The Green Road Read Online Free PDF

Dan.
    ‘Sorry, what’s your name?’ said Hanna.
    ‘My name?’ she said, and laughed for no reason. ‘Oh, I am sorry. My name is Isabelle.’
    Of course. She had a name that came out of a book.
    After the pub they ran down a lane and were suddenly in a place where everyone smelt of the rain. Dan pulled the coat off Hanna even though she was well able to take off her own coat and when Isabelle came back she had the tickets in her hand. They were going to see a play.
    The room they went into did not look like a theatre, there was no curtain or red plush, there were long benches with padded backs and when they found the right row, there were two priests in their way. Actual priests. One of them was old, the other was young and they were dealing, in great slow motion, with programmes and scarves. Isabelle had to push past them, finally, and the priests let them through and then sat down in an insulted sort of way. They stuck their holy backsides out a little, and dipped them on to the leatherette. It was the kind of thing Dan would have laughed at once, but now he said, ‘Evening, Fathers,’ and Isabelle sat in thoughtful silence, until the metal lights cracked and began to dim.
    The darkness of the theatre was a new kind of darkness for Hanna. It was not the darkness of the city outside, or of the bedroom she shared with Constance at home in Ardeevin. It was not the black country darkness of Boolavaun. It was the darkness between people: between Isabelle and Dan, between Dan and the priests. It was the darkness of sleep, just before the dream.
    The play moved so fast, Hanna could not tell you, after, how it was done. The music thundered and the actors ran around, and Hanna didn’t fancy any of them except the youngest one. He had eyebrows that went up in the middle and when he ran past, she could see everything about his bare feet, the pattern of hair and the comparative length of each toe. He was very real, he was as real as the spittle that flew from his mouth, though the words that came out of him were not real – perhaps that was why she could not follow them.
    The story was about Granuaile the pirate queen, who turned, in the middle of it all, into the other queen, Elizabeth the First. The actress lifted a mask, and her voice changed, and her body changed, and it felt like the bubbles rising in Hanna’s fizzy orange, except the bubbles were in her head. Dust moved in the hot lights, the lamps creaked in the rafters. The woman turned, and the mask turned slowly, and suddenly it was all happening inside Hanna and she could feel it spread through the audience like a blush, whatever it was – the play – every word made sense. Then the actors ran off and the ordinary lights came on, and the two priests sat still for a moment, as though trying to recollect where they were.
    ‘Well now,’ said the older one. And when it was time for the second half, they did not come back.
    In the crowded little room outside, Isabelle said, ‘Would you like an ice cream?’
    ‘Yes,’ she said, and Isabelle went into the pack of people and came back with a Twist Cup.
    During the second half, the nice actor spoke to Hanna. He stopped on stage and levelled his head to say something very quiet, and he was looking at her bang in the eye. Even though he could not see her. Or probably could not see her. And Hanna had a sharp urge to step through to the other side and be with him there – his look an invitation to her, as ghosts are invited in from the dark.
    After the play was over, Hanna went to find the toilets, where the women were talking with such carelessness to each other, as they splashed their hands beneath the tap, or pulled some fresh towel down from the roll. Hanna didn’t want real life to start again yet. She tried to hold on to the play as they walked through the rainy streets and turned down by a big river; even though the river was exciting in the night-time, she tried to hold the play safe in her mind.
    In the middle