“What,” whispered Garrity, “was that?”
“You may well ask,” I said.
At which point the elevator lights flashed and the buzzer buzzed. Garrity had to tear his eyes off the summery crowd and heft himself skyward.
I whipped out my notepad and pen, sensing a new book of Revelations was about to be born.
“We,” said the tall slender man with a touch of gray at the temples, “should like a room, please.”
The manager remembered where he was and heard himself say, “Do you have reservations, sir?”
“Dear me, no,” said the older man, as the others giggled. “We flew in unexpectedly from Taormina,” the tall man with the chiseled features and the moist flower mouth continued. “We were getting so awfully bored, after following summer around the world, and someone said, Let’s have a complete change, let’s do something wild. What?
I said. Well, where’s the most improbable place in the world? Let’s name it and go there. Somebody said the North Pole, but that was silly. Then I cried, Ireland! Everyone fell down. When the pandemonium ceased we just scrambled for the airport. Now sunshine and Sicilian shorelines are like yesterday’s lime sherbet to us, all melted to nothing. And here we are to do … something mysterious!”
“Mysterious?” asked the manager.
“We don’t know what it is,” said the tall man. “But we shall know it when we see it, or it happens, or perhaps we shall have to make it happen—right, cohorts?”
The cohorts responded with something vaguely like Tee-hee.
“Perhaps,” said the manager, with good grace, “if you gave me some idea what you’re looking for in Ireland, I could point out—”
“Goodness, no,” said the tall man. “We shall just plummet forth with our intuitions scarved about our necks, taking the wind as ’twere, and see what we shall tune in on. When we solve the mystery and find what we came to find, you will know of our discovery by the ululations and cries of awe and wonder emanating from our small tourist group.”
“You can say that again,” said the manager, under his breath.
“Well, comrades, let us sign in.”
The leader of the encampment reached for a scratchy hotel pen, found it filthy, and flourished forth his own absolutely pure fourteen-karat solid-gold pen, with which in an obscure but rather pretty cerise calligraphy he inscribed on the registry the name David followed by Snell followed by dash and ending with Orkney. Beneath, he added, “And friends.”
The manager watched the pen, fascinated, and once more recalled his position in all this. “But, sir, I haven’t said if we have space—”
“Oh, surely you must, for six miserable wanderers in sore need of respite from overfriendly airline stewardesses. One room would do it!”
“One?” said the manager, aghast.
“We wouldn’t mind the crowd, would we, chums?” asked the older man, not looking at his friends.
No, they wouldn’t mind.
Neither did I, scribbling away madly.
“Well,” said the manager, uneasily fumbling at the registry. “We just happen to have two adjoining—”
“Perfecto!” cried David Snell-Orkney.
And, the registration finished, the manager behind the desk and the visitors from a far place stood regarding each other in a prolonged silence. At last the manager blurted, “Porter! Front! Take these gentlemen’s luggage—”
But just then the hall porter ran over to look at the floor.
Where there was no luggage.
“No, no, none.” David Snell-Orkney airily waved his hand. “We travel light. We’re here only for twenty-four hours, or perhaps only twelve, with a change of underwear stuffed in our over-coats. Then back to Sicily and warm twilights. If you want me to pay in advance …”
“That won’t be necessary,” said the manager, handing the keys to the hall porter. “Forty-six and forty-seven, please.”
“It’s done,” said the porter.
And like a collie dog silently nipping the hooves of some woolly, long-haired, bleating, dumbly smiling sheep, he herded the lovely bunch toward the elevator, which wafted down just at that precise moment.
I paused in my scribbling because … at the desk, the manager’s wife came up, steel-eyed, behind him. “Are you mad?” she whispered wildly. “Why? Why?”
“All my life,” said the manager, half to himself, “I have wished to see not one Communist but ten close by, not two Nigerians but twenty in their skins, not three cowboy Americans but a gross fresh from the saddle. So when six hothouse roses come in a bouquet, I could not resist potting them. The Dublin winter is long, Meg; this may be the only lit fuse in the whole year. Stand by for the lovely concussion.”
“Fool,” she said.
No, I think not, I thought.
As we watched, the elevator, freighted with hardly more than the fluff from a blown dandelion, whisked up the shaft, away.
It was exactly at high noon that a series of coincidences occurred that tottered and swerved toward the miraculous, and myself at the eye of the maelstrom.
Now, the Royal Hibernian Hotel lies half between Trinity College, if you’ll excuse the mention, and St. Stephen’s Green, which is more like it, and around behind is Grafton Street, where you can buy silver, glass, and linen, or pink hacking coats, boots, and caps to ride off to the goddamned hounds; or, better still, duck in to The Four Provinces pub for a proper proportion of drink and talk—an hour of drink to two hours of talk is about the best prescription.
It was high noon, and out of the Hibernian Hotel front who should come now but Snell-Orkney and his canary five, myself following and taking dictation, but telling no one.
Then there was the first of a dumbfounding series of confrontations.
For passing by, sore torn between the sweet shops and The Four Provinces, was Timulty himself.
Timulty, as you recall, when Blight, Famine, Starvation, and other mean Horsemen drive him, works a day here or there at the Kilcock post office. Now, idling along between dread employments, he smelled a smell as if the gates of Eden had swung wide again and him invited back in after a hundred million years. So Timulty looked up to see what made the wind blow out of the Garden.
And the wind, of course, was in tumult about Snell-Orkney and his uncaged pets.
Timulty, frozen to the spot, watched the Snell-Orkney delegation flow down the steps and around the corner. At which point he decided on sweeter things than candy and rushed the long way to the Provinces.
I walked briskly after, feeling like a stage manager at an animal fair.
Ahead of me, rounding the corner, Mr. David Snell-Orkney-plus-five passed a beggar lady playing a harp in the street. And there, with nothing else to do but dance the time away, was my taxi driver, Mike himself, flinging his feet about in a self-involved rigadoon to “Lightly o’er the Lea.” Dancing, Mike heard a sound that was like the passing of warm weather from the Hebrides.
It was not quite a twittering nor a whir, and it was not unlike a pet shop when the bell tinkles as you step in and a chorus of parakeets and doves starts up in coos and light shrieks. But hear he did, above the sound of his own shoes and the pringle of harp. He froze in mid-jig.
As David Snell-Orkney-plus-five swept by, all tropic-smiled and gave him a wave.
Before he knew what he was doing, Mike waved back, then stopped and seized his wounded hand to his breast. “What the hell am I waving for?” he cried to me as I arrived. “I don’t know them, do I?”
“Ask God for strength!” I said as the harpist flung her fingers down the strings.
Drawn as by some strange new vacuum cleaner that swept all before it, Mike and I followed the Team down the street.
Which takes care of two senses now, the sense of smell and the use of the ears.
It was at the next corner that Nolan, bursting from The Four Provinces pub with an argument pursuing, came around the bend fast and ran bang into David Snell-Orkney. Both swayed and grabbed each other for support.
“Top of the afternoon!” said David Snell-Orkney.
“The back side of something!” replied Nolan, and fell away, gaping to let the circus by. I could see in his eyes that he had a terrible urge to rush back in to report upon his fell encounter with a feather duster, a Siamese cat, a spoiled Pekingese, and three others gone ghastly frail from undereating and overwashing.
The six stopped outside the pub, looking up at the sign.
Lord, I thought. They’re going in. What will come of it? Who do I warn first? Them? Or the bartender?
Then the door opened. Finn himself looked out. Finn, come into town to visit his cousin, and now ruining the occasion by his very presence! “Damn,” said Nolan, “that spoils it! Now we won’t be allowed to describe this adventure. It will be Finn this, Finn that, and shut up to us all!”
There was a long moment when Snell-Orkney and his cohorts looked at Finn. Finn’s eyes did not fasten on them. He looked above. He looked over. He looked beyond.
But he had seen them, this I knew. For now a lovely thing happened.
All the color went out of Finn’s face.
Then an even lovelier thing happened.
All the color rushed back into Finn’s face.
Why, I thought, he’s … blushing!
But still Finn refused to look anywhere save the sky, the lamps, the street, until Snell-Orkney trilled, “Sir, which way to St. Stephen’s Green?”
“Jesus,” said Finn, and retreated. “Who knows where they put it this week!” and slammed the door.
The six went on up the street, all smiles and delight, and Nolan was all
