Galore - Michael Crummey [43]
Callum had seen Ralph Stone carry the girl into the house and he came up from the Rooms in time to see Lizzie sit up on the table, looking about herself like she was drunk. She insisted she was fine and refused all offers of help getting home but Callum escorted her over the Tolt Road regardless. He did her the favor of asking no questions about what she had done to give Ralph Stone the shakes. He walked a little ways behind her and he sang to himself as they went, though not in the distracted, fragmented fashion of the African. Most of his tunes were Irish but she had the distinct impression he knew them whole and carried each from start to finish. He stopped behind her when they were within sight of Selina’s House to let her carry on by herself and she felt immediately lonely without his voice for company. —I liked your play, Lizzie, he said to her as she went. —You made a fine Mary.
She had to force herself not to look behind.
—That angel of the Lord was some sook though, he said.
She didn’t see Callum again until Christmas when he came to Selina’s House in the wake of a group of mummers. The children weren’t allowed downstairs when mummers invaded the kitchen but she and the boys sat on the landing to listen to their songs and drunken foolishness. She saw him come in, unmasked, and he smiled up where she huddled in the gloom at the top of the stairs. He bowed slightly. —Mother Mary, he said. Not a hint of mockery in his voice. Selina chased the children to their rooms when she found them there but Lizzie could hear Callum sing through the floor. An English air about the love of a dark-haired maid she recognized from their first encounter, and even the drunken mummers fell silent in the presence of what felt like a private moment. He left as soon as the song ended and she crept back to the stairs to see him out. Callum bowing his head again on his way through the door, as if something had been sealed between them.
Lizzie was fourteen when King-me took the entire family to England for her coming-out. During the voyage Selina taught Lizzie the dances that were fashionable when she was a girl. She was outfitted with stays and pannier and open-robed skirts to wear over a pink quilted petticoat, a black silk bonnet with a porcelain brooch, and she was paraded at masquerades and dances and church services, at teas and dinners arranged for eligible young men to have a view of her. She had the tiny features of her mother and a mane of coal-black hair that fell half the length of her back, and there was plenty of interest in her company.
A private audience was requested by a sharp-nosed twenty-six-year-old and they were sent off in a carriage circling a public garden. He did his best to engage Lizzie in conversation about pheasant hunting and French décolletage, his accent and concerns so affected he seemed cartoonish. He made the Newfoundlanders who visited her father with their endless stories of giant squid and shipwrecks and bad drink seem worldly. It struck her suddenly that her father intended her to marry such a one as this fart-faced bore. The notion was so disturbing that a spell overtook her and she nodded off while he talked.
On two other occasions she fell asleep in the presence of suitors and she was stared at and whispered about in the same way she had been at home. Eventually she refused to leave her room altogether. King-me tried threatening her from the other side of the door but it was clear that she’d poisoned her chances at a match in the West Country, perhaps in the whole of England. He and Selina turned their attention to finding a suitable girl to take back to Newfoundland as a housekeeper, so as not to have wasted the trip entirely.
Selina paced the deck endlessly on the voyage home and if the wind was up Lizzie walked with her to keep the willow of a woman from being blown into the ocean. Selina was distracted and melancholy and seemed in no mood for conversation, which suited Lizzie fine. Virtue