Walk the Blue Fields: 'Pure magic.' Colm Tóibín

by Claire Keegan

Before a year had passed the futility of married life struck her sore: the futility of making a bed, of drawing and pulling curtains. She felt lonelier now than she’d ever felt when she was single.

So much of her life has revolved around things that never happened.

She walked for half an hour with her bare feet in the frothy edge of the sea, then turned back along the cliff path and watched her husband, at five minutes past the appointed hour, slam the car door and turn the ignition. Just as he was taking off, she jumped into the road and stopped the car. Then she climbed in and spent the rest of her life with a man who would have gone home without her.

Stack, like every man who has never known a woman, believed he knew a great deal about women.

He laughed. It was a queer sort of laugh, closer to sadness than amusement. For a moment, she imagined his life and felt for him. Did anyone ever know what another was going through?

most of the time people crazy or sober were stumbling in the dark, reaching with outstretched hands for something they didn’t even know they wanted.