Buried in a Bog Read Online Free PDF

“But you’ve a key to the door at the back, so you can come and go as you like. Mick, say hello to your grannie for me.”
    “I will,” he said, then fell silent again. He guided Maura to a car parked halfway up the drive, waited until she was settled in the passenger seat, then followed the drive to the road at the top. On the main road they turned right, then left almost immediately onto a small country road. Maura watched the countryside roll by. In today’s nice weather, she could see that spring was further along here than back home: there were cheery clumps of daffodils blooming along the road and in the fields, as well as yellow flowering bushes she couldn’t identify.
    After a couple of miles of silence, Maura realized Mick hadn’t said anything. She was the visitor, the guest. Where was the Irish charm she’d heard about? Wasn’t he supposed to be entertaining her? Had she done something to offend him? “So, where exactly are we going?” she asked, in an attempt to make conversation.
    “Knockskagh.”
    Maura waited for him to add something, anything, more, but he didn’t. “Ellen tells me that’s a townland? What does that mean?”
    He glanced briefly at her. “It’s the smallest geographic subdivision. Townlands have been around for nearly a millennium. They’re usually small, no more than twenty or thirty families. Knockskagh’s where your grandmother was born, and where she lived when she first married.”
    “Well, she never told me word one about it. And your grandmother?”
    “She lives in a house her husband’s family built, maybe a hundred and fifty years ago.” He glanced briefly at Maura before going on, “Look, just remember that my grannie is old and she tires quickly. But she’s kept in touch with your grandmother all these years and she wants to see you. Just go easy, will you? Don’t wear her out.”
    What did he think she was planning to do, grill the old woman? Maura wondered. What made him assume she’d be rude and thoughtless? Didn’t he like Americans? “I’ll do my best,” she said a bit stiffly. “I don’t know how long I’ll be around. Will I be able to see her again? Or do I have to fit everything into this one visit?”
    “Let’s see how it goes, will we?” He turned left and his car labored up the hill, along a fairly steep one-lane road.He stopped for a moment just short of the crest. “This is Knockskagh, what there is of it.”
    Maura had a quick impression of a cluster of houses, some of which seemed to be abandoned. Behind them lay green fields dotted with grazing sheep and an occasional cow. “How far does it go?”
    “All in, it’s about a hundred and fifty acres.”
    Maura didn’t bother to tell him that she had no clue how large an acre was; she really only knew how to measure space in city blocks.
    Mick released the brake and drove on to a little yellow cottage, set perpendicular to the lane and surrounded by a handsome stone wall culminating in a pair of stone posts. The posts were closely set, meant for a cart rather than a modern car, but he turned with practiced skill into the minuscule yard in front of the house and parked. He hadn’t even turned off the engine when the brightly painted green door opened and an old woman stepped out. She couldn’t have been more than five feet tall, even allowing for the curve of her back, and her face was a network of fine wrinkles, like an old kid glove. But her blue eyes were bright and curious.
    “Ah, Michael, you’ve brought her, then. Come in, please, and welcome.”
    Ignoring her taciturn driver, Maura clambered out of the passenger side and approached. “Mrs. Nolan? Yes, I’m Maura Donovan, and I’m delighted to meet you.” She followed her diminutive hostess from the bright sunlight into the home’s shadowed interior, and waited for her eyes to adjust. It was a tiny place, two rooms downstairs, with a large fireplace dominating one end of the room they werein, a stove planted in the