The Young Wan Read Online Free PDF

gangrenous, and Sean’s leg had been removed. Over the following year, Sean had been nursed back to health by a young Spanish girl named Maria Augustino, whom he fell in love with. They went on to marry in 1904. The following year, Hoppy and Maria returned to Dublin. Two years later, shortly after the birth of their only child, Bosco, Maria died of consumption.
     
    Pascal sat by the boy, staring into his face. The boy looked foreign all right. He had the look of a young Spanish bullfighter. The leg was healing and the boy would eventually return to full health. Pascal smiled and dabbed the boy’s forehead with the cool cloth. He was happy in the knowledge that he had helped nurse him back to health and yet dreading the thought of when the boy was well again. For it would be Pascal that would have to tell Bosco he was now an orphan.
     
     
     
    Constance’s life at this time was particularly busy. The youngest of her three sisters, Joanne, was to be married. For Constance this meant that, as well as doing her job in her father’s foundry, she would have lots of arranging to do at home. Even so, busy as she was, over the next few weeks her thoughts were constantly invaded by images of the young boy. She wondered: Where was he? Who was he? And was he still alive? She had asked around the foundry, but nobody seemed to know anything. Her inquiries were met with either blank stares or grunts of “I don’t know what you’re talking about, ma’am.” Even from those men whom she had seen carry the boy away. So, eventually, she just stopped asking. With Joanne now becoming the third bride of the Parker-Willis household, Constance would be the only girl unmarried. Constance’s mother, in an attempt, she was sure, to be sympathetic, would pat Constance on the hand and say things like, “For every old sock, there is an old shoe, dear.” On the other hand, Constance’s father would matter-of-factly bellow out his version of consolation: “Your Aunt Petunia died a spinster, and a very happy one at that. Marriage is not all it is cracked up to be, Constance dear.”
     
    Constance’s mother would look dolefully at him and silently agree with a gentle “That’s true.” Of the two opinions, Constance couldn’t decide which was worse. Her mother regarded her as an old sock, and her father, even though she was just twenty-five, was already talking in terms of her being a spinster. Constance tended to agree more with her father on the subject of marriage. Marriage maybe was not all it was cracked up to be. Certainly not the kind of marriages she saw her sisters and her mother live in. She had watched her sisters over the years, each one trying to be more beautiful than the others, constantly dressing up and appearing at social events looking like a gardener’s exhibit. The sole purpose of which seemed to be to capture a man just like their father and then become invisible just like their mother. And Constance truly believed her mother had become invisible. For Constance had seen all the reasons a man would marry a woman vanish from her mother. Constance’s mother had fulfilled her obligation of childbearing—and not too successfully, in her husband’s opinion, for she had failed to produce a son. The children had been reared by nannies. All meals were prepared by the cook. The cleaning was done by the household staff. For conversation Constance’s father went to the Men’s Club on St. Stephen’s Green, and his sexual appetite was satisfied by the many affairs he was having about the town. And so it was that Constance’s mother was not required to provide her husband with food, intellectual stimulation, or sex. She was invisible. Constance Parker-Willis was not certain whether she were an old sock or indeed a spinster, but she was certain that she would never become invisible.
     
    In any case, Joanne’s wedding came and went. The wedding itself was identical to the two previous weddings of Constance’s other sisters,