Lamb Read Online Free PDF Page B

to the child-like stature. The boy’s nails were bitten so much that the round flesh of his fingertips swelled over them, and yet he had never noticed him biting them. Michael swirled the flat beer to a head and, as he drank, tilting the glass, he noticed a man sitting at the opposite side of the lounge staring at him. When their eyes met the man’s eyes flicked away.
    Over the next half hour, each time Michael’s eyes strayed to the far side of the lounge the little man was watching him and each time the man looked away. He was unused to the feeling that he was doing something wrong. All his life he had been on the right side of the law. What he was doing now was right, but he knew that many wouldn’t agree with him. No one, except himself, knew enough to make a judgment.
    The whole system was totally unjust. He had tried to change it from within, tempering the law at every opportunity with his own warmth. Now the saving of an individual was more important than the law. Owen was more important. Michael may have been able to help to some extent boys who in the future would have come to the Home but he had given up that chance for something more complete. Besides he had also to save himself from the slack tide of his own life.
    He looked at the state of Owen’s clothes. Beneath his anorak the frayed denims and the sneakers split across the uppers . . . London would be time enough to kit him out. Old clothes were good enough for travelling. In Belfast he had noticed that the boy’s flies were burst, the zipper pinching the gap in the middle. Beneath, his underpants were the colour of putty. His elbow jutted through a hole in him maroon sweater.
    It was this caring for the boy that Michael looked forward to. Dressing him well, not prissily, buying him things he had never had before, taking him places. Teaching him. He knew there was more than enough time to salvage him, this piece of jetsam. Sacrifice was what was required.
    He had never really felt this way before. The feeling he had had for his parents was something born of respect and gratefulness. He was used to them being there and was never conscious of his feelings for them. Years ago he had experienced something approaching this feeling for a girl who served in a sweet shop beside his school. Her pony tail, her brown eyes, her smile which he thought she reserved especially for him.
    But the time had been one of religious fervour, of self-denial, and all his love was channelled towards Jesus and Mary. His store of it was so meagre that it allowed for no tributaries. All the intensity of his early life was saved for that time he would spend on bended knees either in front of the tabernacle or before the pictures in his bedroom.
    One was entitled ‘Save me Lord!’ It was a black and white print of Jesus walking on the water, His hand raised in benediction, His lightly bearded face full of love and pity. He was half turned towards Peter who was in the act of sinking, his chin arched upwards to avoid the water, his arms thrown wide in appeal. The whites of Peter’s eyes blazed with fear. The sea was grey and jagged with waves, Christ’s garment moulded to His body by the wind of the storm, His black hair flying. Once Michael had climbed on a chair to look with microscopic closeness at the picture. It was made up of tiny dots, shades of black and grey, close in some parts, widely spaced in others. The only place where there were no dots was in the white of Peter’s eyes. It was nothing which produced that look of terror. That close to the picture, Michael had noticed that a film of dust had gathered on the inside of the glass.
    The other picture was of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour. Very dark, it had the wooden pose of an icon and her head was wreathed in gold. She held the Christ Child in hands that were long and thin and seemed the wrong way round, right for left and left for right. They did not hold the Child but were