In 1962, Veronica Troy, who is always called Ronnie, is 29. She is beautiful, like her two younger sisters, with waves of auburn hair and green eyes. She lives in the dilapidated, but once grand, Avalon House with her father, a doctor who runs a surgery in the house. Ronnie shows patients in and makes sure her father has a wardrobe full of clean shirts.
Mother and Child, Wade Reynolds
The Troys live in Faha, a tiny village in County Clare in the west of Ireland, where rain is a constant feature. Ronnie has a natural flair for organization, but she is serious and solitary. Her notebook is her closest companion. As a girl she had written stories for her sisters, but at one point she realizes they are romantic trash and she burns them. She begins writing in her journals what she sees in the surgery daily instead.
Dr. Troy knows that Ronnie should get married, but she says she would rather stay at home and help. Ronnie and Noel Crowe had once had a friendship during which there was no end of talk between them. But the doctor was gruff with Noel and he fears he scared him off. Noel has since left for America. Another suitor also comes calling, but Ronnie gently rebuffs him. She feels more free living at home, and in her mind. Like the doctor, Ronnie cultivates a reserve between herself and the town.
On the first Sunday in Advent, a Christmas fair is held in town. That evening, Jude finds a baby in the churchyard. He believes it is dead, but he brings it to the doctor. Taking the child into the surgery, it revives. In the kitchen, the men who brought it are praying the rosary on their knees and Ronnie joins them. The doctor puts the baby into Ronnie’s arms. He admonishes the men to tell no one in town about the baby. “I’ll mind her. I promise,” Ronnie tells Jude. She and the doctor improvise a way to give the baby warm milk until a bottle can be purchased.
The doctor is inspired by the child’s revival and struck by how natural Ronnie is with it. It was as if she was more herself. Ronnie learns to do things with the baby tucked under one arm. The kitchen becomes a laundry for nappies, because they are trying to keep the baby a secret. As an unmarried woman, Ronnie cannot adopt the child. They are both afraid the authorities will arrive and take the little girl away.
The doctor is so moved by the attachment between Ronnie and the baby, that he conceives a plan to get Noel Crowe to come home and marry Ronnie, without telling her. When the secret does come out, inadvertently, Ronnie is outraged. She throws a dish at the doctor and shouts at him. “Father, I won’t marry anyone. Not every woman wants to marry.” Their conversation is heard by waiting patients and is passed around town.
The doctor has many glasses of brandy and falls asleep. Ronnie slips out the door, leaving a note. She walks for miles with the baby and a suitcase filled with milk bottles. She will take the bus to Dublin, and then a ferry to England, where she can raise the child. But then, she returns, saying to the doctor, “I know what we’ll do.”
At midnight mass on Christmas Eve, Ronnie proudly carries the baby to church. When the baby cries, she passes it around to several mothers, but the old priest, who has dementia, waves at the baby and it quiets. The next day, the Troys introduce the baby to Charlotte, Ronnie’s younger married sister. Charlotte and her husband can adopt the child and Ronnie can then care for it.
It is possible that this is not the last we will hear of Ronnie, who appears in Time of the Child, by Niall Williams [published 2024], as Williams has so fallen in love with the characters he created for his novel that he intends to keep writing about the imaginary town of Faha.
As the eldest in my own family, and having lived in several small towns, I quite identified with Ronnie’s reserve and her notebook companion! My father was a pastor, and I was shielded from most of the town’s secrets by my parents. I did get to take care of my newborn brother and sisters, however. It is thrilling to watch Ronnie’s growing attachment, her intelligence and courage as she stakes her claim to the abandoned child. And it doesn’t hurt that the story is told in wondrous languag, filled with human compassion.
