Emerald Magic_ Great Tales of Irish Fantasy - Andrew M. Greeley [9]
I wandered in, pushed between a couple of occupied barstools, and ordered myself a pint. This by itself gives you plenty of time to look around, as a well-pulled pint of Guinness takes at least seven minutes, and the best ones take ten. Right now, the front of the bar was full of people who had left work early. It was full of the usual sound of Dubliners complaining about work, and the people they worked with. “So I said to him, why don’t you tell him to go to the F ing Spar and get a sandwich and then sit down for five F ing minutes, sure she’ll be back then. Oh no, he says, I can’t F ing spare the time in the middle of the F ing day—”
I had to resist the urge to roll my eyes . . . yet still I had to smile. This is how, when I return home, I know for sure that I’m in Dublin again. The second you’re past passport control in Dublin Airport, you hear it . . . and after that, you hear it everywhere else in town, from everyone between nine and ninety-five. Only in Dublin do people use the F word as casually as they use “Hey” or “Sure” or “Listen” in the US. It’s an intensifier, without any meaning whatsoever except to suggest that you’re only mildly interested in what you’re saying. Only in Ireland would such a usage be necessary: for here, words are life.
I glanced toward the back of the bar. Between the front and the back of the pub was a sort of archway of wood, and looking at it, I realized that it was a line of demarcation in more ways than one. A casual glance suggested that the space behind it was empty. But if you had the Sight, and you worked at seeing, slowly you could see indistinct shapes, standing, gesturing. You couldn’t hear any sound, though; that seemed to stop at the archway.
It was an interesting effect. I guessed that the wizards the leprechaun had mentioned had installed it. I walked slowly toward the archway, and was surprised, when I reached it, to feel strongly as if I didn’t want to go any farther. But I pushed against the feeling and kept on walking.
Once through the archway, the sound of conversation came up to full as if someone had hit the “unmute” button on a TV remote. There had to be about eighty of the Old People back here, which was certainly more warm bodies than the space was rated for; it was a good thing all the occupants were smaller than the normal run of mortals.
There was just as much F-ing and blinding going on back here as there had been in the front of the bar, but otherwise, the back-of-the-pub people were a less routine sort of group. There was very little traditional costume in evidence; all these Old People seemed very city-assimilated. I glanced around, feeling acutely visible because of my height—and I’m only five-foot-seven. Near me, a tall slender woman, dressed unfashionably all in white, turned oblique eyes on me, brushing her long, lank, dark hair back to one side. Only after a long pause did she smile. “Oh, good,” she said. “Not for a while yet . . .”And she clinked her gin and tonic against my pint.
“Uh,” I said. A moment later, next to me, a voice said, “It’s good of you to come.”
I glanced down. It was the leprechaun who had come up to the office. “This is one of the Washers,” he said.
Even if I’d thought about it in advance, the last thing I’d have expected to see in a city pub would’ve been a banshee, one of the “Washers at the Ford” who prophesy men’s deaths. I was a little too unnerved just