Cheating at Canasta by William Trevor Read Free Book Online Page A

about. He had two children, the van driver said, who’d be able to tell him if Kilkenny won. Going down to Tagoat on a Sunday was the way of it when old age would be in charge, he said; you made the sacrifice. He crossed himself when they passed a church, and Prunty said to himself he’d nearly forgotten that.
    ‘You’d go through Wexford itself in the old days,’ he said.
    ‘You would all right.’
    ‘The country’s doing well.’
    ‘The Europeans give us the roads. Ah, but sure she’s doing well all the same.’
    ‘Were you always in Ross?’
    ‘Oh, I was.’
    ‘I cleared off when I had to. A while back.’
    ‘A lot went then.’
    Prunty said you’d never have believed it at the time. It would be happening all around you and you wouldn’t know the scale of the emigration. He was listened to without much interest. The conversation flagged and the van drew up when there’d been silence for a few miles. They were in a quiet street, deserted on a Sunday evening. Prunty was reluctant to get out.
    ‘You couldn’t see your way to a few bob?’
    The van driver leaned across to release the catch of the door. He pushed the door open.
    ‘Maybe a fifty if you’d have it handy,’ Prunty suggested, and the van driver said he never carried money with him in the van and Prunty knew it wasn’t true. He shook his head. He said: ‘Any loose change at all.’
    ‘I have to be getting on now. Take that left by the lamppost with the bin on it. D’you see it? Take it and keep going.’
    Prunty got out. He stood back while the door was banged shut from the inside. They said it because the mention of money made them think of being robbed. Even a young fellow like that, strong as a horse. Hold on to what you’d have: they were all like that.
    He watched the van driving away, the orange indicator light flicking on and off, the turn made to the right. He set off in the direction he’d been given and no car passed him until he left the town behind. None stopped for him then, the evening sun dazzling him on the open road. That was the first time he had begged in Ireland, he said to himself, and the thought stayed with him for a few miles, until he lay down at the edge of a field. The night would be fine except for the bit of dew that might come later on. It wasn’t difficult to tell.
    The old man was asleep, head slumped into his chest, its white hair mussed, one arm hanging loose. The doorbell hadn’t roused him, and Miss Brehany’s decision was that she had no option but to wake him since she had knocked twice and still he hadn’t heard. ‘Father Meade,’ she called softly, while the man who had come waited in the hall. She should have sent him away; she should have said come some time Father Meade would know to expect him; after his lunch when the day was warm he usually dropped off. ‘Miss Brehany,’ he said, sitting up.
    She described the man who had come to the door. She said she had asked for a name but that her enquiry had been passed by as if it hadn’t been heard. When she’d asked again she hadn’t understood the response. She watched the priest pushing himself to his feet, the palms of his hands pressed hard on the surface of his desk.
    ‘He’s wearing a collar and tie,’ she said.
    ‘Would that be Johnny Healy?’
    ‘It isn’t, Father. It’s a younger man than Johnny Healy.’
    ‘Bring him in, Rose, bring him in. And bring me in a glass of water, would you?’
    ‘I would of course.’
    Father Meade didn’t recognize the man who was brought to him, although he had known him once. He wasn’t of the parish, he said to himself, unless he’d come into it in recent years. But his housekeeper was right about the collar and tie, an addition to a man’s attire that in Father Meade’s long experience of such matters placed a man. The rest of his clothing, Rose Brehany might have added, wasn’t up to much.
    ‘Would you remember me, Father? Would you remember Donal Prunty?’
    Miss Brehany came in