Heart Of The Sea

CHAPTER Seven

Warm, dry weather returned to paint both sky and sea the vivid blue of coming summer. Clouds that hovered were white and harmless, and the flowers of Ardmore drank in the sun as they had the rain. The round tower cast its long and slender shadow over the graves it guarded. And high on the cliffs the wind blew gentle ripples over the water in the well of the saint.

In the village, men worked in shirtsleeves, and arms turned ruddy in the sun. Trevor watched the skeleton of his building take shape, the beams and block that were the solid bones of his dream.

As the work progressed, the audience grew. Old Mr. Riley stopped by the site every day at ten until you could set your watch by him. He brought along a folding chair and sat with his cap shielding his eyes and a thermos of tea for company. There he would sit and watch, sit and nap until, sharply at one, he would stand up, fold his chair, and toddle off to his great-granddaughter's for his midday meal.

As often as not, one of his cronies would join him, and they would chat about the construction while playing at checkers or gin rummy.

Trevor began to think of him as the job mascot.

Children came by now and again and sat in a half circle by Riley's chair. Their big eyes would track the sway of a steel beam as it was lifted into place.

This event was sometimes followed by a round of appreciative applause.

"Mr. Riley's great-great-grandchildren and some friends," Brenna told Trevor when he expressed some concern about them being near the site. "They won't go wandering closer than his chair."

"Great-great-grandchildren? Then he must be as old as he looks."

"One hundred and two last winter. The Rileys are long-lived, though his father died at the tender age of ninety-six, God rest him."

"Amazing. How many of those double greats does he have?"

"Oh, well, let me think. Fifteen. No, sixteen, as there was a new one last winter, if memory serves. Not all of them live in the area."

"Sixteen? Good God!"

"Well, now, he had eight children, six still living. And between them I believe they made him near to thirty grandchildren, and I don't have count on how many children they made. So there you have it. You've two of his great-grandsons on your crew, and the husband of one of his granddaughters as well."

"How could I avoid it?"

"Every Sunday after Mass, he goes to visit his wife's grave, she that was Lizzie Riley. Fifty years they were married. He takes with him that same old ratty chair there and sits by her for two hours so he can tell her all the village gossip and family news."

"How long has she been gone?"

"Oh, twenty years, give or take."

Seventy years, give or take, devoted to one woman. It was flabbergasting and, Trevor thought, heartening. For some, it worked.

"He's a darling man, is Mr. Riley," Brenna added. "Hey, there, Declan Fitzgerald, have a care there with that board before you bash someone in the face with it."

With a shake of her head, Brenna strode over to heft the far end of the board herself.

Trevor nearly followed. It had been his intention to spend most of his afternoon lifting, hauling, hammering. The sound of air guns and compressors whooshing and rumbling along with the constant rattle of the cement mixer had the young audience enthralled. Beside them in his chair, Riley sipped tea. Going with impulse, Trevor walked over to him.

"What do you think?"

Riley watched Brenna place her board. "I'm thinking you build strong and hire well. Mick O'Toole and his pretty Brenna, they know what they're about." Riley shifted his faded eyes to Trevor's face. "And so, I think, do you, young Magee."

"If the weather holds, we'll be under roof ahead of schedule."

Riley's weathered face creased into smiles. It was like watching thin white paper stretch over rock. "You'll be there when you get there, lad. That's the way of things. You've the look of your great-uncle."

As he'd been told so once, hesitantly, by his grandmother, Trevor considered, then crouched down so Riley wouldn't have to crane his neck.

It's just that you look so like John, Trevor, his brother who died young. It makes it hard for your grandfather to- It makes it hard for him.

"Do I?"

"Oh, aye. Johnnie Magee, I knew him, and your grandfather as well. A fine-looking young lad was Johnnie, with his gray eyes and slow smile. Built like a whip, as you are yourself."

"What was he like?"

"Oh, quiet, he was, and deep. Full of thoughts and feelings, and most of them for Maude Fitzgerald. He wanted her, and little else."

"And what he got was war."

"Aye, that's the way it was. Many young men fell in 1916, on those fields of France. And here as well, in our own little war for Ireland's independence. Elsewhere, for that matter, at any time you can pick. Men go to battle, and women wait and weep."

He laid a bony hand on the head of one of the children who sat at his side. "The Irish know it comes 'round again. And so do the old. I'm both old and Irish."

"You said you knew my grandfather."

"I did." Riley sat back with his tea, crossed his thin legs at the ankles. "Dennis, now, he was a brawnier type than his brother, and more apt to look a mile down the road instead of where he was standing. A discontented sort was Dennis Magee, if you don't mind me saying. Ardmore wasn't the place for him, and he shook off the sand of it as soon as he was able. Did he, I wonder, find what he was looking for there, and contentment with it?"

"I don't know," Trevor answered frankly. "I wouldn't say he was a particularly happy man."

"I'm sorry for that, for it's often hard for those around the unhappy to be happy themselves. His bride, as I recall, was a quiet-mannered lass. She was Mary Clooney, whose family farmed in Old Parish, and one of a family of ten, if my memory can be trusted."

"It seems sharp enough to me."

Riley cackled. "Oh, the brain's stayed with me well enough. Just takes the body a mite longer to get up and running these days." The boy wanted to know what had been and where he'd come from, Riley decided. And why shouldn't he? "I'll tell you, the babe, the boy who grew to be your father, was a handsome one. Many's the time I saw him toddling along the roads holding his ma's hand."

"And his father's?"

"Well, perhaps not so often, but now and again. Dennis was after making a living and putting by for his journey to America. I hope they had a good life there."

"They did. My grandfather wanted to build, and that's what he did."

"Then that was enough for him. I remember your father, the younger Dennis, coming back here when he was old enough to have grown a few whiskers." Riley paused to pour himself more tea from his thermos. "He seemed to've grown fine, had a pleasing way about him, and set some of the local lasses fluttering." He winked. "As you've done yourself. Still, he didn't choose, at that time, to leave anything behind him here but the memory. You've chosen different."

Riley gestured toward the construction with his cup. "Building something here's what you're about, isn't it?"

"It seems to be, at the moment."

"Well, Johnnie, he wanted nothing more than a cottage and his girl, but the war took him. His mother died not five years after, heartbroken. It's a hard thing, don't you think, for a man to live always in the shadow of a dead brother?"

Trevor glanced up again, met the faded and shrewd eyes. Clever old man, he thought, and supposed if you lived past the century mark, you had to be clever. "I imagine it is, even if you go three thousand miles to escape it."

"That's the truth. Better by far to stand and build your own." He nodded, this time with a kind of approval. "Well, as I said, you've the look of him, long-dead John Magee, in the bones of your face and around the eyes. Once they landed on Maude Fitzgerald, she was his heart. Do you believe in romance and ever after, young Magee?"

Trevor glanced away, up toward Darcy's window, then back again. "For some."

"You have to believe in it to get it." Riley winked and passed his cup to Trevor. "What's built isn't always of wood and stone, and still it lasts." Reaching out, he once again laid one of his gnarled hands on the head of the child nearest his chair. "Ever after."

"Some of us do better with wood and stone," Trevor commented, then absently drank the tea. He lost his breath, his vision blurred. "Jesus," he managed as the heavy lacing of whiskey scored his throat.

Riley laughed so hard he fell to wheezing, and his wrinkled face went pink with humor. "There now, lad, what's a cup of tea without a shot of the Irish in it, I'd like to know? Never say they've diluted your blood so over there in Amerikay you can't handle your own."

"I don't usually handle it at eleven in the morning."

"What's the clock got to do with a bloody thing?"

The man, Trevor thought, seemed old as Moses and had been steadily sipping the spiked tea for an hour. Compelled to save face, Trevor downed the rest of the cup and was rewarded by a wide, rubbery grin.

"You're all right, young Magee. You're all right. Since you are, I'll tell you this. That lovely lass inside Gallagher's won't settle for less in a man than hot blood, a strong backbone, and a clever brain. I'm considering you have all three."

Trevor handed Riley back his cup. "I'm just here to build a theater."

"If that's the truth, then I'll say this as well: It goes that youth is wasted on the young, but I'm of a mind that the young waste youth." He poured another cup of tea. "And I'll just have to marry her meself." Amusement danced in his eyes as he sipped. "Step lively, boyo, for I've a world of experience with the female of the species."

"I'll keep that in mind." Trevor got to his feet. "What did John Magee do before he went to war?"

"For a living, you're meaning." If Riley thought it was odd that Trevor wouldn't know he didn't say so. "He was for the sea. His heart belonged to it, and to Maude, and to nothing else."

Trevor nodded. "Thanks for the tea," he said and went back to join his crew.

He skipped lunch. There were too many calls to make, faxes expected, to take time for an hour in the pub and his afternoon dose of Darcy. He hoped she looked for him, wondered a little. If he understood her as he thought he did, she would expect him to come in, to have to come in. And it would annoy her when he didn't.

Good, Trevor mused as he let himself into the cottage. He wanted to keep her a little off-balance. That careless confidence of hers was a formidable weapon. Her arrogance played right along with it. And damned if he didn't find them both attractive.

Amused at himself, he went directly up to his office and spent thirty minutes immersed in business. It was one of his skills, this ability to tune out every other thought and zero in on the deal of the moment. With Riley's memories fresh in his own mind, and Darcy dancing at the edges of it, he needed that skill now more than ever.

Once current projects were handled, faxes zipped off, E-mail answered and sent, he gave his thoughts to a future project he was formulating.

Time, he thought, to lay the groundwork. Picking up the phone, he called Gallagher's. He was pleased that Aidan answered. Trevor made it a point to go straight to the head of a company. Or in this case, a family.

"It's Trev."

"Well, now, I thought I'd see you sitting at one of my tables by this time of day."

Aidan raised his voice over the lunchtime clatter, and Trevor imagined him pulling pints one-handed while he talked. In the background he heard Darcy's laugh.

"I had some business to do. I'd like to have a meeting with you and your family, when it's convenient for you."

"A meeting? About the theater?"

"Partly. Do you have an hour to spare, maybe between shifts?"

"Oh, I imagine we can accommodate you. Today?"

"Sooner the better."

"Fine. Come on by the house then. We tend to hold our family meetings 'round the kitchen table."

"I appreciate it. Would you ask Brenna to come by?"

"I will, yes." Taking her off the job, Aidan thought, but made no comment. "I'll see you a bit later, then."

Around the kitchen table. Trevor recalled several of his own family meetings in the same venue. Before his first day of school, when he was going off to baseball camp, about to take his driver's test, and so on. All of his rites of passage, and his sister's, had been discussed there. Serious punishments, serious praise had warranted the kitchen table.

Odd, he remembered now, when he had broken his engagement, he'd told his parents as they sat in the kitchen. That's where he'd told them of his plans for the Ardmore theater, and his intention of coming to Ireland.

And, he realized as he calculated the time in New York, that was where his parents most likely were at this moment. He picked up the phone again and called home.

"Good morning, Magee residence."

"Hello, Rhonda, it's Trev."

"Mister Trevor." The Magee housekeeper had never called him anything else, even when she'd threatened to swat him. "How are you enjoying Ireland?"

"Very much. Did you get my postcard?"

"I did. You know how much I love to get them. I was telling Cook just yesterday that Mister Trevor never forgets how I like postcards for my album. Is it as green as that, really?"

"Greener. You should come over, Rhonda."

"Oh, now you know I'm not getting on an airplane unless somebody holds a gun to my head. Your folks are having breakfast. They're going to be thrilled to hear from you. Just hold on a minute. You take care of yourself, Mister Trevor, and come back soon."

"I will. Thanks."

He waited, enjoying the picture of the rail-thin black woman in her ruthlessly starched apron hurrying over the rich white marble floor, past the art, the antiques, the flowers, to the back of the elegant brownstone. She wouldn't use the intercom to announce his call. Such family dealings could only be delivered in person.

The kitchen would smell of coffee, fresh bread, and the violets his mother was most fond of. His father would have the paper open to the financial section. His mother would be reading the editorials and getting worked up about the state of the world and narrow minds.

There would be none of that uneasy quiet, that under-the-polish tension that had lived in his grandparents' home. Somehow his father had escaped that, just as his own father had escaped Ardmore. But the younger Dennis had indeed stood and built his own.

"Trev! Baby, how are you?"

"I'm good. Nearly as good as you sound. I thought I'd catch you and Dad at breakfast."

"Creatures of habit. But this is an even lovelier way to start the day. Tell me what you see."

It was an old request, an old habit. Automatically he rose to go to the window. "The cottage has a front garden. An amazing one for such a small place. Whoever designed it knew just what they wanted. It's like a- a witch's garden. One of the good witches who helps maidens break evil spells. The flowers tumble together, color, shape, and scent. Beyond it are hedges of wild fuchsia, deep red on green and taller than I am. The road they line is narrow as a ditch and full of ruts. Your teeth rattle if you go over thirty. Then the hills slope down, impossibly green, toward the village. There are rooftops and white cottages and tidy streets. The church steeple, and well off is a round tower I have to visit. It's all edged by the sea. It's sunny today, so the light flashes off the blue. It's really very beautiful."

"Yes, it is. You sound happy."

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"You haven't been, not really, for too long. Now I'll let you talk to your father, who's rolling his eyes at me, as I imagine you have business to discuss."

"Mom." There was so much, so much that his morning conversation with an old man and his horde of progeny had set to swirling inside him. He said what he felt the most. "I miss you."

"Oh. Oh, now look what you've done." She sniffled. "You can just talk to your father while I cry a little."

"Well, you got her mind off the editorial on handguns." Dennis Magee's voice boomed over the wire. "How's the job going?"

"On schedule, on budget."

"Good to hear. Going to keep it there?"

"Close to there, anyway. You, Mom, Doro, and her family better keep a week next summer open. The Magees should all be here for the first show."

"Back to Ardmore. I have to say, I never figured on it. From the reports, it hasn't changed much."

"It's not meant to. I'll send you a written update on the project, but that's not why I called. Dad, did you ever visit Faerie Hill Cottage?"

There was a pause, a sigh. "Yes. I had some curiosity about the woman who'd been engaged to my uncle. Maybe because my father so rarely spoke of him."

"What did you find out?"

"That John Magee died a hero before he ever had the chance to live."

"And Grandfather resented that."

"That's a hard way to put it, Trev."

"He was a hard man."

"What he felt about his brother, his family, he kept to himself. I never tried to get through. What was the point? I knew I would never get through to him about what he felt about anything, much less what he'd left behind in Ireland."

"Sorry." He could hear it, that weariness, that vague tone of frustration in his father's voice. "I shouldn't have brought it up."

"No, that's foolish. It would be on your mind. You're there. I think-looking back, I think he was determined to be an American, to raise me as an American. Here is where he wanted to make his mark. In New York he could be his own man. He was his own man."

A cold, hard man who paid more attention to his ledgers than his family. But Trevor saw no point in saying so when his father knew that better than anyone.

"What did you find, for yourself, when you came back here?" he asked instead.

"Charm, some sentiment, more of a link than I'd expected."

"Yeah, exactly. That's exactly it."

"I meant to go back, but something else always seemed to come up. And truth is, I'm a city boy. A week in the country and I'm itchy. You and your mother never minded roughing it, but the Hamptons is about as rural as I can manage and stay sane. Don't snicker, Carolyn," Dennis said mildly. "It's rude."

Trevor scanned his view again. "It's a long way from the Hamptons to here."

"Absolutely. A couple of weeks in that cottage you're renting and I'd be babbling. I don't do quaint for long."

"But you visited, saw Maude Fitzgerald."

"Yes. Jesus, must be thirty-five years ago. She didn't seem old to me, but I guess she was well into her seventies. I remember her being graceful, not creaky the way I, being callow, expected an old woman to be. She gave me tea and cake. Showed me an old photograph of my uncle. She kept it in a brown leather frame. I remember that because it reminded me of the song-what is it-'Willie MacBride.' Then she walked with me to his grave. He's buried on the hill by the ruins and the round tower."

"I haven't been there yet. I'll go by."

"I don't remember what we talked about exactly. It was all so long ago. But I do remember this because it seemed odd at the time. We were standing over his grave and she took my hand. She said what came from me would journey back and make a difference. I would be proud. I suppose she was talking about you. People said she had the sight, if you believe in such things."

"You start to believe in all sorts of things once you're here."

"Can't argue with that. One night while I was there I took a walk on the beach. I could swear I heard flutes playing and saw a man flying overhead on a white horse. Of course, I'd had a few pints at Gallagher's Pub."

Even as his father laughed, Trevor felt a chill skate down his spine. "What did he look like?"

"Gallagher?"

"No, the man on the horse."

"A drunken delusion. Well, that set your mother off," Dennis muttered, and through the line Trevor could hear his mother's delighted laugh.

"I'll let you get back to breakfast."

"Take some time to enjoy yourself while you're there. Get me the report when you can, Trev, and we'll all keep next summer in mind. Stay in touch."

"I will."

He hung up, then continued to stare thoughtfully out the window. Delusions, illusions, reality. There didn't seem to be very much space between them in Ardmore.

He finished up what business could be done before

New York opened, then took a walk to John Magee's grave.

The wind was high and the graves were old. The shifting of ground had tipped and tilted many of the markers so they leaned and slanted toward the bumpy grass to cast their shadows over their dead. John Magee's stood straight, like the soldier he'd been. The stone was simple, weathered by wind and time, but still the carving was deep and clear.

JOHN DONALD MAGEE

1898-1916 Too young to die a soldier

"His mother had that carved in her grief," Carrick said as he stepped up to stand beside Trevor. "In my estimation, one is always too young to die a soldier."

"How would you know why she had it carved?"

"Oh, there's little I don't know and less I can't find out. You mortals make your monuments to the dead. I find it an interesting habit. A peculiarly human one. Stones and flowers, symbols, aren't they, of what lasts and what passes away? And why do you come here, Trevor Magee, to visit those you never knew in life?"

"Blood and bonds, I suppose. I don't know." Frustrated, he turned to face Carrick. "What the hell is this?"

"By that you're meaning me. You've more of your mother in you than ever your grandfather, so you know by now the answer to that, even if your diluted Yank blood doesn't accept what's in front of your face. You're a traveled man, aren't you? You've been more places and seen more things than most who are your age. Have you never found magic on your journeys till now?"

He wanted to think he had more of his mother in him, much more than he had of his grandfather. But there was nothing in Carolyn Magee of the easy mark. "I've never had conversations with ghosts and faeries till now."

"You talked with Gwen?" The amusement died out of Carrick's eyes, turning the bright blue dark and with an edge. He gripped Trevor's arm with a hand that transferred a jolt of heat and energy. "What did she say to you?"

"I thought you knew or could find out."

Abruptly, Carrick released him and turned away. He began to pace through the grass, around the stones in quick, almost jerky movements. The air around him sizzled with a visible color and spark. "She's the only thing that matters, and the only thing I can't see clear. Can you know, Magee, what it is to want one person with all your heart, with all that you have in you, and for her to be just out of your reach?"

"No."

"I blundered with her. Now that's a deep score to the pride, make no mistake. Not that it was only my fault. She blundered as well. It hardly matters who holds the heaviest weight of the blame at this point."

He stopped, turned back. The air grew still again. "Will you tell me what she said to you?"

"She spoke of you and regrets, of passions that flash and burn, and love that lasts. She misses you."

Emotions swirled in Carrick's eyes. "If she-should you speak with her again, would you tell her I'm waiting, and I've loved no other since last we met?"

For some reason it no longer seemed odd to be asked to deliver a message to a ghost. "I'll tell her."

"She's beautiful, isn't she?"

"Yes, very."

"A man can forget to look past beauty and into the heart. I did, and it's cost me dear. You won't make that mistake. It's why you're here."

"I'm here to build a theater, and to acquaint myself with my roots."

His humor restored, Carrick strolled back to Trevor. "You'll do both, and more. Your ancestor here was a fine young man, a bit of a dreamer, with a heart too soft for soldiering and what war makes men do to men. But he went out of duty and left his love behind."

"You knew him?"

"Aye, both of them, though only Maude knew me. She gave him a charm before he marched off, for protection."

He snapped his fingers and from them dangled a chain with a little silver disk. "I expect she'd want you to have it now."

Too curious for caution, Trevor reached out and took the object. The silver was warm, as if it had been worn against flesh, and on it the carving was faint.

"What does it say?"

"It's in old Irish, and says simply 'Forever Love.' She gave it to him, and he wore it faithful. But war was stronger than the charm in the end, if not stronger than the love. He wanted a simple life, unlike his brother, who went off to America. Your father's father wanted something more, and he worked for it and brought it to be. That's an admirable thing. What do you want, Trevor Magee?"

"To build."

"That's an admirable thing as well. What will you call your theater?"

"I haven't thought of it. Why?"

"I have an idea you'll choose correctly because you're a man who chooses carefully. That's why you're still living alone."

Trevor's fingers curled around the disk. "I like living alone."

"That may be, but it's making mistakes you dislike most of all."

"True enough. I have to go now. I have a meeting."

"I'll walk with you a ways. 'Tis a fine summer we have in store. You'll hear the cuckoo call if you listen. It's a good omen of things to come. I'm wishing you luck on your meeting, and with Darcy."

"Thanks, but I know how to handle both."

"Oh, well, now, I believe you do, or I wouldn't be in so cheerful a mood. She'll be handling you as well. It helps the last of this waiting, if you don't mind me saying, to be entertained by the pair of you."

"I'm not part of your plan."

"It's not a matter of planning. It's a matter of what is, and what will be. You've more say in it than I, and you've little enough."

Carrick stopped. He could see the cottage now, the creamy walls, the sunny thatched roof, the rainbow spread of flowers. "Once she would have come out to meet me, her heart pounding, her eyes bright. Fear and love so mixed together neither of us could untangle them. And me so sure I could dazzle her with gifts and promises that I never held out to her the single thing that mattered."

"No second chance?"

A wry smile twisted Carrick's lips. "There might have been, had I not waited so long to take it. I'll go no farther than this, until the waiting's done. Handle Darcy, Magee, before she handles you."

"My life," Trevor said briefly. "My business." He strode down the slope toward the house and his car. But he couldn't resist a glance back.

It barely surprised him that Carrick had vanished. All that was left was the green hill, and sweetly, brightly, the two-tone call of a bird.

The cuckoo, Trevor supposed. He couldn't think of anything more apt.

Put it aside, he ordered himself and continued to walk. Tuck away the sentiment over long-dead relatives and their sweethearts, visits with faerie princes, and messages for beautiful ghosts.

He had business to attend to.

But he slipped the chain around his neck, and tucked the silver disk under his shirt, where it lay to warm against his heart.