Read Online Shamrock Green by Jessica Stirling - Free Book Online

Albert’s guidance had collected in public houses and gambling dens for the Coral Strand Mission Society. Florence and Albert had creamed the takings and before she was seventeen Sylvie had acquired a taste for alcohol, tobacco and footloose gaiety, though there was precious little gaiety left in her now.
    Naturally she did not mention Forbes, not even when Fran tentatively enquired where she had learned her bedroom tricks. She certainly hadn’t learned them from Forbes who had been even less imaginative than Gowry.
    She was intrigued and sometimes bored by Fran Hagarty’s education, intelligence and loquacity.
    â€˜Tell me,’ he said, as they lay side by side in bed, ‘has your husband got more hair than I have?’
    â€˜On his head, do you mean?’
    â€˜I meant in general; everywhere.’
    â€˜He isn’t lacking in hair, no,’ said Sylvie.
    â€˜He’s young, of course, younger than I am.’ Fran lifted his hand and brushed the greying locks that sweat had pasted to his brow. ‘After a certain age a man can expect to give a few hairs to fortune, I suppose.’
    â€˜You’re not going ba— not so bad,’ Sylvie said, trying to make light of his concern. ‘You’re not old. I mean, you’re still in your prime.’
    â€˜He’ll have more hair on his chest than I have, I expect.’ Fran lifted the sheet and, chin tucked in, earnestly studied his breastbone. ‘I’ve never had much hair on my chest. My brothers used to jag me about it all the time.’
    â€˜Brothers? I didn’t know you had brothers.’
    Refusing to be sidetracked, he lifted the sheet higher.
    â€˜What d’you think, Sylvie? Tell me honestly.’
    His skin was as pale as paper and mottled with little veins like watermarks. Three or four individual hairs sprouted feebly from the centre of his chest. The rest was bare, hairless down as far as the belly button, sparse beyond. Gowry was well endowed with hair, a lean-muscled, vulpine hairiness that put poor Fran to shame. Constitutionally Fran was so unlike Gowry, in fact, that she felt a little wave of astonishment pass through her that she had actually climbed into bed with him.
    â€˜You’re fine,’ she said. ‘Absolutely fine.’
    â€˜I don’t suppose you’ve seen a lot of men without their clothes on.’
    â€˜No,’ Sylvie said. ‘Hardly – I mean Gowry, just Gowry.’
    â€˜Hmm!’ He flicked the sheet to one side and stared down at himself, sad-eyed, fishing not for compliments but reassurance. ‘What about the rest of me?’
    More cautious than embarrassed, she leaned across him and, smothering her distaste, laid a hand on his thigh and peered at his parts. He was different from Gowry in that department too. Forbes had been similar in shape and size to Gowry, as far as she could recall, and the thought strayed across her mind that perhaps it wasn’t just ears and noses and the colour of eyes that family members shared. There was something almost comically brutal about Fran’s parts, something curiously unfinished too, as if the ends had not been knotted properly. She was filled with a vague, milksop distaste, not at what she was doing but at what she was doing it to.
    She touched and made to kiss him but he pushed her away.
    â€˜I can’t,’ he said, ‘not again, not so soon.’
    â€˜There’s no shame in that,’ Sylvie said.
    â€˜Shame, who said anything about shame? I’m not ashamed of it.’
    â€˜Nor should you be,’ she said. ‘Not after what—’
    â€˜What?’
    Piqued that he had revealed his weakness, he inched away from her, folding his arms behind his head. She had too much sense to try to rouse him. She turned on her side, crossed her arms across her breasts and looked up at him: ‘I’m glad.’
    â€˜Glad,’ he said. ‘For what?’
    â€˜That