Ghost Songs by Regina McBride

Author:Regina McBride
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tin House Books

PART FOUR

I clap and stomp my foot on the pub’s worn wooden floor as a motley group of musicians play pipes, fiddle, bodhran, and flute, many of the jigs familiar: fast-paced, high-energy music full with joy. The two big, sweet guys who run Tommo’s, the hostel down the road where I’m staying, nod their heads in time and smile bleary-eyed. The one with the black beard winks at me. In the mornings they cook and serve the breakfasts in aprons, overseeing everything with finicky attention, but by afternoon they’ve arrived here to the pub and parked themselves at the bar, drinking pints of Guinness, watching the comings and goings of the various girls staying in their establishment.

A woman stands up and sings along to a tune I know well: “The Black Velvet Band.”

•

In a haze of wet light, I wander alone on winding roads outside of Doolin, looking at farmland and nearby ranges of mountains. A tall, fat goose guarding a field around a thatched cottage on the road to Liscannor waddles toward me as I near its property. I speak to it, trying to make friends, or reach some kind of understanding. It cranes its neck, stepping from foot to foot, then breaks into a chase. I run, laughing and breathless, until it stops and turns back, satisfied with my distance from its jurisdiction.

•

Philip and Jan leave for Yeats country on the second day in Doolin, but I remain behind. There is something welcoming and easy about this place, and something hypnotic about the music. Hours, entire days go by as I listen to long improvisational sessions weaving one piece into another, repetitions, variations, long traipsing fugues. Closing my eyes, I feel as if I’m swimming in the music. Time loses its coherence.

The fourth night at Tommo’s on the edge of sleep, I think of Yeats country and imagine the sacred woods, the giant Irish deer. The images comfort me, but I make no move the next day to get there.

•

Two of the Swiss girls I’ve been going to the pub with have invited me to take the ferry across for a day trip to the Aran Islands. We will all meet at the pier for the one o’clock boat. An hour before, while the two of them are at the beach, I go to a small local shop.

It’s all shadows at first when I walk in from the daylight, and for the flash of a moment, I mistake a side of dark, coppery-smelling bacon hanging from a hook for a person. I approach the counter where a stack of peat bricks for sale issues a black, earthy coolness. “Hello,” I call out.

Silence. Under the foggy glass cover of a cake dish, a rope of pale sausages lies curled up in a pile.

I feel someone here. I don’t move. After a beat, I hear fidgety squeaking from the back of the shop and a breathy, dejected groan. Whoever it is is listening for me to move.

I take a step and look down the last aisle.

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