Philip, on the other hand, was left worrying about whether he had been involved in a miracle or not. He was not in heaven. The landscape did not answer to the heavenly Jerusalem, and, fresh from his terror, the first thing he had to do was squat down and crap before he ruined his breeches. Surely, we do not need to shit in heaven. He certainly was still possessed of his flesh. He wandered on some distance before it occurred to him to stop and pray. This he did but it seemed inconclusive. Whatever had occurred had been so extreme that he felt he was within his rights to expect a bit of a gloss from the divine—even a hint as to how, or why, he had been so suddenly translated. But it did not come.
Philip drifted on until he came to a rocky shore and it occurred to him that he could be on an island. Anxiety rose within him. There are many stories told of islands that Irishmen end up on, and few of them are appropriate for a priest. He might run into a temptress like Circe. Or giants. If he came across a hero who could spurt blood from his ears while one eye grew as round as a plate and the other shrank to the size of a raisin, he, Father Murphy, was not going to know what to say. A nice peaceful little monastery, now, that would fall within his compass. Those were often found on Irish islands too.
He found none of these things. After three days of wandering, very hungry and getting increasingly frail, he found a farmer. An Irish farmer by the name of Peadar Flaherty. Philip had been encountering the man’s sheep for the past two days. He had left them strictly alone. He was the last man on earth—if he was on earth—to steal another man’s sheep, though he was a radical. He was probably too feeble to kill one, anyway. Nor was it out of the question that he was undergoing some sort of religious trial, in which case slaughtering a lamb seemed unpropitious. He greeted the farmer and collapsed at his feet. Peadar Flaherty gave him some water and got him into his family’s house, where they looked after him for some time. The Flahertys were natives of the island and did their best to explain its peculiarities to him. They were delighted to see a priest, as they hadn’t seen one on that side of the island for thirty years, they said. They were happy to hear him read from the Gospels. He had a tiny printed Vulgate with him. Without thinking—his brains were still a bit scrambled—he began to read from John straight off in Latin. In principio erat verbum. The whole family followed him apparently with no problem at all, right down to the four-year-old. It was the same with The Sorrows of Young Werther, which he happened to have in his other pocket. In German. That gave him pause indeed. He began to wonder if it might not be heaven after all.
The Flahertys helped him to build his cottage. That is, they built it and he carried a few things around, truth be told. They were very hospitable people. He taught the four-year-old, Pádraig, his letters. He presided over one family wedding. Other than that, though, they never asked him to do anything. No blessings. No confessions. No sacraments of any kind. It was odd. “What did you do for marriages before?” he asked Peadar.
“Oh, there’s the one priest over on t’ other side of the island, if we feel we need him. But more often than not, the two just stand up and plight their troth in the house here, you know. Then we build them a cottage, like we did for you,” he replied. And it was true that they were just as interested in Werther as in the Bible, if not more so.
“It’s a grand book, that one,” said Anna, Peadar’s mother, the matriarch. “You’d better read it all again.”
Philip read the Goethe to them all again. He tried to picture reading a Romantic book about a German suicide to a grandmother of his previous experience—say, one from County Clare. The picture would not form in his mind.
Then he found Nellie.
He smelled rabbit roasting over a hill and walked over, thinking it was likely to be Thomas, Peadar’s teenage son, good with a snare. A rabbit of any size is enough for two. Squatting in front of the fire he found a filthy and emaciated girl wearing a fisherman’s sweater. When he spoke to her, she understood and tried to reply, but her voice wavered and cracked like a boy undergoing the change. She formed words no better than a toddler might. Yet her understanding was exceedingly quick. She was a mystery.
Nor was her mystery quickly solved when he led her back over the hill to the Flahertys’ farm. They took one look at her too-big sweater and called a family council. Not but they fed her first and offered the poor girl a bath, which she refused. Soon the whole twelve of them, including the two hired men, were all crammed into the main room of the cottage, examining the sweater, which was stinking in the heat of the fire. She refused to relinquish it.
“Sure enough it’s one of ours,” Anna pronounced authoritatively. “From Inis Caillte. Like as not it was Joseph O’Connor’s, him who was lost more’n a year ago.”
Yes, everyone agreed. Look, the ball—the rope—the cow’s hoof. Ours. Ours.
“How did you come by this, girl?” asked Peadar, not unkindly.
“Nellie,” said the girl. It was the first and only word she said clearly.
“Nellie,” returned Peadar. “You are most welcome here, Nellie. Can you tell us how you came by this sweater? It’s from one of our own men. From this island. Inis Caillte.”
* * *
Nellie could not explain. She was not used to talking; that was clear. She touched her ears, covering them and releasing them, again and again. Finally, Philip understood. “I think she is telling us that once she could not hear. Only now she can. So, maybe she did not speak before, or very little?”
Nellie nodded and lifted her hands in quick assent. After that, it went quicker, by question and answer. It came out that the sweater was from a dead man. He had washed up on the beach of Inis Mór, near her village. An old woman had kept it and Nellie had got it from her. The man had had a decent burial. Everyone murmured with relief. They could tell Clara O’Connor. So, that was all right. Thank heaven.
After a little more urging by the womenfolk, Nellie accepted the bath and was led away to the wash house. The next morning, she yielded up the sweater so it also could be washed. The next time Philip saw her, she was quite transformed. She had accepted gifts of clothing from various Flaherty women. The heavy sweater, which had dwarfed her, would take several days to dry, so she was no longer wearing it. Very concerned about it, however, she went to check on it several times a day as it lay spread out in the wash house. “I thought, belike, it had belonged to her man. That maybe she had got together with O’Connor, you know, so it was a relic of his to her. Precious. But I don’t think it’s that,” said Anna to Philip.
“It gives her security, perhaps,” said Philip. “Whatever happens to us, the ones who just find themselves here, is so strange and difficult to explain. Or to accept. Anything from home makes us feel safer. I feel like that about my books. I still carry them around,” said Philip, apologetically.
“More’n likely it’s that sweater brought her here,” said Anna, “And you by your books. I’ve heard people say, the newcomers like yourself, it takes a talisman.”
“So, Werther brought me here? Or the book of Revelation?”
“That young Werther, he felt despair, seems to me. Enough that he sought a way out of his life. And St John, now, wasn’t he an exile on that island there, Patmos? If that book isn’t about escape, I don’t know what is,” said Anna.