style="font-size:15px;"> OLIVER WAS TO share a bedroom with Colin. Without consulting anybody he got his case out of the car, lugged it inside, and started to unpack. Jessie kept leaping up at him and barking. He flapped his hands at her nervously.
“She’s a stupid dog,” Colin explained, realizing he was quite frightened. Jessie was nearly as big as Oliver. “She just wants to play. When people don’t want her she never seems to get the message. It just makes her worse.”
“Do you think she’s educationally subnormal?” Oliver said solemnly, pronouncing the long words very slowly.
“Dunno. Don’t think she’d get any O levels. Well, that’s what my dad says.”
Then the dog crashed into a table and sent a lamp flying. ‘Jessie!” Colin shouted. The snuff-boxes would have to be put vay or the whole lot would be dashed to smithereens. He took her outside and tied her to the concrete mixer. “Stay there, daft dog, till I’ve unpacked. Then I’ll take you for a walk.”
Oliver’s side of the bedroom was soon beautifully neat and tidy. His books were arranged on a shelf, his bed was made, a pair of winceyette pyjamas lay neatly folded on his pillow.
“Shouldn’t think you’d need those, Oliver, it’s so hot.”
Colin was sweating. He’d already stripped down to his shorts and kicked his sneakers off, and even the carpet felt warm. Oliver looked distastefully at his bare feet. “I’m not hot.”
He went on reading his book. He was wearing both socks and shoes, thick trousers and a shirt with a light sweater over it. Underneath that lot he no doubt wore thermal underwear. Colin was irritated. Oliver looked so cool, while he had a raging thirst and was sweating like a pig.
Then somebody tapped on the window. Oliver spun round and Colin nearly dropped his precious camera. A big red face was looking in at them and smiling.
Colin tried to open one of the panes but it was stuck. The person outside, a very fat man, with a clerical collar and a dusty black suit, pointed a plump finger and mouthed, “Front door. I couldn’t make anyone hear.”
“Oh, OK. Hang on,” Colin mouthed back, and went out into the hall. Oliver slipped a marker carefully into his book, placed it on top of the pyjamas, and followed silently.
“You just have the two boys, then?” the priest was saying, perched precariously on a kitchen stool. Mrs Blakeman was opening cupboard doors, looking for cups and saucers so she could make a cup of tea.
“Oh no, this one’s ours,” Dad explained. “Oliver’s a cousin.”
“Second cousin,” the small clear voice said emphatically. “By adoption.” He was staring at the fat clergyman, thinking he looked like Friar Tuck.
“Yes, yes of course,” the man said hurriedly. There was so little resemblance. The older boy had coarse ginger curls, green eyes and skin like a speckled brown egg. He was tall and well built and looked like a footballer. The cousin was small and scrawny with lank black hair and rather bulging blue eyes that stared at him out of a thin white face.
Father Hagan returned the stare, then smiled, before dropping his eyes. Something in the boy’s face made him feel uncomfortable. He couldn’t for the life of him say what it was.
“There are two more,” Dad was saying. “Our daughter Priscilla and a baby. She’s just six months old. They’ve gone down to the sea for a bit of air, Prill wasn’t feeling too good. It’s the long car journey, I expect.”
“You won’t have met old Donal yet, will you?”
“Donal? Er, no. We’ve only been here a couple of hours.”
“Well, you’ll see him around. But it’s as well to be warned. Sure he’s a good soul, Donal Morrissey, salt of the earth. But he’s got to that stage when the smallest change upsets him.”
“Does he live nearby then?”
“So he does. He’s your nearest neighbour. See those trees, where the smoke is? There’s a caravan in the middle of them, that’s where he lives. He’s got an old stove; he burns peat on it.”
“Is he very old?” Oliver said, still staring.
“Nearer ninety than eighty. He was upset when they started building this bungalow. He didn’t like the noise they made, or the lorries going up and down the track.”
“I’m surprised Dr Moynihan was allowed to build here,” Dad said. “I’m amazed the farmer sold him the land.”
“Well, the O’Malleys needed the money to get their farm back on its feet. They’ve had a run of very bad harvests. The house looks a bit raw and new at the moment, but when everything’s tidied up and the trees have grown it’ll fit in. He’s even having his garage built into this slope, so you can’t see it. That costs money.” He finished his tea and stood up. “Well, goodbye now. I just wanted to wish you all a good holiday. Ballimagliesh is my parish, I’m always around. Mrs O’Malley keeps her eye on the bungalow of course. She has a key. But I’m only up the road, so just knock on my door if you need anything. It’s the last house on the road when you leave the village.”
They watched him clamp a shapeless black hat on his head, mount an ancient bicycle and pedal away slowly, his coat flapping round him, and his thick grey hair blowing about as he bumped over the stones. He had a calm, generous face. Dad rather wished he could spend the next month painting him, and not rich Dr Moynihan who had a little bald head and wore navy-blue city suits.
Prill walked along the beach with Alison in her arms. The tide was out and the sea a flat blue line edging a strip of tawny sand. She’d hoped for a wind down here, but the air was strangely still. Everything had gone very quiet suddenly. Nothing broke the silence, nothing that moved. There wasn’t even a gull to tear at the quietness with its sour, high crying, not even a crab.
She looked back at the steep path she’d climbed down from the fields. The tall cliffs reared up all round, ringing the cover, blotting out the gleaming white bungalow, the grass, the wind-blown trees. She and Alison could have been the only people alive on earth.
The baby wriggled in her arms and started to whine. Prill jiggled her up and down and tried to make soothing noises. “Come on, Alleybobs, it’s all right. Look. Look at the sand. Look at the sea. Bye Baby Bunting…” But it wasn’t her mother’s voice, and the baby squirmed and flung herself about violently in Prill’s arms, then went rigid, like a lump of wood. Her face was bright red. Through the tiny cotton dress she was sweating and sticking to Prill’s T-shirt.
Prill still felt very hot herself, and rather sick too. But Alison should be all right now, she’d been fed and changed again before coming down to the beach and she smelt of talcum powder. Prill held her close and tried to comfort her, breathing in the baby smell through the little frock.
Then something made her stomach lurch violently. There was a smell drifting over from somewhere, a rich, sweetish, rotten smell. At first she thought it came from the farm, some kind of fertiliser they’d been spreading on the fields. But it wasn’t manure. She wouldn’t have minded that. This was too sweet, too cloying, and anyway, it was so close.
With the baby crying loudly and
