Furlong found himself not joining in the talk so much as keeping it at bay while thinking over and imagining other things. - P99
This was the man who had polished his shoes and tied the laces, who‘d bought him his first razor and taught him how to shave.
Why were the things that were closest so often the hardest to see? - P100
The snow was still coming down, although timidly, dropping from the sky on all that was there, and he wondered why he had not gone back to the comforts and safety of his own home- Eileen would already be preparing for midnight Mass and would be wondering where he was - bu this day was filling up now, with something else. - P101
Crossing the bridge, he looked down at the river, at the water flowing past. People said that a curse had been placed on the Barrow. - P102
Furlong carried on uneasily, thinking back over the Dublin girl who‘d asked him to take her here so she could drown, and how he had refused her;
of how he had afterwards lost his way along the backroads, and
of the queer old man out slashing the thistles in the fog that evening with the puckaun, and what he‘d said about how the road would take him wherever he wanted to go. - P103
He went on feeling not unlike a nocturnal animal on the prowl and hunting, with a current of something close to excitement running through his blood.
Turning a corner, he came across a black cat eating from the carcass of a crow, licking her lips. On seeing him, she froze, then fled through the hedge. - P104
Crossing the river, his eyes again fell on the stout-black water flowing darkly along- and a part of him envied the Barrow‘s knowledge of her course, how easily the water followed its incorrigible way, so freely to the open sea. - P105
A change, it seemed, was coming over the girl and soon she had to stop, and vomited on the street.
‘Good girl,‘ Furlong encouraged her. ‘Get it all up. Get that much out of you.‘ - P107
As they carried on along and met more people
Furlong did and did not know,
he found himself asking
was there any point in being alive without helping one another?
Was it possible to carry on along through all the years, the decades, through an entire life, without once being brave enough to go against what was there and yet call yourself a Christian, and face yourself in the mirror? - P108
How light and tall he almost felt walking along with this girl at his side and some fresh, new, unrecognisable joy in his heart. Was it possible thatthe best bit of him was shining forth, and surfacing?
Some part of him, whatever it could be called -was there any name for it? - was going wild, he knew.
The fact was that he would pay for it but never once in his whole and unremarkable life had he known a happiness akin to this, not even when his infant girls were first placed in his arms and he had heard their healthy, obstinate cries. - P109
He thought
of Mrs Wilson,
of her daily kindnesses,
of how she had corrected and encouraged him,
of the small things
she had said and done
and had refused to do and say
and what she must have known, the things which, when added up, amounted to a life. - P109
Design by Faber
Cover image: Pieter Bruegel the Elder,
Hunters in the Snow (Winter), 1565, incamerastock/AlamyAuthor photo © Frédéric Stucin/Pasco & Co - P118
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