You Are Not Alone - (Part 1 of 2)
In the low, old cottage in Ringsend they sat quietly, face to face, each with a cup of coffee in hand, looking at the cards spread on the round table dividing them.
‘So this is exactly what he got?’, one witch asked the other.
She knew the answer, but wanted it confirmed just to make sure she understood the situation correctly.
The other witch replied in a meditative tone.
‘Yup, that is it!’
Teresa stopped looking at the cards and moved her eyes on Maggie’s face. The other witch had chosen to look forever like a teenager, so in spite of being four hundred years old her face was bright and wrinkle free. Sometimes, when seeing her friend, Teresa wondered if maybe she should have settled on a younger age, but she had been in her late thirties for so long that she did not really feel like changing it. Plus, she was not self-employed like Maggie, and looking older made it easier for her to get a job. Her thoughts were interrupted when Maggie spoke again.
‘What do you think?’
‘I am not a tarot reader, I mean, yeah, like any witch I know some things, I remember I even tried to make a career out of it at some point …’, the way the other woman inclined her head showed Teresa that she was rambling.
‘... Nevermind that, yeah, of course you are right, but what I do not understand is why you want to interfere. We have seen humans do stupid things like this hundreds, if not thousands of times and we let them be. It is part of their free will thingy no?’
Maggie got up and in less than one step and a half crossed the room to the window.
‘Oh Teresa, this is so complicated! It is not him! It is the illness in his head that is telling him there is no hope, that is why he wants to do it, it is not him, that is why I am interfering. It is not free will, it is the thing inside. You know, during the famine his family was one of the few that actually helped us. They bought grain, then had the people work on their estate and sold it to them cheaply. It was not just a handout, you know how we Irish are, proud and mean, some of the men then wouldn’t have accepted anything for free, so they cleared land, fixed buildings, women did the laundry, cooked, whatever, and that is how our tribe survived, so we are indebted to them.’
Teresa remembered the times and her heart sunk in darkness, feeling the pain again as if it had been yesterday. Certain kinds of trauma will never go away, it is etched into your soul and it will mark every action you take until you are no more.
‘Ok, fine. What do you want me to do about it?’, now Teresa was in a bad mood. All the memories made her choke on her coffee and stop enjoying her huge blueberry muffin.
‘Oh Teresa, please don’t be upset! I know it is unusual to do this, but please, as a favor to me. Let me explain.’ Maggie came back to the table and sitting down started her story.
‘I have been around their family forever, keeping tabs, counselling them with my cards, just all round their good witch. Liam has always been such a precious child and grew up to be a good man. When he took over the family estate it was in decent shape, not too too, nor too low. Somehow he got into his head this idea’, here she leaned forward and whispered, ‘and I blame the ytches’, then leaned back and continued on her normal tone, ‘that it would be worthwhile to turn the main house in I do not know what kind of fancy boutique hotel. Or the house was old and draughty, it had not seen repairs in more than a hundred and fifty years, so it needed fixing up and that cost a lot of money. And when I say a lot, I mean a lot. Money Liam did not have, the banks were not keen to lend it to him so he went to a money merchant and got it from them at an astronomical rate. I told him, I did, I told him, don’t do it, it makes no sense, but he was convinced people will pay good money to come to Ireland and have ‘the Irish experience in luxury’, here Maggie used air quotes and scrunched up her face making Teresa smile with her teenage, funny look.
‘So yeah, then Covid hit. No more people, no more money, Liam in debt up to his eyeballs and now two years later he has to either pay the money or he was proposed a scheme by the government where they take over the house, as a historic building, pay all the debts and he has the right to live in a small gate lodge until he dies. But that is not his either, when he dies it goes to the scheme too. So, in a way he lost everything, there is no way to find the money to pay them and the debts are so large that the money he would take for the house would not cover them…’
Here Teresa burst out.
‘What? That house must be worth millions … That is mad!’
‘True, it is, but Liam never actually did the math’s to see how much money the loans will actually cost him, so all that added up and now it is an astronomical sum. So this is how we got here.’
Maggie’s hand pointed to the cards and she let out a deep sigh.
‘So, will you help me?’, her green steely eyes stared at Teresa from under a dark, curly fringe.
‘Yes, of course! But Maggie, I cannot know if he will listen to me or if that will make any difference, you need to know that!’
Maggie nodded.
‘I know, but all we can do is try, right?’
The silence fell over them sitting there, in the old witches’ cottage in Ringsend, staring at the tarot spread in front of them foretelling of surrender and darkness.
The plan was made. Maggie had, from times long passed, a long wool coat that had belonged to Liam’s grandfather, the man that had been most impactful and most revered by the family and whose name he bore. Liam the elder had been a grafter and a horse work with only one soft spot in his heart, his family. All Liam the elder did, he did it for the family, for their well being, for their legacy. Even now people talk about how he used to measure his fortune, in years of well being for his descendants. He was a passionate man who had a lot of children, so he worked hard to provide for them and their children and so on.
Maggie suspected that most likely this was the main reason Liam the younger felt so desperate and hopeless, he had singlehandedly run into the ground his entire family’s prospects. So, Maggie thought, that if they had a chat, the two Liams, maybe the young one will find some hope and give up his ‘dark passenger’.
Teresa had to think, she needed time to get used to the idea, to think about the man she had to become, to ponder on the situation and give it her best shot.
She took the coat and promised Maggie she will go to Liam sooner than later. It was clear time was of the essence. You never knew when ‘the other’ overtook him completely and he got lost in the waves, as the cards foretold.
At home, in the unseen semi-detached on the unnamed crossroads in Cabra, Teresa put on the coat and looked at herself in the mirror.
‘Hello!’
She said to an old man, maybe eighties, wrinkled and hairy, with big knotted hands and faded, blue eyes. The man looked at her and like a puppet master she raised a hand to straighten up his hair and then stopped mid-air smiling back to him with a crooked, uncared for smile. The hair had been messy, so she should not change it. The man was old, but still strong and Teresa closed her eyes trying to remember if she had ever met him or even just seen him. She hadn’t. It was ok though, she still had his voice, his looks and that was enough for most people. Even if she was not perfect in replicating their mannerisms they were so taken by the other things that they never questioned her.
‘Good, good!’, she said in a hoarse broken voice to the ancient man. ‘We can work with this!’
To be continued next Monday, the 15th of January 2024 (too long for just one post)