The Girl In His Dream

The Girl In His Dream

Dan stared moodily into his beer. The music playing in the background – a haunting Irish melody – was all but drowned out by the chatter of a busload of German tourist that had invaded the mountain top bar. He pushed his beer aside and headed for the door.

Outside the orange ball of the sun was sinking below Barnesmore Gap. His head was buzzing. You’re a fool, Mc Gantry, he told himself. Just like your teacher foretold. Here you are bumming around Ireland looking for a girl you saw in a dream. “And a drunken dream at that,” he agreed with the voice inside his head.

He stuck out his thumb and clamoured into the first thing that stopped. “Going far?” the man enquired. Dan pulled the drawing of the girl from his pocket. He had done it from memory. It had been fingered and folded so many times now it was beginning to look like Dan himself, old and tattered. “I don’t know…until I find her,” he admitted. The man gave him a sympathetic look. “Your daughter? “ Before Dan could explain he went on,” “If she’s missing in Ireland your chance of finding her are sl…”

“She’s not my daughter!”

The driver’s face lost its pitying look.

“Who is she, then?”

Dan rubbed his hand over his week old stubble. His money had long since run out and he’s been sleeping rough.

“She’s the girl of my dreams; my soul mate and my one true love…”

The driver glanced at the photo of his family clinging to the dashboard. His daughter was around about the age of the girl in the drawing. He strove to keep the indignation out of his voice as he pegged the hitch-hiker as an old-timer chasing a young girl.

“Don’t you think you’re a bit long in the tooth for her, fella!”

Dan looked at the aged lifeline of his hand as it lay idly in his lap.

“This is my twentieth year of searching for her,” he said so softly the driver had to strain to hear. “But I will find her. I have been to your holy wells and drank of the healing water…”

His companion stifled a snort.

“You may laugh, my friend. But when I gaze into their depth I see her smiling and forming my name on her lips.”

The driver felt the hairs beginning to stand up on the back of his neck. It’s just my luck, he worried, to pick him up on the May Day feast of Beltane when all the crackpots believe the spirits from the Otherworld come to play tricks on stupid people like me, he raged silently.

“What if you don’t find her? Couldn’t you find love with another woman? Maybe she’s dead or never existed,” he rushed on.

Dan straightened his weary back. “The sun is setting. It is not too late yet. If I don’t find her in this world…”

The lorry driver had heard enough. He rammed on his brakes outside a house with a B&B sign that swung gently in the gathering dusk.

“Here,” he said thrusting a couple of folded notes in the hitch-hiker’s direction, “Mary, here, will put you up for the night. And if you’ take my advice you’ll stop wandering the roads of Ireland looking for a woman you fell in love with in a dream.”

The hitch-hiker climbed down from the high cab of the lorry. “I will find her,” he said emphatically.

The driver exhaled in exasperation. “Listen, fella, we all have a woman of our dreams in our head. You’re searching for a fantasy– something that’s not real.” He slammed the door shut as the hitch-hiker opened his mouth to answer him. “I’ll be back this way on my way to the port in Dublin the day after tomorrow if you don’t find her in Donegal…” he quipped, rolling up the window.

Dan, standing on the grass verge of the country road raised his hand absently as if his mind was already elsewhere. He stood for a moment and looked at the moon, rising. Then, he closed his eyes and imagined her lips, her face, and her smile. Hope joyous and fulfilling rose in him.

“Maybe he’s right,” he murmured as the taillights of the lorry faded to small pinpricks of light,” she is dead and waiting for me…”

The door of the Bed and Breakfast open and a woman stood framed in the light that spilled out onto the path dispelling the darkness.

“Welcome,” she said coming towards him and taking his hand. He stumbled a little at her touch.

“I’ve been waiting…waiting a long time for you, she said softly.

 

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