Цитаты из книг — Клэр Киган

I go down steps until I reach the water. I breathe and hear the sound my breath makes over the still mouth of the well so I breathe harder for a while to feel these sounds I make, coming back.

Now that I know I must go home, I almost want to go, to get it over with. I wake earlier than usual and look out at the wet fields, the dripping trees, the hills, which seem greener than they did when I came. I think back to this time and it seems so long ago, when I used to wet the bed and worry about breaking things.

‘Ah, the women are nearly always right, all the same,’ he says. ‘Do you know what the women have a gift for?’ ‘What?’ ‘Eventualities. A good woman can look far down the line and smell what’s coming before a man even gets a sniff of it.’

The worst was yet to come, he knew. Already he could feel a world of trouble waiting for him behind the next door, but the worst that could have happened was also already behind him; the thing not done, which could have been – which he would have had to live with for the rest of his life.

Безліч людей стільки всього втратили тільки тому, що не скористалися чудовою нагодою нічого не казати.

What would life be like, he wondered, if they were given time to think and reflect over feelings? Might their lives be different or much the same – or would they just lose the run of themselves?

You don’t ever have to say anything. Always remember that as a thing you need never do. Many’s the man lost much just because he missed a perfect opportunity to say nothing.’

I have learned enough, grown enough, to know that what happened is not something I need ever mention.

'Where does thinking get us?' she said. 'All thinking does is bring you down.' She was touching the little pearly buttons on her nightdress, agitated. 'If you want to get on with life, there's things you have to ignore, so you can keep on.'

I stay awake for as long as I can, then make myself get up and use the chamber pot, but only a dribble comes out. I go back to bed, more than half afraid, and fall asleep. At some point later in the night – it feels much later – the woman comes in. I grow still and breathe as though I have not wakened. I feel the mattress…

The sun, at a slant now, throws a rippled version of how we look back at us. For a moment, I am afraid. I wait until I see myself not as I was when I arrived, looking like a tinker’s child, but as I am now, clean, in different clothes, with the woman behind me. I dip the ladle and bring it to my lips. This water is cool…

‘There are no secrets in this house, do you hear?’ I don’t want to answer back but feel she wants an answer. ‘Do you hear me?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘It’s not “yeah”. It’s “yes”. What is it?’ ‘It’s yes.’ ‘Yes, what?’ ‘Yes, there are no secrets in this house.’ ‘Where there’s a secret,’ she says, ‘there’s shame, and shame is something we…

A Note on the Text This is a work of fiction based in no part on any individual or individuals. Ireland’s last Magdalen laundry was not closed down until 1996. It is not known how many girls and women were concealed, incarcerated and forced to labour in these institutions. Ten thousand is the modest figure; thirty thousand…

‘Is it five you have, or six?’ ‘It’s five we have, Mother.’ She got up then and took the lid off the teapot, and stirred the leaves. ‘But it must be disappointing, all the same.’ Her back was to him. ‘Disappointing?’ Furlong said. ‘In what way?’ ‘To have no boy to carry on the name.’ She meant business but Furlong, who’d…

‘But what if it was one of ours?’ Furlong said. ‘This is the very thing I’m saying,’ she said, rising again. ‘Tis not one of ours.’ ‘Isn’t it a good job Mrs Wilson didn’t share your ideas?’ Furlong looked at her. ‘Where would my mother have gone? Where would I be now?’ ‘Weren’t Mrs Wilson’s cares far from any of ours?’…

They could be like young witches sometimes, «...». It was easy to understand why women feared men with their physical strength and lust and social powers, but women, with their canny intuitions, were so much deeper: they could predict what was to come long before it came, dream it overnight, and read your mind.