Loopy Read Free Page B

power of good. In the meantime, aren’t you all getting along fine?”
    No recriminations, no talk of a woman’s place being in the home or a wife being subject to her husband, as some of the older clergy might have told her. Instead he encouraged her to play a more active part in the community now that she was free to do so. For the first time since she had walked down the aisle with Sean Lynch, she had a life of her own. While she wondered to herself, Would I give all this up if he came back?
    Sean also wondered if he should return to Trabane as he trudged the streets of Birmingham in search of a job, any job that would pay enough for him to send something, however meager, back home to his wife.
    *   *   *
    Brona drew back the curtain and looked out into the yard to see who was blowing the horn. Hailstones were bouncing off the cobblestones and the hens had taken shelter inside the open door of the barn. She hoped they wouldn’t lay among the bales of hay that filled the barn. It would take the children half the day to find the eggs if they did.
    Brona would have recognized the white van even without NORBERT’S SUPER STORE—FOR QUALITY AND VALUE painted on its side. She waved at the face behind the windscreen wipers to signal him to come in. Norbert climbed out of the van with obvious reluctance and hunched his shoulders against the driving hail. Instead of making straight for the door of the farmhouse, he went around to the back of the van and lifted out a bright yellow gas cylinder. Looped over his elbow was a plastic shopping bag. Before opening the front door, Brona had time to reflect yet again that as his was the only supermarket for miles around, the van’s sign’s claim was difficult to refute. Yet whenever she shopped in the city, everything seemed to be much less than what Norbert charged. She told herself to be fair as she watched Norbert putting down the cylinder with a gasp of relief. After all, city stores did not deliver to the back of beyond, much less give employment to her eldest son in bad times like these.
    â€œWill it be all right there, missus, or will I connect it up for you? I’ve a loaf of bread in the bag. Larry said he thought you might want it.”
    â€œGreat, the gas is fine where it is, Seamus. Would you like a cup of tea in your hand? I know you’re in a hurry,” she lied easily, “Larry tells me you are run off your feet.”
    â€œThe boy’s right. I have hardly time to draw a breath. Still and all, ’twould be worse if I was idle, I suppose. There’s enough of them idle around the town as it is.”
    He might have expounded further on the virtues of honest toil had not Brona forestalled him, “What do I owe you, Seamus?”
    â€œNothing, missus. Not a red cent. Larry said to take it out of his wages at the end of the week. You have a grand lad in him and no mistake. I only wish to God he’d pack in the school and come to work for me full-time. I’d give him all the time off he wants for the hurling. If we had a few more like him, we’d beat those Lisbeg shaggers out the gate. We might even win the county championship!”
    This topic she was not keen to discuss. Only last week Pat O’Hara had taken the trouble to drive out the four miles to her farmhouse when he knew Larry would safely be out of the way stacking shelves in the supermarket. O’Hara’s mission had been to persuade her to keep Larry on at school until he had graduated: “With that piece of paper in his pocket, there’ll be no stopping him!”
    She hadn’t the heart to tell the schoolteacher that it was all she could do to keep Larry at school until the end of this term. Graduation was completely out of the question now that her husband had taken the boat for England—leaving a mountain of debt and four children behind him.
    She had been alarmed that the schoolteacher had reeked of whiskey