Free The Heather Blazing by Colm Tóibín Page A

particular pleasure from the more subtle and half-disguised manifestations of it.
    He put the reports aside when Carmel came out with tea on a tray. She unfolded another deckchair and sat down beside him.
    â€œI shouldn’t be reading these now,” he said. “I should save them up for when it rains.”
    â€œWas the water warm?” she asked.
    â€œNo,” he said. “It was an ordeal.” He put his hands behind his head and laughed. “But I feel good after it.”
    â€œIt’s funny about the postman. I think he thinks that you can have him made permanent.”
    Carmel read a novel while he lay back and did nothing. Butthe lure of the reports was too great and after a while he found himself curious about some judgments which he had not followed closely at the time when they were made. He began to look through the booklets again. The morning slipped away.
    He became involved in the intricacies of the law, reading as avidly as though the papers were full of easy gossip. He was interested in the workings of his colleagues’ minds, their strategies, the words they chose. A few times he was disappointed by the arguments which were not followed through, by the vague assertions and the weak grasp of case law. There were several judgments which he read after lunch, written by his younger colleagues on the High Court, judgments he could not have written himself, since they were so detailed and all-embracing in their knowledge of technical matters such as patents, copyright and the intricacies of tort and property rights. He was more interested, however, in broader questions, in the cases which could raise much larger issues than the mere right and wrong of the arguments presented to the court.
    During the afternoon the sun disappeared behind the house and the front garden was left in shadow. He fell asleep for a while and when he woke up he saw that Carmel must have folded away her deckchair and gone inside. He still felt the excitement of the Law Reports, and regretted that he had read so much in one sitting and not left more for the days to come. He folded his deckchair too and left it resting against the wall of the house. He found Carmel in the kitchen.
    â€œI’m thinking of going into the town,” he said. “I’ll drop in on Aunt Margaret, but I won’t be too long.” He went out through the house to the car which was parked in the lane.
    The land looked good in the warm light of the summer evening. The hedges were thick with growth and the trees were in full leaf. As he drove towards the Ballagh he noticed the gradual appearance of bigger fields, better land, beech and oak trees. He noticed, too, the presence of big old solidhouses surrounded by stone walls. A few miles later, however, the land deteriorated once more: there were no crops grown here, none of the wheat or barley which the better land yielded, only cattle and sheep. There were no big houses either, just small vested cottages at the side of the road.
    It was the first time he had driven into the town this summer. But as he drove into Templeshannon he felt that he had always been here; the sudden clarity of his recognition made the rest of the world strange and unfamiliar. There had been changes: Bennett’s Hotel was gone and Roche’s Malting had several big tin lungs beside the old stone warehouses. He passed the Post Office and turned up Friary Hill, surprised for the moment at how narrow it was, how small the houses were.
    He pulled up outside his grandfather’s old house where his father had been born. His Aunt Margaret still lived here. She was in her eighties now—eighty-five maybe, eighty-six, he wasn’t sure—but her mind was still perfect, or so Carmel told him. Carmel was in constant touch with Margaret.
    He could see her sitting with her back to the bay window as he opened the garden gate. She was reading a newspaper, holding the print close up to her face. When he