by Pat O'Shea
It was very odd to get down from Serena and find the ground, without being able to see.
‘Safe journey. Goodbye,’ whispered Serena and she was gone; lost in the mist, silent as a flower.
‘You can hold my hand, Pidge, so that you won’t get lost.’
‘You always make me smile,’ he said, and he clasped her hand tightly.
‘Do I? Why?’
‘You just do.’
They started walking.
It needed courage just to walk for fear of unseen things like holes or bogs or even cliffs. After a few steps, however, it began to feel quite natural and, anyway, Serena would not have led them into such a danger.
‘Pidge, are we going the right way?’
‘I can’t tell yet. If there’s a candle soon, it’s the right way.’
Well, he said to himself, the die is cast and no mistake. We’re on our own now. Whoever would have thought that Shancreg could have been the setting for all these supernatural events. In my heart, I’m glad that I’m mixed in with it. Not everyone gets this kind of chance.
They walked along gently, like thieves.
Brigit asked:
‘Are we still in Ireland, Pidge?’ And Pidge wondered before replying:
‘I think we are; we must be I think,’ because he really didn’t know.
A candle blossomed ahead of them through the white mist.
‘There’s one! We’re on the right track,’ Brigit said.
She tried to hurry towards it, her hand squirming in Pidge’s, as she attempted to be free to rush ahead.
‘Don’t let go of my hand, Brigit. Be patient for a second.’
Presently they were standing and staring at the candle-flame. It flared and danced, grew long, rippled and bowed and lit up the ivory-white wax drippings, and these were frosted by drops of moisture. A little anchored flame, with glowing blue frills at its edges, quivered with life and tried all ways to pull free from the wick that was its mainstay.
Of course, Pidge thought, if it did manage to pull free, all the life would instantly die.
‘It’s as if the mist is the sea and the candles are lighthouses showing us the way,’ he remarked to Brigit.
‘I’d like to stay here and watch it forever,’ she said. ‘I like candles much better than electrixity. It’s all right though, I know we can’t, just like that waterspout.’
They walked on.
The candle flame shuddered, went to almost nothing, and vanished.
‘I’m just so surprised that they burn in this mist,’ Pidge said.
‘I’m not. It’s only magic. There’s a lot of it about at present, just like the old days.’
‘There’s always a lot of magic, but our way of seeing is very small and we mostly just call it Nature. Why, we are not at all surprised that we can pick an apple in the autumn that was a pink flower in the spring. That’s natural magic and we don’t really notice it.’
‘Yes, and what about butter?’ Brigit said.
‘Butter?’
‘Yes. It’s hard and it comes out of something soft. It’s yellow and it comes out of something white. Just by battering the cream with the dasher. It comes in little, weeny graineens and when you rock the churn, it turns into lumps. That’s magic.’
‘There used to be spells and charms about making butter in the old days, and even up to when Auntie Bina was a child.’
‘That just proves it,’ Brigit said smugly. ‘I knew I was right.’
They continued walking and passed many more candles, without stopping to admire each one, though they would have liked to. All the time their steps were as soft as the wingbeats of a wren.
Pidge kept on chatting and holding Brigit’s interest with anything that came into his head that would make magic sound natural. It was a way of not thinking too much about the dangers that might face them and a way of reassuring, not just Brigit, but himself as well.
For he had decided quietly to flow, as a leaf on a river, without fear. But, through all his resolution, the beauty of the mist and the candles and the chatter, he was listening intently for any sounds behind them, that might say that they had indeed been followed through the stones.
It was with a start, then, that he heard a voice up ahead of them, calling through the mist:
‘All ha’pennies and pennies, this way, please!’
Chapter 2
THE mist began to thin and, as it thinned, the children heard the sounds of many people bustling about and they were in the midst of footsteps, conversation and laughter, the rattle and squeak of wheels and the clucking of hens.
The mist parted like a curtain before their faces and then vanished completely.
To Pidge’s very great astonishment, he found that they were standing on the platform of the railway station in Galway, surrounded by people, baskets, parcels and luggage, crates of chickens, sacks of potatoes and meal, and some very busy porters wheeling trucks piled high with trunks and umbrellas and bags of every description.
Pidge was utterly unprepared for this. I expected lots of things but I didn’t expect this. I expected at least half a dozen magical things; but not this, he thought.
Brigit, who had been expecting nothing at all, was excited and happy. She had only been inside the station once before in her whole life.
We were definitely going in the wrong direction for this and we haven’t gone half far enough to be in Galway City, Pidge said to himself; it’s certainly a surprise.
‘How did we get here, Pidge?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
A diesel train was coming in from Dublin. People waited and chatted as they stood to welcome their visitors. Some were gathering their things together, to be ready to get on the train for the return trip.
‘All ha’pennies and pennies, this way, please!’ shouted a man with a megaphone, who was sitting on the ground a few yards from the exit. He had only one leg. It was stretched out in front of him on the ground.
‘Pity the man who has only half his share of underpinnings,’ he said.
He caught Pidge looking at him and winked. He beckoned discreetly.
‘That man over there is calling us with his finger,’ said Brigit.
They went across to him.
Pidge wasn’t really sure if the man meant to call them or some other one in the crowd. As they drew nearer, Pidge hesitated.
‘Come closer,’ the man said.
‘Yes?’ Pidge said, feeling in his pocket for some ha’pennies and pennies.
‘Thank you, young sir!’ the man said loudly as Pidge dropped the money into an upturned cap, which lay on the ground with a few coins already lying in it, just by the man’s one leg.
‘I see you took the job then?’ he whispered.
‘Yes,’ Brigit whispered back.
‘That’s good.’
He looked about him carefully before speaking again and then said:
‘Find the man with the spray of oak leaves on his coat and follow him no matter where he goes.’
‘All right,’ Brigit whispered back.
Pidge felt an absolute trust in this man.
‘How did we get here?’ he whispered.
‘No time for ins and outs, hows or whats,’ the man whispered back, ‘but follow my advice.’
‘All right. We will. Thank you,’ Pidge whispered.
‘Thank you very much,’ Brigit whispered dramatically.
‘Not at all,’ the man said. ‘And should you happen to have thorn leaves in your pocket, keep them there.’
‘I will.’
The man put the megaphone to his lips again and shouted out his command about pennies and ha’pennies.
Pidge took this to mean that the man had no more to say to them. He turned away and looked round to see if he could spy the man with the oak sprigs.
The station seemed less bright—why, it was almost dusk in some corners. He had to look really hard to see some things, especially things that stood in against the wall. As he peered into the gloom, an
object caught his attention.
‘Look, Brigit, at that old chocolate machine.’
‘Where?’
‘Just there.’
They ran over to it. They were very excited as it looked so queer and old. The slot for money was very big, but Pidge put some of his money in anyway and pulled a lever. Out came a bar of chocolate. It seemed much bigger and thicker than any he could buy in the shops.
‘You open it, Brigit, while I keep a watch for that man. We could easily miss him in this crowd and with the light going, you know.’
He looked round.
‘That’s odd,’ he said.
‘What?’
A steam engine stood breathing out clouds of steam by the platform.
‘That train. I thought it was a diesel coming in, but it was a steam engine after all.’
The engine whooshed out a massive jet of steam from a valve at the side. The noise it made overpowered every other sound. Brigit stuck the chocolate bar in her other pocket and clapped her hands over her ears.
‘It’s marvellous!’ she shouted. ‘Like an ORMOUS giant. I’d like to drive that. I really would.’
Pidge didn’t hear her. He kept looking everywhere for the man they were supposed to follow.
I didn’t know they still had steam engines let alone used them, he thought, as he searched here and there with his eyes; and the chocolate machine was a nice surprise too.
He noticed that the paint had been changed on the wood-work round and about the place. And the doors and windows of the Ladies’ Waiting Room, Parcels’ Office, Station Master’s Office and General Waiting Room were changed too. Well! Even the people dressed differently, he thought. They must be a different lot and the other lot went off somewhere, perhaps on the diesel—while we were talking to the man with the megaphone? And even he’s gone, and that was quick and clever of him; a man with only half his share of underpinnings, like that. And the porters and the man who takes the tickets, they look different, too. They’ve all got different uniforms on and waistcoats with watch-chains draped across them and they’ve got moustaches. And they look so kind and friendly, and very proud in some way. Because they’re working with that big, massive steam engine, maybe? And those large advertisements nailed high up on the walls: “Fry’s Chocolate” and “Guinness Is Good For You” and “Ah, Bisto” and “Clarke’s Perfect Plug”—all solid and shiny. It looks like enamelled tin and I’m sure positive, they weren’t there before.
And while he was thinking and marvelling at all this, the steam still rushed out, making a great cloud on the platform, and as he glanced once again at the engine to admire it, a newcomer appeared from the steam; a tall man, dressed in dark clothes and wearing a shapeless soft hat well pulled down, so that his whole face was not visible. All that Pidge could glimpse was a brief showing of a cheekbone, the flash of an eye and a quick showing of the tip of a strong nose. The springs of oak leaves were pinned to his lapel.
Brigit, who hadn’t taken her eyes off the steam engine from first sighting it, said:
‘There’s that man.’ And as the steam jet was now going quiet, Pidge heard what she said.
The man walked to the ticket barrier and they followed him. They were both wondering how they would get on when the ticket-collector asked for their tickets. The man simply walked through the barrier without the ticket-collector even noticing him.
‘Come on,’ Brigit said while pulling Pidge after her, ‘I think it’s free today.’
They were through and out into the town without an official word being said.
As they left the station behind, Brigit gabbled on about the steam engine and how much she liked it.
The man crossed over the turning into Forster Street and walked up a slight incline.
On the left was Eyre Square.
Pidge kept his eyes steadfastly on the dark figure up ahead.
‘They’ve put railings all round the Square,’ Brigit remarked.
‘Have they?’
Pidge took a quick look and saw a low, granite wall as a boundary and tall iron-wrought railings surmounting it.
‘They weren’t here the other day; they must have worked very fast,’ he said.
Trees as well—just inside the railings, a row of trees grew. Some children had made swings on the trees with ropes.
‘What will we do if he goes in for a pint?’ Brigit asked.
‘Follow him in and buy some orange crush.’
‘I’ll have a glass of champagne,’ Brigit said grandly. ‘And a packet of biscuits.’
‘Trust you,’ Pidge said smiling.
When he reached the great open space in front of the Square, the man looked carefully in every direction before crossing to the left and walking past the two massive cannon, that stood huge and threatening and pointing (rather insolently, Pidge thought) across the space at the Bank of Ireland.
They followed after him past the Browne Doorway and the statue of Pádraig O’Conaire, sitting inside Eyre Square itself. The statue looked newer somehow but, oddly, the new railings didn’t look at all new, despite a fresh coat of green paint. It was possible to see that parts of the iron were corroded and pitted. They looked old-fashioned and very elegant. Brigit spied a drinking fountain built into the wall by the Browne Doorway. It was a sort of stone bowl and there was a heavy copper cup on a chain.
She wanted to stop and try it but Pidge said no.
The man carried on into Williamsgate Street.
Pidge looked back and thought for a moment that the Square, and all the objects that were part of it, had disappeared and that there was just a space filled with people dressed in rough clothes, having a fair day or a market, but that didn’t last long. In seconds, he found that he was looking back through a massive gate in a great stone wall with a tower, and all the people had moved off somewhere or other. He knew he would have seen them through the open gate if they had still been there.
The man turned round the corner at Dillon’s Jewellers and carried on through the town. They hurried to keep him in sight.
Pidge now noticed that among the ordinary people in the street, there were some who seemed the poorest he had ever seen, with eyes that were like dark rags in pale, gaunt faces. Others among the crowd wore unusual dress and some gentlemen, looking very proud, were riding on fine horses.
They went on, past the Four Corners and still on past the Cathedral of Saint Nicholas of Myra. In the crush of people they lost sight of the man with the oak leaves and so didn’t know which way to go—on towards O’Brien’s Bridge, or left into High Street.
Making a quick decision, Pidge grabbed Brigit and ran full tilt down High Street; looking both ways at the Cross Street intersection and on, down to the quays.
Here the streets opened out and there was more space and fewer people. Across where the Claddagh should have been, there were dozens of thatched white houses built higgledy-piggledy all over the place. Sometimes this is Galway and sometimes it isn’t, Pidge thought. And then he had a sudden insight. Times! I think we are seeing different times; it’s always Galway, but not always the Galway of today.
They went back up and turned left at Cross Street and then left again and on to O’Brien’s Bridge in a few minutes.
The river below the bridge rushed in mad white froth towards the sea and it seemed to be at a higher level than even in the rainiest weather. People moved over the bridge and to Pidge it seemed that they too were like a river moving endlessly forward, all the time. So many people and all so different. Who built this bridge anyway and who was O’Brien? It’s a funny thing that I don’t know really, he thought. And all these people! How often I’ve walked over and thought—this is Galway; this is my town—just like anyone would. And all these hundreds and thousands of people from the past; they thought this very same thing, I shouldn’t wonder. And what about the ones who are to come? I can’t imagine them walking here and not knowing about all of us. This town has belonged to so many.
He studied the faces pas
sing him by; all different, all human. And he suddenly realized, all beautiful in a special human way.
But where is the man? Have we somehow passed him?
He looked back to see, and there was no spire on the Church of St Nicholas. And then he heard from a distance what sounded like the dull thud of cannon and he saw puffs of smoke. But oddly, the spire had gone before the cannon-fire, as though one thing had nothing to do with the other.
Suddenly, there was riot and confusion and the sound of trumpets, and again the sound of cannon and the air thick with the stench of gunpowder. He could hear the long low whistling sound of cannon-balls rending the sky and landing with that awful ‘crump’ sound that said death and destruction and fire and pain. The city was under siege.
The moment was brief and soon over and they saw the man standing at the other end of the bridge, which was now unaccountably made of wood instead of granite. The man was turning right, into Nun’s Island.
They hastened after him.
Everything was ordinary again and through one window, they saw a man sitting reading a newspaper in the front parlour.
Most of the houses had lights on early because there was an early dusk that was brooding, and the sun turned to a vivid red disk in a sky that was purple and awesome.
Leaving the houses behind, they followed the man past tall mills and mysterious yards behind high wooden gates.
On the left, there was a high stone wall built in a broad sweep. It should have been the new Cathedral of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas, but Pidge knew that it was the old jail which had stood on that piece of ground before being knocked down to make way for the Cathedral.
The man turned right on to the Salmon Weir Bridge. Brigit ran and peered through the balustrades and Pidge ran after her and looked too. Down below, the fat beautiful salmon lay packed as tightly as sardines; rising in layers on top of one another and all facing upstream, waiting to jump the weir and get up to the lake.
Pidge urged Brigit to hurry and they carried on over the bridge and saw the man, who had waited for them, at the back of the old Courthouse. He turned to the left and went down the Waterside.
Once more Pidge looked back, not expecting to see very far because of all the tall buildings in the way. But the buildings had vanished and in the distance was a walled city with fourteen towers. He couldn’t understand how he could know at a glance that there were fourteen, but he did. As he looked, the city seemed to shiver and go like a dream, and all the buildings were back in their usual places.