She washed the dishes in the sink, then took a chair out to the yard. His dog must have gone with him, she thought, wondering where that was.
When Florian returned from Greenane he noticed that one of the two remaining chairs was no longer in the kitchen. He couldn’t remember taking it somewhere else and then he saw the washed dishes on the draining-board. From the window he saw Ellie in the yard.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said when he told her Jessie had died.
Thrown up by his digging, a scattering of clay had not yet dried on the grass. A blackbird flew away when they went there.
‘I thought your neighbours’ harvesting . . .’ Florian began to say.
Ellie shook her head. All that was over, she said.
‘I couldn’t not come. I couldn’t.’
‘You’ve been crying, Ellie.’
‘I thought you’d gone. I could see that wasn’t the way of it but even so in the quiet I thought you’d gone.’
‘Well, I haven’t. I’m here.’
And there was still all day, Florian said, and all day tomorrow. He put his arms around her. She said she couldn’t bear to think about tomorrow.
‘Ellie . . .’
‘Please,’ she whispered. ‘Please. I’ve come to you.’
27
He was tired. He had met no one on the roads for a long time, no one to ask, no signposts because the roads were small. It wasn’t right where he was now. He felt it wasn’t and he asked in a house he came to, a dark, cement house among trees.
‘I know you,’ the child who opened the door greeted him, and he said he had walked out from Rathmoye, that his name was Orpen Wren.
‘Sometimes I’d forget it. When you get old it isn’t easy.’
‘It’s just I saw you a few times,’ the child said. ‘When we’d be Rathmoye I’d see you.’
Orpen asked for directions. He wasn’t going further, he said. He’d go back now to Rathmoye if he could discover the way. It was the third time he’d come looking for the destination he couldn’t find, but he didn’t say that.
‘There’s no one here only me,’ the child said. ‘They’re out at work.’
He had thought the child was a boy, but he saw now she was a girl wearing trousers. Her hair was cut short, but no shorter than many a boy’s. Her eyes were a light shade of blue.
‘Are you not in a car?’ she asked.
‘I never had a car.’
‘It’s a good step in to Rathmoye.’
‘I walked all Ireland once. Am I near Lisquin?’
‘Ah, no, you’re not.’
‘It isn’t Lisquin I’m after. It’s only I know my bearings from Lisquin. It’s a man I came looking for.’
‘Go down the road till you’ll come to a black-tarred gate. Keep on past the gate till you’ll come to a four- crossroads. Go to your left and go right at the sharp corner. You’ll get on to the big road then and Rathmoye’s marked up on the signpost. Will I tell you again?’
Orpen requested that, and then thanked the child. He found the black gate but when he went on he couldn’t remember the rest of the directions and would have been lost again if a woman on a bicycle hadn’t walked with him to the crossroads.
‘Who were you looking for out this way?’ she asked him and said he had strayed by a fair step when he told her.
She drew a map on a piece of brown paper she tore off a parcel. ‘That’s the best way you’ll do it from Rathmoye,’ she said. ‘Don’t lose it now for another day.’
He rested after she left him, sitting on the grass verge. Then he went on, put right again by tinkers on the side of the road.
28
When Ellie woke up she didn’t know where she was, and then remembered. She heard a car. Coming into the room, Florian said:
‘The men to tow away the Morris Cowley.’
She asked him what time it was. He said half past twelve, or nearly.
‘Have they gone, the men?’
‘They’re going now.’
She closed her eyes, not wanting to be awake. He was in his shirtsleeves, his tweed waistcoat unbuttoned. He was looking down at her.
‘Don’t be upset,’ he said.
Sunlight made a pattern with the shadows on the boards of the floor and on her clothes where she had thrown them, her bangle, and the ring she had taken from her finger. Her blue dress was crumpled. One shoe was on its side.
