The Visitors (23 page)

Give tom the money I owed to him but more is owed. He counted it quick and said nothing. Shoved the notes into his back pocket and talked about the fine evening. Having a bad streak of luck with the horses. But I never had much luck with them if I think about it. We walked for a long time but did not talk but a pleasant enough
walk. He sighed to himself many times. I was going to ask him if things were all right but didn’t think it was right to interfere. And I was afraid to say her name. What it might do to my face. The way I might act. The name would trip in my mouth. The children are young and don’t understand much of who their father is. Nora keeps going the way she does. I keep the best side I can out.

It was the summer I dug the well up at clearys. Fifteen or sixteen years ago now. She was up at home with the older sister hannah. Clearys and them being neighbors. She was down from dublin for a few weeks. Tom was working abroad in england all that year. We were friends then but not great friends. But the dwyers are related to the clearys. The mothers were first cousins. But I was digging the well not too far from clearys house. The two cleary women lived there by themselves. There are a lot more in the family but they were dead or abroad or married. The clearys are gone with many years and the summer I am talking about they were well up in years. They had some few cows and a pony. That was a fierce hot summer and up on the hill there was not a drop of water. People carting water into the few small farms on the hill in tankards for the cows. I had someone working with me then who went off to england at the end of that summer. England it was I think but it could have been australia. A lazy worker you could not depend on to appear for work on time in the morning. Most of the mornings when he did he was late. But many of them mornings he didn’t appear for work and I had to work by myself. I could work very hard then being younger and that first day Tess came out on her own with water and tea and a few tomato sandwiches. She was helping out the cleary women. Those old cleary women were very fond of her. I
well remember her telling me that first day she liked being at the clearys. Dwyers place was less than a mile across the hill from clearys. Tess walked over to clearys late in the morning. I was down in the hole digging the well and the sun was beating down on me and then the shadow came fully across me and I thought it was the pony or one of the cows that had wandered over in a curious way and I turned and looked up and she was smiling down and saying that she had sandwiches and tea made and I must be famished for water because did I see that my water can was dry as a bone. I looked up at her and squinted up at the sun. A slight person she was and she would stay that way. I came up out of the hole and I thought she would leave the things there and go about her business but not at all. She spread the things out and took the sandwiches from the towel and she sat down with me and pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around the knees. She was playing with the hair. I remember that so well. Her lovely hair. Closer to bronze than it was to black. Horse hair she told me her mother called it. It did look that strong and thick. She said she had brought a tea mug for herself. Did I mind sharing the tea with her. I said to her that she had made the tea so she was surely entitled to have a mug or two of it. She said the cleary women were lovely but she was tired of being in the house and listening to them bicker with one another about nothing. She said she liked to drink the tea out of doors. She said the taste of it was different. I said I was fairly good friends with her brother in england and she said she knew that. Hannah said that she said. I asked how tom was faring out over there and she said he writes to hannah and hannah says he was doing fine and sending a little money home every week. Some of it to
save for himself and a bit of it that went to the house. I inquired if she missed home when she was away in the city and she said when she was back here she missed it frightfully and going back it was sad but she knew she would have to go back but she always cried on the train she said on the way back and when the train was near the city and the houses and the factories were up around her again she would think her heart would break. But in a day or two she would be back in the routine of the work and she was fine. We talked for a long time that first day. She told me about her mother and father who had passed a few years before that. Her mother she said was of no use after the father died of the flu and the mother did not last long after him. I should have been back down in that hole and I inquired if the cleary women would wonder where she was. They would not care a bit she said. They wanted her to be able to enjoy herself on her holidays. They are often too busy bickering to think of anything else she said. She said the older sister hannah was very bossy and she hoarded up the jobs for her. Kept the jobs until she came back from dublin. Sweeping from under the beds and washing the blankets in the tub and hanging them out on the line and spreading them out along the hedge and the gates. Taking out all the cups and the other things in the cupboard and washing them and scrubbing the shelves of the cupboard and putting the cups and the other things back on the shelves again. Scrubbing all the floor on her hands and knees with the scrubbing brush. She said Hannah says the knees are bad with her and she cant kneel down or reach up very high for things. That’s frightfully handy for hannah I said and the two of us laughed. And she said that hannah never understood that this was her holiday and she did not
want to work all the time. She didn’t mind doing a bit of work she said. Sometimes she liked the mind and the hands to be occupied she said. We sat and talked and laughed. It was very easy to laugh with her. She likes the jokes. We poked fun at many people. She was as good as me at that and I enjoyed that. I could have done my dead best at making her laugh all day. I could have never stood up and went back down into that hole.

The next day I could not wait for her to come again. I wore a good shirt that day but I took the shirt off when I was going down into the hole like I always did anyway. But later in the morning it was hannah that was standing at the verge of the hole with her hands on the hips and she said that she had gone down to clearys yesterday and found out that tess was out with me for so long and was she causing me trouble and was she keeping me from my work. I said no trouble and the work was getting done fine. I could work even better with the bit of company. The man who was to be helping with the job I have not seen in a few days and I have no idea where he is I said. I was looking up at hannah with my hand shading my eyes and now her arms were folded and hannah leans over a bit and I moved into her shadow and took my hand down and she looked down at me dead in the eye and says that tess is a very mischievous girl. I was going to laugh but I was afraid that might give something away but I was very fond of that word mischievous. And I was thinking that my life was fine but it was not fine at all. And I was thinking why did I never see her like that before. And I was wondering then and I still wonder after all these years why did I go and bring that lifelong trouble on myself like that. Everything was fine and I went looking for trouble. Or nothing at all was fine and is never fine and
that was why I went in search of it. That’s what I did and I don’t know why I did it. Could I have not left well enough alone. But some days I am very glad I lived my life with that trouble. I say I am glad but I don’t know why. I am not and was never much of a husband for doing it. Feeling that way and keeping it to myself. But that first day she stood and gathered up the things and I went to the verge of the hole and looked down into the hole and laughed and said here I go. And when I did I didn’t think anything had changed but I knew something had happened. And I was a bit afraid but the fear made it more intoxicating. The fine sunlight falling across the hill. But it was in the night it happened. That was it. When I went back home and the thought of her woke me at an early hour of the morning. I woke and she was in my mind. I didn’t wonder why she was in my mind. It seemed very natural that that is the place shed be. And I think that was when the not being good at sleeping started. And that well at clearys turned out to be a fine well in the end but I had to go down a long ways to find the stones and the spring gushing below the stones.

She wore a different dress for the three days. And that first day she sat and pulled her knees up and put her arms around the knees the dress was a shade of blue. Know of late the color is azure. It happened then when we drank the tea. No it happened the second her shadow fell over me when I was down in that hole. I think the first one of them cleary women died the next summer. And the other one passed away very soon after. I missed the two funerals. That summer the cleary woman died it rained every day and I could do very little outside work. I did a few jobs inside in a few places. But the jobs were scarce and hard to come by. I didn’t have a bob to my
name. Then I got the job in the copper mines and I stayed down in them for a few years. That november the second one of the cleary women died. I married Nora the last week of october.

But I forget to remember this part. When I went home that first day the house was empty. All outside with the cows and the father had an old dictionary. He kept it very near where he sat and at night you’d see him turning the pages. Turn the pages and call out words and say what the word meant. He called them out in a slow way because he could not pronounce them right and roger and me would laugh but only to ourselves. And that evening I came in and was very glad that the house was empty and I don’t know what led me over there to open up the dictionary for whatever reason and run my eyes up and down the words and the word where I stopped was acquiesce. I said it to myself many times that evening in my head. I said it when I was milking the cows and the moon was rising about the trees behind the haybarn. acquiesce.

How sorrowful it is to sit here and write. That I will never ever see her again. No more Julys to look forward to. There is no heaven I mostly think. And if its the heaven they say it is I will never be let in. If there is a hell in the way they say there is that’s the hole I will be thrown down into.

The second day she came out later. And she did bring the tea and the water and she brought me the few tomato sandwiches. I came up out of the hole and put on my shirt and she sat like she sat the day before. Pulled the legs up and put the arms around the legs. I ate away and said nothing at first. At some stage I said hannah was out this morning giving out about her and she laughed and
said she was always trying to escape from her and if she knew she was out here now there would be ructions. She said the cleary women told her to take the tea and the sandwiches out to me and to not be worried about hannah. The cleary women said to her that I would be famished from the heat down in a hole. I said the hole wasn’t too hot at all when you were in it was more on the cold side. And there was no sign of water yet. Asked her about her life in dublin and she said she had good friends in the hospital and shed go for walks and go to dances with them. I said to her the dances must be great fun and she said nothing to that but was I in the mood to go for a bit of a walk. I said a walk was the very thing I needed before going back down into that hole and she laughed and said I should stay out of the hole for as long as I can. Water or no water for the cleary women and their cows and the pony. We left that small field of clearys and went into their next small field. All were hilly fields. The grass parched brown in the sun. Only the furze and the ragworth and the thistles thriving. Strange how that goes. She said did I mind if she smoked. The cleary women did not mind her smoking at all but if hannah or tom caught her smoking there would be trouble. I said not at all I was having one myself. Her sister was far away and tom was even farther away. And it was when we walked through the second field of clearys and were going up the smooth stones going into coughlans field that I turned and put my hand down to her and she put her hand into mine and until we got back to clearys first field where I was digging that destitute hole we did not let go hands. We said only a few words to each other in coughlans field. Small remarks. My breath came heavy and so did hers. That was because of the hands and we knew that. I
was listening to every breath in coughlans big field that went all the way up to the top of the hill. Up through the moss and the big white rocks and the furze bushes. And we looked up at the furze that always looked lovely from a distance. The yellow shine on them. Hearing her breath and trying to hide my own. Then after a while she said the sister would be very cracked at her. Today was the day she told the sister shed pull out the beds and sweep and scrub underneath them. I said I should be back down in the destitute hole. I should have been back down there more than an hour ago I said. She had to bring the curtains she had washed for the clearys in from the line and hang the curtains and that was going to take a good while but she said she had not once thought of curtains and scrubbing floors since we first came up the stones. I said I hadnt thought about being back down in that hole since I looked up and saw her standing at the verge of it more than two hours ago. Closer to three hours even. She lowered her head and said she had to go back to dublin soon. I said when exactly was that and she said it was the day after tomorrow. I remember her saying that still and turning her head away from me and when she turned the head the sunlight lit her hair up something fierce. That fine thick horse hair that I see and smell in my head still. And she squeezed my hand when she turned and I squeezed her hand and I brought it to my mouth. And I said will you come out again and see me tomorrow. And she said she most definitely will. And I said ill look forward to it so much. Ill spend all the seconds from now till then looking forward to it. And she said she will too. Then we walked toward the stone steps and we held hands again and she gathered up the tea things and I stood at the verge of the hole and watched her walk away
and she turned to me and smiled and pushed the hair from her face and waved in a small way. Just the hand shaking once before her forehead. That day it was a pinkish dress that she wore. Or on the third day it was the yellow dress I can’t be fully sure anymore and that day it was the white dress with small blue flowers on it and she wore a white blouse. But that was when we went down the stones into coughlans field.