Read Online History of the Rain by Niall Williams - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Niall Williams
Tags: Fiction
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lawn, called the workers together and to the collected jawdrops and head scratches told them stop, stop trimming the hedges boys, no more mowing the hay, pack up, go home.
There’s a photograph of Grandfather when he’s about thirty-five. He’s in a white shirt buttoned to his chin and his face has an expression of wild impatience. His lips are so tight you’d think he was afraid he’d dribble out some awful medicine if he cracked them. He resents the moment of the pose, he wants to escape it, that Elsewhere business again, and already in his chin you can see the Reverend coming. You can see the angle of the nose, the furrow between the dark eyes, and you know the old man is arriving in his skin. There’s going to be no way to escape him.
But Grandfather is going to try. Yes sir. He’s going to apply the What-would-my-father-do to everything, and then choose the opposite. So, instead of settling down into the dull acceptance of midlife, instead of comfortable complacence and respectability, he takes his rods and strides out the gates of Ashcroft accompanied by two bounding wolfhounds. He leaves the house to its own devices, which means weeds, mould, mushrooms in the basement, broken panes in the upstairs bedrooms, flies, snails, mice and a family of trapped rooks.
He begins on the two Black Castle sections of the Boyne River. In the notebooks he kept of his catch there are brackets beneath the salmon he caught and the name Mr R. R. Fitzherbert.
For duties to His Majesty I suppose, maybe for going away and getting Him something nice, the Virgin Islands or something, The King had given Mr Fitzherbert all the fish that passed there – To you the fish, to you the chips, same as the Bible only English-style – and my grandfather was scrupulous enough to record which of Mr Fitzherbert’s salmon he took, and with which flies.
I have his Salmon Journals, which were the workbooks for his book. They are here in my father’s library, pressed flattish between Don Quixote (Book 1,605, Vintage Classics, London), a kind of genius Spanish miracle, and Salar the Salmon (Book 1,606, Henry Williamson, Faber & Faber, London), a book so good that reading it you feel you’re in a river. Each journal is carefully kept, blue marbling inside and blackly leatherbound like a Lesser Bible. The first time I opened one I felt indecent. I love the feel of a book. I love the touch and smell and sound of the pages. I love the handling . A book is a sensual thing. You sit curled in a chair with it or like me you take it to bed and it’s, well, enveloping. Weird I am. I know. What the Hell? as Bobby Bowe says to everything. You either get it or you don’t. When my father first took me to Ennis Library I went down among the shelves and felt company , not only the company of the writers, but the readers too, because they had lifted and opened and read these books. The books were worn in a way they can only get worn by hands and eyes and minds; these were the literal original Facebooks, the books where faces had been, and I just loved it, the whole strange sense of being aboard a readership.
I know, I know. I’m not an e-person or an iPerson. Maybe I would be if we weren’t in the five per cent. The Minister says the whole country is Broadband now, except for maybe five per cent. Hello? We’re not even Narrowband. And what with having a predilection, as Thomas Halvey says, for the nineteenth century, I’m older than old-fashioned, I know. No, whatever way they built Faha down in a hole beside the river, we can’t get Broadband. We still get calls from somebody in the Philippines offering us Best Internet Deals ever. We let them talk to Nan. She can keep them on for an hour. It’s a sort of granny-sitting.
But look, here is one of my grandfather’s Salmon Journals. Feel that. Smell that. The pages have a water warp, a buckled edge like a river wave. The paper is a heavy old stock smooth under your hand. Some pages clump together as if
There’s a photograph of Grandfather when he’s about thirty-five. He’s in a white shirt buttoned to his chin and his face has an expression of wild impatience. His lips are so tight you’d think he was afraid he’d dribble out some awful medicine if he cracked them. He resents the moment of the pose, he wants to escape it, that Elsewhere business again, and already in his chin you can see the Reverend coming. You can see the angle of the nose, the furrow between the dark eyes, and you know the old man is arriving in his skin. There’s going to be no way to escape him.
But Grandfather is going to try. Yes sir. He’s going to apply the What-would-my-father-do to everything, and then choose the opposite. So, instead of settling down into the dull acceptance of midlife, instead of comfortable complacence and respectability, he takes his rods and strides out the gates of Ashcroft accompanied by two bounding wolfhounds. He leaves the house to its own devices, which means weeds, mould, mushrooms in the basement, broken panes in the upstairs bedrooms, flies, snails, mice and a family of trapped rooks.
He begins on the two Black Castle sections of the Boyne River. In the notebooks he kept of his catch there are brackets beneath the salmon he caught and the name Mr R. R. Fitzherbert.
For duties to His Majesty I suppose, maybe for going away and getting Him something nice, the Virgin Islands or something, The King had given Mr Fitzherbert all the fish that passed there – To you the fish, to you the chips, same as the Bible only English-style – and my grandfather was scrupulous enough to record which of Mr Fitzherbert’s salmon he took, and with which flies.
I have his Salmon Journals, which were the workbooks for his book. They are here in my father’s library, pressed flattish between Don Quixote (Book 1,605, Vintage Classics, London), a kind of genius Spanish miracle, and Salar the Salmon (Book 1,606, Henry Williamson, Faber & Faber, London), a book so good that reading it you feel you’re in a river. Each journal is carefully kept, blue marbling inside and blackly leatherbound like a Lesser Bible. The first time I opened one I felt indecent. I love the feel of a book. I love the touch and smell and sound of the pages. I love the handling . A book is a sensual thing. You sit curled in a chair with it or like me you take it to bed and it’s, well, enveloping. Weird I am. I know. What the Hell? as Bobby Bowe says to everything. You either get it or you don’t. When my father first took me to Ennis Library I went down among the shelves and felt company , not only the company of the writers, but the readers too, because they had lifted and opened and read these books. The books were worn in a way they can only get worn by hands and eyes and minds; these were the literal original Facebooks, the books where faces had been, and I just loved it, the whole strange sense of being aboard a readership.
I know, I know. I’m not an e-person or an iPerson. Maybe I would be if we weren’t in the five per cent. The Minister says the whole country is Broadband now, except for maybe five per cent. Hello? We’re not even Narrowband. And what with having a predilection, as Thomas Halvey says, for the nineteenth century, I’m older than old-fashioned, I know. No, whatever way they built Faha down in a hole beside the river, we can’t get Broadband. We still get calls from somebody in the Philippines offering us Best Internet Deals ever. We let them talk to Nan. She can keep them on for an hour. It’s a sort of granny-sitting.
But look, here is one of my grandfather’s Salmon Journals. Feel that. Smell that. The pages have a water warp, a buckled edge like a river wave. The paper is a heavy old stock smooth under your hand. Some pages clump together as if
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