The Gift of Women Read Free Page B

a day gone by and he’s wasting in spite of two doses of fish soup, whelks, mussels, dulse – clams, rock cod, eels from under the stones for snacks. She’s got to go back into Bangor and back to work at old Furey’s pub. She’s been a week away already. Old Furey wants her back behind the bar, her bosom there to bump up the take. She can’t be sneaking by old Furey’s to Sharkey, the Ship’s Chandler’s, next door!
    But she could go to a chandler’s in Belfast.
    â€œDo you want brass rings to go with it?” she asks Basil Del Feeney.
    â€œSo, have you taken on an extra hand who needs a hammock?” the chandler’s helper asks while Meta examines the brass blowers and compasses with her finger. The way she has her breasts thrust up with her corset, Meta could pose as a siren or ship’s figurehead for sale, but she only aims to lead the chandler’s man on – to see if it leads to a discount.
    â€œIf I have, will I get trade rate?”
    â€œI won’t say I can’t say yes,” he tells her very slowly, then asks, “Your vessel is called?”
    â€œHMS Del Feeney .”
    â€œAnd your new hand’s name is?”
    â€œBasil Del Feeney.”
    â€œAnd what does the boat trade in – dopey monikers or silly monkeys?”
    They both laugh.
    â€œPerhaps I can assist you mounting the item after you purchase it?”
    â€œYou’ll have to get the train and come to Carnalea with me to do that.”
    â€œPerhaps a demonstration here will do instead. I’ll give you trade rate, if you’ll just come in the back and pick your hammock.”
    He says his perhapses as though they are made of truly juicy pears and happy hapses.
    The midnight shadow on Del Feeney’s chin is dry, bristly and blotched. Sickening smudges mottle his back and shoulders. He has her hang the hammock over the back stoop, but looks no happier in it, just darker because of the gloomy outdoors and the rain.
    He still chitters. He’s not cold, hasn’t got a cold. He’s just shrivelling and Meta has begun to connect his chitters to the rain, which has been on since she nicked him and left for Belfast. The river has risen over the edge of her garden, stirring around her whitewashed stones on the river bank, drowning and deadening their colour.
    By the morning, her garden is thoroughly flooded and Del Feeney’s gone.
    In his place – a peace offering, an ugly great tuna fish swinging in the hammock, like Basil caught it flying through the air in the dark. For God’s sake, it’s nothing so edible as a tuna, it’s a damn dolphin not even a magician could cut into nice frying steaks. After her going to the trouble of installing a hammock, he only wanted it to go fishing for his farewell.The dolphin has a fin on it like a plough share, and Basil’s frigging toque like a blue bye-bye note stuck over its blowhole, suffocating the poor beast. Its nose is poking through a hole in the mesh.
    Does Meta find the thing ugly because she’s lumped with it as this heart-wrenching, likely back-breaking, very ugly gift? Your dolphin’s not like your nice tuna. They have fins like little ballet dancer’s feet. They do pas de dousies in the sea on them.
    She flips the hammock and is immediately sorry. The slap makes the back porch’s floor boards jump loose from their nails. The river gives a swollen aargh. “Aargh,” Meta gargles back at it as she heaves the dolphin’s tail and body behind it down the back porch steps until she stands shin deep in water, in her own sopping garden.
    The wet makes the grass as slippery as sea weed. She feels mud between her toes; the grass she hasn’t cut all summer winds around her ankles. So what if the damn dolphin doesn’t like it, the slime makes it easier for her, but it’s beyond comprehension what a man will lumber a woman with.
    Now, the dolphin flails. The