The Belfast Girl at O’Dara Cottage. Anne Doughty

ourselves.

      As I finished my coffee I began to wonder how much my lunch was going to cost. Just because it wasn’t very nice didn’t mean it couldn’t be expensive. Then there would be the taxi fare to Lisnasharragh and a night in a hotel if I’d got it wrong. Suddenly, I felt very much on my own, a solitary figure in an empty dining room. Ben and the Rosetta and the familiar things in my life were all a very long way away. I was painfully aware of being a stranger in a strange place.

      It was some time before Feely breezed in. He ignored my unease about not having had the bill, said the car was at the door and he was all ready to take me to Lisnasharragh. Which way did I want to go?

      According to my map, there was only one possible way. I took a deep breath and explained carefully that the village lay at least five miles away on the coast road to the Cliffs of Moher. But it might be as much as six.

      I might as well not have bothered. As soon as we were out of town, he dropped to a crawl, following the thin, tarmacked strip of road between wide, windswept stretches of bog. Nothing I said had the slightest effect upon him and we continued to crawl along, furlong by furlong, through totally unfamiliar territory. For once in my life, I was more anxious about the distance itself than about the hole this luxurious journey would be making in my small budget. As each mile clicked up on the milometer, I became more agitated. Once it showed seven miles, I would know I’d got it wrong. Either I had misread my map, or worse still, Lisnasharragh no longer existed.

      As we approached the five-mile mark, the bog ended abruptly. On my left the land rose sharply and great outcrops of rock dominated the small fields. On the other side of the road, the much larger fields dropped away into broad rolling country with limestone hills in the distance. Bare of any trace of vegetation, the Hills of Burren stood outlined grey-white against the blue of the sky.

      We turned a corner and there ahead of us was the sea. Sparkling in the sun across the vast distance to the horizon, it broke in great lazy rollers over a black, rocky island about a mile from the shore. Beyond this island, in the dazzle of light, like the backs of three enormous whales travelling in convoy, were the Aran islands. Inisheer, Inishman and Inishmore.

      My heart leapt in sheer delight. For weeks now these names had haunted me with their magic. Now the islands themselves were in front of me. Nothing lay between me and them except the silver space of the sea. As if a window in my mind had been thrown open, I felt I could reach out and touch something that had been shut away from me. My anxieties were forgotten. The islands were an omen. Now I had found them all would be well.

      The road began to climb and as it did, I crossed an invisible boundary onto the map I carried in my mind. I knew exactly where I was.

      ‘It’s not far now, Mr Feely,’ I said quickly, making no attempt to conceal my relief. ‘Down the hill and over the stream. There’s a clump of trees to the right and then a long pull up. Maybe we could stop at the top.’

      ‘Ah, shure you’ve been pulling my leg, miss. Aren’t you the sly one and you knows Lisara as well as I do.’

      Feely turned to me and laughed. He seemed almost as pleased about finding Lisara as I was. Even the idea that I’d played a trick on him didn’t appear to bother him.

      ‘Oh no, Mr Feely, I haven’t been here before, truly,’ I assured him as I studied the road ahead. I wished he would look at it himself just occasionally.

      ‘Ye haven’t?’

      ‘No.’ I shook my head emphatically. ‘Not at all.’

      ‘Not at all,’ he repeated feebly.

      To my great relief, he turned away and corrected our wavering course. I stared around me in disbelief.

      For the last two weeks of the summer term, I had spent every day in the departmental library copying maps and reading monographs. In the main library I had found reports from the Land Commissioners and the Congested Districts Board. They were so heavy I could barely carry them down from the stack. I had ploughed my way through acres of fine print. Now, it all seemed irrelevant. Nothing I had done had prepared me for the sheer delight that overwhelmed me as I moved into this unknown country on the edge of the world.

      Months ago, when the whole question of theses was being discussed, something told me I had to come here. I’d managed to cobble up some good reasons for coming but it had never occurred to me to think how I might feel when I actually arrived.

      It wasn’t enough to say that it was beautiful, though I thought the prospect of the islands the most wonderful sight I’d ever seen. It was something much less tangible. However hard I struggled, I could find no words to describe what I felt, not even inside my head.

      ‘Mr Feely, could you stop round the next bend. There’s a cottage on the left with a lane down the side of it. We could park there while I have a quick look round.’

      As we turned the corner and pulled into the lane, my spirits rose yet further. The cottage was not only trim and neat but it had pale patches in the thatch where it had been mended quite recently. Before we had even bumped to a halt, a young woman appeared at the half-door to see who had turned into the lane. I went and asked her if she could help me at all, told her I was looking for somewhere to stay and assured her I would be no trouble.

      ‘And I’m shure you wouldn’t, miss.’

      She smiled weakly and fingered a straggling lock of dark hair. She looked strained and tired, her face almost haggard as she stood thinking. She couldn’t be much older than I was.

      ‘Shure I’d be glad to have you here, miss, but I’m thinkin’ you’d not have much peace for yer work with four wee’ ans. Is it the Irish yer learnin’?’

      As soon as she opened the half-door a chicken made a dive for the house. As she shooed it away it was clear there would soon be another wee’ an to care for.

      ‘I’m thinkin’, miss, where ye’d be best off. Is it Lisara ye want?’

      ‘Yes, indeed, but anywhere in Lisara will do.’

      It was only as I pronounced the word ‘Lisara’ for the first time that I realised Lisnasharragh no longer existed. Perhaps it never had existed, except as a name some ordnance surveyor had put in the wrong place, or one he’d found that the local people never used. Whatever the story, Lisara was my Lisnasharragh, alive and well, and exactly where it should be.

      ‘Well, I think ye might try Mary O’Dara at the tap o’ the hill. She’s a good soul an’ they’ve the room now for all her family’s gone. Tell her Mary Kane sent ye.’

      She leaned against the whitewashed wall of the cottage, weary with the effort of coming out to talk to me.

      ‘I’ll do that right away,’ I said quickly. ‘If she can have me, perhaps I could come down and talk to you about Lisara.’

      ‘Indeed you’d be welcome,’ she said warmly. ‘We don’t have much comp’ny.’

      I thanked her and turned back towards the car. To my surprise, she followed me into the bumpy lane.

      ‘I’ll see ye again, miss, won’t I?’

      ‘You will, you will indeed. Goodbye for now.’

      Feely was looking gloomy and when I asked him if we could go up the hill to O’Dara’s he just nodded and drove off. I wondered if I’d said something I shouldn’t have.

      O’Dara’s cottage was just as trim and neat as Mary Kane’s, but there was a small garden in front of it. A huge pink hydrangea was covered with blooms and there were plants in pots and empty food tins on the green-painted sills of the small windows. Sitting outside, smoking a pipe, was a small, wiry little man with blue eyes, a stubbly chin, and the most striking pink and mauve tie I have ever seen.

      ‘Good day, is it Mr O’Dara?’ I asked.

      ‘It is indeed, miss, the same.’

      For all my flat-heeled shoes and barely reaching five foot three, I found