The Young Wan (25 page)

“Okay,” came the usual reply. They linked arms and headed for home.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

It was 3:15 p.m. Agnes had already dressed Connie. And Marion looked beautiful in her lemon full-length dress. It had not been designed as a full-length, but it was now. They were sitting at the kitchen table, waiting for Agnes to emerge from her bedroom. Marion was bored waiting.

“Are you all right, Agnes?” she called.

“Coming, give me a second!” Agnes roared back.

Marion looked over at Connie. She was wearing a cream-and-cocoa suit Agnes had bought for her.

“You look lovely, Mrs. Reddin,” Marion said, and Connie smiled back. Marion was just thinking that her comment had been wasted when Connie spoke.

“You do too, Marion.” Marion sat open-mouthed at this. But Connie wasn’t finished. “You have always been a good friend to Agnes. I forget so much, Marion, but I promise you, I will never forget that.” Then the blankness returned to Connie’s face. This was the first time Marion had ever experienced one of Connie’s lucid moments and it scared the shit out of her.

Agnes emerged. A vision. The dress looked beautiful on the hanger, but now, wrapped around Agnes, it was positively divine.

“Right, then, let’s go,” Agnes said, and she led the trio down the stairs.

The horse and carriage that awaited Agnes the bride was surrounded by two crowds. One was the crowd of children awaiting “grushie.” This is an Irish custom of tossing a handful of coins to the ground which the children would scramble to collect. It symbolizes, it is said, the sharing of your good fortune with your neighbors. The other crowd were all waiting to see would she do it, would she wear “the dress.” Here was a lot of chattering from the assembled women. Across the street, in Cullen’s Pub, even the men stood to look over the window’s half-curtain to see would this “young wan” defy the church and go to the altar in white.

Marion was the first to emerge from the building. The horse exhaled noisily and adjusted his stance, making a
clip-clop
sound as he transferred his weight from one hoof to another. A few women in the crowd “oohed” and “aahed” at Marion’s dress. She did a little spin, smiling. She was delighted. Connie emerged from the building next and, shuffling past the still-spinning Marion, made her way to Mrs. Delany, who was to escort her to the church. Then they could hear the sound of Agnes’ stiletto heels on the concrete steps. This sent the crowd back to a hush. The footsteps got louder, and then Agnes emerged from the darkened hallway onto the street. The first reaction was a gasp at the beauty that emerged from the building. Then came the buzz of reaction to what she was wearing. She was wearing “the dress.” But
what
a dress it was. The veil shimmered in the light breeze, the ancient pearls on the bodice sparkled like diamonds as the sun shone across them, and the silk beneath the Galway lace glowed like a warm beacon. Agnes stood there before her neighbors, glowing. She looked like an angel. The coins for the grushie were held tightly in Agnes’ hand. They were wet from the nervous perspiration of her palm. She tossed them into the air, and they fell to the ground like a shower of metallic snowflakes. Nobody moved. The dress had them enraptured. The crowd just stood and looked in awe at this beautiful dress. Then someone began to clap. Agnes looked in the direction of the sound. It was Mrs. Cunningham, the butcher’s wife. She called out, “Good on you, love, God bless the bride.”

Agnes smiled to her. Then a few more joined in. It started as a small clatter of hands and built to a thunderous roar of applause. The children, awakened by the applause, suddenly dived onto the coins, and the crowd all laughed and cheered them on as they wrestled each other for the coins. Agnes climbed into the carriage beside Marion, and the crowd went quiet again.

A woman spoke from the crowd: “You’ve no man, love. You have no man to give you away,” she called.

Agnes turned to her. “I just need a man to take me, I can give meself away.”

And the crowd laughed again. The carriage pulled away to make the short two-hundred-yard journey to St. Jarlath’s Church. It moved slowly. The crowd moved behind the carriage.

In the church, Redser Browne waited at the altar. He was shaking more from the coffee Tommo Monks had poured into him than from the nervousness of becoming a new groom. The church was already nearly full, and with the crowd coming behind Agnes added to that, it would be absolutely crammed. A few were there to see Redser and Agnes take their wedding vows, but most were waiting to see the priest turn the young wan away for wearing white while getting married “in sin.” The debate was this: nobody was in any doubt that she would be turned away, it was just what way it would happen. Would he excommunicate her completely? Or would he just maybe send her away to change her clothes? They all waited.

In the front pew sat Constance, looking every inch the mother of the bride. She had a smile on her face, and her lips were moving slightly. She was either praying or talking to herself. It did not matter; nobody was paying a blind bit of notice to her.

In the vestry behind the altar, Father Pius was being dressed by two of the altar boys when the clerk came rushing in. His face was red and he was panting.

“She’s on her way, Father,” the clerk announced.

The priest looked into his face. He didn’t have to ask the clerk the question; it was written in his expression.

The clerk nodded. “Yes, Father. She’s wearing
the dress,
” he said. Father Pius closed his eyes. He finished dressing and instructed the altar boys to wait outside. When they were gone, he went and knelt before the statue of the Sacred Heart, Lord of All Mercy and Compassion, and he prayed to the Lord for forgiveness for what he was about to do.

Outside the church, Agnes stepped from the carriage. She had to wait a few moments until the crowd entering the church had cleared the doorway. When they were gone, she walked up the four steps and stood nervously in the huge Gothic doorway. Behind her, Marion was busy laying flat the now eight-and-one-half-foot train. Two Communion dresses and christening robes had taken their toll on the silk and satin train. Then Marion went to the church doors, opened them slightly, and peeked in. When she saw that the crowd had settled, she turned to Agnes, smiling, and winked.

“Ready?” she asked.

“Ready,” Agnes answered and took a deep breath.

Marion waved at the organ player from the door. The pipe organ sounded a single note, and three seconds later, with Johnny Brennan pumping like a blacksmith’s father, the organist struck up the “Wedding March.” Two men held the doors open, and Marion entered first, smiling from ear to ear. With her head held high in the air, Agnes followed. As the doors closed behind them, they did not see the silver streak of the airplane passing overhead, bound for Canada, with Dolly aboard.

As the bridal group were walking up the aisle, Marion was receiving lots of congratulations and compliments on the beautiful flowers in the church, which had all come from her stall. As each comment came her way, Marion replied, “Thank you. The lilies are eightpence a bunch, the roses a shilling. I’m there all day tomorrow.”

It seemed like a five-mile walk, but eventually Agnes arrived to stand beside her groom. They looked at each other.

“You look great,” Redser said.

“You look like shit,” Agnes replied through clenched teeth. He did; he was hung over. Agnes looked at Tommo, who was supposed to have been keeping Redser out of trouble. Tommo shrugged and hung his head. When the music finished, the couple stood waiting.

The vestry door clanked open and the altar boys entered, signaling the imminent arrival of Father Pius to the altar. The entire congregation stood. Father Pius walked onto the altar without so much as a glance at the bride and groom. He went and genuflected before the tabernacle containing the Host, and then turned. The congregation were supposed to sit now, but nobody moved. It was so quiet that even at the back of the church people could hear the rattle of Father Pius’ rosary beads as he walked to the altar rails to meet Agnes and Redser. He stopped before them. He looked Agnes up and down.

“Agnes, do you know the church’s ruling on proper dress for marriage in . . .” He searched. “. . . your situation?” he asked.

“Yes, Father,” she answered. He looked at Redser, expecting a comment. Redser just looked blankly back at the priest and shrugged his shoulders.

“So why, then, do you come here in white?” Father Pius asked. Agnes began to answer but was interrupted from behind by her mother, who stood into the aisle to speak.

“That dress, Father, is the dress my mother was married in, it is the dress that I was married in, and today it is the dress that my daughter Agnes will be married in.”

Throughout the church there was a collective intake of breath. Agnes turned, amazed, and looked in her mother’s face. Her mother smiled at her. Father Pius stared at Connie, and she stared right back at him. After a couple of moments, he took away his gaze and looked to the ground. Everybody waited for his announcement. Instead Father Pius raised his arms and turned his palms upward.

“We are gathered here today in the sight of God to join together these two people in the Holy Sacrament of Marriage.” In amazement, the congregation slowly sat down. This was indeed unbelievable.

Before Father Pius had gotten to the taking of the vows, the clerk was on the telephone giving the bishop a full account of the new priest’s transgression. By the time Agnes and Redser were exchanging rings, Father Pius was out of a job.

As the happy couple left St. Jarlath’s Church, there were great cheers. Handfuls of rice were thrown into the air and scattered across the churchyard. As the new Mrs. Agnes Browne climbed aboard the carriage, she was dripping with rice beads and trying to hold her husband erect. The carriage pulled away, the crowd followed, and soon the church was empty.

Empty except, that is, for Agnes’ mother, Connie. She still sat in her seat, smiling. Father Pius saw her sitting there alone when he came out of the vestry. He walked down the steps and sat down beside her. They sat there next to each other in the quiet of the empty church, looking at the Holy Sacrament, and to the left the Virgin Mary, over to the right St. Christopher, beside him St. Jarlath.

“They are all here, all the saints.” Father Pius spoke out loud with a little despair in his voice. “The place is full of saints, and yet there is no compassion.” He wasn’t moaning, he was just speaking his thoughts aloud.

“There was compassion here
today,
” Connie said simply. The priest turned his head slightly to look at her. She was still smiling.

“You knew I’d do it, didn’t you, Mrs. Reddin?” he asked her quietly.

“Yes, I did,” she answered.

He turned his head away and exhaled as he spoke. “I had to,” he said.

“Yes, you did, Father, you had to,” Connie agreed.

They sat again in silence for a while. Then Connie opened her handbag and took a gold cross and chain from the inside pocket of it. She held it up. The sun was shining through the stained-glass windows, and the colors shimmered upon the golden crucifix.

“A young man gave me this—a long time ago, it seems. He said that if I ever needed anything from him I should just ask.”

Father Pius looked at the twirling crucifix as if it were hypnotizing him. Constance leaned over and took the priest’s hand. She turned it over, and into his palm she dropped the crucifix and chain. She stood up and looked down at the man, and again smiled. She stretched out her hand and gently stroked the side of his face.

“Paid in full, Michael. Paid in full,” she said. He smiled, and closed his hand around the cross and chain that he had not seen in a long time. Connie began to walk down the aisle.

Father Pius stepped into the aisle and called after her. “Mrs. Reddin.”

Constance stopped and turned to the young man.

“I can’t explain how it feels when somebody saves your life,” he said.

She held up her hand and smiled to him, and to the memory. “You don’t have to explain to me, Michael. He saved mine too.”

No, it’s not the pixie dust, float-on-a-cloud, fairies-at-the-bottom-of-the-garden kind. But, oh God, yes! In the Jarro there is
magic.