Camilla went on grumbling as they carried up their bags, unpacked, and made futile efforts to render the battery cage habitable. But when they ventured into the lower regions, in search of advice about an evening meal, she was the one who accepted the offer of a cup of tea condemning them to a tête-à-tête with Noreen in the Guests' Lounge and TV Room. Mine hostess brought tea and fairy cakes (one per guest). Later she brought the baby, eight-month-old Roisin, suffering from the colic; told Camilla the names of her other children; confided the state of her husband's business. Camilla tasted the admiration in Noreen's eyes, and drew more of it to herself insensately, out of habit, like a pianist running over her scales: she couldn't help it. She really meant no harm. Why are you dressed as a boy? she wondered. Wouldn't you be more comfortable in a nice print frock and an apron? Thus the wheel of fashion turns, and it gets harder and harder to find the true wilderness experience. Peasants the world over have Coca-Cola and Internet access. But their lives (sadly enough, agreeably enough) are no less empty. An attractive stranger is still fascinating, same as she ever was.
Noreen jigged the grizzling baby with businesslike indifference. Camilla admired the family photographs (Noreen in a huge white dress that would have looked better on a pick-up truck, clasping her red-faced builder to her side). Sheridan sat there in his black biker jacket and his black jeans, one long leg crossed over the other, saying little, grinning secretly. "Jaysus," remarked Noreen, in astonishment. "It seems like we've been friends for ever! And will you look at the time. Jonas'll be home and no dinner cooked!"
They went out to eat at a roadhouse with pretensions (Noreen exhorting them from the doorstep to be careful of "the drunk driving"). In the morning Camilla declined to rise for the Full Irish Breakfast. Folded between sickly polyester surfaces, the smell of bad laundry in her nostrils, she listened to middle-aged Americans tramping heavily down the stairs. She could tell by the sound of their voices that there was nothing worth getting up for in that dining-room. I won't stay another night, she thought. I won't . A quarter-hour later, a tap on the door: Noreen with a tray of tea and wheaten bread. "Are yez poorly?" asked the young housewife, gravely concerned. "He says I'm to tell you he's gone out to take a look around the possibilities. He says you'll know what he means."
"Sheridan's a photographer," said Camilla. "He loves the light here. How nice of you to bring me the tea. You shouldn't have. I'm so sorry to be a nuisance."
So Noreen stayed, and talked, and stayed, and told terrible stories about rude unreasonable tourists (Camilla having deftly established that she and Sheridan were actually neither English nor American). Downstairs baby Roisin's grizzling rose to a roar. Camilla heard her, but Noreen didn't. When she left at last her round eyes were as bright as stars, she turned at the door for a lingering glance: came back and patted Camilla's toned and slender forearm with shy, blundering tenderness.
"You have a good lie-in, Camilla. Ye'll be right as rain."
It's so simple, so harmless, such a breeze, to elicit the kindness of strangers. The wheaten bread, poisonously tainted with an overdose of soda, was crumbled, uneaten. Camilla sat up in bed, licking her lips and smiling. She negotiated the battery cage to reach the tiny ensuite, and crouched on the edge of the bath that doubled for a showerstall, which was the only way to get a good look in the mirror above the basin.
"I'm not a bad person," she murmured.
Whatever possesses anyone to build a bathroom with a light from the north? An unkind light, clear and shadowless, that picks out every tiny pore. But this is not a luxury hotel. An Irish B&B is not designed to coddle the guest's sensitive amour-propre . Passing trade, never passing this way again, too much attention to detail would not be cost-effective. A fine ruthlessness , thought Camilla, indulgently, as she applied her make-up. She could afford to be indulgent. She was feeling much better, all the draining little experiences of yesterday soothed.
Outdoors, in the clear light that had painted a disquieting picture on Camilla's mirror, Sheridan walked around the shore of the sea lough. He stopped on a rocky outcrop above the water and sat cross-legged, taking camera lenses out of his bag. A boy of twelve or thirteen came sailing along on a bicycle. The tall man had seen the boy coming from a long way off. Without appearing to do so, he was displaying his wares. The bike swerved to a halt, leaving an impressive skid mark on the gravel track. Sheridan grinned at the sound, and went on thoughtfully laying out his big black truncheons of lenses, his electronic light meters, his tripod. Here comes the boy, the last, late beauty of childhood wrecked by a bullet-headed haircut, magnetically attracted to the stranger: a dignified scowl on his face.
"What'r ye doing?"
"I'm going to take some pictures."
The boy comes closer. Sheridan is an adult, and therefore of no account, but he's dressed like a big teenager, and big teenagers are gods.
"There's seals in the lough. But yez won't see them."
Sheridan shrugged, indifferent to the kind of wildlife that most tourists pursue. "There are seals in a zoo. I'll take pictures of the light and the water." He grinned, as the boy came closer still. "Maybe I'll take pictures of you."
Sheridan drove an ancient Bentley, 1940s vintage, British racing green, a fabulous monster. The car suffered some kind of mechanical failure. It had to be nursed to the town beyond the pretentious roadhouse and left there for diagnosis and treatment. Camilla was not exactly ill, but she was tired out by weeks of travel. She took to her bed in number four, and soon had Noreen waiting on her hand and foot. The passing trade of heavy Americans would have been astonished at this unheard-of behaviour, but they never heard anything about it. Short shrift, in and out, was Noreen's usual way. Her con-versation was all reserved for the beautiful stranger. She was in and out of number four all day, sometimes jigging baby Roisin on her arm, very concerned at Camilla's birdlike appetite.
"Sure, yez don't eat enough to keep a sparrow alive," she sighed, stroking back Camilla's lovely blonde hair. A little physical intimacy had become naturaclass="underline" a touch here, an arm around the shoulders there, nothing shocking, just like sisters.
"I'm eating very well," protested Camilla, with a gentle smile. "You look after me wonderfully." The mirror in that apology for a bathroom obstinately showed a face more worn and wan than Camilla liked to see, but it was deceptive. She had been at a low ebb, running on empty: she was feeling stronger every day.
"Is the photography a living, then?" asked Noreen curiously, lifting a tray with a soup bowl that had barely been tasted, glancing admiringly at the food refused, that mark of true sophistication. Roisin was on her arm in a sick-stained pyjama suit.
"Oh, yes. A very good living."
"And you?"
Camilla said she didn't have a job. She didn't need one.
"So ye're like a kept woman?" said Noreen, round-eyed. "Jayus, I couldn't do that. I'd be afraid to do that."
Slightly needled, Camilla laughed. "Oh, no. No, no. What I mean is we work together. He takes the pictures, I write the text, we make beautiful books." Neither of them needs a job. They are financially independent, but it's better not to say so. And it's very true that Sheridan makes a living for himself out of his photography. Very true.
Thumps and yells from downstairs. The children are indoors. There's "a bug going around" which has robbed the oldest boy of his playmates, so he's at home watching television. The girl has stayed in too, for some reason, and therefore also the younger mites. "I hope to God they don't get sick," mutters Noreen bitterly. "It would be like their awkwardness, in August when I have me hands full with the plaguey tourists."
Camilla murmurs something apologetic. But no! Noreen won't hear a word. No! She's loving having Camilla here. Looking after Camilla is like a big treat, like going to the pictures. Like going to the hairdresser's she adds, dreamily; and sitting there reading a magazine The height of Noreen's notions of idle splendour.