On Blueberry Hill by Sebastian Barry

Author:Sebastian Barry [Sebastian Barry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571342938
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2017-12-27T05:00:00+00:00

Christy

Mayhem. Anger. You can do anything with anger. I mean, the bit of the gospels that I really like, when PJ is reading to me, as he does sometimes in the night-times, is the time JC goes ape-shit over the moneylenders. Some of the holy bits go over my head, but that bit I understand. I understand it perfectly.

Otherwise I can’t understand what got into me. But it got into me, whatever it was. Got into me with knobs on. Jesus. Like I say, I knew where PJ lived, of course I did. I mean, everything you hear at a trial, a trial like that, burns into your brain. You could be the fucking book of the trial, the judge could refer to you, to say out bits of it out again, sure you know it all, word for word. Burns into you. Longford Place, 13 Longford Place. Sure it’s only back of Old Dunleary, where Christine was born. Old Dunleary was just a little fishing village onetime, then came the coalyard, then came the big houses on Longford Place. There’s Longford Terrace as well, they’re just gigantic fucking palaces. All the same, Longford Place, very nice houses. Very nice.

Very easy to break into too, if I say so myself. I’m thin though, I can get into places other lads couldn’t. I’m like Oliver Twist, in the film.

It was a very small window, into the scullery, there were big taps there for swilling out potatoes and carrots, handy for holding on to. When you go head first into a window, you want something below you to stop you breaking your neck. Try it, if you don’t believe me. So I was in then, myself, alone, in the dark scullery, the house quiet as a tomb, all of Old Dunleary indeed, quiet, only now and then at intervals, no doubt decided by the Harbour Commissioners, the fog horn sounded in the bay. Long drawn out and mournful, like somebody had died. Or somebody was going to die. Like it was the banshee calling at the gable of a house.

So in through the kitchen I crept. It was a vaulted room, unusual. I saw a bottle of sour milk, I suppose for the bread PJ’s mother would be making, I don’t know why I noticed that. I had a sniff of it going by. It brought me back to my own mammy’s house. She always had a bottle going sour. When you think of that. These days it’s just the sliced pan and the Marietta biscuits. I opened the dresser drawer and chose a bread knife from the array of knives. She had everything you could wish, PJ’s mother. It was a very pleasing room, that’s all I can say, and that was only the kitchen. Up the narrow stairs I went stealthily. I had taken off my shoes in the scullery, they stood like two bent tin-scoops waiting for me. I was sort of frightened, even in my anger. I knew

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