The Shelter of Neighbours by Eílís Ní Dhuibhne Page B

this even though his own belief has been veering towards atheism for many years.
    â€˜Two things are good for man,’ Alex says.
    Olivia knows what he is going to say. He knows reams of poetry off by heart, is always quoting something. She waits. But he doesn’t finish the line. Instead, he sighs again deeply. Olivia finishes it for him. ‘The heat of the sun, and the fire on the hearth.’ Those are the two things that are good for man, according to an Icelandic poet, writing in the Middle Ages. She says the lines, and squeezes Alex’s hand, and thinks it’s just a stove, for God’s sake. But she doesn’t say that.
    They stand and look at their small field, and at the bungalows below, and the foaming ocean. It is the middle of July. You have to keep reminding yourself of that. There is still some hope that some sort of a summer will come. Winter is a long way off.

It is a miracle

    It is the last weekend before the schools reopen. Let’s call it the feast of the First Harvest. Everyone is celebrating, with wine and schnapps and shellfish, with paper hats and Chinese lanterns. But what good is any of that if you have no children? And no friends.
    â€˜We should have thrown a party,’ Sara says to Thomas, her partner. Thomas smiles and says cheerfully, ‘We are throwing a party. At each other.’ He picks up his wine glass and pretends to toss it to Sara. She raises hers and says, ‘Cheers’, not for the first time this evening.
    Thomas is wearing a baggy yellow T-shirt printed with a photograph of a moose and the words ‘Cheer up! Everything will be ok !’ A few years ago the company that insures his car gave their customers badges and T-shirts and caps decorated with this silly mantra. Thomas wears the T-shirt whenever he’s in festive mood, and at many other times as well.
    â€˜Two’s company!’ He pats Sara on the bottom. He has hung Chinese lanterns on the porch and has put on an Abba cd in the living room. He forgot to the get paper hats.
    â€˜Yes,’ Sara says wanly. Sometimes she finds Thomas’s proverbs and maxims comforting, wise and profound. At other times, they annoy her to death with their unbelievable predictability. Thomas is not unaware of the range of her reactions but he loves his clichés far too much to abandon even a single one. On the contrary, he is constantly adding to his collection, savouring particularly trite specimens.
    He squeezes her arm and chuckles.
    She pushes his hand away. ‘I’m going for a swim,’ she says.
    â€˜What, now?’ Thomas is taken aback. It’s almost nine o’clock and he’s just about to cook the crayfish.
    â€˜Just a quick dip.’ Sara is pleased. It’s not easy to dent Thomas’s complacency. ‘My last evening here!’
    She slips down the path to the lake before he can stop her. Not that he would. Not that he would dream of it. He looks after her for a few seconds, bemused and as hurt as he ever can be, and then he finishes setting the table for dinner.
    The mosquitoes bite. They are mustered in smudged clouds over the reeds, ready to stab as soon as she approaches the water’s edge. But Sara takes off her old robe, hangs it on its hook at the edge of the dock, and lets them do their worst. She’s well sprayed with insect repellent, so that only the bravest, most relentless, monsters succeed in puncturing her skin. Still, they hover around her, as always at this time of evening, making her itchy, until she slides from the wooden steps into the soft, cold water and swims away from the shore.
    She swims out into the lake, keeping her head above the water so that she does not lose a second of the sunset – the sky behind the dark fringe of trees on the western shore is a lovely orangey colour. It looks edible, like a dark chocolate filled with sweet cream. She’d love to eat it or grasp it or somehow hold onto it, but as she