On both sides, Ellie thought. She liked whimsy and magical things as much as the next person, but she kept it in perspective. One could read about it, or use it in one’s art without believing it was real. Donal was bad enough with his teasing tales of the little people and all, but when it came to Jilly, well, sometimes it seemed that Jilly lived in an entirely different world than the one that Ellie and the rest of the world did—a world where the headlines from supermarket tabloids were tangible possibilities rather than outright fiction. It came out in her paintings, which depicted fairyland creatures wandering through urban cityscapes, as well as in her conversation. The latter required only the smallest opening and Jilly would be away with wild theories, supposed true-life anecdotes and the like.
There were times when Ellie found this sort of thing maddening, but it was also part of Jilly’s charm, this fey streak she had and the ability to be so persuasive that, if it was late enough at night and you’d had enough glasses of wine, you could almost go along with her beliefs. You could almost accept that the world held not only what we all know it to hold, but also the fantastical tangents that people like Donal and Jilly almost seemed to draw into it, by their own absolute conviction, if nothing else.
“Okay,” Ellie said. “Since you like mysteries, what do you make of this?”
She went over to where her parka was hanging and fetched the business card she’d found on the dash of the van last night. Donal took it from her, his eyes filled with curiosity until he’d read the few words on it. Then he placed it on the table and gave Ellie a puzzled look.
“It’s a business card,” he said.
“Duh, I know that. But what does it mean?”
Donal glanced down at the card, then back at her, obviously confused. “Could you explain the question again?”
“Is that a person’s name, or the name of a business?” Ellie said. “And why isn’t there a phone number?”
He shrugged. “Maybe it’s like one of those Victorian calling cards that the Brits took around when they went visiting. Where did you get it?”
“I found it on the dash of the van last night—right after I met that strange woman.”
“And you think she left it?”
Ellie nodded. “But why?”
“Maybe she wants you to call her.”
“No phone number.”
“Fair enough.” Donal looked at the card again. “ ‘Handfast Road,’ ” he read. “That’dbe up in the Beaches, I’m thinking, so it’ll be all bloody straight-laced and la-di-da except for…” His face brightened. “Kellygnow. The artists’ colony. Aren’t they on Handfast Road?”
“Let me check.”
Ellie found her telephone directory where it was half-hidden under a stack of art and design magazines and looked up Kellygnow.
“Here it is,” she said. “The Kellygnow Artists’ Community. 17 Handfast Road. There’s even a number.”
“There you go. Mystery solved. All you have to do is call up there and ask for Musgrave Wood.”
“I suppose. Have you ever been up there?”
“A long time ago, and then it was just to a couple of parties that Jilly was invited to. But you know. It’s not really our crowd.”
Ellie nodded. Kellygnow had a close association with the university, whereas she and Donal and their friends were more connected to the Newford School of Art, even though many of them had originally attended Butler U. Ellie had never been up to Kellygnow herself. And except for In the City’s mentioning who was taking up or leaving residence, she never really thought much about it at all. It was just one more place in a very big city.
“So?” Donal said. “Are you going to call?”
Ellie shook her head. “What would I say?”
“Maybe there’s a commission in it for you.”
“I doubt that. If the name of the woman I met last night is Musgrave Wood, and she does want to offer me a commission, don’t you think she would have said something when we were talking?”
But Donal wasn’t going to be easily dissuaded. “Well, maybe they’ve got an opening and want to know if you’d like to take up residence.”
“As if.”
Many of the most important and influential artists to come out of the Newford fine arts scene had spent some time in residence at Kellygnow—everyone from the late Vincent Rushkin, considered by many to be one of the great twentieth-century masters, to the watercolorist Jane Connelly whose art hung in galleries throughout the world. Ellie believed in her own work, but the caliber of artists in residence at Kellygnow at any given time was in a different class entirely.
“Then what are you going to do?” Donal asked.
“Nothing.”
While she could see Donal’s frustration, Ellie had no interest in following up on anything so tenuous.
“But aren’t you at least curious?” Donal asked. “I mean, Jaysus. It’s like a mysterious summons of some sort.”
Still Ellie wouldn’t be persuaded. “Of course I’m curious, but I don’t like mysteries.”
Donal nodded. He got up and refilled their coffee mugs.
“It’s your choice, of course,” he said as he returned to the table and spooned sugar into his coffee. He looked up, a sparkle in his eye. “But all the same. It seems like such a waste of a good mystery.”
“If someone up there really wants to contact me,” Ellie told him, “my number’s in the book.”
4
A wave of music, conversational noise, and hot, smoky air greeted Hunter when he pushed open the oak and glass front door of The Harp and stepped inside from the snowy street that evening. He looked around for a moment, bunking in the haze, then saw Miki waving to him. She sat with her brother Donal at a small table just at the edge of where a dozen or so musicians were playing, the session led by a red-haired woman playing the uilleann pipes who seemed familiar, but Hunter couldn’t remember her name. The other instrumentation was mostly fiddles, flutes, and whistles, but there were also a pair of mandolins, a guitar, bodhrans, and the inevitable tenor banjo playing too loud above it all.
The Harp was in the Rosses, once the predominantly Irish part of town, north of the Market in Crowsea. The oldest Irish pub in Newford, it had been a Catholic stronghold, and meeting place for homesick emigrants and IRA sympathizers, but its partisan loyalties were no longer in evidence. As the make-up of the neighborhood took on a more international flavor and the clientele had come to encompass all nationalities, religious and political differences among the pub’s Irish patrons had mostly been set aside in favor of the craíc—an Irish tenn that encompassed the shared enjoyment of good company, good drink, and good music. Even the musicians were no longer exclusively of Irish descent. As Hunter made his way to the table where Miki and Donal were sitting, he noted a black man playing the tin whistle, a Jewish woman on the guitar, a young Asian man on fiddle—all three playing with the sensibility of having just stepped off the plane from Ireland.
The popularity of Celtic music didn’t surprise Hunter. There was something universal in its infectious dance tunes and mournful slow airs. He could hear echoes of it in everything from old timey and bluegrass to classical and the indigenous music of many other cultures. There was a purity in its cadences, a timelessness with which contemporary music couldn’t compete. He sometimes thought that the difference between the two was like the difference between North America and Europe: The landscape of each was as old as the other, but it felt older in Europe where churches, castles, even a cottage, could easily be six or seven hundred years old. As far as Western culture was concerned, North America hadn’t even existed until the last few hundred years and there were few pieces of architecture that could claim to be much more than a hundred years of age.