A Christmas Grace

disastrously wrong. But no one other than Yorke himself knew what had happened, the mockery, the laughter, the humiliation he might have suffered. It could have been a lashing out at unbearable jeering, perhaps even an obscene insult to his mother, surely a victim enough already. It could have been at least half an accident, never meant to end in death.

Or it could have been quite clearly a murder, even a blow from behind delivered the coward’s way against a man who had come by information by chance, and had never intended to use it.

Had Hugo Ross known? Had he spoken to Padraic Yorke? Or had he kept silence as well? Did he even know what he was concealing? She thought, from what Susannah had said of him, that probably he had known very well.

What he had not known was how the fear and the guilt would slowly poison the very fabric of the village until it was withering, day by day, a new suspicion here, a fear awakened there, another lie to cover an older one; Father Tyndale’s self-doubt, and ultimately his doubt even of God.

She was past the lake and heading towards Oughterard, the wind tearing blue holes in a ragged sky and the sun brilliant on the hills. The slopes were almost gold, black stone ruins gleaming wet and sharp, when she saw a man in the road ahead of her. He was walking steadily, as if he were pacing himself to go far. She wondered if he lived in Oughterard. There was no house or farm anywhere in sight to either side of the road.

Should she offer him a lift? It seemed unwise. And yet it was inhumane to pass him and let him make his own way, against the wind on this rough road.

It was not until she was level with him that she recognized Brendan Flaherty. She pulled up the pony.

“Can I offer you a ride, Mr. Flaherty?” she said. “I’m heading home.”

“Home, is it?” he said with a smile. “Sure, that’s very good of you, Mrs. Radley. And I’ll be happy to drive for you, if you like. Though Jenny knows her way as well as I do.”

She accepted because she was tired, and although she was a good rider, she was completely inexperienced at driving, and she was sure Jenny was aware of it.

They had gone well over a mile before Brendan spoke.

“I shouldn’t have run away,” he said quietly, facing forward, avoiding her eyes.

“You’re coming back,” she replied. Now that she knew the truth about Padraic Yorke she no longer had any fear of Brendan.

He gave a little grunt, wordless, but heavy with emotion.

She felt the weight of sadness in him, as if he were returning to an imprisonment.

“Why are you coming back?” she asked impulsively. “Are you afraid that if you stay in Galway that you’ll end up like your father, drinking too much, fighting, and in the end alone?”

“I’m not my father,” he said, keeping his eyes on the road.

She looked at him and saw that it was not anger but apology in his face, as if he had failed, and somehow he had betrayed the expectations of his heritage.

“What was he like?” she asked. “Honestly. Not your mother’s dreams, but in truth. How did you see him?”

“I loved him,” he replied, seeking the words one by one. “But I hated him too. He got away with being lazy, and cruel because he could make people laugh. He could sing like an angel. At least that’s how I remember it. He had one of those soft voices full of music that makes every note sound easy. And he told stories about Connemara, the land and the people, so real that listening to him seemed as if the past ran like wine in your blood, a little drunk maybe, but so alive. Actually I think now that most of them were Padraic’s stories anyhow, but he never seemed to mind my father telling them.”

“Did he know Padraic well?” she asked. There was a faint overcast coming across the sky, filling it with haze so the sun was no longer bright on the hills and some of the color faded from the grass. It was going to get colder. There was a veil of rain to the northeast over the Maum Hills.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. But it wouldn’t have made a difference. He’d have told the stories anyway. I asked Padraic one day if he minded, and he said my father only made them richer, and that was a good thing, for all of us, for Ireland.”

“He loves Ireland, doesn’t he.” It was an observation; she intended no question in it.

Brendan looked at her. “You didn’t come to Galway looking for me, did you? I thought at first you did. I thought you might have wondered if I killed Connor Riordan…over Maggie. I didn’t.” He said it vehemently, as if it were still somehow open to question.

Emily realized that that was what his mother was afraid of. She knew the violence in Seamus, perhaps she had even been a victim of it at times, and she imagined it in Brendan too, as if even Seamus’s faults, repeated, could somehow keep him alive for her. No wonder Brendan had fled to Galway, or anywhere, to be free of the imprisonment of her dreams.

“I know you didn’t,” she answered him.

He swung around to face her. “Do you? Do you know it, or are you afraid to let me think you suspect me, in case I hurt you?”

“I know you didn’t,” she told him. “Because I know who did, with a far better reason than you have.”

“Do you?” He searched her face, and must have seen some honesty in it, because he smiled, and his clenched hands on the reins eased.

“You should say good-bye to your mother properly, and then go back to Galway, or Sligo, or even Dublin. Anywhere you want to,” she said.

“What about the village?” he asked. “We’re deceived by our own dreams. Padraic has taken our myths and polished them until they look the way he thinks they should, and we’ve come to believe it’s the truth.”

“And it isn’t?” Although she knew the answer.

He smiled. “He makes it more glamorous than it was. He creates saints that never existed, and making ordinary men with faults that were ugly and selfish into heroes with flaws that you love as much as their virtues. Then we’ve looked at the delusion because no one dares break the reflection in the glass.”

“And Connor Riordan saw that?”

He looked at her, a flare of understanding in his eyes. “Yes. Connor saw everything. He saw that I love Maggie, and that Fergal doesn’t know how to laugh and cry, and win her. And that my mother can’t let my father lie in his grave as who he really was. And Father Tyndale thinks God has abandoned him because he can’t save us against our will. And other things. I daresay he knew Kathleen and Mary O’Donnell and little Bridie, and everyone else.”

He did not mention Padraic Yorke, and she did not either. They drove the rest of the way in companionable silence, or speaking of the land and its seasons, and the old tales of the Flahertys and the Conneelys.

Emily set Brendan down in the middle of the village, then took Jenny and the trap back to Father Tyndale. He did not ask her what she had learned, and she did not tell him. Daniel walked back home with her, carrying her bag. He looked at her curiously, but he did not ask. She thought perhaps that he already guessed.

She finally sat alone with Susannah in the evening, when Maggie and Fergal had left, and Daniel was in the study reading. Susannah had a little color back in her face, and she seemed briefly recovered again, though the faraway look in her eyes was still there, as if she were preparing to leave. Soon it would be Christmas Eve, and she was longing for the gift that Emily had for her.

“Hugo did know the truth,” Emily said gently, placing her hands over Susannah’s thin fingers on the coverlet. They were upstairs, where Daniel could not possibly overhear them. “Possibly more than we ever will. He did not tell it because he did not realize that the village’s own fear would poison it, eating away its heart. If he had understood, I believe he would have told Father Tyndale, and let him see justice done.”

Susannah smiled slowly and the tears filled her eyes. “Did you tell Father?”

“No. I will tell you, and you can do as you think best, whatever you think Hugo would have done, were he here,” Emily replied.

Then she recounted what she had learned in Galway, and added a little of her certainty about Brendan Flaherty also.