Lamb Read Online Free PDF

finger to the device, she selected a hole from those she fanned out and tried it round his finger.
    â€˜Is that comfortable?’ she asked.
    â€˜It’s a bit sharp at the edges.’
    She smiled at him, then selected a ring of the type he had chosen.
    â€˜Try that,’ she said, helping him fit it on his finger. Michael smiled and said,
    â€˜Till death us do part and all that.’
    â€˜For richer for poorer,’ said the woman, joining in.
    The ring fitted him well. He felt a foolish desire to look at himself in a mirror, as if it was a suit he was trying on. He looked over his shoulder and saw Owen staring at him through the window, his nose flattened against the glass.
    â€˜That one will do grand,’ he said. ‘How much?’
    â€˜That one is forty pounds.’
    â€˜Fine.’
    â€˜Do you want me to put it in a box, sir?’
    Michael hesitated. She looked at him slyly.
    â€˜Can I suggest that you don’t bother with the box, sir? If your wife were to find it you might have some explaining to do.’
    â€˜Yes, you’re right,’ said Michael. He smiled at her. He liked her becoming involved in his conspiracy, or what she thought was his conspiracy. And it made his own game seem doubly clever. With the ring still on his finger, he took out a bundle of notes and paid.
    â€˜Just up from Dublin for the day?’ she said as she wrote out his receipt.
    â€˜No, not Dublin,’ said Michael. ‘Galway. I’m on holiday.’
    â€˜I could have sworn your accent was sort of Dublin,’ she said, flicking over the page and checking that the blue carbon had come through.
    â€˜My parents were from Dublin. Maybe that’s it.’
    â€˜Maybe.’
    Outside Owen was standing, the bag between his feet, looking in the window.
    â€˜Look at those,’ he said, pointing to a tray of digital watches. They were satin finished, stainless steel with square black faces. One had been fixed so that it flicked up the time every few seconds in its red computer figures.
    â€˜Did you ever have a watch?’
    â€˜Naw.’
    â€˜Would you like one of those?’
    Owen didn’t believe him, but Michael brought him into the shop and asked to see the watches. Owen’s wrist was too thin for any of the watches in the window. The woman showed them a child’s watch of roughly the same design and they took that one. Owen asked her if it was waterproof and she said of course it was.
    â€˜Time, Owen?’ Michael asked when they were outside.
    â€˜Four thirty-two.’
    The boy’s arm was now up over his ear, the face of the watch black and dead. He was best to sleep because now that they were getting well out to sea the boat was beginning to heave and lurch, despite the sunlight outside. Michael’s leg went numb. He would have to move. He lifted Owen’s head and pushed his anorak underneath. The boy snorted and curled up into a smaller ball, even though he now had the whole seat to himself. Seeing that he still slept, Michael went to the bar to get himself a drink. He queued with others, changing his weight from foot to foot as the boat tilted. When he got his pint he drank an inch into it so that he could carry it without spilling to where Owen slept.
    He sat in the recess of the window opposite the sleeping boy, his back to the sea, and looked at him. He was small for his age – he didn’t look much more than nine – and curled up he looked like a baby. His hair was fair and his closed eyelids had the brown pigment that goes with lack of sleep. Michael tilted his head to one side to see the boy’s face the right way up. Thin and sharp, the skin pulled over bones that seemed brittle. Once he had broken his collar bone and had screamed almost to fainting when Michael had stupidly tried to take his pullover off over his head. When his eyes were closed there was no light about his face. It was a dead face, an old face in contrast