Academy Street Read Online Free PDF Page B

into the house, you!’ he roars.
‘Get in, get in out of my sight! ’ He has his hand raised and she thinks he will lash
out and wallop her as he passes. But he runs on in his wellingtons. And then Mike
Connolly comes through the gap, older, slower. Their eyes meet for a second. She
longs for him to nod or say something but he looks away and keeps on going.
    She walks around to the far side of the house where the sun never shines and no one
ever goes. There’s an old rag hanging on the barbed-wire fence. A bird is singing
in a tree. She leans over the fence and vomits, her hair falling into the flow. She
reaches out for the rag to wipe her mouth. It is her mother’s old blouse, faded and
tattered, hung out to dry a long time ago, and forgotten.
    For a long time she cannot look at her father. She tries to stay out of his path.
He has a way of looking at her, a long mean look, as if he is about to say something
terrible that will shame her. He keeps his eyes on her when she moves around the
kitchen. With each step she is afraid the ground will open and pull her in. She can
hardly breathe. I have no mother , she thinks, I have no father . When he is going
to a fair or a funeral she brings him his good coat and hat. Once, he said, ‘Good
girl’, but he never says her name. Mike Connolly says her name. She has grown shy
with Mike, and ashamed, since that day with the sheep. Claire is the nicest, always.
She says there’s a doctor in Dublin who can help her to talk again but Tess shakes
her head. Some nights when the moon shines in her window and shadows cross the wall
she jumps out of bed and tiptoes across the landing into Claire’s and Evelyn’s room.
Claire puts a finger to her lips and lifts the blankets and lets Tess in beside her.
They make chaireens and Tess sleeps all night like that, against Claire’s lap, inside
Claire’s arms.
    There are nights when she is afraid to sleep. She lies in her bed, remembering. Captain
starts to cry below her window. She gets up and creeps down the stairs and opens
the front door. The moonlight is on the steps. She does not say a word, just looks
at Captain and he walks in and follows her up the stairs, into her room. He jumps
on the bed and curls up against her. He understands something about her, maybe everything,
and her heart begins to open. In the darkness, in the perfect silence, she hears
the smallest sounds—Maeve’s breath from across the room, the flapping of an insect’s
wings high up in the corner, the tap dripping far off in the bathroom and in her
mind she sees each drop falling through the air into the white sink, landing and
sliding down inside. They are all asleep in their rooms, their eyelids flickering
as they dream, and the rooms are silent and sleeping too, and downstairs the coals
in the fire are almost gone out but still glow a little in the dark, and a thin line
of smoke disappears up the chimney, curling into little puffs along the way. And
the table and chairs all stand there, and the dresser, watching, waiting—in her mind
she can see them all. And outside the hens and ducks locked up for the night, and
the birds asleep in the trees and the cows in the cow-house and everywhere, all over
the farm, worms and insects and small animals are curled up under stones and hedges
and bushes. She can see them all. She imagines herself small, so small that she can
see everything, hear everything, hear the blades of grass whispering, the pebbles
laughing in the dark. She strokes Captain and he sighs. She can feel the beat of
his heart against her. She is amazed at how happy she is. In her bed, in this house.
With the lawn and the barns and the fields around her. There is nowhere else she
wants to be. In her most secret heart she knows there is nowhere she loves more.
    When morning breaks she walks outside and crosses the courtyard. It is Saturday and
no one is up yet. The sky is blue and the sun has reached the orchard wall. The coach-house
door is open and inside