Love and Summer Read Online Free PDF Page A
Author: William Trevor
better,’ an old farmer he’d known all his life lowered his voice to approve when there was a private moment, each of them taking a corner at the urinals out the back. He sang for them at the wedding party, for her too, as everyone there knew. They went to Lahinch for three days afterwards, the farm looked after by one of the Corrigans. She’d never seen the sea before.
3
Florian Kilderry skimmed a pebble on the dark surface of water as still as ice. It bounced only once; twice, then three times when he tried again. The silence of early morning was unbroken, the air refreshingly cold. The bird he had been unable to identify this summer wasn’t there again and he waited for it, hoping it would suddenly appear, swooping in just above the water in its particular way. He looked in the sky, but there was still no sign of it. His dog, a black Labrador, no longer young, looked also, her manner suggesting that she knew what for. These days she didn’t do much on her own.
It took an hour to walk around the lake. Here and there a detour had to be made if the land was sodden, but it wasn’t this morning. The upturned boat was still forgotten on the shingle where the stream trickled in, hardly trickling at all now. The reeds flourished best close to the water. They hadn’t been cut for years.
When, in the past, there’d been parties - when people had driven down from Dublin - there was always the walk around the lake, whole processions of people and Florian among them, the child of the house. Cars were parked on the gravel turn-about: battered Dodges and Fords, the solitary Morgan that always came, Morrises and Austins. The emblem on the bonnet distinguished each and he knew the number plates, remembering them from the last time. At night when there were parties he had never wanted to go to sleep, the music and the laughter always faintly reaching him in his bedroom. In the morning he crept about the house through silence that felt as if it would never cease.
Florian Kilderry - called Florian after a grandfather he hadn’t known - was the sole relic of an Italian mother and an Anglo-Irish father, a couple whose devotion to one another had illuminated a marriage in which their foibles were indulged and their creditors charmed as part of everyday life. His mother had been a Verdecchia of Genoa, his father born into an army family originally of County Galway but long established in Somerset. The well-to-do Verdecchias had not approved of their daughter’s romance with a wandering soldier who had become separated from his regiment as war was ending in 1918 and was certainly not aristocratic, as they themselves were. Soldato di ventura was the term that expressed their distaste; and too much, otherwise, was said, causing Natalia Verdecchia - several years younger than her suitor - to marry surreptitiously and flee with him to Ireland. ‘I was never more than penniless,’ Florian’s father used to say, and was particularly so at that time, having managed to live from hand to mouth since his right leg was severely injured during the Battle of the Lys. But in spite of the Verdecchias’ displeasure, in time there was a Genoese legacy - less than it might have been but enough to buy the house where the Kilderrys were to live for the remainder of their lives, where their only child was born and which on his father’s recent death he had inherited.
Shelhanagh it was called, a country house of little architectural distinction, looking down on its own wide lake, two miles from Greenane Crossroads, five from the town of Castledrummond. It was now in a state of some decay, for in the Kilderrys’ lifetime there had rarely been money to pay for its structural upkeep; and with the house itself, Florian had inherited a mass of debts and ongoing legal disputes. His father had been skilful to the end at procrastinating when the bills came in, good at knowing which to pay and which to leave. Florian was not. He had had no success at
3
Florian Kilderry skimmed a pebble on the dark surface of water as still as ice. It bounced only once; twice, then three times when he tried again. The silence of early morning was unbroken, the air refreshingly cold. The bird he had been unable to identify this summer wasn’t there again and he waited for it, hoping it would suddenly appear, swooping in just above the water in its particular way. He looked in the sky, but there was still no sign of it. His dog, a black Labrador, no longer young, looked also, her manner suggesting that she knew what for. These days she didn’t do much on her own.
It took an hour to walk around the lake. Here and there a detour had to be made if the land was sodden, but it wasn’t this morning. The upturned boat was still forgotten on the shingle where the stream trickled in, hardly trickling at all now. The reeds flourished best close to the water. They hadn’t been cut for years.
When, in the past, there’d been parties - when people had driven down from Dublin - there was always the walk around the lake, whole processions of people and Florian among them, the child of the house. Cars were parked on the gravel turn-about: battered Dodges and Fords, the solitary Morgan that always came, Morrises and Austins. The emblem on the bonnet distinguished each and he knew the number plates, remembering them from the last time. At night when there were parties he had never wanted to go to sleep, the music and the laughter always faintly reaching him in his bedroom. In the morning he crept about the house through silence that felt as if it would never cease.
Florian Kilderry - called Florian after a grandfather he hadn’t known - was the sole relic of an Italian mother and an Anglo-Irish father, a couple whose devotion to one another had illuminated a marriage in which their foibles were indulged and their creditors charmed as part of everyday life. His mother had been a Verdecchia of Genoa, his father born into an army family originally of County Galway but long established in Somerset. The well-to-do Verdecchias had not approved of their daughter’s romance with a wandering soldier who had become separated from his regiment as war was ending in 1918 and was certainly not aristocratic, as they themselves were. Soldato di ventura was the term that expressed their distaste; and too much, otherwise, was said, causing Natalia Verdecchia - several years younger than her suitor - to marry surreptitiously and flee with him to Ireland. ‘I was never more than penniless,’ Florian’s father used to say, and was particularly so at that time, having managed to live from hand to mouth since his right leg was severely injured during the Battle of the Lys. But in spite of the Verdecchias’ displeasure, in time there was a Genoese legacy - less than it might have been but enough to buy the house where the Kilderrys were to live for the remainder of their lives, where their only child was born and which on his father’s recent death he had inherited.
Shelhanagh it was called, a country house of little architectural distinction, looking down on its own wide lake, two miles from Greenane Crossroads, five from the town of Castledrummond. It was now in a state of some decay, for in the Kilderrys’ lifetime there had rarely been money to pay for its structural upkeep; and with the house itself, Florian had inherited a mass of debts and ongoing legal disputes. His father had been skilful to the end at procrastinating when the bills came in, good at knowing which to pay and which to leave. Florian was not. He had had no success at