Where Old Ghosts Meet - Kate Evans [11]
“It looks delicious. You still cook for yourself every day?”
“Yes, girl. I like everything fresh. Might as well boil up them newspapers,” she nodded at the pile stacked at the end of the table, “as eat that old garbage you get to the store. Besides, I like to do a bit of cookin’. Gives me something to do.”
The sun had edged its way around the corner of the house and fell diagonally across the table. Feeling the warmth on her shoulder and forearm, Nora looked up. “What a grand view you have from here.”
“On a day like today everything looks grand, girl. But there’s days I can’t see beyond the rise out there, the fog is that thick. It’s the same with the snow and sleet: everything blotted out, just like you’ve pulled down a blind. Can’t see a blessed thing then. But it can shift about just like that and then the cliffs and the rocks come out of nowhere, right at you. It’s all fine and grand so long as you’re in here lookin’ out, but if you’re out there lookin’ for a way in, it’s not so grand then.”
“Does the water freeze over in winter?”
“No, girl, not really. But time to time we get a skim of ice close to shore, and in the spring of the year the slob ice sometimes comes in the bay. The youngsters go pan hoppin’ then. You know, jumpin’ from one pan of ice to the other, playin’ about. When we were to the island we seemed to get it worse. Winter months I remember lying in the bed, a gale blowin’ outside. Nights like that you’d think the house would just take off with the lot of us still in our beds and be gone out to sea. Next mornin’ when we’d wake, the spray off the water would be froze solid on the windows to the front of the house.” She finished up her soup, wiping around the edges of her bowl with the last crust of bread.
“Matt never liked to be on the water,” she said suddenly. “Made him sick to his stomach, but now he loved the sound and the smell of the sea.” She dabbed at the corners of her mouth. “Of an evenin’ he’d walk up over the hills and down in the coves. He paid no heed to the weather. He’d just sit for hours and watch the waves, and the tide and the kelp floatin’ about on the rocks. Put him in mind of Ireland, he told me one time.” She began to tease at the woolly fringe of her placemat, picking apart the matted strands with her thumbnail.
Nora watched and listened.
“June 10, 1920,” Peg continued, feeling grateful for the silence and the lack of small talk. She turned to look out across the water to the horizon. “It was a beautiful day, the day he arrived on the island, not so hot as today, but sunny and bright.” She smoothed the unruly fringe with her fingertips and pressed it flat to the table. “I was in the garden to the side of the house getting the ground ready to set out the cabbages. Tell truth I saw his shadow before I saw him. It was a long dark shadow with a hat and it fell right across where I was to. When I come about, the sun was in my eyes so I had a hard time to see who was there. ‘That’s heavy soil you have there, it needs to be worked.’ Them’s the first words he spoke to me. It seemed like he’d been close by, watchin’ for a while and I didn’t know. I was stunned for a minute but by and by I got a good look at him. First thing I noticed was the white shirt; all proper he was done up in a suit and a soft kind of hat. He looked for all the world like a priest except that the clothes were not real black, just dark. The only thing out of place was the suitcase in his hand.”
Her eyes twinkled as she turned to Nora. “‘Well,’ I said to myself, ‘God be praised, it’s not every day a fine looking man in a nice shirt and suit shows up to my door.’ He was too, a fine looking man,” she added quickly. “Not a big man, but sort of regular size with a nice serious face. He was no youngster either; thirty-four years old he was then. ‘Am I speaking with Mrs. Barry?’ he says. ‘Yes,’ I said to him, ‘I’m Peg Barry.’
“With that he set the suitcase on the ground by his feet, took off his hat and began to tell me