A Field Full of Folk Read Online Free PDF Page A

Murchison, “don’t bother. I’ll wait till you’re finished.” The two girls gazed at him with large round eyes while he sat there and thought, “I have nothing to say to them, I bring no help.” He thought that Murray looked much paler than he remembered him and while he was sitting there he was reminded of a cobbler whom he had met in his youth. He too had lost his wife and he used to sit outside his house, repairing shoes, nails in his mouth like thorns, and saying from red distended cheeks,
    â€œMilton, now, did you know that his coffin was five feet eight inches long?” And later.
    â€œRameses the Second, now, he was an Egyptian, you know. That was what he was, an Egyptian. These are the pyramids I am talking of, you understand.” He always seemed to be talking about items he had read in the Reader’s Digest. Perhaps that was why his wife had left him, or perhaps it was after she had left him that he began to read the Reader’s Digest.
    After the two little girls had had their breakfast their father sent them out to play and then turned to the minister with a face of stone.
    â€œI’m sorry,” said Peter awkwardly, because he could not think of anything else to say, “I’m very sorry.”
    â€œShe just took the radio,” said Murray stonily, “and she left her two little daughters. And yet the man was a friend of mine. I met him in Glasgow and he used to come here for a few days’ holiday now and again. And all the time while I was at my work he was driving up from Glasgow and visiting her. His car was parked outside the door and no one told me.”
    The minister remembered Murray repairing the roof of the manse not so many months before and how he had heard him whistling above him, as carefree as the birds themselves.
    â€œThere’s a bit of wood rot, there,” he had told the minister, who was feeling sudden twinges of pain which he suppressed, his face twisting. Didn’t the Bible warn us that women were not to be trusted, that when you had thought you had them they were far away from you?
    â€œShe went away in the red boots I gave her,” said the joiner. “Isn’t that funny? And yet I was always kind to her. I suppose I’m slow by nature but I was always kind to her. But she was always saying how bored she was, just the same.” The minister’s eyes wandered across to the sink which was full of dishes, to the frosty shirt hanging over the back of a chair, to the stained cooker which was losing its icy whiteness.
    What would he himself do if Mary left him? Would he be able to cope?
    â€œWhat was there about him that was so special?” said the joiner. Did the man used to have a moustache? The minister couldn’t remember, perhaps his wife would.
    â€œI don’t know,” he answered. There was nothing he could do here. He didn’t have that instinctive rightness of response that his wife had, his mind was too reflective. But what could anyone say?
    â€œI don’t know,” he admitted. “I really don’t know.” Surely from the distance of imminent death he could speak freely, but the habits and constraints of a lifetime were difficult to change.
    â€œShe was always watching the TV,” said the joiner helplessly, “and listening to the radio. I used to say to her that she would get square eyes but it didn’t matter what I said. That was her life. Perhaps if she had a job, but she didn’t want one. I failed her. Where did I fail her?”
    â€œYou didn’t fail her,” said the minister angrily. “You did what you could.”
    â€œBut she did love me when she married,” said the joiner. “I am sure of that. In those days we used to go to the dances but after that we had the children and we couldn’t go. She never gave me a sign that she was going to leave. And I never knew that he was visiting her.” His huge red raw