I blew a stream of air up at my curly hair in exasperation, then tiptoed down the long hallway that led to the best smells within a hundred miles. Mrs. Fox stuck her head out of the kitchen and told me to sit in the guests’ dining room, explained that the tea—did I take tea or coffee?—well, the tea was there and I just needed to lift up the cozy. The other lodgers, the Helmootes, a German couple, had already gone out for the day. She was sorry to wake me, needing sleep as I obviously did, but the rules of the inn shut breakfast down at nine thirty and she didn’t like to go against Mrs. Langley’s orders.
“I appreciate you holding it for me,” I said, sitting slowly at a darling tea table. “I’m sorry I slept so long. That bed is magic.”
“Irish air,” Mrs. Fox called, ducking back in to rattle at something on the stove. “How do you like your eggs?”
“Oh, any way.”
“Any way is no way, how, then?”
“Scrambled, I suppose.”
More rattling. I sipped my tea and buttered a beautiful scone. Blackberry, I thought. The butter had the yellow coloring of a sunset. I smiled seeing it. My father always purchased Irish butter, his single extravagance, and he claimed he ate his homeland one slice at a time. American butter, he swore, was a mewling, bony-looking paste that a decent cut of bread should reject.
“Here we are,” Mrs. Fox said, weaving into the small sitting room with a tray before her. “Eggs and bacon. You have potatoes on the table and scones … yes, you’ve found them. Well, make your breakfast. You’re likely famished from travel.”
“I am hungry. Thank you.”
“And please make sure you sign the guest book. It’s Mrs. Langley’s passion, trust me. She’ll take my hide if I don’t have everyone sign.”
“I will. Right after breakfast.”
“Oh, I nearly forgot,” Mrs. Fox said, taking a step back from the turn she had made to leave. “Mrs. Nora Crean rang up. She is going to call for you at ten thirty. I told her you were still asleep.”
“Mrs. Crean?”
“She said you would know her as Gran. Everyone knows her, of course.”
I paused with the scone halfway to my mouth. How strange it felt to be receiving a message from someone whom I had met so recently, and so briefly. I didn’t like it. I had nothing against seeing Gran again, but not on the first morning in Ireland. Not now, not here, not when I had just arrived. All I had managed the afternoon and night before was a brief walk around the town, my main objective to stay awake long enough so that I could go to bed in good conscience. Now I wanted time alone to read and to write and to plan about how I should approach my research in the area. Gran’s visit upended all that, but I was aware that Mrs. Fox saw nothing unusual in our meeting.
“Did she leave a number where I could reach her?” I asked, thinking I could cancel the appointment.
“No, I dare say she didn’t.”
“I’m not sure I’m ready…”
“I understand.”
“How did she even know where I was?”
“Now that’s easier to solve. Nobody comes to Dingle in October, after the tourist season, and minds his own business. That I can promise you. If you sneeze three people will offer you a hankie.”
Mrs. Fox flexed her badger eyebrows and returned to the kitchen. I shoved the scone into my mouth, annoyed and tired and mostly needing a bath.
* * *
A portly man in a black suit came to fetch me. He climbed out of an enormous traveling car, an old-looking thing, and tick-tocked slowly up the stairs to the front door. He wore a chauffeur’s cap, though the cap stayed back on his skull as if it could not quite decide to give its service to the wearer. His hair had been red once, but it now had faded into an autumnal wreath that circled his head up to the top of his ears. His face was kind; the crinkles near his eyes gathered in merry chevrons. It is impossible to be in Ireland without hoping to see a leprechaun, and this chauffeur did a serviceable job of playing the part. True, he would have been an older, somewhat wearier leprechaun than I had ever imagined, but his way and his tap on the door before he pushed it open led me to think we could not help liking each other.
“You must be Kate,” he said. “I’m on an errand for Nora Crean.”
“Gran?”
“Herself.”
“Is she in the car?” I asked, going up on my toes to see over his shoulder.
“No, she’s got a surprise for you. She wanted to make your first day in Ireland special.”
“Thank you, I…”
It occurred to me that I was outmatched. How did she know it was my first day? Had I mentioned it in our brief encounter? I felt gloomy suddenly. The entire point of traveling to Ireland revolved around following my own interests. I had nothing against Nora Crean, or Gran, but neither did I have a special desire to give over my day to her.
All of this passed through my mind in an instant. The chauffeur seemed content to allow me to stack the chips anyway I liked. I let out a long breath. He smiled. I asked his name.
“Seamus,” he said.
“Of course it is.”
“Will you be coming along, miss?”
“I don’t even know if what I am wearing is appropriate. I only had a backpack full of clothes…”
“You’ll be fine, I’m sure.”
Who can resist a leprechaun? Even one as old and faded as Seamus seemed to be? I nodded. I left with a single bag. I followed him down the stairs of the B&B. He held open the automobile’s back door for me. I climbed in and he shut the door softly. I looked around. It was vintage automobile, maybe from the 1950s. I was not great about cars.
“Seamus, what kind of car in this?” I asked when he settled behind the wheel. He removed his hat and set it on the dashboard.
“It’s a Chrysler. A Plymouth Belvedere. They imported some through Britain and others they built in a factory in Dublin, miss. It was built in 1945 for a British diplomat. Nora Crean bought it at auction.”
“It’s beautiful. I’ve never been in a car like it.”
“Automobile, miss. You don’t want to insult the machine.”
He started the engine. I sat back against the luxurious seat. Keep calm, I told myself. Unless I was being kidnapped, nothing too horrible could happen to me in such a car, especially as it was driven by Seamus. He puttered down the road, not topping thirty miles per hour. It was odd to see him on the right-hand side of the car and several times, in the first few minutes of the drive, I clutched at the seat to brace myself for impact.
The landscape took my gloominess away. I would never be able to resist the landscape, I reflected. In the morning light the grass held the last of the dew while the sheep—sheep lived everywhere—grazed and never lifted their heads. I suspected we were driving toward the sea. I took out my phone and tapped the screen to bring up the compass. The car traveled gently south and a little to the west. Just as Gerry had said, Boston lay in that direction.
At last we topped a small rise and the ocean glistened before us. I sat forward in my seat. Seamus did not increase the speed. Gulls called as we lost our slight elevation. I rolled down my window with a hand crank. The air that met me smelled of brine and sand and old rock. My heart lifted. Seamus saw my smile in the rearview mirror.
“Did you know your hair grows redder by the sea?” he asked. “It’s true of all redheads.”
“I hadn’t known that.”
“It’s a fact. Some say hair like yours is made from leftover Christmas ribbon.”
“I think you’re full of nonsense, Seamus.”
“Did your parents tell you nothing?”
I fell a little in love with Seamus.
And I fell in love with the tiny harbor we approached.
Daingean Uí Chúis, in the old Irish.
My heart, I couldn’t help thinking, had come home.
6
Seamus parked directly on the dock, not far from a number of fishing vessels moored against a wooden seawall. Gulls greeted us and increase
d their volume as soon as the engine turned off. I knew the rough history of Dingle. I knew that it had been a fishing village for centuries, and that boats from the Isle of Man had plowed the waters off its coast for mackerel. Later, the larger trawlers arrived for herring. But most of that was gone. Now the town fished for tourists, primarily, and the bait consisted of fifty-some-odd pubs offering Guinness and Murphy’s Stout and fish and chips.
“Here we are, miss,” Seamus said, reaching for his hat and propping it on his head.
“Is Gran here?”
“Down on the boat there. You’ll see when you step out.”
“Okay. Thank you for the ride.”
I started to open the door, but Seamus scrambled out and opened it for me. He was a somewhat haphazard chauffeur. He reminded me of men unaccustomed to wearing suits who you sometimes met at weddings. They did their best, but the clothes never fit. They remained imposters of themselves.
Before he could direct me where to go, or what I should be looking for, he darted to the back of the automobile and opened the trunk. He pulled out a large wicker hamper and tucked it over the crook of his elbow. Then he nodded to me and told me to follow him. The hamper was heavy, apparently, because he stopped to switch elbows twice before we had gone a hundred feet.
The boat he led me to was not much to look at it. I supposed it was a fishing vessel; it reminded me of the lobster boats I knew from Maine. It was larger, though, than a typical lobster boat, with a curved bow that seemed to rise like a horse’s neck out of the water. Its engine idled. A pearl-colored stream of smoke came out of a stack on the roof of the cabin. The deck of the boat—was it a ship or a boat, I wondered?—swept back to a wide stern. Across the stern I saw the vessel’s name: Ferriter. It was a Blasket surname, I knew, but I couldn’t place it immediately.
“Here we are,” Seamus said, then called out into the wind, “Hello on board. Is there a man with breath aboard who could help an old man with a basket?”
No one answered. Seamus cursed under his tongue and used his chin to point to the ship’s center.
“We can board here,” he said.
“Can I help you with the basket?”
“No, no, I have it fine. I like to make sure Nora Crean values my labor.”
“I understand.”
“Step on board. They probably can’t hear over the engine.”
I did as I was told. The ship, however it was configured, was well cared for. Ropes and gear stood in neatly arranged piles. Someone had swept it recently, because a small pile of litter lay next to the broom leaning against the back gunwale. The sea around the boat sent small cackles of sunlight that flashed and blinded one.
“Here we are,” Seamus said, pointing again with his chin to the cabin at the front of the boat. “Nora Crean waits for you there.”
I tapped on the door and pushed through. Nora Crean sat at a small table, a steaming cup in front of her. She looked up and smiled. I was reminded again of the kindness of her face. She wore a heavy Irish sweater, a dense, dark-looking garment with a yoke of anchors across her chest. It looked warm and perfect on her. The tightness that had troubled her face at times on the bus had disappeared. Now she was at home, her expression seemed to say, and now she could be herself, not dependent on strangers or tourists to help her on her way.
“Hello, Kate,” she said, but pronounced my name in the old Irish, Ceit. “Welcome. I’m sorry if I rooted you out too early, but I didn’t want you to miss such a lovely morning. We have so few of them, you know?”
“Hello, Gran.”
“Where would you like it?” Seamus asked, somewhat rudely, as he pushed through the door behind me. “Did you fix a lunch of bricks, Nora Crean?”
“What I fixed is my own business,” she said. “If it’s too heavy for you, we could hire a younger man to see to it.”
“You’d find no man who would take this job. You can count on that.”
“Did you have a restful night?” Gran asked me, ignoring Seamus’s last dig. “Don’t pay attention to Seamus. He wouldn’t know he was alive if he couldn’t complain about every turn of the earth. Now come and sit with me. Have you had your breakfast?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“And you slept well?”
I nodded and slipped in beside her. She sat on a curved bench behind a table with a sort of liver-shaped top to take up less room. Before I could answer, our attention was diverted by Seamus lifting the enormous basket onto what looked like an engine cover. He steadied it and looked over at Gran. He raised his eyebrows.
“Do you have to wear that hat?” she asked him. “He wears it to embarrass me. He likes to call attention to his lower status, as he says. It makes him righteous and proud.”
“I am a chauffeur.”
“You are many things, Seamus, we can agree on that.”
How had I ended up here? The day before I had been in Boston. Seamus backed away from the hamper. The boat moved hardly at all. To my surprise, he removed his hat and sat down beside me. I was now between them. I couldn’t quite read the situation. I knew under their banter they held affection toward each other. But what did they want with me? Gran patted my hand.
“We thought you would enjoy a picnic on the island,” Gran said. “If you have the time, I mean.”
“On the Blaskets?”
She nodded.
“An Blascaod Mór,” she said in the Irish. The Great Blasket Island.
Then instead of patting my hand, she took my hand in hers. The kindness in her eyes held me. As simply as that, I was going to the Blaskets.
* * *
Nearly as soon as she said it, I heard the sound of a rope being tossed onto the deck. A moment later, a second rope splattered onto the boat. Then someone stepped aboard, because I felt the back-right corner of the boat shift. The man—it was a man—shouted something to whoever remained on the dock. They spoke for a second, their voices loud and deep, and then the man who had stepped on board pushed through into the cabin.
He smelled like the sea, was my first thought. He brought the outside air into the cabin with him. It clung to the deep, heather-colored sweater he wore. He wore a ridiculous-looking hat, a baseball hat with ear flaps that didn’t suit him at all, and a pair of canvas pants tucked into large rubber boots that climbed to his shins. I could not see him. By that I mean, he had come in too quickly, and the open door had brought in the brightness of the sea, so that momentarily I was blinded to anything above chest height. But an instant later I saw his face, a sharp, beautiful face that struck me as nearly too handsome for its own good. Some men know if they are handsome, but this one didn’t seem to care or put any value on it. He had brown, soft hair under the cap, and an athlete’s neck, broad and muscled, and his movements contained a compressed power and grace. His eyes were deep set; his chin had a square cut like the boat he stood on, trim and efficient as if it might cleave the water. He did not hesitate in any of his actions. He knew the boat and he knew his place on it and his large hands did not settle, but seemed to be in movement with a willingness to work. Even in his heavy boots, he seemed quick and fluid. A wrench stuck out of a pocket along his hip, and I saw where oil had clung to it and soiled the leg of his pants. Apparently, he had been working on the boat, or he done a necessary task somewhere with the wrench, because he tossed the tool casually into a wooden box set against the wall of the cabin. The wrench made a loud, metallic twang, which seemed to satisfy him. Then, free of the wrench, he wiped his hand against his sweater and stropped it, front and back, to get his fingers clean. Moving as he did, he looked like a teenaged girl’s dream of a boyfriend, impossibly symmetrical, and it occurred to me he might, like a girl’s dream pony, be sketched on a notebook or book cover almost in an incantation or spell to make it real. The teacher at the front of the class would believe the girl took notes, but meanwhile she drew a dream-boy, an impossible beauty that she had taken from fashion magazines or the pages of a story.
“This is my grandson, O
zzie,” Gran said. “Ozzie, this is Kate.”
He nodded. But that was all he did. No handshake, no full recognition. He went to the wheel of the ship and turned back to us.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
He directed the comment to Gran and Seamus. I was not included.
“Yes, if you are,” Gran answered.
Evidently, this trip was not his idea. Evidently, taking an American girl on a picnic was not the day he had in mind.
* * *
For a while, no one spoke. Or rather, we spoke about how the boat needed to maneuver out of the small harbor and into the Blasket Sound. Mostly Seamus spoke to Ozzie. When the conversation became difficult to maintain over the engine sounds, Seamus rose and went to stand next to Ozzie. Ozzie was at least a foot taller than Seamus. Six-two or six-three, I guessed. Milly would approve, I knew. She thought every couple should be a salt and pepper shaker, with the girl-pepper being just a bit smaller than the boy-salt.
“He’s cross that I asked this small favor of him,” Gran said, her voice low to keep it obscured by the engine. “He’ll get past it. He wanted to fish today, and instead he’s taking us on a holiday.”
“What does he fish for?”
“Mackerel. Depends on the season. It’s not a thriving industry, but he likes it. He likes being on the boat alone. He was in a foul temper when I asked him to clean it up and take us for a ride.”
“I hope I didn’t…”
“No, no, no,” she said and squeezed my hand. “It will do him good. He is too solitary. He was a soldier once. This does him a world of good.”
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