The Belfast Girl on Galway Bay Read online

  ‘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 fa
mily’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

  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 flow
ed 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.’