The Railway Station Man Read Online Free

as they played golf at Portsalon. Pillars of driving rain interrupted their play, sweeping relentlessly down the lough. Five minutes later it would be over and the grass would sparkle and steam under a hot bright sun.
    â€˜Your mother’ll be getting wet,’ he had said as they stood under a tree near the fourth green. ‘I bet she hasn’t a coat or a scarf or anything with her.’
    His voice had been filled with irritation.
    â€˜I told her it was going to rain, but she didn’t listen, she just went off down the beach with her hands in her pockets … She doesn’t mind getting wet. She never has. She used to say the rain made your hair curl. I remembered laughing when he had said that. She had the world’s straightest hair.
    â€˜She gets stiff. After all she isn’t twenty any longer. It’s silly not to take care of yourself at her age. At any age. She’s never had much sense.’
    He had looked out through the leaves at the rain. Jack didn’t say a word. He had really been talking to himself.
    â€˜I sometimes wonder what would have happened to her if she hadn’t married me. Drift. She’d have drifted.’ He had turned to Jack and spoken almost angrily.
    â€˜What’s she up to now? Down there. Miles away on the beach. Wet. Soaking wet. What’s she up to?’
    â€˜She can’t be up to very much,’ Jack said.
    â€˜In her head. Bring a friend, Molly, Jean, someone you can chat to while we play golf. Have a drink in the bar with. Company. Not a bit of it. She just laughed and said she’d be okay on her own.’
    â€˜She likes being on her own.’
    Dan had been silent for quite a long time. The rain was almost over.
    â€˜I have given her so much. I can’t damn well work out what else it is that she wants.’
    â€˜I don’t suppose she wants anything, Dad. I think you’re just being a little paranoid.’ It had been a new word in his life. He was rather pleased to find an opportunity to use it. Dan laughed.
    â€˜Come on. The rain has stopped. Play can be resumed.’
    That had been the end of the summer holidays before Jack had gone back to school, before his father had been killed.
    â€˜And all is dross that is not Helen.’ Christopher Marlowe, 1564–1593. Prodigy. Prodigious progidy. Political activist and poet, like Patrick Pearse, d’Annunzio. Heros. Bobby Sands. His heroism was beyond doubt but Jack didn’t think that, had he lived, he would have stood up to the scrutiny of the literati.
    None of them shut their eyes to keep out reality.
    No time to do that if you are to become a prodigy … or even a hero.
    Oh thou art fairer than the evening air,
    Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars,
    Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter …
    Helen.
    He wondered what they thought when they had called her Helen. Had they seen all that?
    â€˜And all is dross that is not Helen.’
    Or had it been just another name?
    He thought he too would like to die at twenty-nine, prodigiously full of living.
    She called him for his breakfast after she returned from the village with her purchases, not just cigarettes, but also milk for his Cornflakes and the Irish Times . He always washed and dressed before he sat down to eat his breakfast so she had almost finished the paper and her second piece of toast when he arrived into the kitchen.
    â€˜The tea’s still hot.’
    â€˜Mmm. Lousy day’
    He poured some Cornflakes into his bowl and then some milk. He sat silently looking down at it for a while.
    â€˜I hate Cornflakes’
    The last time he had been to stay he had eaten Cornflakes several times a day. She said nothing.
    â€˜Really hate them.’
    He sighed.
    â€˜Soggy, tasteless, cardboard. That’s what they are, cardboard.’
    â€˜Appalled, stunned, sickened, outraged,’ she read the words from the paper. He got up and took his plate across the room to the sink. A