The Neglected Garden by Suzanne Winterly

Author:Suzanne Winterly [Winterly, Suzanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Alizester Books
Published: 2019-02-07T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

“Hey, Daddy, look! There’s a mermaid in the river. Look, down there, I can see her long green hair.”

Marc put his arm round Samuel’s waist as he sat on top of the narrow stone bridge and leaned over one of the recesses. He watched the Barrow River idle underneath. Shallow water for late April, strands of green weed – the mermaid’s hair – caressing rocks on its bed.

“I can’t see the mermaid, Samuel, but there are some minnows over there. See?” When he’d first bought Glanesfort, he’d read that the Pass Bridge was the oldest in Monasterevin, marched over by the Earl of Essex and his army on their way to Munster in 1599, and there were rumours that Cromwell had also used it on his destructive journey.

He told his son this and touched the limestone. “Just imagine the soldiers, Sam, their shiny swords, their boots clumping on the stones, the plumes on their helmets waving in the breeze.”

The boy’s eyes gleamed. “Tell me more.”

Marc hugged him close. “I don’t know any more. It was a long time ago – four centuries ago. Do you know what a century is?”

He shook his head.

“A hundred years. A long, long time.” Men who fought and died four hundred years ago, but who were still alive today in people’s minds. Still in his mind when he stood against this bridge. Everything around him linked to the past – everything, in its own way, affected by it. No matter how hard people tried to get rid of the memories, no matter how desperately he tried to exorcise his, they shaped and changed him.

“I can see the ducks down there. Fergus and I feed them. Can I go down to the river?” Samuel jumped onto the road. “I won’t fall in, I won’t, Daddy. Can I, please?”

“All right, but be careful.”

“Thanks, Dad. I love you.”

“I love you, too, young man.”

He watched his son run along the grass verge and scramble over the wall into the field that sloped towards the water. A little charmer. Heaven help the girls when he grew up. He was like his mother’s brother, Pierre. Same dark curly hair and recklessness. Pierre lived in America now and had married three times.

Two swallows skimmed low over the river and shot up into the air with the agility of fighter jets. The birds had been back for three weeks now and had already patched up their nests in the old barn behind the apartments at Glanesfort. Marc liked to see them chattering on the telephone wires, with the sun gleaming on sleek blue-black feathers and chestnut bibs. Brave little warriors that flew all the way from Africa to hatch and bring up their young in cooler climates; the harbingers of summer.

Since the evening with Gilly, after her sister’s wedding, he’d forced himself to think about Rachel. She belonged to his past, packed into a box in the attic of his memory, but still in his mind and in the mind of that journalist.

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