F I V E
For years I cannot hum a bit
Or sing the smallest song;
And this the dreadful reason is,
My legs are grown too long!
—Edward Lear
Ella, meanwhile, found her prey with relative ease. The ferry journey, the disembarkation and the drive down to Fermanagh had gone smoothly, and she was soon walking unchallenged through the doors of the primary school. Through a glass window in a classroom door she saw the woman she sought.
Honora Brennan was gathering up stubbed-out paint brushes and jam jars of murky water, offering words of encouragement after an end-of-day paint your fantasy session—yes anything you like, the sky the trees the stars at night. Is that the stars at night, she says to one seven-year-old with a pink NHS eye patch, no he says it's the mortar that got me da, is it she says, put it in the pile with the others and wash out your brushes in the sink. On instinct Honora looked up and saw Ella watching her.
Briskly, she dismissed the class, then turned to rinse the paint-pots as if by this chore she could make the other woman disappear. Ella willed her to turn around: Don't block me out Honora. If Honora heard the words, she fought them.
"Yes, I'm here; you're not dreaming."
Honora stiffened, stacking the pots in a precise pyramid.
"How did you get here?" Her back still turned, she scrubbed at an already gleaming jar.
"You can still get a boat across the water."
"I'm sorry, Ella. I wanted to say 'It's lovely to see you' but I didn't feel it."
"Then you were right not to say it."
Honora busied herself thumb tacking the children's paintings to the wall. Ella waited.
"Do you know why I came?"
Honora looked into her eyes for the first time. "Can't we go somewhere?"
Outside, walking side by side in their thick winter coats, Ella was surprised when Honora gently linked arms with her. She remembered that type of endearing, girlish gesture so well; that, and a fresh smell of camomile and rainwater. Honora's tawny hair fell as it always had, into a tight nest of curls and ringlets. She exuded a vulnerability that made Ella, by contrast, feel coarse.
They went to a small tea shop and peered at each other. The window was misted with condensation. Every time someone came in or left, a door-shaped wedge of cold air sent a shiver around the seated customers. Outside a UDR soldier with his cockade feather erect patrolled by with that circumspect hip-swivelling security walk. Ella watched him.
"After a while you stop seeing them."
"Are we talking about soldiers?"
"What else? They look like shadows; but they're real."
"And what about the real shadows?"
Ella flattered herself that she always knew when someone was dissembling. She had an idea that she could peer, if not into a person's darkest heart, then at least into the blue or grey or green of their eyes, where she might detect the microscopic splash imperceptible to others. Honora dropped her eyes and tried to change the subject.
"You gave me the fright of my life when I saw you outside the classroom. I never expected to see you again, least of all here. It suddenly brought it all back to me. How we were and all that. Weren't we crazy then, Ella? Wasn't it all madness?"
"Oh yes, it was that all right."
"But it's grand to see you. Really it is."
"I wish you meant that." The remark made Honora look away again. "You know why I came to see you."
"You want to talk to me about dreams?"
"We could talk about the IRA instead. Or the Mountains of Mourne. Or about Donegal tweed . . ."
"All right, all right. So, let's talk about dreams. I'm happy to talk about dreams, if that's what you want me to talk about."
"I want to talk about the kind of things that happened to us while we were at university. I mean, if anything like that has been happening to you lately."
"Oh, come on Ella! Don't you think I didn't have enough with what happened at the time? I put it all behind me. I was glad to get away from it when I had the chance. And now it's all in the past."
"It's not in the past. It's back and it's not nice."
"But don't you see what it is!" Honora cried. "Just this talking about it is what does it. You're dredging it all up again. Why can't you leave it alone? The more you want to discuss and analyze and toss it back and forth the more you bring it all back again. It was a mistake, something we did when we were young. It's something we shouldn't keep going back to; like an old—"
"Like an old affair?"
"Something like that."
"Lee said some very similar things, about not wanting to open it all up."
"Well, he's right. Me and him both."
"But he's a different kind of person. Remember what we used to call the repeater? He's been having some of those dreams again. Only it's not a joke any more. Some mornings it's panic . . ."
"Are you living with Lee?"
"No, but I know what you're thinking, and you're wrong. We didn't get together and resurrect this dreaming thing. It started happening to both of us independently. I got frightened, so I got in touch with Lee. That was when I found that the same things were happening to him. I'd already decided that one of the original circle was muddying the pool; so if it wasn't me and it wasn't Lee . . ."
"You thought it might be me."
"I had to come and find you, at least. You can understand that, can't you?"
"Yes, I can understand it."
Dusk had rolled over the street outside the tea shop. A hand switched on dim lights. Now half of Honora's face was in grey shadow, the other half washed by unhelpful amber light. Another patrol passed by the misted window.
Ella was still trying to get Honora to pick up the ball. "So you haven't been troubled by any of that . . . weird stuff? No repeaters. No flashbacks. None of it?"
"Not at all." Honora's eyes were too wide open to be telling the truth.
"Never, over the years?"
"Not since what happened at university. For a year or two after that I did have the occasional nightmare, but that was more of the regular order of bad dreams. If you want my opinion, I'm glad I can't help you. It's dead and gone, and I'd like to keep it that way."
Honora said all of this too cheerfully, working a fraction too hard at trying to keep it light. She was smiling at Ella with those delicate features, but now she was looking like a toy left out in the rain. Yes; there was a pallor under the skin left by the sleeping pills, Ella could guess that; but most revealing were the very fine lines, a tiny chain of folds in her skin which she saw as knives, daggers turned inwards on the subject.
"And over the years you've never had any contact with—"
"None." Honora cut Ella very short. "I don't even want to think about him, far less talk about him. Can we pay this bill?"
Ella sat back.
"I wasn't going to ask you to stay," said Honora with a smile, "but I can't really not, now can I?"
"No, you can't really not. We've got a hundred other things to catch up on."
They threaded their way through the streets of the town, Honora once again linking arms with her old friend. Her house was a two-up two-down brick terrace, its interior painted in bold primary colours. It was almost obsessively tidy, except in the back room which was cluttered with the unframed canvases and rolls of cartridge paper which Honora used for painting and drawing.
"In the summer I still go into town and paint portraits for American and German tourists," Honora explained. "And sometimes I get commissions to paint people's pets. Dreadful!"
"Stinking!" Ella agreed brightly.
One painting rested on a chair, draped with a chequered tablecloth. "Can I see?" Ella asked. But Honora ushered her gently out of the room and switched off the light. Ella suddenly knew exactly what lay under the cloth, as if she herself had splashed it on the canvas in luminous paint.
"What would you like to do while you're here?" Honora asked hurriedly.
"You mean apart from talking about dreams?"
Honora looked defeated.
"Why did you lie to me, Honora? You never used to lie."
Honora turned to the window. "All right, the dreams have been back. I don't even like talking about it. I don't know what's happened, why the . .. repeaters are frightening me again. I hadn't experienced them for over ten years. I thought you must have been doing something, perhaps you and Lee, cooking something up together, resurrecting the dreaming. I thought you might want to include me in some scheme or other . . ."
"I told you; Lee and I don't want it any more than you do."
"Oh I realize that now. But I just want to black it out, hide somewhere, not talk about it, not think about it. When you came I thought: Oh God no, this is why the dreams have been coming back, leave me out of it."
"Do you think us coming together can make things worse?"
"I don't know anything; it just triggers a lot of... associations."
"The point is, if it's not you or Lee or me, then it must be . . ."
"Yes. I was afraid of him. My God Ella, what's happening to us?"
Ella didn't answer. "We should go out tonight," she said, trying to brighten things.
"I never go out."
"You do this evening. I want Guinness and didley-didley music, and you can show me where to get it."
All protests were brushed aside, and Honora, who an astonished, high-spirited Ella later discovered hadn't been outside her house socially for two whole years, was dragged out in a state of excitement and nervous terror mixed. When they left the house it was snowing; soft, light flakes of snow falling under the amber streetlamps, melting the instant they touched the ground.