Past the village the road narrowed alarmingly again until she was threading the lorry along like cotton through the eye of a needle. A man, bundled tight against the cold, trudged toward them, his faithful dog following stoically at his heels. Both man and dog stepped off the road into the hedges as the lorry eased by, inches from the toe of the man’s boots. He nodded to Maggie and Tom in greeting.
“You know what I’ve been thinking, Da?”
“What’s that?”
“If I could sell a few more pieces—just a few more mind—I could have another furnace. I want to work with more color, you see. If I could build another furnace, I could have more melts going. The firebrick’s not so costly, really. But I’ll need more than two hundred.”
“I’ve a bit put by.”
“No, not again.” On this she was firm. “I love you for it, but this I’ll do on my own.”
He took immediate umbrage and scowled at his pipe. “What’s a father for, I’d like to know, if not to give to his children? You’ll not have fancy clothes or pretty baubles, so if it’s firebrick you want, then that’s what you’ll have.”
“So I will,” she shot back. “But I’ll buy it myself. I’ve a need to do this myself. It’s not the money I want. It’s the faith.”
“You’ve paid me back tenfold already.” He sat back, drawing the window down a crack so that the wind whistled through as he lit his pipe. “I’m a rich man, Maggie. I have two lovely daughters, each of them a jewel. And though a man could ask for no more than that, I’ve a good solid house and friends to count on.”
Maggie noticed he didn’t include her mother in his treasures. “And always the pot at the end of the rainbow.”
“Always that.” He fell silent again, brooding. They passed old stone cabins, roofless and deserted on the verge of gray-green fields that stretched on, endless and impossibly beautiful in the gloomy light. And here a church, standing against the wind that was unbroken now, was blocked only by a few twisted and leafless trees.
It should have been a sad and lonely sight, but Tom found it beautiful. He didn’t share Maggie’s love of solitude, but when he looked out on a sight like this, with lowered sky and empty land meeting with barely a sight of man between, he understood it.
Through the whistling crack of the window, he could smell the sea. Once he’d dreamed of crossing it.
Once he’d dreamed of many things.
He had always searched for that pot of gold, and knew the failure to find it was his. He’d been a farmer by birth, but never by inclination. Now he’d lost all but a few acres of land, enough only for the flowers and vegetables his daughter Brianna grew so skillfully. Enough only to remind him that he had failed.
Too many schemes, he thought now as another sigh fetched up in his chest. His wife, Maeve, was right about that. He’d always been full of schemes, but never had the sense or the luck to make them work.
They chugged past another huddle of houses and a building whose owner boasted it was the last pub until New York. Tom’s spirits lifted at the sight, as they always did.
“Shall we sail over to New York, Maggie, and have a pint?” he said, as he always did.
“I’ll buy the first round.”
He chuckled. A feeling of urgency came over him as she pulled the lorry to the end of the road, where it gave way to grass and rock, and at last to the windswept sea that spanned to America.
They stepped into a roar of sound that was wind and water lashing furiously against the teeth and fists of black rock. With their arms linked, they staggered like drunks, then laughing, began to walk.
“It’s madness to come here on such a day.”
“Aye, a fine madness. Feel the air, Maggie! Feel it. It wants to blow us from here to Dublin Town. Do you remember when we went to Dublin?”
“We saw a juggler tossing colored balls. I loved it so much you learned how yourself.”
His laugh boomed out like the sea itself. “Oh, the apples I bruised.”
“We had pies and cobblers for weeks.”
“And I thought I could make a pound or two with my new skill and took me up to Galway to the fair.”
“And spent every penny you made on presents for me and Brianna.”
His color was back, she noted, and his eyes were shining. She went willingly with him across the uneven grass into the gnashing teeth of the wind. There they stood on the edge of the powerful Atlantic with its warrior waves striking at the merciless rock. Water crashed, then whipped away again, leaving dozens of waterfalls tumbling through crevices. Overhead, gulls cried and wheeled, cried and wheeled, the sound echoing on and on against the thunder of the waves.
The spray plumed high, white as snow at the base, clear as crystal in the beads that scattered in the icy air. No boat bobbed on the rugged surface of the sea today. The fierce whitecaps rode the sea alone.
She wondered if her father came here so often because the merging of sea and stone symbolized marriage as much as war to his eyes. And his marriage had been forever a battle, the constant bitterness and anger of his wife’s lashing forever at his heart, and gradually, oh so gradually, wearing it away.
“Why do you stay with her, Da?”
“What?” He pulled his attention back from the sea and the sky.
“Why do you stay with her?” Maggie repeated. “Brie and I are grown now. Why do you stay where you’re not happy?”
“She’s my wife,” he said simply.
“Why should that be an answer?” she demanded. “Why should it be an end? There’s no love between you, no liking, if it comes to that. She’s made your life hell as long as I can remember.”
“You’re too hard on her.” This, too, was on his head, he thought. For loving the child so much that he’d been helpless not to accept her unconditional love for him. A love, he knew, that had left no room for understanding the disappointments of the woman who had borne her. “What’s between your mother and me is as much my doing as hers. A marriage is a delicate thing, Maggie, a balance of two hearts and two hopes. Sometimes the weight’s just too heavy on the one side, and the other can’t lift to it. You’ll understand when you’ve a marriage of your own.”
“I’ll never marry.” She said in fiercely, like a vow before God. “I’ll never give anyone the right to make me so unhappy.”