Foster

Can’t you call in and collect her on your way?’

‘Oh,’ she says. ‘I don’t know should I.’

‘Mine’d be a bit of company for her. Can’t they play away out the back? And that man there won’t budge as long as he has her on his knee.’

Mrs Kinsella laughs. I’ve never heard her laugh like this.

‘Sure maybe, if you don’t mind, you would, Mildred,’ she says. ‘What harm is in it? And you know we’ll not be long after you.’

‘Not a bother,’ the woman says.

When we are out on the road, and the goodbyes are said, Mildred strides on into a pace I can just about keep, and as soon as she rounds the bend, the questions start.

She is eaten alive with curiosity; hardly is one question answered before the next is fired: ‘Which room did they put you into? Did Kinsella give you money? How much? Does she drink at night? Does he? Are they playing cards up there much? Who was there? What were they selling the lines for? Do ye say the rosary? Does she put butter or margarine in her pastry? Where does the old dog sleep? Is the freezer packed solid? Does she skimp on things or is she allowed to spend? Are the child’s clothes still hanging in the wardrobe?’

I answer them all easily, until the last.

‘The child’s clothes?’

‘Aye,’ she says. ‘Sure if you’re sleeping in his room you must surely know. Did you not look?’"

"‘Well, she had clothes I wore for all the time I was here but we went to Gorey this morning and bought all new things.’

‘This rig-out you’re wearing now? God Almighty,’ she says.

‘Anybody would think you were going on for a hundred.’

‘I like it,’ I say. ‘They told me it was flattering.’

‘Flattering, is it? Well. Well,’ she says. ‘I suppose it is, after living in the dead’s clothes all this time.’

‘What?’

‘The Kinsellas’ young lad, you dope. Did you not know?’

I don’t know what to say.

‘That must have been some stone they rolled back to find you. Sure didn’t he follow that auld hound of theirs into the slurry tank and drown? That’s what they say happened anyhow,’ she says.

I keep on walking and try not to think about what she has said even though I can think of little else. The time for the sun to go down is getting close but the day feels like it isn’t ending. I look at the sky and see the sun, still high, and clouds, and, far away, a round moon coming out.

‘They say John got the gun and took the hound down the field but he hadn’t the heart to shoot him, the softhearted fool.