A Prayer’s Answer

A Prayer’s Answer

Gradually, the card players gathered in and took a seat around the peat fire. The fire burned brightly in the grate but to Paddy the room still felt cold. “It’s the cold of death that’s on you,” Annie had joked earlier on in the day. Anxious to get the game of card started and over with Paddy urged the card players to sit down at the table.

Shuffling the deck of cards he concentrated on dealing them out. Somewhere to his right he heard a snuffling sound. It sounded like old Rover pushing his nose into the gap under the door where Paddy had stuffed an old winter coat to stop the draught from creeping in under the door and around their feet. “The dog must have got out when you came in,” he said to nobody in particular.

Shoving back his chair he went to the door expecting the old dog to rush in out of the foggy night to the heat of the hearth rug. The step was empty. He peered out into the frost covered small front garden of the cottage. Everything was still and white with a hard frost.

Sitting down again he focus on his hand of cards. The sound came again like soft breath on wood. Paddy scanned the faces around the table. Nobody else seemed to have heard it. He pushed his finger into his ear. Maybe it was his ear trouble playing up again. Or, worse, maybe his old trouble with ‘nerves’ he had suffered from for years was rearing its ugly head again.

He lifted his head and looked around the table. Most of the men gathered there had a houseful of kids. He shook his head resolutely. No way was he going back to thinking about that tonight. With renewed vigour he tried to focus all his attention on his card playing.

It galled him that most of the men gathered around the table considered either him or Annie barren because they didn’t have living off springs.

A sigh escaped him. He and Annie had married later in life and had nearly been blessed with a child. There had been a swell in Annie’s belly just once. A boy. Perfectly formed in very detail but not meant for this world. His thoughts went to the small grave. He had crossed the field in the dead of night and buried the stillborn unchristened child as close to the consecrated ground of the graveyard as he could get.

Lately, as he and Annie grew older and tired more easily, the question often arose who they would leave the house and their bit of a farm to when they died.

It was the only subject that he and Annie differed on. She thought it should be left to her nephew John, her godchild. He always retorted he’d rather leave it to the Parish than that gambler. He’d have it in hawk to the bank before they were cold in their grave.

“Paddy,” the self-same man said now irritably from across the table,” you’re showing your hand. You’re not paying attention, man.” Slapping his cards down John, Annie’s god-child, rose to his feet and picking an armful of turf from the crib beside the fire he flung them into the grate as if he was already master of the house.

Paddy seethed inwardly. Whatever bit of pleasure he got from the camaraderie’ of the weekly card game John was spoiling it. Paddy knew it was a childish thing to do but without Annie knowing he had started to shoot the bolt in the door on their card playing night hoping John would take the broad hint he wasn’t wanted and not come back. But he always came and played lord of the manner in one form or another. Tonight it was the fire.

Incensed by the thought, Paddy threw down his cards. “Leave the damm turf where they are. I’ve just turned fifty. I’m not that senile yet that I can’t attend to my on hearth,” he shouted suddenly losing all control.

In the startled silence that followed his outburst a small sneeze was heard. The card players looked from one to the other.

“You hear it too?” Paddy sighed with relief. So it wasn’t just his imagination.

“It seems to be coming from that chest,” a card player said.

Paddy looked to where an old blanket chest sat for as long as he could remember under the broad windowsill. Annie often used to house sickly newly born day old chicks or birds who smashed into the sparkling window pane of the cottage stunning themselves. He remembered she once had an injured dove in there who sat contentedly cooing to itself; only leaving the box to follow Annie around the yard as she scattered the hen’s dinner of meal and boiled nettles.

Paddy’s heartbeat settled down and his broad face broke into a grin. “Annie must have found an injured bird when she was out about the fields today,” he smiled. Gingerly, he began to ease the lid upwards.

In one swift movement John was at his side. “Don’t open it,” he ordered tersely. “It could be a bat. I heard Aunt Annie saying she had heard the squeal of young bats in the roof space. Stupid woman. It would be just like her to try and nurse a sick one back to health.”

There was a mixed murmur of responses around the table. The playing cards, forgotten now, lay in untidy heaps amongst the small change scattered around the table.

“A big strong man like you surely wouldn’t be afraid of a wee bat,” the men joked beginning to poke fun at John.

John’s face reddened in angered embarrassment. He had a reputation as a ’hard’ man. It wouldn’t do to let it be known he had an irrational terror of small flying creatures like bats. As soon as he owned the cottage, he’d be replacing the thatch roof with a slate roof and get rid of all the pest-ridden wild life creatures Annie encouraged by nurturing and giving them shelter. And although, his Aunt Annie didn’t know it yet, as soon as Paddy passed on she was for the County Home.

He made for the door. He wasn’t taking any chances. They’d be no more card playing for him tonight. He shuddered. If that bat got free… A gust of icy air rushed in the kitchen as he pulled the door open and left it gaping wide open behind him.

The old hinges on the blanket box creaked as Paddy inched it open. A small prayer left his lips as the light of the lamp lit up a pair of unblinking blue eyes. In the old box lay a baby its little chest bare to the world making slurping  noises as it sucked its fist. The

lower part of its body was wrapped a piece of red tartan rag.

As Paddy watched the wind from the open door drew the smoke of the turf from the chimney into the kitchen and the baby puckered up its nose and sneezed.

The card players gathered around their faces registering shocked and surprised.

“How did it get in there? Where did it come from? “one asked.

A fairy child,” another of them breathed.

“Shut the door against the night,” another said looking around fearfully.

“Tinker’s brat,” another scoffed.

Gently, Paddy picked up the newborn infant and placed him on the hearth rug in front of the blazing fire. “An answer to prayer,” he said softly as he listened to the sound of Annie’s nephew, John’s footsteps fade into the night.

Gemma Hill Feb 2018 ©