The Scattering Read Online Free PDF Page A

cosmetic tricks of his daughters, and knew that repairing nylons had long gone out with the ark. Still, he found her injured politeness magnetic.
    â€˜Is that alright, Mr McCourt?’
    â€˜Monday? Yes, of course. Take it off, Bridie. I’ll take over. That’s if I haven’t forgotten what to do.’
    â€˜Ah now. You’re too modest.’
    â€˜Planning a heavy weekend then, Bridie?’ he joked, ushering her into the front room.
    â€˜No,’ she said quietly, ‘it’s my divorce.’
    His face reddened and he turned to the window. In the more energised atmosphere of the bakery he would have been quicker off the mark and able to respond to Bridie’s frankness. But at home, this evening, his guard was down, and he couldn’t think of anything to say. He stared into the darkening street.
    â€˜Warm fire you have going there, Mr McCourt. Would you not close the curtains and put on the light and settle up to that? It’s dark now, you know.’
    â€˜I’m watching my wee girl, Bridie. Till her bus comes for the airport.’
    â€˜Righto,’ she said, gazing towards the window. ‘Maybe I’ll bring you a pie then, later. Would you like a pie, Mr McCourt?’
    â€˜No. I’m not hungry at all.’
    â€˜I’ll go so.’ He let Bridie out of the house. He was sorry to see her leave, but glad that he could carry on by the window in peace.
    The dark clouds were staggered in short strips across the horizon. His daughter remained perched on her trolley, her bus now almost forty minutes late. He considered going to the door and calling out for a cross-traffic conversation, but then thought this would embarrass her.
    Theirs was an emotional, fragile bond. She was five when his wife had died. He had not managed to be both parents to any of his children, least of all to her. He had behaved badly. When the others had left for England and America, she and he had been left at home together, and there had been much drama. He had not known how to raise a child by himself. Francie and the girls did what they could to help (as the bakery was being reestablished) before leaving for work and lives elsewhere.
    During her teenage years, he had switched tack, resorting to plain-talking force, and once had woken her up for school by pouring a bucket of cold water over her while she slept. He knew now that it was just one of his many cruel and unforgivable explosions of anger in the house; that he should have asked for help with his morose, introverted daughter. He’d not had much trouble with the others (apart from a brief episode with Francie), but she had left him exasperated. When she was fourteen she had suddenly become a vegan and began to object vehemently to his use of gelatin in the shop. He learned later that the protest came as a result of her membership of the Baha’i Faith, which she had clandestinely joined. There had been no end to her rebellion.
    In her late twenties they had begun a slow truce. There was much left unsaid about the years he might have been more percipient, had he not been in such a prolonged mourning himself.
    His eye fell on the mossed-over marble seat in the corner of the garden: the love seat. At least, that was what he and his wife had secretly called it. Engraved somewhere were their initials, and ‘1975’, the year they had come home. He and his wife had behaved like kids in private, and he was often stunned to think that within the family there had been two of him. That the children did not know the man his wife had married amazed him, but that was how it was: one man, necessarily split. And when she died, it seemed that the man she had married went too. The dead take big bites out of you, he thought, so you’ll never forget. Every day he had hoped the bombing of the town would receive a thorough investigation; there had been a few gestures, some well-meaning attempts to get to the bottom of it, but little had