The Maker of Swans by Paraic O'Donnell

Author:Paraic O'Donnell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tin House Books
Published: 2022-04-18T00:00:00+00:00

One evening in August, the boy goes out with his father after supper. He is older now, and the way his father talks to him has changed. There is something he wants the boy to see. He follows him along the shore to the ferry house, struggling at times to keep up. His father is in high spirits and strides eagerly ahead.

On the slip before the ferry house is a new boat, much larger than the old skiff. His father has been putting money by, he explains, though he expected to bide his time a year or two longer. It was no more than luck that he came by this one. A passenger he carried one morning had been in the same trade, a Company waterman thirty years on the Thames. A palsy had afflicted him that put him off the river. He was dissatisfied with his pension, and bore a grudge against the guildsmen. He wished to see the boat go to a man from out of the city, a man who was beholden to no Company and paid his own way. He did him no favours with the price, but that was no crime in one whose living was gone. He did enough in letting the boat go out of town.

His father moves around the dark hull as he talks. He hauls away tarpaulins and brushes at flakes of creosote. He will have room enough for eight passengers, he says, or for two men and their horses. Even the farmers bringing their animals to market will come to him now, unless they are fond of the eight miles they must drive the cattle to the bridge. This boat will establish them, his father says, no matter who in the town might begrudge it. It will put him in the way of handsome money too. They will live in a better style than they have put up with until now. On Saturdays, the boy will have sixpence of his own to do with as he pleases. He will have the price of a silk ribbon for his sweetheart.

As his father talks, the sun sinks beyond the reeds. The water is sluggish and glazed with amber. Midges throng the unmoving air. It comes to him that he will not be going back to school, that this is what his father is telling him. He touches the boat himself, twisting a fine splinter from the stern. His father lays a hand on his wrist, for a moment only, and the warmth of it is coarse and sure.

The news causes him no particular sadness. He will not miss the schoolroom, or the children of the town. He is a stranger among them still. When the day’s lessons are over, they disperse in twos and threes to fish for dab or flounder. They hunt for birds’ eggs in the hour of liberty before they are wanted at home. He no longer asks if he may go along.

His mother makes him practise his letters still.

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