False Mermaid

That was exactly what Tríona had said. Nora had completely forgotten until the words came out of her mouth. Strange, how revisiting a place could bring back memories in that way. The smell of the seaweed, the texture of the stone underfoot, the way the light hit the water at a certain angle—if she closed her eyes, she could see pale limbs underwater, hair floating upward, a pair of coal-black eyes looming close.

Back in the car, the radio sprang to life with the engine. As they reached Carrick, a tune began flowing from the speakers, and Nora knew she had heard it somewhere before. The fiddler slid his bow along the strings, expertly teasing great feeling from the notes, starting low and rising up in exhilarating waves.

It was the same tune Cormac had sent her in his e-mail the other night, she was certain.

When the music ended, the presenter began chatting in Irish, from which she could only pick out a few words—go hailainn, wonderful; an fhidil, the fiddle. The tune’s title went by in a flash. Something i Meiriceá—in America. He had promised her the name of the tune the next time they met. It wouldn’t be long now.

Outside Carrick, they hurtled by a handmade banner fluttering from a pair of stakes at the roadside. Nora registered what it said only after they’d gone past: FÁILTE FIDLEIRI!—WELCOME FIDDLERS! FIDDLE WEEK IN THE GLEN.

When they reached Glencolumbkille, the post office was closed, but the publican at the óstan, the inn next door, knew the Maguire place.

“It’s about three miles outside The Glen, just beyond a little place called Port na Rón,” the man said. “The village itself mightn’t be on your map. There’s no one living in it for years now. But head out this road, anyway, until you come to a fork. Keep to the left there, and the Maguire place will be on your left as you go down that lane, kind of up under a hill. You can’t miss it. And if you get all the way to Maghera, you’ll know you’ve missed the turn entirely.”

“Do you know Joseph Maguire?”

“Sure, wasn’t I in school with him? Josie, we used to call him, in them days. His auntie Julia was our schoolteacher. She’s the one left the house to him there about three years ago. We heard he was off in Bolivia or somewhere. Never thought he’d come back. But that’s the thing about Donegal people, you see. They’ll go off, for years sometimes. To America, Australia, Scotland, all sorts of foreign shores. But they always come back. Something about this place that draws them—something in the blood. You know, it’s amazing. Maguire’s after having a fierce rake of visitors lately. I was terrible sorry to hear about his trouble, taking ill like that—he’s still in hospital beyond in Killybegs. I’m surprised you didn’t know, being a friend of the family, like.”

Nora saw the gossip hunger in the eyes that peered over the glasses at her, and she scrambled to make up a credible lie. “I have to confess—I don’t actually know him. He’s a third cousin to my husband, something like that. My daughter and I are up for the Fiddle Week—my husband is joining us at the weekend. We’re staying with friends up in Ardara, but I was supposed to call in, if we were passing this way. Still in hospital, though—that’s a pity.”

“I’m sure he’ll be up for visitors soon. But aren’t you lucky to have friends in these parts? When you came in, I was afraid you might ask if we’d any rooms left. I would have hated to turn away such a lovely wee woman as yourself.”

Down the road where the barman had directed them, the car climbed up past the church and out of the Glen. Houses were few and far between beyond the village, surrounded on all sides by treeless, mountainy bog. They passed shallow black cuttings, clamps of turf walled in by pallets held together with rope and netting to foil thieves, and thatched with rushes to fend off unforgiving wind and rain. Stone and wire fences hiked up over the hills, marking narrow fields for grazing sheep. The place looked barren, but Nora knew that—at least culturally speaking—nothing could be further from the truth. From the poorest places came the richest music—it had always been that way.

Suddenly she felt so tired that it was difficult to keep her hands on the steering wheel. She looked over at Elizabeth in the passenger seat. Was she doing the right thing, coming here, landing on Cormac without a word of warning? “Hang in there,” she said to Elizabeth. “We’re almost there.”