by Ann Mann
How could either of them offer any comfort when comfort was just a barren space in a distant wilderness?
For a little over two hours Silas and Clodagh sat side by side on a strange bed, each on their respective phones, talking, crying, pulling themselves together and then repeating the procedure. Finally, at nearly midnight and after a couple of stiff whiskies, they bid one another goodnight.
Silas caught Clodagh’s wrist as she was leaving his room. “How’s your leg? Justin said it was better.”
He had never seen her so pale. At that moment she took on the appearance of a waif-like ghost, just a visitor in his concept of reality.
“Yes,” was all she said and suddenly she was gone. Down the corridor and into another strange room. Moving perfectly, like a dancer.
*
The first thing that struck him was that this morning’s events seemed almost ritualistic. Maybe to his fatigued mind it was because the backdrop consisted of the Arcanum set. The Tower, the Moon, the throne between the pillars, even the now sadly comical cut out of the Hanged Man which had toppled over and been placed lopsidedly against one of the flats.
He hadn’t shaved and now regretted it. Particularly as the high priest of stubble, coach company manager Conor Ferguson, was looking as shiny as the proverbial infant’s lower cheeks.
Superintendent Joe Tierney had pulled out all the stops and the theatre was filled with journalists from the regional and national papers as well as television and radio represented by RTE, the BBC and Sky. Lap tops and tablets were perched on knees, and mobiles were ever ready for text and twitter action.
As the growing number of voices in the theatre buzzed in his ears, Silas realised it was the only time in his life when he had faced an audience who weren’t there to see him dance, and it was an unnerving experience.
The group at the table comprised of Tierney in the centre flanked by Conor Ferguson and Silas on his right and Clodagh plus a Superintendent from the Ennis Gardai, Gerry Doyle, to his left. A large map of the area stood on an easel a little way from the table.
Joe Tierney half read the introductory speech he had prepared, the rest he delivered off the cuff. He started by thanking Deirdre McCall for her loan of the theatre and it was, he surmised, the most plausible place to hold the appeal as Arcanum had been scheduled to appear there this week. He ran through the coach’s description and departure, mentioning the CCTV pictures taken at the tolling station as the last known sighting of the vehicle.
When he opened up the room for questions, they came in a rapid crescendo and he had to exercise his position to request that each individual wait their turn.
“What’s known about the driver?”
Conor Ferguson shaded his eyes with his hand in order to see where the question had come from and replied that Dennis Ahearne had worked for his company for ten years and had an unblemished record. Not so much as a scratch incurred on any of the vehicles he had driven over that period and he was a family man with two adult children.
“Where are you focusing the search?”
Joe Tierney acknowledged his colleague from Ennis who stood up and moved towards the map using a pointer to show the area between the two towns that were off the motorway.
“We’re concentrating our search on the whole area off the M18 en route to Ennis. We know that an accident partly closed the motorway just before the Ennis by-pass at approximately ten past one yesterday morning. The coach, along with other diverted traffic could have gone a number of ways but we believe it would have made for the Limerick Road. It wasn’t a tourist, sight-seeing coach and it was dark so there was no need to take the scenic routes, just the quickest one.”
“How many dancers on the coach and are they all Irish?”
Tierney nodded to Silas who leaned forward into the microphone. “There’s twenty-four dancers and one stage manager. There are three non-Irish dancers among them. One Spanish, one German and one from the U.S. We haven’t been able to make contact with any of them on their cells. There were also costumes and music backing tracks on board. Props and scenery were transported separately.”
“Has kidnapping been considered?”
Tierney shook his head. “Not at this stage. It seems highly unlikely that anyone would go to the trouble of holding a large coach-full of people to ransom and no-one has been in touch demanding money. However, we’re not ruling anything out.”
“Are you using the internet as a means of spreading the search?”
“We’re mounting a campaign on Twitter and Facebook. Silas and Clodagh will be doing the same from their social media sites. I believe there will be photos of the missing posted on the Arcanum website. Now, if there are no further questions, I will ask Silas Murphy to just say a few closing words.”
He had decided that he couldn’t write anything down. He also couldn’t be bothered to maintain an air of dignity or deliver well-mannered platitudes. The natural stamina that had carried him this far was overtaken by a burst of emotional adrenalin and he found himself standing up in order to project this so aptly named appeal with tears burning in eyes already throbbing from lack of sleep.
If he closed them, strained his senses to evoke it, he could conjure up the vision of his dancers and then he would open his mouth and let the words flow in a torrent towards ears straining to what he had to say. His mouth and lips were stress-dry and he sipped water from a glass, aware that a silence as heavy as a midnight snowfall had descended on the theatre.
“I’ve watched so many television appeals for missing people. I’ve looked through the screen into the eyes of mothers, fathers, sons and daughters, husbands and wives. Seen the pain etched on their faces, heard their crying, sensed their bewilderment and helplessness. But I was always an observer, an outsider. I never thought the day would come when I would be making my own desperate appeal for people so close to me they might as well be family.
None of us can understand what has happened. It’s not as if it’s a small vehicle, it’s a bloody great coach with twenty-five people on board plus the driver. Someone – no, many people, must have passed it, noticed it simply because it’s not that common a sight on the road.
If any of you out there were on or around the motorway last night or during the last twenty-four hours, I’m appealing - begging you, if you think you might have seen something that can help us, then please, please come forward with information. Anything at all. Please….”
He heard Clodagh choke back a sob and pressed on, sensing the cameras moving in closer for maximum effect and the frantic activity from the newspaper reporters as they conveyed what he was saying to their computers.
“….Finally, I’d just like to thank Superintendent Tierney and Superintendent Doyle from the Dublin and Clare Gardai for acting so promptly as well as the MPB, and I believe that numbers will be going out at the bottom of the screen now for you to ring with information. Thank you and God bless you.”
He sat down heavily and emptied his water glass as Clodagh ran to embrace him. The assembled media shuffled a noisy exit while the two detectives remained on the platform deep in conversation.
Conor Ferguson touched his shoulder. “Well done, laddie. Let’s hope we get somethin’ from it, eh?”
Silas nodded, feeling spent, but nursing a fresh optimism fuelled by the amount of coverage he was sure this morning would have produced.
“What do we do now?” asked Clodagh, pushing a fistful of damp tissues into her tapestry bag.
“We wait.” Silas told her. “Then I suppose we do what we always do. Dance.”
*
Co. Clare.
1735
The peat fire was dying, throwing a burnt orange glow across the small room as the two bodies on the feathered mattress twined and intertwined once again in the art of copulation.
He hadn’t taught her anything she didn�
�t know about dancing but he had taught her everything she didn’t know about sex.
Kathleen Dooley had no idea that anyone could make love so fiercely and savagely. When he came inside her for the third, or was it the fourth time, she uttered a piercing, gull-like cry which rose up through the thatched roof where it was carried on the wind towards the fields leading down to the lake.
How could she not compare this young man to her husband in matters of the bedroom? Thomas was neither lithe nor supple. Lumbering upon her he seemed as heavy as one of the horses he shoed and came quicker than a spark from his hammer before falling into a snoring stupor.
It had been considered a good marriage arranged by the matchmaker and approved by both families, provoking some envy from other girls of marrying age in the area. The blacksmith was a well-respected figure and Kathleen had boasted in those early days that many of the rich gentlemen from the surrounding towns and villages would make the journey to his forge, eager to patronize his expertise. The horses and carts trundling home with turf from the bog or loaded with hay from the meadows, going to the creamery with milk in the early morning all contributed to making the smithy a local necessity, aside from Thomas’s skills as a toolmaker with flint, iron and other metals.
But for Kathleen the icing had worn thin and she was bored. He had not made her pregnant and she had no desire anymore to share his bed or bear him children. She had also become aware that he had grown more indifferent towards her of late which suited her fine, and that his affections seemed more inclined towards his ugly black dog than for his lusty wife.
But this one was a different kettle of fish. A charmer for sure. She had never seen anyone with eyes that shade of blue and his wide smile showing unusually good teeth were what she had noticed first about him when he sauntered up to the barn on that warm September day.
And he hadn’t just taught her about the art of making love. He had persuaded her to become his drinking companion. Young Kathleen Dooley who at twenty-one had only ever supped barley water or warm milk straight from Gilligan’s cow, was now enjoying the heady pleasures of elderflower wine and tangy mead and it served to heighten her experience of sex even more.
She reached beside the bed for the stone bottle and raised it to her lips then passed it to him, giggling as the potent liquid drizzled on to her chin and which salaciously he licked away.
Even through the rosy glow of sex and wine, she knew they were late. That the eighty or so locals who had studied under the old man were keen and ready to continue their tuition and would certainly blame her as well as himself for keeping them waiting. The looks they would throw her way would be contemptuous, some filled with loathing, especially from the crone who used to serve him. The old woman always watching, playing with her infernal pack of cards. A nosy and creepy biddy if ever she’d seen one.
Kathleen pulled on her red blouse that had seen better days and roughly wiped away his sperm with her hemp skirt before tying it round her waist. She ran her fingernails like a comb through her long, dark hair and supped again from the bottle. He drew her towards him but she fought him like a she-cat defending her young, surprising and exciting him with her animal energy.
“Is leor sin!” (“Enough!”)
The hazy days of August had passed and colder air was whistling in from the north bringing driving rain which battered the windowless mud houses in the poorer parts of the village and drove the cattle and pigs inside to share some meagre warmth with their owners.
She ran to the door flinging a shawl over her head and laughed drunkenly at the relentless weather, hearing him call as she bolted across the grass, running in her lace-up ghillies like a wild deer across the field and towards the footpath that led to the farmer’s barn.
The sound of the fiddle echoed towards her in a haunting lilt and her steps became even lighter, barely brushing the ground as she embraced the storm that enveloped her. Now it had become a dizzying, melodic race to join those souls who waited patiently to be guided in their desire for the dance, a desire for physical and spiritual release from decades of penal laws, poverty and the daily restraints of their lives.
But sated from the excesses of that day, the one who was chosen to be their saviour, unmindful of his calling or his destiny slept the dreamless sleep of the infant or the Fool.
*
The following morning, after the live television appeal, many of the nationals as well as the Irish papers, made it their lead story.
Weary of middle-eastern conflicts, fleeing refugees and terrorist atrocities, the press enthusiastically created headlines which read ‘This strange story’, ‘Where did they go?’ ‘Mysterious disappearance’ and it soon became the topic of discussion and debate on chat shows and news programmes across the world as well as on the internet.
Silas and Clodagh, baffled and numbed by the fact that their friends had still not been found, sat bleakly in an RTE studio giving countless interviews to news stations, all-channel breakfast shows as well as contributing to documentaries about the story that were already swinging into production.
By the time they arrived back at the hotel in the early evening, flash bulbs were still popping in their eyes, questions still spinning around in their brains and they knew without doubt that they would have to repeat it all the following day and perhaps beyond.
Nothing tangible had emerged thus far. The appeal had brought a response from a few drivers who had seen the coach in Dublin before it left on the N7. Others had seen it at the toll stations and others at the beginning of the M18. Lorries and vans, vehicles which were mostly on the road at that late hour, did not report seeing it leave at any of the exits off the motorway.
The Gardai had put notices along the areas which they thought would be the most likely to jog memories and there was a police presence just off some of the main exit routes stopping motorists and showing them photographs of the coach.
Deirdre McCall’s theatre was still dark although she had booked in a Gospel choir and a local music group for the following week. Most of the punters had heard about the disappearance of the bus and turned up to get their refunds. A gloomy air of tragedy hung inside the building, touching those who entered with something that they could not define nor wanted to stay around longer to experience.
Justin decided he might as well return to Dublin, particularly as he could do nothing more for Clodagh. He gave her a warm hug and told her to let him know if she needed him.
“Thanks, Justin.” Her voice was a little more than a whisper. “I can’t explain about my torn muscle. I wish I could.”
They were standing in the hotel lobby as people checked in and out, carrying on with the normality that formed the fabric of their daily lives. Many threw curious glances her way as she had now become as familiar and instantly recognisable as the latest reality show celebrity.
She watched Justin leave and then made her way towards the lift, hoping that she could catch an hour’s rest before a quiet dinner with Silas and the chance for them to discuss the situation without any other intervention.
“Clodagh?”
She turned quickly to see who had called her name. “Oh, hello Erin.”
Erin Shaw was in her early forties. Attractive in a well made-up and structured kind of way, with just the right amount of blonde highlights streaked through her immovable shoulder-length bob, and wearing cherry lip gloss which picked up the primary colour of her Chanel style tweed suit.
“I’m sorry to hear about Arcanum.” Her concern held a forced edge. “What a mystery.”
“Yes.” Clodagh said wearily. “A mystery.”
“Clodagh, do you have a minute? I really need to talk to you. Perhaps we could go to the bar?”
“I’m not sure, Erin. I’ve had a long day and I’m meeting with Silas for dinner.”
She wondered why Erin Shaw would need to talk to her. Erin ran an Ir
ish dance company called Lighthouse which had been active on the circuit for about five years and had achieved moderate success in touring up and down the country. She had studied with an old sparring partner of her aunt Peggy’s at a school in Drogheda and was an ambitious, forceful and energetic personality.
“Just one quick drink. I won’t keep you long.”
Curiosity prompted her to accept and she followed Erin to a quiet corner of the hotel bar where the choreographer settled in a high backed chair and ordered a large glass of white wine for herself and a Coke with ice and lemon for Clodagh.
“Clodagh, I won’t beat about the bush. I want to offer you the lead female spot in Lighthouse. You would be joining us next month. We’ve been contracted to a major tour of Australia and New Zealand starting in March next year and the new choreography is awesome. What do you say?”
Clodagh stared at her in astonishment. “But Erin, I have a job as lead dancer with Arcanum.”
Erin Shaw took a sip of her Chardonnay then dropped her voice, aware that others in the bar seemed to be taking an interest in their conversation.
“Clodagh, I know that. Of course I do. But they aren’t here. What will you do if they aren’t found? I can offer you more than Silas pays you and it will take him at least a year to put another troupe together. Please consider it.”
“What do you mean, if they aren’t found?” Clodagh couldn’t contain her disbelief. “Of course they’ll be found. How can you even suggest such a thing?”
Erin leaned towards her addressing her urgently. “At least think about it, Clodagh. Like you, I want to believe they’ll be found but you must have given some thought to the possibility that there could have been a tragic accident. You’ll need to work. To earn money. It’s a good deal, Clodagh.”
She drained her glass and stood up, taking a business card out of her pink clutch bag. Placing it on the table in front of Clodagh, she touched her arm gently.
