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the duvet, hugged the
water-bottle to me, and passed out. Naturally, I woke up at two in the
morning.
    I would have called Jay but there was no telephone in the
room. For about half an hour I tried to coax myself to sleep, but my
eyes remained obstinately open. I pulled the thick paperback of Phineas Finn I'd been reading on the airplane from my purse
and resigned myself to nineteenth century politics.

Chapter 3
    His friends assembled at the wake,
And
Mrs Finnegan called for lunch...
    Irish song
    Somebody was scratching at the door. I surfaced from a
nightmare that involved four cars abreast on a two lane road. The
cars, camouflaged in jungle green like tanks, kept flashing their
lights.
    Scratch. "Lark?" It was my father.
    I pulled my limp arm loose from the water bottle and looked
at my watch. Nine o'clock. At night or in the morning? Had to be
morning. I had fallen asleep again at five. "Just a minute, Dad." I slid
from the bed and staggered to the door.
    "Are you all right?" His tone was anxious, but his color was
good. He must have slept. "Mrs. O'Brien is serving breakfast."
    "Why don't you go down? I'll join you when I've had a
shower. Where's the bathroom—down the hall?"
    Dad laughed. "You were tired, weren't you? Look
around. Bathrooms in all the rooms and unlimited hot water. Quite a
change from the guesthouses of my salad days. I'll see you
downstairs."
    He was right. Two steps up, in a corner of the pleasant room
and concealed behind what looked like a closet door, was a
sparkling, state-of-the-art loo. No claw-footed bathtub. No chain-pull
toilet.
    British fascination with baroque plumbing had extended
across the Irish Sea, though, and manifested itself in the shower
controls. I decoded the mechanism after a minor scalding, showered,
and woke up. It had been, horrors, thirty-six hours since my last
shower. Fortunately, my hair is short and curls when it's wet. I threw
on my emergency jeans, the grungy pullover, and the suede boots,
gave my hair a perfunctory brush, and went out into the hallway.
Fifteen minutes.
    My memory of having to scale the stairs was hazy but
accurate. As in many old houses, even the hall presented several
levels, and the requisite hairy plant on a small table sprawled out
onto the landing of the steep stairway. The floors were carpeted in
thick British Floral, the wallpaper was fresh but traditional, the
woodwork shiny white.
    When I reached the ground floor I hesitated. A long hall
strewn with furniture—a coat rack, a table covered with brochures, a
stand full of no-nonsense umbrellas—led toward the back of the
house. Five doors, one on the left and four on the right, presented
more choices than I was ready to cope with in my pre-coffee
state.
    I peeked in the first door on the right and startled a German
couple dressed for hiking. They were sitting in front of the unlit
hearth with a map spread between them. The room was done in
plush and mahogany. I decided it had to be the lounge. A television,
fortunately off, stared back at me. The woman hiker said something
in German that sounded friendly. I smiled and withdrew.
    My second guess—the last door at the end of the hall—hit the
mark. As I entered the large room, a party of four hikers, Dutch or
German, broke off their conversation and stared at me. I smiled
again.
    Tables covered with pink cloths seated two family groups
and another set of hikers. I spotted my father in the far corner
behind a pillar. The hikers resumed their discussion. Tableware
clattered. I squeezed past a teenaged boy helping himself at the
cereal bar and slid into the chair opposite Dad.
    He had reached the bacon and egg stage. Toast was cooling
to crispness in a metal rack by his plate. A basket held soda bread
wrapped in a pink cloth. Dad smiled and waved a piece of toast.
"Want to share my tea?"
    "I'll wait, thanks. Do they do coffee?"
    "I believe so." He attacked his black sausage with gusto. I
thought of clogged arteries.
    "Good morning, Mrs. Dodge.