Free Essential Stories by V.S. Pritchett

working and eyes gazing upwards and the green water swilling off its back until it had pulled Charlie back into his depth.
    Then Charlie would sit drying himself and listening to the scream of the birds while the black retriever yelped and shivered at his side. And if Micky were late for his meal when he returned, through drinking with the schoolmaster or going away for a day to the races, Charlie would say nothing. He would build up a big turf fire in the empty room and wait with the dog at his side, murmuring to it.
    But it took Charlie hours to make up his mind to these expeditions, and as time went on they became irregular. There were days when the absences of his brother left him alone with his fears, and on these days he would helplessly see the dog run after Micky and go off with him. Soon it would hardly obey Charlie’s call.
    “You’re taking the dog from me,” Charlie complained.
    “Sure if ye’d go out the dog’d follow you,” said Micky. “Dammit, what’s the use of staying inside? I don’t want the dog, but the poor bloody creature needs a run an’t follows me. It’s only natural.”
    “Natural. That’s it,” Charlie reflected. From him that hath not shall be taken even that which he hath. But he cried out sharply:
    “Sure you have it trained away from me.”
    Then they quarrelled, and Micky, thinking his head was getting too hot for his tongue, went out to the dunes and stood in the wind staring at the sea. Why was he tied to this weak and fretful man? For three years since the end of the war he had looked after Charlie, getting him out of hospital and into a nursing home, then to houses in the country, sacrificing a lot of his own desire to have a good time before he returned to Canada, in order to get his brother back to health. Micky’s money would not last for ever; soon he would have to go, and then what would happen?
    But when he returned with cooler head, the problem carelessly thrown off, he was kind to his brother. They sat in eased silence before the fire, the dog dreaming at their feet, and to Charlie there returned the calm of the world. His jealousies, his suspicions, his reproaches, all the spies sent out by his reconnoitring fears, were called in and with Micky he was at peace and no shadow of the future was on him.
    Yet as the months climbed higher out of July into August and swung there awhile, enchanted by their own halcyon weather, before declining into the cooler days, the question had to be faced. Micky knew and Charlie knew, but each wished the other to speak.
    It was Micky who, without warning, became impatient and spoke out.
    “Lookut here, Charlie,” he said one evening as he washed blood off his hands in the kitchen—he had been skinning and cleaning a couple of rabbits—“are you coming back to Canada with me in September?”
    “To Canada is it?” said the brother putting his thin fingers on the table and speaking in a gasping whisper. He stood incredulous. Yet he had expected this.
    “And leave me here alone!”
    “Not at all,” said Micky. “I said ‘You’re coming with me.’ You heard me. Will ye come with me to Canada?”
    Charlie drew in his lips and his eyes were restless with agony.
    “Sure, Micky, ye know I can’t do that,” he said.
    “But what’s to stop ye? Ye’re all right. Ye’re well. Ye’ve got your bit of pension and ye’ll be as comfortable as in your own home. Get out of this damn country, that’s what ye want. Sure ’tis no good at all except for old people and children,” cried Micky.
    But Charlie was looking out of the window towards the mountains. To go out into the world, to sit in trains with men, to sleep in houses with them, to stand bewildered, elbowed and shouldered by men in a new country! Or, as the alternative, to stay alone without Micky, left to his memories.
    “You’ll not leave me, Micky boy?” he stammered in panic.
    Micky was bewildered by the high febrile voice, the thin body shivering like a