The Watch Tower Read Online Free PDF Page A

Herald at the Leaving Certificate results. Curiously elated, she found her school and looked down the list, the omissions beginning to register in her mind. Jacqueline Smith had failed, and so had Paula, and so had Ruth. Yes, there were more names than Laura’s missing.
    She jumped. In the bedroom the clock clanged frantically. If no one attended to it, it was capable of dancing off the dressing-table with every sign of bad temper. Her heart shook. Silence came abruptly and Laura breathed out and moved her hands abstractedly over the paper, attempting to fold it up.
    After her shower she returned to set her mother’s tray and make the breakfast.
    Even money can ’ t buy everything .
    The thought appeared vengefully in her mind as she tipped innocuous flakes of cereal into the three waiting plates. She paused, tilting the packet up, haltingthe stream.
    Money can ’ t buy everything .
    The thought came back with a stab of triumph that was not nice: Laura was shocked. Hastily she set the packet down, switched on the wireless and coffee percolator, cut the bread for toast and listened with extreme agitation to a cigarette commercial.
    Some of those girls like Jackie Smith used to receive an allowance twice as big as the wage Laura contributed to the housekeeping purse. Paula was one of several who had been promised a car if she passed this examination. She had not even scrambled through!
    Crunching cereal to drown the voices in her head, she sat opposite Clare and pretended to listen to advertisements for beguiling brassières and invincible headache powders. The time was announced. Singers sang.
    ‘And now we’re going to give you John Charles Thomas and— The Bluebird of Happiness .A lovely thing, this.’ The announcer’s tone, coming through the small yellow radio, suggested that this was a piece of rare generosity on his part.
    From chattering on about her history homework, Clare closed up instantly. Both girls buttered their toast and spread marmalade on it, chewing carefully not to miss a word.
    Be like I , hold your head up high ,
    Soon you’ll find the bluebird of happiness—
    Was this true?
    Gravely, they looked at each other over big coffee-cups.
    You will see a ray of light creep through
    So just remember this, life is no abyss
    Somewhere there’s a bluebird of happiness.
    Really?
    They had heard this story so often—almost every day—and it was so sincerely sung, perhaps it must be true. If it was, though, and they could not fail to find the bluebird, why did it sound so—lugubrious? There was another livelier song about a bluebird in your own backyard which was also much-favoured by record selectors.
    Blessed with the ability to believe in miracles and magic, Clare had looked down over the brick balcony wall to the small cement square where the clothes were strung up, quite willing to see an actual, but magical, bluebird if one felt inclined to appear. Laura’s nature was less elastic than that, but she had tried to imagine once or twice, when she was pegging sheets and dresses on the line, exactly what sort of event, what possible event, could occur in this small yard behind the flats that could change her life for the better. Or even in the flat itself. What could possibly happen?
    Unless it turned out that her father had not really died?
    Oh, but he must have. When she and Clare had gone home for a day after the funeral, all the neighbours had tiptoed in and out of the house with terrible faces.
    You’ll find your happiness lies
    Right under your eyes
    Back in your own backyard—
    Unless it meant devoting herself less selfishly to her family? Laura felt dubious, but she did want to be faultless and to please her mother. Oh, especially to please her mother. So she continued to absorb the lyrics of songs, as Clare did, with secret earnestness. They contained news about the world, just as books and films did, and were addressed to them by impartial adult strangers. Apart from these fabled supra-human