It Was Only Ever You Read Free

surprised by his sudden appearance. Perhaps she knew he would follow her. Patrick felt a pinch in his stomach when he thought that.
    ‘How’ya now?’ he said.
    She looked up at him shyly from beneath long black eyelashes.
    ‘Grand,’ she said.
    Rose had the type of elegant, refined beauty about which his mother might remark, ‘That girl has a touch of Grace Kelly in her.’ Sleek blonde hair sat in lush waves across her delicate shoulders. Her skin was pale silk, and her cheeks and lips were tinged with soft pink, as if God had remembered the rouge. She had an almost overt perfection to her appearance, which, when she was younger, had made her appear prim. As she grew into a woman it had made her astonishingly beautiful. He remembered his father and his pub cronies saying about Grace Kelly one night, ‘That woman’s face is a caution. It doesn’t do for a woman to be too beautiful.’ ‘You wouldn’t know what kind of trouble they’d lead you into.’ ‘A plain woman will never stray too far from the house.’ ‘Marriage makes a woman plain in any case – that’s the proper order of things.’ ‘All the same, I’d do time for a kiss from them perfect lips!’
    Rose was his sister’s wee friend. He had never paid any attention to her before now. She was just the blonde quiet girl in the background of his life. Yet now he was noticing that her rosebud lips were set in a closed smile, pouting. He thought of reaching across, touching them gently with his thumb to see if they were as soft as they looked. He had done that a hundred times before with other girls, but with Rose he felt unable to. She was too much for him. Too beautiful.
    So, he looked down at his feet and said, ‘That was some bull.’
    ‘It was surely,’ she replied.
    He looked up at her again and she was smiling. Her teeth were straight and white and her blue eyes turning sapphire in the sunlight.
    ‘Yeah, that was some bull,’ he continued, gravely adding, ‘It might have killed you.’
    ‘Might have,’ she said brightly.
    ‘And me too. Did you see the way he was chasing me across the fields? I tell you, he was going at some speed.’
    She shrugged, and smiled a little bit. Not a big smile. Just a small one, her eyebrow raised slightly.
    She was mocking him!
    ‘That was some stupid thing you did coming through the field like that with everyone in the town told there was a bull in it.’
    The happy glint dimmed in Rose’s eyes and she lowered them.
    He had upset her and immediately felt sorry.
    ‘There was no sign,’ she said, still looking at her feet.
    Patrick remembered that, being part of the professional class, Rose’s family lived slightly apart from the ordinary town people. As the local doctor, her father was liked and respected, but his wife was aloof. Mrs Hopkins was not interested in local news and Rose was never let out to dances or to the pictures like other girls. It was possible then that she had not picked up news from around the town about Mickey’s new bull.
    ‘Well anyway,’ he said, making his voice as soft and gentle as if he were talking to a child, ‘you’re safe now.’
    She rewarded him with a smile as dazzling as a film star’s and Patrick felt that his legs might go from under him.
    ‘Are you going in for a swim?’ he asked.
    It sounded like such a stupid thing to say now, but she laughed, as if he were the wittiest man in the world.
    ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘What about you?’
    Spurred on by her smile and the aftermath of his bull- chasing, Patrick ripped off his shirt, breeches and pants, and then right there, stark naked and in full view of Rose Hopkins – the doctor’s daughter – he ran down the jetty and threw himself into the freezing water. When he came back up to the surface he saw her standing there on the edge laughing and clapping. Patrick felt as if he was the funniest, cleverest man in the world.
    ‘Come in,’ he shouted. ‘It’s warm, I promise.’
    Rose took off her