When he went out, it was snowing.
White flakes were coming down out of the sky and landing on the town and all around.
He stood looking down at his trousers, the toes of his boots, then screwed his cap down tight on his head and buttoned up his coat.
For a while, he simply walked along the quayside
with his hands deep in his pockets,
thinking over what he‘d been told and
watching the river flowing darkly along,
drinking the snow. - P96
He felt a bit freer now, being out in the open air,
with nothing else pressing for the time being and another year‘s work done, behind him, at his back. - P96
When he went in and asked Mrs Stafford if she had a
jigsaw of a farmin five hundred pieces, she said the only
jigsaws they kept now were for children, that there was
little demand for the more difficult ones anymore, then
asked if she might help him find something else. - P98
Furlong found himself not joining in the talk so much as keeping it at bay while thinking over and imagining other things.
At one point, aftermore customers had come in and Furlong had shifted across the bench, before the mirror, he looked directly at his reflection, searching for a resemblance to Ned, which he both could and could not see. Maybe the woman out at Wilson‘s had been mistaken and had simply imagined the likeness, assuming they were kin. But this did not seem likely and he could not help thinking over how down-hearted Ned had been in himself after Furlong‘s mother had passed away, andhow they had always gone to Mass and eatentogether, the way they stayed up talking at the fire at night, what sense it made. And if this was truth, hadn‘t it been an act of daily grace, on Ned‘s part, to make Furlong believe that he had come from finer stock, while watching steadfastly over him, through the years. - P100
The snow was still coming down, although timidly, dropping from the sky on all that was there, and he wondered why he had not gone back to the comforts and safety of his own home- Eileen would already be preparing for midnight Mass and would be wondering where he was – but his day was filling up now, with something else. - P101
Furlong carried on uneasily, thinking back over the Dublin girl who‘d asked him to take her here so she could drown, and how he had refused her, of how he had afterwards lost his way along the back roads, and of the queer old man out slashing the thistles in the fog that evening with the puckaun, and what he‘d said about how the road would take him wherever he wanted to go. - P103
On he walked, up the hill, past the reach of the lighted houses and the street lights. In the dark and quiet he there took a turn around the outside of the convent, taking stock of the place. The huge, high walls all around the back were also topped with broken glass, still visible, at points, under the snow. - P104
When he walked back round to the main entrance, past the open gates and on up the driveway, the yews and evergreens were pretty as a picture, just as people had said, with berries on the holly bushes.
There was but one set of footprints in the snow, heading faintly in the opposite direction, and he reached and easily passed the front door without meeting anyone.
When he got to the gable and went round to the coal-house door, the need to open it left him, queerly, before it just as soon came back, and then he slid the bolt across and called her name and gave his own.
He‘d imagined, while he was in the barber‘s,
that the door might now be locked or
that she, blessedly, might not be within or
that he might have had to carry her for part of the way and wondered how he‘d manage,
if he did, or what he‘d do, or
if he‘d do anything at all, or
if he‘d even come here - but everything was just as he‘d feared although the girl, this time, took his coat and seemed gladly to lean on him as he led her out. - P105
‘You‘ll come home with me now, Sarah.‘
Easily enough he helped her along the front drive and down the hill, past the fancy houses and on towards the bridge. Crossing the river, his eyes again fell on the stout-black water flowing darkly along-and a part of him envied the Barrow‘s knowledge of her course, how easily the water followed its incorrigible way, so freely to the open sea. The air - P106
was sharper now, without his coat, and he felt his self-preservation and courage battling against each other and thought, once more, of taking the girl to the priest‘s house - but several times, already, his mind had gone on ahead, and met him there, and had concluded that the priests already knew. Sure hadn‘t Mrs Kehoe as much as told him so?
They‘re all the one. - P106
Not one person they met addressed Sarah or asked where he was taking her. Feeling little or no obligation to say very much or to explain, Furlong smoothed things over as best he could and carried on along with the excitement in his heart matched by the fear of what he could not yet see but knew he would encounter. - P107
In the Square, she paused to rest at the lighted manger and stood in a type of trance, looking in. Furlong looked in, too; at Joseph‘s bright robes, the kneeling Virgin, the sheep. Someone, since last he‘d seen it, had placed the figures of the wise men and the Baby Jesus there but it was the donkey that held the girl‘s attention, and she reached out to stroke and push the snow off his ear. - P108
As they carried on along and met more people
Furlong did and did not know, he found himself asking
was there any point in being alive without helping one another?
Was it possible to carry on along through all the years, the decades, through an entire life, without once being brave enough to go against what was there and yet call yourself a Christian, and face yourself in the mirror? - P108
How light and tall he almost felt walking along with this girl at his side and some fresh, new, unrecognisable joy in his heart.
Was it possible that the best bit of him was shining forth, and surfacing?
Some part of him, whatever it could be called -was there any name for it? - was going wild, he knew. The fact was that he would pay for it but never once in his whole and unremarkable life had he known a happiness akin to this, not even when his infant girls were first placed in his arms and he had heard their healthy, obstinate cries. - P109
He thought
of Mrs Wilson,
of her daily kindnesses,
of how she had corrected and encouraged him,
of the small things she had said and done and had refused to do and say and what she must have known, the things which, when added up, amounted to a life.
Had it not been for her, his mother might very well have wound up in that place.
In an earlier time, it could have been his own mother he was saving - if saving was what this could be called.
And only God knew what would have happened to him, where he might have ended up. - P109
The worst was yet to come, he knew.
Already he could feel a world of trouble waiting for him behind the next door, but the worst that could have happened was also already behind him; the thing not done, which could have been - which he would have had to live with for the rest of his life.
Whatever suffering he was now to meet was a long way from what the girl at his side had already endured, and might yet surpass.
Climbing the street towards his own front door with the barefooted girl and the box of shoes, his fear more than outweighed every other feeling but in his foolish heart he not only hoped but legitimately believed that they would manage. - P110
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