The All of It: A Novel by Jeannette Haien

spoke at last.
    She started and made a gesture with both her hands as of closing a drawer, and, straightening her back, impersonating attendance, said, “That’sthe all of it, Father…. The rest you know.”
    “Oh,” the priest in him all but shouted, “but I don’t.”
    She looked surprised, then—he saw it happen— touched , by what in his outcry she mistakenly took as a zestful yen and appeal for details of her and Kevin’s adventures, and before he could put her straight—before he had a chance to collect himself and put together the track of questions he must, as her confessor, have the answers to—she, flushing with pleasure at his interest, said deeply, “Oh, Father, I could hold you here a year telling you all the particulars of what happened to us over the next months!”
    And again, before he could open his mouth, she led: “We were so green, you know—hardly born, as you might say, in terms of what we knew of the world. And our having never known anybody to speak to other than ourselves, we were shy and timid as hares. But our being timid, it worked for us, kept us geared and wide-awake every second: we didn’t want anything to pass us by, you see, for fear we’d miss something in the way of a lesson we could use later on…. The first time we found ourselves in a big crowd—we landed in Donegal Town on a Saturday morning—we couldn’t believe the excitement of it, all the people moving about in the square, bent on themselves and what they were up to, paying no mind at all to us. We kepttelling each other not to gawk—their clothes, you know, and their ways! And the talk they had in them!” She smiled broadly. “You can imagine how it was for us, Father.”
    He nodded, and, having made the decision to let her go on, he asked, “Did you work? Tell me how you got along.”
    Her face grew serious again. “It was Kevin’s wits that got us through…. We stayed anxious about our leaving traces of ourselves, so we kept going, went from Donegal Town to Sligo, on down Calloony way, all in stages, of course, a few miles one week and a few the next. We stayed nights in the ruins of old places and sometimes in shepherds’ huts; Kevin had a keen eye for ones there’d be little likelihood of our being caught in. Every few days, he’d go into whatever town we were near and ask if there was any work to be had. ‘Anything for a bit of a wage,’ was the way he came to put it. Saying it that way made it sound like he’d settle for the lowest figure, and as there’s always somebody up to doing something, he regularly got taken on for an odd job with an end to it, carting, mending fences, whitewashing, this or that or the like, and being Kevin, he’d always do a tap more than was expected of him, so the extra penny came his way more often than not…. It wasn’t till we got to Ballymote that we settled in for a bit.”
    “Oh? Tell me, Enda.”
    “We came on a grand place, one such as you’d see in a picture…. We took the morning to skirting it about. It had rows of out-buildings, Father, and stables, a greenhouse, too, and of course the main house, grand , as I said, and, well, you know, for a place like that, as Kevin let out to me, hands was needed. By noontime, Kevin’d made up his mind that we should go together to the gate-keeper’s lodge and see if there might be work for us as a pair. If it proved out for us, he said, it’d give us a chance to catch our breath. But before we went to ask, he took off for Ballymote town and bought a curtain ring for my finger, had the part you put the thread through filed off so it’d look like a wedding ring. You can see—” She held out her left hand with the eagerness of a child showing off a treasure. “I’ve never had it off,” she said, and, not taking in his attempt to speak: “Mid-afternoon, we got ourselves to the gate-keeper’s lodge, scared half to death of course at our boldness, but hiding it as best we could…. There was a door