He drove a big, swanky black car with sleek tail fins and an abundance of chrome. With one arm resting on the edge of the open window and the other gripping the smooth rim of the steering wheel, Gerry Quinlan looked suave and confident.
“There’s only one place around here to have a beer. It’s a few miles up the shore in Angels Cove.” He looked at her sideways, his right eyebrow cocked, waiting for her reaction.
“That’s fine, I’m in no hurry.”
“It’s a bit rough now. Not too many women go there. It’s a tavern really.” He glanced her way again.
She caught that now familiar look of amusement in his eyes. “I’ve been in a tavern or two.”
But she had never quite seen the like of this place. It was a small dark room with a low ceiling, not much more than a shed, attached by an adjoining door to an equally small and rundown house. The room served also as a kind of shop with a few shelves behind the bar that were strewn with an assortment of boxes, aspirin, matches, nails. There were a few loaves of bread, odd bottles with various liquids, and a number of cheap plastic toys in dusty wrappers. The air was sluggish with the smell of stale beer, tobacco and smoke. Behind the door and set back in a corner was a small wood-burning stove, which, despite the warm weather, was alight and throwing a fair amount of heat into the tiny room. A solitary figure sat slumped over the fire, his head heavy in his hands.
“Paddy.” Gerry nodded in the direction of the figure by the stove. There was no reply. He turned and closed the door, shutting out most of the light to the little room. In the gloom, Gerry put his hand under Nora’s elbow and guided her to one of the small tables set along the back wall.
“I’ll get us a beer.”
Nora looked around her. The lights of a shiny juke box appeared like a mirage out of the shadows. It winked silently, inviting her to play. The loud clang of a bell startled her. Gerry was tugging at a dangling rope attached to a thin wire in the ceiling. He gave it another tug. The adjoining door opened and closed and a short stout man stood behind the bar. In the dim light Nora guessed him to be in his seventies.
“Gerry. Marvelous bloody day,” he boomed, jolting the room into life. “Too goddamn hot for my likin’ but all right just the same, I suppose.” He had reached under the counter, produced two bottles of beer, and had them uncapped and set on the counter before Gerry had time to draw breath.
“Grand day.” He poked his head around Gerry’s bulk and raised a hand in Nora’s direction.
She nodded.
“Nora Molloy, from Ireland.” Gerry pointed to where Nora sat. “Dave Broderick.”
“Bloody fine women over that way, I’ll allow.” He slapped his hand on the counter, set his head to one side, and smiled admiringly at Nora. Language aside, his round balding head with its fringe of white hair and his plump fresh cheeks put her in mind of Friar Tuck.
“Welcome to Newfoundland, my dear.” Raising his voice even more, he roared across the room, “Paddy, don’t forget the goddamn fire.” With that he turned and disappeared back to where he’d come from, leaving behind a stunned silence.
The man by the stove never moved.
Gerry shrugged, picked up the two bottles of beer, and brought them to the table. “I’m afraid there are no glasses.” He sat down. “What do you think?”
“Different, I have to admit. Who’s he?” She inclined her head towards the man by the stove.
“Paddy Broderick.” He dropped his voice. “A kind of relative. Comes in here every day, first thing in the morning, stays all day. Just tends the stove.”
“Does he speak?”
Gerry shrugged his shoulders. “Not to me.” He raised the bottle to his mouth and took a long draft. “You handled Treese well this afternoon.”
Nora shrugged but made no comment.
“It’s been forty-odd years now and she’s still sniffin’ about like the crackie dog after a bone, unwillin’ to let go. She was all set to tear into you this afternoon, couldn’t wait. But you kept her right at bay. More power to you. I liked that.”
“I thought she was a friend. The way you were dishing out the compliments, I thought maybe you were related.”
“Well, you know how it is. In a place like this you want to stay on the good side of all.” He winked.
“So why would she want to take a run at me?”
“An old battle from years ago. Her brother wanted the teaching job on the island, the one Mr. Molloy was given. He was local, see, from down Red Island way. He had just grade eleven, whereas your grandfather was more educated and also from away, which made him not only better in some people’s eyes, but more important. He was also a friend of Father O’Reilly, and he wanted him in the job so that was the end of it. There was quite the racket brewing at the time and Treese wasn’t beyond spreading rumours around. However, another position was found for the brother and all was smoothed over. But Treese never forgot the ‘slight’ to the family and has held a grudge ever since.”
“Maybe she had good reason to be annoyed. I’d say Father O’Reilly was looking out for his own interests.”
He looked surprised. “What do you mean?”
“I’d say he wanted him to be a permanent fixture on Berry Island, for the company. He liked having him around, it seems.”
“You’re a bit of a crackie yourself, I’d say.” He laughed. “You weren’t impressed with the padre then.”
“No,” she said reluctantly, “I didn’t take to him much. He’s not your uncle or anything like that, I suppose.”
“No, no.” He laughed again and then added, “It’s the same today. Someone you know gives you the nod for a job and you’re in. It’s simple as that.”
She looked across at him. He had that infernal look of amusement on his face again. Normally his attitude would have irritated her, but again, she found herself liking his frankness. “I’m surprised he accepted a job when he didn’t really want it. From what I hear he just didn’t seem like the type.”
“That may be true, but back then, not many said no to authority. I was only a youngster at the time but I’d say he didn’t really care too much one way or the other, and he likely wasn’t aware of the racket that was afoot.” His finger traced the rim of the bottleneck, round and round. “Mr. Molloy was a man of few words so it was hard to tell how he felt. When he was pleased he had a habit of saying, ‘Well, well.’ Anger, on the other hand, made him pace like an animal, small even steps back and forth on the floor, his jacket pushed back to one side with a white-knuckled hand spread wide to hold it in position. Words were not needed then. Soon as the pacing stopped, you could watch out.”
The man in the corner moved, his chair scraping the floor.
They both turned to look but nothing seemed to have changed. Gerry threw his head back and tipped the bottle. The muscles in his neck contracted. Finally, with lips pursed he made a small sucking noise and lowered the bottle. He gave a contented sigh and then his face was still. Fine lines at the corners of his eyes lay slack and open, exposing thin white furrows on his tanned skin. He took another swig.
She followed his lead, allowing the cold carbonated bubbles to rest for a moment on her tongue. The liquid was cool and refreshing. She drank again, this time deeply.
He had begun to pick at the label, digging for a starting point with his thumbnail. A loose spot in the corner gave way and crinkled into tiny damp accordion pleats. “He let me down, you know.” For a brief moment his cocky self was gone and he looked vulnerable as he picked away at the label. His head came up then and he gave a short careless laugh. “It’s all past and gone now. But I sure as hell didn’t see it that way at the time. It was like he got me all fired up to take on the whole bloody world, and more besides, and then when I’m ready to go, he tells me not to be so goddamn foolish. Jesus, at the time I was mad as hell. I wanted to smack him one right there and then.” His fist jerked upwards and tightened into a hard ball. A devious smile spread across his mouth. He regarded the half empty bottle, trying with his thumb to smooth away the wrinkle. “My dreams were all bound to him. I hung on every word that fell from his lips, every move he made, every shift in his imagination. I stored it all away, like a precious stash, deep inside. I was in awe of him.” He paused and drank again.
“Did you have dreams, Nora?” He turned to her, his old jocular mood back.
She shifted but remained silent, feeling a tiny jab of intrusion, like the sudden prick of a needle penetrating a soft fingerpad.
“You’re right,” he said. “Guard your heart. Keep them to yourself.”
But the dream surfaced nonetheless, vivid and uninvited: Alicia Markova, prima ballerina, the breathtaking grace and elegance of the ballet. That was what she dreamed of. She had the physical attributes, the athleticism, the vision, but she had never even owned a pair of pink satin slippers, let alone learned to dance. She had studied pictures of the ballet, committing every detail to memory. She had read every book on ballet in the public library, devouring the words, and today the dream still lived in her imagination, vibrant and lovely as ever, for her eyes only.
“Thuras amac. Do you know this expression?”
She was jolted into the present. “Sorry, yes, of course. Yes, did you say thuras amac? This is Irish. A thuras is a journey and amac means out or outward, so I suppose an outward journey would be the direct translation.”
“Well, down this way when I was a child, it was often used as an expression meaning a bit of a disturbance. Someone might say, ‘Now, that was a right ould thuras amac last night.’”
“Really!”
“Yes, but Thuras Amac was the name he gave to an imaginary ship. The last half hour every day, all hands boarded the Thuras Amac. ‘All aboard,’ he’d call out. ‘Hoist the mainsail, McGrath to look out!’ That was the signal to cover up the windows in the schoolroom with coats.” Gerry laughed a deep throaty laugh that filled the tiny room. “We were pirates then, heading for the high seas, at least that’s how we youngsters saw things. We loved it.” He looked across to the old stove in the corner. “There was a stove just like that. When we were shipshape and all seated around the fire he’d throw open the doors of the stove and the red glow of heat and light would spill into the darkened room. We were there with him, every man jack one of us, ready and willing to be transported to wherever he chose.”
He began to mimic the boys’ excited voices: “‘I knows where we’re to, sir. It’s called Tahiti, sir. This is an island, sir, in the Pacific Ocean, but it’s not even a small bit like Berry Island because the sun is always shining here and it’s lovely. The people are all the colour of the kelp below on the beach and they go around wearin’ half nothin’. There’s millions of big bright flowers grow all over the place and the trees is full of yellow oranges and the water in the sea is warm as the rock pools on a hot day below to the beach, and so the cod fish couldn’t live in that water at all. Too warm, see.’”
Gerry set his beer on the table and assumed an air of authority. “‘Very good, Pat,’ he’d say. ‘Now one day in the year 1769, as the hot sun disappeared below the crust of the earth, a great ship with white sails reaching high into the heavens sailed over the horizon and anchored off the shore of this island. The ship was called the Endeavour. The captain on board …’ That’s how he’d go on, Nora, encouraging us to be colourful and imaginative in our speech and writing, but at the back of it all was learning, learning about the world beyond our island. ‘Knowledge is power,’ he used to say. Times like that, if he told us we were off to the moon in a dory we’d have believed him. It was something we all looked forward to at the end of the day and nobody wanted to miss the trip. It even became a game that we played in our spare time, down by the water, but then it was all about pirates fightin’ and robbin’ and killin’ each other. I believe that half hour every day kept many youngsters in school. Nobody wanted to miss the Thuras Amac. School wasn’t compulsory then, so normally any excuse and the children were gone.”
Nora tried hard to picture this quiet distant man who was her grandfather surrounded by serious little faces, all still and attentive, burning bright with the fire of imagination: a pirate ship, scarlet blossoms, big ripe golden oranges, outstretched hands, a grey stone building, iron fencing, a lonely little boy standing on his own in a schoolyard. Images slipped in and out, forming a curious montage of past and present, light and dark.
“Was it a nice school?” Her voice was distant.
“Well, it was pretty basic, a wooden frame building, clapboard walls, peaked roof. That was all. It was painted red.” His eyes brightened. “A poor excuse for red, the weather saw to that, but red nonetheless.” He chuckled. “Inside was fresh and clean and white and cold. I used to wish they had done the paint job the other way round, red inside, white outside! It would have made more sense to me anyways.”
Nora kept very still, half afraid that he might tire of reminiscing. “Go on,” she said with just a hint of urging.
“We travelled the world on that ship,” he said. “Up the Yellow River into the interior of China, climbed the Great Wall, beating off hoards of fierce tribesmen.” Gerry was a little boy again laughing heartily. “It was grand,” he said with a certain longing. “We sailed across the Arabian Sea and into the stifling heat and colour of Bombay.” He looked right into her eyes. “He had an uncanny knack of making everything seem very real.”
He got up, went behind the counter and helped himself to two more bottles of beer and continued the conversation, barely breaking stride. “My favourite journey, the one I remember best of all was our trek through the tropical jungles. We had read several of Kipling’s stories. Now, can you imagine being a child living on our little island having The Jungle Book read to you and knowing that at three o’clock we were all headed there on our very own ship? It was pure bloody magic no matter how old you were. Jesus, I could hear and smell the jungle.” His eyes were shining. “We all thought we’d been there! I still do,” he added, laughing. He passed her a bottle of beer.
“Another day,” he pushed on, “we went to Paris, to the great cathedral of Notre Dame. ‘The walls rose from the ground like the cliffs out of the ocean.’” The hand that held his beer bottle rose into the air to demonstrate. “‘The glass in the windows blazed with crimson and gold and blue, all the colours of a fierce sky at the close of day.’ We had no concept of a cathedral, so that’s how he described it to us. That day he balled up a bundle of old rags and stuck them under his jacket. Up and down the schoolroom floor he went, dragging his foot, his great hump half hiding his face, his hair askew, clanging the school bell. Quasimodo, high in his cliff tower, addressed the upturned faces in our little schoolroom.”
He shifted around and spoke to the bottle held in his hand. “I came to understand the extraordinary power of the imagination. I saw how easy it was to get people to believe and accept almost anything, provided the mind was open and it was presented in the right way.”
A damp patch of perspiration had begun to collect around his temples, but he seemed oblivious to the heat and discomfort. “At times like that he was a different man, full of strength and energy and conviction. There was fire in his belly then, real passion. It seemed to me that he was at his best when he was being someone else.” He turned to face her. “I was fascinated by that.”
It was a while before either one spoke and then she said, “He must have been an extraordinary teacher.”
“Well…” The word left a trail of uncertainty in its wake. “If you were smart then he was the best kind but he had a hard time dealing with the ‘dunderheads,’ as he called them. He had no patience at all with slackers and even less with those who were just plain stunned. He didn’t seem to take into account that many of the youngsters had never even seen a book until they came to school and that their parents oftentimes could barely read or write or couldn’t read at all. But he couldn’t see that. He put it all down to laziness and that was the end of it.”
He drew the back of his hand across his forehead and sighed. The dark hair on the back of his wrist was flattened by sweat into an oily slick. “There was a fella by the name of Joey Coady. He was a bit of a hard case, like a jack rabbit, off in all directions. Maybe I shouldn’t be saying this but …”
He rubbed at the damp patch on his wrist until it disappeared and the dark hair stood up on end. For a moment he looked uncertain but then decided to continue. “There was one day he had Joey to the board. I remember it all so clearly, big white numbers on a blackboard: 26 X 17, that’s what he wanted him to do. Multiply the two numbers. Joey hadn’t the clue. Mr. Molloy started pacing the floor, back and forth, hand on hip. We all knew what was coming. Joey still hadn’t learned the tables or didn’t know how to do what was asked of him, but that day he laid the cane on that youngster and left big purple welts on his arms and legs that lasted for weeks. He went right off the head, lost it completely.” He rubbed his hand back and forth on his forearm. “It was terrible to watch. Somewhere inside that man there was a mean cruel streak that reared up in him every so often, and there was no telling where it came from. It always seemed to be directed at the most unfortunate … like Joey, poor youngsters who had no one to pick up for them and couldn’t pick up for themselves either.”
Her hand came to her throat, her voice thin. “Did that happen often?”
“Often enough. Not as bad as that day, but every time it happened I felt sick to my stomach, but back then I could never bring myself to blame him.”
She reached for her drink. The beer had become warm and sickly, but still she drank deeply as if somehow she could wash away what she had just heard. She felt claustrophobic and was thinking about making a move when suddenly Gerry stood up and went across to the juke box. Rummaging in his pocket, he scanned the flashing dials, dropped a few coins into the slot, punched the buttons and returned to the table. “Another one?” He pointed to her half-full bottle but she declined. He helped himself at the bar again and came and sat down just as the slow whine of a female country singer hit the air: I go on walkin’ after midnight / Out in the moonlight just a hopin’ / You may be somewhere / Out walkin’ after midnight / Searchin’ for me.
Nora hated country music and wished she could get away, but her driver had settled down with another beer and showed no inclination to leave.
“Patsy Cline,” he said with a jaunty air. “I love Patsy Cline. How about you?”
Nora cleared her throat. “She’s got a great voice,” she replied, mustering up a smile. Until a short time ago she had been delighted, even fascinated, with this strange little tavern in the wilds of Newfoundland, with its blustering landlord who handed his customers their first beer and then conveniently disappeared, leaving them to fend for themselves. Her companion, too, was lively and talkative and seemed happy to take the time to tell her what he knew about her missing grandfather, which was why she was here after all. So what did she have to complain about?
“Ever been to Nashville, Nora?”
“No.”
“You should. It’s a great spot. I’ve been there twice.”
She watched his body take on the rhythm of the song. She wouldn’t have put him down as a Nashville type. It just didn’t seem to fit. He had an easy grace and charm about him, she had to admit that, and an assurance and sophistication that she liked, yet, from time to time she sensed a shrewd side to this man and fancied that in different circumstances he might surprise her. She had wanted several times to ask what he did for a living but shied away from the intrusion.
Instead she asked, “How did he let you down, Gerry?”
He waved his hand as if to brush the thought away. “Ah, you don’t want to know about that. It was just a lot of old foolishness, the mad dreams of a youngster.”
Yet it was important enough to mention earlier on. She looked at him steadily. “I’d like to hear if you wouldn’t mind telling me.”
He sat back in his chair and regarded her over the rim of the bottle. “I was his protégé. I suppose that’s how people would see it today. He worked with me for a nice few years to bring me along, all the time making me believe that if I worked hard at the books, I could be whatever I wanted to be. I believed him absolutely.”
He crossed one leg over the other, shifting most of his weight onto his left buttock and twisting his body around so that he no longer faced her. “I was the only one on the island at that time going for grade eleven. I worked a lot on my own and he taught me after school, at the weekends or whenever we could get a few spare hours. I was even allowed to go to Peg’s house, if I was sore in need of help with my work. I loved to go over there. It was warm and cozy, always neat and clean and peaceful; merciful God, it was so peaceful. A haven of contentment, or so it seemed to me. You could tell there was steady money coming in there. Those days every other house in the community was full of half-starved youngsters, but there was only Sheila there, all bright and smiling and well cared for. They had it all, everything I wanted, or so I thought. But you know, the fact that they were not a real family didn’t occur to me in those days.”
He glanced at her sideways and continued on. “When he left I couldn’t believe he had walked away from that perfect, sheltered life. In fact I was ragin’.” There was a long pause. “I also couldn’t believe that he had walked away from me, leavin’ me twistin’ about in the wind not knowin’ where to go or what to do. I thought I was important to him.”
“I’m sorry,” Nora said, not quite knowing or understanding what she was sorry for. Was she feeling guilty about this strange long-lost man, this relative of hers, this …? She didn’t want to use the word grandfather. Blood is thicker than water, a voice inside suggested. She wanted to be rid of that voice. She wanted it gone. Out! Peg, now she was the loyal one, the kind one, the one who knew him best. She was his … Again she was stuck for a label, a naming word, a bonding word. Immediately she felt ashamed of her rush to push her guilty feelings onto Peg, but at the same time she wondered whether Peg had ever taken on these same guilty feelings.
“So he ran out on everyone a second time. I didn’t know that. What happened? Can you recall or do you know?”
“Oh yes, I know. It was my fault but I was only a youngster, and as I said, it was all a bit foolish. You want to hear that, too?”
She nodded.
“It was Christmas time and us youngsters decided to put on a concert. We wrote the skits, did up the songs and decided on the stories. I put it all together, taking into account all he’d shown us about setting things up and creating atmosphere, making believe. We held it down to our place on Old Christmas Day. Being Christmas and all, my mother got right into the spirit of things and made a big boiler of soup with doughboys enough for the crowd. Everyone was there, all packed into the kitchen. For a while we thought he wasn’t going to show up, but just as we got under way he arrived and stood down back by the door beside my father, even though there was a seat specially set aside for him up front by Father O’Reilly. We had a fine time, everyone doing their bit. Young Joey Coady, I told you about, did the best kind of take-off of Father O’Reilly giving his sermon on Sunday. Up on top of a chair he was, decked out finest kind in an altar boy’s outfit, lookin’ like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, wagging his finger at the congregation and givin’ it to her good as Father O’Reilly any day. It was a grand bit of fun and the crowd loved it and I was glad for Joey.”
“And the priest?”
“Oh, he was the best kind.”
“And did you perform?”
“Yes, I took my turn.” He drew in a deep breath. “I was expected to play the accordion and maybe give a song. That’s probably what I should have done. But I was seventeen years old, getting ready to write grade eleven exams in the summer of that year and I had a plan. This was my chance to show him what I had learned. We had been studying Shakespeare’s Henry V together and had talked at length about the dignity and manliness that the king had shown in his great speech to his men before the battle of Agincourt, and how those qualities had inspired his army to rise above the boastful frivolity of the French and eventually win the day against all odds.”
She nodded and, smiling, quoted in a low voice, “And he which hath no stomach to this fight, / Let him depart.”
“You know it.” He beamed. “I loved that speech. It was burned into my imagination and I lived every word of it that evening. “This day is called the feast of Crispian: / He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, / Will stand a tip-toe when this day is named, / And rouse him to the name of Crispian.”
He laughed as she added a new line. “This story shall the good man teach his son.”
They touched bottles with a soft clink, confirming their togetherness at that moment.
“We few,” he began and she joined in, “we happy few, we band of brothers; For he today that sheds his blood with me, shall be my brother.”
Then, all of a sudden it hit her. Her heart began to thump. He need go no further. She knew, she just knew, with absolute certainty what was coming next: the curt dismissal, the bitter blow that in a matter of seconds would shatter a cherished dream, and then the aftermath, the misery of feeling silly and stupid and sorry, so bitterly sorry for having tried to reach for something that was out of the ordinary, something exciting, ridiculous. Her father, his own son, could do the same in an instant, without a second thought or a hint of remorse. She knew from experience, and the memory hurt her more than she could have believed.
“I was good, you know!” His laugh pierced the quietness in the room.
She felt a surge of relief that seemed to calm the frenzy in her chest.
“Next day there were high expectations of praise amongst the youngsters and he did manage to dole out a few well-chosen words but that was it. So after school, when the others had all gone home, I approached him.”
“Sir?”
“Yes, Gerry.”
“I have a plan, sir, for when I finishes grade eleven.”
“When you finish, Gerry. You must get it right.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And what is your plan, Gerry?” He continued to read and make corrections to the exercise on the desk in front of him.
“I want to be an actor, sir.” His voice was steady. He waited, aware that he had drawn no comment. He waited a moment longer then continued to plough on, staring straight ahead at a dirty smudge on the white wall behind the desk. “If I could just get to New York, sir, and if you could help me a bit, maybe I’d have a chance to get started. I’d work hard and do whatever was necessary to get–”
With a clunk, the heavy black fountain pen with the gold band hit the wooden desk.
The young man’s eyes went from the pen to the face behind the desk and saw a look of utter disbelief.
“Don’t be talking such bloody nonsense.” The voice behind the desk was cold, quiet as death and with a hint of fear. “We are aiming at getting you to the university college in St. John’s. That,” he spat the word out, “is what we are working towards.”
Unexpectedly, the man who never laughed, laughed. It was a quiet dismissive laugh that lingered with mocking candour on the chilly air. The heat rose in the young man’s body, and like a flash fire, a crimson flush spread across the back of his neck and swept over his cheeks and forehead, rising into the very roots of his hair.
“I didn’t know we had decided on that, sir.” He was staring at the dark spot on the wall again. “I don’t remember ever discussing that.” His eyes hurt.
The teacher’s fist came up suddenly and landed in a crashing thud on the desk. “Well, we’re discussing it right now, young man!”
“We!” The pent-up anger spurted out like bright blood from a new flesh wound. “Who is this ‘we’ you’re talking about all of a sudden? In case you didn’t know, it’s my bloody life that we’re discussing and just because you’ve made an arse of yours doesn’t mean to say I’ve got to do the same with mine. Now, if I wants to be a bloody actor, I’ll be a bloody actor, whether it’s all bloody nonsense or not, and I’ll do it with or without you.” He stood his ground, hot with fury, his breath visible in the frigid air.
For a moment there was a stony silence in the room, both realizing that a line had been crossed.
“For now, if you take my advice,” the voice was cool and controlled again, “you would do better to concentrate on learning the correct use of the English language.” He picked up his pen then and resumed marking the exercise in front of him.
Patsy Cline was done on the juke box and the place felt empty. “Of course, later on I regretted everything,” Gerry said with a smile. “I was glad I’d picked up for myself but it was like losing a friend, more than a friend. I knew things would never be the same again. I was no longer the boy he’d brought along. If he hadn’t laughed, maybe things wouldn’t have been so bad. Anyway, shortly after that he left and I never went back to school again.”
“So what did you do?”
“I wrote my exams and went to St. John’s to the university college … eventually. So he had his way. But, it was my choice and not his.”
Suddenly she could stand the heat no longer. She had to get out of the place. “Maybe we should be off.” She made a move to leave.
He finished his beer in one swallow, went to the bar, counted out several bills and threw them on the counter.
Nora made her way to the door. The lone figure by the stove had raised his head and was looking at her with the blank stare of a cow looking over a fence. He blinked once, and for a second she thought he might speak but then he lowered his head and returned to his crouched position. She opened the door and stepped out into the late afternoon sunshine.
“Sorry if I upset you,” he said when he caught up with her. “But you did ask, and I gave it to you, warts and all.”
They had reached the car and she smiled across the black dome of the roof. “I’m glad of the truth. Thank you.” She got in and closed the door.