The Custodian of Paradise Read Free Page B

was not much in them now that was “precious” in the sense that most people would have used the word. I had even left behind my typewriter.
    Letters of a sort were what I planned to write on Loreburn. There would be no need to make legible transcriptions of letters that would not be read and that I might burn no sooner than I finished writing them.
I have come here to write a long letter to myself. And to read
. The woman behind me would take this utterance as conclusive proof of madness.
    Likewise if she knew that each one of my trunks contained fifteen bottles of Scotch wrapped carefully in burlap bags. I assumed, because there was neither Scotch nor the smell of it seeping from the trunks, that the bottles were still intact. The insides of the trunks I hadupholstered with clothing, linen, bedsheets and pillows. Each trunk also contained thirty packages of cigarettes and a carton of matches.
    I was about to turn and face the woman directly when I heard heavy footsteps on the wharf. The woman moved away abruptly. Soon I heard whispering. She and a man I took to be her husband. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, yes, I know, Irene.” More heavy footsteps. I saw, peripherally, a man’s boots, even closer to the edge of the wharf than my own. Assuming he had come to help his wife bring me to my senses, I did not look up. It now seemed absurd to have counted on my physical stature and my manner to convince the people of Quinton that I could manage by myself in Loreburn, that the very look of me would reassure them.
    “You want to go out to Loreburn?” the man said, as if that was all I wanted, to go out there and come back again. He sounded young. Young enough to be fighting overseas, which he probably would have been if he had no children.
    “I intend to live in Loreburn,” I said. “It seems like a good place to write a book, which is what I plan to do. But I need someone to take me there. And bring me things from time to time.” The shape that I presumed was Loreburn was back again.
    “Let’s just take her up to the house, Patrick,” the woman said.
    A wave of despair that nearly sent me pitching headlong off the wharf washed over me.
All I want to do is live in the place of my own choosing. Where, even if only for a while, I cannot be found
. I felt a hand grip me by the upper arm and a voice thick with condescension say “Come on now, missus, you’ve got to stop this nonsense now.” I did not reply, just held my arm motionless with what seemed like great effort. But when the dizziness passed, I realized that no one was holding my arm and no one had spoken.
    “Patrick,” the woman said, “she must have run away from a home or something. We’ll send for her people and we’ll keep her here until they come to get her.”
    “I don’t have any people,” I said. I realized too late that I had said “people” with a touch of sarcasm, even distaste.
    “Where are you from?” the man said, his tone seeming to say that his wife had spoken for herself “Where are you from?” he said again, exactly the same as before. As if he were talking to a child.
    “St. John’s,” I said. I sensed that this man, Patrick, was gauging our chances of ever reaching Loreburn, or his own of ever getting back.
    “Well, there’s nothing out there,” he said. “It’s like here, only older, more rundown. Just some old houses and a church. All boarded up. A road that’s half grown over.” He sounded as if he was simply telling me what to expect, spoke in a kind of “Don’t say I didn’t warn you” way.
    I felt a surge of hope.
    “I’ll pay you,” I said.
    “No.”
    “It’s not a one-time thing,” I said. “I’ll need you once a month.”
    “Then I’ll come out once a month.”
    “I’ll have to give you money for supplies.”
    “All right.”
    I heard retreating footsteps, a rustle of skirts. Irene departing in silence. Perhaps meaning that he had given her some sort of signal that he would “handle” the