Days of Your Fathers Read Online Free PDF Page B

now.’
    He stood behind the old gentleman’s chair and gently stroked the prominent veins of his temples. In two minutes Mr Feitel was asleep.
    â€˜Why are you leaving your country if you did not have to?’ Berta asked.
    There was no longer any tone of cross-examination in her voice; she asked with the trust of a child that she would be answered.
    â€˜â€™Twas like this, Biddy,’ answered Danno. ‘A little yellow man came to me house, and he telling me that he was spending a great fortune to raise sheep on the far mountains of Brazil, and begging me to work with him – for if the sheep didn’t die on him, ’twas only because the ewes were barren. I will not, says I, for what would I be doing in India? ’Tis not India, he says, ’tis America. Then do you go to my uncle, says I, who is in Wyoming these thirty years and as good a man with the sheep as I am meself. So he told me ’twas South America and pressed a thousand pound into me hand, but I would not take it. Will ye come so far as Dublin with me, Mr Flynn, he asks. I will that, I said – for he was a friendly little yellow man and free with his money, God forgive him! And when we had drunk three parts of the whisky in Dublin, he would have me come to London and drink French wines. And how many days we were in London I misremember, but I signed me name on a paper and when the drink passed from me I found meself in a first-class cabin on the raging ocean, with all the money in the world in me pocket and a two-year contract.’
    â€˜But that is terrible! It’s criminal!’ she cried, all her pity for the exiled welling up.
    â€˜It was surely!’ he laughed. ‘But ’tis no fool that I am after all, for would not a man be glad to leave his country for a sight of your sweet face?’
    â€˜Then we’ll comfort each other, Daniel,’ she said frankly, linking her arm in his. ‘There is only a week more before we land, but it shall be a happy week for us.’
    â€˜Let you not be talking so, Biddy!’ cried Danno, muchshocked by the nearness of her and the openness of her speech. ‘Would I be telling you of your eyes and your hair and the shape of you like a young tree and it heavy with fruit? And would I be kissing you in dark places till I was drunk with the scent of you and the white skin that is of a queen surely, and would I let you go then, and you the world’s wonder and the love of my heart? I will not be parting from you and his reverence, I tell you. It’s a poor bargain I have to offer you with no country of my own and no women to greet you in the street, saying – there goes the beauty that is the wife of Danno Flynn. But let you have patience for the two years, and you will not be lonely.’
    â€˜I will not, surely,’ she answered, unconsciously falling into the lilt of his speech. ‘But if I do not go with you I shall be lonely to the end of my days, and the women crying for pity of me.’

Firefly
    I could not guess why he had so urgently insisted that I should dine with him. To share our memories, he said. It seemed most unlikely that any memories of mine could be of value. The war had been over for two years and what little I had known about the shady characters operating in Bucharest in 1940 was out of date. If Rumanians, they were probably dead; if British and more or less alive, they had returned to their peacetime occupations.
    It was still his job to gather information from Eastern Europe. Today it would be fashionable to call him a Spy-master. But in these early nineteen fifties we did not simplify the paramilitary trades so coarsely and outright. However, I suppose that even now I ought not to mention his name. The rest can be told.
    I had never known him show impatience in the old days. But there in the restaurant he did, when the waiter delayed his bill. He ordered me – almost – to come back with him to his flat. We