The Fabulists | Page 7

light industry and dereliction in equal proportion. A
granite-faced warehouse, refurbished and converted into small units,
pleased him. It had been a while since he had been along here.
Just as he turned into Liffey Street, joining the streams of people
walking between Abbey Street and the Ha'penny Bridge, he saw her.
She gave a little start of recognition, just as he did, but he continued
around the corner. Not knowing what to do, he stepped onto the road to
let her pass, or whatever she might choose. She passed, but he could
see that she was hesitant too. They walked almost together for a few
moments, she slightly ahead; then he crossed over to one of the Pound
Shops and pretended to browse, his heart pounding. She had paused too,
and he knew that, like him, she was pretending to be interested in a
shop window. This was his cue, but he was transfixed. She's beautiful,
he thought, and this was all his mind would allow. No strategy, no
opening line, only the all-consuming fact of her physicality.
Baffled, he perversely entered the shop, when all he wanted to do was
catch up with her and tell her his name. That was it: My name is

Mungo, what's yours? It's so simple when you can think straight, he
thought, and rushed out of the shop. She was gone. It was impossible,
but she was gone.
He hurried, trying not to run, to Abbey Street, and looked up and down.
Nothing. Over to Upper Liffey Street. No sign. She had disappeared.
Agitated, he checked again in four directions. She had to be in a shop
somewhere. Perhaps at that very moment she was watching him, highly
amused. This sobered him, and he reassumed his dignity.
In the shopping-centre he walked through the crowds in a daze. All the
shoppers could think about was Christmas; all he could think of was
how beautiful she was, and that he would never see her again because
of his stupidity.
He took the library lift for a few moments privacy. Her red hair
dropped a little below her shoulders. She seemed about the same height
as himself, five foot seven, but with raised heels on her boots, it was
hard to know exactly. What else? Her eyes he wasn't sure of - blue or
green, but they were generous. She seemed ... plump, although again it
was hard to know with her heavy winter clothing. He couldn't picture
her legs, but remembered with pleasure that she walked gracefully. To
him, grace was important.
He went straight to the travel books by force of habit, taking down the
largest volume on Spain, His paper mark was undisturbed and he
opened the book at page ninety, but though he read two pages without
pause, not one word registered. He felt sure her carriage would be
matched by her manner and voice. Her voice would immediately decide
if ... Her voice would decide what? he wondered. He was a married
man, after all, which was not altogether beside the point.
He hoped he hadn't spoken aloud, and moved to another reading table
in case he had. His attraction to this woman had amounted to a surge of
hormones, yet his imagination had leapt ahead, making assumptions
and laying down conditions. The attraction disturbed him. Even if they
met again, which was unlikely, it would have the same inconsequential
end. A similar experience in his youth reminded him how juvenile his

reactions were. It was just an attack of juvenile projection. He could
read his book in peace.
He read about a traveller journeying through Castile by train. It had
been snowing, but as dawn broke the sky was a steely blue and the
snow was compact and silent across the plateau. Later, as the sun rose,
the traveller saw a herd of black bulls, and then the eleventh-century
walls of Avila.
Mango closed the book and dreamed himself onto that train
approaching Avila, the city of Saint Teresa. At first he tried to
remember the details, but abandoned this and let his imagination
provide. Apart from the two weeks with Connie and the children in a
tourist hotel on the Costa Brava, he had never been outside Ireland,
unless he counted the months on housing sites in the English Midlands,
a failed student. So it was Spain that nourished his fantasies about a
new life, the discovery of which would change him, as if stepping out
of the skin that was his past. It would even change his past, give it a
context which would lend it meaning. Then, one day he would go to
Spain and not return.
The idea was still crude, but little by little it was forming.He opened
the book again and went back to