Free Shannon by Frank Delaney Page A

ended in a tall citadel. White, with battlements, it looked like an iced cake, with each corner rounded and windowed. Robert stopped at the gateway, intrigued by this echo of France: a château in an Irish field.
    A tiny girl in a cream lace dress popped out from under the gateway tower. She looked at Robert with suspicion— and then beckoned to him and turned away. He stopped and looked after her; she turned and beckoned again, so Robert followed her across the grass margin of the road. She walked several yards farther, deep into the property, but Robert hesitated. Then, from behind him, he heard grunts of effort and looked over his shoulder. A man dripping wet, in a one-piece black bathing suit, climbed over the wall from the direction of the river. He stepped into the roadway and nodded to Robert.
    “I rather like the water as cold as this. Good to be braced, eh? Oh, that's my daughter, Miranda.” One strap of the bathing suit had slipped off his shoulder. His skin glowed a gentle mauve, and some green weed decorated his bald patch. He held out a dripping hand and smiled; Robert shook the clammy fingers.
    The wet man padded barefoot through the arched gateway and hobbled up the graveled driveway toward the castle, overtaking his small daughter, who had stopped. Miranda waited for Robert to catch up, and when he did she set off again.
    Ahead of them, near the longer part of the building, the man who said he was her father stopped and peeled off his sodden bathing suit, threw it onto the grass, and walked naked into the house, his lank, sickly white buttocks swallowed by a closing door.
    Miranda led Robert around the corner of the castle into a wide lawned garden with evergreen topiary. A row of cone-shaped shrubs stood on the grass like green servants; gravel paths stretched between them. Miranda spun left; Robert felt the rucksack swing across his shoulders as he turned sharply to follow her.
    They passed from the castle's immediate vicinity and into wilder gardens. In the distance, Jersey cows, their tan-colored hides peacefully wrinkled, browsed in an open field.
    The child climbed a stile in a stone wall, and when Robert followed he found himself on a farm lane rutted with tracks. They followed this for fifty yards or so, until they came to a fork. One branch of the lane led off toward sheds and farm buildings, and the other, now taken by Robert and Miranda, led into darkness at noon. The shade was caused by a garden of huge plants, greater and taller than anything Robert had ever before seen. These enormous gunneras— and the palm trees in the next field— received their license to grow wild from the balmy climate of the North Atlantic drift, the Gulf Stream licking Ireland's shores.
    Miranda had skin like cream enamel, red spots on her cheeks like a painted doll, and hair shiny black as a crow's wing. She led Robert under the great tall leaves to a fallen tree trunk that had been set with cracked old china cups, plates, a teapot with no lid, and discarded cutlery, most of which had no handles. As a tablecloth she had spread one of the giant leaves. Robert fingered its velvety surface as he stood and looked at the table with its settings and at the tremendous foliage above his head blocking the day. The light darkened further and it began to rain; he felt no more than a drop or two but heard the heavy raindrops plodding down on the thick vegetation. Miranda hadn't spoken a word.
    Robert had scant experience with small children. An only child with few— and older— cousins, he had no relations of his own age. And since he had spent most of his early life in boarding school, he had known little social time with anyone younger than himself. All he could do now was watch and be led.
    Miranda looked at him from under her bangs of black hair and picked up one of the teacups. Silently she grasped the teapot and poured a cup of invisible tea. She lurched toward Robert, handed him the cup, and began to pour into another