Land Beyond the Map

II

He was still pointing out when they left the plane at Nutt’s Corner and took the bus into Belfast that this didn’t seem the sort of adventure for a girl. She merely told him to contact his book-selling friends and start the hunt for a mid-nineteenth century guide book of some indeterminate part of Ireland, containing in the back cover the torn half of a map. Neither of them entertained much hope of success with that approach; merely coming to Ireland wouldn’t bring the catalogues of the booksellers any closer than back at Crane’s home, Bushmills. But it was one avenue of investigation, and they had so few it bulked larger in importance than it really was.

Polly went off tracking down the last people Allan had seen before setting off.

They reported back to each other, sitting at a low table in the lounge of their comfortable hotel. Results — nil.

“The booksellers were pleased to see me, naturally,” said Crane, leaning back in the deep leather armchair and yawning. “Whew, I’m tired. I’ve been a better than average customer. But they shook their heads and expressed a sympathy that was sincere and universal. Not a one.” He scratched his nose. “Except for one, that is. An old character who advised me to try Smithfield. I told him I was looking for a book and not a side of beef—”

Polly chuckled. “Yes, I know. It is disconcerting to find a general market and junkshop area called Smithfield. Difficult for an Englishman to disassociate his Smithfield Market from his mind.”

“I agree. Especially when Smithfield was the scene of many a tournament with knights in full armor jousting there — or didn’t you know that?”

“No. Anyway, what about it? That’s a world deader than the do do.”

“True. I’m no dreamer of medieval follies; but they did have values that make our material grasping look like the second-rate emptiness it is.”

“With your wealth you’d have been all right. Wait” — she held up a hand at his immediate protest. “That’s not meant offensively or even personally. I know the middle ages believed in values of service instead of money and we laugh at them for it. Our values are money from beginning to end, the lust after material possessions. But even so, if that is the price we have to pay for decent living and freedom from the foulness of those days, then the majority of people today pay it willingly.”

At another time Crane would have welcomed an argument about the progress of civilization; but right now a map that had been torn down the center obsessed him. He contented himself with: “One thing’s certain. People in those days before the Renaissance cult of the persona would readily believe the Map Country exists.”

She smiled obliquely at him, vaguely unsettling his impression that he was getting to know her better. “I think I believe you. I’d still be here even if I didn’t, so there’s no comfort for you in that. Anyway, did you go?”

“Smithfield? No. Tomorrow.” He frowned. “The biggest upset of all is what this same old character told me in passing. Apparently another man has been looking for a guide book, and from his description of what he wants to buy, I’d wager half my collection he’s after the same book as us.”

“Someone else — after the map!”

“That’s what the man said.”

“That sheds a totally new light on this—”

“Does it? I don’t really think so. If the map is being put back into circulation again, then it must be sought after.”

“I really can’t go along with your theory there—”

“You’re right, of course, Polly. It is only a theory and so wild and woolly a one as to make nonsense of the sanity of the world we live in.” He stood up, lean and tall, and smiled down on her. “Me for shut-eye. Tomorrow, Smith-field.”

Though he tramped the fascinating alleyways of Smith-field, amid the noise and bustle, penetrating into the quieter, dusty and time-corroded sections, and turned over so many tattered books — all guide books — that he wondered how anyone ever found their way about without them, he did not turn up a guide book with a torn map in the back. Correction — he turned up many guide books with ripped and frail maps in the back; but that warning zephyr he knew would creep up his spine when he found the right one did not happen. He returned to the hotel, discouraged. Everyone to whom he had spoken had been helpful, bringing out piles and arm-loads and old tea chests full of books, had even helped him to turn them over — but one and all they’d shaken their heads.

“Sorry, sir. Feller called McArdle was here, askin’ the very same questions, sure he was.”

McArdle.

“Who the hell was this McArdle to come poking into Crane’s life, trying to steal his map?”

In the loquacious, easy-talking way of the Irish the booksellers would have told McArdle about Crane. That was a surety and Crane felt uncomfortable at the thought. He felt exposed in a way he could not explain even though that, too, was all of a piece with the rest of the mystery surrounding the torn map and the existence or otherwise of the place called the Map Country.

Polly, too, that evening looked crestfallen. “I found the hotel where Allan stayed that last night. Run-down sort of place. I spoke to the proprietor. The place has changed hands since then. It was five years ago, after all.”

“Hard luck, Polly.”

“I’ve a lead to the man who owned it at the time, though. Thought we could hire a car and run out there tomorrow. Little place called Ballybogy, about four miles northwest of Ballymoney.”

“All right. I’m game.” The obvious thought occurred to Crane. “I suppose his name isn’t McArdle?”

“No. Should it be?”

“If this was straight detection, yes, it should be. But we’re mixed up in something a little stronger than mere crime and sudden death. The death’s there, well enough, but I don’t believe it to be sudden.” Crane could not have explained the dark thoughts crowding his brain except by bringing in the fey influences of Ireland — influences he had heretofore scoffingly derided.

“His name,” Polly said, “is O’Connell. Will you see about the car?”

Crane, thinking back to that filthy night he had first met Polly Gould, said: “On condition you drive.”

“Done.”

Crane found it easy enough to obtain a car, a late model Austin, and Polly took it through the traffic the next morning and out along the excellently surfaced roads with a sure, gentle touch that amused and impressed Crane. The green countryside sped past. The sun shone and fluffy clouds wallowed in a mild blue sky like a fleet of white-winged galleons. And, like true ships of war, they could congregate in an instant and open up devastating broadsides, deluging everything in their wrath. Crane held the Ordnance Survey on his knee and followed their progress through the enchanted names of Ireland.

Ballybogy turned out to be just a tiny whitewashed village of closed front doors lining the main street. They were directed to O’Connell’s cottage, knocked, and, after stating then-business, were admitted into the neat, snug, dark little parlor. O’Connell was a brown-faced, wiry, sharp-eyed gnome of a man. He twinkled at them.

As his daughter brewed tea and laid out pan bread and Irish butter, scones and home-made jam from the strawberries of the previous summer, O’Connell racked his brain, thinking back to a single night five years ago when a man and a girl had stayed at his hotel. Amazingly, he remembered.

As he explained why he remembered, Crane’s amazement was replaced by mounting excitement. He leaned forward on the black-wood chair.

“And you say, Mr. O’Connell, that the man scared you?”

“Not scared, young man.” O’Connell rubbed his chin. “I recall surely he was possessed of the evil eye—”

“Oh, come now, father!” O’Connell’s daughter had a fashionable hairdo, and nylons, and a well-cut flowered dress —she was no half-wild girl from the distant bogs. “That’s all nonsense!”

Despite the sunshine flooding golden through the open door and the cheerful wink of china ornaments and tea things on the table, Crane could not help feeling that perhaps the old man’s dark theories were not nonsense. As soon as you set foot in Ireland you realized that anything at all could happen here.

The story as it came out was in itself nothing sensational; but Crane became vividly aware of the undercurrents, the things that were not said, the possibilities this fresh approach opened up.

“The eye o’ the divil himself,” O’Connell rumbled.

Remembrance of that dark night five years ago had stayed in O’Connell’s mind because on that night his hotel had caught fire. He must have gone over the events leading up to the blaze time after time, sitting tucked away in his little cottage, brooding, reliving the scenes of his days in business and of the conflagration that had ended them.

Crane pieced the story together, sitting drinking strong tea and eating pan bread and strawberry jam.

Allan and Sharon had been drinking a lot in the lounge — that made Polly frown — and they’d been creating quite a disturbance. A stranger had walked in out of the night, called for a drink, and had sat down at their table. He’d had the face and the eyes of the devil, according to O’Connell. Crane was willing to give O’Connell the benefit of being an expert in those matters.

“Him and the young feller got talking. He was trying to buy a book off him and the young feller wasn’t having any, sure he wasn’t.” O’Connell shook his gnome’s head reflectively. “Before you could say Cuchulain they were pummeling each other like it was the glorious twelfth itself.

The young feller was — well — it was like this—” O’Connell stopped and rubbed his nose. “It was like he was hittin’ the whole world, hittin’ that feller with the divil’s face.”

“Poor Allan,” breathed Polly.

“And then,” O’Connell said with some small satisfaction, “me hotel caught fire, the whole works, entire.”

“But I went there yesterday—” Polly protested.

“Terrible fine fire service we have in Belfast, miss. All the best bedrooms running with water and ash. But, d’you know—”

“Now, father,” his daughter said in a voice that held an unmistakable warning.

He rounded on her. “Now what d’you take me for, girl! Don’t I know what happened? Didn’t I see it with my own eyes, then?”

“You know what the insurance people said. You were lucky they didn’t press you too hard…”

“Faith and all! I’m sitting here and telling you, girl, that that divil-faced feller lost the fight with the wee lad and set my hotel afire with his divil’s spit. That’s what I’m atelling you of!”

“Oh, father—!”

Crane glanced at Polly. She had her lower lip gripped tightly between her teeth. She looked intense and, caught limpidly unaware in a betraying pose, appealingly lovely. Crane looked away again, fast.

O’Connell’s daughter — they never did learn her name — said: “You mustn’t mind father too much. He always claimed that the stranger set the hotel alight with his eyes. These old superstitions die hard. I must admit the man did look — well — odd. He registered but of course never stayed the night. I didn’t like the look of him then—”

“Registered, you say?” Crane stepped in quickly.

“That’s right.”

“Do you remember his name?” He waited, aware of the thump of blood through his temples and the dryness of his throat.

“Sure and we all do. ’Twas a McArdle—”

“McArdle!”

Crane nodded at Polly’s surprised exclamation.

“McArdle,” he said, and the satisfaction purred in his voice.

“D’you know the feller, then?” asked O’Connell.

“No, we don’t.” Crane stood up. “But I’m much obliged to you, Mr. O’Connell. We intend to make the acquaintance of this McArdle chap as soon as maybe.”

“Sooner, if possible,” Polly added; and Crane knew she was back on form.

Crane, speaking with great gravity and emphasis, said: “Tell me, Mr. O’Connell. Can you possibly remember if the young man, Allan Gould, gave any indication where he was going in Ireland? It is most important that we know.”

“Divil a word did he say to me on that score. From what they were arguing about I seem to remember a scrap of paper they kept prodding with their wee fingers. But ’twas a lovely fire — only time I remember the best bedroom’s fireplace ever drew properly at all—”

“I know it must be difficult for you to recall details of a night five years ago. But the hotel fire fixes it for you. Is there nothing more you can tell us?” Crane was pleading now, openly and unashamed. Something about this whole fire story annoyed him in an obscure way.

“Well, now.” O’Connell swiveled around to stare at Crane, his eyes bird-bright. “Don’t blame me if it’s nothin’ but a trick of an old man’s memory. After I retired and sold the hotel my mind don’t seem as keen as ’twas.”

“Yes, Mr. O’Connell?”

“I think they talked about County Tyrone. But mind me — I’m not saying they did. Just that I think they did.”

“Thank you, Mr. O’Connell,” said Crane simply. He was already standing in the little parlor and when Polly rose to join him they crowded the place with sunshine and shadow from the windows. O’Connell looked up, smiling. He began to pack a pipe kept handy on the mantelpiece. His daughter stood up, a little embarrassed now, at the parting.

Polly smiled at her. “A lovely house you have, Miss O’Connell. You must be very proud of it.”

Miss O’Connell beamed and, having been won over, Polly-beguiled, could let them depart with dignity and all rites fulfilled. As they settled in the car, Polly said wistfully: “An interesting life, with no complications.”

Crane chuckled. “Don’t you believe it. They have as many complications and figurative knives flashing into backs in a small village as you’ll find any day in your London. Come on, start her up. We’ve no time to waste.”

“County Tyrone?”

“When we’re ready. I’m thinking of McArdle.”

“We know from the booksellers that he’s after the map and, conversely, he must know from them that we’re searching, too.” Polly let in the clutch and the Austin rolled smoothly away. “He was after the map before — trying to wrest it away from Allan violently enough to cause a fight. He’s likely to be an ugly customer.”

The conception was abruptly novel to Crane. All the way back to Belfast through a countryside that, with its unpredictable shifts of mood, was gray and brooding and misted with rain, Crane thought about McArdle.

When Polly pulled the car up before their hotel he was right back in his thought maze at the place he had started. He roused himself with a little grunt.

“I’ll go along,” Polly said, “and check the hotel register. If McArdle signed in, his address must be there.”

“Yes, you do that, Polly,” said Crane humbly. He hadn’t thought of it. Not at all. Polly was the practical one.

She came back to late lunch with a triumphant expression. A triumph, Crane noted, that overlaid a grimness.

“He gave his address as some place in County Tyrone.”

“Well now,” said Crane.

“Only trouble is that the place name has been obliterated by burns. The whole register is badly charred They keep it in the safe and regard it as a curio. A memento of the Great Fire, if you follow me.”

“Yes. Well, it’s too late to do much more today. Any ideas?”

“I ought to try to find a story this afternoon.”

“Huh?”

Polly looked at him reflectively, almost calculatingly, pulling her lower lip.

“You’re a rich man, Mr. Crane — very rich, I mean?”

“Why, I suppose so. And what’s all this Mister Crane stuff, anyway?”

“Rolley?”

“I’ve grown accustomed to it.”

She laughed. “Well, Rolley, hasn’t it occurred to you, living in your ivory tower buttressed by a financial empire, that a young unmarried girl has to work for a living?”

It hadn’t — not in Polly’s case, at any rate.

“Why — huh—” Crane said intelligently.

“I’m a reporter. I kid myself I’m a journalist; not yet, but that’ll come. My paper thinks I’m onto a big story here, as I well might be, but—”

But Crane was blazing with anger.

“Is that all you’ve dragged me here for — to get a story for your confounded paper?”

She blazed right back.

“Your sort are all so high and mighty your feet never touch the ground! I mention that I have to earn my living and I’m trying to find a story — I barely manage to open my mouth telling you what I’ve told my paper and you jump down it with both hob-nailed boots!” Dots of color in her cheeks and sparkles in her eyes couldn’t stop Crane from riposting — and even as he spoke he felt the meanness of his words.

“You know what those few people I’ve spoken to about the Map Country think of me. Dolally-tap! And you propose to smear the whole story across the front pages. I can see it now! ‘Multi-millionaire map-hunts for phantom world!’ You’d soil and degrade the whole object of our search here — and I trusted you!”

Polly stood up to him, chin tip-tilted aggressively.

“With a headline like that thank your lucky stars you don’t have to earn your living writing for the papers! And you still haven’t given me a chance to tell you what I told my editor! That’s just like you — typical. If everything doesn’t go your way — blooey! Fire everyone!”

“Now look here, Polly—”

She brushed aside whatever he was going to say.

“No! You look here! You know why I’m in Ireland with you. My editor will get nothing from me that in any way can cause you distress — because that would do the same things to me.” She was breathing deeply now, angry and annoyed, and yet, Crane somehow knew without doubt, partially angry with herself and understanding what he’d so clumsily been trying to say. “Have you forgotten about Allan?”

At once he saw the enormity of what he had been saying, the attitude he had taken, and contrition swamped him — tinged, thankfully, with a dash of mocking humor. Talk about the grindstone and the steel — the sparks generated here would have done O’Connell’s conception of McArdle no injustice.

“Sorry,” he said, meaning it. “Sorry, my dear. Just that, well — I’ve become so bound up in this thing that the thought of millions of gawpers prying into it over their breakfast cereal turns my stomach.”

“Don’t worry. There’s a time for everything. By the time the story is finished with us — or us with it — and I file it you’ll be as blasé£ as the next.”

Thinking of the thoughts that had crowded his brain in O’Connell’s neat cottage, of the dark enchantment of Ireland, of the potentialities of the Map Country, Crane said slowly: “I wonder.”

Polly had regained her composure, her strong ironical sense of balance in the world. She sensed those vague forebodings disturbing Crane. “This isn’t any supernatural hocus-pocus we’re mixed up in, Rolley. That man McArdle points that up for us. There are some mighty queer goings on going on, but they can all be explained away in the naked light of day, never you fear.”

This time Crane didn’t say: “I wonder.” But the chilling thought still lodged in his brain and refused to be ejected.