Paddy followed a very short trail to the bar of the Swagman’s Inn two doors down from Grenham’s where he’d found Alexander on a high stool drinking a pint of Guinness. And a small ring of blackguards around him, laughing at him. Mickey Briars and Scaldy Collins and a few more Paddy didn’t recognize, real townies. And Scaldy Collins was in his official IRA uniform, or the half of it he had left, the jumper and the black beret, and he was making out he was a real high-ranking Republican altogether, asking Alexander where was he from and what his business was and what his affiliations were and was he a British soldier or a British spy and Alexander was the worse for the porter he’d been drinking, and he was laughing away thinking it was all only a great bit of sport, and Paddy had a strong sense from the first moment he laid eyes on him that there was no harm whatever in the boy, in spite of the length of him and the great size of his hands and the blackness of his skin. And he’d only been drinking porter in the first place out of pure politeness, Lar Grace the barman told Paddy, or so it seemed to Lar anyway, because of the way he was after landing in, suitcase in hand, as a refugee from Grenham’s guesthouse, God help us.
And Paddy swelled a bit as he told the next part, about how he’d elbowed his way into the middle of the circle of shapers and said, Alexander, I’m Paddy Gladney, it’s nice to meet you, and he’d put his hand out to Alexander and Alexander had shaken it, and Scaldy Collins had clicked his boot heels and ordered Paddy to stand down, and Paddy had rounded on Scaldy and told him to go on away to fuck out of it, to go up the fucking North if he was so eager to fight the British, besides standing around in pubs three hundred miles from any danger, in his fancy dress in the middle of a gang of go-boys spouting shite, outnumbering an innocent visitor to these shores by five to one. And Scaldy had taken fierce offence at this, and had issued all sorts of warnings to Paddy, about being a colluder and a collaborator, and what might happen to people like that, and Paddy had looked him square in the eye and told him he talked a great fight, and Mickey Briars had creased up laughing at this, and he’d agreed with Paddy, saying, It’s true, Scaldy, in all fairness to Paddy that is pure true. If talk could free Ireland we’d have the six counties back long ago and you’d be crowned fucking High King!
And after a while the black man, whose name they knew now to be Alexander Elmwood, came around a bit and he ate a good share of the ham and bread and he drank a mug of tea but he snubbed the butter and Paddy thought it odd that a man would eat a sandwich dry like that but he knew enough about the world to know that darkies had different habits from whites, were composed differently, had different constitutions. And Alexander Elmwood begged their pardon several times over, though it wasn’t clear for what it was being begged, his inebriation they supposed, and every time he spoke Moll shushed him and squeezed his hand to stay his words, and he rose for a finish and asked the whereabouts of their facilities, and Paddy and Kit were concomitant in their thanks to God that they’d built an indoor lavatory with a sink and mirror the year that Moll had been sent the pains of womanhood. And Alexander Elmwood stooped beneath the low lintel and shuffled long-legged and rumpled down the short hallway, and they listened to him retching and vomiting, and Kit told Moll to take him down a fresh towel, and she did, and she was gone a long while, and Kit and Paddy strained to listen to the low mutters of their conversation but they could pick up none of it, and Moll came back up the hall on her own, and she said she’d put him into her bed and she would sleep in with her mother that night and Daddy would have to sleep with Alexander, and never in his wildest imaginings did Paddy Gladney ever think that his first night sleeping without his wife alongside him since the day his daughter was born would be spent inside in a bed with a gigantic drunken black man.
But Alexander was out cold and he hardly stirred when Paddy joined him and the next morning Paddy was up with the lark and he checked before he left for his rounds of farm and roads that the stranger was still breathing, so quiet and still was he, and when he went out to the kitchen Kit was waiting with his tea and toast and she had tarts made and ready for the oven, and there wasn’t much to be said between them, they’d have to go about their day as normal and see what the evening brought, and Kit kissed her husband’s cheek before he left, as tenderly as she ever had, and when Paddy Gladney arrived home that early afternoon having walked the land and done his bit of foddering and his round of post up hill and down valley, he found his wife and his daughter and Alexander Elmwood at three sides of his kitchen table, and there was a chair waiting for him on the fourth side, and Kit said, Sit down, Paddy, I have something to tell you, and Moll Gladney and Alexander Elmwood looked across at one another and were silent. Kit’s voice was even and measured, and had an edge of culture to it not normally present, except when speaking to Ellen Jackman or Father Coyne or to her brother’s wife on the payphone in the village once or twice a year. She sounded a bit like a newsreader or a continuity announcer on Raidió Éireann. And the strange sound and the levelness of her deadpan delivery were nearly as amazing as the news she was calmly breaking.
Moll and Alexander have a son, Joshua, who is at this moment sequestered in the Coachman’s Inn in Borris-in-Ossory, in the company and care of his grandparents, Barney and Delilah Elmwood. Alexander left them there yesterday when the Dublin to Limerick bus made its usual convenience stop, and he continued on alone to find his wife. Wife? Yes, Paddy. Our daughter is a married woman. This man, Alexander Elmwood, of Notting Hill, west London, is our son-in-law and the father of our grandchild.
Go on, Paddy said, and felt immediately foolish. Shouldn’t he have more to say than that? But they were married at least, they had a certificate to prove it from the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, and Kit pushed a letter across the table towards him, and Moll handed him his reading glasses, and the letter was written in blue ink and it was from a priest explaining, in a curt, backwards-tending cursive, that he had married this couple, she a Roman Catholic and he a Pentecostalist, in the church of Saint Francis of Assisi in Notting Hill on the first day of July 1977, and both parties had sworn to raise children of their union in the Catholic faith. Paddy Gladney reddened at the thought of it. His daughter fat with sin at the altar of an English church. Who was there? he asked. At the wedding? Only the priest and Barney and Delilah, the girl said. And a sacristan from Mayo and an organist who was nearly blind. Small mercies, Paddy said. And he recovered himself a little. Maybe he was wronging her. He didn’t want to think too much about times and what might have happened in what order. And, anyway, she was a married woman now and beyond reproach. He whistled softly. A blind organist! By God. That’s a fair one. His daughter pressed her advantage. Yes, Daddy. She had a white stick and everything. She came that day especially. She came as a favour to the priest. By God, her father said again. That is a good one.
Still Alexander was silent, looking steadily at the tabletop, but Paddy could see that he was smiling, and there was something childish and genuine in the boy’s smile. Something that would cause you to trust him out of hand. But Paddy knew the danger trust could lead you into. How ill-advised it was to believe your waters when smooth would run so for ever, and not rush and break to torrents.
Kit went on in the same placid and heightened tone: Joshua, our grandchild, is just shy of a year old. Mr and Mrs Elmwood have travelled to Ireland with their son and their grandson, to see could they reunite child with mother, and husband with wife, so that the natural order of things might be restored.