Away Read Online Free PDF Page B

day. And say them slowly and clearly in the voice of Caesar.”
    “Insula natura triquetra, cuius unum latus est contra Galliam,”
the children droned.
“Huius lateris alter angulus, qui est ad Cantium, quo fere omnes ex Gallia naves appelluntur, ad orientem solem, inferior ad meridiem spectat.”
    “Until tomorrow, then!” O’Malley boomed. “And think about Caesar.”
    Thirteen children exploded through the makeshift door and hurtled past the priest. Most were barefoot. Father Quinn watched them scatter across the road in the direction of freedom, their clothing like torn pennants waving from fragile poles.
    Shortly afterwards, their tormentor appeared in the sun. “There’s one or two of them have the makings of a scholar,” he said. “But there’s not a poet in the lot of them. More’s the pity.”
    “And your own poems?” asked the priest, politely.
    “Ah those … they come now, if they come at all … very slowly.” The schoolmaster looked suddenly shy. “I’ve one on the recent shipwreck though, if you’d like to hear it.”
    So, thought the priest, the silver and the whiskey were not divine providence after all. “Speak it to me,” he said.
    O’Malley cleared his throat:
    Their nautical hearts were brave
And the cliffs of Antrim steep.
Lordly was the wave
And darkling was the deep.
The ship had sailed a thousand leagues,
A thousand leagues or more,
But the sight of the cliffs of Antrim
Was the site of its final shore.
    Through the several verses of the poem the priest admired his friend’s strong face, noticing the lines on the forehead and the cut of the angular bones, and then the creases made by worry, thought, and kindness around the dark blue eyes. He needed a haircut, thought the older man, but the hair itself was neatly combed, though greying and thin at the temples. Altogether the man had a pleasant countenance. What would she who was over on the island think, he wondered, of a face such as this.
    The schoolmaster finished his recitation and looked towards the stones at his feet. One of his laces had broken this morning. He mostly kept his poems private, guarded against the world. But Father Quinn was his closest friend – though he came from the island and they met infrequently – and his verses were received by the priest in a friendly manner. Their views on certain other subjects, however, diverged dramatically.
    “Fine,” said Father Quinn now. “A fine poem and filled with noble sentiments.”
    Brian O’Malley took the compliment, as always with mild embarrassment. “Oh, there’s nothing in it,” he maintained quietly, “that hasn’t been said before.”
    Both men were silent, knowing this to be true.
    “Shall we walk towards the cottage then?” O’Malley touched the priest lightly on the shoulder.
    They walked some distance in silence, the priest with his hands behind his back. Normally he would have complimented his friend on his few square acres of native landscape, its cliffs and pastures, the dark lakes and the sea in the distance. He would have commented on a neighbour’s lambs or a new calf. He would have continued with reference to the splendid view of Rathlin Island that could be had from this or that point, and he would have ended with a long speech on the island as being the best bit of rock that God had ever flung into the sea. But his thoughts were elsewhere, on a white neck, a green eye, a burning halo of hair.
    “What is it then?” O’Malley eventually asked.
    The priest looked hard at his birthplace, then into the eyes of his friend. “There’s a terrible fever sweeping the island,” he whispered.
    “Not the cholera again?” The faces of all his pupils leapt into the teacher’s mind.
    The men had stopped walking.
    “No, it’s a fever of the mind,” said Father Quinn, though he, of all the islanders, knew it was a fever of the body as well. “There’s one on the island,” he continued, “who is away.”
    “Now Father … this is