The Good People by Hannah Kent Read Free Book Online Page A

But Father Healy is a busy man. A man from the towns – he’s most like spent his life in Tralee or Killarney. And I don’t think he will be troubling himself with poor wicker-legged boys.’
    Brigid was silent. ‘I pray to God that mine is right.’
    ‘Please God he will be. Keep yourself safe and warm. I suspect ’twas only when this one’s mother sickened that he began to go soft in the head and his limbs moved to kippeens. I never heard a thing about a strange child while she was alive.’
    Nóra’s stomach dropped. Her own kin, sitting in her house, blacking her grandson. She pressed her face against the door, feeling her pulse jump in her throat.
    ‘Did Nóra tell you that, so?’
    Peg scoffed. ‘What do you think? She won’t have any talk about him. Why do you think she keeps him here like a clocking hen, and none of us knowing the state of him? Why do you think, with her husband just gone, she made Peter O’Connor bring him to me before there was a crowd in this place? ’Tis a rare soul who has set eyes on him, and for all us being kin, I’d not had a good look at the cratur until these past days. You can imagine the shock I had when I saw the boy.’
    ‘She’s shamed by him.’
    ‘Well, something’s not right. It must be a great burden. Her daughter dead – God have mercy on her – and now this ailing one to care for all alone.’
    ‘She’s doughty though. She’ll get on.’
    Nóra watched from behind the door as Peg leant back, running a tongue over her gums. ‘She’s got some spine, that woman. Nóra has always been a proud one. But I do be worried after her. Such a dark season of death and strangeness. Her daughter, and now Martin, and the child blighted with it all.’
    ‘Peter O’Connor was saying he saw a light by the fairy ráth in the hour of Martin’s passing. Said he thinks there’s a third death coming.’
    Peg crossed herself and threw another piece of turf on the fire. ‘God protect us. Still, worse things have happened.’
    Nóra hesitated. Rain dripped down her face, the damp of the cloak soaking into her clothes. She didn’t care. She bit her lip, straining to hear what they were saying.
    ‘Did Nance keen for Johanna?’
    Peg sighed. ‘She didn’t, no. Nóra’s girl married a Corkman some years back. She’s buried there, somewhere out by Macroom. Nóra only heard Johanna had died when her son-in-law came to give her the child. Oh, ’twas a pity. Johanna’s man appeared one night at dusk during the harvest just gone, Micheál strapped on a donkey. Told her that Johanna had wasted away and he a widower. Yes, a wasting sickness, the man said. One day she took to her bed with a pounding head and she never got up from it again. She faded day by day until she had gone completely. And he was in no place to care for the boy, and I know his people thought it only right that he be taken to Nóra and Martin. She never said a word like it, but there was a rumour that Micheál was half-starved when he came. A little bag of bones fit for a pauper’s coffin.’
    How dare she, thought Nóra. Gossiping about me on the day I bury my man. Spreading rumours about my daughter. Tears sprung to her eyes and she pulled away from the door.
    ‘There’s no shame in poverty.’ Brigid’s piping voice travelled over the sound of the wind. ‘We all know the price of it.’
    ‘There’s no shame for some, but Nóra has always held her head high. Have you ever noticed that she doesn’t talk of the dead? My own husband is long gone to God, and yet I talk of him as if he were still here. He remains with me in that way. But when Johanna died, ’twas as though Nóra struck her daughter’s name from her tongue. I’ve no doubt she grieves, but any memories of her daughter she shares with the bottle alone.’
    ‘Does she go the shebeen?’
    ‘Sh. I don’t know where Nóra gets her comfort, but if a woman can find peace in the drink, then who are we to grudge her for it.’
    It was too much.