“So, where are we going?”
“Portcarrick,” she said. “Up on the coast, past Ballymena. My parents took us there a few times when we were little. We always stayed on the caravan park, but there’s a hotel on the bay. It’s a quiet place, hardly anyone ever stays there. Hopkirk’s, it’s called. I hope it’s still open.”
“Me too,” Fegan said.
Dreams came and went, some ugly, some beautiful. Fegan had kept his eyes open as far as the outskirts of Antrim, but the endless dual carriageways stretching into the distance lulled him into a fitful sleep, punctuated by jolts and swerves. As he drifted between waking and sleeping, he was aware of the rise and fall of the road, and the darkness they travelled deeper into.
After a time, Fegan woke to see nothing but black around them. The pressure in his ears told him they were up high somewhere.
“We’re nearly there,” Marie said. “We’re in the Glens now. You missed the delights of Ballymena.”
She took a left turn, and Fegan felt the car begin a shallow descent. Beyond the window he could pick out coarse grass that rolled away beyond his vision. It felt like a wilderness, miles of nothing.
“It’s beautiful country when you see it in the daylight,” Marie said. “Peaceful, like the rest of the world doesn’t exist. I used to love coming here. I always wanted to buy a home on the bay. I guess that’ll never happen now.”
Fegan’s breath caught in his throat when, for just a few seconds, the moon slid out from behind the clouds. It illuminated the landscape and he could see for miles in every direction, grassy hills climbing up to touch the sky. And up ahead, in the near distance, he saw the silver shimmer in the bay below, the North Atlantic meeting the Irish Sea to make a looking-glass for the moon. Then it was gone, the brilliant disc hiding, and the road cut downward between the slopes.
“I never . . .”
“Never what?” Marie asked.
“I never thought things could look like that,” he said. “Not really.”
She reached across and squeezed his arm. Fegan didn’t know whether to pull away or meet her hand with his own. He did neither.
A strange anticipation bubbled in him when he thought of the six followers. As much as he longed for a peaceful night, part of him wanted them to see this place too. He thought of the woman and her baby, always pretty, always showing him her soft, sad smile. She deserved to see somewhere other than the inside of McKenna’s bar or Fegan’s sparsely furnished house.
After a last steep drop, the road settled back into a soft undulation and a series of sweeping bends. They arrived at a gathering of low whitewashed houses, and followed the narrow road as it curved around them. And there it was, just as Marie had described it. To the left, a bridge over a small estuary, an ancient church on the other side of it, and a long beach curving north into the darkness beyond. On this side, its dim basalt reflecting little of the car’s lights, stood a memorial to a lost fishing crew.
The memorial passed on their left, between them and the river mouth, and a pretty two-storey cottage was just on the far side of the hotel on their right. Fegan could barely make out the mass of cliffs reaching out to sea, but he could feel them looming over the dwelling. Marie pulled the car into the space between the two old buildings. Lights peered through the slats in the cottage’s shuttered windows. Shadows moved against the walls, but Fegan couldn’t be sure if they were six echoes of the dead, or just the sweep of the car’s headlights. He shivered when he realised he didn’t know which he most desired.
“Here we are,” Marie said. “Hopkirk’s.”
“Oh, no,” Hopkirk said. “No, no, no.”
He was a tall, thin man of senior years, a plume of white hair swept back from his forehead. He wore a pointed goatee and thick glasses, and raised his nose and closed his eyes as he spoke, as if his words had a pleasing odor.
“Quite out of the question,” he said from behind the bar. One customer sat on a stool, watching the goings- on, a whiskey and a jug of water to hand. Fegan eyed the glass and swallowed.
“Please, we’ve nowhere else to go,” Marie said as she rocked Ellen in her arms. The little girl rubbed her eyes and mewled.
“The rooms aren’t aired out and the beds aren’t made up,” Hopkirk said. “I haven’t let rooms in years.”
“If you have sheets I’ll make the bed up myself,” she said. “If not, the mattress will do. It’s very late and my wee girl needs somewhere to stay for the night.”
It was indeed late, almost two in the morning. The bar’s opening hours seemed to be a loose arrangement between landlord and drinker. The customer was a stout man, around sixty, well dressed, with a deep, refined voice. “Come on, Hopkirk,” he said, with a crooked smile. “Have you no mercy?”
Hopkirk scolded the customer with a look. “I’ve no food in for breakfasts,” he said. “Really, there’s nothing I can do for you.”
Fegan put his bag on the floor, unzipped it, and fished inside until he found what he wanted. The bar was coated in generations-thick paint. Fegan placed a roll of notes on the muddy green gloss. Hopkirk and the drinker looked from it to each other and back again.
Hopkirk separated the notes with a fingertip.
“How long can we stay for that?” Fegan asked.
“A while,” Hopkirk said without taking his eyes from the money. “I’ll make no promises about the service. You’ll have to sort your own meals out and you won’t have any hot water.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Marie said.
“Wait here.” Hopkirk came out from behind the bar and disappeared into a dark doorway.
