The All of It: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

of stone? Well, the room wasn’t plastered but for the one wall the door was set in, and the stones—the stones had the winter cold stored up in them…. It happened all so fast, our dad putting us in the room and all, we’d not thought, Kevin nor me, to grab onto an extra bit of a jacket or a sweater….” She faltered, made an empty gesture, then added, “We didn’t know to.” She swallowed. “I’ll not draw it out, Father. We got through the day, long as it was, knowing as we did our dad’s way of always coming back by nightfall. I mean we figured onthat, his coming back and letting us out, so we stayed cheerful.” He winced at the word. “We talked. With me, Kevin always had plenty of talk him. And there was a bit of a stone he found in his pocket and we made games with it—target, you know, and the like. That kept us stirring about and helped to keep our minds off the cold. And Kevin, smart as he was, had us to thromp our arms about and to jump up and down against the chill.
    “Even so, the cold was harsh…. We felt it more than we felt being hungry. We’d not had a proper breakfast, as you know, and Kevin”—her mouth broke in a sudden, strong smile—“along about dinnertime, Kevin put out he’d swallow a whole pot of scalding tea and eat a loaf all for himself if he but could. He set me laughing the way he said it, it was so daft. Exaggerated, I mean…. I’m telling you all this so you’ll see how we passed the time. How we kept our spirits up all the day….
    “It was when it got to be late afternoon, dusk-time and after, then dark and the night full on us and our dad not come back, that we began to lose heart—though, mind, we didn’t say so…only felt it between us…. Out loud, of course, we kept telling each other it’d be any minute now our dad would come. We kept hoping , is what I mean to say….
    “There was stars out; we could see them throughthe breaks in the roof. Kevin said he was glad for the sight of them but I don’t know, for me they were like another worry, there was such a might and pull to them, like they’d draw me out of myself. Telling of the way they made me feel sounds cracked does it, Father?”
    “No, Enda dear, I’ve had the feeling myself.”
    She gave him a slight, drifted smile. “It’s strange about stars. To this day I’m not sure of them.”
    In the light from the fire and in the candles’ pale flickerings her beauty, like a scald, set a fresh mark on him. In the five years he had known her he’d never got used to the sight of her, of her deep enormous eyes, her fair skin and her hair, dark still and darker every year he could count back, with glints of rust in it, the length of it bound in a bun or braided down, or loose sometimes, flying in the wind around her face and her laughter breaking through the strands of it….
    “Father?”
    Abashed, he looked swiftly from her, down, to his shoes. Then: “Shall you go on, Enda?”
    “Aye…. Like I said, it was our hope that kept us going. That, and our listening for a sound of our dad…. You’ve seen a good dog when its master’s due home, how it’ll sit, all the life of it in its ears, trying to catch the hint of a footfall on the sod a mile away…. We were like that. I can still feel how it was, Father. How the listening took usover and carried us along all through the night.
    “In time, though—it was around daybreak—we took in that it was useless to listen and hope anymore…. Kevin brought it up, that this might be the time our dad would never come back. He didn’t forward the end for us, that we’d die, he just said, ‘This might be the time he won’t come back,’ very quiet and set-like. I’d been thinking it of course myself, but that Kevin said it set me to crying….
    “You have to know, Father, that Kevin never liked me to cry. It was so from the time we were mites. Whenever I did—and I credit myself it wasn’t often—but the few times I did, Kevin never spared himself