The Hounds of the Morrigan (2 page)

The bookseller had not yet come back, but someone else was behind the counter, a thinnish old man with a great white moustache. He was deeply engrossed in the study of a paper with strange foreign writing on it.

He’s a scholar, thought Pidge.

He stood for some moments waiting to be noticed. Just as he was about to speak, the man looked at him.

‘Are you serving now?’ Pidge asked.

The man nodded and smiled.

‘I’ve always served,’ he said.

Before Pidge could say anything else, the man added:

‘You want to get rid of that in your hand? It’s condition is bad—any price would be too high.’

‘Oh no, you misunderstand,’ Pidge hastened to say. ‘I found this package in the back room. How much do you want for it, please?’

‘Ah,’ the man said softly. ‘An old pledge from far-off days. Are you sure you want it?’

‘If it doesn’t cost too much,’ said Pidge.

‘Cost—ah, cost,’ said the man thoughtfully. ‘The price could be great, as I’ve said before. But money isn’t the thing, is it?’

‘No,’ Pidge answered, not quite understanding his meaning.

‘All that will burn in that back room is for burning, but we don’t want that burned, do we? You would save it from the fire?’

‘Yes, I would,’ Pidge said.

He looked at the package. I don’t know why I want it so much, but I do, he thought.

‘Is there anything I could say that would stop you wanting this?’ asked the man.

‘No,’ Pidge said, wondering at this peculiar question. ‘I feel it’s important to me.’

‘Take it then and good luck to you,’ the man said.

‘No money?’ Pidge asked.

‘No money.’

At the front of the counter there was a small pile of cards, saying:

I’ll take one of those just to show that I mean to be a proper customer in the future, he thought; and he slipped one into his trouser pocket.

‘Thank you very much,’ he said as he left the shop.

‘Thank
you,’
the man replied, rather fervently, Pidge felt.

There was no room in the saddle-bag so Pidge stuffed the pages inside his shirt, flat against his chest. The bookseller passed him by without noticing him, and he was muttering ‘Supersonic Jets or similar rubbish!’, in an angry way as he went back into his shop.

I’m glad that
he
didn’t serve me, Pidge smiled to himself, while he carefully buttoned his shirt.

The clock in the steeple struck four.

‘Good heavens!’ he said. ‘How time has flown—and if anything, the day has grown hotter!’

As soon as he began to ride his bike through the town, he at once saw that a change of some kind had taken place. There was an unusual atmosphere and the crowds in the streets were wildly excited, as if it were Race Week again, or some sort of Festival time. People were rushing everywhere and the young Garda on point duty was as frisky as a racehorse. He was leaping about with flailing arms as if he were trying to herd quicksilver. One or two people stood looking and pointing at the sky, gabbling, but not listening to each other. Pidge looked up but there was nothing to see.

As he made a right turn after he had passed the Franciscan church, he glanced back and saw the two nuns again, and he had the illusion that one nun was turning a cartwheel and another was trying to stand on her head.

He pulled up, got off his bike and really looked back. Disappointingly, all was normal.

‘I could have sworn I saw it,’ he said. ‘It must have been my imagination unless they were men dressed up. Mummers or such.’

He cycled on. Very soon he turned up the rough track to The Dyke by the side of Lough Corrib, making his way to Terryland and then on to Shancreg where he lived.

Now he was alone, with only the mild wind from the lake and the scratching, rattling sound it made in the dry rushes that grew so thickly by the water’s edge.

For no reason at all, he shivered.

He had left The Dyke and was well into the country when he realized that darkness seemed to be creeping in very early in the evening for August.

He looked west towards the lake which was now at some distance, and saw that the sky beyond the Connemara mountains was dark blue with darker streaks of purple, and the waters of the lake were coloured violet and mulberry, and the mountains themselves were a blurred mistiness of astonishing darkness. These near mountains were the familiar Maamturks. Beyond them stood the Twelve Pins, a region of mountains which Pidge had visited more than once on days out.

His mind drifted from one thing to another, the strangeness in the city already half forgotten. His father would be coming back from Dublin to-morrow. He had been at the Horse Show all the past week.

He was going to buy a magnificent mare who would be the mother of wonderful young horses. She would be the best mare in the whole country and her foals would be the wonder of the world.

Pidge hoped that she would be the colour of milky coffee with a long, blonde tail and mane. He knew that she would have a beautiful head and that her muzzle would be a soft warm velvet. He could hardly bear to wait until he looked into her gentle and intelligent eyes for the very first time. Then there would be the lovely gradual friendship, growing stronger day by day.

‘Could I have a few syllybyls with you, young sir?’

Pidge looked round him.

Sitting on the wall in amongst the bushes, so that he was almost hidden from view, was a very ancient looking man wearing the appearance of an angler. His face was as wrinkled as dried apple skin; his tweed hat was stippled with artificial flies and there was a basket and rod standing up against the wall beside him. His eyes were a bright blue colour and they twinkled as dew drops lit by the sun.

Pidge got off his bike and walked over to him.

‘Are you the young sir who’s just been buying in Galway?’

‘Well, I’m one of them, there must be dozens of others,’ Pidge answered politely.

‘That’s a fair oul’ catch you’ve got under your jumper,’ the angler said, in an admiring way.

‘That’s not a catch at all,’ Pidge smiled, thinking that fishermen all have one-track minds.

‘Isn’t it?’ the old angler said with some doubt.

‘No. Just some books.’

The man looked satisfied for some reason.

‘I’m to tell you to watch out,’ he said, ‘there’s danger at the crossroads.’

‘At the crossroads up ahead? What kind of danger?’

Too soon to say—but danger there is.’

Pidge could think of only one possible danger.

‘You can’t mean traffic, it’s so quiet round here?’

‘I can’t mean traffic, young human sir—but you are to use the eye of clarity when you get to that spot. There’s deluderings at the crossroads, such as would confound Geography and Cartography; such as would make Pandora’s Box into a tuppeny lucky bag,’ the old angler said earnestly, and added: ‘Bad work and not many knowing it; quiet as water under the ground. You be careful, young mortal sir, as there’s more than one kind of angling and you could be sniggled in a flash! There’s lures and lures. That’s my message!’

What a lot of strange things he said and I don’t understand the half of it, Pidge thought. Aloud he said:

‘Who told you to tell me? Was it the Gardai?’

‘Couldn’t say it was. But that’s the chatter that’s filling the place and I was to put you wise.’ The old angler looked with dreadful earnestness straight into Pidge’s eyes as if trying to impress the importance of his words on Pidge’s brain. His concern was clearly very great.

‘Well, thank you very much,’ Pidge said.

‘All the small wild things know it,’ the old angler said. ‘It’s them that chatters.’

‘They usually do,’ Pidge replied, thinking of forest fires and how animals are said to scent danger from a silent wisp of smoke.

Not knowing what Pidge was thinking, the old angler looked surprised at Pidge’s apparent knowledge.

‘You know more than the Minister of Education,’ he said and he swung his legs in behind the wall with great agility. He began to walk off.

‘Don’t forget your rod and basket,’ Pidge called after him and put them over the wall.

‘What rod and basket?’

He turned and came back. He smiled just a bit ruefully, Pidge thought, when he saw that he had forgotten what should have been his most treasured possessions.

‘Time has made a Nutmeg of me Brainbox, I fear,’ he said and picked them up. ‘My thanks to you and a safe journey.’

‘My thanks to you and goodbye now,’ Pidge said.

The old angler vanished from sight in the bushes. Probably on his way to the lake, Pidge decided.

He got back on his bike and rode on, his head turned towards the lake to try for a glimpse of the old man. He stood up on the pedals and looked at the expanse of fields and bushes. There was no sign of him anywhere and the only person visible was a distant youth with flowing fair hair, dressed in something white that looked like a tunic, who was running at an exuberant and impossible speed, just for the joy of it.

It must be the distance deceiving me, he thought. He’s probably wearing some sort of sports kit and is running fast all right but not impossibly so. But I wonder where the old man has gone? He was nice. I liked him and he was so odd and interesting.

Before he could puzzle further about the old man, he was surprised by a large, freshly painted signboard stuck in by the side of the road. It said:

And then there was another almost immediately after, saying:

Pidge burst out laughing.

‘It’s just like a students’ trick, although it isn’t Rag week and they are all supposed to be gone home for their holidays. Maybe some of them are back early and they’ve got some kind of game going on for Charity. I wish I knew more about it and where the real fun is.’

He reached the summit of a small hill, stopped and got off his bike. The road rolled down ahead of him, and there below him and not too far away, was the crossroads.

And it was just the crossroads.

There was nothing there.

All was just as usual: the signpost, the stone walls and the few trees, growing slender and young in the corner of one of the four fields bordering the road. They were too few to be a good hiding-place for a would-be trickster.

A sense of disappointment was beginning in Pidge until he realized that he was standing in the middle of a dead silence.

There was no lowing of cattle in distant fields; no barking of dogs from farms even further distant; no soughing of the wind in the solid old trees growing right beside him on the hilltop; no birdsong or chatter; no clicking of grasshoppers in long grasses. No thing made any sound at all and there was only a stretching and continuing silence; stretching all round him and continuing far away.

Everything seemed to be holding its being in check, waiting for something to happen.

‘My imagination again,’ Pidge reflected. ‘I wonder how many dead silences I’ve been in before and just not noticed because my head was busy with my own thoughts? Anyway, there’s my road home—and home I must go.’

The silence persisted as he freewheeled down the hill.

It magnified the sounds of the bicycle; the squeaks that needed oiling; the whirr of the wheels and the click-clicking of the chain as he rested his feet on the pedals. Small stones rattled sharply against the inside of the mudguards as they jumped out from beneath the pressure of the wheels.