excerpt
“Yes. A mile or so outside the village. His farmhand Bill Neely just left, so my father needs someone like you to do the things you’ve just told me you can do. You weren’t lying to me, were you?”
“Oh no. I can find people here to speak for me. Even in Corrymore. My uncle, Seamus Slattery, lives there.”
“Seamus Slattery is your uncle?” the girl cried in surprise.
“My mother’s brother.”
“I can hardly believe it. We lived with the Slatterys until I was six or seven years old. My twin sister, Nora, and I. My father wasn’t the kind of man who could raise two young girls on his own.”
“You had no mother?”
“She died giving birth to us.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. My own mother died six years ago.”
“And your father?”
“He abandoned us.”
“Well, if you’re Seamus Slattery’s nephew, you’re definitely hired.” She smiled at him again, but the frown still rippled his forehead below the yellow curls. She reached into the basket and brought out a light, golden confection. She held it out to him. “Have some yellow-man, yellow man.”
“Thank you,” he said. He tried to pick a lump from the paper, but it was stuck. He had to hold her hand steady and pull the sweet, sticky pieces of confection apart. She looked at him and smiled at his serious face. Michael felt himself blush.
“You have strong hands,” she said.
“I’ve worked with them all my life,” he replied. He felt a quivering inside of him. He wanted to hold her hand again.
“All your life,” she repeated. “You’re not more than twenty years old.”
“Twenty-one,” he said.
“That’s a long time to have worked with your hands.” She was teasing him again. “Twenty-one years of digging and raking and hoeing and ploughing. Twenty-one years of pulling flax and dipping sheep. And look what big, strong hands you have. What will they be like when you are eighty-one?” She had taken one of his hands in hers and was looking at it like a palmist, turning it over and back. “They’re strong hands,” she said. “Are they gentle hands too?”
He did not know what to say. He looked at his boots; cow manure had caked on one of them.
Manolis Aligizakis 