Chapter 12 The Table's Guest

The guest who came in the spring was not from Carra. She came in a car that was not built for the lane, the same way the auctioneer had come, and she stood in the yard and looked at the house and the table through the kitchen window, and when Niamh opened the door the woman said, "I'm looking for the table." "You've found it," Niamh said. The woman's name was Margaret, and she was from the city, and she wrote for a magazine that Niamh had never heard of, and she had heard about the table from the auctioneer, who had mentioned it to a dealer, who had mentioned it to a journalist, who had mentioned it to Margaret, and Margaret had driven down from the city on a Tuesday morning and had followed the lane to Gort because she wanted to see the table that a family had kept for four generations and had refused to sell. "I didn't refuse to sell," Niamh said. "I said not today." "Isn't that the same thing?" "It's the opposite. Not today means there might be a tomorrow. Refusing means there isn't." Margaret laughed. She had the kind of laugh that makes a room feel larger, and she stood in the kitchen of Gort and looked at the table and said the things that people said: the size of it, the grain, the lamp. But she also did the thing that people did not do, which was to kneel down and look at the underside of the boards, and to run her fingers along the notches under the leaves, and to stand up and look at the end grain with the letters and the half-letter, and she did it with the attention of someone who has been taught to look at things, and Niamh watched her and felt, for the first time since the auction, the particular vulnerability of having your private thing examined by a stranger. "May I?" Margaret said, and she put her hand on the closed-eye knot. "You may," Niamh said. Margaret stood with her hand on the knot for a long moment. Then she said, "Tell me about this." And Niamh told her. She told her about Oona, who had commissioned the table and set it for two and watched it fill. She told her about the carpenter who said a table keeps you company if you touch it. She told her about the drowning and the notches under the leaves and the letters in the end grain and the half-letter that was not a letter. She told her about Callum and the girl and the engagement and the leaves going in for the first time. She told her about the suppers and the roof and the tin that had held the polish and then the account books and now held the money from the town's Thursday evenings. She told her all of it, flat and without decoration, the way Oona had told the stories, and Margaret listened without interruption and without taking notes, which Niamh noticed and appreciated, because the stories were not for the magazine, they were for the table, and the table was listening. When the telling was done, Margaret said, "Can I write about it?" "You can write about the table," Niamh said. "You can't write about the house. The house is private. The table is a table. It sits in the kitchen and it holds the plates and it counts the family. That's what tables do." "The table is the house," Margaret said. "You know that." Niamh looked at her across the boards. She looked at the woman who had driven down from the city and knelt on the floor of her kitchen and put her hand on the closed-eye knot, and she thought of Oona, who had known the measure of a person from the word Oh, and she thought of the girl who had come with Callum and touched the wood and said the thing about the grandmother's table, and she thought of Bríd, who had come with her copper pots and her cream van and had said Right, and she thought of the auctioneer, who had said you know what this is, and she thought of Colm, who had said that's not a letter, and she thought of all the people who had come to the table and left their mark on it, not in the wood but in the room, in the air, in the particular silence that a table makes when someone sits at it, and she said, "You can write about the table. But you have to write it the way the table tells it." "How does the table tell it?" "Flat. Without the words that magazines use. No heritage. No legacy. No heirloom. The table is a table. It counts the family. That's the whole of it." Margaret nodded. She sat at the long side of the table, in the chair that had once been the girl's, and she looked at the closed-eye knot and said, "I understand." She came back three times. Each time she sat at the long side and looked at the table and asked questions, and each time Niamh answered them in the kitchen of Gort with the lamp between them and the grain running to the sea, and each time Margaret left without taking notes and without writing anything down, and Niamh did not know what she was writing or whether she was writing anything at all, and she did not ask, because the asking would have been a kind of selling, and the table was not for sale, and the stories were not for sale, and the count was not for sale, and the only currency the table understood was the currency of hands on wood and voices in the room and the silence that follows a meal when the plates are cleared and the lamp is low and the grain runs on. The article appeared in the summer, in the magazine that Niamh had never heard of, and Margaret sent a copy up the lane in an envelope that had the magazine's name on it and the date and the address of Gort in a hand that was careful and clear, and Niamh read it at the table with the lamp between her and Eamon and the grain running to the sea, and the article was about the table, and it was written the way Niamh had asked, flat and without the words that magazines use, and it described the marks and the notches and the letters and the half-letter, and it described the suppers and the roof and the tin that had held the money, and it described the closed-eye knot and the river of grain and the lamp in the centre of the boards, and it ended with a line that Niamh read twice and then folded the magazine closed and put it in the drawer with the letters and the account books and the old knife, and the line was this: "The table does not keep the family. The family keeps the table. And the keeping is the thing." Eamon looked at her across the boards. "Is that true?" "Which part?" "The keeping is the thing." Niamh thought about it. She thought about Oona, who had kept the table by oiling it and setting it and refusing to sell it. She thought about Callum, who had kept it by sitting at it and saying little and dying at it. She thought about herself, who had kept it by caring for it and setting the plates and refusing the auction. She thought about Eamon, who had kept it by saying not today and then finding a way to make the table feed the town. She thought about all of them, four generations of hands on wood, and she said, "Yes. The keeping is the thing. It's the only thing." And the table stood in the kitchen of Gort at its full length with the leaves in and the pegs turned home, and the grain ran the length of the boards like a river seen from a hill, and the closed-eye knot kept watch from the second board, and the notches under the leaves counted the four generations into their places, and the letters in the end grain held the names of the family, and the half-letter held the name that had never been finished, and the blue cups stood on the shelf above the range, both of them, the chipped one and its pair, and the drawer under the range held the account books and the old knife and the ribbon and the bundle of letters and the magazine article that said the keeping is the thing, and the house of Gort held the table, and the table held the count, and the count held the family, and the family went on, which is what families do, and what tables do, and what houses do, and what the count does, which is to say, it goes on, patient and unhurried, finding its own way, like a river seen from a hill, running to the sea at the far end of the table where the chair stands empty and the grain runs on.