Land Beyond the Map

IV

Polly said: “Oh, my God!” but faintly. Crane turned to her at once, freed from the mesmeric spell, and put an arm about her waist. She stared at him. Her face was drained of blood. He moved around the car, opened the door, put Polly onto the seat. He sat himself behind the wheel, started the Austin, put her in gear and went slowly out of the car park. He drove mechanically. It began to rain and he switched on the wipers. His eyes followed the metronomic tic-toe across the windshield and saw the ripples and balloons of water rilling down. He did not say anything at all. He just sat there, driving the car, watching the rain and the silver-gleaming pavement.

There was nothing to say that would help.

Polly shivered and straightened in the seat. She began to tidy herself up — fresh make-up, a moistened finger along her eyebrows. She did not look at Crane. He kept his face stonily ahead, watching the road as they left the town, not knowing which way he was going, lost in more than the slanting rain.

The downpour had broken suddenly in heavy driving lines of rain; as suddenly it passed with the lightening of the sky and the rolling away of gray cloud masses. A watery sun shyly peeked down on the soaked land. “Where are you going, Rolley?”

“Huh?” He glanced at her, bemused. “Oh — going. Hell, I don’t know. Anywhere. Anywhere away from that damned parking lot and that — that—”

“We’re in this thing right up to our necks now; you know that, don’t you?” Her voice was steady and grave.

“Yes. We’ve been mixed up in it for some time without knowing just how far committed we were. Who was that poor devil, anyway? What did he want? What—”

“You ask the questions, Rolley. I don’t know the answers.”

“Who does?”

Crane swung the wheel, turning the car, and brought her around and back again onto the road leading into Omagh. His mouth hurt from the pressure of his teeth and he had consciously to relax his tension. The decision to go back helped.

Polly tapped him lightly on the elbow.

“You’re going back? Is that wise?”

“Wise or not — it’s the only decent thing we can do.

Some poor devil back there may be lying on the ground, badly hurt, dying. We can’t just skip out on a responsibility; we witnessed the accident.”

“You’re talking as though this was just a road accident.”

“Of course! Maybe he was struck by lightning.”

“Have you ever seen lightning like that, Rolley? Act your age, man!”

“Have you ever seen anyone struck by lightning?”

“Well.” She fidgeted. “No. No, I haven’t. But that’s just a quibble.”

They were bowling down the main street again, heading back through rapidly drying puddles to the parking lot.

“Well, then, Polly. You tell me what you think happened.”

“You saw the same as I did.”

“All right. This is a civilized country, Polly, although occasionally you’d never believe that. You can’t just go around ducking your responsibilities just because you think there was something — something odd about it all.”

“That wasn’t a civilized act, Rolley.” She was angry now. “And you damn well know it. That man was killed — kidnapped, made to vanish — taken. He’s not lying on the ground with a broken skull from a lightning stroke. Turn the car, Rolley. Let’s get out of here!”

The vehemence of her words, the tremble of her lips, scared Crane. Polly Gould was a tough girl; yet she was plainly very frightened, with a fear she tried to cover by anger. As for himself, he felt a detached desire to investigate, to find out more. And now Polly, to whom he had looked for the iron core of determination in their expedition, was begging him to take her away.

He said slowly: “I’m like the character who kept calm because he didn’t know the full details. Is that it, Polly?”

“Some. You can turn at this next corner.”

“I fear nothing very much about this… this flicker of light. It could easily have been lightning. You get very odd effects with the ball variety. But, Polly—” He turned to look at her and then swung back as the car’s tires hit a pothole.

“I’m scared when I think you may crack up. If you really think so, we’ll head straight back to Belfast and take the next plane home.”

After a time, during which Crane halted the car by the curb, she said slowly: “No, Rolley. We can’t run out now. You know as well as I do that that man wasn’t struck down by lightning. The rain hadn’t started then, anyway — and did you hear thunder? Whoever — whatever — wants the map tried to stop what he — or it — thought was an attempt to pass it on to us or to contact us in some way.”

Crane remembered he had thought that the man had shambled across to them. Now he said: “Supposition.”

“But a pretty conclusive supposition, don’t you think?” She blazed the query at him, her eyes wide, her bottom lip trapped between her white teeth as soon as she had finished. Crane had to make a decision, then, a decision he knew he was making incorrectly.

As usual, he found an excuse to avoid an immediate decision. A small white-painted teashop with a narrow red door stood on the opposite side of the road. The tiny windows beckoned with loaded cake-stands and brightly colored tins. The reassuring smell of hot fresh buns wafted across the rain-wet road. The teashop looked pert and charming, smiling amid the frowning rows of stark gardenless houses.

Crane locked the car and ushered Polly across, not meeting her eye, knowing she had guessed the reason for his actions. But, at that, they both needed a cup of tea. The experience in the parking lot, for all their acceptance of it and their matter-of-fact attempts to rationalize it away, had been nerve-shattering to an alarming degree. Over a cup of tea and a thickly-buttered slice of barn brack, Crane faced the problem again.

They had reached the crossroads in this enterprise.

They could go back home, thankful still to be alive, and forget about the Map Country. Correction: try to forget. But they’d be out of it and no worse off. Or— they could go on, probe deeper, face the meaning behind that sinister oval of silver light and McArdle’s passionate desire to gain possession of the map, enter, if they were fortunate, the Map Country.

He knew he ought to say: “Okay. If that’s how you feel we’ll go back home right away.” But some unsuspected devil of obstinacy deep within him resented such a tame ending. With distaste he remembered how during training he had wished, with a frightful lapse from his normal personality, that his men’s ammunition had not been blank but sharp. The moment had come on him suddenly and overwhelmingly, when a red regiment had enfiladed his company in a gulley and the umpires were knocking him out left and right. A sergeant had got a Bren going in reply for his own blue company; but the umpires had not been impressed. Crane recalled with cold horror how he had had to crush down the hot words, the violent wish that the Bren had been firing live ammunition — the umpires would have been proved wrong then.

Something like that was happening now. He very much wanted to find the Map Country. For Polly’s sake he wanted to find out what happened to her cousin and for himself he wanted to do what he could to help Adele. For both Polly and himself finding the Map Country was a therapy and a healing of wounds. He didn’t feel right about giving it all up now.

The most scary thing of all was his own lack of fear.

He sipped tea moodily, staring past heaped cake-stands but of the window. A small tousle-haired boy pushed that same tousled head into the shop, stared about and began to withdraw. His eyes focussed on Crane and Polly. He stopped back-pedaling, froze, jerked forward and then backed out as though he’d stuck his head into a furnace. The door slammed.

“What’s up with him?” Polly asked in a voice that showed she hadn’t the slightest interest. Crane didn’t bother to answer.

They’d finished their second cup of tea when the door opened again, and an old, bent, white-haired man entered. His hair was a clear white, brushed up stiffly and standing out at the sides. His thin face, deeply furrowed, was burned brown and formed an oaken frame around startlingly blue eyes, so blue they appeared white. He walked towards Crane with the near-stepping and deliberate walk of the aged.

Without invitation he seated himself at their table.

“And would you be the man lookin’ for the map, now?”

Crane thought very deliberately: “So I’ve been saved a decision — again.”

“I must be,” he said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t ask.”

“Fair,” the old man said. “Very fair.” He squinted down his nose at them, then took out a red handkerchief and bugled. “Ye saw what happened to poor Barney?”

“Barney?”

“The wee idiot lad. Him as looks after the motor cars. Terrible, it was.”

“Oh.” Crane understood now. “We never did pay the car parking fee.”

The oldster crackled. “I wouldn’t let that weigh on me conscience, son. Barney’ll be the third — the third in twenty five years. I’ve known ’em all, so I have.”

“For God’s sake get to the point!” Polly’s face was blotched, the lipstick lividly patchy on bloodless lips.

Crane touched her hand gently.

“What did you see, Mister—?”

“What you did. And you can call me Liam.” He cocked an eye at them. “And none of your ‘old Liam,’ either. I’m not finished yet.” And the cheeky old devil leered lecherously at Polly.

Crane smiled and Polly perked up. The rigidness left the hand Crane was touching.

“Why, Liam?” Crane asked softly. “Why did it happen?”

“You don’t waste time, son, sure you don’t. It won’t be necessary for me to spend hours explaining. They took Barney and the other two so they could feel safe. And safe they are, the murdering devils.”

Crane glanced at Polly. He guessed her thoughts paralleled his — another O’Connell? Crane realized that this oldster sitting across from him was not as ancient and decrepit as he looked. There was a sparkle in him like the flash of fire from the surface of running water — and like running water he would be slippery and hard to hold. The white stiff hair seemed genuine enough; but the bent posture, the crackling-bone movements, the jerkiness, appeared to Crane to be put on deliberately. Disguise. That must be it. Liam also appeared to think that Crane knew more than he did, which might be awkward or useful. Crane chanced a gentle nudge.

“They thought they had the map, eh, Liam?”

Liam chuckled. His leathery face creased. “Sure and all that’s what they thought. Three times in twenty-five years — and each time wrong.” And he chuckled quietly to himself, the rheumy water standing in his eyes. Crane waited.

Presently Liam said: “And what’s the map worth, then?”

“At the moment,” Crane said, putting artificial hardness into his voice, “precisely nothing.”

“Is it nothing you say!” Liam rocked back.

“Nothing.”

“Faith — then maybe I’m wasting my time!”

“Maybe. And maybe not. Tell me, is it true that Barney was taken because they thought he had the map?”

Liam stared back as though Crane had suddenly sprouted horns. He couldn’t know the profound shock — a shock beneficially turned into shock of relief — shaking Crane at meeting a man who talked about a map logically, with rational speech, familiarly and with no covert leers about Crane’s state of mental health. Liam was a tonic.

“Well, of course. And why else should they take the poor wee creature?”

“And they thought those other two, the others in the twenty-five years, also had the map?”

“Of course.”

“Do you know where they went, Liam?”

“Yes.”

Crane leaned forward. He trembled very slightly, and he could feel his heart beating as though he were an insomniac, unable to sleep. He swallowed. “Have you been there, Liam?” The reply should not have surprised him. What was unsettling, even now, was the matter-of-fact, off-hand way Liam said: “Sure. Coupla times. In the long ago.”

“In the long ago,” Polly repeated in a whisper.

“And since then they’ve been after you for the map, Liam. That’s it, isn’t it?”

“It could be.” Liam’s face and voice became abruptly foxy. “I had a good look at you and your lady before I sat down here. I summed you up as people I could deal with, people who would deal squarely with an old man. There’s been another — a divil-faced heathen with sparks in his eyes who’d roast and eat newborn babes on the Sabbath day.”

“McArdle?”

“Faith, man, I didn’t stop to ask his name. And there’s always the chance I might find a true comrade, a person I could trust…. But I think that dream is over.” The foxy look died and in its place a long sad look of regret clouded Liam’s lined face. “Ther’s only the map left now.”

“If you’ve been — there — then you must have the map.”

Caution deepened the wrinkles around Liam’s nose and eyes. “That doesn’t follow at all, young man. Not at all. Maybe I had the map in the long ago…. I don’t want you to run away with the wrong ideas, though.”

“I won’t. Just that this isn’t an everyday happening, is it now?”

Liam lost his watchful look. “You won’t be contradicted in that, son. Most unnatural, sure it is. But you’re seriously trying to tell me the map is worth nothing? You don’t expect me to believe that — knowing what I do?”

“At the moment.” Crane took a deep breath. “How much were you thinking of asking for it?”

“Ah, now.” And Liam curled up and went into his shell like a tortoise tickled by a lettuce leaf.

Polly said: “If they snatch people they think have the map and you have it, why don’t they snatch you, Liam?”

He showed no apprehension; rather, a deep and joyful cunning irradiated his wizened face.

“They can’t seek through brick walls and what they can’t see they can’t eavesdrop on. I found that out quickly enough. That’s why I waited until you were safely under a roof first. Just don’t talk about this out of doors, that’s all.”

Crane sat quietly. Opposite from him sat a man who had, by implication, possession of the map. Yet the fever of impatience in him was quiescent, calm, content to sit and wait. Why?

Crane didn’t know. They were dealing here with forces that were alien and unnatural and he trusted his own instincts. The time for heady action had not yet come. When it did he felt he would be better and stronger to face the conflict for the benison of this hiatus, this calm before the storm.

He had journeyed a long way since that stormy night when his fifteen eighty Italian of the Florida Gulf and the westward islands had gleamed more brightly through a seven pointed star shattered in its glass. Perhaps there was some tenuous connection between that shattering and his present position. He doubted it; but you never knew, you never knew.

That was the night Polly Gould had erupted into his life.

Liam was talking again, here in this tiny tearoom in a neat market town in the boglands of Ireland. Outside the clouds had massed again; as Crane watched the rain started. Inside the shop colors faded and he shivered a little.

“If a man knows how to use the map, why, then, you cannot put a price on it. It’s more wonderful than any pot of gold at the foot of a rainbow.”

“A treasure map,” said Polly, contempt slurring her voice. She tossed her head. “Is that all you can offer?”

Liam smiled wisely at Crane. “It’s an offer few get and fewer make. Mind you, I’m not making it to you — yet.”

Crane said: “When did you last go into the Map Country, Liam?”

“Is that what you call it? Well, ’tis a good enough name. The Map Country. Faith, yes.”

He would have gone on speaking but the door of the tearoom swung open again and a tall, dignified, roughly-dressed man entered. The man’s eyes held the long gaze of one used to looking far distances under a misty sky. His hands gripped square and strong on the heavy, shiny stick; hands that knew the cunning of cutting turf. He marched straight up to Liam.

“And what is it, Sean, that you should be worrying me when I’m talking to foreigners?” demanded Liam wrath-fully.

The man was humble; his dignity remained, but he showed very clearly that he was lower in the pecking order here than Liam. He twisted his cloth cap nervously.

“’Tis only that I’d like another week, Liam. Everything’s gone awry. The cow—”

“All right, Sean. It seems to me I’ve heard all this before.”

Crane watched, fascinated. Here were country politics, country finance of the old school, being enacted before his eyes. He could guess at the outlines of the farm running down, and the loan, and the pressure for repayment. Another week. Well — how many weeks would that make?

Liam surprised him. The blue eyes gentled and the bristling white hair lost its aggressiveness as he said: “Yes, Sean. Another week. I know you mean well — but never mind that now. Away with ye, and stop your thanks, man.”

Sean’s dignity cloaked his gratitude; but he shook hands as a drowning man shakes hands with a lifebelt.

“You’re a good man, Liam, for all that you’ve never done a stroke of work in your life. The money’s never meant anything to you—”

“Away, man!” roared Liam.

Sean turned and made for the door. “Goodbye, now,” he said, bobbing his head.

“Goodbye, now,” Liam answered automatically.

Ulstermen, both.

“What did he mean,” Polly asked with feminine rudeness that merely charmed, “by the money’s never meant anything to you?”

Liam chuckled again, a wet, wheezing rustle of good humor. He drank the tea that Crane, for one, had not seen provided for him.

“I’ll tell you, young lady. It’s all part of the same story, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ll be pleased to be rid of it — both parts.”

The same tousled-haired boy they had seen before put his tousled head into the tearoom.

“They’re about, Granfer. On the prowl. Ma’s having her twitches again.”

“Drat,” said Liam, rising and throwing coins onto the table in payment for the tea. “Come on. Ma’s never wrong.” Going out the door with Crane and Polly in instant but perplexed pursuit, he added: “Ma’s my daughter and his mother; but she’s looked after the family so long now we all call her Ma.”

Liam halted by the Austin, one hand on the front near-side mudguard. He peered about, like a hound-dog scenting.

“This is our car,” Crane said. “Any use?”

“Aye, that it is. Inside with ye both. Quick, now!”

Polly slipped behind the wheel, Liam at her side. Crane found himself in the back with the tousled-haired youngster bouncing up and down on the upholstery.

“Which way?” asked Polly crisply.

“Och, any way. You’re pointed in the right direction. Just move away from here.”

The car started, carrying them quickly out of town.

Crane looked at the hedges and stone walls fleeing past. The boy at his side remained absorbed in the experience of riding in the car. Polly gave her attention to the driving, adjusting her metal outlook into the bargain, too, surmised Crane. Liam lay back, breathing shallowly with a wheezing cough every now and then. Presently he said: “Take the left fork and stop at the crossroad.”

Polly did so. At the crossroads a stone-built house of two stories leaned against the wind. Rain glinted from blue tiles and tall narrow windows. It was growing dark and the rain and wind in the huddle of trees about the houses sounded disturbingly eerie. The old house might have been a witches’ castle gauntly shadowed in an enchanted forest. Crane waited for Liam’s next oracular pronouncement.

“Let’s go inside,” he said casually. “It’s going to be a soft night.”

Crane walked up the pathway to the frowning facade of the house by Polly’s side. He felt no wonder that he should be doing this. He knew only that he must not let Liam get away until the man had parted with the map. For Crane now felt obviously sure that the strange white-haired oldster did possess the map. And the map was a central part of his life.