And Ellen Jackman whirled on her heel and her teeth were gritted tight and her face was clouded with rage, and her eyes were flashing wet and dangerous, and she nearly knocked them as she charged out of the door, and the door flew back against its hinges and whumped against the grainy whitewashed wall, and Ellen Jackman’s daughters fell into step behind her and all the Jackman women marched back down the lane long-legged, arms swinging, like a company of soldiers off to war. And Paddy couldn’t catch his breath. And neither could Kit. And Paddy’s eyes were nearly sightless from the shock. And so were Kit’s. And neither of them knew a word that could be said. And neither of them was able to lift their eyes from the floor before this dripping girl, and lay them on this changeling, this revenant, this creature that had been sent back, it seemed, from the mouth of Hell, having taken the form of their dear departed Moll. What a trick the devil had played on them, what a terrible, evil trick! What cruelty the world contained, and the heavens, what a show they were now before God and the parish, to say they’d been so easily fooled, so easily led to believe that all their pain was gone, that they’d been smiled upon by Fate, that they’d been divinely rewarded, that their baby had been given back, when all along they had been cursed, and cursed again. Kit raised her face first, expecting in some part of herself to see that the Moll-shaped creature had turned to smoke or a pile of ash, had rejoined the flames, and Paddy looked then and he saw that, no, it was all right, it was still Moll, it was his daughter, and she was sobbing so hard that her shoulders were working up and down, and her face was contorted in some agony, in some unknowable passion, and her dear hands were held tight to the sides of her face, as though to hold the halves of herself together, and it was her, for sure, thanks be to Jesus it was her. And he knew, somehow, and so did his wife, by some perfect and unexplainable force of love, that something was wrong with their daughter, inside in her, that she was whole now but only just, and that she was in terrible, terrible trouble.
They were able, just about and by dint of dire necessity, to put to the backs of their minds, or to quash almost completely, the dark images and half-formed ideas that took shape in their imaginations when they thought about the confrontation between Moll and Ellen Jackman and the provenance of the anger that had passed between them. They had a sacred duty to set their minds and their hearts and their hands to the job of work assigned to them by God: caring for their child. Ellen Jackman had been addressed in this house in profane terms, to a wrath without precedent or any evident cause, had been cursed at by this child. They could be put out for this quite easily. They could end up walking the roads like tinkers, pitching tents of sapling boughs on common land.
The set-to he’d had with the boy of the Jackmans in the bog short years ago rang clear and true in Paddy’s ears: You’re a servant, Paddy, that’s all you are, you’re not much more than a beggar man, and my mother and father could fuck you off our land any time they wanted. And though the boy had seemed ashamed when next they’d met, and had addressed him, seemingly fondly, as Pad, the sting of the shock of his insults had never really eased; his words still smarted and cut on recollection, and Paddy had always thought of himself since as being the same go as an old crossbred dog around that boy, a ratter for the yard and barns; a creature that could be as easily mollycoddled as kicked, utterly dispensable. And this was no levelling of scores, this terrible scene that had played itself out in their kitchen, in the light of their fire: Ellen Jackman wouldn’t know that Paddy had been cursed by her Andrew the same way she’d been cursed by his Moll; nor would she ever unless the screws were tightened on Paddy beyond the limits of his bearing, and he reckoned he could bear a lot; so there would have to be a reckoning, a prostration, and a giving of reparations, but not this day.
Moll was quiet now, and Kit’s strong arms were around her, and they were side by side on the hearth seat, and Paddy was standing looking at them with one arm as long as the other, and all their hearts were slowing down, back to a more sedate rhythm, and the stirred dust was settling itself to a slow fall in a sudden shaft of sunlight from the high unblinded pane of the back window, and Kit was telling him to put on the water and not to be standing there staring, and Paddy knew her impatience with him, her softly dismissive voice, was feigned, a way of making things seem normal and undramatic, but still and all it worked, and he was soothed.
Paddy braved it in to the Jackmans during his rounds the next morning. They had post, but nothing bulky that couldn’t be put in their metal letterbox that was bolted to the high wall outside their house. He opened the gate and he closed it behind him and he cycled in the curved driveway to the front of the house, making a mental note as he pedalled to give their lawn its first cut that week and to tend the beds he had laid the year before the way the weeds wouldn’t take dominion and choke the life from the proper perennials before they had a chance to establish themselves. And he remembered then that he might not be welcome in the Jackmans’ garden ever again, or on their land, or in the doorway of their house, and he felt a shaking start low in himself and he gripped his handlebars tight to steady himself, and he practised his speech of personal and proxy contrition, and he sent a short prayer heavenward for intercession, from any receptive saint, or from his mother and father, or anyone who might have an interest in these things or any hand in the doings of man and the variation of his pathetic fortunes.
Ellen Jackman was coming through her porchway dressed for town when Paddy reached the front of the house, and there was a daughter with her, the middle one it looked like, but it was hard to tell when they weren’t together which was which, and Ellen Jackman told the daughter to go and wait in the car, and she turned to Paddy without a smile, but that wasn’t unusual, especially when she was hurrying, and she said, Hello, Paddy, and Paddy said, Hello, Ellen, as he dismounted and proffered her post, and she told him that Deirdre had an appointment with Sherwood the dentist inside in town, and it was a pity she spent so much of her time sucking sweets and daydreaming when she should be learning her lessons and saying her prayers, and two of her back teeth rotted from her head from those blasted apple drops she was so fond of, and she’d know all about it now when Sherwood went at her with his implements, and she’d be going straight into school after her ordeal, she needn’t fear. And Paddy nodded and laughed away at Ellen Jackman’s story and her admonishing observations on the habits of children in this day and age, and Ellen Jackman stopped at the end of her story and she paused and said, Well. Wasn’t that a shocking thing yesterday? And Paddy could only allow with a slow nod and casting groundward of his eyes that it was, shocking, shocking to the world, and he was as sorry as could be. And Ellen Jackman said, Paddy, you have not one thing to be sorry for. Moll and I will talk again, when she has her rest got. And we’ll say no more about it for now. I know what it is to be lost, Paddy. Tell her to call to me whenever she wants. And Paddy Gladney felt a head-swimming mix of confusion and relief, and he felt utter love for his benefactress as she stepped gracefully across her smooth yard and into her motor-car and pulled on her leather driving gloves and glided away, and he turned his bicycle and pedalled hard after the gleaming motor-car the way he could open the gate for them and close it again behind them, with a tear of gratitude in his eye and a prayer of thanksgiving on his lips.