Land Beyond the Map

The vehemence of her words, the tremble of her lips, scared Crane. Polly Gould was a tough girl; yet she was plainly very frightened, with a fear she tried to cover by anger. As for himself, he felt a detached desire to investigate, to find out more. And now Polly, to whom he had looked for the iron core of determination in their expedition, was begging him to take her away.

He said slowly: “I’m like the character who kept calm because he didn’t know the full details. Is that it, Polly?”

“Some. You can turn at this next corner.”

“I fear nothing very much about this… this flicker of light. It could easily have been lightning. You get very odd effects with the ball variety. But, Polly—” He turned to look at her and then swung back as the car’s tires hit a pothole.

“I’m scared when I think you may crack up. If you really think so, we’ll head straight back to Belfast and take the next plane home.”

After a time, during which Crane halted the car by the curb, she said slowly: “No, Rolley. We can’t run out now. You know as well as I do that that man wasn’t struck down by lightning. The rain hadn’t started then, anyway — and did you hear thunder? Whoever — whatever — wants the map tried to stop what he — or it — thought was an attempt to pass it on to us or to contact us in some way.”

Crane remembered he had thought that the man had shambled across to them. Now he said: “Supposition.”

“But a pretty conclusive supposition, don’t you think?” She blazed the query at him, her eyes wide, her bottom lip trapped between her white teeth as soon as she had finished. Crane had to make a decision, then, a decision he knew he was making incorrectly.

As usual, he found an excuse to avoid an immediate decision. A small white-painted teashop with a narrow red door stood on the opposite side of the road. The tiny windows beckoned with loaded cake-stands and brightly colored tins. The reassuring smell of hot fresh buns wafted across the rain-wet road. The teashop looked pert and charming, smiling amid the frowning rows of stark gardenless houses.

Crane locked the car and ushered Polly across, not meeting her eye, knowing she had guessed the reason for his actions. But, at that, they both needed a cup of tea. The experience in the parking lot, for all their acceptance of it and their matter-of-fact attempts to rationalize it away, had been nerve-shattering to an alarming degree. Over a cup of tea and a thickly-buttered slice of barn brack, Crane faced the problem again.

They had reached the crossroads in this enterprise.

They could go back home, thankful still to be alive, and forget about the Map Country. Correction: try to forget. But they’d be out of it and no worse off. Or— they could go on, probe deeper, face the meaning behind that sinister oval of silver light and McArdle’s passionate desire to gain possession of the map, enter, if they were fortunate, the Map Country.

He knew he ought to say: “Okay. If that’s how you feel we’ll go back home right away.” But some unsuspected devil of obstinacy deep within him resented such a tame ending. With distaste he remembered how during training he had wished, with a frightful lapse from his normal personality, that his men’s ammunition had not been blank but sharp. The moment had come on him suddenly and overwhelmingly, when a red regiment had enfiladed his company in a gulley and the umpires were knocking him out left and right. A sergeant had got a Bren going in reply for his own blue company; but the umpires had not been impressed. Crane recalled with cold horror how he had had to crush down the hot words, the violent wish that the Bren had been firing live ammunition — the umpires would have been proved wrong then.

Something like that was happening now. He very much wanted to find the Map Country. For Polly’s sake he wanted to find out what happened to her cousin and for himself he wanted to do what he could to help Adele. For both Polly and himself finding the Map Country was a therapy and a healing of wounds. He didn’t feel right about giving it all up now.

The most scary thing of all was his own lack of fear.

He sipped tea moodily, staring past heaped cake-stands but of the window. A small tousle-haired boy pushed that same tousled head into the shop, stared about and began to withdraw. His eyes focussed on Crane and Polly. He stopped back-pedaling, froze, jerked forward and then backed out as though he’d stuck his head into a furnace. The door slammed.

“What’s up with him?” Polly asked in a voice that showed she hadn’t the slightest interest. Crane didn’t bother to answer.

They’d finished their second cup of tea when the door opened again, and an old, bent, white-haired man entered. His hair was a clear white, brushed up stiffly and standing out at the sides. His thin face, deeply furrowed, was burned brown and formed an oaken frame around startlingly blue eyes, so blue they appeared white. He walked towards Crane with the near-stepping and deliberate walk of the aged.