I searched every hospital I could find. I met nuns and nurses and patients and porters. At last I took a nun into my confidence; she had an accent thick as a bog and the pointed face of a medieval aristocrat. She told me that they had strict rules about notifying next of kin. My father would have had to tell the hospital whom they should contact.

But if he was unconscious?

“Then we’d find out who he was, and we’d tell the guards and they’d tell the family.”

By the time I had that conversation, at the end of my first day, I’d been to seven hospitals in all, some big, some small, all redeemingly calm. In the Glentworth Hotel, I ate a steak. That night I slept longer than an infant.

I’d ascertained from Cwawfod that the show would play a series of different towns, some one-night stands, some two and some three nights, circling back finally to Cashel after the election. On the map, when you trace those weeks, their travels form two loose circles; I see them now as twin breast-shaped loops.

Here’s another little calendar of events:

Sunday night, 7 February (actually the small hours of Monday morning): I go home; Mother berates me even though she sees that I’m shivering and shaking—and very hungry. I tell her about the disappearance and she folds like a cloth.

Monday, 8 February: I leave the house, mad with intent, I buy a map of Ireland, I stride those hospital corridors, and I’m like a ravening hound, I’m hell-bent on finding him.

Tuesday, 9 February: Early, I arrive in Dromcolloher, find the hall, meet Cwawfod again, give him some food from home, and tack myself onto his coattails. Each night, Cwawfod tells me, they have a full house. On some days they’ve been giving two performances; in Buttevant, they’d given a third—they played it early in the day, because people were flocking to hear Blarney and his political speeches.

They’d have played Dromcolloher three times, Cwawfod said, and packed the house every time, but the priest who controlled the hall hated all theatricals. When he heard of Blarney’s satire on Mr. de Valera’s speech, the priest came down to the hall next morning as they loaded and ranted at them.

In Dromcolloher too, I get myself a room in a bed and breakfast. Cwawfod’s coy about the members of the cast and where they’re staying. I ask about “the man who vanished” and he shakes his head.

That night I can’t bear to go to the show, but I hang around afterward and I see Venetia Kelly and her mother climb into a magnificent car—that’s the only word for it, magnificent—and drive away without a glance toward me. I think about following them but it’s night and they’ll see my lights, and instead I go to the door, but once again they close the door on me, and I hear it being bolted from the inside.

I wait, hiding in a place where I can see what happens next. But nothing happens next; the company is obviously going to sleep in the hall, because at around one o’clock in the morning the last dim light of a candle, lamp, or flashlight goes out and I’m alone in the dark and cold—again. No sign of my father.

Which is when the shadowing of the show began.

Never too far away from me, and often within sight, seen in the distance at the top or bottom of some long hill out in the countryside—that’s how I saw the caravanserai, such as it was, whenever it set forth into the morning air. From town to village we went, the vans led by two cars, packed with people, and I in the distance, behind them.

Slowly, I began to enforce a routine upon myself. I’d follow them to the hall, make sure I could find it again, and then establish a place to stay for the night. Then I’d hang around, peering here and there. Ask questions in the town as to where the people from the traveling show were staying. Inspect each house, each bed-and-breakfast place, and try to guess where my father might be making his bed for the night—that is, if he had come back and I hadn’t been told. You see? I was already suspicious that something was rotten in this particular little state.

In the evening, I’d arrive at least an hour before they were due to begin their show. I’d buy my ticket and sit near the back, looking around me all the time in case my father came into the hall. Then I’d move out before the show ended, go around to the back of the hall, and wait until the performers came out.

This proved the most difficult part. I’m not good at lurking shadily, nor am I easy to hide. Furthermore, I looked very like my father. So there I’d stand, at the back door to some whitewashed, ratty old building, and hear the distant laughter of the audience, still delighted, always chattering, as they walked away. I’d feel lower and lower and then the light would begin to go dim inside the hall, as the company doused the lamps and candles, and turned off the rare electricity.

Night after night I played that scene. And night after night it refused to develop as I wished. In fact, it always played out more or less in exactly the same way.

First of all, the various company people appeared at the back door of the hall. They stood there and debated whether to load the truck that night or wait until the morning. If they were going to another town for accommodation, Cwawfod made them load there and then; if not they often came back in the morning. In either case they stood around, with me a little distance away in half-shadow but within earshot, and waited until “the ladies,” as they called them, appeared.

Much later, I discovered that they’d been told to behave as though I were some strange sort of hanger-on, a pest, a kind of shy Stage-Door Johnnie. Some of them, especially Cwawfod, felt very bad about that when they eventually came to know me.

And finally, the two ladies. Tall and mysterious, they climbed into the wonderful, ghostly car. The ghostly car that never seemed to park anywhere near the hall, the ghostly, ethereal limousine that I couldn’t find in any of those towns.