A Long Long Way Read Free

left hanging too long, and they were starting to decompose. She was just thirteen in that time.

    As he stood there a man came in behind him and pushed past into the curtained space. He was wearing a long, black, threadbare raincoat. The man laid himself down on one of the rickety beds and swung his feet up wearily, and it seemed only then noticed Willie.
    ‘What you want, sonny?’ he said.
    ‘I was bringing these up to Mr Lawlor,’ said Willie.
    ‘Who are they from?’ said the man.
    ‘From my father, James Dunne.’
    ‘The chief super at the castle?’
    Are you Mr Lawlor, then?‘
    ‘Do you want to see the scar on my noggin?’ said the man, laughing not entirely agreeably.
    ‘Can I put them down somewhere?’ said Willie, uneasily.
    ‘So you’re his son, are you?’ he said, maybe noting his height.
    ‘I am,’ said Willie, and then he knew the girl was looking at him. He raised his eyes towards her and she was smiling. But maybe it was a smile of mockery, or worse, pity. She’s thinking, he thought, I am small to be a policeman’s son. He was hoping still in those times he might make a last spurt of growth. But he couldn’t tell her that.
    ‘So what do you think, son, about Peelers rushing in on passers-by and knocking the bejaysus out of them?’
    ‘I don’t know, Mr Lawlor.’
    ‘You should know. You should have an opinion. I don’t care what a man thinks as long as he knows his own mind.’
    ‘That’s what my grandfather says,’ said Willie, expecting to be mocked for his words. But the answer wasn’t mocking.
    ‘The curse of the world is people thinking thoughts that are only thoughts which have been given to them. They’re not their own thoughts. They’re like cuckoos in their heads. Their own thoughts are tossed out and cuckoo thoughts put in instead. Don’t you agree? What’s your name?’
    ‘William.’
    ‘Well, William. Don’t you agree?’
    But Willie Dunne didn’t know what to say. He could feel the eyes of the girl on him.
    ‘Yes,’ said the man, ‘if Gretta here, my daughter Gretta, was to elope to Gretna Green tomorrow with some young fella, with you even say, I would ask her as she went out the door, “Gretta, do you know your own mind?” and if the answer was yes, I couldn’t stop her. I might want to stop her, but I could-n’ t. And I might beat you just for the sake of it. But if it was a thought put in her head by another, you for instance, why, I would bolt her leg to the floor.’
    This was peculiar, embarrassing talk for Willie and, he believed, for anyone in his position at that moment. And while he was reluctant truly to move away from the girl, he was longing to move away from Mr Lawlor.
    But Mr Lawlor had stopped talking and closed his eyes. He had a bushy black moustache but his face was long and thin.
    ‘Mother of Jesus,’ he said.
    ‘It’s all right,’ said the girl, and she had a low, deeply pleasing voice, Willie thought. ‘Leave the birds there. I’ll cook them for him.’
    ‘I don’t want the birds,’ said Mr Lawlor. ‘And I don’t want his jars of lamb stew and his jams and his - Do you know, William, your father sent me in a live chicken last week? I’m not going to be wringing the necks of hens at my time of life. I sold it to a lady for a shilling only because I couldn’t watch the creature starve to death, for the love of God.’
    ‘He’s only trying to make it up to you. You’re his neighbour,’ said Willie. ‘He didn’t like to see a neighbour hit on the head.’
    ‘But it was him hit me on the head. Well, not him, but one of his lads. Wild, big, feverish-looking fellas with big black sticks knocking sparks off of my skull. See, does he know his own mind? Now, does he? If he knew his own mind, he could give a man a belt and not think twice about it. And I suppose could be quite easy in that same mind about the four men killed that day.’
    Willie Dunne stood there marooned by these truths.
    ‘I’m being a miserable old