Circe

Mike Simons was a composer. After an acclaimed graduation piece scored for choir, full orchestra and four soloists, he was determined not to compromise his ambition to make his name and living from music. Between various jobs done purely to pay the rent, he’d written some songs for a couple of up and coming singers, done some arranging for various bands and rescored a musical for the stage, which still toured the regional theatres. Recently he had been commissioned to write the score for a feature length TV film about James Joyce. This, he reckoned, would be his big break.

His knowledge of Irish music was hazy. But there was an old song he’d once heard, accompanied by a harp, that never ceased to haunt him. It was in the unlikely setting of a London psychiatric hospital where he was working during the summer, hosting the in-house radio show whilst the usual guy was on holiday. One hot afternoon as he gazed out of the window at the shrivelled lawns and wilting flowerbeds of the hospital garden, the voice and liquid sound of the harp drifted down on the air to his makeshift studio, plangent and unbearably moving. It came from an upper storey where the long-term patients were housed and when he asked to meet the singer, he was told it wasn’t possible. In compensation he’d opted for a recording by the Chieftains. But the rendering of that unknown harpist still echoed in his dreams.

Now he was off to Ireland to seek out the real music, in contrast to what could be heard in every Irish theme pub. Go west, he was told. So he flew to Dublin and made his way across country by bus, stopping off wherever the fancy took him. Most of what he heard was disappointing, commercial stuff played on electric guitars with a heavy rock base. He was beginning to think the Irish weren’t interested any longer in the old ways of singing, accompanied only by a fiddle or a pipe.

A sudden hush fell over the company in Macfadden’s bar as the stranger entered the room, causing Margaret to look up from the glasses she was washing. She saw a young man of around thirty, quite stocky, with close-cropped curly dark hair and eyes like shiny black coals. It was the man from her dream and the shock of seeing him standing before her was momentarily fazing. Two nights ago she had dreamt of him again and woke filled with dread. He looked foreign, Spanish or perhaps Maltese. They’d had two of those staying last summer. The weather had been terrible so they’d only stopped one night. But when he asked for a pint of Guinness, she noted his accent was pure English.

You could cut the silence with a knife. The old fools regarded strangers with a mixture of curiosity and resentment at the intrusion. Not that there were many strangers at this time of the year. The young man asked if it was possible to get something to eat. She said she’d some ham and could fry up a couple of eggs if that would do him and he thanked her and said it would do nicely. The way he looked at her, she could tell he thought her a striking woman. He took a seat at an empty table near the fire. It was a chilly evening, despite the warm September day, and he was glad of the fire. She retreated to the back kitchen and the men resumed their talk.

When the Guinness was ready one of the regulars, Colm Docherty, who’d taken Margaret’s place behind the bar, brought it over. Mike was gazing up at the TV on the wall, which was showing a sports programme with the sound turned down so it was inaudible. Margaret had been forced to put up a TV for the sake of the regulars but she disliked it and only acceded as long as the sound was kept down. The exception was when a local team was playing.

‘Is it Dublin you’re from?’ Colm inquired.

Mike nodded.

‘I came by bus. It must have been the scenic route because it took hours.’

He reached out a hand, which Colm took in his gnarled one.

‘Mike Simons.’

‘Colm Docherty. Welcome to Kinadoohy. So what brings you to these parts? It’s late now for visitors.’

‘The music. I’m told you’ve the real stuff here.’

‘You’ve come to the right place all right. None of your karaoke here. Just the old fiddlers and pipers.’

Margaret entered with a plate of food, which she set down on the table together with a knife and fork wrapped in a paper napkin.

‘Margaret here has the voice of an angel. When she can be persuaded to sing, which is seldom enough these days.’

‘There’s no need to talk about me as if I weren’t here and hadn’t a tongue in me head.’

But Colm was not to be put off.

‘A man from Dublin wanted to sign her up. He’d a big tour planned and everything but she wouldn’t go.’

‘Perhaps you’ll give me the chance to hear you sometime.’

She felt the stranger’s gaze on her but made no response.

Seamus O’Malley entered and Margaret disappeared into the back kitchen. He walked to the bar with the deliberate step of the habitual drunk and banged on the counter.

‘Is there no one here to give a thirsty man a drink?’

He was a tall, handsome man, made gaunt by loneliness and drink. There was something shy, almost feral, about him which he attempted to mask by aggression. Colm went behind the bar to serve him.

‘This is Mike, our young visitor from Dublin. He’s here for the music.’

Seamus barely glanced at him.

‘A long way to come for a tune.’

‘I’m researching the music for a film on James Joyce. Your great writer.’

Seamus eyed the stranger. No doubt the young fool imagined no one here had ever heard of Joyce, though there were those present who’d read every word the fella ever wrote.

‘That old fraud! Couldn’t get out of Ireland quick enough then spent the rest of his life getting rich telling lies about it. What did he call this country? “An old sow that eats her farrow!”’

‘His wife Norah was from these parts. A fine-looking woman by all accounts,’ Colm intervened.

‘So I believe. Joyce called her the Ireland he carried with him wherever he went.’

Seamus gave a snort of disgust.

‘Not for sure the Ireland of those fighting and dying to defeat the tyranny back home.’

‘Still you can’t deny, Seamus, the man wrote some grand books.’

‘And who reads them but foreigners and those like himself, hypocrites with an eye for smut.’

‘You talk like some ignorant old ballocks of a priest,’ Sean said, joining them.

‘I’m not forgetting the betrayals of Mother Church either.’

‘That’s the trouble with this country. There’s too much remembering altogether.’

‘Can’t you leave your blessed arguments for one night of the year!’ Margaret declared, emerging from the back kitchen.

The men, including Seamus, fell silent as if by her command.

The pints continued to line up in front of Mike and at length the music began. Poraig Moynahan got out his fiddle and someone else beat out a rhythm on the bodhran. Sean sang an old song in Gaelic full of loss and exile with a passion that moved everyone, including Margaret. His face was smooth and rosy-cheeked like a baby, despite his sixty-odd years, and he stretched out his throat like a heron to emit a high, keening sound. Mike had never heard singing like it and, determined to miss nothing, he switched on the small recorder he took with him wherever he went.

When the song was finished, Sean took up a pipe and played a couple of rousing reels with the other musicians. By now Mike was struggling to keep his eyes open. He wasn’t much of a drinker and he was exhausted after his long journey. Walking as steadily as he could, he went up to the bar.

‘Have you a room free? I saw the B&B sign over the entrance.’

Margaret nodded and bade him follow her. She led the way through the door at the far end of the bar to a staircase. He noticed admiringly as she climbed the stairs the way she carried herself and the sway of her shapely hips. When they reached the landing, she opened the door to a simple room.

‘There’s no en suite and the toilet’s down there in the yard. But there’s clean sheets and I’ll bring you up some hot water in the morning.’

He thanked her, trying to think of something to detain her but she was already gone. He collapsed fully clothed onto the bed and in a few minutes was asleep.

Margaret locked the doors behind the last of her customers, washed and put away the glasses then climbed the stairs for bed. She was tired but too restless to sleep. A full moon filled the room with its unearthly light and was reflected in the pier glass at the end of the bed. She stood in front of the mirror and loosed her hair, which in the moonlight was the colour of dried blood. The skin on her full breasts and on her belly and thighs gleamed white and translucent and she swayed her body gently as if to music. She was still a fine looking woman in her prime, despite having borne two children and passed her fortieth year. Men desired her and she could have her pick of the town if she wanted, married or not. But she wasn’t interested. To one man only, the father of her children, she had given herself but that was long ago and she no longer mourned him. Now her son was grown and studying to become a doctor in Dublin even though she, his mother, could barely read or write. Occasionally she thought wistfully of the opportunities he’d had that hadn’t been there for her as a girl, but not often. She was her own woman with few regrets.

There was one thing that troubled her, though, and with increasing force. She felt a growing restlessness, not for a man, though she had nothing against the pleasures of love, but a hunger to see something of the world. It started when her son returned from a vacation job with an international medical organisation. He had talked of the wonders he had seen and shown her photographs he’d taken. The stories he’d told had given birth to an intense longing to leave this place where she’d spent her whole life and to seek out new horizons before it was too late. After that she would be content to return and live out the rest of her days, indifferent to the town and its inhabitants who lacked all curiosity because they held themselves to be the finest specimens of the human race.

‘Pigs,’ she muttered, ‘content to wallow in their own muck!’

The house was quiet. So quiet she could hear the stranger breathing in the next room. She remembered her dream of the previous night. She’d known he was coming for her, heard his approaching tread with a mixture of anticipation and dread, looking for somewhere to hide though it was already too late. Perhaps the dream had meant something after all and this man had come with a purpose. She’d heard mention of a job in TV, which suggested connections with money and influence. He might help her to find a job where she could earn what she needed to pay for her travels, which she had no chance of doing here. She’d be happy to clean the houses of the rich, cook, do laundry and make herself useful in a hundred different ways. She was nothing if not resourceful. Her head buzzed with ideas and plans, and it was a long time before she fell asleep.