Chapters (43)
- Pronunciation
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Acknowledgments
“You and that bloody lamb,” Ceit said to me one day. “I’m sick of it. Nobody has a pet lamb! A dog, maybe, but a lamb?” It was well past the point where it needed me to feed it, but I was reluctant to let it go. We walked in silence up the track that led past Nicholson’s store. It was a fine spring day, a soft breeze blowing out of the south-west, the sky streaked with high cloud, like wisps of teased wool. The sun was warm on our skin, and winter seemed at last to have retreated to crouch in the dark, quietly awaiting the autumn equinox, when it would send word of its imminent return on the edge of savage equinoctial gales. But all that seemed a long way away during those optimistic days of late spring and early summer.
Most of the women were out on their doorsteps spinning and weaving. Most of the men were away at sea. The sound of voices raised in song drifted across the hills on the breeze, strangely affecting. It raised goose pimples all across my shoulders every time I heard it.
Ceit lowered her voice as if someone might overhear us. “Meet me tonight,” she said. “I’ve got something I want to give you.”
“Tonight?” I was surprised. “When? After dinner?”
“No. When it’s dark. When everyone else is sleeping. You can sneak out of your window at the back, can’t you?”
I was nonplussed. “Well, I could, I suppose. But why? Whatever it is, why can’t you just give me it now?”
“Because I can’t, stupid!”
We stopped at the brow of the hill, looking down over the little bay, and out across the Sound, back towards Ludagh.
“Meet me down at the quayside at eleven. The Gillies will be in bed by that time, won’t they?”
“Of course.”
“Good. No problem, then.”
“I’m not sure that Peter’ll be up for it,” I said.
“For fuck’s sake, Johnny, can you not do something without Peter for once!” Her face was flushed, and she had the strangest look in her eyes.
I was taken aback by her sudden passion. We always did things together, me and Ceit and Peter. “Of course I can.” I was a bit defensive.
“Good, just you and me, then. Eleven o’clock at the jetty.” And she stomped off across the hill towards the O’Henley croft.