【荆棘鸟】第五章 01

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"Let me buy the next one, old man," Paddy said genially¹ to his son. "I've got to take Auntie Mary to the Picnic Races luncheon², and I need moral sustenance³ if I'm going to get through the ordeal⁴ without Mum." Habit and awe⁵ are harder to overcome than people realize until they actually try to circumvent⁶ the conduct of years; Frank found he could not do what he longed to do, he could not throw the contents of his glass in his father's face, not in front of a bar crowd. So he downed what was left of his beer at a gulp⁷, smiled a little sickly and said, "Sorry, Daddy, I've promised to meet some blokes down at the showground."

"Well, off you go, then. But here, take this and spend it on yourself. Have a good time, and if you get drunk don't let your mother find out." Frank stared at the crisp blue five-pound note in his hand, longing⁸ to tear it into shreds⁹ and fling them in Paddy's face, but custom won again; he folded it, put it in his fob pocket and thanked his father. He couldn't get out of the bar quickly enough.

In his best blue suit, waistcoat buttoned, gold watch secured by a gold chain and a weight made from a nugget off the Lawrence goldfields, Paddy tugged¹⁰ at his celluloid collar and looked down the bar for a face he might recognize. He had not been into Gilly very often during the nine months since he arrived on Drogheda, but his position as Mary Carson's brother and heir apparent meant that he had been treated very hospitably¹¹ whenever he had been in town, and that his face was well remembered. Several men beamed at him, voices offered to shout him a beer, and he was soon in the middle of a comfortable little crowd; Frank was forgotten.

Meggie's hair was braided these days, no nun¹² being willing (in spite of Mary Carson's money) to attend to its curling, and it lay in two thick cables over her shoulders, tied with navy-blue ribbons. Clad in the sober navy-blue uniform of a Holy Cross student, she was escorted across the lawn from the convent to the presbytery by a nun and handed over to Father Ralph's housekeeper¹³, who adored her.

"Och, it's the wee bairn's bonnie Hielan' hair," she explained to the priest once when he questioned her, amused; Annie wasn't given to liking¹⁴ little girls, and had deplored¹⁵ the presbytery's proximity¹⁶ to the school. "Come now, Annie! Hair's inanimate; you can't like someone just because of the color of her hair," he said, to tease her.

"Ah, week she's a puir wee lassie-skeggy, ye ken¹⁷."

He didn't ken at all, but he didn't ask her what "skeggy" meant, either, or pass any remarks about the fact that it rhymed with Meggie. 

 

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