The house stood four-square and somewhat sinister in its bulk of yellow stone, at the top of one of those endless rank pastures. No trace of a garden, except for a bizarrely suburban machicolation of cypress hedge. The gate at the road announced the services of Jonas O'Driscoll, Builder. Also, vacancies. But vacancies cannot be trusted.
' Should be okay,' said Sheridan, scanning the whereabouts and liking the isolation. 'It's fucking huge for a B&B. Unreal!'
'Not at all,' she corrected him. Camilla was always wise to the local ways. 'Traditional Irish rural industry needs bedrooms. The only crop that thrives in this country is babies. Breed them up for emigration, ship them out and look forward to a comfortable retirement on their earnings.'
'That's cold-blooded, isn't it?'
She laughed. 'I like it. It shows a fine ruthlessness. Children as a business venture, why not?' She was childless herself.
'Bring me tangle-curled barefoot peasant girls,' groaned Sheridan. 'Bring me a reeking cottage with a pig looking out'
Mine hostess was at the door, a young woman with mouse-brown hair cropped short as a boy's, her large behind embraced in boyish dark blue jeans; pink cheeks, naive round hazel eyes and a cute, piggy turned-up nose. The tourists smothered their giggles as she welcomed them in to a stark, tiled hallway with a huge varnished pine dresser and varnished pine umbrella stand. Pokerwork signs hung on the walls, inscribed with the rules of the B&B (all credit cards, rooms must be vacated, etc.) — Miniature warming pans, decorative teacloths, china donkeys on a knick-knack shelf. Everything excruciatingly new. The travellers caught each other's eyes and sighed. Their hostess was Noreen O'Driscoll. She'd had a phone call from the inn, and she could show them to an ensuite room. She beamed naively when they accepted the astonishing price of a night's lodging; displayed flushed puzzlement when they insisted on shaking hands.
Camilla and Sheridan liked to shake hands with the natives. They followed her round denim bottom up the varnished pine stairs, savouring the touch of that scrubbed peasant skin — already worn down (she can't be more than twenty-five or so, poor girl) to the texture of spongy sandpaper.
Room number four, ensuite. How many rooms are there? Maybe six, maybe eight. Maybe it goes on for ever, into the antechambers of hell. Thick yellowy varnished pine, brass numberplates. The wallpaper in number four is the same as in the stairwell: strawberries and strawberry flowers, in shades of pastel brown and pastel apricot. The bed takes up most of the space. The bedding is pastel apricot, polysomething, with the same debased, dreary strawberries and strawberry flowers. There's a fitted wardrobe, a vanity unit. A window with meagre flimsy curtains provides a magnificent sea view. As they stare at the room, Noreen frankly stares at them , these two exotic birds of passage, tall and slender, blonde and sophisticated (he is tall, she is blonde). Her round, bright eyes are filled with a peasant's ingenuous hunger for sensation.
'This is fine,' says Sheridan briskly. 'We'll take it.'
Noreen looks at Cam, a little puzzled. (Camilla must remind Sher that he's in a country where menfolk do not make domestic decisions. It's his place to be silent!) But she also looks very happy. They are welcome, they are accepted, they are fascinating: all is as it should be.
When they were alone, Camilla sniffed the towels and moaned softly. The polyester sheets, cheap enough to start with, are worn to a grisly fungoid sheen; and why in the world, in a house so big, does this 'double room' have to be so mean and cramped? It's a battery cage for tourists. 'I can't stand these places,' muttered Camilla. 'I cannot bear them. The sheer effrontery! I thought Ireland was supposed to be romantic.'
'That's my line,' said Sheridan. He had to stoop a little to look out of the window. Beyond the pasture, a wide sea shore under a fabulous sweep of sky, but the back of the house is like a builder's yard. A heap of sand under a tarpaulin, a stack of roof tiles. The children are playing: two boys of that touching age between childhood and adolescence, trying to humiliate each other with BMX bike tricks. A girl a little older, chivvying a terrier puppy. A couple of infants. Unseen, above, he smiled on them benignly.
'The light is wonderful.'
She could hear the children's voices. 'How can you tell? It's nearly dark.'
'Exactly.' He turned with a knowing grin. 'I'm sure you'll find something to do.'
Camilla went on grumbling as they carried up their bags, unpacked, and made futile efforts to render the battery cage habitable. But when they ventured into the lower regions, in search of advice about an evening meal, she was the one who accepted the offer of a cup of tea condemning them to a tete-a-tete with Noreen in the Guests' Lounge and TV Room. Mine hostess brought tea and fairy cakes (one per guest). Later she brought the baby, eight-month-old Roisin, suffering from the colic; told Camilla the names of her other children; confided the state of her husband's business. Camilla tasted the admiration in Noreen's eyes, and drew more of it to herself insensately, out of habit, like a pianist running over her scales: she couldn't help it. She really meant no harm. Why are you dressed as a boy? she wondered. Wouldn't you be more comfortable in a nice print frock and an apron? Thus the wheel of fashion turns, and it gets harder and harder to find the true wilderness experience. Peasants the world over have Coca-Cola and Internet access. But their lives (sadly enough, agreeably enough) are no less empty. An attractive stranger is still fascinating, same as she ever was.
Noreen jigged the grizzling baby with businesslike indifference. Camilla admired the family photographs (Noreen in a huge white dress that would have looked better on a pick-up truck, clasping her red-faced builder to her side). Sheridan sat there in his black biker jacket and his black jeans, one long leg crossed over the other, saying little, grinning secretly. 'Jaysus,' remarked Noreen, in astonishment. 'It seems like we've been friends for ever! And will you look at the time. Jonas'll be home and no dinner cooked!'
They went out to eat at a roadhouse with pretensions (Noreen exhorting them from the doorstep to be careful of 'the drunk driving'). In the morning Camilla declined to rise for the Full Irish Breakfast. Folded between sickly polyester surfaces, the smell of bad laundry in her nostrils, she listened to middle-aged Americans tramping heavily down the stairs. She could tell by the sound of their voices that there was nothing worth getting up for in that dining-room. I won't stay another night, she thought. I won't . A quarter-hour later, a tap on the door: Noreen with a tray of tea and wheaten bread. 'Are yez poorly?' asked the young housewife, gravely concerned. 'He says I'm to tell you he's gone out to take a look around the possibilities. He says you'll know what he means.'
'Sheridan's a photographer,' said Camilla. 'He loves the light here. How nice of you to bring me the tea. You shouldn't have. I'm so sorry to be a nuisance.'
So Noreen stayed, and talked, and stayed, and told terrible stories about rude unreasonable tourists (Camilla having deftly established that she and Sheridan were actually neither English nor American). Downstairs baby Roisin's grizzling rose to a roar. Camilla heard her, but Noreen didn't. When she left at last her round eyes were as bright as stars, she turned at the door for a lingering glance: came back and patted Camilla's toned and slender
