Free The Good People by Hannah Kent Page A

and you in the house with the boy? Well, what when you’re off to sell your eggs and butter?’
    ‘I can sell eggs and butter to those who come collecting for it.’
    ‘And when you’re in the fields in the summer? Doing the work of two to keep the thatch over your head?’
    ‘I can’t be thinking of summer yet.’
    ‘Well then, Nóra, do you think it best to be sitting the dark hours through on your own? There are girls from up north, their families are starving. Would it not be a comfort to know you’re taking one in? Would it not be a comfort to have an extra soul about the place this winter?’
    There had been sense in what Peg had said. Later that day, sobbing to ruin on her bed while the child howled by the dying fire, Nóra understood that she was slipping. She was not like Martin. Her grandchild was no comfort to her; he was burdensome. She needed someone who might quiet the shrieking wean, who might help her resurface after she was hit with the waves of her grief. Someone who was not from the valley, who would not spread knowledge of Micheál’s withered legs amongst her neighbours, would not say he was astray in the head.
    It was a ten-mile walk to Killarney through coarse, moory land, brindled in autumn, past small mud cabins huddled by the roadside, the sound of cocks and hens from within, waiting to be let out. Open, flat-boarded carts pulled by donkeys clattered past Nóra on the lane, and she shrank back against the briars and holly of the ditches to let them pass. The men nodded to her, reins in hand, while their sleepy-eyed, shawled wives, stared out across the morass to the mountains in the distance: Mangerton, Crohane, Torc, their familiar mass towering purple against the sky.
    Nóra was glad to leave her own house, glad for the hours of walking to clear her head and breathe in the air. Since Martin had died, she had kept to her cabin, refusing to join the night-visiting for stories and song as she once had. Nóra didn’t like to admit it, but she felt bitter towards the other women of the valley, found their sympathy cloying and insincere. Some had come to her door with food and offers of condolence and distraction, but Nóra, ashamed of Micheál, had refused to invite them inside to sit at the fire. Since then, in that cruelly imperceptible manner of grown women, the valley wives had slowly closed their company to her. There was nothing overt about their exclusion. They still greeted her when she met them at the well most mornings, but there was a way they had of turning in amongst themselves that made her feel unwanted. They did not trust her, Nóra knew. Those who stayed inside their cabins had something shameful to hide: bruises, poverty, sickness.
    They must know about Micheál, Nóra thought. They must suspect something is not right with him.
    She felt suffocated by the constant neediness of her grandchild. He made her uneasy. The night before she had tried to encourage him to walk, holding him up so that his feet brushed the ground. But he had thrown his red head back, exposing the pale length of his throat and the sharp ridges of his collarbone, and screamed as though she was pressing pins into his heels. Perhaps she ought to fetch the doctor again. There were plenty of doctors in Killarney, she knew, but accustomed as they were to the deep purses of tourists who came for the lakes, she doubted they would consider looking at Micheál for what she could afford. It was not as though the first doctor had been able to do anything for him. She would be taking food out of their mouths and for no good.
    No. In the valley the sick were faced with the usual crossroads of priest, blacksmith or graveyard.
    Or Nance, said a small voice in her head.
    Killarney was alive with noise and smoke. New Street and High Street bristled with paupers and children begging halfpennies, and the buildings along the many filthy lanes were close and oppressive. Those who had come to sell their produce jostled for space