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‘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.
