Chapter 8

 

We follow Felice through a large double-height entrance hall into an enormous living room. An over-sized L-shaped leather couch with a conveniently placed coffee-table is angled towards the largest television set I’ve ever seen. Everything is expensive and the couch is designed for comfort as much as aesthetics, but the huge picture windows make me uneasy.

There are no curtains and the wide expanse of glass looks out into the impenetrable darkness beyond. There’s something eerie about it, a disturbing sense that we are all on view, like characters on a stage, in a brightly lit set. Anything could be out there looking in, and we would never know.

The tense atmosphere seems to affect us all. Before long, everyone is making excuses to go to bed. With a shiver, I realise I’m stuck in Axel Carr’s house for the night. There’s no way I can find my way back to Drimshanra in the dark. Perhaps I could use the phone to let Mam know I won’t be home till morning, but she promised not to wait up and there’s no point in waking her at 2.00 am.

Felice takes us all upstairs and leads me to a spare room. “You can sleep here. There’s a bathroom through there.” She points at a door in the far wall.

The room has its own balcony and as soon as Felice has gone, I rush to draw the curtains across the French window leading out onto it. Once the darkness is closed out, I take a deep breath and look around me. Fancy isn’t the right word, because there is nothing ornate about the room. But even though it’s simple and understated, you can tell the pale colours and subtle details have been chosen by an interior designer. It’s like something straight out of a five star hotel, not that I’ve ever been in a luxury hotel, or slept in a room like this before. Despite my restless agitation, I fall asleep quickly. It must be the mattress on the bed. I’ve never slept on anything so comfortable.

In the morning I almost don’t want to get up. For an instant, I’d rather just lie there, luxuriating in the smoothness of the sheets, wondering how on earth I got here.

With a shock, I remember I’m in Axel Carr’s house and Mam has no idea. She’ll be so worried when she gets up and finds out I didn’t come home last night. I leap out of the bed and pull back the curtains. Sunlight floods the room, compelling me to open the french doors. I step out onto the balcony, imagining what it would be like to live like this, to own a house like this.

By day, the view is bright and welcoming with nothing sinister about it. A wide lawn below stretches down towards the river in the distance. Over to one side, a patchwork of small fields slopes towards a grassy mound, with a sprinkling of gorse and a hawthorn at its base.

It’s not big enough to call it a hill, but because of its position, it dominates the landscape and my eye is irresistibly drawn to it. It’s only when I see how high the sun is in the sky, I realise how late it is and rush downstairs. The smell of freshly brewed coffee leads the way to a spacious kitchen, the white marble worktops gleaming in the sun. The others are already up. Spike is busy scrambling eggs and offers me some, while Felice points me towards the coffee pot.

“Is your father around?” I ask her, curious to meet my employer, Axel Carr.

“No, he’s away.”

“Will he mind the way we all stayed over?” Mostly, I’m thinking of the mess we’re making of his kitchen, and all the sheets that need to be washed.

“The cleaner comes on Monday, so he won’t know a thing about it, but it wouldn’t make any difference if he did. He couldn’t care less.” Her tone is light but there’s a sullen edge to it. Something tells me father and daughter don’t have the easiest relationship.

Len gulps down his coffee. “I’ve got to get back. The lads are going to the beach today.”

“We’ll come too,” Felice says. “Tully will bring us over, won’t you?”

“Sure.” I can hardly refuse to drop them at the band’s house on the way home, but I hope they’ll be ready to leave soon. I’m anxious to go home before Mam gets upset.

Once again, Spike hops into the front seat. I’d prefer if it was Kit, but don’t like to say anything. As soon as we turn out of the long lane that leads to Felice’s house, we pass the mound that caught my eye earlier. There’s a small sign pointing to it but I’m concentrating on the road and can’t read it.

“What is that in there?” I ask.

“You mean the passage grave?” Felice says, while Spike murmurs something I don’t catch.

“Passage grave?”

“Ancient burial site,” Spike explains. “This area is well known for them.”

“Oh, you mean like New Grange?” A memory comes to me of a school trip way back in primary school. We’d all been hoping they’d take us to the cinema but instead they’d brought us off to the middle of nowhere to learn about our Celtic culture and heritage. A massive stone carved with crude spirals lay on its side in front of the entrance to the burial site. It was very old, we were told, as old as the pyramids in Egypt.

In single file, we went into a narrow passage that led into a stone lined chamber at the centre of the mound. The guide explained at great length how at dawn, on the winter solstice, a shaft of light gradually enters the chamber and lights the whole thing up. We were all meant to gasp in astonishment at this early feat of engineering but none of us did. All I could think about was whether somebody had randomly spent the night in this cold creepy tomb, on the eve of the shortest day of the year, and just happened to be there when the sun came up. It seemed so unlikely, yet somebody must have done it, because otherwise how could they have figured it out?

“It’s like New Grange,” Spike says, “but it hasn’t been all tarted up for tourists and it’s not nearly as famous. So yeah, it doesn’t get many visitors.”

“Can you go inside?” I ask.

“Well, it has a chamber, if that’s what you mean, but the Office of Public Works locked it up. Apparently it’s not safe.”

“Sounds like there’s not much to see.” It doesn’t surprise me that the place isn’t a busy tourist attraction but my companions fall silent. An uneasy, brooding silence, as though there’s something they aren’t saying. At that moment the day turns dark as a tuft of cloud sails across the sun.

“Or maybe they don’t want to disturb Aonghus,” Kit murmurs from the backseat.

“Who’s Aonghus?” I ask.

“There are old stories about him,” Spike says. “Aonghus was a Celtic god who got bored in the realm of the gods. He disguised himself as a wandering musician and set out on a hopeless quest to find his one true love in the world of men. The other gods warned him not to interfere in human affairs but Aonghus didn't listen. On his journey, he often helped couples in distress. But when he hid doomed lovers, Diarmid and Grainne, causing great war in Ireland, the gods grew angry. They cast a spell, imprisoning Aonghus in a tomb where he must sleep for eternity.”

“You mean, Aonghus is in the mound we just passed?”

“It’s only a local folktale.” Felice’s tone is dismissive, but in my rear view mirror I catch Kit flinching. She takes the story more seriously than her friend.

The sun comes out from behind the cloud and the sky is blue and bright again. The old Celtic gods are long-forgotten. There’s no way one of them is sleeping in the passage grave beside Felice’s house.

Spike fiddles with the car radio and, when he lands on a station playing the Black Death hit, ‘Plagued By You’, we all cheer and sing along.