Eden Burning Read Online Free PDF

apple tree and there’s a weeping willow in the front garden. Didn’t Eileen always say that she would love to have a weeping willow? We’re only asking you to have a look. If you don’t like it, we’ll stay in Elmwood Terrace. This is all about Eileen.”
    “At seven thirty? It will be dark. We won’t see the garden properly.” Peter wrinkled his nose.
    “We can see the garden another day. We’re not going to be living in the fucking garden. It’s the inside of the house that we need to see. It’s fucking dark here for most of the year and so we might as well see what it looks like in the dark.”
    They drove up the Shankill Road, and along the WoodvaleRoad. Peter saw the spires of Holy Cross Church.
    “Which one is it?”
    William and Cedric laughed at one another.
    “What did we tell you? You’ve a lot to learn about life.”
    They swung the car from the Woodvale Road onto the Crumlin Road. They drove past the sentry look out, past Ardoyne Hall and accelerated past Holy Cross Church on the right.
    At ten minutes to eight they saw Paddy on the left hand side of the road walking to work.
    “I told you he would be here.” Cedric glanced sideways at William before looking over his shoulder at Peter who was sitting upright in the back seat, looking through the front window.
    “You’re just about to learn about life brother.”
    The car screeched to a halt.
    “Let’s introduce you to Paddy.”
    Paddy was thirty-five, living on his own in lodgings in a terraced house in Butler Street, off the Crumlin Road. His landlady, Anne, cooked his breakfast during the week and he made his own arrangements for the weekend. Sometimes that meant a Chinese take-away or fish and chips from ‘The Last Supper’ on the Crumlin Road. His bed-sit was on the first floor, with a bed, a wash basin, television and a stove where he boiled a kettle for tea or warmed Heinz tomato soup to take the chill out of his winter bones. He polished the window which looked onto Butler Street with a newspaper. From the window he would watch crowds of mourners hanging around the corner outside Blackwood’s shop with its display of brassieres and men’s socks waiting for a funeral to pass by.
    He would count the steps leading up to Holy Cross Church, through the hedges and shrubs into the Grove as a meditation, letting his gaze move to the metal gate at the top of the stepswhere soldiers from the Welsh Guards stood looking at him, rifles cradled in arms, bulletproof jackets fastened tightly, hard helmets hanging from belts. He loved the symmetry of Holy Cross Church – with its twin towers reaching into a cloudy sky – a cross on top of each spire, three stained glass windows above the tall arched wooden front door, the jutting side altars. For Paddy the church was like Noah’s Ark – capable of providing safety and shelter in the tumultuous seas surrounding it. Paddy stood at the back of a crowded church for the annual ‘mission’. He listened with gratitude to the practical guidance given by the missionary priests on how to respond to the chaos outside. Each sentence was like a brick from the solid towers stacked one on top of the other in his head to bring the strength and security of Holy Cross Church into the confusion within his mind.
    On the bedside table there was a black and white framed photograph of his parents, arm in arm on their wedding day. His mother wore a garland of artificial roses around her head and held a bouquet of fresh lilies. She had a lost look in her eyes, as though she had moved away from the present moment and would return after the photo was taken. Beside her, stood his father with Brylcreemed shiny flat black hair, parted on the left, and a dull, brittle, surprisingly orange moustache suspended over his upper lip like a yard brush. He had a proud look in his eye as if he had returned from safari with a Bengali tiger which he alone was responsible for shooting. Unlike his mother, Paddy’s father’s look knew