The Misremembered Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

counter had frightened her. She remembered his hooded eyes and the long white beard, his purple mouth, like a buried bruise. He might himself have been the risen Christ. He had counted the change into her palm with long pale fingers and rasped “Praised be the Lord, my child,” causing her to run for the door.
    She remembered her parents’ smiling approval as they unwrapped the picture. Her father had conjured a hammer and nail as if from nowhere and secured it to the wall. And there it had hung, unmoved, for twenty-eight years. She guessed that the portrait of a smiling Queen Elizabeth below it might have hung there just as long, and the fan of souvenir spoons from trips to the coast, and the faded tapestry of birds gliding on their smudged reflections over a pond—its age, whom it had belonged to, she did not know, but she believed it might have been another precious wedding gift.
    It seemed that every room in the house had the power to entrap her with some form of sentimental pull.
    The sound of the postman at the front door brought her back to the present. She went immediately into the hall and collected the letters lying on the Bless This House mat.
    There was a bill from the electricity company, a circular from Gallagher’s furniture store (“20% off all Draylon suites”) and a stiff vellum envelope which looked like a greetings card. She trashed the furniture flyer, stuck the invoice in Uncle Sinclair’s wooden cat on the kitchen windowsill, and sat down again at the table to open the letter. It was addressed to her.
    It was a card with a gilded edge, a wedding invitation. Lydia saw that it was from an old college friend: Heather Price. Gosh, she hadn’t seen or spoken to her in years.
     
     
    Herbert and Henrietta Price
    Have great pleasure in requesting the company of
Lydia Devine & Partner
    On the occasion of the marriage of their daughter
Heather
to Mr. Simon Taylor
on August 28th 1974 in St. Hilda’s Parish Church
& afterwards at the Ross Park Hotel,
Main Street, Killoran
     
     
    Lydia reread the invitation with a mounting sense of unease. It was that word “partner” which caused her the most discomfort. All her old girlfriends seemed to be married now, and she was not. She had attended too many of those weddings, knew all too well the embarrassment of being seen in the company of her fractious mother, and the attendant smirks and sly looks that went with the questions: “Any word of you, Lydia? When are you going to give us another big day?”
    She returned the card to the envelope, angry at the very thought. Yes, she would go to the blasted wedding, and she would find a man to accompany her—even if she had to hire one for the day! After all, her father was no longer around to censor her every move. And as for her mother: She was not her partner, and was therefore not invited. And, by heavens, she would no longer stand in her way!
    Lydia knew what she had to do. She’d look up Daphne at the library and ask her advice. Daphne always knew what to do in such circumstances. She rose, galvanized into action, checked her watch, saw that she had most of an hour left, grabbed her purse and left the house.

Chapter five
     
    T ailorstown, a small village in County Derry, had started out with Flynn the grocer, O’Shea the bar owner, Duffy the undertaker, a smattering of dwellings and the obligatory parish church. Over the decades it expanded its buildings and population through the committed efforts of the above-mentioned stalwarts, alongside a steady influx of traders and urban speculators. So the ladies from the shirt factory met the bricklayers from the council estates, and in time the school and every church pew were filled with the by-products of their passions. Tailorstown was a success.
    To the outsider, the village was nothing more than a one-horse town leading nowhere, ringed by the peaks of the Slievegerrin mountains, which neither sightseer nor adventurer yearned much to see. Like most small