Free The Truth About Love by Josephine Hart Page B

got his wish. They opened fire later the same day in Croke Park at a Gaelic football match. Thirteen killed, including three children. Bloody Sunday, they called it. The Anglo-Irish War: long, long and bloody story. Ah it must be the whiskey. I’m lost in history again. I didn’t expect to tell you that, about my sister and her husband, I mean. Nor about his cousin. It shall remain our little secret.”
    “A confession, Bishop?”
    “Confession to a non-Catholic is indeed a humiliation. To a Catholic, Thomas, it holds out the possibility of absolution.”
    “And the memory of sin? Can anyone absolve that?”
    “We try, Thomas. We try.”

        SIX
    I do not drive a Mercedes, nor do I drive a Volkswagen. I drive an English car. Other than the Volkswagen which, I’m told, is assembled in Dublin—the first non-German franchise—few cars are manufactured in Ireland. Even in daylight the scenery in this part of Ireland does not obtrude. I am not dragged unwillingly by dramatic beauty into the world about me. This is not a colourful county. Fierce colour in Ireland is most often found in language. I, of course, am content not to be ravished. September is here. It is cold and it is wet. They do not have Indian summers in Ireland. They do not normally have summers at all. This year’s sudden summer days were an aberration.
    There are few cars on the road. It is an under-populated country. This fact, whether demonstrated by the comparatively empty roads or by the nation’s difficulty in creating a successful modern economy due to its small population, which becomes each year ever smaller, inevitably leads one in any conversation, however short, to the tragedy of emigration. Which leads to the tragedy of the Famine and its cruel mathematics. Subtly in the mind of the listener the shadow of guilt arises, unjustified yet somehow essential if the conversation is to continue.
    I am a careful driver. Harriet is not. This thought comes each time I drive. It is a connection to her that I need. I remind myself almost daily of my dependence. How else is my life—this shadow life without her—to be lived? Harriet. Dear Harriet. Not dear Harriet. When I first saw you, you were wearing white. Remember? You wore dresses then. I remember the dress you wore that first day. How easy it was. My terrible, easy first time. It should have been just that.
    I turn slowly into the main street and approach the market square, which is used as an unofficial car park by the town. I succumbed some time ago to the amour-propre of the few I know here and no longer refer to this place as a village. As I manoeuvre my car into a space close to the library entrance, a task that is less than challenging since there are only four other cars, someone shouts. Then screams. And Olivia O’Hara, her head buried in a book, steps straight out in front of me, sways slightly and seems to disappear, while still holding her book, beneath the wheels of my car. My foot and the brake are in violent collision, my wrist twists to kill the ignition. I almost fall out of my car. People are running across the road. Olivia O’Hara is lying on her side facing the wheels, her arms outstretched towards them like a lover. She is still. Then she rolls over onto her back and looks up at me.
    “Oh God! It’s the German! You nearly knocked me down, Mr. Middlehoff Indeed you did knock me down. You nearly killed me.”
    I lean over her and with another man whom I recognise as Mr. Brannigan help her to her feet. Her face is slightly grazed and blood from her knee seeps through her woollen stockings.
    “I’ll drive her to the hospital. My car’s just here.”
    Mr. Brannigan wears a long, heavy raincoat and leans slightly on his furled umbrella, as though his height embarrassed him and he wished to shrink a little. He speaks with the fast rhythms of a man from Cork, an accent with which Bridget has made me familiar. It is one she mocks and mimics.
    “I don’t think a