The Lost Souls' Reunion Read Free Page A

but it took many years and by that time she had already lost herself.
    â€˜I suppose I do have a present for you.’
    Noreen spilt some of the hot tea she had made for them, having scrubbed the kitchen around his seated form. It smelt of carbolic, the windows opened wide to let in the betraying sunshine, which gave it all the appearance of a happy place.
    â€˜There’s a plot out the back you might do something useful with.’
    He also gave her six hens to look after. From that day on he took the surplus and left her the six. When one died he cursed Noreen as if she had wrung its neck herself. What she got from him on that first day was all she got.
    She was left alone at night in the back room. Occasionally he would push open the door. He was not the first for Noreen but he was the roughest and he did not like her to make a sound.
    *   *   *
    The child, Carmel, came into the world quickly – as if not to cause trouble. She did not cry until they tried to put shoes on her.
    An only child, her companions came out of her imagination. Her dreams were filled with kind people who could only love her since she had created them and she had not a spiteful bone.
    â€˜Get wise to the world, girl, or it’ll walk all over you!’ Noreen tried to teach her when they were not under Joseph’s eye.
    Once they had left him. Noreen’s family had sent her back, warning her they would tell Joseph the next time. They reminded her how lucky she was to have married a farmer.
    After that day Carmel did not meet or know her grandparents who lived three miles away in another world. Joseph did not like his wife and child to go into town unless it was absolutely necessary. He did not like to pay for shoes or clothes.
    Noreen’s last pair of tights laddered just before her daughter was born. She made dresses for her girl out of her own clothes and was left with little to wear for herself. She did not go into town if she could help it.
    When Joseph had drink on his breath or a look in his eye the child had been taught to go to the barn until she was called. Sometimes Noreen was not well enough to come out for her, so she slipped into the night and learned the ways of a cat, prowling until the first light.
    That was how Eddie Burns came to know her, a streak of flame through Gamble’s wood, hiding and watching him with her green eyes, from a safe distance. They did not say hello to each other over the years that they turned into man and woman. What was between them needed no words.
    Welcome, Eddie. There’s a place beside Carmel for him, as there has always been.
    *   *   *
    Eddie left school at thirteen to take over his uncle’s window-cleaning round. He could cycle over thirty miles a day, which did not worry him as he liked his own company and his work did not take him out on wet and windy days. On those days he liked to walk through the wood and feel her watching him. In bad weather, woodland gives the best shelter, without a soul to disturb it.
    Carmel was rarely to be seen in Scarna. People would have forgotten her mother only they caught an occasional glimpse of her in early morning or late evening, shopping for a few bits. Their hearts went out to the big woman reduced to a bag of bones. Joseph was seen more often in the town and avoided. The word on their girl was that she was simple.
    Noreen tried to put manners on Carmel, but there was no reason for her to keep them. They were far enough away from the town for her to grow up without a friend. On the days Noreen got her to school, by dragging her, the teachers sent her home by lunchtime. They could not keep her at a desk and she took off her shoes continually.
    When they asked her a question she would not answer them. She did not write well and could barely read.
    She would only be seen near the town when the fit-ups came. The travelling theatres brought life and colour and dreams into the grey hours that made