Time of the Child: A Novel

by Niall Williams

he could see what he had always known but through love denied: that the child would never be allowed to stay in Avalon, that those forces that were the designated custodians of what was deemed right would be coming, and soon. He could see it as clear as though it had already happened, and he had already stood in the front hall with Ronnie while they carried the child out the door past them. He could see his daughter’s face

Although Christmas was painted a fairy-tale time, and although since the first it had married women with miracles, he felt nothing of that, but only an overwhelming sense of defeat.

‘My understanding,’ he said, ‘my understanding, and you can correct me if I am wrong, is that for the accomplishment of what was intended, God is required to have a patience not otherwise imaginable by human beings, except vaguely by the word unearthly. My understanding is He sees and knows, and foresaw and foreknew, all our errors, all our wrong turns and catastrophes, and still loved us. And still loved us. Not because but despite. He has already seen that child and seen to it that she was brought to this house, and seen to it that my daughter would love her. He has already read this story, and knows how it goes, because he knows there are humans in it. And that’s where His patience has to come in. Because. Because in some part of Him, in some part of Him He remembers that He made us with the intention of love. And that no matter how many times, no matter how many ways we find to defeat that intention, it is still there. Still there. And beats any regulation, ruling, decree or code, is beyond all jurisdiction or legislation made by man, because it pre-dates all, didn’t even need to be

commanded. Love. That’s my understanding. And that’s what’s in that kitchen. That’s what came to this house the day of the fair. And that’s what I am going to try and keep alive. You can go ahead now and tell me where I’ve gone wrong. Father.’

‘what I am going to choose to believe is something I heard in church once. Forgiveness. Forgiveness for mistakes made down here, because we are down here, and can only see what we can see and think This seems the right thing to do. Forgiveness, which I’m going to say seems to me an essential component of, an outright necessity of,’ – he wet his lower lip – ‘love. And so

that’s what I’m going to choose to believe in, and in patience and forgiveness that pass our understanding, except where we get glimpses of them, like I have, in that kitchen. Father.’

He did not know if he believed in the Holy Spirit, but if asked he would have said that night was the closest he came, that there was an otherness, a largeness apparent and invisible there at the same time, something that did not exist in the textbooks but was the same thing that had been since the beginning, which was that there was something more than the perimeter of flesh, something else and beyond explanation, and which

was felt in that part of us that, for lack of any better, was given the word soul.