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work adorned the classroom walls and attracted immediate attention by its remarkable maturity. Three of her paintings and two of her pencil drawings had once been accepted for an exhibition of children’s art in the Museum and Art Gallery in Belfast. Liam brought all his pupils there on a special outing one day, but they showed more interest in the Egyptian mummy, the huge, stuffed Irish wolfhound, and the ugly orang-utan than they did in their classmate’s art. Nora’s own effervescent enthusiasm was divided equally between the geological exhibition and the paintings of William Conor.
Liam remembered that day as clearly as if it had occurred last week. Nine years ago. He could hardly believe it. Nine years. He was not yet thirty then. His hair was still thick and wavy. Nora was eleven. She was a plain little girl with large, brown eyes and straight, dark hair cut severely square both above her eyes and across the back of her neck. She was going to be a nun, she said, and help to heal the sick and starving children in India. She showed little indication then of the beautiful young woman that she was today. The only vestige from her childhood was her large, dark eyes. All else was changed. Her hair was long and black and sparkled with highlights like a starry sky. Her skinny body had fleshed out fully. Especially her breasts. Her shapely, bodice-straining breasts. Liam had a fixation with the female breast that almost frightened him. He imagined that one day he would begin uncontrollably reaching out and fondling the breasts of every woman he would meet. The urge to unbutton girls’ blouses made his palms sweat and sent quivering sensations from his finger-tips to his loins. No one quickened his pubescent impulsions more than Nora Carrick.
At the age of eleven Nora had awakened in Liam only sympathy. She was a pale and sickly child back then and she remained so through her adolescence. She lacked conspicuously the robust good health of her contemporaries and for that reason perhaps she was a solitary little girl, one not given much to play. The high-spirited rough-and-tumble of the schoolyard was not for Nora. Then the summer before her twelfth birthday she experienced the first frightening surrender of her will to those dark powers that some, not being able to understand them, described as satanic. As a result, Nora was always serious, almost cheerless, with her large, pathetic eyes staring from a wan face. She seemed indifferent to the world, but her indifference was feigned, a defence that drove her in upon herself, forced her to develop a strength of will and purpose that did not fit so frail a constitution.
No one but her parents knew for how long Nora had been fighting the dark, possessive powers before that first awful capitulation in the schoolyard.
Mayanaam
vequinox
Manolis 