Miriam's Talisman (29 page)

After two hours of driving, we rested by a wide stretch of meandering green river and scrambled over huge boulders to the edge. Harold cast his line, set his back against a grassy mound and immediately fell asleep. I set up a makeshift easel and board and studied the clear torrent
bubbling over polished boulders. This time I anticipated the effect and first allowed myself to tune in and become a part of things. I was learning quickly. I ran with the water, ice-cold and free. Then I waited with the eternal patience of the stones. I felt the pull and the resistance between them, held it in my mind, then moved the conflict onto the paper. Again I would make the finished work a gift to Harold.

I had to wake him when his line caught and the rod bent over. I couldn't watch the catching and the killing. He cleaned and skewered the fish, and turned them over a fire. The skin shrivelled and scorched, and the smell conspired with the mountain air to overcome any scruples I might have had. We ate with our fingers, like primitive hunters, while wide-winged birds circled overhead, watching us. Harold said they were hawks, but I preferred to think they might be eagles.

We opened cans of beer, and he talked to me of the land and the people. When he returned to Boston he had resumed his career, devoting himself to the study of Indian culture and religion.

‘Here? I always thought of Indians belonging to the Wild West, with wagon trains and cowboys.'

He laughed and shook his head. ‘No, no, this is all Indian country. Or it was until the white man came and took the land. Some of the bloodiest massacres happened along the seashores of New England. They believed in the land, you see, that it lived, that the Earth itself was a living being.'

‘You mean they worshipped the Earth?'

‘They worshipped the Great Spirit. But they believed everything had a spirit, each plant, each animal, the rocks
and the rivers. Everything lived and was part of the Great Spirit, yet had its own identity.'

‘That's like what the Celts believed, wasn't it?'

‘It's the way most human races see things, or at least they used to until the Christians put a stop to it.' He looked around, his old eyes taking in the stillness, sunlight glancing off water and the distant purple ranges against the horizon. He could sense it too, the energy and life in the land.

‘The Indians, they practised shamanism, didn't they?' I asked. ‘Isn't that something to do with spirit guides, like animals?'

‘Kind of. It was like reaching out and joining with the Great Spirit by finding some aspect of themselves in the forces of nature. They'd put themselves through the most horrific physical and psychological tortures. Not a test of bravery, as some think. They believed it caused an awakening of a higher consciousness.'

‘Sounds awful! They must have thought it worked, though.'

‘They reckoned it did. Their higher spiritual self would appear to them in some recognisable form, maybe an animal or a bird. Through this totem they could regularly enter the other world. Act as an emissary for the tribe.'

‘Did they believe in…other beings, then? I mean like spirits, things that existed independently of man?'

‘Well, they believed in the Ancestors. Apparently these Ancestors were partly divine beings, like demigods. They had supernatural powers. Could change their shape from time to time to suit their convenience.'

‘You mean like the ancestors of the Irish peoples, from
the Fairie kingdom? Like elves and demons could disguise themselves as humans or animals?'

‘Been reading Miriam's books, have you? Yes. It's the same concept. Pretty universal.'

‘What was that song Miriam used to sing to me? It was Scottish, something about seals that change into men. Silkies, they called them.'

I searched my memory for the words. The tune drifted back to me.

‘It's so sad,' I said, a little embarrassed at my own singing.

‘It's just a story, a folk tale. People need their folk tales. They justify the unfairness of life. Come on,' he staggered to his feet and crumpled his beer can, ‘we should be getting back.'

I wasn't sure how much he knew. We still hadn't talked about Ireland and what had happened there, but we both knew we had to.

Time was running short. I had left it until two days before I was due to leave. Harold had suggested he take me to dinner at a restaurant on the wharf at the other side of the lake. Apparently some friends of his ran it and I was expected to be on display. I dressed up for the occasion in one of Miriam's swirling skirts and an open-necked silk shirt.

As we drove round the lake he brought the conversation around to my paintings. I'd noticed they were missing.

‘Drove down here earlier to book a table. Thought I'd call in, see my friend Josh. Runs an art gallery just along the way. Took him your pictures. Asked him to knock up some frames for them.'

‘Oh, I'm flattered.'

‘You should be. He offered me a thousand bucks apiece for them.'

‘What! That can't be right. He must have made a mistake.'

‘You bet he made a mistake. Told him they weren't for sale.'

I was still reeling with disbelief when we arrived at the restaurant. There were the usual introductions and questions about England. Then we were shown to a candlelit table in a bay window overlooking the water, assured it was the best in the house for the occasion. As I slipped off my coat the candlelight glanced off the heavy silver at my throat.

‘She gave you that?'

‘Yes. Why? What's wrong?'

I had expected Harold to recognise it, maybe even to
be angry, but I was not prepared for the look of dismay that darkened his face. He leaned across to me, his hands pressing down on the table.

‘Get rid of it. You don't understand.'

I sat down and felt it sway against my skin. ‘No, I don't understand. Tell me about it. Tell me about Ireland. What happened there? Why did you leave?'

He shook his head and lowered himself heavily into the chair. When the waiter came over, Harold said we needed some time and could we order later. I asked for some drinks. I thought they might be needed.

‘Whatever it was, can't you forgive her?'

‘I forgave her long ago. It wasn't her fault. You want me to tell you. So did she. She said so, in that letter you brought with you.
Explain to Cliohna
, she wrote,
tell her everything
. But I'm not sure there's anything to tell. It was all so…so nebulous. There was no reason to it all. Nothing I could see or touch. Only that pendant. That's why I lost her.'

‘I need to know. I need your help.'

He reached out and wrapped his hands around mine. ‘You're a gift. It's like having her back again.'

‘Then tell me. Please.'

‘I
DON'T KNOW
where to begin.'

‘Ireland. Tell me about Ireland. What made you go there?'

Harold shrugged his shoulders. ‘It was my subject, pre-Christian civilisation. The chance came up. I had to make a grab for it. It wasn't long after the end of the war, you see. I'd been over in Europe, Northern France. I was at university when America joined the war. But I had to go, we all did. Turned out to be the shortest war record in history. Lasted all of fifteen minutes. First time I saw action I got shot in the leg. Still bothers me when it rains. They shipped me straight home again, but I'd seen enough to want to go back there.

‘I went to college and majored in European history. We married and I ended up at Boston, teaching, like I told you. There was a post-war upsurge of interest in all things European, particularly British. When Ireland came up, well, I couldn't pass up the opportunity. Not that Miriam would have let me. Back to the Old Country, she said. She didn't know the first thing about Ireland, but, like most Irish Americans, she had a romantic empathy with the
place, a sort of homesickness for somewhere she'd never been. Though you'd think, with the stories they told of starvation and fighting, it would be the last place on earth anyone would want to go. Still, that's where we went, Miriam and I and little Hannah.'

The waiter arrived. I was impatient while he filled my glass with wine. Harold took a long gulp of his beer. When we were alone again, I asked, ‘And what did you find when you got there?'

‘It was everything and nothing we'd dreamt of. Stepping back in time. I know that's a cliché, but that's what it was. A small island after the vastness of New England. Yet there was wildness and rawness in the landscape that I'd not imagined, for all that it was cut through with roadways and neatly plotted out with dry stonewalls. Where New England was clean and untouched, Ireland was primitive and savage. It was still the Ireland Miriam's great-grandparents had left behind. She was entranced by the little stone houses with their earth roofs and the donkey carts bowling along dirt roads. Oh, there were the trappings of modern civilisation, cars and buses, shops and houses, but they were already outdated and dilapidated. The real things, the solid things, the castles and the standing stones, they were ancient. This was the Ireland I'd come seeking and,' he smiled, ‘Miriam was bewitched by it all.'

‘You were working on some excavations, weren't you?'

‘That's right. A vast arena in the lower part of the mountains. Work was already underway when we arrived. Of course the whole area was steeped in legends. The Kingship of Erinn. You didn't have to learn about it. It was
in the air all around you, it entered through your every breath, through the pores of your skin.

‘The team worked out of Trinity College, Dublin. Of course I had no illusions about my position. I was the token Harvard man, international relations and all that. Working alongside wizards like Johansson and Dolby, I felt like the new apprentice. My first qualified field assignment, and I was determined to prove myself. And where we were going, what we might uncover! I would have worked as gopher for the chance to be there. There were others, of course—volunteers, students on vacation—but we three made up the main team. I was the only one with a family. That wasn't a problem. They were all enchanted with Miriam and the young one.'

‘Hannah told me something about how you lived there.'

‘They'd set us up in a village near one of the sites. I suppose we were both a bit shell-shocked when we saw the housing we'd been allocated. We could hardly complain. It was luxury compared with most of the villagers' homes. Miriam was like a little cork that bobbed back up on the water. She set about turning it into a home for us. She thrived there. Every day was an adventure. There was a glow about her, an excitement that was contagious.

‘At first she was very involved with the dig, helping out when she could. She seemed to have an instinct for finding things, as if she could read the landscape. I got her to assist me with some local research, looking up parish records, that sort of thing. That got her interested in the social history of the area. She'd talk to the villagers and the crofters. Started to write things down. That was OK, too. In fact it was quite helpful to the work. Then she went
off on a trail of her own, got sidetracked into folk tales and fairy stories. I was pleased for her. It was something she could do for herself but still share with me. She was finding her own role, a place for herself. It made us equals. Stopped me from becoming too single-minded.

‘She was able to talk to the people, you see, relate to them in a way that we couldn't. Not that they were unfriendly, far from it. The Irish have a reputation for being warm and hospitable. That's true, they are all of that. But that's only the surface of it. They can fool you into thinking they're a simple, open, honest people. And that's true, too. But they have a breadth and a depth that can take you unawares. They're shackled to a land that breaks their backs and a religion that breaks their souls. And they rise triumphant over both. I don't know what it is about them. Maybe they cower before the priesthood because they have known darker gods. What was it Miriam said? “There are things lurking in the shadows of their psyche, with only the bread and wine to keep them at bay.” Whatever made them the way they were, Miriam could get them to talk, prise their secrets from them.'

As he spoke Harold had turned to the window and was gazing out across the lake. Then he seemed to remember I was there and turned back to me with an embarrassed smile. I had to keep him talking, keep him moving along the path.