Furlong left Kathleen, who was off from school, in charge of the office while he made the out-of-town deliveries, collecting as much as he could of what was owed.
When he came back, at lunchtime, Kathleen had the next loads organised and the dockets ready so there would be only a small delay while he got a bite to eat before delivering more. - P49
I just want to go out with my friends to the shops now before they close and see the lights and try on jeans, but Mammy called down earlier and says I have to go with her to the dentist.‘ - P51
Dapper, some of the others looked, striding along, inspect-ing the ground and their surroundings with their wings tucked in, putting Furlong in mind of the young curate who liked to walk about town with his hands behind his back. - P52
When he knocked, softly, on the door, it wasn‘t the woman of the house who answered it but a youngish woman in a long nightdress and shawl.
Her hair, which was neither brown nor red but the colour of cinnamon, fell almost to her waist, and her feet were bare. - P53
The room smelled pleasantly of something familiar which he could not name, or place. - P54
"Take it on with you,‘ she said. ‘You know there‘s no luck to be had in refusing a man water. - P54
"There‘s nothing I‘d rather,‘ he said, ‘but I have to get on.‘ - P55
Sleepily, he climbed out and looked over the yews and hedges, the grotto with its statue of Our Lady, whose eyes were downcast as though she was disappointed by the artificial flowers at her feet, and the frost glittering in places where patches of light from the high windows fell. - P57
How still it was up here but why was it not ever peaceful? The day had not yet dawned, and Furlong looked down at the dark shining river whose surface reflected equal parts of the lighted town.
So many things had a way of looking finer, when they were not so close. He could not say which he rathered: the sight of town or its reflection on the water. - P58
For a time he stood listening and looking down at the town, at the smoke starting up from the chimneys and the small, diminishing stars in the sky. One of the brightest fell while he was standing there, leaving a streak like a chalk mark on a board for just a second before it vanished. Another seemed to burn out and slowly fade. - P58
When he let down the tail board and went to open the coal house door, the bolt was stiff with frost, and he had to ask himself if he had not turned into a man consigned to doorways, for did he not spend the best part of his life standing outside of one or another, waiting for them to be opened. - P58
The only thing he thought to do was to take his coat off. When he did, and went to put it round her, she cowered. - P59
Tactlessly, he again shone the light across the floor, on what excrements she‘d had to make. - P59
When he managed to get her out, and saw what was before him a girl just about fit to stand, with her hair roughly cut the ordinary part of him wished he‘d never come near the place. - P59
For a moment he wasn‘t sure that she wasn‘t the same girl he‘d seen in the chapel that day the geese had hissed at him - but this was a different girl. He shone the torch on her feet, saw the long toenails, black from the coal, then switched it off. - P60
|