Cold Pastoral by Margaret Duley

a suck of her lips. “The Father must be sick anointin’ him.”
    â€œYou can fall once too often, Mrs. Houlihan,” boomed Mrs. Rolls, with the weight of a boulder crushing a pebble.
    â€œThat you can, Mrs. Rolls,” agreed Mrs. Walsh. “Put a bit of wood in the fire, Mrs. Costello. You’re nearest the stove.”
    â€œI’ll do it,” said Mrs. Houlihan, making a scrape of her kitchen chair. “I know her kitchen better than the rest of you and I’ll make the tea. The men’ll want a nice warm drink, and I’m the one to get it for them.”
    â€œWill they stay out the night?” asked Mrs. Walsh in a hopeful voice. The occasion was sad but rare.
    â€œAnd what else would they be doin’, Mrs. Walsh, with that slip of a child in the open?” Now that Mary Immaculate had gone Mrs. Houlihan approved of her more. When the stove had been fed with spruce-logs she returned to the circle at the table. Bending further in, she gathered the women’s faces nearer the lamp-chimney. “If she sleeps in this weather there’ll be no runnin’ about for her any more.” The circle echoed with whispers that lacked solidarity from Mrs. Rolls. When Mrs. Houlihan was planning a wake for Mary Immaculate, Mrs. Rolls discarded her aloofness. With a shift like the fall of an avalanche she slid to her knees and became a boulder on the floor. “Thou shalt open our lips, O Lord.”
    The women dropped in one descent, while the lamp was left to shadow their brows. “And our mouths shall show forth Thy praise,” came in unison from their mouths.
    Mrs. Rolls was leader, and she guided them through the Rosary where the women had to answer her according to her mood. Suitably it was a day for the five Sorrowful Mysteries, and her voice gave value to their contemplation. Returning from her own world of silent meditation, Josephine led the responses. The women prayed, with no hope of recess from Mrs. Rolls.
    Molly Conway shambled by the waterfall whimpering for attention until a relation ran her down the valley, locking her inside her house.
    The temperature rose, releasing the trees. Dripping away their masquerade they returned to spruce and fir. The junipers drooped further to the east, dragged in a deeper bow. The moon receded, paled by a morning sky. In a chill dawn snow was revealed without sparkle, trees without magic and box-like houses empty of their owners. Heavy with the burden of winter the village shivered in a nadir of rest.
    At seven Benedict and his train of sons dragged up the slope. Slack and speechless they clod-hoppered in their long rubbers. Entering the kitchen, more shadows found homes in hollowed eyes. Pale, silent women rose and filed out, insensate with sleeplessness and the thought of their own tired men. Mrs. Rolls moved like a mobile mountain.
    Josephine’s eyes focused on her husband. “Any sign, Ben?”
    â€œNo,” he said briefly. “We’re going to wire to the City for the police. There’s a boat gone across the Bay to the telegraph office.”
    Benedict and his loutish sons died to the thought of Mary Immaculate. Fully dressed they sprawled and slept in a vast indifference to the toll of sea or land. Only Josephine prayed on, until she crumbled like an animal lost in turgid sleep.
    The first day of Mary Immaculate’s disappearance she was village and shore news. The second she was City news. The third she was Island and World news. While the village was recovering from its first search strange skiffs and dories came in from the sea, and other men climbed the slopes of the ravine. Authority arrived, and uniforms mixed with blue overalls hitched over long rubbers. The fisherfolk lent themselves to organisation, but they did it in silence. In front of the invaders not a word was said. “A little girl was lost.” Lost, was she? Let them say what they say, she was held! The Little People had taken