Fina put all that in a letter, making a joke of it, as they would have in the past. It was a long letter, with bits of news saved up from the period when they’d been out of touch: O’Brien’s bread van breaking down, the boats unable to go out for four days, the widow dancing at Martin Shaul’s wake. She wondered if John Michael had an accent now, like Bat Quinn said Matt Cready acquired.
A Christmas card came in January and a fortnight later a letter with an address, 2a Beaver Street, a room that was big enough for both of them.
The morning the letter about the room came there was an iciness in the air when she walked on the strand, thinking about the banns and thinking about Beaver Street. She imagined a fire escape zig-zagging on an outside wall, a big metal structure she had seen in a film, windows opening on to it. She imagined a poor neighbourhood because that was what John Michael could afford, spindly trees struggling to grow along a sidewalk. She wouldn’t object to a poor neighbourhood, she knew he’d done his best.
The strand was empty that morning. The fishing boats were still out, there had been no one on the pier when she went by it. New shells were embedded in the clean, damp sand where she walked, washed by the waves that lapped softly over them. Once upon a time, so the story was told in the village, a woman had walked all the way to Galway, going after the man she loved. Missing John Michael more than ever, even though the time was shortening with every day, Fina understood that now. Slowly, she made her way back to the village, the room he had found for them more vivid in her consciousness than anything she saw.
She knew when her father called her. She had heard the ringing of the telephone above the clatter of voices in the bar, and her father’s surprise when he responded. ‘Well, b’the holy farmer! How are you at all?’ She pushed the glass she’d just filled across the counter. ‘Wait’ll I get Fina for you,’ she heard her father say, and when she picked the receiver up John Michael’s voice was there at once.
‘Hullo, Fina.’
He didn’t sound distant, only unusual, because in all the time of their friendship they had never spoken on the telephone to one another.
‘John Michael!’
‘Did you get my letter, Fina? About the room?’
‘I got it yesterday.’
‘Are you OK, Fina?’
‘Oh, I am, I am. Are you, yourself?’ There wouldn’t be telephone calls, he’d said before he went, and she agreed: telephone calls would eat up what he earned. But hearing his voice was worth every penny they’d lose.
‘I’m good, Fina.’
‘It’s great to hear you.’
‘Listen, Fina, there’s a thing we have to think about.’ He paused for a second or two. ‘A difficulty about May, Fina.’
‘Difficulty?’
‘About coming back.’
He paused again, and then he had to repeat some of what he said because she couldn’t follow it. It was why he had phoned. Because he knew it would sound complicated, but actually it wasn’t: it was best he didn’t come back in May for the wedding. It was best because once you’d got to where he was now, once you’d got into steady work, it wasn’t easy to come and go. He shouldn’t be working at all, he said. Like hawks, he said they were.
‘You understand, Fina?’
She nodded in the darkened shop, where the telephone was. There was a smell of bacon, and of stout and spirits drifting in from the other side of the half-and-half. The deep-freeze began to sound, registering its periodic intake of electricity.
‘If I was to come over I wouldn’t get back in again.’
It would be better to be married in America. It would be better if she came over and he stayed where he was. He asked her if she understood and she felt as if she were stumbling about, in some kind of a dream without sense in it, but even so she said she understood.
‘I think of you all the time, John Michael. I love you.’
‘It’s the same way with me. We’ll work something out. Only it’s different than we thought.’
‘Different?’
‘All the time you’re thinking would you be sent back.’
‘We’ll be married in America, John Michael.’
‘I think of you too, Fina. I love you too.’
They would work something out, he said again, and then there was the click of the receiver replaced. Fina wondered where he was, in what kind of room, and if he was still standing as she was, beside the telephone. Once there had been voices in the background. It would be half past four, still daylight there, and she wondered if he was at work in the laundry and if he’d taken a risk, using the phone like that.
