The Trout by Peter Cunningham

Author:Peter Cunningham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sandstone Press Ltd
Published: 2016-08-12T04:00:00+00:00

The good weather had lasted. As we nosed in across Flannery’s pastures, a warm peace caressed the land. I was sick with apprehension and had lain awake for most of the nights before, fretting about what would happen if we were caught. My father’s anger petrified me, the thought that he might find out what I had planned. I clung to the image of Terence’s superior strength and knowledge that would spring us both from the worlds we hated. Inchoate images of America, picked up from cowboy comics, spun in my head.

As if the gaze of each Infant of Prague contained the knowledge of my secret, I prayed that the doctor would not look at the statues and realise the truth. The shed door in Flannery’s yard was open and the thigh-waders visible, suspended as if a man were strung up in the void above them. The doctor pocketed his pipe, got out and tapped on the rear door window.

‘Are you feeling out of sorts, lad?’

For want of a reply, I nodded. His attitude took on a professional slant.

‘I might have known. It’s this damn flu that’s going. You need a hot drink and bed. Poor lad.’

‘Doctor Smyth, thanks be to God!’ cried Flannery from his front door. ‘She’s fit to burst!’

‘I won’t be long,’ the doctor told me. ‘Stay in the car.’

What was about to take place had filled my mind so completely that no room existed to work around it. I was too terrified to get out, terrified that Terence would appear, terrified that he wouldn’t. The locked-up dog, tormented as ever by unseen intruders, scratched and snarled. Inside the barn, young cattle were gathered. Then I saw him.

A hundred times I had thought of this moment, but had not expected it to unfold so quickly. He came crouching from the barn, opened the back door of the Humber and slid in behind the driver’s seat like a fox sliding into an earth.

‘Shut the door!’

I could neither breathe nor hear. He was clutching a bulging jute sack, his travel belongings, a detail I had overlooked.

‘The blanket,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘The blanket. Cover me with the blanket!’

I instantly forgot the bargain I had planned to strike and threw the travelling rug over him. All became quiet and deathly still. Then a strong odour of stale milk and cow byre began to fill the car. Overcome by my memory of the last time, and the doctor’s reaction, all my plans disappeared in a moment governed only by fear. I snatched away the rug.

‘You have to get out. Quick!’

He bared his uneven teeth.

‘Get out!’

If he had got out then, the future might have unfolded differently, but he grabbed back the rug with both hands. I wanted to vomit for fear.

‘Get out!’

His mouth opened in a silent howl as he held the rug around him like a shawl. Suddenly he was no longer Man Friday, or strong and confident, but a frightened child with missing teeth.

‘Get out!’ I cried.

He looked up at me, his expression pitiable.

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