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rooms her heart raced and she lifted her face, listening. The sense
of emptiness rushed in on her and she would have to go out into the dose
and listen to the muted drumming from the barn where Hamilton seed
potatoes. Nor did the presence of Hamilton and Yank in the house
sooth her. The tiled floor that had sounded all day to the tap and
shuffle of her mother’s feet now clashed harshly under the feet of the
men.
The absence of Martha brought back with acute poignancy the death
of Andrew. Although all three of them felt this in varying degrees, the
feeling of restraint prevented then from talking about it to each other.
The older woman had absorbed into herself, silently and unobtrusively,
the void and bitter longing left by Echlin’s death. The illusion of
youth seemed nurtured and prolonged by the presence of familiar old age.
But now Martha was gone and there was no-one to stand bet we an them and
the passing days. Sometimes, as the three of the l sat at their evening
meal, safe inside the circle of lam]light with the night pressing against
the window, the keening of a dog across the fields ior.de the familiar place
strange and hostile to Sarah, and they seemed lifted up in the hollow of
the ancient rath, adrift without guidance on a dark and desolate sea.
They wore now passing through the short glimmering days of the year,
days of drenched storm riven twilight. very day from horizon to horizon
the sky was filled with matted clouds creeping to the east. At noon for
an hour, an unearthly pearly light fell on the walls and fields, a light
that pressed on the head and hurt the brain, and those who had t be out
at that time did so with averted heads, hurrying quickly from doorway to
doorway. Then the baffled sun drew away and the countryside slid back
