Beneath the Earth Read Online Free PDF Page A

the parlour, and Émile lifted the poster to show her, watching as his mother closed her eyes for a moment and sighed before shaking her head, as if she was both surprised and not surprised by what she saw. ‘I knew something like this would happen,’ she said. ‘I said so, didn’t I? But your father had to have his own way.’
    â€˜But why would someone wrap it around a brick?’
    â€˜Ã‰mile, your foot,’ she cried, ignoring the poster now as she looked down at the floor where a small streak of blood had stained the woodwork. ‘I told you to keep away from the glass.’
    â€˜There’s no one outside,’ said Stephen as he came back inside, closing the front door behind him and putting the latch on.
    â€˜I knew those posters would only bring trouble,’ said Marie.
    â€˜I know, love, but—’
    â€˜Don’t
love
me,’ she snapped, a rare moment of anger, for most days Marie and Stephen seemed to do nothing but laugh together.
    â€˜How was I to know that they’d attack our house?’
    â€˜What did you think they’d do, throw a party for you?’
    â€˜I didn’t hurt my foot in here,’ said Émile, unable to meet his father’s eye as he told them what had happened when he woke up. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said when he was finished. ‘It was an accident.’
    â€˜Ah Émile,’ said Stephen, coming over and lifting the boy up to carry him back to bed. ‘Don’t be worrying about something like that. I can fix it. Sure I’ve broken the glass many times myself. Trust me, we have bigger things to worry about right now.’
    Ã‰mile had heard the stories many times but he never grew tired of them.
    The story of how his grandfather had left England when all his friends were signing up to fight the Boers in South Africa but he wanted no part of killing people whose name he couldn’t even spell correctly. Instead, he came to the south coast of Ireland where he met an Irish girl, married her and brought up their son, Stephen, to love dogs, the ukulele and the novels of Sir Walter Scott.
    The story of how Marie left France for Ireland when her parents died and Stephen found her sitting in a tea shop on the afternoon of her twenty-third birthday while he was strolling back to his father’s farm.
    The story of how he’d sat by the village pump until she came out and he asked her to come to a dance with him some night and she said, ‘I don’t go dancing with strange men,’ and he said, ‘Sure I’m not strange, do I seem strange to you, I’m not a bit strange, am I?’
    The story of how the dance had gone well, not to mention the wedding at Clonakilty parish church later that same year and how they’d wanted a child for a long time but none would come and only when they’d given up on the idea of it did Émile suddenly appear, out of the blue, a gift to the pair of them, and then their family was complete and neither of them had ever been so happy in all their lives as when there was just the three of them together at home, cuddled up on the sofa, reading their books.
    These were stories that Émile had heard many, many times. But sure how could he ever grow tired of hearing them when they made him feel so wanted, so happy and so loved?
    The posters had arrived four days before the night of the broken window in a long tube sealed in cardboard and brown tape, with eight stamps on the surface bearing the image of King George, who looked like an awful grump. Mr Devlin, the local postman, waited until evening time to deliver it. Émile suspected that he’d been watching out for Stephen to return home from work and only then did he knock on the door.
    â€˜What do you suppose it is?’ asked Stephen as he, Marie, Mr Devlin and Émile stood at all four corners of the kitchen table, staring at the tube as if it was an unexploded bomb.
    â€˜There’s