Read The Truth About Love for Free Online Page A

awaited the island swimmers?”
    “No, I didn’t know that. He was proud to be asked to row the boat. It’s been a club rule since the O’Driscoll child drowned. Oh, four years ago must be now. Her uncle, a Tralee man, up for the weekend was rowing the boat. Couldn’t swim. Poor little Alice O’Driscoll fell off the boat—got into difficulties and went down. Some on the island and on the shore could hear the man, distraught, crying out his prayers, ‘Mary, Mary, Mother of God, save her. Save her.’ Shocking story. If the uncle could swim Alice would have lived. It wasn’t the Mother of God who was needed that day. It was a swimmer! So that’s what we decided to do with the lesson of Alice O’Driscoll and that’s how Malachy Martin, the best swimmer in half the County of Kerry, got his promotion. Strings were pulled and we got a Sergeant who in his spare time, and indeed in more than that, goes out to the lake to teach the town’s children how to swim. Poor Malachy, he misses County Kerry. Told me it took him ages to get used to living in a place ‘without even a hint of the sea.’ Does something to the soul, he thinks. Have you ever heard him sing ‘Thank God We’re Surrounded by Water’? He’s got a great voice. Loves the sea and sent to a Midlands town. Isn’t that the way? Ambition comes at a price. He divides swimmers into body types. Told Olivia she was for the breaststroke. Her shoulders, evidently. The lad’s body was long, you know. His long arms made him a crawler. ‘Crawler’s body, Tom. Long, narrow. The breaststroke boys are built differently, stockier, heavier, in my opinion, Tom.’ Who’d challenge him anyway? We learn from tragedy. Slowly. Anyway, I didn’t know you’d chatted with the lad. He was shy in the beginning. Not like Olivia and as for Daragh, he’s neither one nor the other. Hidden. But the lad—he was shy all right but good with …”
    “Strangers?”
    “Yes.”
    “I thought he was a very kind boy.”
    “He was. About the gate again: I want to mark the place with something important. Something he loved. And part of him is still there. Though they found nothing.”
    “It’s hard to know what to say to you Mr. O’Hara.”
    “I suppose it must be. To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t know what to say myself. That’s why poor Father Dwyer now says nothing. Perhaps it’s best in these circumstances to say nothing. Or maybe there’s a language we don’t know yet. You speak two languages and yet you’re stumped.”
    “I speak four languages. This not to boast but to agree with you. ‘I’m stumped,’ as you put it, in all of them. And Mr. O’Hara, I need to think about your request. If I decide to part with the gate I won’t sell it. I will give it to you.”
    “I did not come here for charity!”
    “Forgive me. I did not mean …”
    “I want to buy it. I want to buy it for him. A present for him. You wouldn’t understand but I didn’t buy a new bike for him. Bought him a second-hand bike. Last birthday. What meanness made me do that? He was grand about it but I knew he’d set his heart on the new one. Madness, the way my mind’s working now. But I need to do this. I know it’s an important thing, the gate. It’s nearly eight feet high. The helmet is bronze. I’m not a fool. Though you may be surprised to hear it, my mother sculpted in bronze—exhibited in London, at the Royal Academy summer show, often. I know the gate’s approximate value. And now I have the money.”
    “I did not mean to suggest you did not.”
    “Yes, you did. And normally you’d be right. I have little money. I am the worst kind of poor man, a man who came from a family that was not rich—you know, we’re not a rich country—but well off. Very well off indeed. Land. Which they sold. My mother’s family, three sisters, two brothers all living and living well on the income from their capital. Freemen of the city of Dublin in recognition of their charitable work. My two