Academy Street Read Online Free PDF

warm her. She joins
her hands and says a Hail Mary. She listens for the words, to test her sound. But
no sound comes. She prays louder, harder. She gives a little cough, and tries again.
She starts to cry. She touches her face and the feel of the tears makes her cry more.
She climbs to the top and runs along the landing to her mother’s and father’s room.
On the dressing table she picks up the photograph of her mother in her nurse’s uniform
and carries it back to her own room. She takes off her boots and gets into bed with
the photograph in her hand.
    When she wakes it is dark. She knows from the silence of the house that it is the
middle of the night. Across the room she can make out Maeve’s shape in the other
bed. She moves a little and feels the mattress damp under her. She puts a hand down
between her legs. She has wet her knickers. She gets out and takes them off and climbs
back in, keeping away from the wet spot. She remembers the photograph and feels around
until she finds it on the pillow.
    ∼
    Her talk does not come back. Her father and Evelyn bring her down to Dr O’Beirne
and he sits her up on a high table and asks her questions. But she cannot answer
them. One day Denis sits beside her on the low wall. ‘You’ll be all right—any day
now you’ll be as right as rain,’ he says. ‘I bet you by Christmas when Santy comes
you’ll be talkin’ away to him.’ She says her prayers, like Claire and Mike Connolly
tell her to do, but her talk does not come back, not even for Christmas. At school,
Mrs Snee brings her up to her desk and tries, in a kind way, to trick her into talking.
On one of her visits Miss Tannian takes her aside, tells her to take deep breaths
and say her own name. Tess , she keeps saying, Tess , as if Tess does not know her
own name. Sometimes people get cross with her. She gives up trying to answer them.
She looks into all their faces and their eyes and then they give up too. Little by
little she gets used to it. She does not miss talking at all. She does everything
they ask—all her chores—and they all get used to her silence.
    One day when Evelyn and Denis are gone to town her father wants help with the sheep.
Tess is told to stand in a gap leading into the yard. Claire is standing at the avenue
and Maeve is at the orchard gate which has fallen off its hinges. Her father and
Mike Connolly go off into the fields to round up the flock. They are gone a long
time. Tess hates when there are big jobs like this going on—when the cattle are being
dosed, or the sheep are being dipped or shorn. She lies awake at night thinking of
all the things that can go wrong, all the dangers.
    Then the sheep appear, running, bleating, Captain nipping at their heels, and behind,
her father and Mike Connolly. She moves a little to the right, then to the left,
trying to spread herself across the gap. She feels the ground shaking from the pounding
of their hooves. The smell of them, their greasy wool, reminds her of mutton. Her
father shouts, Keep back a bit . Mike Connolly is talking to Captain all the time,
making little whistling sounds that Captain understands. And then something small
and dark—a cat or a rat or a bird—darts across the track and startles Tess and she
jumps and one of the sheep sees what Tess has seen and turns and breaks away and
rushes towards the gap, towards Tess. The others break and follow and in an instant
the whole flock is coming at her, diving past her, right and left, into the open
field beyond. Her father and Mike Connolly and Claire are waving their arms, shouting
at her. She stands, trapped, as the sheep shoot by, brushing off her arms, leaping
past her head, their hooves like thunder so that she has to crouch down and cover
her head to save herself.
    They are all shouting at her. The sheep are spreading out in the field behind her,
Captain after them. They will go on and on through all the gaps into the far fields.
Her father is coming, running, his face red. ‘Get