So she prays for him: that he won’t be back too soon; that he won’t be gone too long. That
he falls into good company, please God, and doesn’t fall in love with an English girl. She prays every
night, kneeling by the side of her bed with the velvet green cushion beneath her knees, her elbows
making two dents in the blankets on the bed. She thinks of him when she is doing the silliest of
things, like peeling vegetables or folding clean clothes. She is as conscious of his absence as she is of
her own presence, and the days roll on with no news.
The wound in her chest never heals, but it scars over with thick, red skin. The brightness
in her eyes comes back, slowly, when Michael and Sean try to make her laugh by walking on their
hands, or by making her a cup of tea and surprising her with biscuits they bought for her especially
with their pocket money pennies.
No news is good news, she tells herself. Isn’t that what they say, she thinks, washing the
dishes after dinner, gazing out the window at the wet blanket that leaks into the sky and soaks the
earth.
When the postman arrives weeks later she knows. She runs out to meet him at the road, takes the
letter off him and walks back into the house, forgetting even to send her regards to his wife. She sits
in her place at one end of the kitchen table, using the butter knife to slice open the envelope in one
clean cut.
She goes over to the door and switches on the light and sits back down again.
He’s well, it says. He hasn’t found anything but has met a lad who is going to Australia and
he has decided to get the ferry over with him. She would reach for the phone to call him, but there
is no phone. She would write him a letter. But she reads on. He is getting the ferry tomorrow, it
says.
Tomorrow.
By the time she’s reading this letter, he’ll already have done half of the journey, more or
less. It’s about six weeks, he’s heard. He’ll write again when he can.