Far Inland by Peter Urpeth

Author:Peter Urpeth [Peter Urpeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857900494
Publisher: Birlinn
Published: 2011-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Later that morning Sorley came down from the bedroom where he had stayed for maybe three hours reading the old books. Theresa greeted him.

‘How are you feeling now?’ she asked.

‘I’m fine, just fine. I’m going to the shop,’ he replied with an edge of stress in his voice as though accusing her of stopping him from leaving.

‘Fine,’ she replied.

‘Danny has kept it going, but nothing much in the away of sales.’

‘No. I don’t expect so. What’s wrong, Sorley?,’ she asked him, trying to tackle the tension in his voice. ‘I’m going nuts sitting in here, I need to get out, get back to normal, get back to work.’

‘Is that all? I mean, is there anything else?’

‘Aye, that’s all.’

Sorley went to the hallway and the bulk of coats on the hooks. On the wall by the front door was a mirror and Sorley caught a glimpse of his face as he reached for his jacket.

He left the jacket and turned to face the mirror. In the cold grey light of the morning that drenched the old-fashioned painted and tiled interior of that space with the feeling of a kind of melancholic but logical truth, his face was ashen but bleached with pale yellow from the bruising. His left eye was more bloodshot than his right and his cheekbone was swollen. He looked away, determined not to let the sight of his face deter him from moving on.

He put on his jacket and went to the small hall cupboard looking for a bag for the books. The cupboard was cluttered with the usual contents: a vacuum cleaner, tins of household cleaners and a few, small, unpacked boxes from the time he had moved in with Theresa.

He turned the light on and could feel the bright, burning heat of the bulb close to his face as his hands searched before him in the mound of coats and bags and unwanted things stacked there. As he did so he saw at the back of the cupboard the coat he had worn throughout his college days, a full-length leather army officer’s greatcoat, its tan colour scratched through years of wear. It had a sturdy, impenetrable quality and in his depressed and agitated mood the security of its thick layer appealed to him. He pulled it out from the cupboard, took off his jacket and put it on. The leather was stiff and near to cracking but the coat fitted.

He turned up its rigid collar and he could feel the thick leather hard against the back of his head. He felt safe then, the coat was awkward and heavy but just wearing it was a comfort and for a second he was again Sorley MacRath, the punk, the Gaelic punk, the confident even arty lad he had been when he moved to the city, freeing himself of the island and the strictures he saw in the lives of its people. He liked himself back then. He liked being confident for the first time in his life.

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