Barefoot Over Stones Read Online Free Page A

prospect. His lounge, ordinarily empty during the day, would become a flurry of tea-drinking and ham-sandwich-eating and his handful of hotel rooms, usually only inhabited by the odd returning emigrant, would have a purpose.
    ‘Business is business wherever it comes from,’ he said, shaking Cathy’s hand to seal the deal. ‘And tell me now, miss, are you the doctor’s housekeeper or secretary? It’s just that I have a bad knee that I have been meaning to get checked.’
    Cathy imbued her smile with a friendship she was finding hard to muster. ‘I am Richard’s fiancée, Mr Lovett, and I am sure he would be happy to look at your knee if you can make it across to us. Otherwise he does house calls, whatever best suits the patient’s needs.’
    ‘Ah, sure I’ll wait until he moves over here for the few weeks. He can have a look at my knee in passing, in between jobs. I should get a discount really, seeing as he will be my lodger.’
    ‘Richard won’t see you suffer with your knee, Mr Lovett.’ Cathy took herself back to the barn before she said something smart. Caharoe was a small place and it was better to keep on the right side of everyone. God, this doctor’s wife thing was shaping up to be great fun altogether.
    Tadhg watched her tall, sweeping figure cross the street. ‘Fiancée, if you don’t mind. Did you ever hear the like of it?’ he said to no one in particular, but he was already plotting the sliced-pan order for the sandwiches required for the makeshift surgery and its hungry patients.
    The builders took down the partition walls that a previous owner had erected, restoring the original proportions of the house. When all the months of structural work had been completed Cathy took to the decorating with feverish intent. She and her younger brother Donal came most evenings that summer to paint, sand and varnish every surface. Richard supplied the money for the restoration work and brought roughly made picnics to the workers. He was totally useless buthe sat keeping them company. If a song he loved came on the battered paint-stained radio he would release Cathy from her vice-like grip on the paintbrush and waltz her around the room. Donal would turn scarlet and look away embarrassed, painting even faster while his sister and Richard danced. When exhaustion overtook them they would sit on a bare floor sipping bottled beer and eating egg sandwiches followed by slices of jam sponge or cream rolls from the bakery on Earl Street.
    It took all of that summer to get the house and surgery completed but Cathy enjoyed every minute of it. Tadhg Lovett sold a mountain of sandwiches and had his knee fixed into the bargain. Cathy barely had time to get ready for their wedding, which was set for 29 September, Michaelmas Day. She chose a simple shift dress to the knee in the softest shade of ivory. She wore no veil and her long dark hair hung loose around her shoulders. She carried a clutch of fiery orange-blossomed crocosmia picked for her by her mother. Not for the first time Richard stood captivated by Cathy’s radiance. That day he was sure he was the luckiest man alive.
    As a wedding present for them both, Cathy got a brass nameplate made for their barn. She read it now twenty years later surrounded as it was by the climbing bark of mature wisteria and clematis.
Michaelmas House
Caharoe
Dr Richard Shepherd
General Practitioner
    First Richard, this house and then Alison had been the focus of her life.
    She stood hesitating before she put her key in the front door. Her heart was breaking with loneliness for Alison and tears welled in her eyes. Richard was across at Lovett’s knocking back whiskey as he always was on a Sunday night. When exactly had it happened? When had her life shrunk to such a small, predictable package of care and duty? As she turned the key on an empty Michaelmas House Cathy Shepherd decided to go easy on herself. She was lonely, that’s all, and it was best not to dwell on things that could