“No,” she said.
“Then you won’t be living high. You wouldn’t want to anyway, not if you want to go among the people and collect new songs. You’ll stay in inexpensive hotels and eat at cheap restaurants. But it should be fun for you. You’ve never been out of the country before?”
“Never.”
“I think you’ll enjoy it.”
“I know I will.”
And she would, she thought fiercely. True, London had been a disappointment, but London was only a small portion of the trip. She had had two bookings in London, and they had not added up to what she had hoped for. The first concert turned out to be more rock ’n’ roll than true folk music, and they had let her sing only three songs, toward the end of the show. The audience, while polite, was generally unresponsive.
The second concert, because of some fluke, had been canceled entirely. The folk singers she had hoped to see in London — a trio she had met in New York and the only persons in England she knew well enough to speak with — had picked that particular week to fly to New York. So she’d been stranded, friendless and alone, in a city that had been less than kind to her. The sightseeing and the theater had not made up for all of this. Now the purse snatching was the crowning blow, the finishing touch.
No matter, she told herself. London, after all, was the least important part of her trip. Tomorrow she would be off for Dublin, and then she would have days on end to spend touring Ireland with tape recorder and guitar. With any luck at all she would return with enough material on tape for half a dozen albums. True folk songs, sprung from the hearts of the Irish people and passed on from generation to generation as part of a vibrant oral tradition and heritage.
She got undressed, laid out clothes for the morning, and got into bed. She pulled the covers over her and settled her head on the soft feather pillow.
For a moment the memory of pursuit in the dark London streets came back to her in a flash. The man, moving into the glow of the streetlamp, his features sharp and terrifying. Running, and slipping, and being caught. The firm grip on the back of her neck, the dull pain, slipping, falling, the world turning black...
But it was over now. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, certain that it would be hours before she could sleep; and then, surprisingly, sleep came in a rush.
Her travel alarm woke her at eight. It rang so softly that she almost slept through it, but she awoke in time, rubbed the sleep from her eyes, slipped into her trench coat (“Use your raincoat in place of a bathrobe,” the guide books had suggested, “and save room in your suitcase”), and walked down the hall to the communal bathroom. She bathed quickly, thinking again how odd it was to be charged for every bath you took. The price was just a shilling, only fourteen cents, but it did seem odd to pay extra to be clean.
In her room, she dressed quickly and went down the stairs for breakfast. Crichton Hall served an excellent breakfast, three eggs and sausages and juice and cereal and toast and a pot of tea. She shared a table with two spinster ladies from France who spoke French to one another and ignored Ellen entirely. When she finished breakfast she asked the landlady to prepare her bill and call a taxi.
She paid her bill, got her suitcases from her room, and took the taxi to the airport bus terminal. The cab driver offered to take her straight to the airport, but she was afraid the ride would cost too much. She rode to the bus terminal instead and took the bus to the airport. She checked her suitcase and guitar and decided to carry her tape recorder onto the plane with her. It was a small model, fully transistorized and not too heavy but good enough to record music faithfully.
Sitting on a bench in the airport, the tape recorder on her knees, she wondered if that might be one of the reasons she had felt ill at ease in London. Here she was, with her tape recorder and her guitar, and she hadn’t been putting either of them to good use yet. In Ireland things would be different. She could picture herself in the singing pubs in Dublin or in the counties in the south and west, Tipperary and Cork and Kerry, seeking out the native singers and learning new songs and getting exciting new material on tape. She was anxious to get to work, anxious to be doing what she had come across the ocean to do.
Soon, she thought. Soon.
She went through exit customs, had her passport stamped, and moved into another room to wait for her Aer Lingus flight to be called. everyone was very polite. The young man who stamped her exit visa on her passport gave her a big smile. “Off to Ireland, are you?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Well, you’ll like it there. Come back and visit us again, will you?”
“Oh, I will,” she said. And she knew that she would. Her disappointment with London, she decided, had been a very personal thing, an unfair judgment of a great and grand city. The coldness and impersonality of it could be balanced off by some very fine things, she knew. The sweet red-haired woman who had helped her last night, the gentle civility of the passport clerk, the efficient politeness that had greeted her everywhere she had gone. And the fine breakfasts at Crichton Hall, and the sense of History echoing in ancient streets. Yes, she thought, she would be back.
Her flight was called. She got to her feet, followed a herd of passengers through a flight gate and out toward a sleek green-trimmed jet. A stewardess, looking trim and pretty in the Kelly-green uniform of the Irish international airline, welcomed her and the rest of the passengers aboard in English just faintly touched with a melodious Irish brogue. Then she repeated the welcome in Gaelic.
Ellen drank in the words, savoring the texture of the Gaelic tongue. She had heard the old Irish language sung — indeed, she could sing two or three songs in Irish — but she had never heard the language spoken before. She would have to hear a great deal of it, she decided. She couldn’t hope to learn it, but if she let her ear grow accustomed to the sound of the language it would be much easier for her to render Irish songs effectively.
She sat by the window. The plane was still filling with passengers for the nonstop flight to the Irish capital. She looked out the window at the crowds of people boarding and leaving other planes. It was a busy airport, even busier than Kennedy.
“I beg your pardon, Miss. Is this seat taken?”
She turned at the voice. A tall man was bending over her. His hair was dark, and he wore the turned collar and black robes of a Catholic priest. He was in his late thirties, she guessed, though she had always found it hard to tell the ages of clergymen. There was something ageless about them, some quality that set them apart.
“No, it’s not taken,” she said. “Please sit down.”
He sat beside her, buckled his seatbelt, and sighed. “Ah, it’s a beautiful day for flying,” he said. “And are you going home to Dublin this morning?”
“I’m going to Dublin, but it’s not my home. I’m an American.”
“I’ve never been to America, but it’s a second home to many an Irishman. I’ve relatives in Boston and Philadelphia, and family on my mother’s side in Chicago, as well. What part of America are you from?”
“New York.”
“And might I ask if you’re of Irish descent?”
She smiled. “Partly, I think. My name is Cameron and my mother’s maiden name was Paisley. Cameron is Scottish, of course, but I think the first Paisleys came from Northern Ireland. Though our family has been in America for so long that that’s all we are now, really. American.”
“It must be a grand country.”
“It is.” She hesitated. “Though I’ve never been anywhere else, until this trip. I’ve had a wonderful time in London” — it was a small enough lie — “and I’m very anxious to see Ireland.”