Read Online The All of It: A Novel by Jeannette Haien - Free Book Online Page B

been back to any one of them since!”
    “Tell me.”
    “Well, there was Tubbercurry and Swinford—Kevin caught a runaway horse for a man in Swinford and the man gave over a five-pound note to him as a reward like! Imagine! In those days, that was a fortune! And at Ballyvary, we saw a good-sized place burn to the ground. Not a thing could be done.”
    “That’s above Castlebar, isn’t it, Ballyvary?”
    “Aye…. Now, Castlebar! We couldn’t get away from there fast enough!”
    “Why?”
    “There’d been a bachelor murdered in his bed the night before we got there, and the place wasalive with the strain of it. Us being strangers, Kevin said it was best not to linger. Kevin got the full of it from a cartwright he helped put iron-shod on the wheels of a wagon….” She clucked her tongue. “Terrible, a thing like that…. It happens more now, murder and the like. Even on an everyday basis, over the merest things, you see tempers being let out at an awful rate, isn’t it so, Father?”
    “Indeed. Temper’s a raw-willed thing…. But go on, Enda. Did you get to Westport?” he asked eagerly.
    “Westport!” she beamed, “I’ve the loveliest memories of Westport.”
    “Back then,” he put in hurriedly, “it was completely lovely. Now, it’s a bit overrun with people and traffic. Almost too lively for a place of its size. Americans like it, and Germans. Tourists…. They change a place.”
    “Aye, they do. But those many years ago, like you said, it was completely lovely…. We were a week there, Kevin having got work with a builder. Mr. McEvilly was his name. He’d a face sewn over with purple veins, but such a nice disposition. It was him as put it to Kevin that, to his mind, the coast running out towards Roonah Quay was as beautiful as could be found anywhere in the world. It was him too that gave Kevin the map .”
    “The map?”
    “Aye, I’ve got it still. If you’ll remind me, I’ll show it to you sometime.”
    “I’d like that.” He hoped she saw how enormously pleased he was that she’d made the offer.
    “Mind,” she larked on, “we couldn’t read, of course, but Kevin—it showed the trust he had in Mr. McEvilly—he’d ticked off all the places we’d been to, and Mr. McEvilly’d put circles around them on the map. As I said, you’ll see it for yourself another time…. When Kevin first showed the map to me, I didn’t have the wit to take it at its value. He told me, ‘Look, here’s where we started, here’s where we’ve been, and here’s where we are’—pointing, ever so excited. But it struck me as daft, all the days we’d trudged, the distances , Father, and him holding a piece of paper no bigger than a square of handkerchief, nattering on and on, telling me that what I remembered as a full day’s hard walk was no more than the length of a daisy petal!”
    He laughed. “Go on; go on.”
    “I never supposed you’d be so interested, Father.” Her smile was brilliant. “Well, Mr. McEvilly’d put a big dot on the map by the place he’d told Kevin was Roonah Quay. Kevin told me, ‘All that blue colour beyond the dot is the sea , and where that dot is is where we’ll be heading.’” Her face, atthis moment, took on the look of a mischievous child: “Now, Father, where the dot was on the map was the length of several daisy petals from where Kevin said we were standing in Westport, and when I asked him how long it’d take us to accomplish the trudge and he told me he figured three days, four days at the most, I hooted! It was then he lost patience with me.” She paused.
    “Don’t stop, Enda!” he begged, leaning forward, drawn by her lit eyes and freshly pinkened cheeks. “Take me through to the last step!”
    “Father dear, that you care so!” she opened out her hands to him.
    The sweetness of her gathering gesture charged him through with joy. “You’ve netted me with your telling,” he said with a rushing sense of elation and, instantly, was more