The Hill Road by Patrick O'Keeffe

Author:Patrick O'Keeffe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2010-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

Grass taller than she, thistles, nettles, and ragwort suffocated the patch of ground behind the chicken wire, next to the clothesline. Alice knotted her mantilla tightly, bundled her skirt high between her thighs, and threw her leg across the chicken wire. She knelt at the edge of the patch, tucking her apron under her knees, to pillow them. With both hands she clutched the weed stems close to the ground, and heaved the weeds over her shoulder. Insects buzzed loudly around her ears, and stuck in her mantilla. She weeded her way to a strawberry patch, and plucked the weeds carefully around it. She located the corner of the garden where she would plant the potatoes and cabbage. When she had finished weeding, a bright and full moon was glowing above Tarpeys’ farmhouse. She stood and took off her mantilla and shook the clay from it.

Her sister had left the mantilla to Alice. Her only sister, who had died when Alice was a baby, and Alice offered up the day’s work for the repose of her sister’s soul, as she offered up all the days to her sister. The mantilla, and one letter from her sister, was all that Alice possessed; the letter named the parish of Kilroan, where her sister had met the man, who later she waited for on a road at night.

Only two nuns knew about this, and the week before they sent Alice out to the Tarpeys, they brought her into the front room, where a girl was called to only on important occasions. The nuns sat at a round table opposite Alice. A pot of tea with a cozy, and a plate of biscuits, lay on the table; a fire blazed in the fireplace behind them. The largest crucifix Alice had ever seen hung above the fireplace.

Sister Catherine smiled and held the plate of biscuits up. Alice lowered her eyes, thanked the nun, and said she was grand. Sister Kathleen spoke kindly, telling Alice she once had had a sister, whose name was Margaret, and she died from pneumonia, when Alice was a baby, and she was unwed and with child when she died, and this was a frightful sin, but Alice must remember that God was all forgiving.

Sister Catherine pointed to the mantilla and the envelope, which had been opened. She asked Alice to pick up the mantilla, that Margaret herself had sewn it, and it would last Alice a lifetime. Alice spread the mantilla over her opening hands, her fingers working like a spider until one finger caught a tiny hole, and Alice dropped the mantilla onto the table, recoiled from it, joined her hands at her breasts, and cried out. Sister Catherine scowled and told her to straighten herself up; there was never a need for such a carry-on. Alice raised her damp eyes to the crucifix, but she did not see Jesus now; she saw a nearly naked man, his arms and body about to rip from each other, like they were only held together with thread.

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