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Back Trespasses Save as PDF
Chapters (44)
  1. COVER
  2. HALF-TITLE PAGE
  3. BY THE SAME AUTHOR
  4. DEDICATION PAGE
  5. TITLE PAGE
  6. 2015
  7. THE IRISH FOR NO
  8. 1
  9. 2
  10. 3
  11. 4
  12. 5
  13. 6
  14. DÚIL
  15. 7
  16. 8
  17. 9
  18. 10
  19. 11
  20. 12
  21. CHIAROSCURO
  22. 13
  23. 14
  24. 15
  25. 16
  26. 17
  27. 18
  28. IN CALVARY’S FLOW
  29. 19
  30. 20
  31. 21
  32. 22
  33. 23
  34. 24
  35. WHEN I MOVE TO THE SKY
  36. 25
  37. 26
  38. 27
  39. 28
  40. 29
  41. 30
  42. 2015
  43. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
  44. A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

And the last one. Michael standing at the counter. He was smiling, although the quarrel they’d had was still on him, in the stooped, defeated set of him. Cushla’s hands were just in the frame, slipping a beer mat under his whiskey, his outstretched fingers almost touching her wrist. She looked at the doorway. For a moment Michael Agnew was there, his broad body turning away from her. And then he was gone.

2015

2015

All the times Cushla pictured this moment she had seen herself bending to a small boy, but a middle-aged man is standing in front of her. Beneath the glasses his eyes are very blue, not the violet shade of Tommy’s, but the icy colour of his mother’s. He is dressed carefully: navy pea coat, a denim shirt beneath a maroon sweater that reminds her of the day she soaked him. The skittishness is gone, she thinks, until he takes her hand and swings it.

I looked for you, Davy, she says, a mortifying old-lady quiver in her voice.

She had looked for him on the street, in every classroom. She made Gerry trawl each new edition of the telephone directory for their name. She taped Tommy’s funeral, pausing and replaying it again and again, searching for Davy among the mourners, but, in the press of police and news crews as shots were fired over the coffin, could not find him.

This is the man our Tommy killed, he says, pointing at the sculpture.

I know.

What are the chances?

Cushla knows that it is merely happenstance that has placed them, in this moment, beside Penny’s gauzy monument to Michael Agnew, that there is no more reason to it than there was to the ghastly fortuity that placed Tommy in Michael’s kitchen one wet morning. And yet.

Are you still Miss Lavery? he says.

I’ve been Mrs McTiernan for a long time, she says. And call me Cushla, for God’s sake.

I’ll try, he says. I thought you’d marry Mr Devlin.

Mr Devlin is in a civil partnership with a Mr Mulgrew. He’s still my best friend.

Do you have kids?

Three. And four grandchildren. What about you?

A daughter. She’s angry with me. I wasn’t up to it at the time.

Remorse, so natural to her it is like breathing, swells in her chest. Is it my fault, she almost blurts, that you were sent away and didn’t learn how to be a father? He sees her anguish, lets it take. For a moment she is afraid he will turn on her, but he squeezes her hand. She doesn’t know whether to apologise or thank him.

We see each other a bit now. It’s a start, he says.