Excerpt
He left almost half the cup which he hated doing. It galled him to pay for something and not get its full value, even half a cup of cold, strong tea.
He left the restaurant in a mood of impotent frustration. His escapade was going badly and was going to get worse. He knew it. He could feel it. That bitter taste in his mouth. That nagging in his head. That sickening self–recrimination.
Carraghlin was just another salty, sea-weed-smelling, seaside resort with typical tall sea-front guest houses, shops selling postcards and trashy souvenirs, an amusement arcade, a cinema, a boating lake. And crowds of people in light, brightly coloured summer clothes, their arms and faces red from too much sun. He hated their smiles, their laughter, their loud chatter as they passed him by. He was one and alone, an uninvited guest at a huge garden party where everyone present had gone to school with everyone else, or knew their cousin or their next-door neighbour. A bond of some sort, however tenuous, existed between each and every other person there. They flowed past him, one after another, brushing or bumping against him, and they were all linked together like barges by some happy relationship, by some shared knowledge or experience to which he was a stranger. He found himself hating them because Nora wasn’t one of them. He despised their carefree happiness. He despised their sheep-like uniformity. He grew hostile. His face scowled. Rudely he butted the passers-by aside, as the buttress of a bridge cleaves the flotsam in a river. And always he was searching: every face, every head, every back, searching, hoping, losing faith. He could see Nora nowhere. Perhaps she had been unable to come to Carraghlin this evening. One of her children might have taken ill. Or her old, malingering husband had taken himself to bed out of spite because last Wednesday his wife had stayed out till early in the morning.
Ian walked to the quiet, almost deserted end of the main street, to where it curved up a low hill and disappeared behind a tall crag on its way out along the coast towards Corrymore. Then he crossed the road and strolled back along the seaward side. A green park and ornamental gardens offered quiet, scented paths and lovers’ seats to old and young alike. The same chain of connected people filed through the park happily, or at least in apparent contentment, excluding him by just ignoring him. These people did not want to know him. They refused to break a link anywhere to admit him. And there was no beginning nor end where he might stretch out a hand and join on.
Libros Libertad 