They let her talk and talk away, and she got up from bed and dressed herself in her old clothes and she appeared out to the kitchen and took her old seat at the hearth, and the sight of her sitting there where she had always sat, in the light of the open fire in the jeans and blouse that Kit had bought for her inside in Gough, O’Keeffe and Naughton’s in Nenagh the Christmas before she left, hanging perhaps a little looser on her now but still fitting well, caused Kit Gladney almost unconsciously to place her hand across her chest and gently pound her heart in thanksgiving. It was true that Moll had taken up smoking, and they passed no remark on this, but Kit saw how shyly she took the box from her small, worn handbag the first time, and how her hand shook as she struck her match, how she regarded them side-eyed as she puffed her filtered cigarette ablaze, and how she grew in boldness as that first full day wore on, so that the smoking of cigarettes revealed itself to be a practised thing with her, second nature. And Kit saw how Paddy smoked with her though he’d never really been a smoker, just to put her at her ease, lovely, foolish Paddy, always doing his damnedest to ease the way of others. Kit watched and listened as Moll told story after story about the different people she’d met and worked alongside and served in the grocery shop and the hotel, and the digs she’d stayed in run by a cousin of the forklift driver from Cavan. Kit watched Moll’s eyes, lit by the flames that licked the bake pot in the open fire, as she sat in her old place on the hearth seat, with Paddy across from her on the far hearth seat. Kit saw how Moll’s eyes searched Paddy’s face for approval as she told each story, and none of the stories telling anything or revealing anything, really, about why she had left in the first place, and how in the name of all that’s good and holy she could put her poor parents through five long years of living death, and flounce back in that door smoking fags and spouting stupid stories about Pakistanis and chandeliers and forklift drivers from Cavan, and not have the common decency to explain herself, to ask forgiveness, to fall down on her knees before them in contrition. But Kit pushed that crossness away and down and out from herself, and she kneaded her dough, and she tended the lamb joint in the bake pot, and she watched the happy faces of her daughter and her husband, and she broke no happy silence and she let herself be ignorant for the time being to all the whys and wherefores, and she let herself be suffused at last, purely and silently, with contentment and joy.
The peace was broken on the morning of the second full day, Moll’s first Sunday back, and the purity of their joy was smirched, but that was to be expected. The world would always find its way in. Two hours before Mass, just as Paddy was sitting down to a cup of tea after his rounds of the land, Jossie Horse appeared at the open half-door. He’d walked right up the lane and had opened and closed the gate and crossed over the yard as far as the half-door without them hearing him, without causing the dog even to stir, and stood there saying nothing, just looking in through his ignorant bulbous eyes, for a joke mar dhea, just for the fun of it, until Kit turned around from the dresser across from the door and screeched so loud in fright at the sight of the long fecker that Moll hopped from the hearth seat, where she’d been drying her hair against the fire, and Paddy spat a mouthful of his tea back into his cup. And wasn’t that a terrible shame, that a lowly person like Jossie Horse, descended from thieves, the blood in his veins tainted all sorts of ways, was the first from the parish to lay eyes on Moll, or at least the first to know for certain it was her, that she wasn’t dead, and was back among civilized people, unscathed and, please God, unsullied? Of all the people.
Jossie Horse had some kind of an old story, once he’d finished his long braying laughs at the fright he’d given them all, some kind of a pretext for his creeping visitation, about a bearing being gone on the axle of his horsebox and could Paddy call down to Labasheeda when he had time and see to it for him. But Kit knew, and the knowledge burnt inside her, that he was there for a look, for a nosy, and maybe it was apt that the longest, crookedest nose in the parish was the first to be pushed in through the door, sniffing for news.
Kit had imagined Moll’s return daily, and her imaginings had taken all sorts of shapes and hues and sounds: the Jackmans processing down from the big house with their best clothes on and their children strung in a line behind them arranged in descending order of size, each one holding a wrapped joint so that the sum of the carried parts was a slaughtered calf; Mary the Shop and her husband and the head postmaster from town parading solemnly up from the village, and all of Paddy’s colleague postmen, resplendent in their official suits, slowly pedalling gleaming bicycles unburdened with cargo behind the brass in a sparkling honour guard of welcome; the whole of the village and every townland from the far side of the Arra Mountains to the lake’s long shore, man, woman, child and beast, converging in a tightening ring on the cottage, led by Father Coyne in his shining vestments, chanting and singing and offering up praise and incantations for joy at the maiden’s return. And always she felt foolish at her fantasies. And weren’t her feelings of foolishness fully vindicated now? The reality of Moll’s welcome-back committee was Jossie Horse, leering in the top of the door, lying about ball bearings.
He was let in but was given no welcome. He was left with his hands hanging and was allowed only a promise from Paddy that he’d drop in to him the next morning at the end of his rounds, and he was asked if he had a bearing to replace the lost one, and he said that he had, and all the while his monstrous eyes were on Moll, and Moll had her eyes cast shyly down, and was scrunching nervously at her hair, and it was as though no time had passed at all, as though nothing had ever happened, so like her old self was she in that moment, in aspect and mannerism and in the angle she held her head at. Jossie Horse was shifting his weight now from foot to foot, and Paddy was standing between Jossie and the open fire where Moll sat, and Jossie had to lean out past Paddy to regain his full view of her, and he said, Hello there, Moll, it’s good to see you back. From your travels. We were all praying for your safe return, so we were. The whole place is over the moon to hear you’re home with us again. And Moll acknowledged him graciously and thanked him for his prayers and good wishes, and he turned to Paddy and then to Kit, and there was a glint of reproach in his eyes, of hurt pride and offence taken, and he said, Well, I better be off, so. And he laid a little too much emphasis on so, the way no mistake could be made about his feelings. And he turned back towards them before breaching the doorway and said, There’s no point in walking back home now because I’d have to turn back and hit for Mass as soon as I got there, so I’ll hit down the lane for the village, I suppose, and see can I put down what’s left of the morning there. And he cast an eye, where sadness now had joined reproach, at the wisping teapot in its cosy on the table, and the rashers laid across the pan atop the stove, and he gathered up his wounded shoulders in a hunch, and he pushed his long-fingered hands into his insalubrious pockets, and he left, and Paddy thought he heard the sound of him hawking and spitting as he clanked the yard gate shut.
Moll announced then that she didn’t want to go to Mass. Kit looked at Paddy from the stove and Paddy looked back at Kit from the half-door. No words were spoken in reply. What answer could be given to such a proclamation? Kit looked up at the Sacred Heart and searched His sweet tormented face for answers, and found none there. Paddy held the fingers of his left hand tight with the fingers of his right hand and rolled the ball of his thumb over and back across the flat black stone of his wedding ring, and he looked uphill through the back window at the meadows and trees and the tops of the twin mounds of Slieve Felim and Keeper Hill in the far distance, and was surprised to notice a dusting of snow on Keeper’s peak, and he thought to himself that heavy cloud must have drawn down from the north overnight and cleared away again with the dawn because the sky was a clear and brilliant blue, and Lord God, how would they face into the church without Moll, now that Jossie Horse would have the whole place told that it was true, that Moll Gladney was definitely back?