Walk the Blue Fields Read Online Free PDF Page A

across the dance floor. The bride is standing there with her hands out. When he places the pearl in her hand, she looks into his eyes. There are tears there but she is too proud to blink and let one fall. If she blinked, he would take her hand and take her away fromthis place. This, at least, is what he tells himself. It’s what she once wanted but two people hardly ever want the same thing at any given point in life. It is sometimes the hardest part of being human.
    ‘I am so sorry,’ he says.
    He looks at the fragile lines in her open palms, at the pearls accumulating. He lifts his eyes back to her face. Lawlor is staring at him but Breen comes up and breaks it.
    ‘How many had you?’ Breen says.
    ‘How many?’ says the bride, shaking her head.
    ‘Aye,’ he says. ‘Have you any notion how many was on the string?’ Breen looks at her and changes. ‘Ah, don’t be crying, girl. Tis only a string. Tis aisy mended.’
    Down at the ballroom door, the groom has caught the best man by the collar. The big hand is tight, the face white in temper.
    ‘You mad bollocks!’ he roars. ‘Could you not control yourself for the one fucken day!’
    *
    Lovely to be out in the avenue again, to leave that terrible music behind. The wind has died and now the trees are still. On a bough, a crow sits watchful. Down the street, a chimney throws white smoke against the sky. The newsagent has closed her door but in the betting shop, a TV light still flickers. The priest pauses at the window, sees there a girl, fast asleep with an open book. He would like to go in and wake her, to tell her that she will get a crick in her neck but he walks on down to the parochial house. As soon as his foot touches the deep gravel, he knows he cannot go inside. He turns back down the street, past the petrol pumps, and heads out the country road.
    So, she is married. For a moment, he feels the possibility of all things new and then it vanishes. He passes the high walls of the convent, then the tubular steel fence of the mart. There’s no pavement now, just the bare road, a fringe of dead leaves under his feet. It is slippery, in places, and he tells himself he does not really know where he is going. He passes Jackson’s gate, the milk cartons left standing in the crate. Every now and then a beast in some field or shed lets out a roar. Many of the cattle in this parish will not be fed tonight. He walks without allowing any single thought to dominate his mind. After a few miles he can hear, under the road, the comforting noise of the river.
    When he reaches the creamery, he turns down Hunter’s Lane. Here, the Blackstairs tower over the land, throwing the fields into strange, blue shadow. Hunting men come down here on Sundays, after mass. They’ve left dead fowl at the house: cock pheasants, ducks, a goose. The housekeeper has hung them, plucked them, served them up on the dinner table. The priest doesn’t like to think of this even though he’s taken pleasure in the meals, the gravy.
    The lane ends where a house once stood, its derelict walls choked in ivy. At the marshy patch where the alders grow, there’s panic on the water, a flutter, and the wild ducks rise. The catkins shiver after them. The priest turns still and looks at the sky for the heron. Never once has he come this way without seeing her. It is asking much to see her again but suddenly she’s there, her slow wings carrying her in a placid curve against the sky.
    Down at the river, the sleepy brown water runs on. The peace is deeper as always simply because it’s still there. On the water’s surface, the reflection of the far bank’s trees is corrugated. A single cloud floats on the sky, so pale and out of place, like a cloud left over from another day. Heremembers the snatch of bridal veil on the yews, puts his hand in his pocket and feels it there. He takes it out, lets it fall. Before it touches the water, he regrets it but he had his chance, and now his chance is gone.
    There was