The South by Colm Tóibín Page A

back to the wall, he sat opposite her.
    “I had business to do, so it was easy for me to come,” he said.
    “I hoped you would have come anyway.” She smiled.
    “Your mother wrote to tell me you are living in a house in the mountains without water and electricity. Is that true?”
    “My mother interferes.”
    “I want to know how you are living.”
    “Did my mother not put all that in her letter?”
    “Her letter was almost as brief as yours. She wrote that you had been living in the mountains without water or electricity and she wished me to know that you had her backing in anything you now wanted to do. She made it sound as though there was something specific you wanted to do.”
    “There is.”
    “What is it?” he asked.
    “I’ll tell you in a moment. I want a drink and I want to know about Richard.” Tom went to the bar and she wrapped her arms around herself as though some awful cold had come down into the wide, rich room of the hotel.
    “This is very difficult,” he said when he came back, “it’s very difficult to talk here.”
    “Do you want to move?”
    “Where to? I can’t think of anywhere.”
    “Tell me about Richard,” she said.
    “He’s been at Saint Columba’s now for three years. He’s only got two years more.”
    “What will he do then?”
    “There’s always plenty to do at home but he’s been in Scotland staying with his cousins every summer now and I think he’ll go to a college there for a few years.”
    “What sort of college?” She tried to picture Scotland and the dreary cousins.
    “Oh, where he’ll learn about agriculture and farming so that when he takes over he’ll know what to do. He knows the farm pretty well.”
    “Tom, I want to sell my part of the farm. That’s what I’m here for.”
    “It doesn’t belong to you,” he said quickly, “you can’t sell it.” He seemed instantly angry.
    “It was mine before we married, it’s mine now. I want to sell it, Tom.” She could feel the blood reddening her face.
    “I wouldn’t have come to meet you if I’d known you were going to want something like this.”
    “I need the money. I have a different life now and I want to sell. You have your own farm. I’m going to sell whether you like it or not.”
    “You have no rights. The farm belongs to me, both farms belong to me, and Richard will get both of them. You will sell nothing.”
    “It’s my farm.”
    “Go to a solicitor then and find out. You have no right to sell, the property is mine, go and check it. I don’t mind what embarrassment you cause me. I have sat so many nights thinking about you.” His voice had quietened. She had never heard him talk like this before—she found it difficult to believe him.
    “I have thought of you too,” she said.
    “Think of me now, then, and think about Richard. I wantyou to come back with me. I have told Richard I’m meeting you. I have told him that I will ask you to come back.”
    “You shouldn’t have done that.”
    “I did it because I meant it. Seriously, I want you to come back now.”
    “Tom, listen to me. I married you and when I did I owned a large house and three hundred acres. It was in my mother’s name then, but it was mine. Are you telling me that I own nothing now and you will let me have nothing?” She tried to change her tone, to speak more quietly and firmly.
    “What’s ours is Richard’s, it’s for him, it’s not for us to sell, no matter how badly we behave.”
    “Will you buy it from me?”
    “I don’t need to buy it from you. I own it, but it’s not mine to sell or buy or dispose of. I told Richard I would ask you to come back. Do you wish me to tell him you want to sell half his land?”
    “You will tell him what you like. You can tell him his mother is impoverished.”
    “I can’t talk to you here.”
    She did not answer immediately, she didn’t know what he wanted: did he want to leave the hotel and walk the streets with her, did he want to move to her room, or did