The Glass Lake by Maeve Binchy Read Free Book Online Page A

you health and help and hope
    My dark Rosaleen
.”

    â€œWasn’t that beautiful!” Sister Madeleine spoke of the poem. Rita laughed aloud with pleasure, sheer pleasure that she had read without stumbling. “That was beautiful, Rita. Don’t ever tell me you couldn’t read a poem,” she said.
    â€œDo you know what I was thinking, Sister?”
    â€œNo. What were you thinking? Your mind was far away; poetry does that to you.”
    â€œI was just thinking that if young Emmet were to come to you…?”
    â€œEmmet McMahon?”
    â€œYes. Maybe you could cure his stutter, getting him to read sonnets and everything.”
    â€œI can’t cure a stutter.”
    â€œYou could make him read, he’s too shy to read at school. He’s fine with his friends but he hates when Brother Healy comes to him in class. He was the same when he was in Babies, he got red in the face with fright.”
    â€œHe’d have to want to come. Otherwise, it’d only be a torture to him.”
    â€œI’ll tell him the kind of magic you do.”
    â€œI think we should talk less about magic, you know people might take you seriously.”
    Rita understood at once. There were people in Lough Glass who were suspicious of Sister Madeleine, the hermit. And thought she might not come in a direct line from God. It had been whispered that people who believed in herbs and cures from the olden times might be getting their power from the very opposite of God.
    The Devil hadn’t been mentioned, but the word had stood hovering in the air over such conversations.

    D AN O’Brien stood at his door looking up and down the street. Business in the Central Hotel was never so pressing that he couldn’t find several opportunities during the day to come out and survey the main thoroughfare. Like many towns in Ireland, Lough Glass consisted of one long street, the church in the middle, the Brothers at one end and the convent strategically placed far at the other, giving the children as little chance of accidental meetings as possible. In between, there were the shops, houses, and businesses of his neighbors, fronting onto the same street as he did himself.
    You could learn a lot by standing at your own door. Dan O’Brien knew that Billy Sullivan’s two boys had come back from their uncle’s once their father had been locked away. The fiction was that they had been visiting, helping the uncle out with the farm. Everyone knew, of course, that Kathleen had sent them there to avoid the drunken rages and the unsettled atmosphere in the family home.
    It was hard on children like that.
    The lads were not to blame for the life they were born into. Handsome little fellows too, the very image of Billy himself before his face had turned fleshy from the drink and he had coarsened beyond recognition. They would be company for poor Kathleen anyway. Stevie must be about sixteen, and Michael was the same age as his own lad, Philip.
    Philip didn’t like him, he said that Michael Sullivan was tough, and he was always ready for a fight.
    â€œSo would you if you had been brought up with an old man like his,” Dan O’Brien said. “Not everyone is as lucky as you are, Philip.” Philip had looked at him doubtfully. But then, the young were never satisfied with what they got.
    Dan watched as the summer afternoon took its leisurely course. There was never much of a sense of urgency in Lough Glass, even a Fair Day had a relaxed air about it. But when the weather was warm like this, people seemed to move at half speed.
    He saw young Clio Kelly and Kit McMahon arm in arm practicing the steps of some dance along the footpath, oblivious to anyone else. It seemed only a few months since those two had been skipping ropes, and here they were getting ready for the ballroom. They were the same age as his Philip, twelve, an unsettled age.
    And as he watched he saw Mother Bernard from the convent