Departures Read Online Free PDF Page B

nephew not turned him in.
    My father was fifteen years in the city before he moved into the house beside Harry’s. The second son of a man whose farm was neither large nor rich, he’d had no choice but to leave the country and try his luck away from the land. At twenty-three he’d taken a bus from Ballymoney to Belfast and arrived in the city just as the shops were closing. He’d walked from the depot to the centre of town amid the sluggish flow of people emptying out of offices and into the streets. In search of a boarding house or a YMCA he’d hired a taxi and headed west, to the home of a girl the driver knew, a girl from the Shankill who lived alone and took in lodgers.
    When I was old enough to appreciate romance, my father would speak to me of her as any aging artist would speak of what was once his inspiration. Her name was Madelaine Andrews, and she had just turned twenty when they met. She was tall, slim, and glamorous, with the wide, liquid eyes and the full, pouting lips so favoured by the fashion-conscious of a later era. Her hair was long and auburn, and so unreasonable that she wore it where it fell,or else piled it up haphazardly. In every way she defied expectation: she was bookish, yet beautiful; privileged, yet unpretentious; street-wise, but unbruised.
    The only child of a defiantly mixed marriage, she, like her parents, had made a name for herself as an independent thinker, unfettered by the fads and mores of the moment. At a time when those of her peers who had not embraced some form of Christianity had rejected their gods altogether, she would not join the rush to declare what she believed and why. At eighteen she had moved out of her parents’ house and found a place of her own with two other girls from school. Six months later they left to get married but she stayed on alone, readying the rooms and airing the linen and opening the house to any lodger, male or female, who happened to apply.
    My father’s previous experience with the opposite sex had been limited to brief, ungainly contact with certain farmers’ daughters at the infrequent functions his local parish held; he had never met anything like her before. As a child I loved the story of their meeting because it was in its telling that my father’s powers as a speaker were most pronounced; yet at that meeting Madelaine struck him dumb. She spoke incessantly, but in a low, mellifluous voice so pleasing that he could not describe her talk as chatter. On the stairwell she explained that she did not own the property, the government did, and that strictly speaking she shouldn’t be hiring out the rooms. My father had been raised never to touch things not his own, and such things included the law. Yet with one month’s rent already paid and the keys there in his hand, the uncomfortable feeling settled upon him that he’d already committed a crime.
    In the small, white bedroom at the top of the house he’d unpacked his belongings while she set his books out on themantle. Having inspected their titles she asked to borrow Kavanagh, and as she was leaving with the book under her arm she’d cast a final glance over his collection and remarked that she, too, was an ornithologist. He’d looked at her blankly. You like birds, don’t you? she’d demanded. Uncertainly he’d agreed. Well, then, she’d said, as if all had been made clear, you’re an ornithologist.
    The next morning she broke the rules of her own establishment and made him breakfast. She also pressed his trousers, polished his shoes, and lent him a tie. My father was a handsome man when he was young, well-mannered and polite and clean about his person; but he had never dressed for an interview before, had no idea what to wear or how to behave, and the unfamiliar made him awkward. Madelaine, who enjoyed the process, adopted his cause as her own, fussing over his appearance and advising him what to say, and arranging to