‘I’ll be back in half an hour, child. Go back to sleep.’
In the kitchen, he didn’t bother with the kettle or tea, but simply buttered a cut of bread which he ate from his hand before going on, to the yard.
Outside, the streets were slick with frost, and his boots, on the pavement, sounded unusually loud, it being so early on a Sunday. When he reached the yard gate and found the padlock seized with frost, he felt the strain of being alive and wished he had stayed in bed, but he made himself carry on and crossed to a neighbour’s house, whose light was on.
When he knocked, softly, on the door, it wasn’t the woman of the house who answered it but a youngish woman in a long nightdress and shawl. Her hair, which was neither brown nor red but the colour of cinnamon, fell almost to her waist, and her feet were bare. Behind her, a gas cooker was throwing rings of flame up under a kettle and saucepan, and three small children he recognised were sitting around the table with colouring books and a bag of raisins. The room smelled pleasantly of something familiar which he could not name, or place.
‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ Furlong said. ‘I’m from just across the way and trying to get into the yard but the padlock’s froze.’
‘Tis no bother,’ she said. ‘Is it the kettle you’re after?’
She sounded like she was from The West.
‘Aye,’ Furlong said. ‘If you don’t mind.’
She lifted her hair back over her shoulder, and Furlong saw an impression, which was unintended, of her breast, loose, under the cotton.
‘The kettle’s on. Here,’ she said, reaching for it. ‘Won’t you take it on with you.’
‘Surely you’ll want this for your tea.’
‘Take it on with you,’ she said. ‘You know there’s no luck to be had in refusing a man water.’
When he’d released the padlock and went back and knocked and softly called and heard her saying to come in, and pushed the door, a candle was lighted on the table and she was pouring hot milk over bowls of Weetabix for the children.
He stood for a moment taking in the peace of that plain room, letting a part of his mind turn loose to stray off and imagine what it might be like to live there, in that house, with her as his wife. Of late, he was inclined to imagine another life, elsewhere, and wondered if this was not something in his blood; might his own father not have been one of those who had upped, suddenly, and taken the boat for England? It seemed both proper and at the same time deeply unfair that so much of life was left to chance.
‘Did you manage?’ she asked, taking the kettle.
‘Aye,’ Furlong said, feeling the cold of her hand in the exchange. ‘Many thanks.’
‘Will you take a cup of tea?’
‘There’s nothing I’d rather,’ he said, ‘but I have to get on.’
‘It won’t take but a few minutes to boil it up again.’
‘I’m near late as it is but I’ll get one of the men to leave over a bag of logs for ye.’
‘Ah, there’s no need.’
‘Happy Christmas,’ he said, and turned away.
‘And the same to you,’ she called out, after him.
*
As soon as he propped the gates open with the blocks, Furlong came back to himself and to what was next. He felt anxious over the lorry but when he turned the key in the ignition, the engine started and he let out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding, and left her running. The evening before, he’d checked the load to make sure it matched the order but now found himself checking it again. He looked at the yard too, to see that it was properly swept, and at the scales to see that nothing had been left there overnight, although he’d done these things, he was sure, before he’d locked up yesterday. There wasn’t anything he needed in the prefab, but he opened the door and switched on the light and looked over everything: the stacks of papers, the telephone directories and folders, the delivery dockets and copies of the invoices pierced through the spikes. As he was writing out a note for a bag of logs to be left at the house across the way, the telephone rang. He stood watching it until it rang out then waited for a minute or two to see if it would ring again. When he’d finished writing the note, he backed out, and locked the door.
Driving up to the convent, the reflection of Furlong’s headlights crossed the windowpanes and it felt as though he was meeting himself there. Quietly as he could he drove past the front door and reversed down the side, to the coal shed, and turned the engine off. Sleepily, he climbed out and looked over the yews and hedges, the grotto with its statue of Our Lady, whose eyes were downcast as though she was disappointed by the artificial flowers at her feet, and the frost glittering in places where patches of light from the high windows fell.