Read Online Long Lankin: Stories by John Banville - Free Book Online Page B

been the farmyard — the barn and the sties had long since crumbled. After the dimness of the kitchen the light here burned his eyes. He moved across to stand under the elm tree and listen to the leaves. Out over the green fields the heat lay heavy, pale blue and shimmering. In the sky a bird circled slowly. He lifted his head and gazed into the thickness of the leaves. Light glinted gold through the branches. He stood motionless, his arms hanging at his sides, listening, and slowly, from the far fields, the strange cry floated to his ears, a needle of sound that pierced the stillness. He held his breath. The voice hung poised a moment in the upper airs, a single liquid note, then slowly faded back into the fields, and died away, leaving the silence deeper than before.
    —Are you coming or are you just going to stand there all day?
    He turned. The girl stood between the two ancient bicycles, a saddle held in each of her small hands.
    —I’m coming, he grunted.
    They mounted and rode slowly down to the gate, where he halted while the girl swung carelessly out into the road. When he was sure of safety he pedalled furiously after her.
    —You’ll get killed some day, he said when he was beside her again.
    The girl turned up her nose and shook her hair in the warm wind.
    —You’re an awful scaredy cat, she said contemptuously.
    —I just don’t want to get run over, that’s all.
    —Hah.
    She trod on the pedals and glided away from him. He watched her as she sailed along, her bony knees rising and falling. She took her hands from the handlebars and waved them in the air.
    —You’ll fall off, he shouted.
    She glanced over her shoulder at him and pulled her hair above her head, and the long gold tresses coiled about her pale arms. Her teeth glinted as she laughed.
    Free now they slowed their pace and leisurely sailed over the road, tyres whispering in the soft tar. The fields trembled on either side of them. Sometimes the girl sang in her high-pitched, shaky voice, and the notes carried back to him, strangely muted by the wide fields, a distant, piping song. Tall shoots of vicious grass waving from the ditches scratched their legs. The boy watched the land as it moved slowly past him, the sweltering meadows, the motionless trees, and high up on the hill the cool deep shadows under Wild Wood.
    —Listen, the girl said, allowing him to overtake her. Do you think they’ll let us see him?
    —I don’t know.
    —Jimmy would. He’d let me see him all right. But there’s bound to be others.
    She brooded, gazing at her feet circling under her.
    —How do you know they’ll find him? the boy asked.
    —Jimmy said so.
    —Jimmy.
    —You shut up. You don’t know anything about him.
    —He’s dirty, the boy said sullenly.
    —You never saw him.
    —I did.
    —Well he’s not dirty. And anyway I don’t care. I’m in love with him, so there.
    —He’s dirty and he’s old and he’s mad, too.
    —I don’t care. I love him. I’d love him to kiss me.
    She closed her eyes and puckered her lips at the sky. Suddenly she turned and pushed the boy violently, so that he almost lost his balance. She watched him try to control the wobbling wheels, and she screamed with laughter. Then she sailed ahead of him once again, crying:
    —You’re only jealous, you are.
    The girl disappeared around a bend in the road, and he stepped down from the machine. He plodded scowling up the first steep slope of Slane Hill.
    When he came round the bend he found the girl standing beside her bicycle waiting for him, her hands at her mouth.
    —Listen, she said, and grasped his arm. There’s somebody up there.
    At the top of the hill a dark figure was huddled in the ditch at the side of the road.
    —It’s only a man, the boy said.
    —I don’t like the look of him.
    —You’re afraid.
    —I am not. I just don’t like the look of him.
    —Not so brave now, the boy sneered.
    —All right then, smartie. Come on.
    They began the climb. Sweat gathered at