Dreamside - By Graham Joyce Page 0,8

for a moment, hoping that someone would appear. Then he got out of the car and went to the door. No one answered his knock. He tried again, waited, and pushed at the handle. The door swung open; a pile of unopened envelopes lay on the mat. They were addressed to Brad Cousins. Lee went in.

F I V E

For years I cannot hum a bit

Or sing the smallest song;

And this the dreadful reason is,

My legs are grown too long!

—Edward Lear

Ella, meanwhile, found her prey with relative ease. The ferry journey, the disembarkation and the drive down to Fermanagh had gone smoothly, and she was soon walking unchallenged through the doors of the primary school. Through a glass window in a classroom door she saw the woman she sought.

Honora Brennan was gathering up stubbed-out paint brushes and jam jars of murky water, offering words of encouragement after an end-of-day paint your fantasy session—yes anything you like, the sky the trees the stars at night. Is that the stars at night, she says to one seven-year-old with a pink NHS eye patch, no he says it's the mortar that got me da, is it she says, put it in the pile with the others and wash out your brushes in the sink. On instinct Honora looked up and saw Ella watching her.

Briskly, she dismissed the class, then turned to rinse the paint-pots as if by this chore she could make the other woman disappear. Ella willed her to turn around: Don't block me out Honora. If Honora heard the words, she fought them.

"Yes, I'm here; you're not dreaming."

Honora stiffened, stacking the pots in a precise pyramid.

"How did you get here?" Her back still turned, she scrubbed at an already gleaming jar.

"You can still get a boat across the water."

"I'm sorry, Ella. I wanted to say 'It's lovely to see you' but I didn't feel it."

"Then you were right not to say it."

Honora busied herself thumb tacking the children's paintings to the wall. Ella waited.

"Do you know why I came?"

Honora looked into her eyes for the first time. "Can't we go somewhere?"

Outside, walking side by side in their thick winter coats, Ella was surprised when Honora gently linked arms with her. She remembered that type of endearing, girlish gesture so well; that, and a fresh smell of camomile and rainwater. Honora's tawny hair fell as it always had, into a tight nest of curls and ringlets. She exuded a vulnerability that made Ella, by contrast, feel coarse.

They went to a small tea shop and peered at each other. The window was misted with condensation. Every time someone came in or left, a door-shaped wedge of cold air sent a shiver around the seated customers. Outside a UDR soldier with his cockade feather erect patrolled by with that circumspect hip-swivelling security walk. Ella watched him.

"After a while you stop seeing them."

"Are we talking about soldiers?"

"What else? They look like shadows; but they're real."

"And what about the real shadows?"

Ella flattered herself that she always knew when someone was dissembling. She had an idea that she could peer, if not into a person's darkest heart, then at least into the blue or grey or green of their eyes, where she might detect the microscopic splash imperceptible to others. Honora dropped her eyes and tried to change the subject.

"You gave me the fright of my life when I saw you outside the classroom. I never expected to see you again, least of all here. It suddenly brought it all back to me. How we were and all that. Weren't we crazy then, Ella? Wasn't it all madness?"

"Oh yes, it was that all right."

"But it's grand to see you. Really it is."

"I wish you meant that." The remark made Honora look away again. "You know why I came to see you."

"You want to talk to me about dreams?"

"We could talk about the IRA instead. Or the Mountains of Mourne. Or about Donegal tweed . . ."

"All right, all right. So, let's talk about dreams. I'm happy to talk about dreams, if that's what you want me to talk about."

"I want to talk about the kind of things that happened to us while we were at university. I mean, if anything like that has been happening to you lately."

"Oh, come on Ella! Don't you think I didn't have enough with what happened at the time? I put it all behind me. I was glad to get away from it when I had the chance. And now it's all in