Shannon

  “God, Bobby,” called somebody else, “you'd take a drink off of a child.”

  Said Bobby, “Doesn't everybody in the parish know I'd suck a pint off a sore leg.”

  The door burst open and a hook-nosed man charged in, carrying an ax over his shoulder, his face blurting with annoyance.

  “They got it,” he said. “Oh, Jesus, and more.”

  “More?” someone cried in an aghast voice.

  “The shaggers. Eight thousand more. The shaggers. Ah, look, there's no shaggin’ justice.”

  By now Robert more or less guessed that the auction had gone well for the disliked vendors.

  He began to drift away.

  “You're not goin’?” cried one man.

  They raised their glasses to him as he left. Within minutes he would be within sight of his river; the day had come sunny again, with a breeze now on the water.

  Robert looked at his watch: five o'clock. Ellie might be home by now. He reached a bridge over a stream that flowed into the river and stood to look down into the water. An undercurrent, probably swirling beneath the legs of the little bridge, was causing a vortex that generated a short backflow, and the water formed ravishing patterns in the sun and shade. As he walked across the bridge, Robert stared at the stream's hypnotic spinning— and was snapped out of it by the sound of wailing.

  Ahead of him, a man leaned on the farther end of the bridge, an elderly man, his elbows on the parapet's shelf and his face buried in his hands. He wept like a child, his breath catching in surges of distress. Robert stood, fearing intrusion. Not able to bear it further, he asked, “Are you all right, sir?”

  The man, without lifting or turning his face, waved Robert away, a gesture so strong and dismissive that Robert walked quickly and softly past him and crossed the bridge without looking back.

  When he reached the house, Ellie had returned. Vivid with agitation, she said, “Did you hear what happened?”

  He said, “I saw a man weeping on the bridge.”

  “They shot Michael Collins.”

  Robert looked blank. “I don't know enough—”

  “That's as bad for us as when they shot President Lincoln,” she said.

  She explained to him the circumstances of Collins's reputation and the intricacies of the Irish civil war.

  Robert said, “I had my own civil war.” He told her of the dying boy in the fields, the gunfire on the riverbank, the soldiers at the sandbags in Limerick, the strangling gunmen in Clonmacnoise, the truckload of troops firing bullets into the trees. Ellie stared at him, appalled.

  He told her about the pub. She was walking in and out of the house, preparing the table outside for yet another alfresco meal in the glorious weather, and he moved in and out, talking to her; he was full of energy and vim.

  Ellie stopped to look at him. He was gesturing and handsome and fine. She walked around the table, and Robert, smiling like the sun, held his arms out to her.

  Dinner did not take place immediately. Ellie led him to the hallway, still holding hands after a long silent embrace. Robert looked more lucid than she had seen him since France, the hesitations and blinkings far fewer than at any time since his arrival at her house. And yet she had to be so careful.

  She tried to remain objective, aware of the dangers of emotional shock. They edged up the stairs, with him talking all the time, trying to remember for her as much as he could of the pub conversation. Step after step they stopped and stood, as his excitement continued and her agitation increased.

  Robert Shannon, the chaplain of forces, the war hero, the young pastor from the Berkshires— those green rolling hills of New England so startlingly like the Ireland that he had come to see— this man could not have defined, summarized, or described that moment. His personal familiarities and intimacies had all been subsumed to his life in the cloth of a priest, and the only women who had ever touched his naked skin had been his mother and her housekeeper— and not since he was seven years old.

  Except for the war: Day after night, Nurse Kennedy had tended to his needs; she was the one who bathed him while he exhaled after the wheat field. Did he remember that? Did he recall her touch? Who's to say? If he did, he still wouldn't have been able to articulate it.

  And so, in this well-run and peaceful white house with a yellow door, in the center of Ireland, on the banks of the River Shannon near Lanes-borough, in the dog days of August 1922, two forces collided.

  One was a mature young woman, daily accustomed to viewing and handling the human body, a girl clearheaded and wise about herself: a girl who for two days of her life had held in her arms a young blond Australian man who looked like a god and who made her laugh to her belly, and who, within weeks of climbing out of her arms, bled his guts out in the foreign snow of a futile war; a girl who every night and most days ever since had longed for the renewal of that side of herself and now had, alone, under her own roof, the only man she had ever truly been compelled by, even if that was a shameful comparison to make with her husband of the war. The other force was a man two years younger than herself, a tender and beloved pastor, who could calm wild boys and men, who could console the suddenly bereft, who could find jobs for people where there were no factories, who could ignite a congregation to tears and smiles in the same sentence; a man whom war had blooded, whom war had blooded more fiercely than it had blooded anybody else except the dead, and who had disappeared from that war into a dread-filled place of bones, blood, and vile dreams where, for months at a time, nobody could reach him, a man who had come slowly back into the world and had only been able to do so by behaving like a ghost taking on the flesh he had worn while he was alive.

  When Ellie walked through the doorway of her room, Robert followed her; he followed her with no hint or falter, no hesitation or doubt. She expected awkwardness. She expected wonder. She expected tears, perhaps. What she got was a man who lowered himself into her bare arms, who said to her that he had never met anybody who so understood the world from his viewpoint and who made him feel so safe and worthwhile.

  In the Ireland of 1922, virginity dominated the lives of single women, and the relevant fire and brimstone rained down every Sunday from pulpits all over the country.

  If looked at with any sociological objectivity it would have made a fascinating study— a celibate clergy preaching intensive chastity. To say that they might have done so from envy is too facile and does not give the subject the respect demanded by its complexity— for complex it was. The Church had always insisted universally on the outlawing of coition outside marriage.

  A cynical sociologist would have argued that the Church wanted people to marry and produce many many Catholics, thus increasing the Church's world presence. By outlawing any congress before the wedding bells rang, they saw that appetites would heighten, and in countries such as Ireland many marriages took place because of deep sexual frustration.

  In Ireland, however, another factor strengthened the taboo, a factor that dominated the country's psyche with a passion far more powerful than two hearts beating as one. That factor was land. Nobody wanted illegitimate birth disputes when it came to inheriting family farms. Thus, given that and the Church's weight, in the atmosphere of rural Ireland throughout Ellie Kennedy's adolescence and womanhood, there were few taboos greater than pregnancy outside wedlock.

  Ellie Kennedy, however, had traveled and been to war, and inside that war she had, as she said to herself, “been married, known, and widowed in months.” The embargoes of her youth and her society held few terrors for her anymore; she knew from close and frightful experience too much about Life's brutish face. If she didn't deliberately set out to gather rosebuds while she might, she certainly meant to fill her basket if they fell from the trees in her own garden.

  And she owned her land.

  This was just as well, because she was now breaking an even greater taboo. A priest and a young widow together in bed? On a scale greater than robbery with violence, not much below child murder, no greater scand
al could be imagined. Everything about it sang out to be judged. But the couple in each other's arms never paused to think of this.

  That early evening, Robert slept again. Ellie could scarcely bear not to wake him in order to see his eyes as remembrance came into them. She got out of bed and knelt on the floor by his side of the bed, her face a foot away from his, waiting for him to wake up, and her heart raced from disbelieving joy to anxiety and up to fear. When he did wake it took him a moment, and then he focused and saw her, smiled, and held out his arms again.

  Robert Shannon and Ellie Kennedy spent all night— and all the next day and the day after and the day after that— in heat and food and wildness that grew wilder, in laughter, a few— very few— tears, and talk, talk, talk. Nothing else in the world existed outside that house; they barely remembered to bring in the milk daily before it went sour.

  On the fourth day they rested— a little. Robert had become so enthralled with his newfound land that he could not bear for Ellie to leave his sight— and especially his touch.

  The house rang with their noise. They woke during the night. During the day they went back to bed. Soon the balance of their circumstances began to level off and their bodies relaxed into these new shapes and sizes whose permanence felt so assured between them.

  Not far from the house, the river had an arrow-straight length of just over 100 yards. In Ellie's childhood her father had stuck markers on one bank. White-painted stakes said START and FINISH, and other posts marked off yardage in between at 25, 50, and 75. The stretch of water typically ran with hardly a ripple.

  Robert emerged from the house— having got out of bed— at about six o'clock in the evening of the fifth day of lovemaking and came down to this stretch of water. Some trees obscured the setting sun, and when it emerged from behind them and shone on the river he could see the deep-down things of the riverbed. The water turned from gray to silver-green to red under the evening light.

  On the grassy bank he stood and looked all around him. He saw nothing other than a small bird dipping from one copse to another. He saw nothing other than three cows in a far-off meadow across the water, sitting placid as aunts on their green rug. He saw nothing other than the shivering, dense green leaves of the grove through which he had walked from the garden. Turning this way and that to feel the air, he then made himself revolve with his arms out in a 360-degree circle.

  Still surprised that he didn't feel more confused, still amazed at his relaxation in this new and wonderful drama, he began to undress. He had left the house in bare feet, a shirt, and pants. Not a word had he said.

  If he had to describe what he sought by coming down to the river like this— at sunset, to immerse himself, in solitude— he would have been surprised not to reach for the word cleanse. But he didn't feel he had become unclean in any way— in fact, he believed the river might add to, and support, the joyful and fierce experience through which he had just been living. He took off all his clothes.

  Dive in like a sportsman or walk in like a pilgrim? Out of habit, he made a Sign of the Cross, held his arms out from his body, and walked slowly down the grassy bank to the spit of mud that gave access to the water beside the START post. A tress of weed trailed and swayed.

  The water's cold temperature shocked him, yet he kept walking. Insofar as he could gauge from the bank, he expected that the median depth would reach to his breastbone. When he arrived at this point he lowered himself slowly— down, down— until the waters of his river closed over his head.

  Holding his breath comfortably he stayed down, savoring the flow of a strong current beneath the surface and relishing the utter coolness of the water's texture.

  When he broke the surface again, he faced south and began to swim, trying to keep his body as high in the water as he could. He swam slowly, each crawl stroke a deliberate and powerful forward action, in which he also sought— while in no hurry— to break the surface of the water as little as possible. From a distance, a passerby who could not see the river would not have heard him either.

  Robert covered the hundred yards slowly and then turned and came back against the current. For the next half hour or so he swam the makeshift course and deliberately prevented himself from thinking; this, he believed, was a moment for feeling and nothing else.

  By now, in the water, he knew he had come down here to swim because he looked to the Shannon for some undefined spiritual effect. Was it a harking back to stream-of-life thoughts he had enjoyed as a student, some remote biblical echo? Would that help explain some things, such as—lack of guilt?

  He settled for a series of different sensuous responses: an awareness of his own body as never before, a triggering of sensations that had been suppressed and banished for as long as he could recall, a delight in a new relaxation he had never known existed.

  To conclude his quiet investigation, he decided to swim the course once more— and this time he swam like a racer, with furious strokes and as much mastery of his breathing as he could call up from his swim-team days.

  Unknown to him, Ellie stood watching from a distance. When she had found him absent she had come straight to the river. Now, as she saw him swimming, she felt no further anxiety and walked back to the house at speed.

  Robert never saw her; by the time he climbed out at the FINISH post she had gone from view. He stood and swung his arms to dry them. With the sun on the water, the mud he had churned settled back again, and near the shore the riverbed began to appear like a lovely mosaic. Stones materialized, smooth and beige, some even golden.

  He found a patch of sunlight and stood in it, turning his body to have it dried. Already he could tell that tomorrow would become as hot as Ireland ever permitted— perhaps even as warm as a pleasant July day in New England. And he laughed out loud as he suddenly anticipated how the heat of the day would be spent.

  At that moment, three men on the island of Ireland had deep and insufficiently known connections to each other. One, Robert Shannon, knew absolutely nothing of the movements of the other two, not even that one of them existed.

  Another, Archbishop Anthony Sevovicz, floundered a hundred miles to the south. Cast out, as he saw it, by the Mullens at Clonmacnoise, he picked up no trail and found no help. He could scarcely divine north, south, east, and west, and his control of himself had begun to diminish. He had no options. He didn't know where to go and, even if he did, when he got there he didn't know what people were saying to him. Worst of all, the desperate need to find Robert Shannon had become supplanted by the almost hysterically frantic need to find Robert Shannon's pursuer.

  He, Vincent Patrick Ryan, had better luck. Fifteen minutes after Robert returned to the house after his Shannon baptism, Mr. Vincent stood on Ellie Kennedy's doorstep.

  He looked splendid. The bicycling wind had tanned his face, and the Irish food had bulked him a little. The dark eyes seemed to contain a universe. He exuded the self-possession that made him such a good cook and faultless killer.

  She heard the strong crack of the door knocker. Before she could answer it, the doorbell rang too— such insistence. Robert, upstairs, heard neither.

  Ellie had been making lemon curd. The dog sat sleeping in a pool of late sunlight coming through the window.

  Wiping her hands and frowning in wonder, Ellie walked along the corridor. Her long loose cotton dress flowed like light itself.

  As she walked, she tried to identify, her head to one side, the big stranger in the open doorway. With the light behind him she couldn't see his features until she stood directly in front of him.

  When she reached the door she moved a little forward of him, so that he turned his face partially to the light.

  Evidently an American; the hair, the face, the size, and the sheen told her that. As did the good manners and, at first sound, the accent.

  “Ma'am, forgive me.”

  “Hello?” Sweetly she held out a hand, in which he could have broken every bone just by clasping it.

  “I was traveling throu
gh, ma'am, and I heard that a fellow American might just be staying here.”

  Ellie smiled again. The accent— is it American? Well, maybe Boston? Perhaps. Or—Irish?

  “Well, of course, come in. And you're right, there is another American here. Come in.”

  She turned and led the way to the kitchen. Vincent Patrick Ryan followed— along the same corridor, past the same mysterious closed doors, past The Falls of Doonass, across the same round lobby, and into the embracing warmth of the kitchen.

  “My goodness,” said Vincent, as he stood in the kitchen. “What a terrific house. And somebody is making lemonade.”

  The dog half rose and— uncharacteristically— did not come forward.

  Ellie smiled. “You have a good nose. I'm making lemon pie. Now, can I get you a drink or a cup of tea? When did you last eat? What's your name?”

  As she fired these questions, she moved to boil water for tea. She also kept looking at him, with a “Don't I know you?” look— which he began to return. He got there first.

  “You”—he paused and pointed one of his large fingers—”weren't you … a nurse?”

  Ellie put the kettle down on the hearth with a little bang. “Oh, my God,” she said. “You were at Bouresches.”

  “I was, ma'am.”

  “I met you.”

  He recalled it at the same time. “You were very kind to me.”

  “No, I wasn't.” She laughed. “I kept trying to find out if you were wounded. Did you ever get as much as a scratch?”

  “No, ma'am.”

  She put a hand on her hip as she stood there and looked at him. “Well, well, well.”

  “I could say the same thing myself, ma'am.”

  Ellie said, “I can't remember your name.”

  “Nor I yours, ma'am.”

  “I'm Nurse Kennedy.”

  He smiled his perfect smile. “Vincent Ryan.”

  “My name is Ellie,” she said, and turned to put the kettle to boil. When she turned back she said, “Sit down, won't you? Now, how do you happen to be here?”