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The Belfast Girl at O’Dara Cottage
Anne Doughty


Readers LOVE Anne Doughty:‘I love all the books from this author’‘beautifully written’‘would recommend to everyone’‘Fabulous story, couldn't put it down!’‘Looking forward to the next one.’Prepare to be spirited away to rural Ireland in this stunning new saga series from Anne Doughty.







ANNE DOUGHTY is the author of A Few Late Roses, which was nominated for the longlist of the Irish Times Literature Prizes. Born in Armagh, she was educated at Armagh Girls’ High School and Queen’s University, Belfast. She has since lived in Belfast with her husband.


Also by Anne Doughty (#u8888f6c1-5ca0-5ee0-8bd2-f3e958898e78)

The Girl From Galloway








Copyright (#u8888f6c1-5ca0-5ee0-8bd2-f3e958898e78)






An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2019

Copyright © Anne Doughty 2019

Anne Doughty asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © May 2019 ISBN: 9780008328801


Praise for Anne Doughty (#u8888f6c1-5ca0-5ee0-8bd2-f3e958898e78)

‘This book was immensely readable, I just couldn’t put it down’

‘An adventure story which lifts the spirit’

‘I have read all of Anne’s books – I have thoroughly enjoyed each and every one of them’

‘Anne is a true wordsmith and manages to both excite the reader whilst transporting them to another time and another world entirely’

‘A true Irish classic’

‘Anne’s writing makes you care about each character, even the minor ones’


For Peter


Contents

Cover (#u3b19d4a7-9cfa-5db6-9fe2-00b29fc737ff)

About the Author (#uca7d8347-f312-5c68-87b2-18680c4170d5)

Also by Anne Doughty (#u231fc832-bb0b-504c-b53d-380b5b529ea7)

Title Page (#u0315f9c3-0e1b-5e8d-9fa3-ad3cae553fd3)

Copyright (#u1605b2ec-41d9-5eb0-a68e-9c8dd833b92b)

Praise (#u46fe87bd-0216-5bcb-9119-c926a472007b)

Dedication (#ud535762f-44a6-5035-b0d8-67ac828187e9)

Chapter 1 (#u91f27f91-7ec6-580c-8cf2-4a37168ff58d)

Chapter 2 (#ue80a10c8-d981-5778-ac20-210124797614)

Chapter 3 (#u248c992c-0d9b-579a-968f-7056bde0eb3c)

Chapter 4 (#u00b06536-e782-5f70-ab68-8cfdb868fc61)

Chapter 5 (#ubc97aa99-beab-5227-9c11-c5db3a2a81fe)

Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)

Dear Reader (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter One (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Two (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)


Chapter 1 (#ulink_f486e88f-db8b-53f8-8e42-14a94c73d88b)

SEPTEMBER 1960

As the ten o’clock bus to Lisdoonvarna throbbed its way northwards, my spirits rose so sharply I found it almost impossible to sit still. Brilliant light spilled across the rich green fields, whitewashed cottages dazzled against the brilliant sky and whenever we stopped, people in Sunday clothes climbed up the steep steps, greeted the driver by name and settled down to chat with the other passengers.

How incredibly different my train journey from Dublin to Limerick. Under the overcast sky of a rain-sodden evening, we steamed westwards, stopping at innumerable shabby stations with hardly a soul in sight. I caught glimpses of straggling villages and empty twisting lanes, weaving their way between deserted fields. The further we went, the more I felt the heart of Ireland a lonely place. It was so full of a sad desolation that I longed for the familiar busy streets of the red brick city I had left two hundred miles away.

Through the dirt-streaked windows of the rattling bus, I took in every detail of a landscape that delighted me. Flourishing fuchsia hedges, bright with red tassels, leaned over tumbled stone walls. Cats dozed on sunny windowsills. A dog lay asleep in the middle of the road, so that the bus driver had to sound his horn, slow down, and wait until he moved. In the untidy farmyards, littered with bits of old machinery, empty barrels and bales of straw, hens scratched in the dust clucking to themselves, while beyond, in the long lush grass of the large fields, cattle grazed. They looked as if they came straight out of the box which held the model farm I played with at primary school.

Some hillsides were decorated with sheep, scattered like polka dots on a billowing skirt. There were stretches of bog seamed with stony paths, the new, late-summer grass splashed a vivid green against the dark, regular peat stacks and the purple swathes of heather. I imagined myself making a film to show to my family on a long winter’s evening but this country had been excluded from their list. An unapproved country, like an unapproved road, I thought suddenly as we stopped in Ennistymon, in a wide street full of small shops liberally interspersed with public houses.

An hour later, in the Square in Lisdoonvarna, it was my turn to weave my way through the crowd of people waiting to meet the bus. A short distance beyond the rusting vans, the ancient taxi and the ponies and traps by the bus stop, abandoned rather than parked, I spotted a row of summer seats under the windows of a large hotel. They were all unoccupied, so I went and sat down. It was such a relief to have a seat that didn’t shake and vibrate every time the driver changed gear.

It was now after one o’clock. As I watched, the bus disappeared in a cloud of fumes, followed at intervals by the other vehicles. In a few moments the Square was completely deserted. I looked around me. Directly opposite was a war memorial, set within a solidly built stone enclosure. The walls were hooped with railings and pierced with silver-painted gates, hung between solid pillars. Each sturdy pillar was capped by a large, flat flagstone, white with bird droppings. Within the enclosure, grass grew untidily around young trees and shrubs already touched with the tints of autumn. Dockens pushed their rusty spikes through the locked gates and dropped their seeds among the sweet papers and ice-cream wrappers drifted against the wall.

Except for the clatter of cutlery in the hotel behind me and the running commentary of the sparrows bathing in the dust nearby, all was quiet. Nothing moved except a worn-looking ginger dog of no specific breed. He trotted purposefully across the red and cream frontage of the Greyhound Bar, lifted his leg against a stand of beachballs outside the shop next door, and disappeared into the open doorway of a house with large, staring sash windows. A faded notice propped against an enormous dark-leaved plant in the downstairs window said ‘Bed and Breakfast’.

‘What do I do now?’ I asked myself.

Just at that moment, the ancient taxi I’d seen collecting passengers from the bus came back into the Square. To my surprise, the driver went round the completely deserted space twice before stopping his vehicle almost in front of me. He got out awkwardly, a tall, angular man in a battered soft hat, looked around him furtively and began to move towards me.

I concentrated on the buildings straight ahead of me, a cream and green guest-house called ‘Inisfail’, a medical hall, a bar, a grocer’s, and a road leading out of town, signposted ‘Cliffs of Moher’ and ‘Public Conveniences’. The bar and the grocer’s were part of a much larger building that occupied almost all one side of the Square and extended along the road towards the cliffs and conveniences as well. Against the cream and brown of its walls and woodwork, ‘Delargy’s Hotel’ stood out in large, black letters.

‘Good day, miss. It’s a fine day after all for your visit.’

He was standing before me, touching his hand to the shapeless item of headgear he’d pushed back on his shiny, pink forehead. The sleeves and legs of his crumpled brown suit were too short for his build and his hands and feet projected as if they were trying to get out. In contrast, the fullness of his trousers had been gathered up with a leather belt and his jacket hung in folds like a short cloak.

‘Ye’ll be waitin’ for the car from the hotel, miss. Shure, bad luck till them, they’ve kept you waitin’,’ he said indignantly.

I shook my head. ‘No,’ I replied. ‘I’m not staying at a hotel.’

‘Ah no . . . no . . . yer not.’

He nodded wisely to himself as if the fact that I was not staying at a hotel was plain to be seen. He had merely managed to overlook it. He sat himself down at the far end of my summer seat and for some minutes we studied the stonework of the war memorial in front of us as if the manner of its construction were a matter of some importance to us both.

He turned and smiled again. His eyes were a light, watery blue, his teeth irregular and stained with tobacco.

‘Have yer friends been delayed d’ye think? Maybe they’ve had a pumpture,’ he suggested.

He seemed quite delighted with himself for having seen the solution to my problem and he waited hopefully for my reply. It had already dawned on me that I wasn’t going to go on sitting here in peace if I didn’t give him some account of myself.

I knew from experience that country people have a habit of curiosity based on self-preservation. Strangers create unease until they have been labelled and placed. And he couldn’t place me. In his world people who travel on buses and have suitcases are to be met. I had a suitcase, I had travelled on a bus, but I had not been met. I glanced at him as he pushed his hat back further and scratched his head.

‘I’m just having a rest before my lunch,’ I said, hoping to put him out of his misery. ‘I’m going on to Lisnasharragh this afternoon,’ I explained easily.

‘Ah yes, Lisnasharragh.’

Again, he nodded wisely, but the way he pronounced the name produced instant panic. He’d said it as if he had never heard of it before.

‘Ye’ll be having a holiday there, I suppose?’ he said brightly.

I was slow to reply for I was already wondering what on earth I was going to do if Lisnasharragh had disappeared. It had been there in 1929 all right. On the most recent map I’d been able to get hold of, the houses referred to in the 1929 study I’d found were clearly shown, but that didn’t mean they were inhabited now in 1960. Lisnasharragh might be one more village where everyone had died, moved away, or emigrated to America. There had been no way of finding out before I left Belfast.

‘No, I’m not on holiday,’ I began at last ‘I’m going to Lisnasharragh to do a study of the area,’ I explained patiently.

All I wanted was for him to go away and leave me in peace to think what I was going to do about this new problem.

‘Are ye, bedad?’

His small eyes blinked rapidly and he leaned forward to peer at me more closely.

‘And yer going to write about it all, I suppose, eh?’

He laughed good-humouredly as if he had made a little joke at my expense.

‘Well. . . yes . . . I suppose I am,’ I admitted reluctantly.

He leapt to his feet so quickly he made me jump. Then he grabbed my suitcase, stuck out his free hand towards me and pumped my arm vigorously.

‘Michael Feely at your service, miss. There’s no one knows more about this place than I do, the hotels, the waters, the scenery, everything. I’ll be happy to assist you in your writings.’

He tossed my heavy suitcase into his taxi as if it were an overnight bag and opened the rear door for me with a flourish.

‘You’ll be wantin’ yer lunch now, miss,’ he said firmly. ‘I’ll take you direct to the Mount. The Mount is the finest hotel in Lisdoon, even if it isn’t the largest. All the guests are personally supervised by the owner and guided tours of both scenery and antiquities are arranged on the premises for both large and small parties, with no extra charge for booking.’

‘Thank you, Mr Feely,’ I said weakly, as he closed the door behind me.

As he’d taken my suitcase, I couldn’t see I had much option. I settled back on the worn leather seat, glanced up at the rear-view mirror and saw his pink face wreathed in smiles. He looked exactly like someone who has struck oil in their own back garden.

The Mount was a large, dilapidated house set in an enormous, unkempt garden where clumps of palm trees and a pair of recumbent lions with weather-worn faces suggested a former glory. He parked the taxi at the back of the house between a row of overflowing dustbins and a newish cement mixer, picked up my case, marched me round to the front entrance, across a gloomy hall and into a dining room full of the smell of cabbage and the debris of lunch.

He summoned a pale girl in a skimpy black dress to remove the greasy plates and uneaten vegetables from a table by the window, pulled out my chair for me and left me blinking in the strong sunlight that poured through the tall, uncurtained windows.

Across the uneven terrace the lions stared unseeing at groups of priests who strolled on the lawns or lounged in deckchairs. Against a background of daisies and dandelions or of striped canvas, their formal black suits looked just as out of place as the bamboo thicket and the Japanese pagoda I could see on the far side of the garden.

My soup arrived. I stared at the brightly coloured bits of dehydrated vegetable floating in the tepid liquid and recognised it immediately. Knorr Swiss Spring Vegetable. One of the many packets my mother uses ‘for handiness’. But she does mix it with cold water and leaves it to simmer on a low heat while she’s downstairs in the shop. My helping had not been so fortunate. It was full of undissolved lumps. I stirred it with my spoon and wondered what the chances were that Feely would return to supervise me personally while I ate it.

Fortunately he didn’t. My untouched bowl was removed without comment. I wasn’t expecting much of the main course, so I wasn’t too disappointed. Underneath a lake of thick gravy, overlooked by alternate rounded domes of mashed potatoes and mashed carrots, I found a layer of metamorphosed beef. It was tough and tasteless just like it is at home, but I did my best with it. The vegetables weren’t too bad and my plate with its pile of gristle was safely back in the kitchen without Feely having reappeared.

I looked around the shabby dining room as I tackled the large helping of prunes and custard that followed. There were now two very young girls, dressed identically in skimpy black skirts, crumpled white blouses and ankle socks, beginning to lay the tables from which lunch had just been cleared. Out of the corner of my eye I watched them brush away crumbs and place paper centrepieces over the stiffly starched cloths. The table next to mine was beyond such treatment. Well-anointed with gravy, the heavy fabric was dragged off unceremoniously to reveal underneath a worn and battered surface ringed with the pale marks of innumerable overflowing drinks.

I smiled to myself and thought of Ben, my oldest friend. How many rings had we wiped up from the oak-finish Formica of the Rosetta Lounge Bar in these last two months? He would miss me tomorrow when there was only Keith in the kitchen and no one to help him with the cleaning and the serving. The thought of doing the Rosetta job on my own appalled me. If it hadn’t been for Ben the whole episode would have been grim indeed.

‘Hi, Lizzie, what are you doing up so early?’

He greeted me as I stood disconsolately at the bus stop outside the Curzon Cinema waiting for a Cregagh bus. It was the first Monday in July, seven-thirty in the morning. I was sleepy and cross, my period had just started, and I was trying to convince myself it wasn’t all a horrible mistake.

‘Holiday job up in Cregagh.’

He looked me up and down, took in my black skirt, my surviving white school blouse and the black indoor shoes I’d worn at Victoria.

‘It wouldn’t by any chance be the Rosetta, would it?’ he asked, as he squinted down the road at an approaching double decker.

‘How did you guess?’

‘Read the same advertisement. That’s where I’m for too,’ he announced, grinning broadly. ‘When I get my scooter back, I can give you a lift. Save you a lot in bus fares.’

I could see how delighted he was and the thought of his company was a real tonic, but something was niggling at the back of my mind.

‘But weren’t you going to Spalding for the peas, Ben?’ I asked uneasily. ‘It’s far better paid.’

‘You’re right there,’ he nodded. ‘But Mum’s not well again,’ he said slowly. ‘She won’t see a specialist unless I keep on at her. You know what she’s like. So I cancelled and the Rosetta was all I could get. It could be worse,’ he grinned. ‘It could be the conveniences in Shaftesbury Square.’

When the bus came, we climbed the stairs and went right to the front so we could look into the branches of the trees the way we always did when we were little.

Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, I counted silently, as I scraped up the last of my custard, but before the prune stones had told me who I was to marry, a cup of coffee descended in front of me and my future disappeared before my eyes.

The coffee was real coffee, freshly made Cona with a tiny carton of cream parked in the saucer. I could hardly believe it. I sipped slowly and went on watching the pale, dark-haired girls as they humped battered metal containers full of cutlery from table to table. At least we didn’t have that to do at the Rosetta. The restaurant only opened in the evenings, at lunchtime we only served bar food, sandwiches and things in a basket. But there were other jobs just as boring as the endless laying of tables.

Every morning at eight o’clock, we started on the mess the evening staff had to leave so they could run for the last bus from the nearby terminus. Stacks of dishes, glasses and ashtrays from the bar. After that the staircases and loos to sweep and mop before we started on lunches. That first day, the manageress set us to work separately and by four o’clock when we staggered off to the bus stop we were not only bored but absolutely exhausted. Next morning Ben had an idea.

‘C’mon, Lizzie, let’s do it all together. I’ve worked out a system.’

‘But what’ll we say if she catches us?’

‘Wait and see,’ he grinned.

I knew there was no use pressing him, because he’s good at keeping secrets. You could sooner get blood out of a stone.

We were standing under one of the Egyptian kings who provide the decor at the Rosetta with Ben holding a table on its side and me vacuuming under it, when she appeared.

‘I thought you were supposed to be doing the washing-up, Ben,’ she said crossly.

‘Oh, that’s all finished,’ said Ben cheerily. ‘But you were losing money on it.’

‘What? What d’you mean?’

She wrinkled up her brow, peered into the kitchen behind the bar, and saw it was all perfectly clean and tidy.

‘Time and motion,’ he said easily. ‘I did you a complete survey yesterday. No charge of course, it’s just a hobby of mine, but when I processed the results last night I really was shocked. . .’

He put the table aside, pulled out a chair and motioned to her to sit down.

‘You must never stand while talking to employees, it’s bad for your veins. Senior staff must safeguard their well-being, it’s one of the first principles of efficient management.’

Standing there with the vacuum cleaner in one hand and a clean duster in the other, I had an awful job keeping my face straight. Ben is a medical student, so he does know about veins; it was the time and motion study that really got me. But it worked a charm. After that, she left us to do the jobs in whatever way we liked. Often, we even enjoyed ourselves.

As I finished my coffee I began to wonder how much my lunch was going to cost. Just because it wasn’t very nice didn’t mean it couldn’t be expensive. Then there would be the taxi fare to Lisnasharragh and a night in a hotel if I’d got it wrong. Suddenly, I felt very much on my own, a solitary figure in an empty dining room. Ben and the Rosetta and the familiar things in my life were all a very long way away. I was painfully aware of being a stranger in a strange place.

It was some time before Feely breezed in. He ignored my unease about not having had the bill, said the car was at the door and he was all ready to take me to Lisnasharragh. Which way did I want to go?

According to my map, there was only one possible way. I took a deep breath and explained carefully that the village lay at least five miles away on the coast road to the Cliffs of Moher. But it might be as much as six.

I might as well not have bothered. As soon as we were out of town, he dropped to a crawl, following the thin, tarmacked strip of road between wide, windswept stretches of bog. Nothing I said had the slightest effect upon him and we continued to crawl along, furlong by furlong, through totally unfamiliar territory. For once in my life, I was more anxious about the distance itself than about the hole this luxurious journey would be making in my small budget. As each mile clicked up on the milometer, I became more agitated. Once it showed seven miles, I would know I’d got it wrong. Either I had misread my map, or worse still, Lisnasharragh no longer existed.

As we approached the five-mile mark, the bog ended abruptly. On my left the land rose sharply and great outcrops of rock dominated the small fields. On the other side of the road, the much larger fields dropped away into broad rolling country with limestone hills in the distance. Bare of any trace of vegetation, the Hills of Burren stood outlined grey-white against the blue of the sky.

We turned a corner and there ahead of us was the sea. Sparkling in the sun across the vast distance to the horizon, it broke in great lazy rollers over a black, rocky island about a mile from the shore. Beyond this island, in the dazzle of light, like the backs of three enormous whales travelling in convoy, were the Aran islands. Inisheer, Inishman and Inishmore.

My heart leapt in sheer delight. For weeks now these names had haunted me with their magic. Now the islands themselves were in front of me. Nothing lay between me and them except the silver space of the sea. As if a window in my mind had been thrown open, I felt I could reach out and touch something that had been shut away from me. My anxieties were forgotten. The islands were an omen. Now I had found them all would be well.

The road began to climb and as it did, I crossed an invisible boundary onto the map I carried in my mind. I knew exactly where I was.

‘It’s not far now, Mr Feely,’ I said quickly, making no attempt to conceal my relief. ‘Down the hill and over the stream. There’s a clump of trees to the right and then a long pull up. Maybe we could stop at the top.’

‘Ah, shure you’ve been pulling my leg, miss. Aren’t you the sly one and you knows Lisara as well as I do.’

Feely turned to me and laughed. He seemed almost as pleased about finding Lisara as I was. Even the idea that I’d played a trick on him didn’t appear to bother him.

‘Oh no, Mr Feely, I haven’t been here before, truly,’ I assured him as I studied the road ahead. I wished he would look at it himself just occasionally.

‘Ye haven’t?’

‘No.’ I shook my head emphatically. ‘Not at all.’

‘Not at all,’ he repeated feebly.

To my great relief, he turned away and corrected our wavering course. I stared around me in disbelief.

For the last two weeks of the summer term, I had spent every day in the departmental library copying maps and reading monographs. In the main library I had found reports from the Land Commissioners and the Congested Districts Board. They were so heavy I could barely carry them down from the stack. I had ploughed my way through acres of fine print. Now, it all seemed irrelevant. Nothing I had done had prepared me for the sheer delight that overwhelmed me as I moved into this unknown country on the edge of the world.

Months ago, when the whole question of theses was being discussed, something told me I had to come here. I’d managed to cobble up some good reasons for coming but it had never occurred to me to think how I might feel when I actually arrived.

It wasn’t enough to say that it was beautiful, though I thought the prospect of the islands the most wonderful sight I’d ever seen. It was something much less tangible. However hard I struggled, I could find no words to describe what I felt, not even inside my head.

‘Mr Feely, could you stop round the next bend. There’s a cottage on the left with a lane down the side of it. We could park there while I have a quick look round.’

As we turned the corner and pulled into the lane, my spirits rose yet further. The cottage was not only trim and neat but it had pale patches in the thatch where it had been mended quite recently. Before we had even bumped to a halt, a young woman appeared at the half-door to see who had turned into the lane. I went and asked her if she could help me at all, told her I was looking for somewhere to stay and assured her I would be no trouble.

‘And I’m shure you wouldn’t, miss.’

She smiled weakly and fingered a straggling lock of dark hair. She looked strained and tired, her face almost haggard as she stood thinking. She couldn’t be much older than I was.

‘Shure I’d be glad to have you here, miss, but I’m thinkin’ you’d not have much peace for yer work with four wee’ ans. Is it the Irish yer learnin’?’

As soon as she opened the half-door a chicken made a dive for the house. As she shooed it away it was clear there would soon be another wee’ an to care for.

‘I’m thinkin’, miss, where ye’d be best off. Is it Lisara ye want?’

‘Yes, indeed, but anywhere in Lisara will do.’

It was only as I pronounced the word ‘Lisara’ for the first time that I realised Lisnasharragh no longer existed. Perhaps it never had existed, except as a name some ordnance surveyor had put in the wrong place, or one he’d found that the local people never used. Whatever the story, Lisara was my Lisnasharragh, alive and well, and exactly where it should be.

‘Well, I think ye might try Mary O’Dara at the tap o’ the hill. She’s a good soul an’ they’ve the room now for all her family’s gone. Tell her Mary Kane sent ye.’

She leaned against the whitewashed wall of the cottage, weary with the effort of coming out to talk to me.

‘I’ll do that right away,’ I said quickly. ‘If she can have me, perhaps I could come down and talk to you about Lisara.’

‘Indeed you’d be welcome,’ she said warmly. ‘We don’t have much comp’ny.’

I thanked her and turned back towards the car. To my surprise, she followed me into the bumpy lane.

‘I’ll see ye again, miss, won’t I?’

‘You will, you will indeed. Goodbye for now.’

Feely was looking gloomy and when I asked him if we could go up the hill to O’Dara’s he just nodded and drove off. I wondered if I’d said something I shouldn’t have.

O’Dara’s cottage was just as trim and neat as Mary Kane’s, but there was a small garden in front of it. A huge pink hydrangea was covered with blooms and there were plants in pots and empty food tins on the green-painted sills of the small windows. Sitting outside, smoking a pipe, was a small, wiry little man with blue eyes, a stubbly chin, and the most striking pink and mauve tie I have ever seen.

‘Good day, is it Mr O’Dara?’ I asked.

‘It is indeed, miss, the same.’

For all my flat-heeled shoes and barely reaching five foot three, I found myself looking down at his wrinkled and sunburnt face when he got to his feet.

‘I’m sorry to disturb your nice quiet smoke, Mr O’Dara, but I wonder, could I have a word with Mrs O’Dara? Mrs Kane sent me.’

‘Ah, Mary-at-the-foot-of-the-hill.’

He turned towards the doorway and raised his voice slightly. ‘Mary, there’s a young lady to see you.’

Mary O’Dara came to the door slowly. She looked puzzled and distressed. Her face was blotchy and she had a crumpled up hanky in one hand. I wondered if I should go away again but I could hardly do that when I’d just asked to speak to her.

Her eyes were a deep, dark brown, and despite her distress, she looked straight at me as I explained what I wanted. When I finished, she hesitated, fumbled with the handkerchief and blew her nose.

‘You’d be welcome, miss, but I’m all through myself. My daughter’s away back to Amerikay, this mornin’, with the childer an I don’ know whin I’ll see the poor soul again.’

She rubbed her eyes and looked up at me. ‘Shure ye’ve come a long ways from home yerself, miss.’

‘Yes, but not as far as America. It must be awful, saying goodbye when it’s so very far away.’ I paused, saddened by her distress. ‘Perhaps she’ll not be long till she’s back.’

I heard myself speak the words and wondered where they’d come from. Then I remembered. Uncle Albert, my father’s eldest brother. ‘Don’t be long till you’re back, Elizabeth,’ was what he always said to me, when he took me to the bus after I’d been to visit him in his cottage outside Keady.

It was also what everyone said to the uncles and aunts and cousins who appeared every summer from Toronto and Calgary and Vancouver, Virginia and Indiana, Sydney and Darwin. Everybody I knew in the Armagh countryside had relatives in America or Australia.

‘Indeed she won’t, miss. Bridget’ll not forget us,’ said her husband energetically. ‘Come on now, Mary, dry your eyes and don’t keep the young lady standin’ here.’

But Mary had already dried her eyes.

‘Would you drink a cup o’ tea, miss?’

‘I’d love a cup of tea, Mrs O’Dara, thank you, but Mr Feely is waiting for me. I’ll have to go back to Lisdoonvarna, if I can’t find anywhere to stay in Lisara.’

‘Ah, shure they’d soak ye in Lisdoonvarna in the hotels,’ said Mr O’Dara fiercely. He looked meaningfully at his wife.

‘That’s for shure, Paddy. But the young lady may not be used to backward places like this.’

‘Oh yes, I am, Mrs O’Dara. My Uncle Albert’s cottage was just like this and I used to be so happy there. Perhaps I’m backward too.’

Maybe there was something in the way I said it, or maybe it was my northern accent, but whatever it was, they both laughed. Mary O’Dara had a most lovely, gentle face once she stopped looking so sad.

‘Away and tell Mr Feely ye’ll be stayin’, miss.’

She crossed the smooth flagstones of the big kitchen and took a blackened kettle from the back of the stove.

‘Paddy, help the young lady with her case.’

She bent towards an enamel bucket to fill the kettle so quickly she didn’t see Paddy clicking his heels and touching his forelock. He turned to me with a broad grin as we went out.

‘God bless you, miss, ye couldn’t ‘ive come at a better time.’

Feely sprang to life as Paddy lifted my case from the luggage platform.

‘Are ye goin’ to stay a day or two, miss?’

‘I am indeed, Mr Feely. Two or three weeks, actually.’

‘Are ye, begob?’

I was sure I’d told him I needed to stay several weeks, but he looked as if the news was a complete surprise to him. Paddy had disappeared into the cottage with my case, so I set about thanking him for his help.

‘I don’t know what I’d have done without you, Mr Feely,’ I ended up, as I pulled my purse from my jacket pocket and hoped I wouldn’t have to go to my suitcase for a pound note.

‘Ah no, miss, no,’ he protested, waving aside my gesture. ‘We’ll see to that another time. I’ll see ye again, won’t I?’

He started the engine and looked at me warily.

‘Oh yes, I’ll be in Lisdoonvarna often, I’m sure. I’ll look out for you. I know where to find you, don’t I?’

‘Oh you do, you do indeed,’ he said hastily. ‘Many’s the thing you know, miss, many’s the thing. Goodbye, now.’

He put his foot down, shot off in a cloud of smoke and reappeared only moments later on the distant hillside. I was amazed the taxi could actually move that fast. Before the fumes had stopped swirling round me, Feely had roared across the boundary of my map and was well on his way back to Lisdoonvarna.


Chapter 2 (#ulink_ccfb6aa9-6177-5866-beeb-33329c14bfe9)

While I’d been talking to Mary Kane, streamers of cloud had blown in from the sea. Now, as I crossed the deserted road to the door of the cottage where Paddy stood waiting for me, a gusty breeze caught the heavy heads of the hydrangea and brought a sudden chill to the warmth of the afternoon.

‘Ah come in, miss, do. Shure you’re welcome indeed. ’Tis not offen Mary an’ I has a stranger in the place.’

Mary waved me to one of the two armchairs parked on either side of the stove and handed me a cup of tea.

‘Sit down, miss. Ye must be tired out after yer journey. Shure it’s an awful long step from Belfast.’

She glanced up at the clock, moved her lips in some silent calculation and crossed herself.

‘Ah, shure they’ll be landed by now with the help o’ God,’ she declared, as she settled herself on a high-backed chair she’d pulled over to the fire. ‘It’s just the four hours to Boston and the whole family ‘ill be there to meet them. Boys, there’ll be some party tonight. But poor Bridget’ll be tired, all that liftin’ and carryin’ the wee’ ans back and forth to the plane.’

She fell silent and gazed around the large, high-ceilinged room with its well-worn, flagged floor as if her thoughts were very far away. The sky had clouded completely, extinguishing the last glimmers of sunshine. Even with the door open little light seemed to penetrate to the dark corners of the room. What there was sank into the dark stone of the floor or was absorbed by the heavy furniture and the soot-blackened underside of the thatch high above our heads.

I stared at the comforting orange glow beyond the open door of the iron range. One of the rings on top was chipped and a curling wisp of smoke escaped. As I breathed in the long-familiar smell of turf I felt suddenly like a real traveller, one who has crossed wild and inhospitable territory and now, after endless difficulties and feats of courage, sits by the campfire of welcoming people. The sense of well-being that flowed over me was something I hadn’t known for many years.

‘Is it anyways?’

The note of anxiety in Mary O’Dara’s voice cut across my thoughts. For a moment, I hadn’t the remotest idea what she was talking about. Then I discovered you had only to look at Mary O’Dara’s face to know what she was thinking. All her feelings were reflected in her eyes, or the set of her mouth, or the tensions of her soft, wind-weathered skin.

‘It’s a lovely cup of tea,’ I said quickly. ‘But you caught me dreaming. It’s the stove’s fault,’ I explained, as I saw her face relax into a smile. ‘Your Modern Mistress is the same as one I used to know. It’s ages since I’ve seen an open fire. And a turf fire is my absolute favourite.’

‘Shure it’s not what you’d be used to atall, miss.’

‘Don’t be too sure of that,’ I replied, shaking my head. ‘I used to be able to bake soda farls and sweep the hearth with a goose’s wing. I’m out of practice, but I’d give it a try.’

‘Ah shure good for you,’ said Paddy warmly.

He put down his china teacup with elaborate care and turned towards me a mischievous twinkle in his eyes.

‘Now coulden’ I make a great match for a girl like you?’ he began. ‘There’s very few these days can bake bread. It’s all from the baker’s cart or the supermarket.’

I thought of the rack of sliced loaves by the door of my parents’ shop. Mother’s Pride, in shiny, waxed paper. They opened at eight every morning to catch the night workers coming home and the bread was always sold out by nine. ‘A pity we haven’t the room to stock more,’ said my father. ‘Or that the bakery won’t deliver two or three times a day.’

Bread was a good line. People came for a loaf and ended up with a whole bag of stuff. Very good for trade. And, of course, as my mother always added, the big families of the Other Side ate an awful lot of bread.

‘It was my Uncle Albert down in County Armagh taught me to make bread,’ I went on, reluctant to let thoughts of the shop creep into my mind. ‘He wouldn’t eat town bread, as he called it In fact, he didn’t think much of anything that came from the town. Except his pint of Guinness. His “medicine”, he used to call that.’

Paddy O’Dara’s face lit up. He looked straight at me, his eyes intensely blue.

‘Ah, indeed, miss, every man needs a drap of medicine now and again.’

‘Divil the drap,’ retorted Mary O’Dara. ‘I think, miss, it might be two draps or three. Or even more.’

It was true the arithmetic wasn’t always that accurate. I could never remember Uncle Albert being drunk, but he certainly livened up after he’d had a few. That was the best time to get him to tell his stories.

‘They’re all great men when they’ve had a few,’ she said wryly, as she offered us more tea.

‘Ah, no, Mary, thank you. Wan cup’s enough.’ Paddy got hurriedly to his feet. ‘I’ll just away an’ see to the goose.’

I smiled to myself, as she refilled my cup. Uncle Albert always went to ‘see to the hens’ when he’d been drinking.

‘I’ll have to go and see to the goose myself when I finish this,’ I said easily.

‘Ah, sure you knew we had no bathroom and I was wonderin’ how I would put it to ye.’

Her relief was written so plainly across her face that I wondered if she could ever conceal her feelings. I knew what my mother would say about someone like Mary. Only people with no education showed their feelings. Anyone with a bit of wit knew better. You couldn’t go round letting everyone see what you felt even if it meant ‘passing yourself’ or just ‘telling a white lie’.

My mother sets great store by saying the right thing. Most of her stories are about how she put so and so in their place, or gave them as good as she got, or just showed them they weren’t going to get the better of her.

Whatever my mother might think I knew Mary was no simple soul. She had a wisdom that I recognised. It was wisdom based on awareness of the world, of its joys and sorrows, of how people managed to live with them. I had known the same kindly, clear-eyed perspective on life for eighteen of my twenty-one years. I had lost it when Uncle Albert died and had not found it again. Until this moment.

‘Mrs O’Dara,’ I said quickly, ‘before Mr O’Dara comes back, you must tell me how much I’m to give you for my keep. Would four pounds a week be enough?’

‘Four pounds, miss . . . an’ the dear save us . . . I couldn’t take your money, shure you’re welcome to what we have, if it’s good enough for you.’

‘It’s more than good enough. But I must pay my way,’ I insisted quietly.

She had taken a basin from under the table that stood against the outside wall of the cottage and was putting the teacups to drip on the well-wiped oilcloth that covered its surface. She looked perplexed.

‘Have you a tea-towel, so I can dry up for you?’

‘Shure, two pounds would be more than enough, miss. I don’t know your right name.’

‘Elizabeth, Elizabeth Stewart.’

‘Well, two pounds, Miss Stewart, then, if you want to pay me.’

‘Oh you mustn’t call me that, Mrs O’Dara. I’m only called Miss Stewart when I’m in trouble with my tutor.’

She laughed gently and pushed a wisp of grey hair back from her face. ‘Well, indeed, no one calls me Mrs O’Dara either, savin’ the doctor and the priest. Nor Paddy either. Paddy woulden’ like me takin’ your money, miss . . . I mean Elizabeth.’

‘But you’re not taking my money. It’s just grocery money,’ I reassured her. ‘I’ll tell you what. I’ll put it in that teapot on the dresser every week, that wee one with the shamrock on it. You can tell him it was the little people. Say three pounds and we’ll split the difference.’

I went and took a striped tea-towel from the metal rack over the stove. Long ago, I had learnt to bargain for goods when I knew they were overpriced. I was good at it. This was the first time I had ever had to bargain upwards. I knew that Mary O’Dara would rather go short herself than exploit someone else. What a fool my mother would think she was not to take all she could get and close her hand on it.

I dried the cups and watched her put them away in the cupboard under the open shelves of the dresser. When she came back to the table, she ran the dish-cloth round the basin inside and out, slid it onto the shelf below, wiped the oilcloth and spread both the dish-cloth and the tea-towel to dry above the stove. She moved slowly, with a slight limp and a hunch in her shoulders that spoke of years of heavy work. But there was no resentment in her movements, neither haste, nor hurry, nor twitch of irritation.

I found myself thinking of a novel I’d read at school. The hero believed that all work properly done was an offering to God. His superiors thought he was mad, but his workmates didn’t. They were mechanics and the aircraft they serviced flew better than any others and seldom had accidents. The idea of a practical religion that worked on the principle of love really appealed to me, especially since the only one I was familiar with seemed to work entirely on the principle of retribution.

I smiled to myself. After Round the Bend I’d read everything Nevil Shute had written and enjoyed it enormously. Then, when my mother finally realised that he wasn’t on the A-level syllabus, there was a furious row. ‘Filling my head with a lot of old nonsense,’ was what she’d said.

Mary straightened up from the potato sack and came towards me. ‘Ah, ’twas my good angel that sent ye to my door today, Elizabeth, for I was heartsore. Sometimes our prayers be answered in ways we never thought of. Draw over to the table an’ talk to me, while I peel the spuds for the supper?’

‘I will indeed, Mary. But first, I really must go and look at the Aran islands.’

She laughed quietly as Paddy came back into the cottage and I went out, crossing the front of the house in the direction from which he had appeared. Somewhere round that side I’d find a well-trodden path to a privy in an outhouse, or the sheltered corner of a field.

The path led up behind the house, so steeply at first that there were stone steps cut into the bank. I stopped on the topmost one and found myself looking down on the roof. The cottage was set so close to the hillside, I could almost touch it from my vantage point. The thatch was a work of art. Combed so neatly there was not a straw out of place, it had an elaborate pattern of scalloping like the embroidery on a smock, all the way along the roof ridge, a dense weave to hold it firm against winter storms. Beyond the cottage, fields stretched down to the sea. Under the overcast mass of sky it lay calm and grey, but I could hear the crash of breakers where the long swells born in mid-Atlantic pounded the cliffs, a mere two fields away.

I counted the houses. Seven cottages facing west to the sea, each with turf stacks and smoke spiralling from their chimneys. Four more in various stages of dereliction, their roof timbers fallen, the walls tumbled, grass sprouting from the remains of the thatch. There should be another group of cottages facing south to Liscannor Bay, but from this angle they were hidden by high ground. I breathed a sigh of relief; here below me at least was a remnant of the community I had come in search of, a community once more than a hundred strong.

I stood for some time taking in every detail of the quiet, green countryside, the wide, grey sweep of the sea and the now-dark outlines of the islands. I thought of those who had once lived in the tumbled ruins, those who had been forced to go, those who had endured poverty and toil by remaining. Sadness swirled around me with the wind from across the sea. I knew nothing of these people, of their lives here in Lisara, or beyond in America, and yet some part of me felt as if I had known them, and this place, all my life. As I walked up the hillside, the sadness deepened. It was all the harder to bear because try as I might I could find no reason to explain my feelings.






By the time we cleared away the supper things the wind had strengthened and the dark clouds hurled flurries of raindrops onto the flags by the open door. Reluctantly, Paddy put down his pipe and went and closed it.

‘I may light the lamp, Mary, for it’s gone terrible dark. I think we’ll have a wet night.’

‘Indeed it looks like it, but shure aren’t the nights droppin’ down again forby.’

Paddy waited for the low flame to heat the wick and mantle, his face illuminated by the soft glow.

‘D’ye like coffee, Elizabeth?’

‘I do indeed, Mary, but are you making coffee? Don’t make it just for me.’

‘Oh no, no. Boys, I love the coffee meself, and Paddy too. Bridget always brings a couple of packets whinever she comes.’

Paddy put the globe back on the lamp and turned it up gently. The soft, yellowy light flowed outwards and the dark shadows retreated. I gazed across towards the corner of the kitchen where heavy coats hung on pegs. There the shadows were crouched against the wall. They huddled too beyond the dresser so that in the darkness I could barely distinguish the sack of flour leaning against the settle bed. But here I sat beyond the reach of the shadows in a warm, well-lit space. I leaned back in my chair and let my weariness flow over me, grateful for the moment that nothing was required of me.

Above my head, the lamplight caught the pale dust on the blackened underside of the thatch. The rafters were dark with age and smoke from the fire. A row of crosses pinned to the lowest rough-hewn beam ran the whole length of the seaward wall. Some were carved from bits of wood, others were woven from rushes now faded to a pale straw colour or smoked to a honey gold. A cross for every year? There were a hundred or more of them.

‘I’ll just get a wee sup of cream from the dairy.’

The lamp flickered and the fire roared as Mary opened the door and the wild wind poured in around us. As she pulled it shut behind her, I found myself gazing up at a tiny red flame that danced in the sudden draught. Beside it, on a metal shelf a china Virgin smiled benignly down upon the freshly wiped table, her hands raised in blessing over three blue and white striped cups and a vacuum pack of Maxwell House.

‘Boys, it would blow the hair off a bald man’s head out there,’ Mary gasped, as she leaned her weight against the door to close it, a small glass jug clutched between her hands.

‘That’s a lovely expression, Mary. I don’t know that one,’ I said, laughing. ‘I think Uncle Albert would’ve said, “It would blow the horns off a moily cow.”’

She repeated the phrase doubtfully, while Paddy chuckled to himself. ‘Ah Mary, shure you know a moily cow.’ He prompted her with a phrase in Irish I couldn’t catch. ‘Shure it’s one with no horns atall.’

She laughed and drew the high-backed chair over to the fire. I jumped to my feet.

‘Mary, you sit here and let me have that chair.’

‘Ah, no, Elizabeth, sit your groun’. I’m all right here.’

I sat my ground as I was bidden. I was sure I could persuade her to sit in her own place eventually, but it wouldn’t be tonight. When Mary did come back and sit in her own place, it would say something about change in our relationship. But that moment was for Mary to choose.

I watched Paddy fill his pipe, drawing hard, tapping the bowl and then, satisfied it was properly alight, lean back. The blue smoke curled towards the rafters and we sat silently, all three of us looking into the fire.

It was not the silence of unease that comes upon those who have nothing to say to each other, rather, it was the silence of those who have a great deal to say, but who give thanks for the time and the opportunity to say it.

We must have talked for two or three hours before Mary drew the kettle forward to make the last tea of the day. Paddy had told me about Lisara and the people who lived there, Mary spoke about their family, the nine sons and daughters scattered across Ireland, England, Scotland and the United States. In turn, I had said a little about the work for my degree, mentioned my boyfriend, George, a fellow student away working in England for the summer, and ended up telling them a great deal about my long summers in County Armagh when I went to stay with Uncle Albert.

It was only when Mary rose to make the tea, I realised I’d said almost nothing about Belfast, or my parents, or the flat over the shop on the Ormeau Road that had been my home since I was five years old.

‘Boys but it’s great to have a bit of company . . . shure it does get lonesome, Elizabeth, in the bad weather. You’d hardly see a neighbour here of an evening.’

I listened to the wind roaring round the house and reminded myself that this was only the beginning of September.

‘It must be bad in the January storms,’ I said, looking across at Paddy.

‘Oh, it is. It is that. You’d need to be watchin’ the t’atch or it would be flyin’ off to Dublin. Shure now, is it maybe two years ago, the roof of the chapel in Ballyronan lifted clean off one Sunday morning, in the middle of the Mass.’

He looked straight at me, his eyes shining, his hands moving upwards in one expressive gesture.

‘And the priest nearly blowed away with it,’ he added, as he tapped out his pipe.

‘Oh, the Lord save us,’ Mary laughed, hastily crossing herself, ‘but the poor man had an awful fright and him with his eyes closed, for he was sayin’ the prayer for the Elevation of the Host’.

As she looked across at me, I had an absolutely awful moment. Suddenly and quite accidentally, we had touched the one topic that could scatter all our ease and pleasure to the four winds. I could see the question that was shaping in her mind. It was a fair question and one she had every right to ask, but I hadn’t the remotest idea how I was going to reply.

‘Would ye be a Catholic now yerself, Elizabeth?’

‘No, Mary, I’m not. All my family are Presbyterians.’

‘Indeed, that’s very nice too. They do say that the Presbyterians is the next thing to the Catholics,’ she added, as she passed me a cup of tea.

If she had said that the world was flat or that the Pope was now in favour of birth control, I could not have been more amazed. I had a vision of thousands of bowler-hatted Orangemen beating their drums and waving their banners in a frenzy of protest at her words. I could imagine my mother, face red with fury, hands on hips, vehemently recounting her latest story about the shortcomings of the Catholics who made up the best part of the shop’s custom. Try telling her that a Presbyterian was the next thing to a Catholic. I looked across at Mary, sitting awkwardly on the high-backed chair, and found myself completely at a loss for words.

‘’Tis true,’ said Paddy, strongly. ‘Wasn’t Wolfe Tone and Charles Stuart Parnell both Presbyterians, and great men for Ireland they were, God bless them.’

I breathed a sigh of relief and felt an overwhelming gratitude to these two unknown men. The names I had heard, but I certainly couldn’t have managed the short-answer question’s prescribed five lines on either of them. The history mistress at my Belfast grammar school was a Scotswoman, a follower of Knox and Calvin. She had no time at all for the struggles of the Irish, their disorderly behaviour, their revolts, their failure to recognise the superior values of the British Government.

When she had made her choice from the history syllabus, she chose British history, American history and Commonwealth history. I could probably still describe the make-up of the legislatures of Canada, India or South Africa, and bring to mind the significant figures in the history of each, but I knew almost nothing about a couple of men who were merely ‘great men for Ireland’.

Yesterday, when the Hendersons had given me a lift to Dublin they had dropped me by the river within walking distance of the station. Under the trees, I gazed across the brown waters of the Liffey at a city I knew not at all. I had been to Paris and to London with my school, travelled in Europe on a student scholarship, visited Madrid, and Rome, and Vienna, but I had never been to Dublin. My parents had raised more objections to my coming to Clare than to my spending two months travelling in Europe.

It was pleasant under the trees, the hazy sunlight making dappled patterns on the stonework, a tiny drift of shrivelled leaves the first sign of the approaching autumn. I liked what I saw, the tall, old buildings with a mellow, well-used look about them, the dome of some civic building outlined against the sky, the low arches of the bridge I would cross on my way to the station.

‘A dirty hole,’ I heard my father say. ‘Desperate poverty,’ added my mother. Neither of them had ever been there.

I sat on my bench for as long as I dared before I set off to catch the last through-train to Limerick. Just as I reached the bridge, I saw the name of the quay where I had been sitting. ‘Wolfe Tone Quay,’ it said in large letters.

Mary took two candlesticks from the mantelshelf above the stove and I stirred myself. Paddy turned the lamp down and the waiting shadows leapt into the kitchen, swallowing it up, except for the tiny space where the three of us stood beside the newly lighted candles. Paddy blew down the mantle of the lamp to make sure it was properly out.

‘Goodnight Elizabeth, astore. Sleep well. I hope you’ll be comfortable,’ said Mary, handing me my candle.

‘Goodnight, Elizabeth. Mind now the pisherogues don’t get you and you sleeping in the west room,’ said Paddy. ‘And you might hear the mice playing baseball in the roof. Pay no attention, you’ll not disturb them atall,’ he added with a grin.

‘Come on, old man, it’s time we were all in bed.’

He laughed and followed her towards the brown door to the left of the fireplace.

‘Goodnight, and thank you both. It was a great evening,’ I said, as I pointed my candle into the darkness at the other end of the kitchen.

I pressed the latch of the bedroom door, pushed it open, and reached automatically for the light switch. Of course, there wasn’t one. My fingers met a small, cold object which fell off the wall with a scraping noise. As I brought my candle round the door, I saw another china Virgin. This one was smaller than the one in the kitchen and from her gathered skirts she was spilling Holy Water on my bed.

Thank goodness, no harm done. I put her back on the nail and swished the large drops of water away from the fat, pink eiderdown before they had time to sink in. The room was cold and the wind howling round the gable made it seem colder still. I undressed quickly, the linoleum icy beneath my feet when I stepped off the rag rug to blow out the candle on the washstand. The pillowcase smelt of mothballs and crackled with starch under my cheek as I curled up, arms across my chest, hugging my warmth to me.

‘And don’t say the bit about getting my death of cold sleeping in a damp bed. It isn’t damp. Just cold. And it will soon warm up.’

I laughed at myself for addressing my mother before she could get in first. She had beaten me to it last night in Limerick. Oh, the predictability of it. Like those association tests my friend Adrienne Henderson did in psychology. She said a word and you had to respond without thinking. My parents were good at that. I knew the key words. Or more accurately, I spent my life avoiding them. If I accidentally tripped over one, I could be sure I would get a response as predictable and consistent as a tape-recording.

The smell of the snuffed candle floated across to me. I was back in the small upstairs room of Uncle Albert’s cottage. The candle wax made splashes on the mahogany furniture and I picked them off with my fingernails, moulded them and made water-lilies to float on the rainwater barrel at the corner of the house. Suddenly, I was there again, a ten-year-old, sent to ‘the country’ for the holidays.

Being ten years old didn’t seem at all strange. I lay in the darkness, wondering if I would always be able to remember what it was like to be ten. Would I be able to do it when I was thirty, or forty, or fifty? Or would some point come in my life where I would begin to see things differently? For as long as I could remember, my parents, my relatives and those neighbours who were ‘our side’ had all assured me that when I was ‘grown up’, or ‘a little older’, or ‘had a family of my own’, I would come to see the world as they did. The thought appalled me.

Was it really possible that I could end up locked into the kind of certainty that permeated all their thinking? They always knew. They were sure. Indeed they were so sure, I regularly panicked that I would come to think as they did. What if there was nothing to be done to stop the process? What would I do if I found that thinking as they did was like going grey, or needing spectacles, or qualifying for a pension, one of those things that was as inevitable as the sun rising tomorrow.

As I began to feel warm I uncurled and lay on my back. Moonlight was flickering from behind dark massed clouds and gradually my eyes got used to the luminous glow reflected from the pink-washed walls. I distinguished the solid shape of the wardrobe at the foot of my bed and the glint of the china jug on the washstand. Then, quite suddenly, for a few moments only, the room was full of light. In the brightness, I saw a large, grey crucifix on the distempered wall above me. Crucifixes and Holy Water. Even more to be feared than a damp bed.

The room settled back to darkness once more and I closed my eyes. The door latch rattled and stopped. Then rattled again. Perhaps I wouldn’t have to change after all. Perhaps I could just go on being me at twenty-one, or thirty-one, or any age, till I was so old there would be no one left older than me, to tell me what I ought to think. There was a scurry of feet in the roof. The wind whined round the gable and the door latch rattled again. The scurrying increased. Mice, of course.

And pisherogues. I had not the slightest idea what a pisherogue was. But whatever it turned out to be, it would not harm me. Indeed, in this unknown place at the edge of the world, I felt as if nothing could harm me. Tomorrow, I would ask Paddy what a pisherogue was and make a note about it. I was going to make lots and lots of notes. In the blue exercise books I had brought with me. Tomorrow.


Chapter 3 (#ulink_d8c2f7f7-708e-5ea6-838a-3942029f2600)

After three days tramping the lanes and fields of Lisara I was looking forward to my walk into Lisdoonvarna on Thursday afternoon. Paddy was sure I’d get a lift, but as I strode along, turning over in my mind all I’d learnt since my arrival, the only vehicles that overtook me were full of children and luggage. I was very glad when they waved and left me to the quiet of the sultry afternoon.

As I reached the outskirts of the town and turned up the hill by the spa wells, I was surprised to find there were people everywhere. Preoccupied and distracted, they wandered over the road, walked up and down to the well buildings and streamed back and forth to the Square. After the emptiness of the countryside and the company of my own thoughts, the sudden noise and bustle hit me like a blow. I wove my way awkwardly between family parties, strolling priests, and bronzed visitors, only to find that the Square too was completely transformed.

The empty summer seats were now packed with brightly coloured figures. Close by, a luxury coach unloaded a further consignment. Clutching handbags and carrier bags, beach bags and overnight bags, they queued erratically beside a small mountain of luggage and reclaimed matching suitcases from a uniformed courier.

I’d been planning to sit down for a bit but now even the stone wall of the war memorial was fringed by families eating ice-creams. Nothing for it but the first grassy bank on the way home.

The queue for the post office greeted me on the broken pavement outside. It moved slowly forward. When I finally got inside the door the smell of damp and dry rot caught at my nostrils. The place hadn’t seen a paintbrush for years, the walls were yellowed with age and seamed with cracks. Behind a formidable metal grille, an elderly lady with iron-grey hair and spectacles despatched stamps and thumped pension books with dogged determination, apparently unconcerned by the queue of restless women with coppery tans, white trousers and suntops in violent shades of lime-green and pink.

I shuffled forward on the bare wooden floor. In front of me, an old lady cast disapproving glances at two women writing postcards on the tiny ledge provided. She glared at their bare shoulders and arms and the skimpy tops that revealed their small, flat breasts. Despite the heavy warmth of the afternoon, she was wearing a black wool coat and a felt hat firmly skewered to her head with large, amber hatpins.

The woman behind me fidgeted impatiently and shuffled her postcards as if she were about to deal a hand of whist.

‘Gee, you Irish girls sure do have lovely complexions. How come you manage it?’

Her voice so startled me, I must have jumped a couple of inches but I went on watching the postmistress counting out money for the old lady, a pound note and some silver coins. Could her pension possibly be so small?

I felt a tap on my shoulder. When I turned round she was looking down at me. Waiting. Pinned to her suntop was a button which said: ‘I’m Adele from New York City . . . Hi.’

‘I think it’s probably the climate,’ I said, awkwardly.

The moment I spoke I knew it was ‘my school teacher voice’. George often says I must never become a teacher. Women who do always lose their femininity and he couldn’t bear that. He loves me just as I am so I mustn’t ever change.

‘D’you mean all that there rain we had in Killarney lass’ week?’

She looked baffled, but something in her manner suggested she would not give up easily. People were turning to look at us and I felt my ‘Irish’ complexion grow a few shades more rosy.

‘I think it’s the dampness of the air here.’

I tried to sound suitably casual, but I just sounded lame. What else could I say? I could hardly explain the adaption of skin colour and texture to environmental features, could I? What on earth would George say if I did that?

‘Gee, you Irish girls do talk cute.’

She beamed indulgently and gazed around at the women writing postcards, delighted to have got one of the natives to perform.

I was saved from further questions by the little lady in black who pushed past me, handbag firmly clutched in both hands, leaving me to face the postmistress who stared at me fiercely as I handed over my letters.

‘You’d be a friend of Mrs O’Dara, then?’

I nodded awkwardly. Of course Mary and I were friends, but I knew that wasn’t what she meant.

‘I’m staying with Mr and Mrs O’Dara for a few weeks,’ I said quickly. ‘I’m a student.’

‘We don’t get many students here,’ she said suspiciously. ‘Is it the Irish yer leamin’?’

‘Only the odd wee bit from Mr O’Dara. I’m really studying farming.’

That sounded a bit schoolmistressy too. Behind me, the queue was building up again and Adele from New York City was breathing down my neck.

‘And that’s nice fer ye too,’ she said decisively, as she studied the envelope addressed to Mr and Mrs William Stewart.

‘You’d be wanting to let yer paren’s know ye was safely landed, indeed,’ she said severely, as she turned her attention to my letters to George and Ben, and my thank you to the Hendersons.

‘Oh, I did write letters on Monday, but Paddy the Postman took them for me.’

‘Indeed, shure he wou’d take them for you, and why wou’dn’t he?’

Her face crinkled into a grimace that looked like a friendly gesture, though I could hardly call it a smile.

‘I’ll be seein’ ye again, Miss Stewart, won’t I?’

‘Oh yes, you will indeed. I’ll be doing the shopping while I’m here.’

I was so glad to escape the smell of Adele’s Ambre Solaire that I set off back to the Square at a brisk trot. But I had to slow down. Apart from the ache in my legs, the afternoon was getting hotter by the minute. Huge clouds were building up in threatening grey masses and it felt warm, sticky and airless.

The windows of the hotel with the summer seats had been thrown wide but there wasn’t the slightest trace of a breeze. The net curtains hung motionless and I could see into the dining room where small black figures moved to and fro. Like the pale, dark-eyed girls I’d seen at the Mount, these girls were equally young, straight from school at fourteen.

I thought about them as I waited in the queue at the butcher’s, drawing circles in the sawdust with my toe. I too might have left school at fourteen if I hadn’t passed the Eleven Plus. Even then, I still might have had to leave if it hadn’t been for the Gardiners.

‘Did ye hear that Mrs Gardiner today, bumming again?’

I was back in my bedroom in Belfast on a summer evening towards dusk, reading in the last of the light. My parents had come out into the yard behind the shop. There was a rattle as my father filled his old metal can so he could water the geraniums and the orange lilies which he grew in empty fuel oil cans he’d brought home from Uncle Joe’s farm. It was the beginning of July, for the lilies were in flower but hadn’t yet been taken to the Lodge to decorate the big drums for the Twelfth.

‘Oh yes, she was in great form, and the whole shop full. Did ye not hear? Ah don’t know how ye cou’da missed her.’

The reply was indistinct. My father always speaks quietly. Often, he just nods or grunts.

‘There’ll be no standin’ that wuman, if that wee girl of hers goes to Victoria an’ our Elizibith doesn’t.’

Eavesdroppers hear no good of themselves, I thought to myself. But there wasn’t much I could do about it. The window was wide open and they were right underneath.

‘Well, if Bill Gardiner is going to send that wee scrap of a girl, why shouldn’t we send our Elizibith,’ my mother went on. ‘None of the Gardiners have any brains worth talkin’ about an’ that shop of theirs is only a huckster of a place, not even on the main road. It won’t look well at all, Willy, if we don’t send her. People’ll think our shop’s not doin’ well. I think we should just send her. We’re every bit as good as the Gardiners. We’d have done it for wee Billy for sure.’

I stuck my fingers in my ears, for I hated them talking about wee Billy and I knew that was wicked. You shouldn’t hate your brother, especially if he was dead. The trouble was it didn’t feel as if he was dead. They were always talking about him, what he liked and disliked, what he used to say, what age he would be his next birthday if he’d lived, where he would be going to school, or even what flowers they would take when they next visited the cemetery where he was buried. My Aunt Maisie once said to me that it was a pity I hadn’t been a boy, for Florrie would never get over wee Billy now and her too old to have another.

I lifted Mary’s shopping bag onto the counter and let the red-faced man put the brown-paper parcel inside. The butcher’s counter was marble and the one in the shop was wood. I imagined myself standing behind it in a pink, drip-dry, nylon shop coat like my mother’s, handing out papers and cigarettes and penny lollipops, ringing up items on the till, running up the rickety stairs to the stockroom for a new box of Polo mints, or a fresh carton of Players.

He counted out my change slowly, made a mistake and corrected himself. His fingers were smeared with blood. My father’s fingers were yellowed with nicotine, the nails cut short to keep them clean. I could see him as he spread the day’s takings on the table each evening. Piles of silver, mounds of copper, creased pound notes, and the occasional papery fiver which he held up to the light to make sure it was all right. Business was good, he would admit as he counted. Never better, my mother would agree. Everyone has money these days, she would continue, especially the Other Side.

It was the Other Side’s money that let me stay at school to take A-levels. Then my scholarship had taken me to Queen’s. After seven years passing the back of the students’ union every day on my way to school, I got off the bus one stop earlier and stepped into a different world. It was luck. Pure luck. I had my books and my hopes for the future, these girls had their skimpy black skirts and their long hours of hard, poorly paid work.

‘Well then, how do you fancy a career in catering?’ Ben and I were sitting in our usual seats at the top of the double decker, our first week’s pay envelopes torn open on our knees.

‘Not a lot,’ I replied. ‘If this was all you had to live on you wouldn’t have much of a life, would you?’

‘No, not even if there were two of you and there was equal pay.’

I laughed wryly and counted the crumpled notes in my hand. We had worked so hard, sharing the same dreary jobs, working the same long hours. Ben had ten pounds, I had only seven.

‘It’s one thing if you’re earning book money,’ he went on, stuffing the notes into his pocket, ‘it’s another if it’s all you’ve got. Are you going to have enough for going to Clare, Lizzie?’

I’d reassured him that I’d be fine for I knew he’d offer to help me. I couldn’t let him do that for I knew what he was planning to buy. The newly published book he hoped might help him to make sense of his mother’s condition would cost several weeks’ work.

‘It’s exploitation, Ben, isn’t it? But what can one do? What can anyone do?’

‘Political action, Lizzie. Probably the only way. But that’s not my way. It needs a particular sort of mind and I know I haven’t got it. I’ll have my work cut out to make a decent doctor. What about you?’

I told him I didn’t really know about me.

The first thing I noticed as I opened the door of Delargy’s shop was the smell. This time, unlike the post office, it brought the happiest of memories: small shops in Ulster, in villages where I had done messages for various aunts, places where you could buy everything from brandy balls and humbugs to groceries and grass seed, packets of Aspros and pints of Guinness. There had been many such places in my childhood and I had loved them all.

Surprisingly, the shop was empty but for a single customer, the little lady in the black coat whose hatpins I’d studied closely in the post office queue. A pleasant-faced girl in a blue overall had come from behind the counter to pack her shopping bag. As she fitted in the packets of tea and sugar, she listened sympathetically to what the old lady was saying.

‘And they want to put me out and knock the whole row down.’

‘But Mrs McGuire dear, they’ll have to give you a new house, or one of the bungalows. Wouldn’t that be nice for you now, and no stairs to climb?’

The girl glanced at me and made a slight move as if to come and serve me but I shook my head. ‘I’m not in a hurry. Do you mind if I have a look round?’

‘Do, miss, do. I’ll be with you shortly.’

We exchanged glances over the head of Mrs McGuire, who was completely absorbed in her problem. Indeed, they were very nice, she agreed. And a nice price too. Where would she get seventeen shillings rent out of her pension?

I moved away in case my presence would disturb them and began to examine the contents of the long, low-ceilinged room. A solid wooden counter ran the whole length of one side. Behind it, shelves filled with packets and boxes rose to the ceiling, except at a central point where a large clock with dangling weights ticked out the separate minutes of the day. Against the counter leaned bags of dried goods, barley and rice, lentils and oatmeal, each with its polished metal scoop thrust into the mouth of the sack ready to measure into the pan of the shiny brass scales on the counter. Beyond the end of the counter, a low-arched doorway led into a passage which gave access to the stable yard outside.

On the opposite wall was the bar. Empty now. But the fluorescent light was on. It reflected in the rows of bottles and glinted off the well-polished seats of the high stools. At the furthest end of the bar, a new Italian coffee machine had just been installed. It sat, still partly draped in its polythene wraps, looking across the worn floorboards to a stand of Wellington boots and a rack of Pyrex ware.

I wandered around slowly. Who would buy the bottles of DeWitts Liver Pills, the mousetraps with the long-life guarantee, the shamrock-covered egg-timers, the hard yellow bars of Sunlight soap? And what would the same people make of the contents of the freezer, tucked between a pile of yard-brushes and a display unit of the blue and white striped delft I’d met at the cottage. Prawn curry. Chicken dinner for two. French beans and frozen strawberries. Unlikely substitutes for the bacon and cabbage, the champ, or the stew Mary had cooked for our supper on these last evenings.

Below a small counter laid out with newspapers and magazines, I found some exercise books. The notebooks I’d brought with me were filling up rapidly and these had the wide-spaced lines I liked. As I turned one over to look for the price, I heard voices in the passage leading to the stable yard.

‘Now don’t worry, Moyra. You concentrate on Charles and I’ll see to the stock. Paddy knows what’s needed here and Mrs Grogan won’t let you down in the hotel.’

There was a woman’s voice too, light and pleasant but further away.

‘I’ll come in this evening to make sure all is well, but I won’t come up to you. You look tired yourself.’

The voice intrigued me. It had something of the intonation of the voices I’d been hearing all around me since I arrived, but it was more formal. With her sharp ear for social distinctions, my mother would pronounce the owner either ‘educated’ or ‘good class’, depending on the mood she was in.

‘Are you all alone, Kathleen?’

I glimpsed the figure who strode across the empty shop to where Kathleen had just closed the door behind Mrs McGuire. I busied myself with the stand of postcards as he followed her glance.

‘It went quiet a wee while ago, so I let May and Bridget go for their tea,’ she explained. ‘They hardly got their lunch atall we were so busy. It’s teatime in the hotels, that’s why it’s gone quiet.’

He nodded as he listened to her. I had the strange feeling he was watching me out of the corner of his eye. A rather striking man. What some people might call handsome. A strongly shaped face, rather tanned, dark, straightish hair. He seemed to tower over Kathleen who was about my own height.

‘I’ve been talking to Mrs Donnelly and I’ve told her I’ll take care of the stock till Mr Donnelly is better. Would you let me have a note of anything you can think of. It’s so long since I’ve done the ordering I shall probably be no good at all.’

Kathleen laughed easily at the idea and said she’d start a list right away. He moved towards the door leading out into the Square and then, as if he had forgotten something, he turned and walked back towards me.

‘I’m afraid the selection isn’t very good,’ he said, as I looked up from the postcards. ‘We’ve some new colour ones on order from John Hinde, but there seems to be some delay.’

His eyes were a very dark brown and he was looking at me carefully, as if he was possessed by the same curiosity I had come to expect, but was too well-mannered to let it show.

‘I don’t honestly think they do justice to the place,’ I replied, nodding at the inexpensive sepia cards on the stand. ‘I’m glad you’re getting the John Hinde, he’s done some very good ones of Donegal.’

‘But you don’t come from Donegal, do you?’ he replied promptly. ‘I’d have thought it was more likely to be Armagh or Down myself.’

I had to laugh. Partly because it’s a game I play myself, placing people by their accent, and partly because he was so accurate. Even after growing up in Belfast, my accent hadn’t lost the markings of my earliest years when we lived with my grandparents down near the Armagh-Monaghan border.

‘You’re not far wrong,’ I admitted, smiling at him. ‘Very near in fact, but I live in Belfast now.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘and you’re staying with Paddy and Mary O’Dara at Lisara.’ He held out his hand and made me a small bow. ‘Miss Elizabeth Stewart, I presume. Patrick Delargy at your mercy.’

‘How on earth did you know that?’

His hand was warm and firm and he was smiling broadly.

‘Kathleen, come over here a moment Come and meet the lady herself. Does she answer the description we had of her?’

Kathleen hurried over.

‘Oh, miss, you made us all laugh, you did indeed. Didn’t you put the fear of God into Michael Feely on Sunday. I hear he’s not the better of it yet.’

Patrick Delargy leaned himself comfortably against the side of the freezer. ‘I missed all the fun,’ he said sadly. ‘Kathleen had better tell you the whole story.’

‘Ah miss, poor Feely came in here on Sunday evening and we thought he had seen a ghost,’ she began, her face horror-stricken.

I was so worried by the look on her face and the thought that I’d upset Michael Feely that I turned to Patrick Delargy to see how he was reacting. He appeared to be enjoying himself thoroughly.

‘He came in here,’ she repeated, ‘and the bar full and he swore he had met a witch.’

Her tragic expression crumpled and she giggled. Patrick Delargy shook his head. ‘Now, come on, Kathleen, this won’t do. Tell Miss Stewart the story the way you told me.’

With an effort, Kathleen gathered herself.

‘Yes, indeed. A witch. That’s what he had met. And it took two large whiskeys before he could go on.’

I opened my mouth to protest, but Patrick Delargy held up a warning finger. Kathleen was not to be interrupted.

‘He said that he had taken a student out to Lisara, a nice enough young lady and very well-spoken. And he says that she told him she had never been in the place before and didn’t know anybody and didn’t even know if the place was still there. And he said he believed her, for she was a very nice young lady and good-looking forby.’

She nodded towards me as much as to say, ‘Now there’s a compliment for you.’

‘And then he says, he takes her out to look for this place she’s never been to and the next thing is that she starts to tell him where every house and tree is and where he can park his taxi. And she knows every stone and bush of the place as if she’d been born and reared there.’

‘But I’d only been reading the map . . .’

‘Ach, sure, what would Michael Feely know about maps, miss? The man has no wit.’

Patrick Delargy was watching us both, a broad grin on his face. ‘What about bewitching Paddy O’Dara?’

‘I was coming to that, Mr Delargy, I hadn’t forgotten atall,’ she reprimanded him.

‘Apparently, miss, you went into O’Dara’s cottage with Paddy, and you’d never set eyes on the man before. No relative, not even a far-out friend, and the next thing, back you come with Paddy as meek as a lamb to carry your case and you to stay for three weeks.’

Kathleen could certainly get value out of a story. When she imitated the look on Feely’s face, I had to laugh myself.

‘I do hope I didn’t really upset him. I did try to explain. But he does jump to confusions, doesn’t he?’

‘He does that, miss. Whatever way you would put it plain, he always gets the wrong way of things.’

‘But it was a serious case,’ added Patrick Delargy, the light in his eye at odds with the soberness of his expression. ‘I’m not sure how many whiskeys he was bought to help him over the shock and to elicit the full extent of his distress.’

‘I think at one stage he thought I was going to write a book about his hotel,’ I offered.

‘Oh, he did, he did indeed,’ Kathleen nodded vigorously, as the shop door opened and two girls in blue overalls appeared, followed by a group of visitors and a cluster of children. She left us to go back behind the counter. Patrick Delargy looked at me quizzically.

‘And how are you proposing to get back to Lisara, Elizabeth? By broomstick?’

There were grey hairs on his temples and above his ears. His tie was one of those tweedy, handwoven ones with little irregular blobs of colour where the thread is thick. Like the one I’d nearly bought George for his birthday. Lucky I hadn’t. When I showed him one in a shop window, a lovely yellowy mix, he said it looked just like scrambled egg.

‘No, actually,’ I replied, glancing at my watch, ‘I must get a move on. The meat for supper’s here in my bag, and I still have bacon to get from Kathleen.’

‘Right. You get the bacon and I’ll bring the car round. It’s going to rain long before you get to Lisara. You do know about witches and water, don’t you?’

Without another word, he disappeared down the passage and into the stable yard.

The car was the largest I had ever seen. It was American and very new. The front seat was long and squashy and the shelf above the dashboard wide enough to lay out a whole picnic. When Patrick Delargy settled himself behind the wheel, his solid frame seemed somehow smaller and a remarkably long way away. He drove slowly out of the Square, manoeuvred round a pony and trap abandoned in the middle of the road, paused for a group of visitors who appeared quite unaware they were strolling on a main road and stopped twice for pedestrians who simply crossed the road without looking.

I remembered an article I’d once read in a women’s magazine about assessing a man’s character by the way he drove. Patrick Delargy certainly scored well on patience. I saw him relax as he turned right at the crossroads beyond the wells.

‘This is not exactly the best car for driving through Lisdoonvarna in September, I fear,’ he said with a slight, apologetic smile.

I was puzzled by the car. The best word to describe it was opulent. And that was right out of key with its owner who was in no way opulent, either in dress or in manner.

‘Well, it is rather large,’ I agreed cautiously.

‘Large, oversprang, difficult to handle and expensive to run. It was also a gift. What would you do?’

‘I see the problem,’ I began sympathetically. ‘I used to have an aunt who gave me the most ghastly blouses for Christmas. I always had to wear them when she came to visit so as not to hurt her feelings. I do wish people would just sometimes ask what you really want and not just assume they know.’

He looked at me briefly but very directly, something he had done several times already. I was beginning to find it most disconcerting. Until I came to Lisara, I had found few people ever bothered to look at me and even fewer who paid the slightest attention to my reactions. As I met his gaze I knew I’d spoken far more sharply than I intended.

‘Don’t people ask you what you want either, Elizabeth?’

‘No, not usually. My family all seem to know exactly what I want without any help from me. They then get upset if I point out that it’s not what I want at all.’

‘And what happens then?’

‘Oh, a row of some sort.’

I couldn’t for the life of me see how we’d managed to get ourselves into a conversation about my family. I was anxious to change the subject.

‘Was it your family’s idea that you came to Lisara?’

‘You must be joking.’

‘Well, I did rather wonder. Most of the Ulstermen I know think the west is a wild, barbarous place.

‘Do you know many Ulstermen then?’ I asked, my curiosity getting the better of me.

‘Not so many now. Years ago, I had cousins at Trinity when I was at U.C.D. I used to visit the north in the long vacations. My mother had relatives in Fermanagh.’

‘What did you read?’

‘English literature. Only for two years though. I had to give it up.’

His eyes were on the road ahead, but the soft tone in his voice and the set of his face spoke with more feeling than the words themselves. I wanted to ask why but something held me back. After all, I hardly knew him. I nodded and said nothing.

‘My father died and then my brother was killed. Someone had to take over at home. So I packed up my books and became the squire.’ He turned towards me, touched his forelock and mumbled, ‘Yes, sur, no, sur.’ He sounded just like an ancient retainer in a sentimental, Irish comedy.

I laughed aloud, delighted by the accent and gestures which were so exactly right.

‘And what about the books?’

He had made me laugh, but beyond his mimicry I felt the shadow of painful memories.

‘I still read. Oh, not as much as I’d like. But some. Have you read Tolstoy, Elizabeth?’

‘Oh yes, but only Anna Karenina so far. I thought that was splendid, though I didn’t like Vronsky and I just couldn’t understand Anna. Kitty and Levin were much more interesting. I really felt for Levin.’

‘So you like Tolstoy?’

‘Yes, I suppose I do, but I shouldn’t really say that.’

‘Whyever not?’

‘My English teacher used to say you couldn’t possibly “like” a writer on the evidence of one book. You had to study the range of his work. But I liked Tolstoy from chapter one. I’m afraid it’s a weakness of mine, I make up my mind far too quickly. That’s what happened with the islands.’ I waved my hand towards the familiar shapes which lay darkly below the massed thunderclouds. ‘The minute I saw the islands, I knew I would be happy here.’

He pulled across the road at a point where it widened and had a broad grass verge. He angled the car so that we were looking out straight across the turbulent white-capped water.

‘Funny you should say that,’ he replied. ‘I always stop here on my way to Limerick and have a think. Perhaps the distance lends a certain perspective.’

His eyes were fixed on the far horizon where silvery rays pierced the dark storm clouds. A gust of wind spilled round the car, buffeting it as a curtain of rain descended, pattering on the roof. In a few moments, the islands had disappeared and we heard the first rumbles of thunder. I wondered what he meant about distance lending a certain perspective.

He turned abruptly and smiled at me.

‘I must take you home, Elizabeth, or the locals will have us married off by tomorrow. I expect you’ve worked out what small communities are like by now.’

I nodded vigorously and told him about a man on a turf cart passing the cottage, who greeted me by name, and the way the postmistress had checked me out.

‘I used to spend a lot of time in the country before I went to Queen’s, but I’ve not been there very much these last few years. I’ve forgotten things I used to know. I haven’t got my lines right yet. But I keep remembering things all the time.’ ‘I take it the work is going well.’

‘Far better than I expected. My tutor really did lay it on about me being a woman and a Protestant in a male-dominated, Catholic community. He advised me not to come.’

‘But you came anyway?’

‘I was lucky. My tutor changed. The new one is an anthropologist and she’s just come back from fieldwork with the Masai. She didn’t see any problem.’

‘Have you managed to get any figures for acreages and landholdings?’

‘Oh yes. But I did explain I wasn’t from the income tax or the Land Commission, that I just needed them for my examinations. They were very good about it.’

He shook his head ruefully. ‘I think perhaps Michael Feely was right. You’re the first person I’ve ever heard of who’s got any real information out of them. I’ve known these people all my life and all I get is a version of the truth.’

‘Yes, but you are the squire.’ I touched my forelock and said ‘Yes, sur, no, sur,’ just as he had done, but I couldn’t get the accent quite right. ‘And I’m only a student who’ll pass the time of day for a week or two and then disappear for ever. They can afford to be generous. I don’t threaten them, because I’m only a stranger in the place.’

‘You don’t have the feel of a stranger,’ he said promptly. ‘You have the feel of someone very much at home here.’

He stopped outside the cottage and looked across at me.

‘Yes, I am. I’m far more at home here than I ever am in Belfast. I’m trying to work out why. It’s far harder than the land-use bit.’

‘Will you apologise to Mary and Paddy for me? I must get back. Will you be in on Saturday?’

‘Yes, I expect so. It’s easier for Mary, if I do the shopping.’

‘Come and see me when you’ve finished,’ he said, as he came round and opened the door for me. ‘I’ll be shut up with the stock books, Kathleen will show you where. I’ll be needing a spell or two by then.’

‘Thank you for bringing me home. If I come on Saturday, I shall pester you with questions,’ I warned him, as he walked back round to the driver’s side.

‘I shall look forward to that.’

He raised a hand and was gone.

Mary was standing in the middle of the kitchen with the empty kettle in one hand and the tin mug she used for filling it in the other. ‘Boys, Elizabeth, was that Patrick Delargy’s car I saw outside? That hyderange has grown so high I can’t see a thing these days.’

‘It was indeed, Mary. He gave me a lift back, for he said it would rain. Wasn’t it nice of him?’

‘It was, it was that, but shure he’s a very nice man altogether.’

She stood peering out of the door. ‘He’s a great one for books, like yourself,’ she said, as if the thought had floated in with the exhaust fumes of his departure.

‘We were talking about books. He said he’d been to college, but had to leave.’

‘Aye, he did, poor soul. Shure, it was a tragedy. First his father died, and then Walter was killed and their poor mother an invalid. They say she died of a broken heart. Poor lady, she was kindness itself.’

As I started unpacking the shopping on the table, she went to the bucket of spring water and filled the kettle.

‘What happened to Walter?’

‘Ah, it was a fall. He was a great man for the hunting. The whole family were great for horses, but Walter was mad about them. Well, it was the Boxing Day meet and he had this new horse. They say Patrick advised him not to ride it with the ground so hard. Oh, that was a bad year, Elizabeth. I found a wee bird in the haggard frozen with cold and I put it in a box near the stove, but it died, poor thing.’

She pulled back the rings of the stove and poked up the fire before she went on. ‘But Walter would ride the new horse and it threw him on the road, just below the house. They say he never moved, his neck was broken.’

‘But why did Patrick have to leave college?’ I asked after a few moments. ‘Was it because of his mother?’

‘’Twas partly that,’ Mary answered sadly. ‘Yes, ’twas partly that, but indeed she didn’t live long after Walter died. I suppose Patrick came home because there was no money for the girls. Patrick’s father was a lovely man, but he was no use with the land, or the shop, or the hotel. He’d inherited them, but he had no interest in business. He left that to Walter. He was a doctor, you see, and the kind of a man that wouldn’t send a bill to poor people that he knew couldn’t pay. Oh, they might send him a dozen eggs or a fowl, if they could spare it, but that’s not much good with two girls away at school in England.’

‘So Patrick took over from Walter?’

‘He did, and a great job he’s made of it, so I hear tell. Anyways, his sisters finished their schooling in Dublin and went for a year in Switzerland forby, and one of them’s married in England to some big man in the government there. In the Parliament, I think, but I don’t know the right way of it. He’s very high up, for shure. And the other sister married a man who trained horses. They run the hotel and shop and have horses as well. They’re back and forth to Dublin and you’d see them in the papers regular with winners. It must be in the whole family.’

She poured two cups of tea and handed me one.

‘Where’s Paddy, Mary? If he’s up on the far field he’ll be soaked by now.’

‘Ah, never fear. He’s gone to Doolin for the pension and I’m thinking he’s met somebody in Considine’s.’

I hoped that Mary would go on talking, but she seemed lost in her own thoughts as she sat looking into the fire. ‘Patrick Delargy is a rich man now, Elizabeth,’ she said with an air of finality and sadness. ‘All he needs is a wife and shure who would he marry here and him an educated man?’

She certainly had a point. In his position, he couldn’t just marry anyone, nor could there be many suitable single women of his age around. It must be very lonely to be so old and not have anyone to go home to. I remembered the way he had asked me about Tolstoy and I wondered who he could talk to about Tolstoy in Lisdoonvarna. Then it struck me that I had never talked to anyone about Tolstoy either. At home, no one ever reads anything but newspapers. George reads The Economist because that’s his subject and Alistair Maclean for relaxation. Good escapism, he always says. And don’t we all need some low literature to keep our minds off things.

‘That tea was marvellous, Mary. Can I help myself to another cup? What about you? Are you ready yet?’

To my surprise and delight, Mary held out her cup and let me refill it. All week, she had been pouring my tea and serving Paddy and me at the table, while eating her own meal by the fire. She had waited on others all her life. Now, at last, she’d let me do something for her. It delighted me, for I knew such a gesture could have only one meaning. As far as Mary was concerned, I was no longer a stranger in the place.

We finished our tea in silence. My legs were beginning to throb gently after the long walk and the standing in the shops. Mary had been on her feet all day too, feeding hens and calves, baking bread, separating milk and making butter. We were both reluctant to move.

Finally, Mary got to her feet, her hand to her low back in a familiar gesture. ‘Have you writing to do today, Elizabeth?’

‘I have, Mary, but I’ll wait till we light the lamp. I’ll help you with the supper first.’

Outside the cottage a van stopped. Mary moved quickly to the middle of the floor. ‘I wonder who that is. Bad luck to that hyderange, for I can’t see a thing these days.’

The van started up again and continued on up the hill. The fumes drifted through the open door. They were followed by the scrape of boots on the flagstones. A moment later, Paddy appeared.

He had shaved off the stubble which had graced his chin at lunch and was wearing his best suit of brown corduroy with the pink and mauve tie that had so amazed me on my arrival. His face looked as if it had been polished, the cheeks fresh and pink, his eyes even brighter than usual. From the top of his cap, perched on his shiny forehead, to the toes of his well-polished boots, he looked trim, collected and totally in command of himself.

Such a small man, I thought, as he raised his hand in the doorway. Small and compact and full of a compelling sense of life that related not at all to the lines on his face, the remaining wisps of white hair, or the gnarled fingers, thickened with age. How can a man be old and yet so full of life? Paddy would never be old.

He hung his cap on the hook behind the door, grinned at us cheerfully and walked into the room with only the slightest trace of a sway. He smiled again, a sideways smile directed mostly at Mary. It was like the look on a child’s face, when it knows it has been naughty, but expects to be let off with a caution.

Mary said nothing, but I could see she was amused. We waited.

‘God bless all here,’ he said heartily. ‘I’m sorry, Mary, that I was unavoidably detained. I met some Yankees from Australia.’


Chapter 4 (#ulink_5f56d6bd-6816-52cf-9282-3e66d51a511b)

It isn’t Paddy who has the hangover this morning, I thought to myself, as I sat munching wheaten bread at breakfast next day. He had been in such sparkling form the previous evening that we had sat by the fire till midnight. He’d told me stories from every part of his life, moving back and forth across the Atlantic and the decades of his seventy-odd years with equal ease and a fluency that had me spellbound.

He had such a gift with words. Everything he said was put in a simple, direct way but out of that simplicity he built something much more complex. The atmosphere he created was so very potent that as I listened to his stories, some happy, some sad, some cautionary, I felt sure I was experiencing something quite beyond the actual events he was recounting. It came to me that Paddy’s stories were like parables for in them he had concentrated the wisdom of a long life lived with passion and humanity. I had gone to bed, my head full of Paddy’s stories, and spent a dream-haunted night reliving stories of my own.

‘God bless all here.’

The dark-caped figure of Paddy the Postman stood in the doorway, a hand half-raised in greeting. I’d been so far away that I had neither seen the bob of his cap above the hydrangea, nor heard the scrape of handlebars as he leaned his ancient, regulation bicycle against the wall of the dairy.

‘God bless you, Paddy. Sit down and rest yourself, till I get you a drop of tea.’

He sat down, his cape dripping gently from a sudden shower. ‘Ah, miss, I have a handful for you today,’ he said. He counted out three letters for me.

‘Well, what’s news in the world today?’

Paddy O’Dara put down his blue enamel mug. He’d persevered with the delft cup and saucer for two days after my arrival until Mary had absentmindedly taken the mug from the dresser. He clutched it thankfully and the cup and saucer did not reappear.

‘Good news. Mary-at-the-foot-of-the-hill has a wee boy and all well. Seven o’clock this morning.’

‘Ah, thanks be to God,’ said Mary, crossing herself. ‘I’ll go down and see the poor crater after a while.’

‘There’s Yankees arrived at John Carey Thatched House and his brother’s over from Kilshanny. There’ll be a big party tonight, I’m thinking. Flannigan’s lorry was there delivering crates of porter.’

Paddy finished his tea at a gulp and stood up. ‘God bless you, Mary, that was good, but I must be like the beggar man, drink and go, for I’ve a packet for Flaherty’s beyond the Four Crosses.’

‘Ah, ’tis a good way that, Paddy, and mostly uphill,’ Mary nodded.

‘And we’re not getting any younger,’ said Paddy ruefully, as he settled his mailbag on his shoulder and put his cap on.

‘Good luck till ye.’

‘Good luck.’

I began to stack the cups and plates at one end of the table, but Mary stopped me.

‘Sure leave them, astore. Aren’t you going over to Ballyvore. And I’ve not much to do today.’

It was highly unlikely that Mary had not much to do. I had seldom seen her finish her daily round before supper. But I sensed that often she was glad to be alone, with me out pacing the fields and Paddy working on the land or in the haggard.

‘Will I need my wellingtons, do you think, Paddy?’

‘Ah no, it won’t be that wet. The path is rough, but it doesn’t flood and the wind’s been drying between the showers.’

I collected my plastic folder of field maps, put the letters in my pocket and zipped up my jacket. ‘I’ll be back by one, Mary, is that all right?’

‘As right as rain, astore.’

‘Mind yourself, Elizabeth,’ Paddy warned severely, ‘Ballyvore is full of old bachelors and wouldn’t they just like me to make a match for them with a nice, slim, young girl like yourself.’ He laughed as he stumped off to the garden to dig potatoes.

Slim. I smiled to myself as I set off up the road. No one had called me slim before. After my ‘skinny’ phase in early childhood, I had begun to put on weight when I was about eight years old. Despite the removal of all sweets, chocolate and cake from my life and my mother’s continuous nagging not to eat this or that, or anything I put my hand out for, it was my late teens before I suddenly shed the flabby layers that had made my late childhood and teens so miserable. For years now, I had shut out the memory of those unhappy times. The teasing at primary school was bad enough, but what happened at grammar school was even worse. The games mistress made me run round and round the gym every morning before prayers. Remedials, she called it. My face would prickle with heat, I’d get a stitch in my side, and afterwards I couldn’t find my place in my Songs of Praise, because my hands were shaking and sticky with perspiration. Those days were long gone. Thank Heaven.

But slim. I could hardly think of myself as slim. Certainly not compared with Adrienne. Perhaps Adrienne was a bit too slim. George said she had a marvellous figure but he preferred his women cuddly, like me. He said he was glad I wasn’t sylphlike. Often, when we were lying together on the sofa in his mother’s sitting room, or on a rug on some beach or hillside, he would put his head in my lap and say that I was built for comfort. But Paddy thought I was slim.

I turned to look back at Lisara and to study the new perspective from the high point I had reached on the long curving slope of the road. Funny how people see you differently. George. Paddy. My mother. Mary. It made me wonder how you could ever tell what the truth really was when people offered you so many different versions of yourself.

Just over a mile from the cottage I came to a weather-beaten signpost. It didn’t say anything for the arms had long ago dropped off, but the track which led away to my left was clearly used. It was rough, but some of the bigger holes had been filled with stones. Apart from that, there wasn’t much other sign of life about. No houses were visible either behind or before me. The hedge boundaries were overgrown and the fields were full of rushes. The trackway to my right that led down to the cliffs was identifiable only by the parallel stone walls. Its whole length was filled with the luxuriant growth of grass and bramble.

The bank below the signpost was smooth and mossy. I sat on my plastic-covered maps and took out my letters. I fingered the two from George in anticipation and laughed at myself as I put them to one side. I always save the nicest things till last. Adrienne always says you can tell a great deal about a personality from that simple observation, but whenever I ask her to explain exactly what you can tell, she never does.

My mother’s letter was a single large sheet. It had been written hastily in blue biro on the strange-smelling, pink paper she had been using for years, a line that hadn’t sold in the shop. ‘Dear Elizabeth,’ I read,



Dad and I were glad to get your letter and hear that you had found somewhere to stay. It sounds reasonable considering but be careful of a damp bed. You can’t be too careful in these places. Things are much as usual. We are very busy in the shop. It’s amazing how trade keeps up especially cigarettes. Dad had to go to the Cash and Carry twice last week. Everyone has money these days especially (the Other Side). I don’t know how they do it what with the big families and what they have to pay the church. Of course they have the big family allowances and the national assistance. The house at the end of St Judes the one with the orange lilies has been sold to one of them. One of our customers says the church puts up the money for them. They’re getting in everywhere round here.

I paused. Even the irony of the Other Side having bought the house with the orange lilies failed to raise a smile. My mother puts on paper exactly what she thinks. Given how I feel about most of what she thinks, it was hardly surprising I’d find a letter upsetting. I just hadn’t been prepared for it. Listening to what she said, evening after evening, I had learnt to filter out the things that upset me, but seeing them written down in tangible blue biro was another matter. I couldn’t filter out the words and what they meant. She’d even written ‘the Other Side’ in brackets, like a stage direction, to remind me of the customary lowering of the voice.

Mary and Paddy were ‘the Other Side’. So was Patrick Delargy, a man who had talked to me as a friend and driven me home to save me a walk and a wetting. Just by being here in Lisara, I was doing something neither of them could accept. There would be no talk of my visit when I went back, no interest in anything I’d done. My father would put the event out of mind, as he always did with anything uncomfortable. My mother would wear that tight, thin-lipped look of hers, if I were foolish enough to mention the visit myself.

Once, long ago, I had made the mistake of suggesting that some Catholics might be quite nice people. I have never forgotten the look she gave me.

‘Don’t ever let anyone hear you say a thing like that,’ she warned me, two bright spots of colour flaming on her cheeks.

My father had actually lowered his newspaper, a rare thing for him to do. ‘Indeed, Elizabeth,’ he said, in a tone intended to sound both conciliatory and wise, ‘that’s all very well, but when all’s said and done, you know, you can’t trust one of them.’

I never raised the subject again, or expressed any further opinion, but I did wonder what strange power it was that produced such hatred and fear.

I shivered in the chill wind and turned back to the rest of the letter.



Clare Roberts that you were at school with has got engaged to Clive Robinson the shop. They are going to live in Helen’s Bay. Clive has got a big job with the Co-op and they have bought a lovely bungalow with an L-shaped lounge. Her mother says it is the last word. She is very pleased I was speaking to her on Monday. She also told me Mary Dalzell as was had a lovely baby boy born on her birthday. What a coincidence. They are calling it William John after the grandfather.

That was the trouble with the shop. It meant my mother heard all the news. All the girls I went to school with, married and having babies, or leaving their babies with their mothers to take ‘wee, part-time jobs’ so they could buy the velvet curtains for the L-shaped lounges, or clothes for their Spanish package holidays. Perhaps it was my imagination, but I sometimes thought the only time my mother ever looked at me was when she talked about my contemporaries. It seemed as if she were waiting for me to say something. But whatever it might be, I’d never managed to say it. Her face went hard and disapproving, no matter what comment I made.

A graduation photograph on the piano in the seldom-used sitting room over the shop and a married daughter in a lovely bungalow in Helen’s Bay. Was that the future she wanted for me?

The single page of the letter was flapping in the stiff breeze and my fingers were numb with cold.



Dad has started to do up your room. He thought it was a good chance. Uncle Jamsey got us the paper from his work 30% off. It is a nice big green leaf with gold on white. Dad says it will dirty awful easy but you only have a year to do. He has only the woodwork left. You said white but he thought it would look a bit bare so he got a nice cheerful yellow at the cash and carry. I have no news at all from the country so will close now. Mum.

I suddenly began to feel very depressed. At first I thought it was the green and gold wallpaper, which sounded hideous. Then I wondered what they’d done with my precious maps and postcards that I’d been able to sellotape all over the walls, because the paper was brown with age and long overdue for stripping. My mother was quite capable of throwing the whole lot out.

No, it was something deeper than wallpaper and the lack of respect for my possessions. It was L-shaped lounges and babies called after their grandfathers. That wasn’t what I wanted. I didn’t know what I did want but it certainly wasn’t that. Just thinking about my mother’s news of the girls I’d been at school with made me feel afraid. Perhaps such things could happen to me too. Just like one of those road accidents you couldn’t possibly predict, where people get killed or injured, because they happened to be where they were at a particular moment.

I stuffed my mother’s letter back in my pocket and started to open the first of George’s. At that moment, the wind caught me. I looked up and saw the islands had already disappeared beneath the approaching squall. The grey, choppy sea had white caps and the first spots of rain fell chill on my cheeks. I put the letter away, stepped back onto the road, pulled up my hood and tied it awkwardly in place with my numb fingers.

A few minutes later, the squall hit me as I walked up the track to Ballyvore. Hail peppered my back and legs, bounced off the loose stones at my feet and drifted into the tangled grasses below the low stone walls. I bent my head forward and walked as fast as I could. I’d had a good look round and I knew there was no shelter anywhere. The only thing to do was keep going.

After the squally morning, the day improved steadily. By late afternoon the sky was a brilliant blue. Up on the floor of the quarry where I’d been collecting rock samples, I had to take off my jacket and then my sweater. When I opened the neck of my blouse and turned up my sleeves, I decided it was time to have a rest. I spread my jacket on one of the smooth surfaces at the foot of a layered rock face, stuck my rolled-up sweater behind my shoulders and leaned back in the blissful warmth. I thought about George.

In all the romantic novels, this would be the moment when he would come striding up the track. He would have come home unexpectedly, borrowed a car and driven down to find me. Now he would be in sight, looking everywhere, calling my name. But this wasn’t a romantic novel. George and I hadn’t seen each other since he’d gone off to England to his vacation job in the middle of June. I had wanted to go with him but the factory he’d found had no accommodation for women. That’s why I’d ended up at the Rosetta.

Earlier in the summer I’d thought a lot about our reunion. Whenever things got bad at home or when I felt especially lonely, before I started my job, I’d let myself daydream. Particularly, I thought of his arms around me. Not of kissing him or of our limited lovemaking, but simply of being held, of being safe in his arms, of feeling warm and secure.

I stirred myself, for my sheltered corner was so comfortable I was in danger of dozing off. I took out the letters I had been carrying with me since the morning, saving them for just such a quiet moment. I opened them quickly.

They were both rather short. The first had been written from the vegetable factory in Spalding. It said how much George missed me, how he longed to put his arms around me and how awful the campbeds were. Their Nissen hut had no hot water and the bog across the yard had been bunged up for days. He said the crack was good and his crowd had taken over a pub which sold Guinness and that the fish and chips were the best he’d ever had. He said I wasn’t to worry about him. He could cope with these things. The rest of the letter was an account of the practical jokes they had played on the supervisor to break the monotony of tending the pea belt, or watching the labelling machine.

The second letter was shorter still. The vegetables had come to a sudden end with a change in the weather, so he had packed up and caught the first boat home. He missed me terribly. None of our friends were around in Belfast, the students’ union was still closed, and he couldn’t have his mother’s car. She needed it for work since they’d stopped the estate bus. How wonderful it would have been if he could just have driven down and whisked me away from all those strange people and found us a nice place where we could be alone together, just the two of us, a long way away from Belfast. He hoped the work was going well and that I’d be back very soon. I was to let him know by return when he could meet me at the Great Northern.

I reread both letters several times to see if there was anything I had missed. But there wasn’t. Letters were such a poor substitute for being together, I reminded myself. And, of course, George didn’t like writing letters in the first place. He always said that scientists have difficulty with literary modes. Geography wasn’t really a scientific subject, he said, and anyway I’d always been good at English which was his worst subject.

Beside me a clump of tall, pink wildflowers began to sway in the light breeze. From their lower stems hundreds of tiny balls, like thistledown, drifted in front of me. They spun slowly in the sunlight, a hint of iridescence on their white fronds, some borne upwards by the warm air, some colliding, some few moving towards me, touching my warm skin, catching in my hair. I looked down the empty track and tried to re-enter my daydream. But I had the greatest difficulty remembering what George looked like.

I thought back to our first meeting. It was in my second year, a lovely, lively spring day just before the beginning of term. I came out of the front gate of Queen’s on my way up to the Ulster Museum and saw Ben sitting on the wall opposite the bus stop with a tall boy I didn’t know. Ben had hailed me, introduced George, asked if I had time for a coffee. We’d gone to the espresso bar across the road, talked for an hour or more and then gone for a walk in the Botanic Gardens. A few days later George found me in the library and asked me out.

It had been easy to get to know him. Although he lived on a new estate near Lisburn with his widowed mother, he’d gone to the same city-centre grammar school as Ben, so we knew many of the same people either from schooldays or from our first year at Queen’s. We began going to the weekly hops and to the film club. George worked hard and sometimes we would meet in the library and go to the union together for coffee. I was grateful for his company, glad to have someone to talk to when things got on top of me, when I felt suffocated by the flat over the shop and my mother’s complaints, or when my tutor was being awkward, pressing me for work I could only do if I had enough time to think it through.

George was easy-going. Nothing seemed to upset him. I had once thought I was easy-going, but I’d come to accept that I wasn’t. I was always getting upset over things and having to be comforted. And George was very good at that. What was the point in getting upset about things if you couldn’t alter them, he always said. It seemed he had a point.

I sat watching the swirling down and wondered about the name of the tall plant that had shed its seedheads with such enormous generosity. I picked some silky fronds from my black trousers and waved away a floating fragment that tickled my nose. As I moved my hand, the sunlight gleamed on George’s signet ring, the one he had asked me to wear before he went off to Spalding. I wore it on my right hand, but I knew very well that he hoped to replace it with an engagement ring as soon as we graduated. He’d never asked me to marry him, it just somehow seemed obvious that was what would happen. I hadn’t really thought about it till now.

Everyone assumed that because George and I had been going out together for more than two years we would marry. My parents certainly assumed that my bedroom wouldn’t be needed when I finished my degree and Adrienne Henderson was always asking where we would live and whether George would teach or try to get into industry, whether we’d stay in Belfast, or be prepared to move away for a time till George got established.

I took his letters out of my jacket pocket and looked at them again, the envelopes I had ripped open so hastily and my name written in biro on them. Miss Elizabeth Stewart. Perhaps it was being so far away that made my life in Belfast suddenly seem so very remote. What was it Patrick Delargy had said when he’d stopped to look at the islands? Something about distance lending perspective.

Perhaps, being so much older, he felt he had a lot to reflect upon. So much had happened to him. He had lost people he loved, given up a future he’d chosen to take up something he certainly hadn’t chosen. But nothing very much had ever happened to me. I’d lost my Uncle Albert the year I got my scholarship, but he was in his eighties so I could hardly complain about that. I hadn’t had to give up what I wanted to do and go and do something else.

‘Not yet, you haven’t.’

I heard Ben’s voice as clearly as if he were sitting beside me. One of his favourite phrases. If ever I told Ben I couldn’t do something, or I’d never been able to manage such and such a thing, he would always come back at me. Not nastily, but always firmly. You shouldn’t make closed statements about yourself, he said, because people and circumstances change all the time. Surely there were things I thought now that I never used to think, things I did now that I couldn’t do before.

I hadn’t noticed before how different Ben’s way of thinking about life was from George’s. I wondered if I would have noticed the difference had I not been sitting in the sun, in an abandoned quarry, over two hundred miles away from the low, red brick wall where I’d bumped into the two of them on a bright, spring morning that now seemed a very long time ago.


Chapter 5 (#ulink_59e2d1de-ab8b-5e70-9b39-3c97f2ae6222)

‘Hallo, Elizabeth, I heerd you was here. Will ye come with me to the dense tonight? Me cousin Brendan has the van from his work an’ he says there’s room for wan more.’

As I stepped through the door of the cottage, a red-haired girl of about my own age hailed me cheerfully.

‘Ah, shure do, Elizabeth, do,’ urged Mary. ‘Go to the dense with Bridget. ’Twill be company for her and it’ll do you good. Ye can’t be working all the time. There’ll be a great crowd.’

‘The dense is great gas, Elizabeth,’ Bridget went on, tossing her short, coppery curls. ‘Isn’t the band down all the way from Belfast itself. They must have knowed you were here!’

It was a long time since I’d been to a dance without George, I was tired and I couldn’t think what I’d wear, but because I liked her immediately, I let Bridget persuade me. There weren’t many people I knew who’d walk two miles to offer a complete stranger a lift to a dance.

When Brendan’s van started bumping its way round a huge, crowded car park full of buses and minibuses, cars and taxis, vans, tractors, motorcycles and bicycles, I could hardly believe that the long, low building ahead of us was a ballroom. With its rusting corrugated roof and boarded up windows it looked more like a warehouse or a battery chicken unit. Its breeze-block walls were plastered with the tattered remains of posters and flourishing nettles sprang from its concrete base but as I peered out into the darkness I saw a long line of people queueing up at its entrance and a tail-back of vehicles spilling out into the road behind us.

It was some time before we got inside. Only one half of the building’s double doors was open and once over the threshold the four large men who were supervising the payment of seven and sixpences created a further bottleneck. Beyond them a wide, empty corridor led to the darkened ballroom itself. We were greeted by a solid line of backs.

‘’Tis the season,’ Bridget explained, as we struggled through the press of bodies towards the dance floor. ‘They come from all over in the season. And there’s visitors forby.’

I felt a touch on my shoulder. Bridget winked at me and as I turned round, a young man asked me to dance. He put his arm firmly round me and energetically shouldered our way to the dance floor.

Despite the noise of the band and the speed of the quickstep, he asked me where I came from, what I was doing here, and whether I liked farming. Then, I danced with a farmer from near Ennis. He too asked me where I came from, what I was doing here, and whether I liked farming.

A few more partners and I was able to predict the questions. What was more I heard the odd snatch of other conversations. The same thing was going on all around me.

About eleven o’clock, I looked around for Bridget and couldn’t see her anywhere. Probably Danny had arrived and they were settled in the back of Brendan’s van for a while. No matter. As long as they turned up to take me home, I could look after myself. I manoeuvred my way towards the back of the hall and plumped down gratefully on the narrow bench next to an emergency exit, firmly locked and barred against gatecrashers. I wiggled my aching feet inside my high-heeled sandals and looked about me.

The dancers divided into two camps, women on one side, men on the other. Up by the stage, their ranks were six or seven deep. Down here, beyond the range of the beacon that bathed the dancers with alternate garish hues, they thinned out into a single line. On the men’s side there was an intense scrutiny of the opposite camp. The women’s scrutiny was just as intense, but they covered it by talking to each other and feigned indifference. Their eyes moved around just as much.

As the band started up again the dark wall of suits crumbled at its edge. The women held their ground as if nothing were happening and looked surprised or even bored as they were led onto the floor.

From time to time, a couple detached themselves from the moving mass of dancers and came and stood only a little way from where I sat. Not romantic encounters these. No affectionate gestures, not even the touch of hands. The faces were far too intent for it to be any kind of chatting up that was going on. I watched cautiously and saw that as each dance ended, the couples who’d been engaged face to face would either return to the dance floor together, or turn their backs on each other and rejoin their respective camps.

‘Ah, sure many’s the bottle of whiskey I’ve had, Elizabeth, for the making of a match. But sure, nowadays, the young people see to it themselves and save the expense of a matchmaker, more’s the pity.’

Paddy had talked at length about the custom of matchmaking. I’d listened to every word, intrigued and fascinated by what he’d said. What I hadn’t expected was to see it actually going on around me.

‘I think the hardest match atall is when the family has no money and the daughter is ill-favoured forby. There’s a lot of work and if no good comes of it the matchmaker gets the blame from both sides,’ he’d said ruefully. ‘Another hard one is when there’s a love match. The boy and girl have their minds set on each other but maybe one of the families is hoping to gain by the match and they think they’re losing a great opportunity.’

What was clear to me from all Paddy had said was how good he was at the job and how much he enjoyed it.

‘Ah well,’ he reminded me, his eyes twinkling. ‘There’s a lot of grand eating and drinking at the expense of both sides while the negotiations are going on. An’ many’s the bottle of whiskey I’ve had if it came out right.’

Some of the women I could see were as young as fifteen or sixteen, others were years older than I was and some few were in their thirties. Small and fragile, large and matronly, warm and homely, large-boned and gingery, they were dressed in a variety of ways, everything from the latest fashion in bridesmaid’s dresses to T-shirts and jeans.

I wriggled uncomfortably on the hard bench. It was one thing reading up the marriage customs of the Nootka or the Inuit and quite another to observe the customs in action. It didn’t look to me as if ‘love and marriage went together like a horse and carriage’ as the song would have it.

Whatever I might like to think about how people behaved in 1960, the evidence was that out on that crowded floor young men were looking for a woman who would cook and clean for them, help with the farmwork and bear sons to carry on the work on the land as they themselves grew older.

‘And the women? What about the women?’ I said quietly to myself.

It looked as if they were just as hard-headed as the men. They had to be. What they wanted was a man to give them a place of their own, children and their status as a married woman. Until they acquired that status, be they fifteen or fifty, they would still be a ‘girl’. And a ‘girl’ had no rights. She was someone who stayed at home, had no life of her own, did always what others told her to do, someone who could end up spending her whole life looking after aged parents or unmarried brothers.

Suddenly, I thought of my own Aunt Minnie, my mother’s youngest sister, a tiny wisp of a woman married to a large, loud-mouthed man I’d never managed to like. Uncle Charlie was a greaser in the ropeworks, his hobbies were drinking, betting on greyhounds and sitting in front of the television in his vest. He and Minnie didn’t get on. Often, they didn’t speak to each other for days and when they did, it was only to complain.

‘Yer Uncle Charlie’s a dead loss,’ she would say to me, shaking her head, when I went over to visit her in Short Strand. ‘Yer grandfether warned me. “Minnie,” he sez, “if ye marry thon pahel of a man ye’ll have neither in ye nor on ye.” An’ he wos right.’

Standing over the chipped and stained jaw box in her shabby kitchen as she emptied the tea leaves into a cracked plastic drainer, she nodded at me and went on.

‘All verry well, Elizabeth, but how wos I te get outa that aul hole at the back end o’ Dromara? Yer mather upped and went as soon as she cou’d. I might ’ave been there till this day if I hadn’t struck up wi’ Charlie, bad an’ all as ‘e is.’




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