Campfire Meditations

By Mary Murray Bartolomé

Éimhear Lysaght has seven teeth and no bank account. And nobody calls him Éimhear Lysaght. You mean Éim? Someone will say, later, to the police. The gardener who breakfasts on ale? they won’t say.

Éim sits on his usual stool at the bar/reception desk of Meditations Campsite. With a breakfast IPA in hand, he observes the weekenders (those fools who buy fixed campervans to replace their broken dreams) unaware that he, in turn, is up for discussion.  A weekender (one with a Masters in Art History) sits up in her lounger. She positions her body so the group take notice, and in a painterly way, she describes Éim’s calloused hands, his purpling swollen fingers, and his scar the shape of a shepherd’s crook, pronouncing him Caravaggio’s apostle. The group chuckle, and she leans back, sipping.

Another guest jostles Éim, leaning over to claim his Blood Mary. Éim  shares a look with barman Cathal, a look which accuses this guest of being English or worse, American (like the ones who park up motor-homes with complex pergola system, practising calisthenics and investigating ancestral connections). The men share a joke, in Irish, of how the guests’ tans graduate through the shades of Éim’s paint sample strip. That couple, selecting their credit card for the tab, sliogán uibhe. Eggshell. But this one, who’s forefather’s no doubt hails from Ramelton, he’s cnó coill. Hazelnut. Henry (his real name) nods at Éim, rattling the ice of his Bloody Mary. The cubes are too big to crunch, and he frowns. It is the biggest problem in Hazelnut Henry’s day because he hasn’t yet realised his child is missing. In fact, nobody has.

The child in question was last seen eating a croissant under a pergola with her father, Hazelnut Henry, who then went to the bar, presuming his daughter would go to the pool with her mother, who presumed she would join her cousins in callisthenics. The shadows of clouds move across the lawn as whale-song reverberates from the meditation circle, where Aoife, campsite owner, commences a morning session. Henry is ready to order his second Bloody Mary when wife appears, swimsuit dry, asking the question which makes him chomp on the final ice cube, biting his tongue. The mutual realisation of what has happened, of what could still happen, of their worst fear, is spoken in the distortion of their faces, in the moment of silence lingering, threatening.

The search begins. At first exploratory, convivial almost. But once every tent is unzipped, and caravan door flung open, the weekenders look at the English who look at the Americans who look back at the weekenders. The bar empties, cleaning duties pause. Asking for luxuries, even essentials, is bad taste in a crisis.

Barman Cathal interrupts campsite owner Aoife’s meditation session, breaking the news. She turns to see the sun loungers thrown upside down, their legs splayed. The words she painted onto them glare back at her, Bhfeidhm and Creideamh. Useless words, she thinks. Strength, Faith. All words are free. A child has gone missing, from her campsite, her perfect nest. She imagines the worst and decides the inevitable. She pictures the tabloids and the mortgage meetings. The wind picks up, blowing warm gusts onto her face, reminding her of great aunty Máire, who always stood too close with her bad breath. As the hours pass, she laps the boundaries again, and then again, and wonders if she can hear the cry of wolves.

She forgets about Éim, but Cathal doesn’t. Knowing their toothless gardener should be kept away from the growing number of police, Cathal sends him on an invented errand into the woods. But Éim, being Éimhear Lysaght, potters down, trailed by dogs, practically marching himself to the police officer’s backseat. Cathal does their team whistle accompanied by a meaningful glare and both go ignored. Instead, Éim beams like a prize-winner when the police propose the position of final witness. Cathal watches the patrol drive away, as a small crowd presses around him. He pictures the policewoman’s eyes bulging as they bring up Éim’s record. He’s not even sure if Éim is literate. He bites his lip remembering his shaky initials when he signed his contract. Aoife had laughed, saying the signature looked like a child’s drawing of a dog.

With Éim gone, the search continues. Everyone wants in. The English drag punctured lilos from staff-only cupboards. The Americans discover dried-up birds’ nests under sheets of corrugated iron. The weekenders head straight to Éim’s caravan and are disappointed when they fail to find a porno under the bed. But look at those tools, the spades hanging in size order! Torture weapons, in disguise! He’s an odd one, the one with the teeth, the one with the scar. Their murmurs of agreement gain momentum, until Cathal attempts to negotiate, using words like warrant. He raises his voice. Aoife pulls him aside, whispers that he’s making a scene. Cathal can’t reply because the marijuana is discovered. Only four plants, but one too many, legally speaking, plus the dried stuff in jars. The art history weekender takes them down to the station after pocketing an eighth for herself.

By late afternoon, the local press arrives. Cathal puts the barrier down. Aoife tells him he shouldn’t. They agree to disagree. The barrier opens. This is something bigger for the campsite. Today will decide their fate; this is understood yet remains unspoken, because eight hours ago a child went missing. Tragedies, like all things, have their hierarchies.

Cathal first met Éim on a meditation course. Éim was sponsored by a rehabilitation programme because he was found half-dead on the Derry cycle path. Cathal was sponsored by Aoife because he was unable to calm the fuck down after reading the Suggestions Box. On day two, Cathal proposed a verbal contract to Éim, primarily as revenge against Aoife. Odd jobs for food and board. Éim’s sole negotiation was a pint of IPA with meals, and it was agreed.

At Meditations Campsite, the life Éim planted restored his own. Odd jobs meant all jobs, even cracking the frozen pool with an axe, so the thaw wouldn’t damage the cement (something Aoife and Cathal hadn’t considered). Aoife praised Éim’s instinct for landscaping, announcing that he must speak the language of trees (she was pleased with the phrase) and who was Éim to tell her that he had spent his youth cultivating his father’s marijuana operation. His early years had fine-tuned him on the variables of temperature, light exposure, and soil quality. Not that Éim used those words. He just wanted things to grow and be happy, and for his father to thank him, which he never did, because the old man died one afternoon, an overdose, it was said.

Éim was never an addict before jail. Not even inside. But once out, his father’s homestead was acquired by the state in lieu of fines and he felt the absence of things he never truly had; a family, friends, a place to call home with his own earth to sink his hands into. He skirted parks, fields, graveyards; he slept on verges, weeding them before moving on. Letterkenny, Strabane, Derry; he wept for a garden and found heroin. Easier to come by, easier not to feel anything at all. He laid low in the squats, awaited hits, did things to acquire more, until one afternoon his heart slowed, his skinny legs buckled into the banks of the Foyle, and there he remained until a border collie sniffed him out. It was always the dog walkers.

Back at Meditations Campsite, Éim coppiced beech and poplars, planted evergreens in meditation-zone semi-circles, re-orientated the beds to face the equinox. Shortly afterwards, the campsite’s Trip Adviser page blossomed with reviews praising the herbaceous borders, the beds of bearded iris (bucolic!) and the rural idyll which Meditations Campsite had become (and although these were written incognito by Aoife, who loved synonyms, no guest could dispute the claims). But with a record for drug dealing, substance abuse, and homelessness (not to mention his Caravaggian-apostle look) it would be Éim the police round in on, weighted with the authority of anecdotes, with only Cathal and Aoife believing the contrary; that Éim was capable of harming only one person in this world; himself.

When a child goes missing, you have seventy-two hours; the question is how to use them.

The search lasts nine hours before moving to the water tank. Guesses are made as to the ten-metre depth; of how it’s not impossible to climb inside, even for a child, to open the hatch, fall in, tread water, and scrabble at the plastic until strength gives way to nothing. He was up there, they agree, the man with the dogs and the seven brown teeth. An Englishman valiantly volunteers to dive. An American procures a ladder. A weekender lends his climbing harness. They crowd around, and it would have looked ridiculous, except it’s not, because a child is missing.

When the dive proves fruitless, someone raises the possibility of the abandoned village up on the moor. The search party shake their heads, speaking of the path overgrown, the fences, ditches, thorny bushes, and did someone mention badgers? And wolves? Surely someone would have seen the child. No, this was his doing.

They march up anyway, finding a sock on a fence. Pink unicorns. It’s handed to the mother and recognised in the collapsing of her limbs. That silences them. It’s a bogland up on the plateau, even in summer. Any adult would fall up to their waist; an American almost does. A child could be sucked down, drowned – or would they be able to skip across the surface? Hypotheses are shared; the pace increases. The day loses heat, their shadows elongate, and then, behind an ivy-covered ruin, she’s found. All she wanted was to escape callisthenics with her competitive cousins, and now her ankle is swollen and sore. As the light drains away, she’s carried down by Hazlenut Henry and the search party descends like a funeral procession.

The next day, Meditations Campsite carries the eerie silence of an aftermath. The weekenders retreat indoors, the Americans to their pergolas. Nobody practices calisthenics. Instead, they stir tea and speak in hushed tones. Just a scare. Can you imagine. Lucky we came together. Lucky we found that path. I could swear to you it was him.

Nobody attends Aoife’s meditation session. She begins anyway, secretly delighted by the empty lawn. Yet she finds her eyes opening, after barely a few minutes, to see the loungers still upside down. Bhfeidhm and Creideamh. What would those words mean, in the face of tragedy, without roots, or a home?

At the bar/reception desk, Cathal is similarly restless. He reassumes his routine with numb automaton. He cleans the milk frother, sprays the counter, wipes it, then pours two IPAs, leaving the one for Éim in its usual corner. An English couple, the eggshells from yesterday, appear, explaining their decision to leave a day early. Automatically, Cathal hands them a customer feedback sheet and immediately regrets doing so (now not being the moment to ask whether their stay met or went beyond expectations). He thinks of the meditation course, of him and Éim giggling through the breathing exercises. Thank God for the phone ringing. If only everyone could fuck-off and leave him in peace.

Erin, the cleaner, takes the call, covering her mouth in melodramatic shock. She covers the receiver with her hand and mouths out P-O-L-I-C-E to Cathal. The eggshell couple shuffle, cough, fold their questionnaires into quarters. Yes? You mean Éim? Erin continues, her voice rising. The gardener who breakfasts on ale? She doesn’t say, because at that moment, she is instructed to pass the call to Cathal.

The police officer introduces herself. Her tone of voice is soft, making Cathal’s heart drop. Then his eyes widen, tracing back to the bar. The police officer says she is sorry, that they’re all very sorry. They didn’t see it coming. Something follows about finding peace, and God. But Cathal only hears sounds, which must be words, making sentences. Yet nothing is real. How? He wants to ask. He was here, yesterday? A lightness crawls up his legs. His vision doubles. He bends over, retches, leans on his elbows. By the time he looks up, he’s alone at the bar. The couple have gone, leaving their folded questionnaires, and beside them is Éim’s IPA; the bulging amber glass, with bubbles slowly rising. A Japanese offering to the dead.

Mary Murray Bartolomé is a Scottish writer, teacher, and adventurer. She lives in a small town outside Barcelona with her husband and border collie Neu. Her short stories have been published online and listed in prizes such as the Bath Short Story Prize, the Bridport Prize, and the Chipping Norton Literary Award.

Her debut novel was longlisted in the Bath Novel Award and the London Library scholarship. She is an alumni of the Faber Writing A Novel course and recently won a place on the New Writing North Academy's short story course.

She is currently working on her second novel, a short story collection, and seeking representation. More of her writing can be found on her blog.

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