In the Company of Others

Начало книги

The beams of their hired car scarcely penetrated a summer twilight grown dark as pitch in the downpour.

His wife’s fear of being hemmed in was only slightly greater than his own. As the road narrowed to a lane the width of a sheep track, he took Cynthia’s hand and peered out to sullen hedges pressing on either side. He was peevish at being crammed into a rain-hammered Volvo with a testy driver and a box of books, which for some bizarre reason they had thought they couldn’t live without.

He closed his eyes, then thought it best to keep them open. He was a lousy traveler. Indeed, the aggravation of getting from Atlanta to Dublin had exceeded his worst expectations. Following a delay of seven hours due to storms in the Atlanta area, the trip across the Pond had been an unnerving piece of business which shortened his temper and swelled his feet to ridiculous proportions. Then, onto a commuter flight to Sligo Airport at Strandhill, where-and this was the final straw, or so he hoped-they met the antiquated vehicle that would take them to the lodge on Lough Arrow. When he located an online Sligo car service a month back and figured how to dial the country code, hadn’t he plainly said this trip would celebrate his wife’s birthday as well as her first time in Ireland? Hadn’t he specified a nice car?

Читать дальше →