‘Please, sir,’ she said. ‘Please, sir. I don’t like it.’
But after a time she ceased to make any protestation and remained as silent as she had been at first. Twelve years or maybe fourteen, she said to herself, lying awake in her bedroom: as long as that, or longer. In her two different uniforms she would continue to be the outward sign of Mrs Shaughnessy’s well-to-do status, and her ordinary looks would continue to attract the attentions of a grey-haired man. Because of the field, the nature of the farm her father had once been barefoot on would change. ‘Kathleen’s field,’ her father would often repeat, and her mother would say again that a bargain was a bargain.
Acknowledgements
These stories first appeared in the following publications: Antaeus, Antioch Review, Atlantic Monthly, Best Irish Stories 2, A Book of Contemporary Nightmares, The Eighth Ghost Book, The Eleventh Ghost Book, Encounter, Good Housekeeping, Grand Street, Harper’s, Irish Ghost Stories, Irish Press, Irish Times, James Joyce and Modern Literature, Listener, Literary Review, London Magazine, New Review, New Yorker, Nova, Observer, Penguin Modern Short Stories, The Real Thing: Seven Stories of Love (The Bodley Head), Redbook, Spectator, The Times, Town, Transatlantic Review, Voices 2 (Michael Joseph), Winter’s Tales (Macmillan, London), Winter’s Tales from Ireland, Woman’s Journal.
‘Going Home’ and ‘Attracta’ first appeared as radio plays on Β Β C Radio Three.
Grateful acknowledgement is made to A T V Music Group for permission to quote from ‘Yesterday’ by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Copyright © Maclen Music, Inc., 1965. ATV Music Corp., 6255 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90028, for the USA, Canada, Mexico and the Philippines. Northern Songs Ltd for the rest of the world. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
The Collected Stories Page 171