Galore - Michael Crummey [56]
—I thought he’d come to kill me, Virtue said afterwards. —To finish what he’d left unfinished.
—He’s not here to hurt any but himself, the priest said, watching her straighten her skirts matter-of-factly, as if she were laying a tablecloth for dinner. —It may be a long penance he’s after, Mrs. Gallery.
—I’ve no pressing obligation elsewhere, she said.
Father Phelan visited the house every morning and led Virtue through the most varied and perverse acts of love his years of lechery had taught him. Her husband’s ghost a tortured witness to it all. Virtue sat over Phelan’s cock to take the length of it inside her, reaching behind to cup his balls in her hand. —He used to call you a dirty mick priest, Father.
—Oh sweet Jesus, Phelan whispered.
—Said he’d cut off your nuts if you laid a finger on me.
—Oh Christ help us.
The ghost appeared to weep at times, though the tears were dark as soot on his face.
No one was privy to the goings-on at the house in the droke, though there was plenty of speculation about the rituals being performed to rid Mrs. Gallery of the cross her husband had become. Father Phelan was uncharacteristically reticent about the details, though he stayed longer than was his custom. After two months of parading the basest carnal pleasure before Mr. Gallery, Father Phelan asked again if he wished to make confession, but the specter simply muttered in refusal. —He’s a stubborn devil, the priest told Virtue. —It could be years of this ahead of us.
—I trust I can count on you to fulfill your ecclesiastical duties.
—I am the Lord’s servant, he said, and he paused at the door. He said, It’s hard to fault your husband wanting to keep you to himself, Mrs. Gallery.
—He had me to himself, she said.
From that visit forward, the priest stayed at the house in the droke whenever he was on the shore and no one doubted a match of some sort had been made between Father Phelan and Virtue. They were never seen together outside the house, but to Mary Tryphena Devine and every child born after her, Mrs. Gallery was “the priest’s woman.” And Mr. Gallery took his place in a crowded netherworld the youngsters came to know as well as their own, a realm populated by charms for fetching lovers or curing warts, by fairy lore and the old hollies which were the voices of the drowned calling out of the ocean on stormy nights. They inherited their parents’ aversion to the house in the droke, taunting Mr. Gallery as they ran past the little patch of woods or daring one another to sneak close enough to touch the door. That spectral figure on the margins of their lives seemed as ancient and abiding as the ocean itself, and generations after Gallery was sighted for the last time he occupied a dark corner in the dreams of every soul on the shore.
{ 4 }
MARY TRYPHENA DEVINE BORE A CHILD by Judah, just as Devine’s Widow told Selina she would. At the time there was no evidence to support such a claim and Mary Tryphena felt it was the old woman’s certainty that set the world in motion, as if her telling a thing somehow made it so. —You’ll marry Judah, the widow woman said to her, and that will keep him with us.
Lizzie was the only person with gall enough to oppose the old witch but she fell into one of her spells as she tried to bar the wedding party from getting through the door. While they walked over the Tolt, Devine’s Widow asked the girl had she seen the rams mount the sheep or the dogs on one another. Mary Tryphena nodded uncertainly. —Man and wife, Devine’s Widow said cryptically.
Judah helped lift them through the offal hole into his prison on the waterfront and nodded in assent when prompted by the priest during the ceremony. But left alone, Judah seemed as doubtful as Mary Tryphena what should follow. —We’re married you and me, she said. —You know what that means, Jude? The smell of the man was as strong as ever, though in the company of the room’s fishy stink it seemed less oppressive. Mary Tryphena turned away finally, kneeling and lifting her skirts over her waist to