Free The South by Colm Tóibín Page A

been travelling for over nine hours; the sun was low and mellow in the sky.
    The village was sheltered below the summit in a small dip; it stretched out beyond a stone church and a narrow street of houses towards a valley. The houses had been built from the yellow-brown stone of the mountains and the rock behind the village was bare so that it was difficult at first to make out some of the houses. A woman leading cows through the village turned and looked when she saw the jeep and then walked on. The jeep moved slowly behind her. When Katherine asked Miguel which house was theirs, he pointed towards the end of the street.
    *   *   *
    The house looked extremely small with just a door, one window and a balcony. It seemed to be the smallest and shabbiest in the village; some of the others had three and four storeys and huge windows. Inside, however, it was much larger. There was a bedroom with a balcony and a kitchen after that. At the end of the corridor there was a long room with two windows which looked out to the valley. Off that there was a toilet and another bedroom.
    They walked through the house without speaking. It was Michael Graves who discovered the long room at the end of the corridor and took her down to look at it. She went into the toilet and pulled the chain. “It works,” she said. “The house is wonderful.” She pulled back the shutters on one of the windows and walked out on to the small balcony.
    The church lay over to the right. Beyond the long valley were snow-covered mountains; the valley was darkening as evening came down. The small hills to the left were capped by a pine forest. She stood there and gripped the railings. The others had gone back inside. She looked down on the valley, trying to register it carefully as though she was preparing an inventory of each shade in the valley and the hills, as though she wanted to be able, at some time in the future, to remember exactly what this felt like.
    She was disturbed by Michael Graves, asking her, “Have you been upstairs?”
    “What? Is there an upstairs?”
    “Yes, there’s a bedroom up there. Come on I’ll show you.”
    He led her to another door off the corridor. Up narrow wooden stairs and into an attic room which had walls of varnished pine, and a small dormer window which looked out on to the mountains and the valley. There was a double bed but no mattress.
    “Miguel has gone back down,” Michael Graves said. “He says he has to get the things now. It’ll take him a few hours.”
    “I hope he’s going to bring a mattress and intends to get some food. We should have got food down below.”
    “There’s another floor beneath the kitchen where animals and wood can be kept,” he said.
    They walked back down to the ground floor and into the front room. They took chairs out on to the balcony. Katherine lit a cigarette.
    “What are you going to do?” Michael Graves asked.
    “I’m going to stay,” she said.
    “Are you in love with Miguel?”
    “I love him, yes.”
    “But you’re not sure?”
    “Of course I’m not sure,” she said.
    “Why are you doing this?”
    “I’m trusting my luck. I have made up my mind I’m going to stay.”
    “You did that today, didn’t you?”
    “I don’t know when I did it. Give me a few minutes—to be quiet.”
    They sat in silence as the housemartins swarmed about the village. They listened to the water flowing fast down from the hills above. After a while she spoke again.
    “I always feel you live a double life in Barcelona. I think we’re just a small part of what you do there.”
    “Are you jealous? Do you want me all to yourself?” Michael asked her.
    “No, I’m curious. I don’t know anything about you.”
    “And how eager you are to learn things!”
    “Can’t we talk directly without you twisting the conversation?”
    “You want me to answer your questions?”
    “Yes. What sort of teaching will you do in Barcelona?”
    “To be straight, I have a job in a school from