Long Goodbyes by Scott Hunter

he sat as if deep in thought in the armchair by the leaded window looking into the garden. Grace descended, a lace handkerchief dabbing at her powdered cheeks. She nodded and bent to some minor task at a parcel she intended to carry with her. There was nothing more to be done; it was just a matter of awaiting Mr Benjamin’s pony and trap. I felt choked, sad beyond words. I wanted the moment of separation to be over.
    ‘I wondered if…?’ Grace began, but her words dried up. I turned to find her standing awkwardly by the dining table, hands clasped beneath her bosom, her customary stiffness suddenly relaxed, as if a veil had been lifted to reveal the vulnerable woman beneath, but then she shook her head. ’Never mind,’ she said quickly. ‘It is nothing.’
    ‘Please,’ I said, ‘tell me. I can see that you are troubled.’ Indeed, I had never seen this side of her. She looked like a woman in fear of some terrible consequence.  
    ‘I just wondered if you had heard it too. The crying. In the night. Oh, but how silly it sounds in the light of day. I heard it distinctly - I thought perhaps a neighbour’s child had got itself lost. I came down and went into the garden but there was nothing. Nothing that could have made that sound…’ she finished, confused, her hands busy at the buttons of her dress.
    I was much taken aback. ‘Grace, I heard nothing at all. A dream, that is all. You were dreaming the sound.’
    ‘No.’  
    ‘An animal then, a stray sheep from the field. It has happened before.’
    ‘I know the voice of a child.’
    ‘Of course. I cannot explain it, then. You must put it down to some peculiarity of the wind. Sound can carry a long way given the right conditions.’
    ‘Maybe,’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘I simply do not know.’  
    A familiar clip clop in the lane and a jingle of reins ended our strange conversation. Grace’s relief was clear.
    ‘But here is Benjamin. Now, Jenny, help your husband outside.’

    I could not bear the silence of the cottage. Once the trap had rounded the corner I prepared myself for the short walk to Orla’s. A cardigan, my walking shoes, a cake tin with half its contents remaining. A closing of the door. A tear. And I was walking away, walking away from Jack. It felt like a separation of my soul from its maker. Take heart , I told myself. You have been through worse than this.
    Ahead of me a ginger-haired boy was sitting on the bench by the green. The sun slanted and obliged me to shield my eyes. When I looked again the child was gone.

    ‘I feel terribly guilty,’ Orla declared. ‘You must consider me the most fragile of creatures.’
    I shook my head. ‘You would do the same for me, would you not?’ And I knew she would.  
    Dusk had fallen and by now Jack and Grace would be far away, almost at Ringaskiddy where they were to spend the night before boarding the steamer. What troubled me most was the thought that Jack would be unaware of my absence. Our goodbyes had been perfunctory; he did not know me and may as well have been parting from one of his subalterns. I prayed that Grace would treat him gently. My face must have given me away, for Orla was looking at me oddly.
    ‘And Jack was happy to go with Grace?’
    ‘He was. He would have gone anywhere with anyone, I fear.’
    ‘But he was well? In himself, I mean.’
    ‘Well enough, I think, yes.’
    She seemed satisfied at this and we went on to eat a simple meal which Orla had prepared in anticipation. I noticed that she ate very little, although I found my own appetite oddly unaffected by the emotional upheaval of the day. When we had cleared away the trappings of our supper we sat together in the lounge. I could not help but recall the evening of Jack’s collapse and the anxious and fruitless faith I had placed in the local doctor. As we sat with the onset of dusk ushering the shadows ever inward I could see in my mind’s eye the expression etched upon Jack’s face as he gazed through the