|
The Blackwater Lightship - One
|
would be like to be married to someone like that - the mixture of
control and anarchy, the unevenness. She turned around and watched as
Hugh began to sing in Irish, his voice nasal and thin, but sweet as well
and clear. His eyes were closed. There were only about ten people left,
and two of these joined the song, softly at first and then more loudly.
She stood there and thought about Hugh: how easygoing he was and
consistent, how modest and decent. And she wondered - as she often did
in moments like this - why he had wanted her, why he needed someone who
had none of his virtues, and she felt suddenly distant from him. She
could never let him know the constant daily urge to resist him, keep
him at bay, and the struggle to overcome these urges, in which she
often failed.
He tried to understand this, but he was also frightened
by it, and often succeeded in pretending that it was nothing, it was her
period, or a bad mood. It would pass, and he would wait and find the right
moment and pull her back in again, and she would lie beside him, half
grateful to him, but knowing that he had wilfully misunderstood what was
between them. As she watched him now, his voice soaring in the last verse
of the song, clearly in love with the sounds of the words he was singing,
she knew that anybody else would have laid bare, in the way that he had
covered, the raw areas in her which were unsettled and untrusting.
[ Last Sample Page ] back to main page
[<
<
25.
|
|
|