Galore - Michael Crummey [48]
—All right Callum, the priest said. —Do you have a message you’d like passed on to Lizzie at least?
Callum’s chest was a knot of pain, each breath like a fist against his ribs. He nodded. —Yes Father, he said. —I do.
It was after midnight when they reached Selina’s House, Lizzie still sitting beside John Tom’s corpse on the floor. Callum and Jabez lifted the body onto the table. —I’ll be getting home to my own, Jabez said then. —If there’s nothing more I can do for you here.
Virtue had to fight to repress her laughing fit whenever she was in the corpse’s presence, and Lizzie dismissed her. She sent Callum after the servant and he offered his infuriating little bow. —Make the gentleman at home, she said.
Devine’s Widow was holding her hand over the eyes of the corpse, waiting for the lids to close for good. —I can manage this on my own, she said.
—I’ve no doubt, Lizzie whispered.
They began stripping the layers of shirts and undershirts, the foul socks. Rigor mortis still setting in and the head lolled as the body shifted left or right. The old woman pulled the filthy tunic over John Tom’s head in one abrupt tug, working with a cold efficiency, as if she were skinning a rabbit. The absence of life in the flesh she was handling made Lizzie’s stomach turn. John Tom’s chest and belly covered in a thick moss of white hair, the stink of his feet acrid. Callum sitting in the next room. She grabbed the table edge, one of her spells traveling down its black tunnel toward her, and before they managed to remove the man’s trousers she was dead asleep on the floor.
The widow woman called for Callum and he carried Lizzie away to the kitchen, her body almost weightless in his arms, her close-cropped head like a child’s. Virtue stood back by the fire, the laughter finally choked out of her, and Callum sat beside Lizzie on the daybed while she struggled back to herself. He’d never been this close to her, never had the luxury to simply stare and stare. He’d been right to stay clear of her all this time, his hands shaking now he was close enough to touch her, his stomach in an uproar. He’d given her up and should have stayed at home, as the widow told him.
Lizzie’s eyes slurred open, the spell still on her for all she was awake. Callum could see her taking him in, piecing together why he was there, remembering John Tom dead in the next room. He said, You cut your hair, and she managed a half-smile that made his chest ache.
—Miss made me cut it off her, Virtue said, and told me to burn it all.
—Burn it?
—Virtue, Lizzie said, would you give us a moment.
They watched one another as the housekeeper closed the door of the kitchen behind her. —Even Virtue has a man comes knocking at all hours and won’t take no for an answer, Lizzie said.
—I never wanted to see you here, Callum said. —Like this.
—We could have run off.
He shook his head. —I didn’t want that either.
—What did you want, Callum?
He glanced at his boots, feeling foolish. He’d known all along that the grudge between his mother and King-me stood in the way of the match, though as far as he could figure the feud stemmed from a disputed hen, a trifle invested with weight by time and pigheadedness. A stubbornness of his own was all he thought necessary to overcome the squabble. Each year on the anniversary of Lizzie’s Easter pageant he had walked into Paradise Deep, standing before King-me’s desk to ask for the girl’s hand, thinking the man would eventually have to acquiesce to the obvious. But King-me’s one-word refusals insisted something illicit was all they could look forward to. And Callum was too pigheaded himself to allow the man to force that upon them.
He looked at Lizzie squarely now, her wounded girl’s features, the ragged haircut. —I couldn’t let you waste