and his coming out in his striped underpants and everyone getting the giggles. Much cajoling to get admitted and then seven of them packed into a room, like children, unable to restrain themselves, still laughing, still intoxicated. The young accountant coming back in every few minutes and threatening to turf them out on the road if they didn’t stop their malarking. No tomorrow.
When she held the letter up her eyes brimmed with emotion. She knew it would be there and it was. But for her own stubbornness he could be there himself, talking away and they would be crossing the road to Ownies for toasties and coffee and Maddie plying Sven with pompous little questions about farming. It was a pale blue envelope with wavelets of paler blue and it had a lot of stamps. She walked to the bench under the tree, saw how damp it was but sat there anyhow.
‘Can Elmer and me go for a walk?’
‘Don’t go far.’
It was as if Sven were there talking to her, she could hear his voice, that soft bedtime voice reassuring her:
So I am back in my old room in my parents’ house in the eastern part of the country, close to the German border. From my window I have a view of a church steeple and a water colour sky. It has been raining the whole week.
Because I got to know you so much through our listening to music together it is now very important to me. There was an old keyboard in the room here that I got tuned and I play on it, songs we played if you remember. I am also getting on with my studies. I plan to be a bit more intensive on that part of my life as it’s a good way of forgetting. How is your place coming along? Does the roof still leak? Maybe not, maybe Declan came. My strongest memory is our going out that night just to make certain no one had squatted in it and playing the car tape very loud and the music went off outside and down to the lake and we made us a dance in the dark under the stars - ‘You can get it if you really want, you can get it if you really want, but you must try, try and try, try and try.’
I meet vibrant, red haired, attractive, husky voiced women every time I go down the street. Hahaha. That’s not true. It’s a shame people can’t express themselves better. Listen to the tapes I guess. Of course I’m thinking about all things small and big.
She decides to write two letters, the safe and the unsafe and would ponder over which one she should send:
The other morning I went up the track to give an eye to the ewes in Dessie’s field because they are about to lamb. There was a fox coming across the opposite field, lifting its leg every other minute and then it crossed a stream and I wondered if it saw me or if it would attack the ewes. Smokey our stray dog spotted it and chased it, the two of them flying like mad over the fields, barking, their coats a mirage of red and grey, rounding on each other and then the fox disappearing into a hole and Smokey hurrying back, panting, waiting for his reward, the big, dozy, pregnant ewes oblivious of his valour . . .
She put it down and began her second letter:
Believe me I did not want wedding bells, I hoped for something to happen between us that would be permanent and maybe it has. Life is a roller coaster and we never know, do we?
A scream broke in on her thoughts and then the crunch of brakes and someone running and her turning to look. What she saw was a car veering onto the pavement to avoid an oncoming Jeep and Maddie thrown up into the air like a ball, then coming down again and dropping under the Jeep, then a deathly silence and as she runs, the driver of the Jeep, a woman wearing a man’s hat, has her head out the window perplexed. Fred from the garage comes running, shouting, ‘Don’t move the car . . . don’t move it ... the fan is under there . . . it’ll cut the hands off him’ and as he grips the front wheels he mimes to the woman that he is going to push them back slowly, slowly. Eily and those who have foregathered watch aghast.
‘Hello
When she held the letter up her eyes brimmed with emotion. She knew it would be there and it was. But for her own stubbornness he could be there himself, talking away and they would be crossing the road to Ownies for toasties and coffee and Maddie plying Sven with pompous little questions about farming. It was a pale blue envelope with wavelets of paler blue and it had a lot of stamps. She walked to the bench under the tree, saw how damp it was but sat there anyhow.
‘Can Elmer and me go for a walk?’
‘Don’t go far.’
It was as if Sven were there talking to her, she could hear his voice, that soft bedtime voice reassuring her:
So I am back in my old room in my parents’ house in the eastern part of the country, close to the German border. From my window I have a view of a church steeple and a water colour sky. It has been raining the whole week.
Because I got to know you so much through our listening to music together it is now very important to me. There was an old keyboard in the room here that I got tuned and I play on it, songs we played if you remember. I am also getting on with my studies. I plan to be a bit more intensive on that part of my life as it’s a good way of forgetting. How is your place coming along? Does the roof still leak? Maybe not, maybe Declan came. My strongest memory is our going out that night just to make certain no one had squatted in it and playing the car tape very loud and the music went off outside and down to the lake and we made us a dance in the dark under the stars - ‘You can get it if you really want, you can get it if you really want, but you must try, try and try, try and try.’
I meet vibrant, red haired, attractive, husky voiced women every time I go down the street. Hahaha. That’s not true. It’s a shame people can’t express themselves better. Listen to the tapes I guess. Of course I’m thinking about all things small and big.
She decides to write two letters, the safe and the unsafe and would ponder over which one she should send:
The other morning I went up the track to give an eye to the ewes in Dessie’s field because they are about to lamb. There was a fox coming across the opposite field, lifting its leg every other minute and then it crossed a stream and I wondered if it saw me or if it would attack the ewes. Smokey our stray dog spotted it and chased it, the two of them flying like mad over the fields, barking, their coats a mirage of red and grey, rounding on each other and then the fox disappearing into a hole and Smokey hurrying back, panting, waiting for his reward, the big, dozy, pregnant ewes oblivious of his valour . . .
She put it down and began her second letter:
Believe me I did not want wedding bells, I hoped for something to happen between us that would be permanent and maybe it has. Life is a roller coaster and we never know, do we?
A scream broke in on her thoughts and then the crunch of brakes and someone running and her turning to look. What she saw was a car veering onto the pavement to avoid an oncoming Jeep and Maddie thrown up into the air like a ball, then coming down again and dropping under the Jeep, then a deathly silence and as she runs, the driver of the Jeep, a woman wearing a man’s hat, has her head out the window perplexed. Fred from the garage comes running, shouting, ‘Don’t move the car . . . don’t move it ... the fan is under there . . . it’ll cut the hands off him’ and as he grips the front wheels he mimes to the woman that he is going to push them back slowly, slowly. Eily and those who have foregathered watch aghast.
‘Hello
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