An animal lowed in the distance and some nocturnal creature landed on the roof of the lean-to and scratched and clattered there before flying away, and a car passed through the village downhill from them as Kit tried in vain to form all her questions into one. The girl had spoken now, and still Kit knew as little as she had before she spoke. She felt again her temper rising for the third time and this time it heated fast and exploded upwards like boiling milk and she heard herself shouting and she was surprised at the loudness of herself and at the words that were coming from her mouth. What did you think, Moll, in the name of God? That you were the first person in the world to have a dark thought? How is it you hadn’t a tongue in your head for twenty years and now you’ve said more in a few days than any woman has a right to say in a lifetime? What kind of patience do you think your father and me were given? Could you not have written a letter in all the time you were gone? I’ll tell you what’s wrong with you, Mary Gladney. You’ve too much time for yourself. You give yourself too much consideration altogether. ’Tis our own fault. Mine and your father’s. We made a fool out of you, mollycoddling you, asking nothing of you, allowing you to sit there grinning and never asking you to do a hand’s turn. You thought too much about yourself, so you did. Little lady of the manor, you were. You did things? You did, I’d say. Whatever they were they were the first things you ever did. I don’t know what the things you did were and, God help me, God help us all, I hope I never know. Lord Jesus, your poor father. You’ll be the death of him. That good man. Gone off into Nenagh to try and sort out your dirty, dirty mess. God help us all.
Kit Gladney found herself for the first time raising her hand to her child, and Moll’s eyes were closed tight and her cheeks were wet with tears and the strength left Kit’s arm and she lowered it to her side. Moll was here now, changed but whole. All the other parts of her daughter’s story, she knew, would reveal themselves piecemeal, or could lie unobserved in the gloom of the past. And the nature of the things that Moll had done, which she felt such shame over, took solid shape in Kit’s imagination for short moments and fragmented again and melted away, like the patterns of light on the insides of her eyes, when she squeezed them tight shut, that bloomed and starred and disappeared when she tried to fix her focus on them. As far as she could tell her daughter had killed no one, had stolen from no one, had harmed no one only herself. And what about it now if she had strange urges? Kit had felt the sickly sweet breath of such things herself, one time. She’d never acted on them but then again she’d never had the opportunity. She was busy minding her parents and her brother and sister until the old people died in quick succession and her silent brother married, and then her sister, to a man with a good job and a Pioneer pin, and then she got married herself and Paddy had been close to forty but he’d been full of conjugal enthusiasm and they’d made up in the light of grace for a lot of time spent longing. If Moll had sinned her sins would be forgiven. Moll had been sent a trial, had been cast into the desert to hear all the devil’s invitations to treat and to deal with them. She could cleanse herself quite easily. All that was required for forgiveness was contrition, and that was evident in abundance, and there were plenty of confessionals in the country besides the one that Father Coyne rested his great bulk in every Friday afternoon and evening; Paddy and herself could easily drive the child in the road to Limerick city, or over as far as Birr or Tullamore or any of those places and they all full of dark and welcoming confessionals of carved oak where returned prodigals could bare their sorrows to gauze-blinded priests, and it was unlikely there’d be anything said to any confessor that wasn’t heard before, and Moll could light a whole bank of candles after her prayers of penance, and Kit would gladly help to fund the lighting of them, and they’d carry her back with every stain and smirch removed from her precious tormented soul.
And Kit said as much to Moll, and said that she was sorry for shouting and for calling her that name, and Moll looked as though she might be getting back to herself, coming to some kind of an accommodation with herself and with her situation, and Kit went to the hearth seat to embrace her, and there wasn’t a screed of embarrassment or awkwardness between them that was ever known, in spite of all the alien talk and shouted words that had passed between them, and they clung tight to each other a good long while, and they forgot momentarily all the dramas of the day and the mission that Paddy had been sent on, and all their fears and worries melted away in the warmth of the open fire and one another’s arms, and after a while they heard the sound of a car on the lane, and it was Paddy’s car, and they went to the door to greet him, and they saw in the passenger seat the eyes and the ears and the mouth and the white teeth and the tie-knotted neck of a man. A black man. Alexander. Kit had known in some part of herself that this would happen. That, in spite of the way he’d gone off all revs and hard business for himself, and in spite of the clear mandate he’d been given at the door of this house, and in spite of his stated intention and the envelope of banknotes he’d been equipped with, Paddy Gladney would land back from town with the black man in tow. And that he’d have some kind of a half-baked sob story as to why. And he went about starting the sob story in the moonlit yard before even getting the black man out of the car, but Kit cut him off, and said, Get him in. Get him in this instant before anyone passes up the way and sees us. And it was clear when Paddy opened the passenger door and put his hand in to help the black man to extract himself that the black man was drunk: his head was wobbling on his shoulders and there was a breeze of porter wafting from him, and he was making some kind of an attempt at talking but all that was coming from him was a low, strangled noise, and Moll was standing beside her father now looking in at the black man and she was saying, Oh, Alex, why are you drunk? You don’t even drink. And the black man was looking up at her now from his reverie and his mouth had stretched and broadened into a smile of the whitest teeth that Kit had ever seen and his eyes were shining with drunkenness and love. And Kit could see that this pair were far better acquainted, and had more between them, than her daughter had let on. And Kit knew further, though she wasn’t exactly sure how she knew, that this long, suited stranger was going to be a part of all their lives.
Alexander was helped inside and put sitting at the table and was given tea and a plate of ham and bread and a saucer of butter and a knife and fork. But still his head was wobbling and his eyes were full of watery light, and he was saying, Thank you, thank you, over and over again, and that was all he seemed at the time to have to say for himself. His hands were twice the size at least of Moll’s, and Moll had one of them held in both of hers, and she was looking imploringly at him, and she was on the verge of getting cross, and she was saying, Alex, how on earth did you find me? And she was telling him that he shouldn’t be here, he shouldn’t have come.
Kit stood by the sink with one hand on the cold rim of it and one hand on her hip, and Paddy sat across from Alexander and his daughter, and he said he’d had no choice but to get Alexander away from the town and out here to safety. When he’d arrived at the door of Grenham’s he was told by the lady of the house that she’d put the black man out because he’d abused her. He’d taken offence because she’d rung the barracks to inform them of his presence and had told them his business, as she’d put it, but she assured Paddy that that hadn’t been the case at all, that two young guards had been in the café downstairs having a cup of tea and a sandwich earlier in the day, two of the new lads fresh from Templemore, and that they’d observed the black man with their own four eyes and they’d heard him with their own four ears asking people did they know whereabouts was Knockagowny and did anyone know a girl called Moll Gladney, and it was they radioed the Masontown barracks and it was likely Benjy Crossley who had phoned the parochial house in Youghalarra and none of it was her doing but all the same he stuck in her and addressed her as woman and she certainly wasn’t having any of that from anyone. Out on his ear he was put.