"And no love in him, ever?"
"He says the word as fishermen toss their nets in the sea," I said.
"Ah, Christ, and I"m caught!" And here she gave such a cry that the shadow came to the window in the great house across the lawn. "I"ll stay here the rest of the night," she said. "Surely he will feel me here, his heart will melt, no matter what his name or how deviled his soul. What year is this? How long have I been waiting?"
"I won"t tell you," I said. "The news would crack your heart."
She turned and truly looked at me. "Are you one of the good ones, then, the gentle men who never lie and never hurt and never have to hide? Sweet G.o.d, I wish I"d known you first!"
The wind rose, the sound of it rose in her throat. A clock struck somewhere far across the country in the sleeping town.
"I must go in," I said. I took a breath. "Is there no way for me to give you rest?"
"No," she said, "for it was not you that cut the nerve."
"I see," I said.
"You don"t. But you try. Much thanks for that. Get in. You"ll catch your death."
"And you ... ?"
"Ha!" she cried. "I"ve long since caught mine. It will not catch again. Get!"
I gladly went. For I was full of the cold night and the white moon, old time, and her. The wind blew me up the gra.s.sy knoll. At the door, I turned. She was still there on the milky road, her shawl straight out on the weather, one hand upraised.
"Hurry," I thought I heard her whisper. "Tell him he"s needed!"
I rammed the door, slammed into the house, fell across the hall, my heart a bombardment, my image in the great hall mirror a shock of colorless lightning.
John was in the library, drinking yet another sherry, and poured me some. "Someday," he said, "you"ll learn to take anything I say with more than a grain of salt. Jesus, look at you! Ice cold. Drink that down. Here"s another to go after it!"
I drank, John poured, I drank. "Was it all a joke, then?"
"What else!" John laughed, then stopped.
The croon was outside the house again, the merest fingernail of mourn, as the moon sc.r.a.ped down the roof.
"There"s your banshee," I said, looking at my drink, unable to move.
"Sure, kid, sure, uh-huh," said John. "Drink your drink, kid, and I"ll read you that great review of your book from the London Times again."
"You burned it, John."
"Sure, kid, but I recall it as if it were this morn. Drink up."
"John," I said, staring into the fire, looking at the hearth where the ashes of the burned paper blew in a great breath. "Does . . . did that review really exist?"
"My G.o.d, of course, sure, yes. Actually ..." Here he paused and gave it great imaginative concern. "The Times knew my love for you, kid, and asked me to review your book." John reached his long arm over to refill the gla.s.s. "I did it. Under an a.s.sumed name, of course-now ain"t that swell of me? But I had to be fair, kid, had to be fair. So I wrote what I truly felt were the good things, the not-so-good things in your book. Criticized it just that way I would when you hand in a lousy screenplay scene and I make you do it over. Now ain"t that A-one double absolutely square of me? Eh?"
He leaned at me. He put his hand on my chin and lifted it and gazed long and sweetly into my eyes.
"You"re not upset?"
"No," I said, but my voice broke.
"By G.o.d, now, if you aren"t. Sorry. A joke, kid, only a joke." And here he gave me a friendly punch on the arm.
Slight as it was, it was a sledgehammer striking home.
"I wish you hadn"t made it up, the joke, I wish the article was real," I said.
"So do I, kid. You look bad. I-"
The wind moved around the house. The windows stirred and whispered.
Quite suddenly I said, for no reason that I knew: "The banshee. It"s out there."
"That was a joke, kid. You got to watch out for me."
"No," I said, looking at the window. "It"s there."
John laughed. "You saw it, did you?"
"It"s a young and lovely woman with a shawl on a cold night. A young woman with long black hair and great green eyes and a complexion like snow and a proud Phoenician prow of a nose. Sound like anyone you ever in your life knew, John?"
"Thousands." John laughed more quietly now, looking to see the weight of his joke. "h.e.l.l-"
"She"s waiting for you," I said. "Down at the bottom of the drive."
John glanced, uncertainly, at the window.
"That was the sound we heard," I said. "She described you or someone like you. Called you Joey, Joe, Joseph. But I knew it was you."
John mused. "Young, you say, and beautiful, and out there right this moment . . . ?"
"The most beautiful woman I"ve ever seen."
"Not carrying a knife . . . ?"
"Unarmed."
John exhaled. "Well, then, I think I should just go out there and have a chat with her, eh, don"t you think?"
"She"s waiting."
He moved toward the front door.
"Put on your coat; it"s a cold night," I said.
He was putting on his coat when he heard the sound from outside, very clear this time. The wail and then the sob and then the wail.
"G.o.d," said John, his hand on the doork.n.o.b, not wanting to show the white feather in front of me. "She"s really there."
He forced himself to turn the k.n.o.b and open the door. The wind sighed in, bringing another faint wail with it.
John stood in the cold weather, peering down that long walk into the dark.
"Wait!" I cried, at the last moment.
John waited.
"There"s one thing I haven"t told you," I said. "She"s out there, all right. And she"s walking. But . . . she"s dead."
"I"m not afraid," said John.
"No," I said, "but I am. You"ll never come back. Much as I hate you right now, I can"t let you go. Shut the door, John."
The sob again, and then the wail.
"Shut the door."
I reached over to knock his hand off the bra.s.s doork.n.o.b, but he held tight, c.o.c.ked his head, looked at me, and sighed.
"You"re really good, kid. Almost as good as me. I"m putting you in my next film. You"ll be a star."
Then he turned, stepped out into the cold night, and shut the door quietly.
I waited until I heard his steps on the gravel path, then locked the door and hurried through the house, putting out the lights. As I pa.s.sed through the library, the wind mourned down the chimney and scattered the dark ashes of the London Times across the hearth.
I stood blinking at the ashes for a long moment, then shook myself, ran upstairs two at a time, banged open my tower room door, slammed it, undressed, and was in bed with the covers over my head when a town clock, far away, sounded one in the deep morning.
And my room was so high, so lost in the house and the sky, that no matter who or what tapped or knocked or banged at the door below, whispering and then begging and then screaming . . .
Who could possibly hear?
I arrived at Courtown House late.
When John answered the door, I shoved the short story in but did not follow.
"What"s wrong, kid?" John asked.
"Read that."
"It looks like a story. Where"s the script?"
"Later. The story first. And listen, don"t throw it page by page on the floor as you walk through the house reading it."
John c.o.c.ked his head to one side. "Now, why in h.e.l.l would I do a thing like that, son?"
"G.o.d. Just don"t."
He walked away, leaving me to shut the door. Down the hall, I saw him turning the pages, nodding. In the library, I heard him mutter: "Well, now. Looks like no more practical jokes at lunchtime. No more jokes."
28.
"Good G.o.d in heaven, what"s that?" I said. "What"s what?"
"Are you blind, man? Look!" I said.
And Garrity, the elevator operator, looked out to see what I was staring at.
And in out of the Dublin morn, sweeping through the front doors of the Royal Hibernian Hotel, along the entryway, and to the registry was a tall willowy man of some forty years, followed by five short willowy youths of some twenty years, a burst of bird song, their hands clapping all about on the air as they pa.s.sed, their eyes squinching, batting, and flickering, their mouths pursed, their brows enlightened and then dark, their color flushed and then pale-or was it both?-their voices now flawless piccolo, now flute, now melodious oboe, but always tuneful. Carrying six monologues, all sprayed forth upon each other at once, in a veritable cloud of self-commiseration, peeping and twitting the discouragements of travel and the ardors of weather, the corps de ballet as it were flew, cascaded, flowed eloquently in a greater bloom of cologne by me and the transfixed elevator man. They collided deliciously to a halt at the desk, where the manager glanced up, to be swarmed over by their music. His eyes made nice round O"s with no centers in them.
"What," whispered Garrity, "was that?"
"You may well ask," I said.
At which point the elevator lights flashed and the buzzer buzzed. Garrity had to tear his eyes off the summery crowd and heft himself skyward.
I whipped out my notepad and pen, sensing a new book of Revelations was about to be born.
"We," said the tall slender man with a touch of gray at the temples, "should like a room, please."
The manager remembered where he was and heard himself say, "Do you have reservations, sir?"
"Dear me, no," said the older man, as the others giggled. "We flew in unexpectedly from Taormina," the tall man with the chiseled features and the moist flower mouth continued. "We were getting so awfully bored, after following summer around the world, and someone said, Let"s have a complete change, let"s do something wild. What? I said. Well, where"s the most improbable place in the world? Let"s name it and go there. Somebody said the North Pole, but that was silly. Then I cried, Ireland! Everyone fell down. When the pandemonium ceased we just scrambled for the airport. Now sunshine and Sicilian sh.o.r.elines are like yesterday"s lime sherbet to us, all melted to nothing. And here we are to do ... something mysterious*."
"Mysterious?" asked the manager.
"We don"t know what it is," said the tall man. "But we shall know it when we see it, or it happens, or perhaps we shall have to make it happen-right, cohorts?"
The cohorts responded with something vaguely like Tee-hee.
"Perhaps," said the manager, with good grace, "if you gave me some idea what you"re looking for in Ireland, I could point out-"
"Goodness, no," said the tall man. "We shall just plummet forth with our intuitions scarved about our necks, taking the wind as "twere, and see what we shall tune in on. When we solve the mystery and find what we came to find, you will know of our discovery by the ululations and cries of awe and wonder emanating from our small tourist group."
"You can say that again," said the manager, under his breath.
"Well, comrades, let us sign in."
The leader of the encampment reached for a scratchy hotel pen, found it filthy, and flourished forth his own absolutely pure four-teen-karat solid-gold pen, with which in an obscure but rather pretty cerise calligraphy he inscribed on the registry the name David followed by Snell followed by dash and ending with Orkney. Beneath, he added, "And friends."