Borderlands Read Online Free PDF Page B

the bouquets at the base of the tree, reading the cards attached
with grim curiosity. There was a bunch left by the Cashell girls. Sadie had left an old battered teddy bear with "From Mummy and Daddy with love" written on a piece of
foolscap t ucked into the ribbon around its neck.
The whole thing reminded me of the fairy trees people used to talk about in the
west of D onegal. Locals would tie talismans of
some sort around the tree and in return, the fairies would bless them. The base
of this tree was covered with Mass cards and
rosary beads, sympathy cards and flowers. Among
them I saw a photograph, clearly taken decades ea rlier. In it, a young woman was sitting on a set of concrete steps. Be hind her, I could see children playing on a beach. I
assumed the woman was a grandmother of Angela's
and replaced the photograph, tucking it behind a vine of ivy that snaked up
around the hunk of the tree. I read a few more of
the messages, laying each ca rd gently onto the bed
of damp moss at the tree's base.
    Days
later I would still feel saddened by the simplicity of Sadie's message; what else could adequately convey a parental
emotion so i nstinctive it could barely be
expressed?
    When
I arrived at her house, Sadie was sitting on a wooden kitchen chair on her
front door-step, smoking a cigarette and talking to her neighbour, who leaned across
the hedge that divided their two houses, The neighbour, Jim something-or-other,
nodded towards me as  I got out of the car and I heard him say, "Hey
Sadie, someone's brought home the bacon."
    I
wanted to tell him to screw himself, but nodded politely and smiled. Sadie
stood up as I approached and walked into the house, leaving the door open,
which I took to be as close to a sign of hospitality as I was going to get.
    The
two younger daughters were sitting at the kitchen table, al most exactly as I had last seen them and, I noticed, in
the same clothes. Both looked up from their play when I came in, then returne d to their dolls. Sadie was standing at the stove,
removing a fresh cigarette from the packet on the worktop beside her.
    "Have
I not enough to be bothering me? What do you want?"
    She
leaned over the stove, removing a pot from a gas ring and lighting her
cigarette from the flame. She had to drag at it several times to get it lit, billows
of smoke mingling with the steam from the pots which left her face damp and
flushed.
    "I've
a few questions, Sadie. About Angela. If you're feeling up to it."
    "The
fuck you care if I'm up to it. That bastard's gone and got himself nicked
again. Two days shy of Christmas. What am I meant to do? Eh?" She sat
down, a tacit recognition that, try as she might to blame me, she knew I was
not the architect of her misfortunes. I sat opposite her, studying her face.
    She
had always been a fairly heavy woman, her chestnut brown hair tied back from
her face. It had lost its lustre now, and the deep brown, which once had
resembled a mare's mane, was streaked with white and dirty grey. Her skin was
weathered as leather, peppered with burst blood vessels. In another life, with
another husband perhaps, she could have been attractive in a way, but life
with Johnny Cashell had taken its toll on her. She looked significantly older
than her forty-seven years. I had never seen her look more dejected in my life.
I opened my wallet and took out three 50 euro notes that I had withdrawn from
the bank machine that morning in order to buy Debbie's Christmas present. Sadie
watched me with open suspicion.
    "Sadie,
we had a whip-round at the station, seeing as all that's happened the past week
to you. Take this to tide you over Christmas."
    Her
initial response was indignation and anger, though I assured her that it was
not charity as such, but simply a contribution to help her over a bad patch.
Slowly, and without thanks, she took the money, folded the notes once and
slipped them under the fruit bowl. Then she gestured towards me without
discernible reason, which I assumed to