I’m shure you wouldn’t, miss.’
She smiled weakly and fingered a straggling lock of dark hair. She looked strained and tired, her face almost haggard as she stood thinking. She couldn’t be much older than I was.
‘Shure I’d be glad to have you here, miss, but I’m thinkin’ you’d not have much peace for yer work with four wee’ ans. Is it the Irish yer learnin’?’
As soon as she opened the half-door a chicken made a dive for the house. As she shooed it away it was clear there would soon be another wee’ an to care for.
‘I’m thinkin’, miss, where ye’d be best off. Is it Lisara ye want?’
‘Yes, indeed, but anywhere in Lisara will do.’
It was only as I pronounced the word ‘Lisara’ for the first time that I realised Lisnasharragh no longer existed. Perhaps it never had existed, except as a name some ordnance surveyor had put in the wrong place, or one he’d found that the local people never used. Whatever the story, Lisara was my Lisnasharragh, alive and well, and exactly where it should be.
‘Well, I think ye might try Mary O’Dara at the tap o’ the hill. She’s a good soul an’ they’ve the room now for all her family’s gone. Tell her Mary Kane sent ye.’
She leaned against the whitewashed wall of the cottage, weary with the effort of coming out to talk to me.
‘I’ll do that right away,’ I said quickly. ‘If she can have me, perhaps I could come down and talk to you about Lisara.’
‘Indeed you’d be welcome,’ she said warmly. ‘We don’t have much comp’ny.’
I thanked her and turned back towards the car. To my surprise, she followed me into the bumpy lane.
‘I’ll see ye again, miss, won’t I?’
‘You will, you will indeed. Goodbye for now.’
Feely was looking gloomy and when I asked him if we could go up the hill to O’Dara’s he just nodded and drove off. I wondered if I’d said something I shouldn’t have.
O’Dara’s cottage was just as trim and neat as Mary Kane’s, but there was a small garden in front of it. A huge pink hydrangea was covered with blooms and there were plants in pots and empty food tins on the green-painted sills of the small windows. Sitting outside, smoking a pipe, was a small, wiry little man with blue eyes, a stubbly chin, and the most striking pink and mauve tie I have ever seen.
‘Good day, is it Mr O’Dara?’ I asked.
‘It is indeed, miss, the same.’
For all my flat-heeled shoes and barely reaching five foot three, I found myself looking down at his wrinkled and sunburnt face when he got to his feet.
‘I’m sorry to disturb your nice quiet smoke, Mr O’Dara, but I wonder, could I have a word with Mrs O’Dara? Mrs Kane sent me.’
‘Ah, Mary-at-the-foot-of-the-hill.’
He turned towards the doorway and raised his voice slightly. ‘Mary, there’s a young lady to see you.’
Mary O’Dara came to the door slowly. She looked puzzled and distressed. Her face was blotchy and she had a crumpled up hanky in one hand. I wondered if I should go away again but I could hardly do that when I’d just asked to speak to her.
Her eyes were a deep, dark brown, and despite her distress, she looked straight at me as I explained what I wanted. When I finished, she hesitated, fumbled with the handkerchief and blew her nose.
‘You’d be welcome, miss, but I’m all through myself. My daughter’s away back to Amerikay, this mornin’, with the childer an I don’ know whin I’ll see the poor soul again.’
She rubbed her eyes and looked up at me. ‘Shure ye’ve come a long ways from home yerself, miss.’
‘Yes, but not as far as America. It must be awful, saying goodbye when it’s so very far away.’ I paused, saddened by her distress. ‘Perhaps she’ll not be long till she’s back.’
I heard myself speak the words and wondered where they’d come from. Then I remembered. Uncle Albert, my father’s eldest brother. ‘Don’t be long till you’re back, Elizabeth,’ was what he always said to me, when he took me to the bus after I’d been to visit him in his cottage outside Keady.
It was also what everyone said to the uncles and aunts and cousins who appeared every summer from Toronto and Calgary and Vancouver, Virginia and Indiana, Sydney and Darwin. Everybody I knew in the Armagh countryside had relatives in America or Australia.
‘Indeed she won’t, miss. Bridget’ll not forget us,’ said her husband energetically. ‘Come on now, Mary, dry your eyes and don’t keep the young lady standin’ here.’
But Mary had already dried her eyes.
‘Would you drink a cup o’ tea, miss?’
‘I’d love a cup of tea, Mrs O’Dara, thank you, but Mr Feely is waiting for me. I’ll have to go back to Lisdoonvarna, if I can’t find anywhere to stay in Lisara.’
‘Ah, shure they’d soak ye in Lisdoonvarna in the hotels,’ said Mr O’Dara fiercely. He looked meaningfully at his wife.
‘That’s for shure, Paddy. But the young lady may not be used to backward places like this.’
‘Oh yes, I am, Mrs O’Dara. My Uncle Albert’s cottage was just like this and I used to be so happy there. Perhaps I’m backward too.’
Maybe there was something in the way I said it, or maybe it was my northern accent, but whatever it was, they both laughed. Mary O’Dara had a most lovely, gentle face once she stopped looking so sad.
‘Away and tell Mr Feely ye’ll be stayin’, miss.’
She crossed the smooth flagstones of the big kitchen and took a blackened kettle from the back of the stove.
‘Paddy, help the young lady with her case.’
She bent towards an enamel bucket to fill the kettle so quickly she didn’t see Paddy clicking his heels and touching his forelock. He turned to me with a broad grin as we went out.
‘God bless you, miss, ye couldn’t ‘ive come at a better time.’
Feely sprang to life as Paddy lifted my case from the luggage platform.
‘Are ye goin’ to stay a day or two, miss?’
‘I am indeed, Mr Feely. Two or three weeks, actually.’
‘Are ye, begob?’
I was sure I’d told him I needed to stay several weeks, but he looked as if the news was a complete surprise to him. Paddy had disappeared into the cottage with my case, so I set about thanking him for his help.
‘I don’t know what I’d have done without you, Mr Feely,’ I ended up, as I pulled my purse from my jacket pocket and hoped
