Joyous and Moonbeam Read Online Free PDF Page B

me we were like two hermits, or those ducks waddling along at their own pace, but nevertheless it was simple and good although I didn’t know it, just working the vegetables and keeping the animals happy like our extra family members and being in our own space, which I still miss being stuck here in the city in this apartment but that’s just how it is.
    Then after about five years of same-old day-in-day-out, a good life but quiet for me, then Sammy-K came calling. He was selling property at the time, mainly land, and said he could get a good price for the farm if I was interested in selling because five-acre blocks by the river were becoming a precious rarity and much sought-after by people looking for a change in their lives as well as for development. He was different looking then too, healthier and more muscled, tanned like a saddle and confident with it. But I suppose we were both different, me much thinner and still good-looking in my own kind of way. Least that’s what he said over and over. He was a real flatterer in those early days, turning my head by callingme My Darling and even My Exotic, like these were my names, never Margaret or Marg, but My Darling or My Exotic. Anyway it wasn’t just flattering and looks so much, what he had, Joyous, was a sense of going somewhere, going some place and that’s what first attracted me, especially since I had been so much alone for five years, apart from you, of course, My Special. You need to know I wasn’t trying hard looking for another man, because I knew that no man could ever replace the wonderfulness of Thomas Bowen, but Sammy-K had direction which I did not and that’s what got him over the doormat in the first place.
    Once over he was very persistent, though not in a way that I found to be wrongful. I think at that time I was weakened by not having any sort of seeable future and worrying about you growing up in the style that you were, without a daddy or an understanding of anything else but the farm and me. So even though I knew Sammy-K was from time to time a bit harsh and sarcastic in his dealings with you and also with me I sort of pushed that backwards in my mind and tried to think of the good bits, like a sense of going somewhere. So you see, I was doing what Thomas Bowen always said, working things around a little and for a while it was okay and trusting and that trust made it easy for Sammy-K to persuade me to leave Kinsville and go to the city with him, a place filled withopportunity he said which was all he ever wanted. We’ll be rich, he said, a palace for My Darling, My Exotic. So we were married in the registry office quick as a flash and off we went.
    You have to know that I have never been especially comfortable here but it’s always been my nature to make the best of what we have, no point in complaints now, just get on with it. When we first arrived the apartment was no palace but a mess and so gloomy but I fixed it as best I could and I grew flowers which was a hobby and selling them in those days gave me some extra bits and pieces. I was sure that Sammy-K would find a job, being in property as he was, and he used to go out looking every day. At least that’s what I thought until the smell and appearance of him helped me work out he was out drinking down the road at the Queens Head or Royal. I had some money from the sale of the farm and I had lent most of it to Sammy-K to set up business in property, or so I thought. I guess I was naive because he wasn’t doing that, not at all. After a year or two the idea of a job just went away in preference to the fortnightly dole money and we never talked any more about business in property because it made him angry and that was never good, Sammy-K being angry. The city was a hard place, a drain that seemed to pull away his sense of going somewhere and he sort of came into greyness and became less than what he oncewas. When that happened the anger was quicker to rise