Echoes Read Free

Clare’s coat on the hook.
    â€œThis isn’t a hand-me-down shop,” she said. “Take that coat and put it where it’s meant to be.”
    The unfairness of this stung Clare deeply. “We always leave our coats there. That is where it’s meant to be.”
    â€œDo you hear her?” Agnes looked in appeal to her husband, did not wait for an answer but headed for the stairs. Chrissie up there was for it.
    â€œCan’t you stop tormenting your mother and move your coat?” he asked. “Is it too much to ask for a bit of peace?”
    Clare took her coat down from the hook. She couldn’t go up to the bedroom she shared with Chrissie because that would be like stepping straight into the battlefield. She stayed idling in the shop.
    Her father’s face was weary. It was so wrong of him to say she was tormenting Mammy, she wasn’t, but you couldn’t explain that to him. He was bent over in a kind of a stoop and he looked very old, like someone’s grandfather, not a father. Daddy was all gray, his face and his hair and his cardigan. Only his hands were white from the paint. Daddy had grown more stooped since her First Communion three years ago, Clare thought; then he had seemed very tall. His face had grown hairy too—there were bits of hair in his nose and his ears. He always looked a bit harassed as if there wasn’t enough time or space or money. And, indeed, there usually wasn’t enough of any of these things. The O’Brien household lived on the profits of the summer season which was short and unpredictable. It could be killed by rain, by the popularity of some new resort, by people overcharging for houses along the cliff road. There was no steady living to be gained over the winter months, it was merely a matter of keeping afloat.
    The shop was oddly shaped when you came in: there were corners and nooks in it which should have been shelved or walled off but nobody had ever got round to it, the ceiling was low and even with three customers the place looked crowded. Nobody could see any order on the shelves but the O’Briens knew where everything was. They didn’t change it for fear they wouldn’t find things, even though there were many more logical ways of stocking the small grocery-confectioner’s. It all looked cramped and awkward and though the customers couldn’t see behind the door into the living quarters it was exactly the same in there. The kitchen had a range, with a clothesline over it, and the table took up most of the space in the room. A small scullery at the back was so poky and dark that it was almost impossible to see the dishes you washed. There was one light in the middle of the room with a yellow light shade which had a crack in it. Recently Tom O’Brien had been holding his paper up nearer to the light in order to read it.
    Agnes came downstairs with the air of someone who has just finished an unpleasant task satisfactorily. “That girl will end on the gallows,” she said.
    She was a thin small woman, who used to smile a lot once; but now she seemed set in the face of the cold Castlebay wind, and even when she was indoors she seemed to be grimacing against the icy blast, eyes narrow and mouth in a hard line. In the shop she wore a yellow overall to protect her clothes, she said, but in fact there were hardly any clothes to protect. She had four outfits for going to Mass, and otherwise it had been the same old cardigans and frocks and skirts for years. There were always medals and relics pinned inside the cardigan; they had to be taken off before it was washed. Once she had forgotten, and a relic of the Little Flower which had been in a red satin covering had become all pink and the pale blue cardigan was tinged pink too. Agnes O’Brien had her hair in a bun which was made by pulling it through a thing that looked like a doughnut, a squashy round device, and then the hair was clipped in. They never saw