By William Ried

Not knowing where I was when I first woke up had become routine. But that next morning I knew even before I opened my eyes, with none of the struggle between dream and reality.

I felt cold and wet air, smelled salt and dark wood, heard creaking beams. There was no doubt I’d landed in “that little corner of Ireland you’d not otherwise see.”

At the cottage I found breakfast and a note: “Off shopping. Back at three. Take a bike from the garage.”

Then, well, a day ’til three. Three, and that was odd as three was when Liam would be back to work. That must mean she and he were shopping together?

But did it mean, as well, he’d be no part of after three?

Well, I concluded it was better to be safe and make it a bike ride until three and one minute more.

There was an old tank of a bike in the garage, and I headed off with squeaks and clanks on the only road through Maddy’s wondrous corner. Peddling between walls draped with fuchsia and red berries I met wet and warm, greens I couldn’t believe, breathing browns and wide tweed smiles. Each sheep and cow, solitary met, paused to watch and reacted confusedly to my barnyard impressions…

Rounding the last bend at three ten, in sight and time, I made out her winsome smile through a smoked cottage window. She came out in a jacket and boots. We hunted for beach glass and presented each other with shells. Then we turned inland on the lane and fed each other berries. She placed a red flower behind her ear.

We biked to a fisherman’s pub. The regular crowd watched her beat me at darts. She pointed out Louis, the Frenchman who was rich but no one knew what he did for his money.

“I only know he wants to bed both my husband and me,” she whispered and slyly added her drinking without her husband would make a scandal in the village.

Back at the cottage she suggested I start a fire and disappeared to see about dinner.

The turf briquettes were strange but easy to light and a warm glow quickly filled the room. She returned with a bowl of pasta, part of a round loaf of brown soda bread and a salad.

We toasted with red wine the fading sunlight over the bay and sat long at the table talking books. When I said I’d nearly finished Tom Jones, she reached to a crooked bookshelf behind her head, her breasts again pushing against her sweater, and presented me with a large paperback of Ulysses.

“Now that you’ve come to the magic island,” she said, “you’ll want to be movin’ up to Irish literature.”

I cleared the dishes while she put the food away, and then she chased me from the kitchen while she washed up. I stoked the fire and lay on a thick rug with a pillow under my head. A wind blew through an octave of tones outside, but the room was warm and peaceful. I felt as if I were dreaming, and this time the dream was lovely.

Maddy joined me before the fire and filled our wine glasses. She joked that I took easily to being served. I protested and tried to rise but she silenced me with a finger on my lips.

The wine drained from our glasses. We reclined before the fire. I felt her eyes upon me when I stirred the turf. When I resumed my place on the rug, I felt I was keeping her waiting… and leaned toward her… and softly kissed her lips.

She jerked back, flushed.

“My husband!” she said breathlessly. “I can’t sleep with you!”

This sucked the air from the room. We both lay still. I wondered how we had leaped to the question of sleeping together and looked at her cautiously.

She threw her arms around my neck. We rolled and scratched, laughed and kissed. Fire filled the room. She held me and pulled me over her and into her with a smoldering hunger. She adored my young body, she said. I devoured her; she was soft and voluptuous, and it had been too long. In the moment of climax, my mind raced in spirals.

Only after we lay quietly against each other did I again think about her husband. What was she like with him, I wondered.

How could he have left us alone together?

The glow of the fire was soporific and I lay dozing and dreaming of Maddy’s knowing smile, her forest of hair tangled round my fingers. The night crystallized as a new turn. I’d reached past charity and curiosity to a real life. This time the mark I left on my hostess marked me as well. Maddy stirred in my arms, but I held her tight. The thought of Liam gnawed at me. I was anxious to know how she’d explain to him or what she’d explain or if she’d explain.

She had said she loved the West, but she hadn’t said she’d go with me. Would that make sense, anyway? Did I even need to go west? Would she leave Liam so soon after returning home?

What could I offer her? I was a vagabond. I had nothing but a backpack: no car; no bed. She couldn’t possibly follow me, or lead me? I could just imagine showing up with her at my aunt’s house.

She nuzzled my shoulder. I breathed her in, my guilt building. I had run amok through a marriage and would be off with a jolly nod. I got a notch on my walking stick and Maddy would be left to pick up the pieces. I realized I had too much conscience for this Tom Jones routine.

She looked up, eyes warm and sleepy. I looked away, afraid my expression would betray too much. She touched my chin and turned my face back to her.

“What’s wrong?” she said softly.

“I don’t know how to say this,” I stammered.

She looked up with concern and waved me on with a nod.

“I can’t stay here.”

She rolled toward me, trying to smother a laugh.

When she caught her breath, she said in a condescending voice:

“I’d have thrown you out anyway in a day or two.”

Forty years in the making, Five Ferries tells the story of a young college graduate who yearns to escape a country torn apart by the Vietnam War. He buys a one-way ticket for the journey he will come to call “Europe on No Dollars a Day.” Readers of a certain age will recognize a world that seems archaic in this day of debit cards and instant communication. But time and technology don’t diminish the universal human experience of survival and redemption, love, loss and liberty that await the traveler.

For more on the author and the novel go to the Five Ferries website.