Walk the Blue Fields by Claire Keegan Read Free Book Online Page B

of drawingand pulling curtains. She felt lonelier now than she’d ever felt when she was single. And little or nothing was there around Aghowle to amuse her. Every week she cycled to the village but Parkbridge was just a post office and a public house cum shop whose keeper was inquisitive.
    â€˜Is Victor well? There’s a great man, a great worker. You’ll not find the grass growing under his feet.’
    â€˜You must like living up there now, do you? Afine house it is.’
    â€˜Where did he find you anyhow? Courtown? Didn’t he go far enough for you?’
    One Thursday, as she was about to cycle out for groceries , a stranger appeared with a trailer. A big blade of a man with a thick moustache, he parked in the centre of her yard and strode up to the door.
    â€˜Have you any interest in roses?’
    There, in the trailer, the stranger had all types of plants: rosebushes, budding maples, Victoria plum trees, raspberry canes. It was the end of April. She said it was getting late for planting but the salesman said he knew that, and would not go hard on her. She asked how much he wanted for the roses, and his price seemed fair. Over tea, they talked of vegetables, how lifting the potato stalk was magic for you never really knew what it would yield. When he left, she collected hen dung with the shovel and planted the rosebushes deep in rows at either side of the hall door where she could train them to climb up around the windows.
    When Deegan came home she told him what had happened .
    â€˜You spent my money on roses?’
    â€˜Your money?’
    â€˜What kind of fool did I marry at all?’
    â€˜Is it a fool I am?’
    â€˜What else?’
    â€˜I suppose I was fool enough to marry you.’
    â€˜Is that so?’ Deegan grabbed the end of his beard as though he might tear it off. ‘The hard times aren’t over. It’s all very well for you sitting here day in, day out. You didn’t bring so much as a penny into this place. And a working man needs more than dried-out spuds for his dinner.’
    â€˜You don’t look any the worst for it.’
    And it was true: Deegan had put on weight, had the bloom on him that men have after they marry.
    â€˜If that’s the case, it’s not your doing,’ Deegan said, and went out to milk the cows.
    That summer her roses bloomed scarlet but long before the wind could blow their heads asunder, Martha realised she had made a mistake. All she had was a husband who hardly spoke now that he’d married her, an empty house and no income of her own. She had married a man she did not love. What had she expected? She had expected it would grow and deepen into love. And now she craved intimacy and the type of conversation that would surpass misunderstanding. She thought about finding a job but it was too late: a child was near ready for the cradle.
    The children Martha bore, she reared casually, never threatening them with anything sharper than a wooden spoon. When her first-born was placed in her arms her laughter was like a pheasant rising out of the bushes. The boy, a shrill young fellow, grew tall but it soon became apparent that he had no grá for farming; when the boy sat in under a cow, the milk went back up to her horns. He looked up to his uncles whom he visited every now and then in Dublin and it was hardship to make him do a hand’s turn. He would get away just as soon as he saw the opportunity.
    The second child was a simpleton: a beautiful, pale boy with a pair of green eyes staring from a shell of dark brown hair. He did not attend school but lived in a world of his own and had a frightening aptitude for speaking the truth.
    It was the girl who had the brains, the girl who travelled through youth same as youth was a warm stretch of water she could easily cross. She finished her homework before the school bus reached the lane, refused to eat meat and had a way with animals. While others were afraid to enter