Nora Webster Read Online Free PDF Page B

When Nora reached into hershopping bag to find her purse, she discovered that the peaches that had seemed so fresh and firm just a few hours before had become all soggy. The paper bag had split open. She dumped them in a rubbish bin, knowing that there was no point in trying to take them any further, they would only rot more in the train.
    The boys had not realised that it would be dark for the trip home, and as the train began the journey south, the window was covered in condensation. They opened the LEGOs and Conor played with it while Donal read. After a while, Conor moved over to her side of the table and fell asleep against her. She noticed as she looked across at Donal how oddly adult he seemed as he turned a page of his book.
    “We’re going to school t-tomorrow, aren’t we?” he asked.
    “Oh yes, I think you should,” she said.
    He nodded and looked back at his book.
    “When is F-fiona coming d-down next?” he asked.
    Her words with Fiona in the café, she knew, would work quietly on his mind. She wondered if there was one thing she could say that would stop him worrying and brooding over this.
    “You know, Fiona will love the caravan,” she said.
    “She d-didn’t s-sound like that,” he said.
    “Donal, we have to start a new life,” she said.
    He considered her statement for a moment, as though he had a complex piece of homework in front of him. And then he shrugged his shoulders and went back to reading his book.
    Nora gently moved Conor aside while she took off her coat in the overheated train. He woke for a second, but did not even open his eyes. She made a note that she must ask about caravans in Curracloe.
    In her mind, she stood in the house in Cush again, and she tried to picture the children on a summer’s day, taking their togs andtowels from the line and going down to the strand, or herself and Maurice walking home along the lanes at dusk trying to keep the swarms of midges at bay, and coming in to the house to the sound of children playing cards. It was all over and would not come back. The house lay empty. She pictured the small rooms in the darkness, how miserable they would be. Inhospitable. She imagined the sound of rain on the galvanised roof, the doors and windows rattling in the wind, the bare bed-frames, the insects lurking in the dark crevices, and the relentless sea.
    As the train made its way towards Enniscorthy, she felt that the house at Cush was more desolate now than it ever had been.
    When Conor woke, he looked around him and smiled at her sleepily. He stretched and lay against her.
    “Are we nearly home?” he asked.
    “Not long now,” she said.
    “When we stay in Curracloe,” he asked, “are we going to put the caravan near the Winning Post or are we going to the caravan park up the hill?”
    “Oh, near the Winning Post,” she said.
    She knew she had answered too quickly. Donal and Conor earnestly considered what she had said. Then Conor glanced at Donal, watching for his reaction.
    “Is that d-definite?” Donal asked. As the train slowed down, she managed to laugh for the first time all day.
    “Definite? Of course it’s definite.”
    When the train shuddered to a stop, they gathered up their belongings quickly. As they made their way to the door, they met the ticket collector.
    “Ask him now about the t-toilets,” Donal whispered as he nudged her.
    “I’ll tell him that you’re the one who wants to know,” she said.
    “Would this sausage like to come to Rosslare with us?” the inspector asked.
    “Oh no, he has to go to school tomorrow,” Nora said.
    “I’m not a sausage,” Conor said.
    The inspector laughed.

    As she drove out of the Railway Square she remembered something, and she found herself telling the boys what had come into her mind.
    “It was when we were married first, and it must have been during the summer holidays, and didn’t we drive to the station one morning to find that we had missed the train by one second. It was gone and, God,