homily, the behavior of fellow congregants, the altar boys and girls scratching themselves in forbidden places. Unfailingly, Father Colavin would greet such “suggestions” with awed gratitude for the information, offer a hint that heresies, liturgical abominations, and public sinning would soon become the object of his full attention, then go about his business with an equanimity available only to those capable of ignoring the presumptions of upstarts.

More often than not, Kitty was grateful for his barricades. Given any proximity she would have been unable to resist the urge to reach out and plant a kiss on the dear man's time-furrowed brow. She didn't doubt that the impulse would recur during this present session, especially since the opening moments—ledger, groans, despair—indicated that all would go according to plan, ending with Kitty pledging a sizeable sum to repair the very roof that she had already paid to fix after her previous intrusions concerning the wedding.

Also, Kitty was particularly grateful that this was the day set aside for her appointment. She'd just returned from Cork and a session with her lawyer, one Debra McAlevey. Ms. McAlevey had summoned her after Kitty had ignored a series of e-mails informing her that the current Lord Shaftoe, George Noel Gordon Lord Shaftoe no less, had hired solicitors in London to represent his charge that he alone, and neither the Crown nor the Republic of Ireland, was claimant to ownership of Castle Kissane. Kitty had dismissed the previous e-mails and their content as unworthy of her attention— until Ms. McAlevey had threatened to resign as her advocate should she persist in her silence.

That very morning Kitty had been told that his Lordship's case was far from negligible. Documents had been presented that might possibly contradict previous assurances that the castle had, through a longtime failure to pay taxes, come finally into the possession of the Republic from which Kitty had made the purchase. She must respond. There were papers for her to sign, affidavits to which she must subscribe and, in general, she must be more attentive to her predicament.

All of this, she told herself, was no more than an annoyance. Her right of purchase had been thoroughly researched and duly processed. Her claim was as solid as the walls of the castle itself; no one could announce himself after an absence of two centuries and presume to lay a bloodied hand on a sin- gle inch of Irish ground. Although she had signed on every dotted line Ms. McAlevey had placed before her, she had drawn on her inexhaustible fund of displeasure, allowing herself the certainty that these proceedings were meant to do no more than offer a feeble and temporary diversion from the real difficulties with which she was currently besieged—difficulties that had brought her to Father Colavin's rectory, to her side of the table.

Father Colavin was again shaking his head, staring down at the intractable ledgers before him. “First,” he said, “the Son of God had no place to lay his head, and now He's to have no roof over it either. But that's hardly your concern. You've no doubt come on more urgent business.” Kitty considered, by way of experimentation, making a pledge now and getting on with her purposes for being there. But then Father Colavin, in his wisdom, might interpret her opening offer as an invitation to bargain once her needs were made known. No outright increase would be asked, merely repeated interruptions of her cause, Father Colavin noting sadly the challenges to his concentration occasioned by the imminent collapse of his roof. To relieve his worries and focus his concentration, she might consider upping the pledge just a wee bit.

Kitty decided to stick to the old ways: plead her case now, bargain later. She was fully aware that, before this meeting would be brought to its conclusion, not only the roof but also a stained glass window or two, plus a new bell for the belfry, might be put on the table as bargaining chips in the soughtfor resolution of her requirement that the castle be relieved of one ghost but not the other. She was prepared to include the bell but not the windows. Some things must be kept in reserve for future emergencies.

“Now then, Caitlin”—Father addressed her with the name he had bestowed on her at the font—“tell me what I can do for you and rest assured I'll do it if it's within my feeble powers.”

“What I have to say, Father, isn't very easy.”

“Oh, don't tell me! Not you and Kieran. Not trouble so soon!”

“Oh, no, Father. Not that. Or—no—not really—”

“Then praise be! You gave me a fright I haven't had since the reforms of Vatican Two.”

The good priest had been horrified by the conciliar changes: the idea of the Pope acting in concert with the bishops instead of ruling by fiat from the Chair of Peter had unsettled him completely. Fortunately for the aging priest, succeeding Popes—men of insufficient faith to trust in the workings of the Holy Spirit, as Pope John XXIII had done— had, with the craven acquiescence of those same bishops the council had meant to empower, nullified the reform. In doing so, they safely placed the children of God back into the grip of a mortal man too uneasy to expand the bounds of the universal church to include the Third Person of the Holy Trinity.

The reform they retained—the liturgy in the language of the congregants—was, however, much to Father Colavin's liking. That he should celebrate the divine mysteries and expound the good news of salvation in Irish seemed to him the just reversion of an ancient wrong that had been inflicted long centuries ago—against all common sense—to retain Rome as the Seat of Peter rather than transfer it to the one place on earth untouched by the barbarian rampage that had imposed illiteracy on an entire continent. It was an article of faith for Father Colavin to believe that it had been an Irish monk, schooled in an Irish abbey, who had journeyed to the land of the Franks to teach Charlemagne how to read. It was only too apparent that Dublin should have been declared the heart and head of Christendom, surrounded as it was by saints and scholars obviously able to rekindle the civilization of an extinguished continent. The suppression of this inspiration had been a torment to the priest, but still, he did have the consolation that it was now Gaelic words that summoned into the sacrifice of the mass the very presence of God himself. Of course, that this bit of Irish speaking in the liturgy was confined to a small patch of the planet along the coastlands of the Western Sea did, at times, disquiet him, but then he would celebrate yet another mass in the Church's rightful tongue—Irish—and feel the triumphant swell within his breast available only to those who had waited patiently for this remediation of history.