"Over The Wall" will be available from www.wings-press.com from October 2007

Meeting at The Crossroads - (Back in the days before mobile phones...)

They had a date, a kind of one anyway.
Just the two of them, alone in the Connemara vastness, in the distance the rugged amethyst slopes of the Twelve Bens, and all around wild, untidy moorland, gushing brooks, deep black loughs and byway banks of towering rhododendron.
One of those rare summer days had been forecasted, hot and sunny, the heat subdued by a moderate southerly breeze carrying the intoxicating aroma of salty seas, purple-flowering heather, fuchsia, montbretia and the ever-present tang of matured peat. One of those days when you wanted to throw yourself face-down in a bed of spongy woodland moss and breath in the lushness of it all, to shut out the clamouring clatter of so-called civilisation and let nature's soothing blanket of tranquillity settle upon you, to press your ear to the warm ground and listen to mother earth's steady heartbeat pulsating in time to your own.
It would be magical, the kind of day Finnula had been romanticising about for the last ten years, and as the weekend drew near, she began to count the seconds of every incessant minute separating her from that carefully nurtured dream.

And then, quite suddenly, Saturday was upon her and the morning traffic in her favour. For once, the customary Galway City congestion lessened graciously, allowing Finnula to reach Oughterard by midday. Travelling inland, away from the cooling sea air, she was forced to wind down the window as she passed through Moycullen. To the north, the glittering blue expanse of Lough Corrib winked across a checkerboard of green fields.
The holiday season was in full swing and a constant stream of vehicles with strange foreign number plates and overflowing roof racks trundled laboriously along ahead. Away from the main thoroughfare the lonely moors would be as peaceful as ever, she reflected, the narrow bog roads winding across desolate, lake-studded wetlands the perfect backdrop for this idyllic day. Already, the pungent aroma of newly cut turf was causing her heart to thump and her grasp on the steering wheel tightened. When finally, just outside Oughterard, a lurching camping van with a row of red-cheeked faces at the rear window kindly pulled into a lay-by, the whole breathtaking panorama of Connemara unfolded before her. Up ahead in the distance, outlined against flawless azure blue, the craggy slopes of the Twelve Bens and the Maumturk Mountains swept up to meet the sky.
On either side, huge mounds of stacked peat flanked the road, the black, hairy clods heaped into dangerously listing barricades which defied all laws of gravity as they leant inquisitively towards the passing holidaymakers. Far less curious were the lone sheep with mud-caked rears and coloured markings, as they sauntered light-footed and fancy-free into the path of oncoming traffic. Not seldom, abrupt, evasive action on the part of surprised motorists released badly-secured suitcases from their roof racks, and sent them hurtling over the grassy verge, or down into the murky brown depths of some wayside lough. Today, the woolly ruminants chose to graze on the cooler nearby slopes, the heat of the sticky asphalt making suicidal strolls along the white dotted line an uncomfortable undertaking.

It was shortly before one o'clock when Finnula pulled up outside the pub at Maam Cross. A tourist coach had disgorged dozens of elderly tourists who were now wandering aimlessly back and forth across the wilderness intersection, their hi-tech cameras aimed at anything vaguely exuding bucolic Irish auras. She searched the few cars parked randomly nearby, but couldn't spot Julian's station wagon among them. A pity. She hated being the first one to arrive for a date, but inevitably managed to do so every time.
After the muggy heat inside the car, however, the countryside freshness was a relief. Throwing a light cotton cardigan over her bare shoulders, Finnula strolled along the green daisy-dotted roadside away from the crossroads, hoping to meet him as he approached from the north. Further on, the air rippled hazily above the hard surface and soon the unaccustomed warmth became oppressive. Tying the top around her waist, she sat down on a mossy hillock and let the light wind cool her arms. High above, a small bird warbled shrilly, hovered for a moment and then flew on, plunging and soaring gracefully in long drawn out loops. Finnula checked her watch, then once again searched the narrow road up ahead. It was twenty past one already. She sighed, irritated, but curbed her impatience, reminding herself that punctuality was a question of good luck when travelling longer distances through the Irish province.
Any moment now his car would appear over the crest of the hill.
Not far off, but in the opposite direction, traffic hummed along the east-west Galway to Clifden route. Here, it was unusually peaceful for a summer Saturday afternoon. Only occasionally a local motored by, waving a friendly greeting in passing.
Ten minutes later, stoically ignoring the bothering dart of anxious exasperation, Finnula stood up, brushed off the seat of her jeans and wandered slowly back towards Maam Cross, all the while firmly believing to hear the sound of a car bouncing down the bumpy road behind her. Yet this belief remained a sorry figment of her imagination, and when she finally arrived back at the car park, only an ancient, rust-ridden tractor and two cyclists had passed. At quarter to two, Finnula went into the pub and ordered a glass of Cidona, at the same time enquiring if anyone had called and left a message. Sorry, deary, no call, no message. Damn! Agitated, she took her drink outside and leant against the low window-ledge. From there she watched the curve of the road leading northwards in the hope that the very act of concentration might make Julian and his station wagon materialise out of nowhere. Taking tiny drawn-out sips, she made the lukewarm apple drink last half an hour, and then, having dribbled the last drop out of the glass, decided to ring home. Perhaps he'd chosen to contact her mother at Birch Hill – although heaven only knows why. He must realise she'd be waiting here at a junction in the middle of nowhere, twiddling her thumbs.
Her mother, Mary, answered after two rings.
'Mam, it's me. Julian didn't call by any chance, did he?'
'No . . . Has he not turned up?'
'Not yet . . . I wonder what's happened.'
Mary paused for a moment, the fleeting memory of teenage heartbreak hurrying through her head. 'Have you tried to call him?'
'I only have a work number, there'll be nobody there at the weekend.'
Finnula heard her mother sigh. 'I'm sure there's a good explanation.'
'I hope so . . . he wouldn't just stand me up, would he?' She hadn't wanted the notion to cross her mind, but it had nestled there nicely nevertheless.
'Ach, of course not. He probably has a flat tyre . . . hang around for another twenty minutes or so.'
'Twenty minutes? Ten, maybe . . .'
Finnula, hating herself for her gullibility waited, in fact, another hour. She paced the road, counted sheep and ate a bag Taytos before the truth ultimately set in. Even as she pulled away from the lonely Connemara intersection well after half past three in the afternoon, she kept her eyes fixed on the rear view mirror in the unlikely case a miracle should occur. When the small group of buildings vanished around a bend in the road, and the last-minute wonder failed to transpire, she finally conceded that her rendezvous had flopped miserably, and the carefully cherished dream was nothing more than a proverbial sandcastle in the sky.
For the first few miles of the return journey, she successfully kept the tears at bay, forcing herself to focus on a whole series of plausible explanations, yet manoeuvring the car through rows of double-parked vehicles in Oughterard, she eventually let them fall.

At the same time, a crow flying in a north-westerly direction over swampy marshes and uncombed hillsides, would have crossed high above the lonely road between Maam Cross and Kilmeelicken in Joyce's Country, and spied a handsome dark-blond man as he tried to disentangle the rapidly stiffening carcass of a suicidal sheep from the front radiator of his station wagon. It was a truly pitiful sight, the widening pool of water mingling with the victim's blood to create a greasy red puddle in the middle of the remote Connemara roadway. The curved horns curling around the sheep's black face had become so ensnared in the front grille that a long time passed before the beast could finally be dragged onto the soft shoulder. As it turned out, the man might have saved himself the bother, then the car was, for the time being anyway, far beyond repair. Giving the dangling bumper a furious kick with the tip of his boot, Julian McDermott bellowed an insalubrious expletive into the tranquil Irish countryside and slowly began the long march back to the next telephone box five miles away.