Cold winds from the sea reached her, but there was no sign of Sara. “Sara,” she called suddenly, forgetting all her duplicity. “Sara!” she screamed. With a sick feeling of distress she screamed again. It was no use. Soon it would be pitch black. She ran back along the white sand to the road. Finding tarmacadam under her feet, she turned right, she turned left. She didn’t know where she was. She turned right and keeping the middle distance of the crest of the hill before her and the single light of O’Malley’s to her left, she made for The Dwellings. She rounded Termoncarrach Lough, frightening the lake birds. The high stone wall had a dark human presence. Walking back to Corrloch seemed to take an eternity. The night was filled with the sound of coughing animals, and always, as she ran the last few yards, the impression of someone, stronger and more powerful than herself, gaining on her.

19. Oh No, Don’t Stop the Carnival

19

Oh No, Don’t Stop the Carnival

A few years later, on St John’s Eve, fires celebrating the summer solstice of a few days before were burning everywhere through the far west. All along the coast as darkness fell piles of tyres, old furniture, barrels of tar were set alight. On Mullet fires were burning and they were answered by fires on Achill, on Nephin, at Benwee Head, Carrowteige, and Sheskin. Flames leapt up into the darkness as the Adams girls drove towards Barnatra.

Whooshes of sparks rose on every side.

Across the gate that opened into a field a huge banner announced the Folk Festival. The banner plunged in the wind like a parachute behind a seaplane touching down. A string of bulbs had fallen with a spray of light into a corner of the field.

The wind was fierce. The marquee billowed. The girls came up the road through lines of parked cars. A few acres of stony land away was the Atlantic. The girls clung to each other’s arms, balancing and laughing against the gusts. The marquee, with sails illuminated, shook like a grounded ship. “The things we do,” shouted Sara. “What?” screamed Catherine. The generator hummed and gave off a stench of dark oil. The stewards, laughing to each other, swung bits of twine with a darning needle at the end to pierce tickets. They drank by turn from a bottle and slagged those they knew.