by Shane Dunphy
‘What shall we sing, then?’
The girl just looked at me, smiling blankly.
‘Sing,’ she said again.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘You sing this after me, then.’
I tried an old American call and answer song, thinking it might suit my audience best.
Oh, Eliza, li’l Liza Jane!
Oh, Eliza, li’l Liza Jane!
I tried it again, and the second time, she mimicked me perfectly. I went through it a few more times, then tried a verse, punctuating each line with the refrain: Li’l Liza Jane.
I know a gal that you don’t know,
(Li’l Liza Jane!),
Lives in the mountains where the flowers grow.
(Li’l Li-za Jane!).
She joined in, clapping her hands in delight as we sang, swaying from side to side in rhythm with the punchy beat.
Liza Jane looks good to me
(Li’l Liza Jane!),
Prettiest girl I ever did see,
(Li’l Liza Jane!)
When the song finished, she bounced on her chair like a small child, and proclaimed: ‘Again, again.’
This time, I could hear Douglas joining in on the callbacks, and had to smile to myself as he whisked past us, sweeping the floor in time to the old song.
It wasn’t long before the stools were upside down on the bar, and Douglas was switching off the lights. ‘Come on then, have ye no homes to go to?’ he said, echoing the eternal lament of the publican.
‘Will that thing make it up into the sticks?’ my companion asked when he had the front door locked and we were standing by my car.
‘Only had her serviced a week ago.’
‘I didn’t ask you that.’
‘It’ll make it. She drives like a dream.’
‘Okay then. Let’s go. Sooner we go, sooner we’ll be back.’
The girl, whom I was starting to think of as Liza, after the song (and, indeed, the name had an old-fashioned quality that seemed to suit her), climbed into the back seat without having to be told, and promptly fell asleep. I started the engine, and turned north towards the dark shape of Mount Muireann looming above the village out of the night.
‘So tell me about our friend, then,’ I said as the road coiled out ahead like a blue ribbon.
‘Not much to tell,’ Douglas said. ‘Everyone hereabouts knows her people. They’re a quare bunch, living up in the highlands in a kind of shack – barely civilized at all. From what I’ve been told, they used to own a farm up there, but those goats and sheep run pretty much wild now, and there’s no fields you could grow anything on any more in them parts. I don’t know how they feed themselves – welfare, I s’pose.’
‘Is Liza there on her own?’
‘How’d’you mean?’
‘Are there many of them in it? Does she look after elderly parents or what?’
‘Does she look after her parents? Sure, she’s like a small babby.’
‘I used to work with people like her in another life, Douglas. I’ve seen children who were little more than toddlers take care of alcoholic or drug-addicted parents. You’d be amazed what kids can do if they have to.’
He grunted assent. ‘You’re right, I reckon. I’ve had little ’uns coming into the bar to collect their dads and mams on dole day, more or less takin’ the money out of their hands to buy food. It’s one of the hard things, in my business, to have to witness that.’
It occurred to me that Douglas didn’t have to keep serving such people when he knew their children were at home, unsupervised and hungry, but I kept the thought to myself. The ethics of working in a bar had never been something I’d had to contend with, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt.
‘So does she have any brothers or sisters? Are they all intellectually disabled?’
‘I think there might be another couple of kids in it, all right, but as far as I know they’re all like her, and the parents, who are about my age’ – Douglas was in his sixties, I guessed – ‘are mighty strange, and that’s putting it kindly. The dad, William, now I knew him from school. He used come in the odd time, with the arse out of his trousers and no shoes on his feet, wild and skinny and barely able to scratch out his name. We used to give him a fierce hard time, but, sure, you know what kids are like. He was the class hard-luck case, and we all knew it. Turn left up here.’
The lane was overhung with trees and bushes, and huge potholes made the going treacherous. I slowed to a bare crawl.
‘It’s just up a little bit ahead now. You’ll be on it before you know,’ Douglas warned me.
Sure enough, suddenly, the side of a rough stone wall – part of a larger building that disappeared into the shrubbery on the left-hand side of the lane – protruded halfway out into the crude roadway, making it impossible to pass. I realized in a rush that I would have to reverse all the way back to the main road, and mentally cursed Douglas for not warning me; with all the blind corners, it would be a difficult return trip.
I turned to look at our sleeping passenger. She was deeply unconscious, breathing steadily and regularly.
‘Hey,’ I said, shaking her gently. ‘You’re home, Liza.’
Like a child being woken for school, the girl rolled over and showed me a pointed shoulder.
‘She’s not goin’ anywhere in a hurry,’ Douglas said, rolling down the window and taking a pack of non-filter cigarettes from his breast pocket.
I opened the door and climbed out, to lift her physically if necessary. A few more gentle shakes and she was sitting up, blinking in the semi-darkness.
‘You have to go home now, hon,’ I said. ‘Do you have a key to get in?’
‘Home…’ she repeated, and struggled out into the night air.
‘We have company,’ Douglas said sharply.
‘Daddy,’ Liza said, and I saw the man who was now standing in the grim laneway, in the full headlights of the Austin.
He was tall, probably six foot four or five, and dressed in what looked like ancient overalls, which were so dirty and discoloured they had taken on a kind of generic grey hue. His hair was a greasy tangle of white with a yellow tinge, and on his feet were the most enormous pair of hobnailed boots I had ever seen. His face was a mask of anger and bewilderment. His eyes – piggish and too close together – were squinting against the light, and his chin was obscured by thick white stubble. I couldn’t tell if he was fat or heavily muscled, but I got the sense of huge bulk, behind which I knew would be a powerful strength.
There was no doubt in my mind that he saw us as intruders. He did not look one bit happy.
‘Daddy,’ Liza said again, but I was aware that, rather than moving towards the man who was obviously her father, she was pressing back against me with no little force.
‘Umm,’ I said, feeling strongly that I should say something at this point, ‘we’re just leaving your daughter home, sir. She was down in Drumalogue, and we didn’t feel it was safe for her to walk home so late.’
The man lowered his gaze to the girl.
‘You run off again, child,’ he said, his voice a low and guttural growl.
Liza did not answer.
‘You go on to your bed now,’ he said, and turned and disappeared into the darkness. I could hear his huge frame moving through the foliage that hung down into the laneway for some long moments. Liza hung back until she was sure he was gone, then she shot off round the corner of the old building, leaving me standing in the night.
‘Can I go home now?’ Douglas asked. ‘Some of us have businesses to run.’
‘Uh – yeah, okay. I’m coming,’ I said.
‘Well, are you satisfied?’ my companion asked when I finally managed to get us back on the road and was pointed for home.
‘In what way?’
‘Well, you rescued the maiden in distress. Did you get a word of thanks? Did old William shake your hand and praise you for bringing his wee girl home safe? Do you feel that your efforts were appreciated?’
‘No,’ I a
dmitted. ‘None of those things happened.’
‘Waste of time then, wasn’t it?’ Douglas said, sounding pleased at the declaration.
I lit a cigarette of my own from the dashboard lighter.
‘I would not have slept properly tonight, knowing that little girl was wandering about, at risk from any arsehole who happened upon her. I know she’s home now, and that’s a relief.’
Douglas nodded, watching the ditches and scrub that sped past.
‘I see. And you’re not going to toss and turn, wondering just how safe she is in that shit hole we just left her in, with that ogre of a man?’
I said nothing to that. I had a feeling sleep was many hours away.
Douglas refused to take the money when I left him back at the bar. I thanked him and drove towards my home amid the fields and the hedgerows, wondering about Liza, and why she had come out of the mountains to find me.
2
Over the next two weeks I thought often of Liza, but on each occasion I pushed the questions and concerns that occurred to me to the back of my mind, and got on with the new life I had made for myself.
My cottage, a simple one-bedroom affair, had been built as a labourer’s residence in the early nineteenth century and needed some maintenance, and although I am spectacularly unskilled in such basic practicalities, I bought some tools and DIY manuals, and threw myself into the tasks wholeheartedly. To my surprise, the results were not at all bad: the door I rehung fitted its frame snugly, the drain I unblocked remained free-flowing, and the guttering I cleared and then repaired did not fall from the roof.
Proud of myself, I sought permission from the landlord (an old farmer who was delighted with the few euros rent I paid) to plant some vegetables in the back garden. He not only agreed, but offered to contribute to the project by giving me some potato tubers and young cabbages – the traditional crops of that part of the country – to get me started.
My new benefactor, whose name was Joss, proved to be a firm yet patient teacher, who took great pleasure in sitting on an old stone offering suggestions as I turned over, stoned, weeded and raked the small patch of earth which was to be my new vegetable garden.
‘It’s all about giving the soil space to breathe,’ he informed me, a short black briar pipe clenched between his teeth, a wisp of tobacco smoke twirling about his ear. ‘You need to treat the earth tenderly. If you want her to give you food, then you have to woo her, like a woman.’
‘Like a woman. Got it,’ I grunted, beating a sod apart with my fork, and pulling the grass that sat atop it out by the roots.
‘People have no respect for the land,’ Joss continued. His lessons were always punctuated by musings on the nature of modern agriculture. ‘It’s all pesticides and crop quotas and feckin’ land taxes… how the hell is a soul to make any class of a living out of it any more?’
‘You’ve got me there, Joss,’ I said, picking the sharp flinty stones from the newly exposed patch of dark soil.
‘It can’t be done,’ he said, as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘The small farmer is at a severe disadvantage. I tell you, what you’re about is the best way to do it. You’re beholden to nobody, and you can have the pleasure of growing something you planted and tended yourself, without having to give the men in suits their pound of flesh.’
We continued in this vein for another hour or so, until Joss decided it was time for tea. He was always acutely aware of the need to keep me hydrated with liberal dosings of strong tea during my horticultural tutelage. He had also discovered that I baked a good scone, and was always happy to sample one or two when visiting. ‘There’s no shame in a man being able to cook well,’ he informed me. ‘When I was a lad, a man was expected to be able to darn his own socks and make a pot of stew if called upon to do so. I always thought it a scandal, them fellas who’d nearly starve if their wives went away for a day or so. Soft eejits.’
I set the old copper kettle on the hob to boil, only to discover on investigation that I was out of milk. I drink tea and coffee black, and often forget to restock my fridge in case of visitors.
‘I have to pop into town to get some milk, Joss,’ I informed my guest. ‘You’ll be okay for a few minutes?’
‘For certain. I’ll pull a few more weeds out while you’re away. Have you e’er a bit of jam for the scones?’
‘I do.’
‘And butter?’
‘In plenty. I’ll just be ten minutes, Joss.’
‘Right you are.’
I was leaving the village shop, a litre of milk and the morning paper under my arm, when I heard a tuneless voice raised in song, ‘Oh, Eliza, li’l Liza Jane!’
I stopped dead in my tracks, and looked about to find the source of the off-key singing. I knew there could only be one person who knew those words, although I was amazed that she had remembered them.
‘How many nickels does it take? Li’l Liza Jane! To take you sailin’ on the lake? Li’l Liza Jane!’
At last I spotted her. The girl was in a group of young adults – there were maybe ten of them – walking along the footpath across the road from where I stood. I could see that they were all, at varying levels, intellectually disabled (they were linking arms, and two among the group clearly had Down’s Syndrome), and I could easily pick out the three carers who were shepherding them along the path. Without hesitation, I jogged over. Liza saw me coming, and laughed giddily, breaking free from the line and rushing over.
‘Sing, sing!’ she said. She picked up the arm that wasn’t holding groceries and turned it over, then looked behind me. For a moment I wasn’t sure what she wanted, then I understood: she was looking for my autoharp. ‘Sing,’ she said again, firmly.
‘I don’t have my instruments with me right now, Liza,’ I said.
The group had stopped, and I realized that many eyes were surveying me expectantly. I was still wearing my gardening clothes, which were not exactly clean, and my hair was loosely tied in a ponytail which had mostly come undone. I could not have looked very respectable.
‘I’m Shane,’ I said to the sea of waiting faces. ‘I met Liza, here, a little while ago.’
‘Her name is Annie,’ a tall, grey-haired man said, extending his hand to me. ‘I’m Tristan Fowler, co-ordinator of the Drumlin Therapeutic Unit.’ He looked to be in his early fifties, was athletically built, and spoke with a clipped English accent. He was dressed in denim shorts and a short-sleeved shirt, his silver hair cut in a tight military style.
‘Good to meet you,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean to intrude, it’s just that I’ve been wondering about this young lady ever since I ran into her.’
‘I take it you taught her her new song,’ Tristan said. Liza – or Annie, as I now knew she was called – was leaning against him, her arm wrapped about his broad shoulders.
‘I did.’
‘Are you a musician?’
‘Yeah. I play some of the local pubs.’
‘Well, we would love it if you would consider coming and doing a little concert for us, wouldn’t we, lads?’
The group all whooped and cheered. One short, smiling youth with long blond hair slapped me on the back. I grinned and blushed sheepishly.
‘Yeah, okay,’ I said. ‘I’m sure I can do that.’
Tristan fished a card out of his pocket. ‘Here’s my number. You’ll get me there most mornings before ten. After that, we’re into the programme, so it’ll be hit and miss.’
‘Thanks. I’ll call you.’
Tristan nodded. ‘I hope you do. Come on, lads.’
And off they went. I wandered back to the Austin, looking at the white card. Drumlin (Therapeutic) Training Unit it read. Co-ordinator: Tristan Fowler. Assistant Co-ordinator: Beth Singleton. Underneath were telephone and fax numbers, and an email address. In the corner of the card was the image of a standing stone. I stood by my car, and wondered why I felt so privileged to have been asked to do something for free during the day that I was paid well to do at night. Something told me that Tristan Fowler w
as an unusual man. My suspicion would prove to be true.
3
I worked hard for the next two days, and finished off the garden. I had promised Tristan Fowler I would play music for him and his clients, but now that a little distance had been put between us, and knowing that Annie was in a safe place on at least an occasional basis, I was more or less happy to forget the whole affair, and get back to my leisurely pace of life.
One evening, a week or so later, I was sitting in an old chair outside my front door, an old Spanish guitar slung across my knee and a bottle of beer on the windowsill beside my ear. I had fallen in love with an old American mountain song called ‘When First Unto This Country’, and I was trying to work out my own version of it. So far, searches of my record collection had unearthed several interpretations, none of which I felt quite suited me.
This has always been my method: I need to wear a song in before I’m happy to perform it in front of an audience. This can mean trying it out on several instruments, in a variety of tempos and in perhaps two or three different keys, until I’ve found what I tend to think of as a comfortable fit. It can take me anything from a week to a month, and is a constant part of my life. As the process unfolds, I develop a sense of the song; who the protagonists are; what the overall atmosphere and emotion is; not to mention developing a feel for the imagery and structure. I’ve always got one or more song on the go, and can be running over verses or considering possible chord sequences while I’m driving or cooking.
I was enjoying the early evening warmth, and was close to finding my own take on the song. The Spanish guitar I was plucking was the instrument I had first learned to play on, so it almost felt like an extension of myself. My mother had bought it for herself when I was a child. She took guitar lessons for a while, but the demands of teaching in a school for children with learning difficulties and being a mother to three growing children had finally distracted her from her musical studies. The guitar gathered dust in our living room for several years, until one wet afternoon I took it up out of boredom and began to slowly pick out the chords to ‘House of the Rising Sun’.