The Double Hook Read Online Free PDF

Now Ma’s lying dead in her bed I give the orders here. When a person’s dead in a house there should be a little peace.
    She pointed to the door. But when the others went out James did not move.

TWO
1
    A fter the storm the Widow’s girl did not get up from the bench by Felix Prosper’s stove. Felix sat looking at her. Her eyes shut. Her head settling on her shoulder. Her mouth loose with sleep.
    He wondered: If a bitch crept in by my stove would I let her fall on the hot iron of it? I’ve got no words to clear a woman off my bench. No words except: Keep moving, scatter, get-the-hell-out.
    His mind sifted ritual phrases. Some half forgotten. You’re welcome. Put your horse in. Pull up.
Ave Maria. Benedict fructus ventris. Introibo
.
    Introibo. The beginning. The whole thing to live again. Words said over and over here by the stove. His father knowing them by heart. God’s servants. The priest’s servants. The cup lifting. The bread breaking.
Domine non sum dignus
. Words coming. The last words.
    He rolled from his chair. Stood barefoot. His hands raised.
    Pax vobiscum
, he said.
    The girl lifted her head. She licked the saliva from the corner of her mouth.
    What the hell, she said.
    Go in peace, he said. Turning away his head. Closing his eyes. Folding his hands across his overalls. Waiting for her to go about her business. With Angel. With anyone. Leaving him alone after the storm.
    The girl looked at him.
    I got no place to go, she said.
    He’d had his say. Come to the end of his saying. He put a stick on the fire. There was nothing else he could do.
2
    I thought it best to go straight on when Angel told me, William said to Ara. The strange thing, he said, is that you should have been there below stairs with Greta and James. What a person has a right to is his kin. There’s enough things half-cocked in life, he said, without scrambling out of it any which way.
    What a person would like to have, he said, is the grain brought in and the tools wiped and put away and the ropes coiled and the animals in their stalls.
    I didn’t intend to be there, Ara said. It just happened. I was sure I’d seen her fishing past the house. Then something led me to go and speak to James.
    She wasn’t in her bed, William said. She was laying on the floor, her rod broke beside her and the line tangled in the hook.
    And Greta below stairs drinking tea with Angel, Ara said. And James with his horse saddled about to go off. A house isn’ta range, she said. So big that a man can’t keep track of what goes on in all corners.
    I know, William said, but a man gets used to things being as they are from day to day. It’s always when a man sleeps that his barn burns down to a fistful of ash.
    But Greta knew, Ara said.
    There’s no telling, William said, how a person will act. A man would be hard pressed to know what a person would do. James did nothing, he said. He just let her lie. He wouldn’t move to put a hand on her. And Greta, he said, trying to send me off before I’d ever looked. You’ve no notion, he said to Ara, how curious a person can be.
    He unlaced his boots and set them behind the stove. He stood in the centre of the linoleum, tracing the edge of a square with his toe. Pressing his toe up and down in his grey woollen sock.
    I’ve handled lots of dead things, he said. But it didn’t seem right to lay a finger on her. She was dry and brittle as a grasshopper, he said. A man does what he can. I’ve seen men die in winter stowed away in trees until spring thawed the ground soft enough for digging. In summer a man can’t wait.
    He sat down at the table. Ara opened the oven and took out a plate of food which she set before him. He took a knife and fork out of the tumbler on the table and began to eat.
3
    Ara left him. She went to the parlour and opened Greta’s catalogue. She heard William shoving aside his plate. Pulling his boots on again. Going out through the back to do his night chores.
    She opened the front door. The