The Heather Blazing Read Free

traffic, which was still heavy on the quays, but he decided he would drive home now, pack up the car and set out.
    He drove along Christchurch Place and then turned right into Werbergh Street. It had begun to rain, although the day was still bright and warm. He hated days like this, when you could never tell whether the rain would come or not, but this, in the end, was what he remembered most about Cush: watching the sky over the sea, searching for a sign that it would brighten up, sitting there in the long afternoons as shower followed shower.
    He had known the house all his life: the Cullens had lived there until the Land Commission gave them a better holding outside Enniscorthy. Himself and his father had gonethere as paying guests every summer, and each of the daughters had been what he imagined his mother would have been had she not died when he was born. He remembered each of their faces smiling at him, the wide sweep of their summer dresses as they picked him up, each of them different in their colouring and hairstyle, in the lives they went on to live. In his memory, they remained full of warmth, he could not remember them being serious or cross.
    He turned off Sandford Road and pulled up outside the house. He left the keys in the ignition as he went in. The rain had stopped now and the sun was out. He found Carmel sitting in the conservatory at the back of the house with the door open on to the garden. She was wearing a summer dress.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?” he asked. She said nothing, but held his look. Her expression was rigid, frozen.
    â€œAre you all right?” he asked.
    â€œI was asleep,” she said. “I woke when you rang, and then I was so tired I fell asleep again. It must be the summer weather, it’s very heavy.”
    â€œDo you feel all right?”
    â€œI feel tired, that’s all. Sometimes I hate packing and moving. I dread it. I don’t know why.” She put her hand to her head, as though she was in pain. He went to her and put his arms around her.
    â€œMaybe we could take some of the plants down with us. Will there be room for them?” she asked quietly.
    â€œI’ll try and find space for them,” he said.
    â€œSometimes it looks so bare down there, as though the house wasn’t ours at all, as though it belonged to someone else.”
    He began to pack the cars with bags and boxes, and then he carried out her flowering plants and her sweet-smelling lilies and tried to place them carefully and gently in the boot or the space behind the front seats of the car. “One quick jolt and they’ll be ruined,” he said and smiled.
    â€œOh, drive carefully, please,” she said. It had begun to rain and a wind rustled through the bushes in the garden. He found an umbrella to give her shelter as they went out to the car, closing the door behind them.
    He drove away from the house. They did not speak until they were beyond Shankill.
    â€œThere’s something I have to tell you,” she said. “I was going to tell you this morning, but you were too preoccupied. Niamh came over yesterday to say that she’s pregnant. She thought that we had noticed on Sunday when she came for dinner, but I didn’t notice anyway. Did you notice?”
    He did not reply. He looked straight ahead as he drove. Niamh was their only daughter.
    â€œIt was the last thing I thought of,” Carmel went on. “She sounded very cool, but I think she was dreading having to tell me. How could she be so foolish! I couldn’t sleep last night thinking about it. I rang Donal but he didn’t know either. You’d think she would have told her brother.”
    Carmel did not speak again until later when they stopped at the traffic lights in Arklow. The atmosphere in the car was tense with their silence.
    â€œI asked her who the father was. I didn’t even know she had a boyfriend. She said she didn’t want to talk about the father.”
    When