Echoes Read Online Free PDF Page B

myself smiling nowadays whenever any child gets anything right. It’s such a shock, you see.”
    He laughed. “Are they all hopeless at the school here?”
    â€œNo, not all. Some are as smart as paint. But what’s the point? Where will it get them?”
    â€œWon’t it get them their exams?”
    â€œYes, yes, it will.” She stood up a bit like a grown-up who wasn’t going to follow the conversation on with him. He was disappointed.
    Â 
    Angela cycled home from Dr. Power’s house into the wind. Her face was whipped by it and the salt of the sea stung her eyes. Any journey in winter seemed like a voyage to the South Pole, and she wondered for the millionth time would they be better if she moved her mother to a town. Surely this wet wind coming in through every crack in the cottage must be hard on her, surely it couldn’t be healthy living in a place that was only right for seals and gulls for three-quarters of the year. But then she mustn’t fool herself: if they moved to a town it would be for herself, so that she could have some life. Let’s not pretend it would be for her mother’s poor old misshapen bones. And anyway what more life would there be for her in a town? She’d come in as a schoolmarm with an ailing mother, that’s if she were to get a job at all. A schoolmarm who was freewheeling down to thirty. Not something that was going to light many fireworks. Stop dreaming, Angela, head down, foot down, pedal on, only a few more minutes now, the worst bit is over, you’re past the blasts of wind from the gap in the cliff. You can see the light in the window.
    People called it a cottage because it looked small from the front but in fact there was an upstairs. It was whitewashed and had the formal little garden with its boxed hedge and tiny path up to the door.
    She wondered how they had all fitted there when her father was alive, when they were children, they must have been crowded. But then her parents had slept in one room upstairs, the three girls in another and Sean, the only boy, in the third. And downstairs the room which she had now made into a bedroom for her mother had been a kind of sitting room she supposed. There had been no books in it in those days, there had been no shining brass ornaments, no little bunches of flowers or bowls of heather and gorse like she had nowadays. But of course in those times the small house had been home for a drunk, an overworked and weary mother and four youngsters all determined to get away from it as soon as possible. How could there have been time for the luxury of books and flowers?
    Her mother was sitting on the commode where Angela had put her before going up to the Powers’. She had dropped her stick and the other chair was too far away so she had nothing to support her and couldn’t get up. She was uncomplaining, and apologetic. Angela emptied the chamberpot and put Dettol in it, she got a basin of soapy water and a cloth for her mother and helped her to wash herself and put on powder. Then she slipped the flannel nightdress that had been warming on the fireguard over her mother’s small bent head and helped her to the bed in the room adjoining the kitchen. She handed her the rosary beads, her glass of water and put the clock where she could see it. She didn’t kiss her mother, they weren’t a kissing family. She patted her on the folded hands instead. Then Angela O’Hara went back into the kitchen and took out the essays which would be handed back next day. There was no doubt about the winner, that had been obvious all along, but she wanted to write a little paragraph on the end of all the others. They had done the essay in their free time to enter for the prize that she had provided. She wanted to give them some encouragement, some visible proof that she had read them, even the illiterate ones.
    She wet a pot of tea and settled down with the wind howling outside and very shortly