A Place Called Here

For Jack, running down to his car, all he could think about was finding Sandy, so she could bring Donal back to where he belonged.

Jack’s continuous questions about Sandy Shortt to the hotels, inns and bed-and-breakfasts in Glin were beginning to raise eyebrows. Impatience was entering the voices of the once-friendly members of staff, and diversions of his phone calls to duty managers were becoming more frequent. Now, with still no clues as to where Sandy was, Jack found himself taking deep breaths of fresh air down by the Shannon Estuary. The River Shannon had been a prominent feature in Jack’s life. Ever since he was a child he had wanted to work in Shannon Foynes Port. He had loved the excitement of the bustling docks that housed the monstrous machines that roamed the river’s edge like metal herons with long steely legs and beaks.

He had always felt a connection with the river and wanted to be a part of helping all it carried. His mother and father had brought the family to Leitrim on a summer holiday one year, the holiday that remained more vivid in Jack’s mind than any other. Donal wasn’t born and Jack hadn’t yet reached ten years old. It was on that holiday he learned where and how the great river began, slowly and quietly at first in County Cavan before it picked up speed, gathering the secrets and spirit of each county with each part of soil it eroded. Each tributary was like an artery being pumped from the heart of the country, whispering its secrets in hushed and excited babbles until it eventually carried them to the Atlantic where they were lost with the rest of the world’s whispered hopes and regrets. It was like Chinese whispers, starting out small but eventually growing and becoming exaggerated, from the freshly painted wooden boats that bobbed on the surface in Carrick-on-Shannon, to finally carrying steel and metal ships alongside cranes and warehouses that was the grand excitement of Shannon Foynes Port.

Jack rambled aimlessly down a quiet road along the Shannon Estuary, grateful for the peace and quiet. Glin Castle disappeared behind the trees as he walked further down the track. A splash of bright red glowed from behind the greenery in an area that had long ago been used as a car park but was now overgrown and merely used as a walk for ramblers and birdwatchers. The gravel was uneven, the white lines had faded and weeds grew from between every crack. There sat an old red Fiesta, battered and dented, its gleam long ago rubbed away. Jack stopped in his tracks, immediately recognising the car as the Venus flytrap that had captured the long-legged beauty from the garage the previous morning.

His heart quickened as he looked around to find her but there was no sight or sound of any other presence. A coffee-filled Styrofoam cup sat on the dashboard, newspapers piled up on the passenger seat alongside a towel, which led Jack’s overactive imagination to believe she was jogging nearby. He moved away from the car in fear she would return to find him peering through the windows. The coincidence of them meeting once again in another deserted area filled him with far too much curiosity for him to walk away. And saying hello to her again would be a welcome joy to a day lacking in results.

After forty-five minutes of waiting around, Jack began to feel bored and foolish. The car looked like it had been abandoned years ago in the forgotten area, yet he knew for sure that he had seen it being driven yesterday morning. He moved closer and pressed his face against the glass.

His heart almost stopped. Goose bumps rose on his skin as a shiver ran through his body.

There on the dashboard, beside the cup of coffee and a mobile phone with missed calls, was a thick brown file with ‘Donal Ruttle’ written in neat handwriting across the front.

16 (#ulink_b578c501-8f61-5048-927f-d0f8fd47587b)

I tapped my shoe against the plate that once held the chocolate digestives, causing a loud tinkling sound to echo through the clearing. Around me the four sleeping bodies were lazily stretched out on the forest floor, and Bernard’s snores seemed to get louder with every minute that passed. I sighed loudly, feeling like a pesky hormonal teenager who couldn’t get her way. Helena, whom I hadn’t spoken to for an hour, raised her eyebrows at me, trying to show her lack of amusement although I knew well that she was enjoying every second of my torture. Over the past hour I had ‘accidentally’ knocked over the china, dropped a packet of biscuits on Joan and had a rather loud bout of coughing. Still they slept and Helena refused to lead or even direct me out of the woods to the other life she had spoken of.

Hearing laughter, I had attempted to make my own way out but, finding my way blocked by thousands of identical leering pines, I decided that getting lost once was enough, to get lost a second time in already unusual circumstances would be just plain stupid.

‘How long do they usually sleep for?’ I asked loudly in a bored tone, hoping my voice would disturb them.

‘They like to get a good eight hours.’

‘Do they eat?’

‘Three times a day; usually solids. I walk them twice a day. Bernard in particular loves the leash.’ She smiled into the distance as though remembering. ‘And then they partake in the occasional personal grooming,’ she finished.

‘I meant do they eat here?’ I looked around the clearing in disgust, no longer caring if I insulted their annual camping resort. I couldn’t help my agitation but I hated to be pinned down. Usually I came and went in my life as I pleased, in and out of others’. I never even succeeded in staying in my own parents’ house for very long, usually grabbing my bag by the door and running. But here, I had no place to go.

Laughter echoed in the distance once again.

‘What is that noise?’

‘People call it laughter, I think.’ Helena settled down in her sleeping bag, looking snug and smug at the same time.

‘Have you always had an attitude problem?’ I asked.

‘Have you?’

‘Yes,’ I said firmly, and she laughed. I let go of my frown and smiled. ‘It’s just that I’ve been sitting in these woods for two entire days now.’

‘Is that an apology?’

‘I don’t apologise. Not unless I really need to.’

‘You remind me of me when I was young. Younger. I’m still young. What has you so irritable at such a young age?’

‘I’m not a people person.’ I looked around as I heard another bout of laughing.

Helena continued talking as though she hadn’t even heard it. ‘Of course you’re not. You’ve just spent the guts of your life working to find them.’

I registered her statement but decided not to respond to it. ‘Do you not hear these sounds?’

‘I grew up beside a train station. When friends stayed over they’d be kept awake all night by the noise and the vibrations. I was so used to it I couldn’t hear a thing, yet the creaking on the stairs when my parents went to bed woke me every time. Are you married?’

I rolled my eyes.

‘I’ll take that as a no. Do you have a boyfriend?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Have you got children?’

‘I’m not interested in children.’ I sniffed the air. ‘What is that smell? And who is laughing? Is there somebody nearby?’

My head whizzed round like a dog trying to snap at a fly. I couldn’t discern where the sounds were coming from. They had seemed to be coming from behind me but when I’d turned round the noise appeared to be louder in the other direction.

‘It’s everywhere,’ Helena explained lazily. ‘What the new people here compare to a surround-sound system. You probably understand that more than I.’

‘Who’s making that noise and is someone smoking a cigar?’ I sniffed the air.

‘You ask a lot of questions.’

‘And you didn’t when you first arrived here? Helena, I don’t know where I am and what’s going on, and you’re not being much help.’

Helena at least had the decency to look embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry. I’d forgotten what it’s like.’ She stopped and listened to the sounds. ‘The laughter and these smells are just entering our atmosphere now. So far, what do you know about people who come here?’

‘That they’re missing.’

‘Exactly. So the laughter, cries and scents that arrive are missing too.’

‘How can that be?’ I asked, utterly confused.

‘Sometimes people lose more than just socks, Sandy. You can forget where you put them first of all. Forgetting things is just parts of your memory missing, that’s all.’

‘You can remember again, though.’

‘Yes, but you don’t remember all things and you don’t find all things. Those things end up here, like the touch and smell of someone, the memory of their exact face and the sound of their voice.’

‘That’s bizarre.’ I shook my head, unable to take it all in.

‘It’s really very simple if you remember it like this. Everything in life has a place and when one thing moves, it must go somewhere else. Here is the place that all those things move to.’ She held her hands up to display our surroundings.

A thought suddenly occurred to me. ‘Have you ever heard your own laughter or cries?’

Helena nodded sadly. ‘Many times.’