excerpt
“I am glad, Caitlin.” Padraig sat down like a doctor on the edge of her bed. Caitlin no longer held the eiderdown under her chin; she had it drawn across her breasts and tucked under her arms. The priest took the woman’s hand and pressed it to his lips.
‘Do you take me for His Holiness, Padraig?” Caitlin asked with a mocking smile. “Is this how priests must greet a woman too?”
“Caitlin. Please. I am tired. I had to see you. I …” Padraig lost his words. He struggled like an actor with his lines, straining to hear the unseen prompter. His heart pounded, drowned the sounds and sense of what he sought to say. His wild eyes scanned the room that he remembered so well. The room had become part of his psyche. “Why did you move in here?” he asked.
Caitlin looked at him for a moment in silence before replying, as if she were thinking of something other than the question Padraig had put to her. “I like it better than my own old room. I love to look out at the sea first thing in the morning. See it sparkle when the sun shines on it. See it angry and dark under storms.”
“You didn’t change much in here,” Padraig noted.
“No. I liked it the way you had it.”
“Am I to have your room then?”
“If you wish. Mine or Nora’s. They are both empty now. You can sleep in either one until you move to the rectory.”
Padraig stared at his white, slim hands in a perturbed silence. Then, as if emboldened he asked, “Who is Michael?”
“Bill Neely’s successor,” Caitlin replied.
“Bill’s gone?”
“A year since. He inherited his grandfather’s farm up Strangford way.”
“I was never much help around the farm, was I?” Padraig said.
“You did what you could, Padraig. You were no ploughman, that’s a fact, but you were hard to beat when it came to grubbing potatoes. When the plough opened up a potato drill, no one could fill a basket of purties faster than you.” Caitlin smiled. “Nor a pail of blackberries either. You had nimble fingers when you were a young buck, Padraig.”
Padraig looked down at his long, pale fingers. They played piano keys now; no more pulling potatoes from freshly turned soil nor picking blackberries from thorny brambles.
“Willy John Thornton used to pay me half a crown for a stone of blackberries,” Padraig said, looking at Caitlin with a reminiscent smile. “That money went into my savings.”
Libros Libertad 