Where Old Ghosts Meet - Kate Evans [34]
She finished her drink and poured another. Nora passed her glass.
“Back in those days I used to believe that Johnny knew, when he met Matt, that he wouldn’t be comin’ back no more, so he sent him to me, special like. By and by, I come to think it was just fate, that all along this is what God had planned for me. Matt’s ways were strange sometimes, but he brought me what I wanted most of all, the outside world. He knew about everything it seemed. He was full of information, full of stories, real and not so real. I said to him one time after he told me a few of them Arabian Nights yarns, ‘Matt,’ I said, ‘sure, you’re for all the world like that missus Scheherazade, yarn after yarn and no end to it!’ He laughed then, or I should say he made a kind of noise like a laugh. He never laughed, not really. Then he just said, ‘You’ll not chop my head off, if I run out of tales, I hope.’ ‘I might an’ all, so you best look sharp,’ I said.” She laughed again.
“Not indeed that there was much time those days for tellin’ stories. But evenings when the work was done and my father was to bed and I’d have a bit of knittin’ on the go, it’s then he’d tell the stories or read. Best part of the day it was, that hour before bed. My dear, could he tell a story. Oh, you wouldn’t believe! Mind now, there was many on the island those days could tell a good story, especially the old people. We did that all the time at the house parties, especially in the winter. But now Matt, he was different. The voice on him! I don’t know where it came from. He wasn’t a big fella but, my dear, it rumbled about inside of him like a great swell and when it come rollin’ out, well, the power of it! He could command an army with that voice, he could, or be soft enough to put a child to sleep. It was wonderful to hear. And a memory! He never needed a book for the words; it was all in his head, every word. Now times he’d use a book. Said he liked the feel of a book in his hands. I used to watch his long fingers, so elegant, turning pages thin as a butterfly’s wing; they’d make a little crinkling sound as he touched them. I liked that sound. Oftentimes when he wasn’t around, I’d pick up one of them books with the thin pages, open it up and do the same thing just to see if I could get the same feel.”
“And could you?” Nora was amused but touched by the simplicity of the disclosure.
“Yes, girl, but, well, I just wanted to watch him.” Peg looked away. “It sounds foolish, I know.”
“I don’t think it’s foolish,” Nora reassured her.
In a flash Peg’s head came up, their eyes met and her index finger began to tap a determined rhythm on the table top. “It’s true just the same; it’s how it was.” She averted her eyes but not before Nora had seen the glint of unwelcome tears.
“It’s important, Peg. It’s part of your life,” Nora urged. “I want to know.”
“Yes, girl, I know but it’s …” She struggled for a moment, trying desperately to hold on to her composure, then she sat forward in her chair, straightened her back slightly and said, “Never mind, let me get on with it.”
Nora was thinking that maybe a break might be a good idea when Peg found her voice again. It was strong and purposeful. “You know by now he loved books. It’s what he lived for. You saw below in the room.” She pointed vaguely in the direction of the spare bedroom. “Beautiful books.”
“They are beautiful, and valuable.” Nora looked at Peg, wondering if she understood that.
“What you saw is only a part of it,” Peg said. “He never stopped collecting them. Some of them have names of famous people written in them, like they gave them to him for a present. It was a job to pack them up and take them with me but I had to do it; it’s what he would have wanted.”
She nodded her head several times and sipped her whiskey. “After he left home and ran away off, he did what he should have done in the first place, went to Dublin. It was there he really got into the plays an’ all that. He used to talk a lot about the Gaelic League and the Abbey Theatre and all of the goings on in Dublin.