Читать книгу He Is Mine and I Have No Other - Rebecca O'Connor - Страница 8

I remember that evening. It was dark by the time I got back from the cemetery. The white paintwork of the house was luminescent under a full white moon. I remember the sound my feet crunching on the gravel. I remember it because it was the only thing I could hear besides the blood gushing in my ears. That particular evening the lawn looked like a pale green glass. And I could feel eyes on me as I passed the laurel hedge separating our house from the neighbours.

The garden at the back was pitch-black. I could just make out the frosty tufts of grass glinting in the light from the porch. The swing creaked slowly from side to side, the blue twine gnawing into the branch’s old bark. If you swung high enough on the seat you could touch the lowest branches with your feet and see right out over the wooden gate onto fields, and to the river, which had burst its banks that winter. I tried not to look down, walking a tightrope of light from the porch, concentrating hard on my steps, and on the footsteps behind me of those little orphan girls in their white dresses, charred black at the hem.

Gran was sitting alone in the dark in the living room, her left hand slack on her lap, her head slumped to the side. The stroke three years earlier had left her with the notion that that hand was not her own, but my dead grandfather’s.

Lazy Bones, she called him. She was forever complaining about his nails that dug into her while she slept, leaving sores on her belly and hips that Mam would have to clean and bandage.

An empty sherry glass sat on the nest of tables beside her, the half-empty bottle underneath. Blue was sleeping fitfully by her feet. I switched on the light and pulled an armchair towards the fire, close to hers. She woke with a jolt.

‘Switch over if you like, love,’ she said. ‘I’m not watching this.’

But I couldn’t sit still. ‘I’ll make you a cup of tea, Gran,’ I said.

She patted her hand and said one for her and one for Lazy Bones please.

‘Sure you can share,’ I said, but she didn’t seem to hear me.

The kettle was still warm. I stood looking at my reflection in the dark window pane as I waited for the water to boil. I tried to look through the glass but couldn’t make anything out. There wasn’t a sound from outside. No wind. The cows had moved off to the hollow corner of the field, furthest from the house.

That boy walking home in the dark. He wouldn’t be scared of the dark as I was. He’d cock his ear to the animal sounds, turn towards the sudden beams of car lights, pulling himself slowly onto the mucky verge and gingerly stepping back onto the glistening surface of the road once all was quiet. It was difficult to imagine what that boy might be thinking as he walked home. And wrong for him to be spending his evenings as he was. That’s what I thought as I let the tea bags in the pot brew to a dark pulp.

Gran liked her tea sugary – three, four spoons sometimes. I made it extra sweet for her.

She’d slouched further into her chair. I set down her tea and tugged at the pillow at the base of her back.

‘Why do nails grow on dead people?’ she asked, clicking the nails on her left hand. I wasn’t sure if it was me she was talking to or herself.

‘I put lots of sugar in your tea, Gran,’ I said.

She needed to sleep, but I couldn’t be doing with the removal of the false teeth, hauling her out of her clothes and into her nightie. So I ran up the stairs and turned on her electric blanket instead, then waited with her until Mam and Dad returned, flicking from channel to channel while she dropped in and out of sleep. Blue twitched her back leg as if she was trying to bury something.