" I envy you, O'Neill my boy" said Thomas Mallory as he shifted his large and elegantly suited frame into the front passenger seat of my open topped four seater. 
This statement, coming from the senior partner of Langlands and Houghton, one of Dublin's premier legal establishments and expressed to one very insignificant cog in the organizational wheel who happened to have his weekend ruined by a late request from his immediate supervisor to drive TM down to the Wexford office on this breezy and fair Saturday in late May, left me mildly perplexed. My response of a noncommittal, baffled grunt was drowned by the dull throated roar of the Triumph engine as I wheeled the red throwback from the fifties out into the Dublin traffic. In contrast to my mood, the day was one of those rare but wonderful gifts of late spring in Ireland when the air was warm and water clear and freshened by a gentle breeze which chased a few white sheep across an otherwise cloudless blue sky. 
And to think that I could have been on the beach in Brittas Bay already, deep in the dunes with Sheila, or better still, deep in Sheila, the lovely long legged beauty whom I had met just a few weeks ago at the Lansdowne tennis club. One oflife's little adventures she was, to be laughed with, wooed and conquered, and who could lift life itself onto the high plain of un wedded bliss. But instead ofthat, here was I ,Sean O'Neill, stuck with himself and driving him on this day of all sorts of possibilities to Wexford of all feckin' places. That gobshite, Dick, give his arse a lick, O'Conner, had tried to tell me it was a great opportunity, being like I was with the big boss all day when they were soon to be considering me for junior partner. That's as it may have been but there weren't too many of the right words flowing through my head, much less trippin' off my tongue, which would give the right expression to my wonderful abilities and move the maybe promotion into the sure thing category. Of course, I didn't have any trouble in court last week when I gave that big, lying, bejasus, Cormac Brady, some would say the brightest new star on the Dublin legal scene, a right whippin' in the Mooney-Boland case. So I'd take my chances on the promotion with my work, thank you very much, and forget about the big eejit sitting in the seat where the lovely Sheila should have been. 
"I followed the Mooney case, you did a grand job", he said above the sounds of the wind rushing through the open four seater. "Can we put the top up? I can't hear myself think much less talk." 
Restraining several innapropriate impulses, I gritted my teeth, downshifted, slowed and stopped. Jumping out, I pulled the cover from its well behind the back seat and clipped it onto the front windscreen. 
"There, that's much better, now we can hear ourselves think. Where was I? Ah, yes, the Mooney case.Impressive stuff. Clear that you had done your homework. Delivered your arguments with confidence, the right amount of humour thrown in, and you really caught Brady out on his claim of the inadmissability of the Carter evidence when, de facto, he had used part of it to his own advantage already. You were also quick to spot the obscure Fitzgerald connection." 
"Bit ofluck", I mumbled, surprised, and if truth be told, despite my frustration, flattered by his interest and detailed knowledge of the case. " I was working on the Ryan brief and came across the Fitzgerald situation.It comes up next week under uh .. " 
I had been about to use the less than flattering nickname of the presiding judge, an appelation earned in full by his fondness for gas producing foods.but then I remembered he was one of Mallory's peers so I bit back the words. 
"Ah yes, his honor Judge Joe Moloney, old flatulence", he chuckled. "He has had that nickname since I knew him at law college. A real bag of wind. But you must watch out for him because, besides being very sharp,he does not like cases like Ryan that pit his professional responsibility for fairness and duty to uphold the law against a deep ingrained Irish bigotry which comes to the fore when anything gets in the way of natural law, which for him means frequent and gushing childbirth. 
I glanced over at my passenger with a tinge less annoyance. I had had exactly the same gut reaction myself about Judge Moloney. 
Mallory continued analyzing, telling me what he saw as the subtleties of the Ryan case, asking me what tack I was going to take and nodding vigorously when he liked my argument and more slowly when he wanted me to rethink an approach and steer me into safer waters. He was not at all afraid of give and take and, before I knew it, I was arguing away with him, just like I do with Flinty Boyle, my great law college teacher and current mentor, with whom I dissect all my cases over a pint or two in McGlade's snug on Pearse Street. And this all with the man whom, up till now, had only given me the briefest of nods as he passed me in the corridors of Langlands and Houghton where he was captain, King and feckin' Pope all rolled into one. I found myself beginning to enjoy his company. I even began to forget a bit about Sheila. 

"What did you mean by what you said when you first got in the car, about envying me?", I surprised myself by asking after the Ryan battle had been fought and put to bed and we were enjoying that quiet and 
satisfied lull that often follows spirited conversation between well matched combatants. 
"Sure, compared with yourself, I've done nuttin'." 
Always, when a little embarrassed, I fall back on Dublinese. 
At first I thought he had not heard or that, if he had, had decided to keep the camaraderie on a professional and away from the personal level. But he had heard and, like with everything he did I suppose, responded only after some thought and then in slow and measured tones. 
"Because", he said, "you meet life head on and seem to be willing to risk much to gain much. You see things worth doing or worth having and you pursue them. Certainly in your professional life and I'd imagine, although don't have any direct knowledge, in your private affairs as well." 
My thoughts briefly returned to Sheila. She certainly didn't fit the traditional mould of the wife of a junior partner, but she was a lot of fun and made me laugh. That was far more important. 
"From what I've seen of you and what I have learned about you ... " . 
He hesitated noting my surprise and then laughed, 
"Oh yes, I may not give the impression that I am watching my younger colleagues, but I do." 
"Anyway," he returned to his interrupted thought, "from what I have observed, you do not follow the usual path to success. You do not seek to cultivate influence by saying the right kinds of things, by joining the right clubs, by courting the daughters of the influential. You even seem to have your own definitions of success and failure, and they don't necessarily agree with how others might define these polar points. And yes, I know about your failures too. I remember well the Cummings case." 
I felt the crimson creep up the back of my neck. I had taken too much of a chance on that one. But I had liked old Sam Cummings and although he had not much of a case by law, he had a helluva case by justice and he deserved my best shot.Which, investing a lot of the firm's resources, I had given the old codger. Law, however, had prevailed. 
But Mallory seemed to be sparing me in his reply. 
" You did what most wouldn't have.Most barristers your age would have retreated with future prospects and professional dignity intact advising their clients in symapthetic and conspiratorial tones to settle with lots of euphemisms about living to fight another day and all that, traditonal excuses for capitulation." "You, on the other hand, fought shoulder to shoulder with old Cummings and, I might add, shared in full the inglory of his defeat." 
"Yep", I muttered, "in McGlade's". 
" I am not sure I would have done the same thing." 
At first I thought he was admonishing me, telling me in firm but gentle tones that I had screwed up, but when I glanced at him, it seemed that he had uttered the statement as a sentiment of regret rather than criticism. 
"Oh,sure you would", I responded, suddenly wanting to reassure the man whom for most of us had reached the pinnacle. 
" I can understand that being in the position you are, you would have to be a bit more cautious and conservative, what's good for the firm and all that." 
He smiled and then went on a little sadly. 
"That excuse is just a fac;:ade behind which most senior law partners,most CEO's of major corporations hide.Not all, but most. They have common sense, they are good professionals. Good team players, loyal partners.Most have achieved their present positions by outwaiting and, in some cases, outliving their competition. Vision is a word which makes them very nervous. When opportunity knocks, the watchword is caution. And caution is often the excuse for not seizing the moment.No carpe diem for them." 
He paused, and then continued with an air of grim finality. 
"In this regard, I am as guilty as most." 
There was nothing much for me to say. To contradict the man would be to call him a fool and oflittle comfort. And besides, I somehow could not see him taking the easy way out on professional things. So I didn't say anything. I glanced over at him and could see he was deeply affected by whatever had triggered these thoughts. His eyes were focussed straight ahead on some distant past events. 
" I once had a chance of great personal happiness," he went on talking as much to himself as he was to me, " and I not only let it pass but let someone who deserved better slip out of my life altogether." 
He seemed to recover then, to stop himself from further personal revelations, perhaps realizing that if repeated in the wrong quarters, would open him up to later ridicule in the firm's canteen. But at the same 

time, I could palpably feel the emotion well up in the man. He was on the verge of releasing an anguish long suppressed. I said nothing. To be sure, ifhe wanted to tell me something, it would be safe with me. Keeping confidences was one of my few virtues. The women appreciated it. But it's not something I could say to him. He would have to decide for himself whether to trust me with what he clearly wanted to reveal. After a long pause, he seemed to come to a conclusion. 
"She was so young, so wise, so fresh, so alive, so beautiful "and, he added in a wry self deprecating tone, "so very inappropriate for a rising young barrister." 
" I was young, full of myself , a major dose of stuffed shirt straight out of Trinity and the King's Inn." He continued in a more conversational manner. 
"I had been sent down to take care of some business for a country client, her father, a poor but proud man, tough as nails, who was trying to hang on to the forty acres of land, the thing that gave his simple life a great dignity. The land had been leased to his family for years and years by the neighboring landowner, Lord Ashmore. But the old Lord Ashmore, who was a decent skin, had died and had left the estate in the hands of a son who lived in England and didn't give a tinker's dam about his tenants. He wanted to sell off the land to the highest bidder, quickly and with no guarantees that the leases would be continued." 
"The firm didn't often take on that sort of case but old Langlands was from those parts and didn't much like the new Lord Ashmore. Said he was one of those unprincipled and spoiled bits of garbage that occasionally drift across the Irish sea. So he sent me down to fight the case." 
Mallory continued somewhat ruefully. 
"I remember he wasn't exactly sure I was the right man for the job. 'All right, Mallory, he said, you have the right pedigrees but am not sure you have the right stuff for this task. Sometimes you remind me of myself as a young man and other times you are a real stuffed shirt and pain in the arse. So go show me what you are made of.' ". 
" And with those words of endorsement and encouragement, he sent me out into the world of the real advocate." 
" Did you have any experience at all in that form of litigation," I asked. " Absolutely none ", he laughed. " Absolutely none." 
"I was more than a bit out of my depth, I can tell you. A Trinity graduate, educated in an English public school, with a toffee nosed accent to boot. Trying to argue the merits of the Irish tenant farmer." 
I must admit I had a hard time imagining the young Mallory sparring with some seasoned country lawyer over the importance of manure and sheepdip to the dignity of life. 
"She was my teacher," he confided. "It was she who showed me how to think about the case, not in terms of legal technicalities but in terms of things that really mattered. Ownership in the true sense of the word versus the legal sense. The idea of the true steward, like the biblical good shepherd, caring about his charge, in this case the land, its cultivation and preservation and renewal for generations to come. She reminded me of the parable of the talents, told in the Book of Luke, about the importance of using land and not letting it lie idle." 
He chuckled. 'I must say I used that argument to great effect in spelling out the differences between my hard working client and his scavenging, parasitic, landlord." 
"The new Lord Ashmore really blew a fuse on that one and eventually disintegrated on the stand. But I can't claim credit for the victory for it was she who essentially suggested the right strategy.It wasn't that she was schooled. She was mostly self taught. She just had an intuitive feel for what was the right thing to do, for what was right for the land and for the people who lived on it." 
He paused for a minute, reflecting on things I could only guess at. When he continued, his voice became softer and more wistful. 
"We spent many wonderful days together, walking over every bit of the forty acres, exploring the nearby Comaragh mountains, breathing in all the perfumes of spring meadows. All the days seemed to be fine and filled with sun." 
He sighed. "It was a very magical time. She constantly surprised me with her originality. She had many wonderful sayings which caught in a single phrase an exact mood. Almost like poetry. I remember one in particular, "May you get to ride with the swallow on its wing', which still to this day reminds me of the incredible, kaleidoscopic beauty of the quilted landscape of meadow, land and distant sky. She meant it not only as an invitation to enjoy the countryside from many angles but also, in a deeper way, to see things from many perspectives." 
His voice became a little thick and he stopped. I knew he would say no more. He didn't have to. I could fill in the rest of the story for myself. It was clear that the young Mallory had fallen and fallen hard for this 

magical creature. A summer of adventure and romance totally new to him. And if I was guessing right, probably a loss of virginity for both of them. But then, back in Dublin, and when seen from the perspective of a budding law career in a socially prominent city fIrm, she might not have looked so good. Or so he might have been persuaded to believe. And then there was Gillian, daughter of Charles Houghton, one of the founders of Langlands and Houghton, to whom he may have been offIcially or unoffIcially engaged at the time. Educated in Alex, one of them exclusive Protestant schools, and groomed, as we Dubs used to say, for one of the Foxrock crowd. So the summer romance was let die and fade into a distant memory. The career blossomed instead, followed by a marriage of convenience and profIt. And old story. 
To tell the truth, I didn't know much about Gillian other than she seemed to be good at everything a prominent barrister's wife should be good at, except perhaps in bed. There was a son, I recalled, but he was not spoken about much around the offIce. He had been simple, a hereditary sort of genetic defect, it was said. Spent most of his brief life in an institution and died in his early teens. I looked over again at Mallory who still had his gaze fIxed far into the distance. The loss of the son, no matter how simple he might have been, must have left a terrible hole in his life. I could see clearly what he was trying to tell me. A lonely man, alone because he had not the courage to follow his heart. Married to a woman he probably never loved. Perhaps they could not even console each other. I could just imagine the two of them, living in empty luxury in a grand iveagh covered walls house surrounded by manicured gardens, dead as doornails. Everything measured, everything controlled, no ribald or reckless behavior there. 
I thought again of Sheila and began to understand the man's envy. I also felt a surge of affection and sorrow for the man. And also I felt a great sadness because, in my gut, my guess was that, in all likelihood, were he faced with the same choice under similar but unfamiliar circumstances, he would make the same mistake again. 
Suddenly and violently, I swung the car towards the right ditch, gaining just enough control to avoid riding the most senior of senior partners tw-ough the thick and thorny growth of an Irish roadside hedge. Cursing freely, I pulled the Triumph back to the left side of the road and brought it to a halt. I immediately looked back to give a piece of my undiluted fury to the reason for our sudden departure from circumspect locomotion. She was standing there.right in the middle of the highway, about twenty yards or so back, and looking not quite sure as to what the commotion was all about. She half ran towards the car and,just as she reached us, her face broke out into what even through my fury I had to admit was one of the most radiant of smiles. 
"Can yer give me a lift?", she yells, , I have to meet a man in Enniscorthy town." 
The nerve of the feckin' girl. Nearly putting me and the boss in the ditch and now she wants a lift to bloody Enniscorthy. I glanced over at Mallory, expecting him to be livid, but he just looked slightly discombobulated and confused. 
"Are you all right, sir? I'm very sorry but I had to swerve to avoid hitting this young lady who was in the middle of the road." 
"Quite all right. Quite all right," he managed. 
Before I could get going,the cause of our near misadventure appeared on Mallory's side of the car, breathless, clear eyed and quite beautiful with her unkempt strawberry blond hair billowing up around her head. She must have been about eighteen or nineteen. Her radiant smile, full of innocence, again lit up her face.She addressed Mallory. 
"Can ye gentlemen take me to Enniscorthy? I have to meet a man." 
Just as I was designing a response for the creature, suffIciently vehement to vent my anger and suitably mild so as not to offend Mallory, he himself took the initiative. He opened the door, got out and ushered the lovely near disaster into the back seat where she sat forward so as not to miss out on any conversation. 
"A fIne day it is, sirs, it is an' all. And very good ofyees to stop," she sang out as Mallory climbed back into his passenger seat. 
She must have taken my stunned silence as an invitation to explain her situation in more detail. " It's me day off,' she confIded, well sort of, not really" 
She struggled again to make sense of her situation. 
"See on Saturdays, Mr. Jim goes to the pub and Mrs.Reilly goes to visit her sister at the nuns up in the convent of Mary and the Heart of Jesus, you know them. sir, an' when they're gone, I go to town." She giggled nervously before adding on a much more sombre note, 
"I must be back by fIve, 'cos ifI'm not there with the tae for Mr. Jim, he'll have too much drink taken and bate me,band," she shivered, "put me in the room with the cats." 

"But I don' mind the cats as much as I used to ,sir, when my grandman died and I had to go live with Mr. Jim. They said I had to, sir. It was that or the asylum or the nuns in Tipperary. They tell me I'm simple, sir, and that I can't go places on my own. But I do,' she chortled conspiratorially, " 'cos on Saturdays I snake off to Enniscorthy." 
"Christ," I thought to myself, we have a runaway from the Ferns lunatic asylum. What the hell are we going to do with her? And then a worse thought. She probably won't get out in Enniscorthy. We're stuck with her. Suddenly I had visions of very difficult discussions with the local Garda Siochanna trying to explain to them how we came to be in possession of this very beautiful but obviously very simple Cinderella who lived somewhere deep in the countryside with either the nuns or an institution or, if we were to believe her, with a very weird set of wicked stepparents. 
For the moment, I was nonplussed, completely out of my depth. I stole a glance across at Mallory to see how he was taking this turn of events and was surprised at his bemused countenance. He was enj oying the company! 
"Do you go to school,? " he asked. 
"Ah not any more, sir. Sure I did once, but it did me no good. The nuns said I wasn't for learnin' and was only good for mindin' the house. But my Mam and Grandman, sir, they taught me lots ofthings." 
"What sorts of things," asked Mallory. 
" Stories, sir. Me mam said that I'd learn best from stories and she told me the best of them, about the land and about animals, and about a great man who would come for me one day." 
Mallory turned to look at her. 
"Ill wager you can tell great stories, too," he said. She laughed. 
'That I can, sir. I can tell stories that would make your hearty leap into the sky and stories that would make you cry with the laughin'." 
Can you tell me one now?" Mallory asked. 
And this simple child of a woman began to tell him a story about the fairies finding this young baby girl on the shores of one of the Western Isles, washed up out of the sea it seemed from the land of the forever young" Tir na N'Og. And the fairies were absolutely enchanted with their find and took the child on all their adventures. But in the end, they had to give her up because, whereas they could make themselves invisible at the sight of an enemy, the young girl child could not. There were many wolves in the woods where they lived and wolves liked to eat pretty young girls. Indeed, many times they had to risk their own lives by reappearing in order to save the child. So, after several close escapes, the fairies decided to leave their charge with an old man who lived with his beautiful daughter all alone in the wood. The fairies knew them to be kind and have no kin of their own. So they left this special gift at the front door of the cottage. "And the old man and his daughter were absolutely delighted, no doubt," said Mallory, grinning. 
"Yes they were, sir, yes they were, and surprised too." She laughed and laughed and laughed. 
"And they were so happy with the child for years and years." 
And then she retold the story in song, her gentle and lilting voice echoing the charging white horses on the beach where the young girl child had been found, the fun and adventures with the fairies and the dangers of the woods and the happy sounds of the bonds between the girl child and the old man and his daughter. 
"It's the best story I've ever heard told." 
Mallory was clearly taken with the story and the girl and muttered, " Goriecke himself could not have done better." 
"Is there any more?" he asked. 
" There is, sir, but it's too sad for you because the old man's daughter did die. Too sad for today," she announced. 
Mallory seemed genuinely disappointed. 
"Jasus," I thought, " what's happening here? I have the simple child of some ill-fated union and the Head of Dublin's best law firm jabbering away in my car with neither a care in the world. And here we are approaching Enniscorthy where I've got to get her out." 
"So you're going to meet a man in Enniscorthy. We are nearly there." I said firmly to remind both of them that our acquaintance was to have a finite lifetime. 
"Where do you want to be dropped off?" 
She didn't seem to mind and offered no protest. 

"Oh anywhere in the town, sir. I look at the shops for a while and all them wonderful dresses on the ladies in the market, and then I go out the Ferns road to wait for him drive by in his big motor car. When he sees me, he always gives me a big wave." 
"This is the man whom your mother told you about? The one who is coming to collect you someday? ' She nodded. 
"One day, sir. One day, he will stop for me." There was real expectation in her voice. 
"You see, she told me before she died that one day a great man in a chariot would come for me and not to be afraid because he is a good man and would take care of me." 
"And where would you go with this man?" I asked. I could see the town of Enniscorthy just ahead. ""Sure, sir, wouldn't I go anywhere he took me," she answered with a faith that only the purest of hearts possess, relegating my question to the irrelevant concern of a hopeless cynic. 
"Sure, we'd go on great journeys, even to Dublin and maybe .... " 
She seemed to find it hard to come up with another place from the horizon of her adventures of the imagination. 
At this stage, she became quiet as if reflecting on all the possibilities. But she had left her head forward between the two of us, and curiously, despite the potential difficulty of our predicament, there was a simple and comfortable peace with her there with us in the car, this wide eyed, trusting and generous soul, for whom the world seemed to care so little, but who as yet seemed unscarred by this reality. 
We were then entering the streets on the outskirts of the town where the first little shops selling ice-cream and orange tanks of calor gas first appear. 
"I hope you get to meet your man today and that, someday soon, he will stop for you," I found myself not only saying but wishing. 
"But, I added with a mock warning nod, ifhe doesn't stop today, I hope you'll be back before Mr. Jim discovers you have gone." 
"Oh yes, sir. That I will." 
Instead of being apprehensive about any future consequence with Mr. Jim, she was at that moment happy at the thought of the day's adventure and breezed full confidence that in the end the man her Mam promised her would come. 
"I thank yees, both ofyees," she said as she squeezed past Mallory getting out of the car. She turned to look directly at Mallory. 
" You have the eyes of a most kind man, sir." 
"Goodbye and good luck to you, my dear," he answered clasping both of her hands in his. He looked like he wanted to give her something. A couple of quid, I thought. But he didn't. "And wherever you are going, sir, may you too have a good day. ' 
I smiled a wistful smile as I let in the clutch. Partly with relief, certainly. But with the relief came another emotion. I was also a little sad. As the car began to move, she called out a last goodbye. 
"May you go safe, sir, and as me mam used to say, 'may you get to ride with the swallow on her wing'." The human brain is a funny thing. At the highest level, it works like a simple computer, in sequence where one stimulus triggers the next down the line. But deeper down, it operates in parallel mode, by association, seeking to fit apparently unrelated bits of information into a recognizable pattern. Suddenly it was clear to me why this lovely girl's farewell was familiar. 
I looked across at Mallory. But he was away ahead of me. He sat there rigid with his face clenched and his cheeks were already wet. 
"Will I stop the car, sir?" 
He didn't seem to hear. 
"Mr. Mallory, sir, do you want us to go back?"