My Ghosts by Mary Swan

Author:Mary Swan [Swan, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical
ISBN: 9780345807830
Google: gFuXnAmtEW8C
Amazon: B00CK8CJMM
Goodreads: 17857788
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: 2013-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

The ship docked and there were trains and more trains, but that calm feeling stayed. There was so much bustle in the stations that he couldn’t hear his own footsteps, and he always seemed to be moving against a flow of young faces, fresh uniforms; he thought how much easier it was to get into the war, swept along on a wave of cheers and brass bands, and fluttering handkerchiefs. The journey felt as though it could go on forever, but finally he was on the last, shorter train, and the people getting on and off at its frequent stops were familiar, although he didn’t actually know any of them. He must have looked very fierce or sad because no one sat with him or tried to start a conversation, though a few times someone asked if he was getting off, if he needed help with his bags. “No, thank you,” he said. “I sent them on ahead.”

Those bags would have already arrived, would be sitting somewhere in his house, like the effects of a dead man, and he wondered how large they would seem, in his son’s small world. He tried to imagine himself walking through his own front door, but another picture formed in his head and he saw himself slumping down, heavy in his seat as they drew into his station. He saw himself staying on the train and riding farther, riding north to the end of the line. There was a ferry there, he knew that, and he could sail with it across the neck of the lake. He saw himself walking down the short ramp on the other side, walking on and on until he reached the start of the dense bush that would seal itself behind him, after he’d passed through.

That would be right, that would be better, and it would be a better thing, a braver thing, to leave his son with the story he would make for himself, from the things unpacked from the battered bags. From the banjo with its snapped strings and the jacket with polished buttons, from everything else he’d be told. They would tell him the only things he should know, Edie and Robbie’s mother. The funny stories and the scrapes he got into when he was a boy, the facts of the rest of his life. And that way his son would grow up knowing the best of him.

It had nothing to do with his missing arm, although that’s what everyone thought. Would think. Back at the hospital Elizabeth sometimes sat with him on that bench by the roses, her cool hands folded in her lap. She told him once about her fiancé, Patrick, who was somewhere in muddy France, and she asked him to believe her when she said that nothing would matter, nothing, as long as Patrick came home alive.

He had let her believe that she’d helped him, because she was kind, and it was kindly meant; he knew that Edie would say the same, but he also knew that he didn’t deserve it.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.