pain would grow stronger, but then, if they could bear the distress and speak of what was revealed to them when the pain increased, the pain would fade away. Often it did not return.
Deara opened her eyes and looked down at the woman whose body she touched. She sat quite still, head slightly bowed, eyes closed. There were traces of blue eyepaint on her lids and dark smudges below her eyes. But the red swelling had gone, the skin was soft and smooth – not young, but not hardened as many women’s faces were by hardship or bitterness.
She closed her eyes once again and let the images come.
A child. Running across the shorn meadow, in its hands a piece of blue parchment. The child kneels by the boulders, tears the parchment. From it drops seeds. One by one, with great care, the child makes holes with its finger, drops one seed into each hole, for there is after all soil between the boulders. Now a woman comes. Speaks words in anger. Sends the child away, scratches in the earth, finds the seeds and takes away the blue parchment.
The image fades. Another shapes. It is the same child grown taller. She is sitting by herself beneath trees talking to someone. But there is no playmate to be seen. The woman appears again. She moves silently behind the trees and listens to what the child is saying. Then she steps out. The child jumps in fright and the woman laughs, becomes angry, speaks quickly, and sends her away.
Deara lifted her right hand from the woman’s shoulder and opened her eyes. The images she could not understand. Clearly the child was she who was in pain. The woman had harmed her in some way. But in what way she could not tell, for she could not share the image. She had no words this woman would understand, for she was of another tribe.
The pain, however, would go now. She could do no more. She addressed the God, spoke the prayer of thanksgiving, made the sign of the coiled snake for the woman’s protection and took her left hand away.
The woman looked up, smiled and spoke.
They were words of thanks. Deara was quite clear about that. But the words themselves were quite unfamiliar. She thought of traders and travellers she had met, but not even they had spoken in this manner. She felt sad. Sad that this woman was not her mother, that she could not speak to her, or give her a draught from the God’s well to speed her recovery.
She made a sign of lying down to sleep.
The woman nodded, but did not go on her way to her sleeping place. She had stretched out a hand towards her. It came to Deara that perhaps the woman needed a token from the God. She picked up the flowers of her offering, chose a bloom that had both a flower and a bud, and handed it to her.
For a moment she was intensely aware of this woman on whom she had laid her hands. She saw her as if from a very long way away, sensing a great space between them. But at the same time, she was also intensely aware that she knew this woman. She felt a familiarity, an intimacy, that she had never before known with any other person. It was as if her hands had touched some secret part of the woman’s being, known to few, perhaps not even to the woman herself.
Deara watched the woman’s hand reach out for the token she offered. She was aware of the grey eyes smiling, the touch of the woman’s fingertips. In the same moment she experienced a strange, shimmering weariness and then knew herself to be alone.
She sighed and looked around her. Gone. Yes, she had gone. And everything else as well. The old trees, the stone on which she had sat, the shorn meadow and the strange dwelling place. In front of her stood the familiar worn stone coping of the God’s well. The fading flowers of her last offering dropped their petals around the base of the small earthenware jug which held them. Driven by the warm breeze they fluttered into the lush grass which grew where the water always splashed down from newly drawn pitchers.
For a few moments Deara stood, poised between joy and sorrow, elated by hope and possibility, yet saddened by the brevity of this strange meeting.
Then, into the stillness of the deserted grove, where only birdsong broke the heavy somnolence of the afternoon, came words of comfort. Merdaine’s words, spoken in this place, when she had talked to Deara about joy.
‘Joy, true joy, comes but rarely, but when it does, cherish it. Cherish the moments you have without longing for others.’
Deara took the flowers of her offering and looked at them. It was the moments she had just been given that she must cherish. For them she would give thanks.
Two days after the estate agent’s visit to Anacarrig, a lengthy communication dropped through the letterbox. He thanked me for my kind instructions, repeated all he’d said about the state of the market, the possibility of finding the right kind of buyer and the likelihood of achieving a satisfactory sale. He named a selling price which amazed me. But it was his final paragraph that left me feeling agitated and upset for the rest of the morning.
He regretted he’d been unable to advertise in this week’s local papers because the photographs of the property were not available until Thursday afternoon. However, he’d gone ahead with putting the house in the Belfast Telegraph, as we’d agreed. Their weekend property guide had a wide circulation, he assured me, and as his firm’s offices remained open all day on Saturdays he would no doubt be in touch with me to arrange viewing for this coming weekend.
Working so hard all week to get the house ready for viewing, it just hadn’t struck me I could end up having to show people round so soon. The thought appalled me. I realised with a shock that I wanted to see no one here at Anacarrig.
For a whole week I’d hardly spoken to a soul. Apart from the estate agent, the only other person was the mechanic who was working on Mother’s car. He’d called in on his way home from work to let me know why it was taking so long. A matter of a part that hadn’t been sent when it was ordered. Mr Neill had rung to ask if I needed anything from the shops in Armagh, but I’d reassured him that Sandy had filled the freezer so full I’d have a job eating it all up before it was time to leave.
I would have phoned my dear friend, Helen, but she was still in Oxford on her course. Joan had gone to visit a cousin in Rye, Sandy was somewhere in France buying old farmhouses and my beloved Matthew was visiting hill villages north of Maharajpur a dozen miles at least from the nearest telephone.
I hadn’t been aware of my solitariness at all. In fact, I had actually enjoyed being on my own. Tears of disappointment and frustration sprang to my eyes as I read the letter a second time and imagined what would happen when the phone started to ring.
And, of course, I had a rotten morning as a consequence, the kind where nothing you begin to do can be carried through. Some tool, or code number, or critical piece of information just isn’t available and you can’t get on without it. It got so bad at one point and I felt so irritable that I just couldn’t keep going. I took myself off across the lawn and down to the hawthorns. I hoped if I sat down and composed myself something might come to comfort or inspire me. But nothing happened. All I was aware of was the scratch of the worn stone against the seat of my jeans, the buzz of an insect swooping around behind me, the clacking racket of some new piece of machinery in the farmyard across the road and a dull throb in my lower back. Of my friend, Deara, there was no trace. I simply couldn’t reach her.
I gave up eventually, tramped back to the kitchen feeling thoroughly upset, climbed awkwardly up onto the work surface, took down the curtains and put them in the washing machine. After the morning’s record of disasters, I could hardly believe my luck when I pulled the switch and it actually worked. I watched
