Читать онлайн «The Soldier's Song»
Автор Alan Monaghan
THE
SOLDIER’S
SONG
CONTENTS
Part One
I
II
III
IV
Part Two
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
Part Three
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
I
STEPHEN RYAN ESQ.
RSVP: RYEVALE HOUSE, LEIXLIP.
The kids in the street were fighting again. They were always squabbling over something, but this time it was serious. He heard scuffling and shouting, and the high-pitched voices rising to a crescendo – then a distinct slap, and the wail of a child crying. As he bent to look out through the lace curtain, he saw some of them darting into the gloomy hallway of the tenement building across the street. A welter of skinny legs and heads shaved for nits. Running to mammy, he thought, smiling to himself, though they’d probably all get a clip round the ear for their trouble. That was the hardest lesson they’d learn; that she didn’t care what side they were on.
He was still smiling as he turned back to the mirror and finished fastening his cufflink. He straightened his cuffs, enjoying the feel of the heavy, luxuriant cloth around his wrists, and then took the jacket from the back of a chair and slipped it on. Nearly ready now. He plucked the invitation from the shabby gilt frame of the mirror and looked at it for a few moments before slipping it into an inside pocket. Not bad, he thought, standing up straight and sticking out his chest as he surveyed himself in the glass. Quite elegant, in fact – although he couldn’t resist tugging the tie just a little more to one side.
He glanced down at the table, stacked with books, and thought about all those evenings he’d spent teaching sweaty, dull-eyed young lads to bluff their way through the civil service exams. The tedium, the endless bloody repetition.
But it had been worth it at a bob a time. The suit was the only thing he’d ever had tailored, and he smiled to himself again as he admired it in the mirror. It was a good suit and he carried it well. At nineteen he still had the gangly limbs of an adolescent, but he was tall and well proportioned and there was a certain grace in his bearing. With his fair hair brushed and his face freshly shaved, he thought he looked presentable, if not downright handsome. And definitely elegant. He could easily pass for a gentleman.‘Stephen!’
The reedy voice barely carried down the stairs, but Stephen’s face fell at the sound. What was it this time? More tea? Or a mug of porter? Or did the chamber pot need emptying again?
‘Stephen! Stephen!’
He walked out into the narrow hallway in his stockinged feet. ‘I’ll be up now!’ he shouted up the stairs, and scowled to himself as he went down the passage into the kitchen. Why couldn’t Joe see to him? He’d heard him come in from work hours ago – the slam of the hall door and then his heavy boots on the stairs as he went straight up to bed. The late nights were catching up on him. He’d been out until the small hours again last night, over in Liberty Hall with his union pals. That was all very well, but he still had to be up at the crack of dawn to queue with the corner boys and bowsies looking for work on the docks. If the Da was in better health he would have had something to say about that. Joe could do better. He’d been an apprentice coachbuilder before they were all locked out – regular work and good prospects. Now he was lucky if he got three days a week.
