Foster

It was like learning to ride the bike; I felt myself taking off, the freedom of going places I couldn’t have gone before, and it was easy.

Mrs Kinsella gives me a bar of yellow soap and my facecloth, the hairbrush. As we gather all these things together, I remember the days we spent, where we got them, what was sometimes said, and how the sun, for most of the time, was shining.

Just then a car pulls into the yard. It’s a neighbouring man I remember from the night of cards.

‘Edna,’ he says in a panic. ‘Is John about?’

‘He’s out at the milking,’ she says.

‘He should be finishing up now.’

He runs down the yard, heavy in his Wellington boots, and a minute later, Kinsella sticks his head around the door.

‘Joe Fortune needs a hand pulling a calf,’ he says. ‘Would you ever just finish the parlour off? I have the herd out.’

‘I will, surely,’ she says.

‘I’ll be back just as soon as I can.’

‘Don’t I know you will.’

She puts on her anorak and goes down the yard to the milking parlour.

I sit restless and wonder should I go out to help but come to the conclusion that I’d only be in the way. So I sit in the armchair and look out to where a watery light is trembling across the scullery, shining off the zinc bucket. I could go down to the well for water so she would have the well water for her tea when she gets back home tonight. It could be the last thing I do.

I put on the boy’s jacket and take up the bucket and walk down the fields. I know the way along the track and past the cows, the electric fences, could find the well with my eyes closed.

When I cross the stile the path does not look like the same path we followed on that first evening here. The way is muddy now and slippery in places. I trudge along, towards the little iron gate and down the steps. The water is much higher these days. I was on the fifth step that first evening here, but now I stand on the first and see the edge of the water reaching up and just about sucking the edge of the step that’s one down from me. I stand there breathing, making the sounds for a while to hear them coming back, one last time. Then I bend down with the bucket, letting it float then swallow and sink as the woman does but when I reach out with my other hand to lift it, another hand just like mine seems to come out of the water and pull me in.

8

It is not that evening or the following one but the evening after, on the Sunday, that I am taken home.