Read Online A Parachute in the Lime Tree by Annemarie Neary - Free Book Online
Authors: Annemarie Neary
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She felt a bit daft, for there was nothing to see but a jumble of leaves. He was so mysterious and sure of himself and so totally unlike anyone else she had ever come across. He must be brave, too, to jump out of the sky.
‘Were you one of the ones who bombed Belfast?’ she asked. Maybe that was a bit blunt but she had to know.
‘I was a lamplighter.’
That sounded a nice thing to be but she knew it couldn’t be nice at all. She assumed she should know what that was, so she didn’t ask any more.
‘I will leave soon. As soon as my leg is strong enough, I will go.’
‘If you’re gone when I see you next,’ she said, ‘I’ll say nothing.’
When she went back to the house, she couldn’t settle to anything. There was the baking to do and the pantry to be done over and the boys’ beds to be stripped. Instead, she went up to Mother’s dressing table and took out the manicure set with all the sharp little instruments with their pearly handles. She prised out specks of dirt from under her nails, soaked, clipped, filed and buffed them. All the time, she could see his tired face with the blue, blue eyes. She wished there was something she wanted enough to jump out of a plane for it.
She still talked to Father sometimes and she knew he wouldn’t like what she’d done to his atlas. No one ever came to his shed uninvited either, but maybe he would like that a traveller was in there. He would be curious, of that she was sure. He was always far more interested in what was happening on the other side of the world than in what went on in Dunkerin. Mother always told him that to succeed in a country practice, you needed to join this and that, pay heed to give a little bit of business to this grocer, a bit to that draper. Father did none of that. He pretended not the slightest interest in either golf or bridge. There were those, of course, who said Dr Hennessy couldn’t give a hoot about anything; spent all his daydoodling on maps in his consulting room while the queue of patients got longer and more restless. He never bothered about the order of arrivals, either. He would come out and scan the grey faces in the room and form a snap judgement as to who was most in need.
‘Every doctor needs a diversion,’ Father used to say. His own passion was St Brendan and his voyages. ‘First to reach America, not that the rest of the bloody world will give him the credit for it.’ All summer long, he’d be at his experiments. He spent months soaking scraps of leather in the old bath he filled with seawater, each one coated in a different substance from the pots he kept in his shed to see which one provided most protection from the brine. He tried tallow, beeswax, cod oil, lanolin, and God knows what else. Finally, he came down in favour of one, though she couldn’t remember now which one it was. He had Sean Galligan dig and line a trench that ran all the way down from the henhouse to the gooseberry bushes, which he filled with seawater from Dunkerin Bay. Then, he built himself a model curragh – gunwhale to keel about three feet long – covered it in stretched oxhide, treated it, and set it afloat.
She went to put away the atlas she had defiled earlier. On the map of Europe were hundreds of pinpricks where Father had stuck little flags in different colours, trying to predict where the Germans would go next. She ran her fingers over the pitted surface of Poland and the Low Countries. He was dead before they reached France.
When she went to bring the airman some food, she warned him about the lads.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said.
‘It’s not me who needs to be worrying.’
He smiled, and suddenly it seemed the right response.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked. He said it back to himself a few times, flicking her name on the tip of his tongue like he was calling the cat. ‘Well, Kitty, I might need to be here for acouple of days. After a couple of days they will forget about me and my knee will be stronger.’
She
‘Were you one of the ones who bombed Belfast?’ she asked. Maybe that was a bit blunt but she had to know.
‘I was a lamplighter.’
That sounded a nice thing to be but she knew it couldn’t be nice at all. She assumed she should know what that was, so she didn’t ask any more.
‘I will leave soon. As soon as my leg is strong enough, I will go.’
‘If you’re gone when I see you next,’ she said, ‘I’ll say nothing.’
When she went back to the house, she couldn’t settle to anything. There was the baking to do and the pantry to be done over and the boys’ beds to be stripped. Instead, she went up to Mother’s dressing table and took out the manicure set with all the sharp little instruments with their pearly handles. She prised out specks of dirt from under her nails, soaked, clipped, filed and buffed them. All the time, she could see his tired face with the blue, blue eyes. She wished there was something she wanted enough to jump out of a plane for it.
She still talked to Father sometimes and she knew he wouldn’t like what she’d done to his atlas. No one ever came to his shed uninvited either, but maybe he would like that a traveller was in there. He would be curious, of that she was sure. He was always far more interested in what was happening on the other side of the world than in what went on in Dunkerin. Mother always told him that to succeed in a country practice, you needed to join this and that, pay heed to give a little bit of business to this grocer, a bit to that draper. Father did none of that. He pretended not the slightest interest in either golf or bridge. There were those, of course, who said Dr Hennessy couldn’t give a hoot about anything; spent all his daydoodling on maps in his consulting room while the queue of patients got longer and more restless. He never bothered about the order of arrivals, either. He would come out and scan the grey faces in the room and form a snap judgement as to who was most in need.
‘Every doctor needs a diversion,’ Father used to say. His own passion was St Brendan and his voyages. ‘First to reach America, not that the rest of the bloody world will give him the credit for it.’ All summer long, he’d be at his experiments. He spent months soaking scraps of leather in the old bath he filled with seawater, each one coated in a different substance from the pots he kept in his shed to see which one provided most protection from the brine. He tried tallow, beeswax, cod oil, lanolin, and God knows what else. Finally, he came down in favour of one, though she couldn’t remember now which one it was. He had Sean Galligan dig and line a trench that ran all the way down from the henhouse to the gooseberry bushes, which he filled with seawater from Dunkerin Bay. Then, he built himself a model curragh – gunwhale to keel about three feet long – covered it in stretched oxhide, treated it, and set it afloat.
She went to put away the atlas she had defiled earlier. On the map of Europe were hundreds of pinpricks where Father had stuck little flags in different colours, trying to predict where the Germans would go next. She ran her fingers over the pitted surface of Poland and the Low Countries. He was dead before they reached France.
When she went to bring the airman some food, she warned him about the lads.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said.
‘It’s not me who needs to be worrying.’
He smiled, and suddenly it seemed the right response.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked. He said it back to himself a few times, flicking her name on the tip of his tongue like he was calling the cat. ‘Well, Kitty, I might need to be here for acouple of days. After a couple of days they will forget about me and my knee will be stronger.’
She
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