The Green Road Read Online Free PDF Page A

might die.
    Later, that evening, Emmet sneered at him.
    ‘You don’t actually believe,’ he said. ‘You just think you do.’
    And Dan gave his new, priestly smile.
    ‘And what is the difference again?’ he said.
    And so it became real. Dan would leave them to save the black babies. Their mother had no power to stop him, anymore.
    Meanwhile, there was the small matter of Dan’s girlfriend, who had yet to be informed. This Hanna realised after the Easter dinner, with the chicken sitting, dead and very much unresurrected, in the centre of the table; half a lemon in its chest or bottom, Hanna could never tell which. Her mother did not come down to eat with them, she was still in bed. She would never get up, she declared. Hanna sat on the landing outside her bedroom and played cards on the floor and when her mother pulled open the door all the cards got mixed up and Hanna cried, then her mother slapped her for crying, and Hanna cried louder and her mother reeled and wailed. On Tuesday, Dan took Hanna back to Galway with him for a few days. He said it was to get her away from all the fuss, but there was fuss of a different kind waiting for them in Eyre Square.
    ‘This is Hanna,’ her brother said, pushing her forward.
    ‘Hello,’ said the woman, holding out her hand, which was covered in a dark green leather glove. The woman looked very nice. The glove went up her wrist, with a line of covered buttons along the side.
    ‘Go on,’ said Dan, and Hanna, who had no manners yet, reached out to shake the woman’s hand.
    ‘Fancy a scoop?’ she said.
    Hanna walked alongside them, trying to make sense of the traffic and the people who passed, but the city was so busy, there was not enough time to take it all in. A couple of students stopped to talk to them. The girl’s check jacket was hanging open over a woolly jumper and the man had big glasses and a scraggy beard. They held hands, even while they were standing there, and the girl shifted and took glimpses at Dan from under her messy hair, like she was waiting for him to say something hilarious. And then he did say something, he said:
    ‘What fresh hell is this?’ and the girl fell about laughing.
    They parted, a little uncomfortably, from this pair and Dan’s girlfriend led them in through a pub door. She said, ‘You must be starving. Would you like a ham sandwich?’ and Hanna did not know what to say.
    The pub was very dark, inside.
    ‘She would,’ said Dan.
    ‘And what? Do you want a pint?’
    ‘Maybe she’ll have a fizzy orange.’
    And so it had appeared, in a glass that flared out at the top, and the surface of it a hush of bubbles that rose and were lost to the air.
    ‘So are you in big school?’ said Dan’s girlfriend, as she threw three packets of crisps on the table, and sat in. ‘Have they killed you yet, the nuns?’
    ‘Doing their best,’ said Hanna.
    ‘No bother to you.’
    She busied herself with gloves and bag. She wore a clasp in her hair made of polished wood, and she took this out and settled it back in again. Then she held up her glass.
    ‘Gaudete!’ she said. Which was Latin, and a joke.
    Hanna was mad about Dan’s girlfriend. She was so fine. There was no other word for it. Her voice had layers, she had sentiment and irony, she had no idea – Hanna realised, with an odd, crumpled feeling – what the future had in store.
    Dan was going to be a priest! You wouldn’t think it as he set down the pint in front of him, and hooked his lower lip over the top to clear it of foam. You wouldn’t think it as he looked at this young woman beside him with her cascade of light-brown hair.
    ‘So what’s the story?’
    ‘She’s well up to it,’ she said.
    ‘You think?’ he said.
    Dan’s girlfriend was a tragedy waiting to happen. And yet, those green gloves spoke of a life that would be lovely. She would study in Paris. She would have three children, teach them beautiful Irish and perfect French. She would always mourn for