Read Brooklyn for Free Online Page B

hungry.
    "A bun," she said, "maybe and a cup of tea."
    "Enjoy your last cup of tea, so," he said.
    "Do they not have tea in America?" she asked.
    "Are you joking? They eat their young in America. And they talk with their mouths full."
    She noticed that, when a waiter approached them, Jack asked for a table almost apologetically. They sat by the window.
    "Rose said you were to have a good dinner later in case the food on the boat was not to your liking," her brother told her.
    Once they had ordered, Eilis looked around the café.
    "What are they like?" she asked.
    "Who?"
    "The English."
    "They're fair, they're decent," Jack said. "If you do your job, then they appreciate that. It's all they care about, most of them. You get shouted at a bit on the street, but that's just Saturday night. You pay no attention to it."
    "What do they shout?"
    "Nothing for the ears of a nice girl going to America."
    "Tell me!"
    "I certainly will not."
    "Bad words?"
    "Yes, but you learn to pay no attention and we have our own pubs so anything that would happen would be just on the way home. The rule is never to shout back, pretend nothing is happening."
    "And at work?"
    "No, work is different. It's a spare-parts warehouse. Old cars and broken machinery are brought in from all over the country. We take them to pieces and sell the parts on, down to the screws and the scrap metal."
    "What exactly do you do? You can tell me everything." She looked at him and smiled.
    "I'm in charge of the inventory. As soon as a car is stripped, I get a list of every single part of it, and with old machines some parts can be very rare. I know where they're kept and if they're sold. I worked out a system so everything can be located easily. I have only one problem."
    "What's that?"
    "Most people who work in the company think they're free to liberate any spare part that their mates might need them to take home."
    "What do you do about that?"
    "I convinced the boss that we should let anyone working for us have anything they want within reason at half the price and that means we have things under control a bit more, but they still take stuff. Why I'm in change of the inventory is that I came recommended by a friend of the boss. I don't steal spare parts. It's not that I'm honest or anything. I just know I'd get caught so I wouldn't risk it."
    As he spoke, he looked innocent and serious, she thought, but nervous as well as though he was on display and worried how she would view him and the life he had now. She could think of nothing which might make him more natural, more like himself. All she could think of were questions.
    "Do you see Pat and Martin much?"
    "You sound like a quiz master."
    "Your letters are great but they never tell us anything we want to know. And Pat and Martin's letters are worse."
    "There's not much to say. Martin moves around too much but he might settle in the job he has now. But we all meet on a Saturday night. The pub and then the dancehall. We get nice and clean on a Saturday night. It's a pity you're not coming to Birmingham, there'd be a stampede for you on a Saturday night."
    "You make it sound horrible."
    "It's great gas. You'd enjoy it. There are more men than women."
    They moved around the city centre, slowly becoming more relaxed, beginning to even laugh sometimes as they talked. At times, it struck her, they spoke like responsible adults-he told her stories about work and about weekends-and then they were suddenly back as children or teenagers, jeering one another or telling jokes. It seemed odd to her that Rose or their mother could not come at any moment and tell them to be quiet, and then she realized in the same second that they were in a big city and answerable to no one and with nothing to do until five o'clock, when she would have to collect her suitcases and hand in her ticket at the gate.
    "Would you ever think of going home to live?" she asked him as they continued to walk aimlessly around the city centre before having a meal at a