Three Summers Read Online Free Page B

kitchen door, the big box of groceries hoisted on his shoulder, looking down at her. ‘Here, let me do that,’ he’d said, when she’d gone to take the box from him, and she’d watched his shapely fingers arranging the jars and packets on the kitchen table, felt the warmth from his body as she stood beside him. After all these years it still gave her a whip of fury to remember how she’d burned for him.
    â€˜Nan? What’s the matter?’
    â€˜Nothing.’ Margaret May fought hard for a smile. ‘Just a goose walked over my grave.’
    â€˜Oh, don’t !’ Ruth grabbed at her grandmother’s hand. ‘Don’t say that!’
    â€˜It’s just an expression,’ said Margaret May. ‘Have you ever seen a goose in Barinjii?’ She rose from the bench in a single fluid movement. ‘You’ll have a different life from me,’ she told the girl firmly, ‘a different life altogether.’ She nodded and handed the letter back. ‘Here, you take care of that while I get on with my watering.’
    â€˜Let me help.’ Ruth jumped up and reached for the watering can.
    â€˜No need,’ said Margaret May, taking it from her, and Ruth felt that in this small gesture Nan was closing a door on her, gently but firmly, sending her away.
    â€˜Please let me carry it,’ she pleaded.
    â€˜There’s no need, it’s empty,’ said Margaret May. ‘I can manage.’ She twirled the big can from her hand. ‘Light as a feather, see?’

four
    On this beautiful morning Father Joseph was also out in his garden, his shabby black cassock moving amongst the rows of tomato plants. Back home in Ballyroan he hadn’t seen a tomato till he was ten years old, that blessed day he’d run a message for Mrs Stavely at the White Stag Hotel and she’d given him threepence and a round red fruit he’d thought was some kind of plum. He’d bitten right into it and the juice had spurted down his chin and he thought he’d never tasted anything so grand – like eating a bit of sunshine, a warm summer’s day on your tongue. The next time he’d got hold of a tomato had been in the seminary: a whole basket full of them left on the steps by some kind soul.
    Two tomatoes in ten years! And now he had a whole garden full of them, all types and sizes: Harbingers, Cardinal Kings, Ruby Queens. The Harbingers were at their peak: the old man parted the leaves of a healthy bush and found a great plump beauty, so ripe it was, so ready, that the moment he cupped his hand beneath it, the fruit fell from its stem into his palm. He sniffed the perfume of its skin and dropped it gently into his pocket – with some of Mrs Ryan’s bread, a dab of fresh butter, black pepper and a few leaves of Maidie’s fresh basil he’d have a feast fit for a king!
    He bent to pick up his gardening fork and then straightened again. A young girl was running across the paddock outside his back fence. It took him a moment to recognise that the girl was Maidie’s little granddaughter. Ruth, she was called.
    Only she wasn’t so little now. His old eyes widened, he was astonished by the size of her. Why, she was almost a young woman! ‘Ruth,’ he called. ‘Ruth Gower! Come over here a minute!’ He hadn’t seen that one in church for a long, long while. ‘Ruthie!’
    The girl kept on running. ‘Can’t stop! Something I have to do!’ she flung back over her shoulder into a mass of wild brown hair.
    The old man returned to his tomatoes. ‘She’ll keep,’ he muttered, reaching for the fork again. But as he dug the prongs into the rich crumbly earth a frown deepened across his broad forehead. ‘Aaw,’ he breathed, recalling how Maidie had got the idea in her head that the girl would be going to the university down in Sydney. Sydney University! That sink of iniquity – hardly a week