The Collected Stories Read Online Free

shoes uphill through the leaves.
    ‘They cheered and shouted,’ he had to fumble at last. ‘They cheered and shouted when I fell on Nora.’
    The girl’s eyes stayed on the leaves that she was now kicking uphill as she walked.
    ‘They cheered and shouted,’ he said definitely. ‘Teresa, they cheered and shouted when I fell on Nora.’ This time she did look up and stared so coldly at him that he flinched.
    ‘They cheered and shouted,’ she admitted.
    ‘But why? I only fell on Nora.’
    ‘What does it matter why? They cheered and shouted, that’s all.’
    ‘But there must have been some reason?’
    ‘You fell on Nora.’
    ‘But why did they shout?’
    ‘That’s the why,’ she laughed.
    ‘But that’s the why is no answer. Was there some reason for it?’
    ‘There’s a raisin for everything. And a currant for the cake.’
    ‘But why, Teresa? Why did they shout?’
    ‘Why should I tell you?’
    ‘No why. Just tell me.’
    ‘You’re too young. You’ll have to wait to find out. Why should I be the one to tell you? Answer me that and I’ll tell you.’
    ‘You’re not that much older than me,’ he argued painfully and doggedly and without much hope.
    They’d reached the top of the hill. Before them, against the lake with its swaying barrels and Oakport Wood turning to rust beyond great beech trees, was the village where they lived; the scattered shops and houses and humble sycamores of the roads dwarfed by the church in its graveyard of old yew and cypress trees. Past it the Shannon flowed, under the stone bridge at its end, flinting river of metal moving endlessly out into the wastes of pale sedge that waited for its flood waters to rise.
    ‘I don’t see what harm it would do you to tell,’ he pleaded.
    ‘You’ll have to grow up.’ She laughed the animal laugh of her superiority. Soon she’d be a woman in her prime. Already her body was changing. She laughed again without turning her head and started to run downhill. He moved to keep up with her, but he was too sick at heart, he let her run. He felt the same futility and confusion of everything as when his mother had gone away for ever, the terror and pain of his whole life draining away. Then something frighteningly alluring in the running girl’s stride stirred him to follow her, but he was again bewildered by the memory of the softness of Nora’s body, the shame of the shouting ringing in his ears. ‘They’re in love! They’re in love! They’re in love!’ and he began to weep with anguish.
    All through the next morning the schoolroom was tense. They waited for what Master Kelly would say after prayers. It was with such relief they heard him say what he said every morning, ‘Open your home exercises and come up in your proper order, the fourth class first, and leave them on the table.’ They watched the road and concrete steps down to the school for someone to come and complain, but no one came. Every move of Nora’s was watched, every move of Stevie’s, every hand that went up to ask to go to the lavatory. The growing tension followed them to the playground, the boys in one group, the girls apart in another, Nora strung tight and eating her lunch alone by the wall. Then suddenly and unnaturally, as if she was the mouthpiece of a decision, one of theolder girls called a game and declared, ‘Nora must be Queen. Come on, Nora, we’re making you the Queen,’ and they gathered round her, and soon the air was filled with the excited noises of their play. The boys started to kick an old rag ball made from corks and the wool of ripped socks about at the other end of the yard. Stevie watched the tenseness go in the play, connected in some way to the fit of shrieking at the Chair the evening before. ‘They’re in love! They’re in love! They’re in love!’ still haunting him with his own helplessness, but he’d try once more to get behind the mystery. He would offer Teresa a penny toffee bar on their way home.
    Quickly they chased