Petty Magic (27 page)

I look to Billy Byrne. “Is there anyplace we can get something to eat at this time of night?”

“There’s a chipper van just up the road. We’ll leave by the back way.”

So Billy leads us past the toilets, through an alley, and back onto the main street a few doors down from the pub’s front entrance. To our right there’s a row of thatched whitewashed cottages. To our left, twenty yards down the road, we see a big white truck with a side counter where a woman is handing out cans of cola and burgers in paper boxes. The cold fluorescent light casts a shimmer on the rain-slicked road. The image is stark as a Hopper, and the quiet on the street is broken only by the drone of a small generator on the ground by the rear tires.

Justin joins the queue and asks our companion if he’d like anything. “Nothing for me, thanks,” Byrne replies.

“What do you think I should order? I want the real Irish junk food experience.”

“If I were you, I’d have the curry chips.”

So that’s what Justin orders, along with a burger for me and a couple cans of soda, and the woman behind the counter hands him down a big box of French fries doused in brown muck. I give Justin a look—half doubt, half disgust—but he smiles and tucks in with good cheer.

I hop up on a stone wall facing the road—I never eat standing up; it isn’t ladylike—and Justin hops up beside me.

We eat in silence as Byrne paces the sidewalk with his hands thrust into the pockets of his dungarees, looks up at the stars, watches the other locals place their orders at the junk truck. The burger isn’t great, but I’ve had worse. On our way back Justin catches sight of a quaint little shop-front a few doors up from the pub. “Eve, look—antiques!”

Beyond the words
HAHESSY’S ANTIQUES, OLD & RARE
, hand-painted in Gaelic script on the window glass, we can just make out a display of dog-eared songbooks, an accordion and one of those old-fashioned wooden washboards, a set of end tables topped with panels of cobweb lace. “How fortuitous,” he says happily. “We’ll have to come back tomorrow.”

Back at the pub, we’re waiting to order another round when all the lights dim. People start shrugging on their jackets. “Last call,” Byrne says.

“They’re closing?” I cry. “But they
can’t
close!”

“It’s after midnight,” the bartender replies as he pours our last pints.

“But it’s a Friday night! Couldn’t we have a—what do you call it—a lock-in?”

“Young lady,” the bartender replies, “the last time we had a lock-in here, Shane McGowan still had all his teeth.”

“Why deprive a toothless man?” I say. “Oh, please, sir? It would make our holiday—”

“No, it would make our
year,”
Justin puts in.

It would make our lifetime
, I reflect sadly. “We’ve only got one night here,” I tell the bartender in a low, urgent voice. “We’ve got to make it count.” He glances up at me—we make eye contact—he can see I’m not intoxicated. I am
not
going home before dawn, simple as that.

The bartender sighs. “All right, lads,” he says. “Ye can stay. Put the money in the till and wipe the counter before you go, and don’t be making any racket.”

The two dozen or so folks left in the pub let out a huge cheer, and Justin takes me by the waist and nuzzles my neck. A couple of men pull down the shades in the front window, and we all resettle ourselves with our drinks, poised for further merriment. The fiddler plays another reel or two, and then, mindful of the bartender’s warning, the musicians put their instruments away. A few men go up to the bar to refill their glasses and drop their coins in the till. Someone throws more peat on the fire and the overhead lights are switched off.

“Now you sing us a song, Mick,” someone says to the man who’s just put his drum back in its carrying case. The dialogue that follows seems to be an intricate system of entreaty and refusal, Mick the drummer telling the crowd it’s too late, he’s too tired, and so forth, but clearly
wanting
to sing. It’s only a matter of how badly we’d like him to. Finally we manage to “convince” him, and the room settles down to listen.

“He’s going to sing
sean nós,”
Byrne says under his breath.

“What’s that mean?”

Byrne seems to think we should already know this. “An air. Unaccompanied,” he says shortly.

The man’s voice is low and reedy—one might even call it fierce—and I can’t help thinking he sounds like a human bagpipe. He keeps his eyes closed throughout, and he sings without seeming to care a fig for time or melody. It almost sounds as if he’s making it up as he goes, ending each verse with a melismatic flourish. Had I any oomph to spare, I could understand his foreign lyrics; nobody volunteers an English translation afterward, but it hardly seems necessary. Where there had been vigorous applause at the close of other songs earlier in the evening, when Mick the drummer ends this one everyone praises him in low, sober murmurs, his fellow musicians clapping him on the shoulders.

Then come the stories. There are more tales of the selkie, and of the sea goat of Inishbofin—man-eating or benign? they can’t seem to agree—and eventually somebody asks if I’d be willing to tell one, if I know any. So I tell a story Neverino told me once, about a young wanderer in the Harz captivated by a bashful, lovely chambermaid, and how ardently he begs her master for her freedom. The mysterious innkeeper sets him to three tasks, all of which he completes. Just as the young man begins to rejoice in his triumph he looks down and notices the innkeeper’s cloven feet and realizes he’s been tricked into marrying the devil’s daughter. The young man flees the inn, but he is forever followed on the road by a dark misshapen figure, a queer sooty lump of a creature, who still has the silvery voice of the maiden with whom he’d believed himself in love. Every night, at every place he stays, she sits at the foot of his bed and weeps, whispering in that incongruously sweet voice, “I knew not that I deceived thee.” And when I finish the fable with the words “I knew not what I was,” Justin is gazing at me with such intensity that I have to look away.

S
OON AFTER
three o’clock old Oonagh Coyne appears in a plaid bathrobe and tells us the jig is up.

“What’ll we do now?” I sigh as we put on our jumpers and jackets. “I’m not ready to turn in yet.”

“I could take ye on a bit of a sightseeing tour,” Byrne says. “Show ye all the local haunts.”

I hadn’t been talking to
him
. But to my dismay, Justin seems delighted at the prospect of a little late-night adventure, and for these last few hours I can’t have him thinking I’m a stick in the mud. So I’ll bide my time—we can always ditch our garrulous companion later on.

Ten minutes later we’re walking out of town on a side road—a “boreen,” Byrne calls it. The only sounds are our three sets of footsteps squelching along the muddy track and an occasional bovine groan from one of the stone-hemmed pastures on either side of the road. I spot an old clawfoot bathtub in one of the fields, the rainwater inside long since turned to slime. “Rather inconvenient spot for a wash,” I say, and Justin laughs.

The unruly hedges obscure our view, but eventually the road dips and a view of the sea spreads forth below us, the moonlight glimmering on the water and a few lights twinkling along the far side of the harbor.

I keep stopping to admire the view, so after a few minutes Byrne and Justin are yards ahead. I catch a snatch of conversation here and there, and when I hear the words “ghost babies” I hurry up the road to meet them. I don’t like the sound of this. “What did you say?”

“Oh, nothing,” Justin says impishly.

“We’re going to a graveyard, aren’t we?”

“We’re already here,” Byrne calls over his shoulder, and suddenly I spot a rusted gate in the low stone wall that follows the road. Beyond I can make out the ruin of a small church. Byrne lifts the latch with a terrific creak and Justin follows him inside. Byrne turns and looks at me. “Aren’t you coming?”

“I don’t do graveyards.”

“What do you mean, you don’t ‘do’ them?” Byrne asks with a good-natured snicker.

“I don’t go inside them.”

“You’ll be going in sooner or later,” laughs Billy Byrne. “Might as well get used to the idea.”

“I’ve got time,” I reply with far more confidence than I feel.

“Suit yourself.” So I wait at the gate while Byrne shows Justin the graves of all those men and women late of Tully Cross, reminding him of stories he’d told us earlier in the evening. The night’s still enough that I can hear most of what they’re saying, though they might be fifty feet or more from me. Past the graveyard the ground rises into a small headland, beyond which the sea is softly glittering. I can hear the breakers tumbling against the rocks somewhere below. I glance down at the rusty old gate and notice the metal nameplate turned toward the inside.

The metal screeches as I twist it round to read it:

BALLY …
GRAVEYARD

The rest of the name has worn away.

“Here we have a poisonous plant famed in folklore,” Byrne is saying. “Belladonna—deadly nightshade. Also known as witches’ berries.”

Justin makes a sound of disbelief. “They let that grow here?”

Byrne shrugs. “Do you know anyone mad enough to go scavenging for wild berries in a graveyard? Shame, though. There are some useful plants growing here.”

Justin sits on his heels and peers at the bush growing along the wall. “Only poisonous if you eat them, right?”

“Aye, that’s right.”

Justin plucks a nightshade flower, a purple star-shaped bloom, walks back to the gate, and tucks it behind my ear.

“Here,” Byrne calls, and Justin trots back to his side. “See those blue bell-shaped blooms? That’s comfrey. You put that into an ointment, speeds healing. Same goes for that royal fern over there in the corner. This place is more bountiful than Mrs. Molloy’s kitchen garden. Of course, the auld wives have their own notions. Brew the spores of that royal fern into a strong tea, and they say you’ll see the future in your dreams.

“But this isn’t why I brought ye,” he says, cutting short this curious lesson in morbid botany. He starts ambling toward the far wall of the graveyard.

“Eve, come on!”

“Where are you going, Mr. Byrne?” I call. “Is it outside the graveyard?”

“That depends,” he calls back.
Depends?
Depends on what?

With a sigh I venture into the bog and brush round the perimeter of the cemetery, making my way to the grassy hillock beyond. The space is studded with broad smooth stones brought up from the shingly shore. “They’d swear on a Bible they’d seen ’em,” Byrne is telling Justin as I stumble toward them. “Dancing along the cliff. Bones glowing in the moonlight.
Bones
, aye, that’s what I said. Water table’s awfully high in these parts.”

Justin is staring at Byrne in amazed silence. “Ever seen them yourself?” I ask with a careless toss of the head.

Byrne stares at me. “Would I bring ye here if I hadn’t?”

Justin and I look at one another, then up toward the cliff. Does he believe Byrne’s story? Personally I can’t say I doubt him; if I believe in myself then I can believe in anything.

Billy Byrne turns and walks a few paces, eyes on the ground, as if he’s seeking one stone in particular. He finds it and stands over it with hands clasped and head bent. “Here he is,” he says softly. “Here’s my wee brother.”

Justin and I trade nervous glances. He isn’t about to cry, is he? We’ve only just met him, after all. He looks older than ever, and the change is so dramatic that I now feel certain it isn’t just a matter of my misjudging his age. He
is
older. Suddenly I wish we were far away from this lonesome little graveyard.

“It’s cruel,” Byrne murmurs. “They never had the chance to live, and then they get buried out here beyond the wall just as if they’d done something wrong. Look over there.” He points to the far end of this unconsecrated space, where the grass has grown tall around the simple markers.
“They’re
the ones who did wrong. My brother, he doesn’t belong here.” Byrne pauses. “But where I’m from, in Ballywhatsit, folks believe these little ones are happy enough out here. Passing time ’til the Day of Judgment, just like anybody else.”

“Ballywhatsit?” I ask. “I thought you said you were from Ballybeg.”

“Fearsome good memory, this one,” he says to Justin, jerking his thumb at me. “May you live to rue it.”

I fold my arms. “So is it Ballybeg or Ballywhatsit?”

“Ballybeg, I think. Or maybe Ballyconneely. I can’t say I remember for sure.”

“How can you forget where you’re from?” Then I feel a chill as I recall the sign on the graveyard gate. Bally
where?

“Doesn’t matter, so long as I remember how to get there,” Byrne replies. “It’s only a mile or two up the road.”

It was a mile or two up the road a mile or two ago, but there’s no point picking nits. I think back to earlier in the evening, when there was a pint glass in front of him, the stout disappearing by levels though he never seemed to take a sip. He didn’t eat—he didn’t talk to anyone but us, nor did anyone else acknowledge him with so much as a nod—and there’s his ever-shifting appearance.

I ask him one more question now, though I think I already know the answer he’ll give me. “Mr. Byrne … what was the name of your little brother?”

His back is still facing me, but judging by the sadness in his voice I’d bet he looks as old as his great-great-grandfather. “I can’t remember that either,” he says softly.

I lock eyes with Justin as I reach for Byrne’s shoulder. Then I look away, toward the cliff. “Justin—I think I see something.”

So Justin turns toward the cliff, just in case the ghost babies have come out to dance after all, and I lay my hand on Byrne’s shoulder …

 … Or would have, had he actually been there.

Justin turns back to where the mysterious Irishman was a second ago and gasps. “Where—what—where did he go?” He takes a few steps back toward the graveyard, turning this way and that. The night is still as ever. “How could he remember every detail of all those old scandals … but forget where he lives and the name of his own brother?”