The turf was stacked high, thick brown earthy bricks of it, against the end of the house. Jack had no idea how much of it to use or how long it would last—and the learning of such things was the very kind of mundane knowledge he’d come this distance to find—so he gathered as much in his arms as he could hold onto and carried it into the house.

  He dumped it on the stone flags before the fireplace, then piled it neatly against the wall. Then he stood back, put his hands on his hips, and realized that he’d never built a fire before in his life, even out of wood, much less peat.

  He lit a cigarette and wondered if the lighter would do the trick or if he’d have to wait until he could get to a shop and buy wooden matches. But he wanted the fire now; it would be the perfect thing for this first night in his new home.

  Then he thought of Grainne.

  He realized instantly that his thoughts were running away with him. He hardly knew the girl, had spent no more than a few hours with her, might never see her again, and here he was picturing her sitting beside him on the floor in front of a cozy turf fire. The image was vivid and warm in his mind: her glistening black hair, dark eyes, milky white skin, the touch of her lips on his, her slender legs and hips and full breasts. He’d been aware, certainly, of all of that the evening before and again this morning, when he’d stopped briefly at the bookshop, but the wave of new scenes, things to do, things to think about, had blurred and softened the impression of her face, voice, words, touch. He told himself quickly that, of course, he’d felt, and felt now, an immediate closeness to her; after all, she was the only person he knew—and even that was stretching a point pretty far—in the whole country. And at the same time, he wanted to tell her how much he loved the house. Besides, he had to find out how to build a peat fire, right? Right.

  Humming a tune he knew from a Clancy Brothers album but the title of which he couldn’t recall, he got the bookshop card from the pocket of his jacket and went to the telephone in the kitchen. He was relieved that it worked. He dialed the number in Dublin—it suddenly seemed awfully far away—and listened happily to the foreign-sounding burr of the phone at the other end.

  “Hello?”

  He knew her voice instantly.

  “Grainne, it’s Jack Quinlan.”

  There was a moment’s silence, then she said, “Oh!”

  He sat back in the kitchen chair and put his feet up on a counter.

  “What’s happened?” she asked quickly. “Did you find it? Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” he laughed, “I’m fine. Everything is fine. The drive took about three times longer than I expected, but I’m here and the house is terrific. It’s big, it faces the ocean, it has a great view, and I love it.”

  “I’m glad,” she said, sounding pleased but still a little puzzled.

  “I wanted to tell someone.”

  “Oh?”

  “And, right now, you’re the only friend I have in the world.”

  She said nothing and the telephone crackled a little in the momentary silence.

  “That didn’t come out right, did it?” Jack said. “What I mean is, you were the first person I thought of.”

  He thought she was smiling when she replied, “Well, that does sound a little better.”

  “It really is beautiful here, Grainne. I wish you could see it.”

  She said nothing to that.

  “Actually,” Jack went on quickly, “the real reason I called is purely a business matter.”

  “It is?”

  “Oh, yes. You see, I’ve read all the books I bought—I read them while I was driving—and now I need a new supply.”

  “Do you?” she said, and now he could definitely hear the smile, almost see the curve of her lips. “You must be an awfully fast reader.”

  “Oh, I am. In fact—”

  “I read your book,” she said quietly. “The shop wasn’t at all busy today and I finished it.”

  Now it was his turn to say, “Oh.”

  “I liked it.”

  “Good.”

  “Do you not want to talk about it?”

  “No, nothing of the sort. It’s just that . . . Well, as soon as you said you’d read it, it suddenly mattered a great deal whether you liked it or not.”

  “Oh,” she said again, then added quickly, “I keep saying that, don’t I?”

  “So do I.”

  “I did something else, too. I was thinking about your book, the one you’re writing, and I made a list of books on the Famine. You may have read some of them but I could get them for you if you wanted. I did it, you know, just on the chance you might phone.” Her voice trailed off uncertainly.

  Jack slid lower on the chair and crossed his ankles up on the counter.

  “Well, I’ve phoned,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Yes.”

  They both laughed easily.

  “I meant it, Grainne, when I said I wished you could see this place. Maybe you’ll come here and see it. You could come here for a weekend.”

  “The university didn’t corrupt me that much, Jack Quinlan,” she said at once.

  He was about to reply when she added, “You’ll have to steal me away.”

  “I might just do that,” Jack said. “I’d just toss you in the box with the books.”

  After that, she steered the conversation toward more neutral topics and they chatted easily for another ten minutes. He promised to call again in a couple of days.

  He’d hung up the telephone and strolled out to the living room before he remembered he’d meant to ask about the peat fire. Too late, he thought. And he was too tired, anyway, especially with all he’d done and two days’ worth of jet fatigue to get over. Yawning, he walked into the bedroom, opened a window to let in some fresh air, tested the mattress and found it as hard as he liked, peeled off his clothes, and climbed in.

  As he dozed off, he thought he heard a distant high-pitched keening sound, borne on the dark night breezes, but then it blended with the rhythm of his own breathing and he was lost in sleep.

  At some time during the night, a thick, damp fog drifted up the hill from the ocean and came curling in the open bedroom window. Jack stirred in his sleep and rose naked from the bed, shivering and grumbling at the cold touch of the air. He closed the window and got back under the covers and, not remembering, slept peacefully the rest of the night.

  CHAPTER 4

  He slept until almost eleven in the morning and awoke clear-headed, filled with energy, and ravenous. He blessed himself again for thinking of the bread and cheese and tea, and thought the whistling of the kettle on the stove was nearly the sweetest, homiest sound in the world.

  Outside, it was raining and the world was gray and still and wet.

  He stood at the living room window, drinking a cup of tea and eating a slab of bread liberally covered with strawberry jam. His view stretched down the hillside toward the ocean—he could just see the foamy surf rolling in and breaking on the rocks and, if he pressed his forehead against the cold glass, he could catch a glimpse, off to his right, to the north, of the gray-white blur of the Burren—and he thought the scene was grandly picturesque.

  The only sounds to be heard were the patter and drip of the rain. The only human sounds were his own.

  “King of the mountain,” he said out loud.

  He finished the bread and tea and, before returning to the kitchen to fix more, he made the rounds of the living room and turned on all the lights. Instantly, the room seemed warmer, and the gray, wet world outside retreated and, thus challenged, grew darker still.

  Jack spent another hour or so doing odds and ends in the house. He sat at the kitchen table and made a shopping list of foods he needed and another list of shops and services he’d have to locate. He wondered how far he’d have to travel—possibly all the way to Galway city?—to find, say, a dry cleaner’s. Or a Xerox machine. He smiled at himself; this, after all, was what he’d come here for. He turned his head and looked out the kitchen window, and saw the top of the pile of peat stacked beside the house, ready for the cold, wet weather ahead. He sighed with satisfaction. Good move, he told himself.

  When he was done with the lists, he delayed going out a little longer while he arranged his books in the empty bookcase he found waiting in the study. Looking at them and handling them made him think of Grainne. He supposed it had been pretty bold of him, from the Irish point of view, even to mention the idea of her coming here. But she hadn’t instantly ruled out the possibility of coming to visit. If she thought it was out of the question, she would have said so, right? And she hadn’t, so the possibility remained . . . a possibility. He wasn’t surprised at all to find that he was still thinking of her as warmly as he had the night before. He only even became conscious of how he was lost in thought when his knee became cramped from kneeling in front of the bookcase. He changed his position and finished putting the rest of the books on the shelves, grouping them into several sets. When he came to the multiple copies of his own books, he wondered what Grainne really thought of them . . . and what she thought of him after reading them. And if she really would . . .

  Daydreaming. Wasting time.

  He stood up and stretched the stiff knee.

  Take it easy, he warned himself. Grainne Clarkin was indeed very easy to look at, very pleasant to be with, very interesting to talk to, and, from what he knew, seemed to care about all the same things he cared about. She was also the only person he knew in this entire country, and here he was facing three celibate months—like some medieval monk—on the cold, wet rocks of western Ireland with winter coming on apace, and with nothing for company but his own imagination and the winds from the North Atlantic. What he felt was all the product of circumstance and wishful thinking, nothing more. Besides, she was Irish, wasn’t she, born and bred to it, and that meant Virgin City, university education or no university education. Forget it, he told himself. You probably scared the hell out of her on the phone by even suggesting such a thing.

  He decided he’d call her again the next evening, and went off, whistling, to get the yellow rain slicker he’d brought and the car keys.

  He spent most of Wednesday doing shopping in the tiny village, wandering around, taking in the sights, such as they were—part of his mind told him they were really pretty dismal, while another part rejoiced in the sheer and primitive foreignness of the place: stone walls, ancient wooden signs, sidewalks only a foot wide in places, where there were sidewalks at all, and, visible through the narrow lanes between buildings, the green-gray fields and slopes of the hills, all of them dotted white with wandering woolly sheep. There were three pubs and he stopped in to sample two of them, eating his lunch in the first he came to, the Seafoam, and passing on afterwards to McGlynn’s. Both were clean and plain, surprisingly bright, and sported identical arrays of colorful posters on the walls, advertising popular Irish groups, singers, and musicians, De Danann, Clannad, Mary Bergin, Liam O’Flynn, and others. Each also had, among the posters, hand-lettered signs promising traditional music on Friday and Saturday nights. It was all in keeping, Jack thought, just as advertised; he knew from several guidebooks that Doolin, unlikely as it seemed for this remote coastal village, was something of an international center for traditional Irish music. He was looking forward to it; the music of the fiddle and bodhran and uilleann pipes, passed down from teacher to student before a peat fire and unspoiled by commercial influences, was something he sought out at home when groups appeared at Town Hall and Folk City. Here he could have it at the source. And, thank God, something to do on the weekends. He’d toyed with the idea of buying a bodhran, the Irish goatskin drum that was played with a two-headed beater and whose ancient, hollow sound evoked visions of naked, blue-painted Celtic warriors running in shrieking hordes down the hills. Maybe he’d buy one now. Surely in Doolin he could find someone to teach him how to play it.

  He enjoyed the afternoon. He filled the back seat of the car with his purchases and worried not at all, as he would have at home, about the milk and cheese and eggs and fish he’d bought. They’d be fine; the Irish didn’t worry overmuch about refrigeration and, besides, the weather was cold enough to keep them. He ended up in McGlynn’s with a pint of lager in front of him, his head whirling with scenes he wanted to use and describe in his book.

  When he reached home at last, it was already getting dark. He wasn’t much of a cook—he was going to have to find somebody to come in and take care of that for him—but he made a valiant effort at frying the piece of fish he’d bought. The result was less than spectacular, but edible. As he washed the one plate he’d used, the pan, and the pot he’d used to boil two potatoes, he found himself lost in thought about the book. There were notes he wanted to make, reminders he wanted to jot down. In the study, he worked for an hour, then pulled out his files of notes and added the new pages. He spent almost another two hours connecting the computer and the printer, setting up a disk for the new book, and testing the system. Tomorrow, he thought. Tomorrow he’d start. That was always the hardest part, the first few pages, but he’d do it tomorrow.

  By the time he pushed his chair back from the desk, it was too late to call Grainne.

  It was Thursday, his second morning in Doolin, that he saw the funeral.

  With a couple of good nights’ rest behind him, he was up early and at his desk, feeling extraordinarily virtuous and filled with ideas, by the time the gray light of dawn had firmly established itself over the land. Sitting before the keyboard of the computer, the words came easily. The first sentence of the book had been in his mind for a month. He typed it in and looked at it on the word-processor screen. It was good. The next sentence came and he typed that. And a paragraph. And a page, and another page. When he finally sat back, longing for another cup of breakfast tea, he was already a third of the way into the prologue, with the rest of the scene taking shape clearly in his mind. He was safe now. The book was started.

  He had only explored the village itself the day before. Now he thought he’d take the car and spend an hour or two driving the narrow, rutted roads of the area, along the rocky coast and up among the hills and the farms.

  It wasn’t raining as he started out, but the sky looked as if it might open at any moment. He drove back the way he’d come on Tuesday and, moving slowly, letting his gaze drift easily over the rocky landscape where muddy sheep were the only things that moved, he circled to his left, making a wide swing around the neighboring hills and the village of Doolin itself. After about three quarters of an hour, as the car topped a rise on a tight bend, then straightened out, heading downhill, he saw the line of black-clad mourners gathered just ahead.

  He brought the car to a stop, taking care not to go into the deep, weed-filled ditch at the side of the road. As he shut off the motor, a few fat, clear raindrops spattered heavily on the windshield.

  The shuffling, dark line of people was turning in through a break in the tumbled-down wall that lined the road on his right. He could see six elderly men, all dressed in rumpled dark suits and wearing dark tweed caps and scarves, sliding their feet slowly over the gravel of the roadway, while a plain wooden casket trembled on their shoulders and grew slightly darker as the raindrops fell harder and the water stained the raw wood. At the head of the procession walked a tall, elderly priest, one hand clutching a raincoat closed over his chest. His black scarf flapped like an angry bird at his throat.

  They were obviously people from Doolin and Jack wondered for a moment if he should join the procession and say a prayer (or at least pretend to) at the grave. After all, he was a member of the community now, even though, so far, he’d only met a couple of the shopkeepers. Then he thought that might be regarded as intruding, and he decided against it.

  The funeral procession had moved on into the field and turned uphill toward the straggly line of trees. The mourners were out of sight now. Jack sat in the car, smoking a cigarette.

  He needed to see a funeral, for a scene in the book, and this one would be perfect. He wouldn’t even need to adapt it to his purposes; all he’d have to do is describe it. Writers can be ghoulish when they need to be, he thought. He sighed, stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray, and got out of the car. He hesitated for a second, then, from force of habit, reached in and took the keys from the ignition.

  It was easy to climb over the wall, but the hillside beyond it was rough, uneven, thick with nettles and tangled, ropy vegetation that concealed treacherous rocks. He moved with care, trying to watch where he placed his feet and, at the same time, angle across the slope in the direction the funeral procession had taken.

  He had just reached a few dark, slouching fir trees when he saw the party gathered at the grave.

  They stood with heads bowed beneath the rain and their grief, and Jack could just hear on the chill, salty wind, the murmurings of the priest’s blessing on the deceased and the mourners’ mumbled responses. The sounds reached him, faded, touched him again, as the wind danced over the hill. He shivered, pulled his collar up close against his chin and held it tight across his throat. Cold rain struck his face and he felt his hair getting wet. He could see the open grave, a dark patch at the mourners’ feet. A pile of raw dirt, dotted with stones, stood beside it. As he watched, the priest made the sign of the cross over the coffin and the six pallbearers lowered it on ropes into the hole. They tossed the ropes in after it, then immediately picked up waiting shovels and began pushing in the pile of dirt. The other mourners were already beginning to move away. Jack thought he could pick out the principals among them, a woman and, apparently, two grown sons.