Small Things Like These(10)

He stood for a moment taking in the peace of that plain room, letting a part of his mind turn loose to stray off and imagine what it might be like to live there, in that house, with her as his wife. Of late, he was inclined to imagine another life, elsewhere, and wondered if this was not something in his blood; might his own father not have been one of those who had upped, suddenly, and taken the boat for England? It seemed both proper and at the same time deeply unfair that so much of life was left to chance.

‘Did you manage?’ she asked, taking the kettle.

‘Aye,’ Furlong said, feeling the cold of her hand in the exchange. ‘Many thanks.’

‘Will you take a cup of tea?’

‘There’s nothing I’d rather,’ he said, ‘but I have to get on.’

‘It won’t take but a few minutes to boil it up again.’

‘I’m near late as it is but I’ll get one of the men to leave over a bag of logs for ye.’

‘Ah, there’s no need.’

‘Happy Christmas,’ he said, and turned away.

‘And the same to you,’ she called out, after him.

*



As soon as he propped the gates open with the blocks, Furlong came back to himself and to what was next. He felt anxious over the lorry but when he turned the key in the ignition, the engine started and he let out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding, and left her running. The evening before, he’d checked the load to make sure it matched the order but now found himself checking it again. He looked at the yard too, to see that it was properly swept, and at the scales to see that nothing had been left there overnight, although he’d done these things, he was sure, before he’d locked up yesterday. There wasn’t anything he needed in the prefab, but he opened the door and switched on the light and looked over everything: the stacks of papers, the telephone directories and folders, the delivery dockets and copies of the invoices pierced through the spikes. As he was writing out a note for a bag of logs to be left at the house across the way, the telephone rang. He stood watching it until it rang out then waited for a minute or two to see if it would ring again. When he’d finished writing the note, he backed out, and locked the door.

Driving up to the convent, the reflection of Furlong’s headlights crossed the windowpanes and it felt as though he was meeting himself there. Quietly as he could he drove past the front door and reversed down the side, to the coal shed, and turned the engine off. Sleepily, he climbed out and looked over the yews and hedges, the grotto with its statue of Our Lady, whose eyes were downcast as though she was disappointed by the artificial flowers at her feet, and the frost glittering in places where patches of light from the high windows fell.

How still it was up here but why was it not ever peaceful? The day had not yet dawned, and Furlong looked down at the dark shining river whose surface reflected equal parts of the lighted town. So many things had a way of looking finer, when they were not so close. He could not say which he rathered: the sight of town or its reflection on the water. Somewhere, voices were singing ‘Adeste Fideles’. Most likely these were the boarders at St Margaret’s, next door – but surely those girls had gone home? The day after tomorrow was Christmas Eve. It must have been the girls in the training school. Or was it the nuns themselves, practising before early Mass? For a time he stood listening and looking down at the town, at the smoke starting up from the chimneys and the small, diminishing stars in the sky. One of the brightest fell while he was standing there, leaving a streak like a chalk mark on a board for just a second before it vanished. Another seemed to burn out and slowly fade.

When he let down the tail board and went to open the coal house door, the bolt was stiff with frost, and he had to ask himself if he had not turned into a man consigned to doorways, for did he not spend the best part of his life standing outside of one or another, waiting for them to be opened. As soon as he forced this bolt, he sensed something within but many a dog he’d found in a coal shed with no decent place to lie. He couldn’t properly see and was obliged to go back to the lorry, for the torch. When he shone it on what was there, he judged, by what was on the floor, that the girl within had been there for longer than the night.

‘Christ,’ he said.

The only thing he thought to do was to take his coat off. When he did, and went to put it round her, she cowered.

‘There’s no harm,’ Furlong explained. ‘I’ve just come with the coal, leanbh.’

Tactlessly, he again shone the light across the floor, on what excrements she’d had to make.

‘God love you, child,’ he said. ‘Come away out of this.’

When he managed to get her out, and saw what was before him – a girl just about fit to stand, with her hair roughly cut – the ordinary part of him wished he’d never come near the place.

‘You’re all right,’ he said. ‘Lean in on me, won’t you.’

The girl didn’t seem to want him close but he managed to get her as far as the lorry, where she leant against the warmth of the bonnet and looked down at the lights of town and the river, then far away out, much as he had done, at the sky.

‘I’m out now,’ she managed to say, after a while.

‘Aye.’

Furlong pulled the coat a little way around her. She didn’t now seem to mind.