Long Island by Colm Toibin

Author:Colm Toibin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2024-05-07T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

In Cush, he parked the car at the top of a lane that led down to the sea. He passed a mobile home and a single-decker bus that had been cemented into the ground, and then a few modern huts, all reserved, he thought, for summer use. The smell was of clover and grass, and in the distance he could hear the sound of a tractor. When he turned down the next lane, he found two houses on the left-hand side but no sign of life, no parked car or clothes hanging out to dry. If the tractor sound were not there, this could easily feel like a place abandoned.

At the end of the lane, there was a low ditch, but no set of steps leading to the strand. He stood on the ditch and looked down at the calm sea and the deserted shore. Perhaps Eilis had just driven down here and gone for a walk and was now back in her mother’s house. He was almost relieved at the thought that he might not now have to meet her. It would be too much to appear like this, out of nowhere. The stillness, the calm waves, the thin white clouds in the eastern sky, the empty houses, emphasized how settled and hidden this place was, and how inhospitable to an outsider, someone who did not even know what house he was looking for.

As he walked back to the car, a woman standing in the gateway of the second house was studying him closely.

“You look like a man who is lost,” she said.

“I was looking for Martin Lacey’s house.”

“Martin’s not there. I heard his car blasting off early this morning and I haven’t heard him coming back. He has to do something about the car.”

Jim hesitated. He wanted to ask her if Eilis was in Martin’s house.

“Now, you are the man that has that pub in Enniscorthy,” she said.

He could not think who she was.

“I am Lily Devereux’s mother. She used to talk about you. I remembered you because I had seen your name over the pub.”

“That’s my father’s name.”

“And I knew him, too, at least to see, and your mother. But that’s your name too.”

Jim still saw Lily Devereux sometimes in the town. She had been on the board of the Credit Union with him. News would spread that he had been seen in Cush. He would have to be careful what he said.

“Well, I was looking for Martin. But I’ll find him in the town.”

“His sister is there now in the house, one of the neighbors told me. She has a rented car with a Dublin registration. I don’t think I know her at all.”

If he did not move away quickly, he thought, she would surely ask him why he was looking for Martin and he would not be able to come up with a credible reply.

“Do you know which house is Martin’s?” he asked.

“It’s beyond the judge’s house,” she replied, “below the marl pond.”

Jim made clear that he did not know what she was talking about.

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