Five Years of Marriage to Mr. Bradford novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Salthill

He was on the sea wall at Salthill forty minutes before I was.

I saw him from the far end of the promenade, a tall dark figure in a navy coat, with his back to the town and his face to the bay.

He had bought an umbrella.

It was yellow, with a duck's head for a handle, and it was too small for him.

I stopped walking and put my hand over my mouth, because I was laughing.

"It was the only one in the shop," Leonard said, when I reached him. "The man said it was for children."

"It suits you."

"It's two euro."

"You got a bargain."

"I'm told this is how the Irish say hello." He took a breath. "Dia dhuit."

"Dia duit."

"That's what I said."

"You said dhuit. Like a cat sneezing."

"Dia duit," he tried again.

"Better. Don't use the d-h-u, it's old."

"Fiona told me that on the phone, and I wrote it down wrong."

"You rang Fiona?"

"Twice. She said I had the vowels of a tractor." His mouth moved at one corner. "I'm taking lessons. Ten euro an hour, from a retired man in the flat below, and he thinks I'm a Protestant."

I walked beside him along the sea wall with six feet of cold air between our shoulders.

It was an easy, strange hour.

The wind off the bay stung my cheeks, and children ran past with ice creams in the rain, and a man with a spaniel stopped to ask whether I was the dancing one.

I said yes, and the man said it was a grand job, and walked on.

Leonard watched the man go.

"They love you here."

"They love a story."

"It's the same."

"It isn't. A story's what they want from you. Love is what they give you after they know you're a person."

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