Galore - Michael Crummey [118]
Matthew said, It was only a bit of fun we were having, Eli.
John Blade brought Eli a drink and they all sat in silence awhile.
—I never meant disrespect to Hannah, Eli said. He was speaking directly to John, watching the girl’s father in the light of the candle. —I never said anything meant to raise her hopes. She’s a fine girl, Mr. Blade.
John Blade nodded and refilled glasses all around and they carried on drinking. Hannah came into the tiny kitchen an hour later, woken by the racket. Her presence in the doorway shushed them and Eli watched in silence as she took her drunken father by the elbow to help him to his bedroom. As soon as she was out of sight, James and Matthew crept to the door. They lived in houses to either side of John and Magdalen and were suddenly anxious to get home. Matthew pushed James out into the cold and turned back to the kitchen. —Hold her off for us, Eli, he said. —For the love of Christ.
When Hannah came back to the kitchen she was carrying a quilt. —You can lie out there, she said, pointing to the daybed near the stove.
—I was just on my way home, he said.
—That’s a long walk this time of night.
He fixed her with a drunken look. Thick red hair, delicately freckled hands clutching the quilt. He’d held one of those hands an afternoon when he was ten, rescuing her from a pirate lair on the barrens, a simple childish affection between them. It was the first time she’d let anyone not her family touch the webbed skin between her fingers.
—What is it you wants, Eli? she asked him.
—Out, he said. —Elsewhere.
—And what do you expect to find elsewhere?
He gestured around the room, too drunk to censor himself. —Not this, he said.
—Well then, she said and she settled the quilt closer to her belly. —You watch yourself going home, she told him.
Barnaby Shambler died during an afternoon debate at the Colonial Building in St. John’s. He’d gained a reputation as a napper in his latter years, snoring quietly through the business of government, and to all appearances the Legislature’s most senior member had simply fallen asleep. But he couldn’t be roused when it came time to vote on the tabled bill and was pronounced dead by one of the handful of doctors who served as elected members in the House. His body was shipped to Paradise Deep for what turned out to be the last funeral officiated by the Reverend Eldred Dodge.
Dodge was spry for a man in his nineties. He lived alone without an ache or complaint all the years of his widowhood but the wind of old age seemed to catch him broadside with Shambler no longer before him to bear the brunt. He took to his bed after the Honorable Member was laid to rest and never stood on his feet again. Adelina and Flossie Sellers attended him, the two women holding hands as they sat at his bedside. Adelina moved into the manse when it was clear he wouldn’t recover, reading from the Gospels or simply keeping watch as the man slept. The morning of the day he died, she suggested a visit from Reverend Violet and Dodge shook his head on the pillow. —Send the other one round, he said.
—What other one?
—Reddigan.
The two men had little in common other than a shared distaste for the Methodist faith. It inspired a devotion too close to mania for the priest’s liking, too close to sex for the Anglican. The congregation singing and rocking on their heels and praying to the rafters. It was appetite Reverend Violet was feeding with his Glory Hallelujah, with his Ye must be born again. And both Dodge and Reddigan distrusted appetite as a moral compass.
—Thank you for coming, Father.
—You’ve seen to more than a few of my flock in your time, Reverend.
Dodge lifted a hand. —I was all they had to look to, he said. He seemed to drift a few moments before he said, You never met the widow, Father. Devine’s Widow?
—She was long gone by the time I got here.
—I went to see her before she died. A hundred if she was a day. Dodge closed his eyes. —She was a loathsome creature, Father.
—This wouldn’t be the time, Reddigan said, to dwell on such things.
But it was too late