Where Old Ghosts Meet Read Online Free PDF Page B

the water,” she said suddenly. “Made him sick to his stomach, but now he loved the sound and the smell of the sea.” She dabbed at the corners of her mouth. “Of an evenin’ he’d walk up over the hills and down in the coves. He paid no heed to the weather. He’d just sit for hours and watch the waves, and the tide and the kelp floatin’ about on the rocks. Put him in mind of Ireland, he told me one time.” She began to tease at the woolly fringe of her placemat, picking apart the matted strands with her thumbnail.
    Nora watched and listened.
    â€œJune 10, 1920,” Peg continued, feeling grateful for the silence and the lack of small talk. She turned to look out across the water to the horizon. “It was a beautiful day, the day he arrived on the island, not so hot as today, but sunny and bright.” She smoothed the unruly fringe with her fingertips and pressed it flat to the table. “I was in the garden to the side of the house getting the ground ready to set out the cabbages. Tell truth I saw his shadow before I saw him. It was a long dark shadow with a hat and it fell right across where I was to. When I come about, the sun was in my eyes so I had a hard time to see who was there. ‘That’s heavy soil you have there, it needs to be worked.’ Them’s the first words he spoke to me. It seemed like he’d been close by, watchin’ for a while and I didn’t know. I was stunned for a minute but by and by I got a good look at him. First thing I noticed was the white shirt; all proper he was done up in a suit and a soft kind of hat. He looked for all the world like a priest except that the clothes were not real black, just dark. The only thing out of place was the suitcase in his hand.”
    Her eyes twinkled as she turned to Nora. “‘Well,’ I said to myself, ‘God be praised, it’s not every day a fine looking man in a nice shirt and suit shows up to my door.’ He was too, a fine looking man,” she added quickly. “Not a big man, but sort of regular size with a nice serious face. He was no youngster either; thirty-four years old he was then. ‘Am I speaking with Mrs. Barry?’ he says. ‘Yes,’ I said to him, ‘I’m Peg Barry.’
    â€œWith that he set the suitcase on the ground by his feet, took off his hat and began to tell me he’d met Johnny, my husband, in London a few years earlier. Johnny was on leave and was headed back to the front the next day. Matt made him a promise he’d come and see me. Well, my dear, if he’d taken the spade from my hand and knocked me to the ground I wouldn’t have been more shocked.” She turned to explain, “Johnny, my husband, twenty-four years old he was when he marched off to war one day and never came back. Missing in action is what they wrote me. Gone, like last year’s snow, disappeared into the ground in France. I never laid eyes on him no more.” Her voice trailed off like a wisp of smoke.
    She found a small smooth dent in the table and began to rub gently with her forefinger. “I made supper for Matt that evening while he sat and talked to my father. Those days my father was poorly. He’d had a stroke the winter before and couldn’t get about no more. His mind was the finest kind but he had a hard time talking. You had to listen close to know what he’d be trying to say. When the neighbours used to come and visit him, they’d talk like he wasn’t there, like he was gone with the fairies or couldn’t hear no more. Instead they’d go on to me with their old men’s talk and foolish jabbering. To begin with, I tried to include my father in the talk and be interested in what they had to say but in the end I’d just say yes and no and wish them gone. But now Matt, he sat and talked to him and listened to what he had to say. He told him about London in war time and about Ireland and