Jenny Ibsen was divorced from her husband Stanley Smith, a dealer in English watercolours. Damp meadows and ruined castles bored her. She sought the excitement of inner city living.
“I’ve seen an apartment in Salford Quays,” she informed Stanley as they lunched at The Bell in Hinton Charterhouse.
“Salford! Jenny, darling! It’s a revolting place - chimney stacks…the Manchester Ship Canal…Those dreadful Lowry pictures…”
Stanley had found some William Turner sketches of Venice in a monastery in the Alban Hills outside Rome. Christies had placed them in New York for a substantial sum.
“This is for you, darling.” he smiled, as he passed her Christies’ cheque.

He was letting her go, unable to quench her melancholy. He never dared to hope he might keep her. Like a bee, she hopped from flower to flower.
“That white face, that slender figure…” he had said when they met - “such rich hair…”
“Those eyes - sea-green…sad…restless…” he thought now as he sunk a bottle of Sancerre in the ice bucket and watched her open the envelope, “only Rossetti could paint her.”
He cut a sliver of trout and watched her hair change from brown to red in the winter sunlight that blazed through the restaurant window. Their marriage had flared like a forest fire then spluttered like a gutted candle. His business of buying and selling watercolours had prospered.

“I have a good eye, Jenny, it’s brought me some good pictures and - for a while - an interesting wife,” Stanley observed bleakly.
“I hate your sodding pictures,” blurted Jenny and slipped the cheque into her handbag.

Niall Doherty noticed the pale face in a group gathered at the Dolce Vita restaurant on Whitworth Street. Salford University were hosting a lunch for participants in their Spring series of lectures on Victorian Architecture. Doherty, from Donegal, thought the course would be a change from refreshers in Georgian Dublin. Jenny came to relieve her boredom.
“So where do you practise?” he asked at the bar.
“I don’t.”
“You don’t! So why are you here?”
“I like buildings. Is that a problem for you?”
“Why would buildings be a problem for an architect? Wouldn’t that be wild strange?”
Her face seemed familiar: that bone structure, those green eyes…
“Can we sit together?”
“I suppose so.”

On the marble table, in a slender glass vase, stood a white lily, its stamen scarlet. A waiter brought water and a bottle of Verdicchio - the wine straw pale. He plunged it into a bucket of crunching ice.
“You know, I thought I recognised you. But - and this is wild silly - I was in the City Gallery this morning, gawping at the Pre-Raphaelites - Burne Jones and Rossetti…and that’s it…you’re there in the pictures…that’s wild! Some wine?”
She ignored the compliment but noticed how his fingers left a smear on the frosty bottle - long, delicate fingers.
“Slainte!”
Their glasses clinked. The wine reminded her of hazelnuts.

He had a chiselled face, weathered; calculating grey eyes. Quite a nice voice.
“Are you Irish?”
“Indeed I am.”
“Why do you keep saying wild? - you’ve said it three times.
“Wild…? It’s where I come from - Donegal - everything is wild there?”
“Do you have a wild name?”
“They call me Niall the Mason - Niall Doherty to you.”
“Why the mason? Do you belong to some sinister society?”
“Not at all! It’s my nickname. Where I live everyone is called Doherty. My father was a builder so I’m one of the Masons: there’s a wild lot of us. And you…? What do they call you?”
“Jenny - Jenny Ibsen... "

A boy brought Parma ham, melon, slabs of bread. Jenny fingered her glass and watched Niall twist pepper from a long wooden mill.
“Are you from Northern Ireland?”
“Ulster - yes. County Donegal. North geographically, south politically.”
“Oh…you mean Eire…?”
“No, I mean Ireland.”
“…Where all the trouble is?”
Niall spied a flush spread on her white cheeks, caught her scent.
“What’s Ireland like?” she asked, when he offered more wine.
“George Moore said: ‘One of Ireland’s many tricks is to fade away to a little speck down on the horizon of our lives, and then to return suddenly in tremendous bulk, frightening us.’ I always quote him when asked that question. That’s what I think Ireland’s like – wild frightening! … Slainte!”
“How can you remember that quotation? I don’t think of England like that. I never remember things - only people…special people.”
“Come to Donegal and then you’ll remember. That’s the difference between us: the English never remember and the Irish never forget!”
“I want to go.”
“When?”
“Now.”

Five years before, at an auction in Carndonagh, Niall the Mason acquired two acres of rocky hillside on the shore road out of Malin Town. Inspired by the tombs in Newgrange - dazzled with light at the summer solstice - he built a house hidden in the boulders. Windows slit a stone structure and captured brightness. It was his parable for living - light penetrating darkness.
“Is it you have the house in the rocks above the shore?” queried Mary White Paddy in the post office at Malin as she banged stamps on his letters.
“I do - just”
“Ones about here call yon ‘Ard na Si’.
“The fairy height?”
“Aye, fairies is right!”
Here, above the mysteries of Trawbreaga Bay, he created houses and bridges for Dublin and London and San Francisco. Here, he led Jenny Ibsen.

It was spring when she came. Stanley Smith was delighted. He thought Donegal better suited to the melancholic nature of his still loved ex-wife than Salford Quays.
“Why Inishowen, darling?” he asked on the phone.
“I’m told it’s a wild frightening kind of place.”

Yellow gorse tumbled down the glen. It pricked her hand. The blood surprised her. On Knockglass, she watched a cow lick afterbirth from her calf. She climbed Knockamany and smelt breezes lathered with turf smoke. From Dunargus, she gazed across Trawbreaga to Doagh, her eyes drawn beyond the Swilly to Fanad. On the White Strand, she contemplated half a moon trickle light on the Atlantic and heard the tide swish through dark stones. Outside Doc’s pub at Malin Head the eyes of three lighthouses winked at her - Tory, Inistrahull and Islay. In the mornings she witnessed a heron stretch and rise squawking from the shore.

The house at ‘Ard na Si’ was spacious. A living area with range and open fire overlooked the bay through a long series of glass doors. The moods of sky and sea filled this space. The architect allowed his visitor freedom, making no demands, social or sexual. He considered Jenny Ibsen a decoration, another shaft of light to illumine a world in need of design. He let her float, watching, waiting.

Snow came to Inishowen early in March. It skirted Trawbreaga but clung to the peaks of Slieve Snacht, Crockaughrim and Crocknagalcossagh.
“That’s a grand sight,” proclaimed Niall, arms outstretched like a priest, “the hills about the bay…a necklace of pearls, just. I doubt a man could go to his work on a day like that. Jenny, would you ever come to Cloncha with me?”

At the gate of the ruined church they heard the yelp of Barnacle geese and watched as the birds passed in formation, then wheeled like an army under orders before gliding down into the snow-covered field beyond the wall. In the valley between Cloncha church and the hills, silver mist wrapped the whin bushes in shrouds. Through the brittle air came the barking of a dog, the bleating of sheep. Jenny blew on her fingers, raising balloons of breath. Niall, led her warily along the icy concrete that led to the church and cross. Silver drops trembled on skeletons of fuchsia and glittered in the low sunlight. Above them a jet escaped clouds and trailed a line of vapour through blue sky.

“There was a monastery here from the seventh century,” explained Niall, “thanks to your to your man Colmcille. Before that, a church was built in the time of Patrick. Look at the cross - St Boden’s cross they call it - tall and slender with a fine head - a bit like yourself… Those patterns of fretwork and double ribbons. Wild intricate, isn’t it?”
“What’s that?” asked Jenny inside the roofless church.
“That’s Manus MacOristin’s grave slab - see his sword. My namesakes - the O’Dohertys - gave land to the Scots in the early fourteen hundreds - ’twas a reward for helping us get control of Inishowen…A wild mix of folk are buried hereabouts… And look - d’ye see his hurley stick and ball?”
“Looks like hockey to me… Are there more graves outside?”
“Of course.”
“I like graveyards.”

“Cloncha?” asked Stanley on the mobile that night, “where’s Cloncha?”
“It’s an old church. Inishowen is awash in early Christian sites…standing stones…ring forts…high crosses…”
“Is that your kind of thing, darling? I mean - you’re not getting religion, Jenny…are you?”
“Oh piss off, Stanley!”
Niall was speaking on his mobile when she came in for breakfast.
“They have problems in Naas. I need to go down. I doubt you’ll manage a day or two on your own?”

She drove to Cloncha in her Toyota. The snow had gone. In Culdaff, weekend litter blew along the street. Cattle stood in the fields, flanks smeared with mud. At the church she searched the graves.“Hello, Horatio,” she whispered and crouched, shivering, above a flat grave stone. She took a pencil and pad from her pocket and began to copy: ‘In memory of Horatio Nelson, late mid-shipman of HMS Endymion - an amiable youth who breathed his last at Malin Hall in the eighteenth year of his age. Could friendship have prolonged his days he had lived. Born at Chorlton-cum-Hardy in the county of Lancashire. Died January 17th 1811. Nomenque est indelible nostris.’

A breeze disturbed her. Drops of water fell from the hedge and spattered the page. She saw the fuchsia bend, heard whistling in the church. Hailstones stung her cheek. Clutching her notebook she ran along the path, bombarded with balls of ice. Breathless, she sat in the car listening to the rat-a-tat-tat on the roof, her breath clouding the windscreen. Had he lived, her son Guy would have been eighteen this month - the same age as Horatio. A sense of utter loss engulfed her as she drove back to Ard na Si, battered by wind.

Niall was worried about the change of weather as he drove across Glentogher and into Carndonagh. Jenny had exulted in the Donegal spring and the sudden snow. These rainy days, when cloud enveloped the peninsula and the world dripped, were another aspect of Inishowen. This was bleak winter, when the wind whipped the Atlantic white, when sometimes the light died for days and the birds were silent. Why had he not asked for her mobile number? She must be out somewhere. Not at Malin Head he hoped…

“Thank God!” he breathed when he saw the Toyota parked between the rocks.
The door was open, wind scattering papers about the hallway.
“Jenny! He yelled. No reply. Her bed was made. The kitchen was tidy. A bunch of lilies stood in the middle of the table, white petals spread wide, scarlet stamens ablaze. But no Jenny.

The sky was black, threatening rain. The ground squelched as he ran to the shore. The tide was on the turn heading out for the Bar Mouth. A flock of gulls rose screeching from the strand. He turned towards Malin Head. Two hundred meters away he saw a car. A figure ran towards him.
“Jenny!” he roared.
But it was a man in a long coat.
“Come quickly for Christ’s sake”, gasped James Duffy, the vet.

She was lying in shallow water, her black dress caught in an outcrop of rocks. Yellow wrack tangled her red hair and filled her mouth. Her face shone white like moonlight - Ophelia drowned with flowers. Niall stooped towards her pulse.
“Hold on, Niall,” said Duffy putting a hand to his shoulder, “she’s been dead this hour past. It’s a wonder the tide hasn’t taken her!”

There was no note. Perversely, as happens in Donegal, the sky cleared. A rainbow bridged the bay with mauve and saffron. Niall went to move the Toyota. He lifted her mobile and saw there was a text message. It read: ‘Can we meet on Guy’s birthday? Stanley.’