Read Online Not the Same Sky by Evelyn Conlon - Free Book Online Page A

same bird. Still with us. All day and all night in the dark. Still with us.’
    ‘How can you tell? Don’t be silly.’ That came from Cissy Weir.
    ‘It’s the same bird, I know it is.’
    Her eyes filled up. Charles had seen her stepping from the breakfast line to speak to this bird.
    ‘It may be the same bird, it may not,’ Honora Raftery said, which seemed to settle the argument.
    ‘It’s the same bird,’ whispered Bridget, so low it could only be lip-read.
    Charles had already had a complaint about Honora Raftery, although he couldn’t be sure if it was actually a complaint. It might have been more that the teller wanted something to report, not to get Honora in trouble necessarily, but more to test conversation and to have something to say to him. Or maybe she wanted to break from the ordered rigor and have a small disturbance.
    ‘Honora Raftery’s up on deck telling lies again.’
    ‘I don’t think they’re actually lies,’ Charles said. ‘She’s telling stories.’ He had overheard her.
    ‘What’s the difference?’
    ‘There is a difference,’ Charles said. ‘It’s all right to tell stories.’
    ‘Even if they’re not true?’
    ‘Yes, even if they’re not true.’
    The subtlety escaped even him. But his incompetent explanation would have to suffice. He would have to remind himself again not to call Bridget Joyce ‘Birdy’. It would be too easy to do that.
    ‘You can go now. Stories are all right.’
    The girl turned her back on him.
    The first day of classes started with calm waters outside, which helped. The boat clipped through the sea, the sails made whistling sounds, the noise of slapping ropes faded into the wood and the water. The dawn that day appeared sedately over the edge of the flat sea and the light had slowly filled the sky. Charles had seen this as he took a morning stroll. He walked back and forth quietly, never going as far as the bridge to the girls’ quarter—he didn’t want to wake them, partly because he felt it was better for them if they slept, but also because he wanted time alone to imagine himself without charges. Some mornings were like that, maybe because of a restless night, or a deep sleep troubled by dreams. But it was hard to imagine himself without them now, particularly today as he was worried about the classes. He knew that most had more than the rudiments of English—that had been taken into account in their selection. He had seen them crowd around the map. Indeed he now knew that some of them could perhaps have been destined for more than domestic service, but that could be of no concern to him. Others of them had only the basics of schooling and some had a strange grasp of English—they understood, but put their verbs where perhaps their nouns should be. Or was it the other way about? Or was that it at all? It happened so fast in their speech that he did not have time to examine it and if he asked them to repeat it he suspected they phrased it as it was supposed to be.
    Charles would have to decide how to determine class groups. Would it be best to mix the weak with the strong so that they might learn from them? But there were others, Julia Cuffe for instance, who by now had come to his attention often enough for him to remember her name. She would scoff, no doubt. She would have to be put into a class that would make her want to learn, make her want to cast aside all her certainties and approach a search for knowing as if it would mean something to her, as if it could be of use to her, as if she might like it even. But this was hard. Julia had been broken and had put herself back to living by believing that every dark thing that she had seen could be trumped by belligerence, bad language, and scepticism. This quality was so rampant in her that it frightened him. In his first direct encounter with her, he had felt obliged to call her aside because of the way she spoke to Matron. She had an answer for every comment he made. Before he had finished