The beams of their hired car scarcely penetrated a summer twilight grown dark as pitch in the downpour.

His wife's fear of being hemmed in was only slightly greater than his own. As the road narrowed to a lane the width of a sheep track, he took Cynthia's hand and peered out to sullen hedges pressing on either side. He was peevish at being crammed into a rain-hammered Volvo with a testy driver and a box of books which for some bizarre reason they had thought they couldn't live without.

He closed his eyes, then thought it best to keep them open. He was a lousy traveler. Indeed, the aggravation of getting from Atlanta to Dublin had exceeded his worst expectations.

Following a delay of seven hours due to storms in the Atlanta area, the trip across the Pond had been an unnerving piece of business which shortened his temper and swelled his feet to ridiculous proportions. Then, onto a commuter flight to Sligo Airport at Strandhill, where—and this was the final straw, or so he hoped—they met the antiquated vehicle that would take them to the lodge on Lough Arrow. When he located an online Sligo car service a month back and figured how to dial the country code, hadn't he plainly said this trip would celebrate his wife's birthday as well as her first time in Ireland? Hadn't he specified a nice car?

In any case, they'd be getting no consolation from the driver, a small, wiry fellow so hunkered over the wheel that little more was visible than his headgear—a mashed and hapless affair of uncertain purpose, possibly a hat.

He had visited County Sligo as a bachelor ten years ago, with his attorney cousin, Walter, and Walter's wife, Katherine; they had driven to and from the fishing lodge on this same road. In any weather, it was no place to meet oncoming vehicles.

He unbuckled the seat belt and leaned forward.

'Aengus, I think we should pull off.'

'What's that?'

'I think we should pull off,' he shouted above the din of rain and wipers.

'No place to pull off.'

'Ask him how he can possibly see anything,' said Cynthia.

'How can you possibly…?'

'I see th' wall on m' left an' keep to it.'

'Doesn't appear to be any cars coming, why don't we stop and wait it out?' Torrential. Second only to the hurricane he'd driven through in Whitecap.

'I'll get round th' bend there an' see what's ahead.' Aengus muttered, shook his head. 'Bleedin' rain, an' fog t' bleedin' boot.'

'It's what keeps you green,' shouted his wife, opting for the upbeat.

'That's what they all say. M'self, I'm after goin' on holiday to Ibiza.'

He sat back and tried to stuff his right foot into the shoe he'd removed on entering the car.

'Timothy,' said his wife, 'if there's no place to pull off, what happens when people meet another vehicle?'

'Someone has to back up. I never quite understood how that gets decided. Anyway, there'll be a pull-off along here somewhere; they seem to appear at very providential places.'

'When he said he keeps to the wall, I realized those aren't hedges. There's stone under all those vines.'

He thought she looked mildly accusing, as if he'd neglected to pass along this wisdom.

'Walls!' reiterated Aengus. 'Landlord walls.'

He had promised her this trip for years, and for one reason or another, it had been often deferred, twice rescheduled, and even now there was a glitch. Last week, Walter and Katherine had been forced to postpone tomorrow's planned arrival in Sligo until four days hence. Walter's apologies were profuse; after months of red tape and head scratching, he said, the date for meeting with a big client had come out...