Mr Carnovan's Little Shop of Dreams, Part 1a of 5

‘Daaaaaaaa . . .’ The little boy flew out the door and over all three steps, landing with a tremendous thump as both feet hit the walkway. He rocked back and forth until he regained his balance and then ran through the front garden to the street and threw his arms around the legs of the man who had just stepped out of a taxi. ‘You’re back.’

‘And who are you?’ The man sat his suitcase down on the pavement. He stared at the boy with bewilderment and stroked his chin. ‘Do I know you?’

The child giggled, ‘It’s me, it’s me, Michael.’

‘No, you can’t be. My son is only this tall.’ The man bent forward at the waist and held his palm flat at the level of the child’s shoulders. ‘He’s nowhere near as tall as you are.’

‘I’ve grown.’ Michael stretched his arms up, asking to be picked up.

‘Hmm, you’re sure you’re Michael, and not some impostor who’s taking my son’s place?’

‘No, no! I’m not a pasta. . . . But are you sure you’re my father? He’s much taller than you.’ Michael held his hand up as high as he could reach and danced around his father.

‘Hmm, it’s a problem, isn’t it? Well, there’s only one way to find out.’ His father reached down and put his hands under the child’s arms. He grunted and groaned, as though straining to lift a heavy weight. ‘All right, let go of the ground. How can I pick you up and hug you if won’t let go of the ground?’

‘I’m not. I’m not. See.’ The child hopped around, raising one knee and then the other high into the air to show that his feet were not stuck to the ground.

The man tried again, screwing his face up with exertion. ‘What have you been eating, Michael? Dinosaur eggs? You’re getting so big.’

Michael gleefully adopted that suggestion. ‘Yes! Every morning for breakfast. Two! I eat two dinosaur eggs for breakfast.’ He screamed with laughter.

‘Well, since you’ve gotten too big to lift, I’ll have to bend down to you.’ The man knelt down and hugged his son. Then he wrapped one arm around Michael’s waist and stood up suddenly, so that the child’s legs hung down behind him and his chest and arms drooped down in front. With his other hand, Michael’s father picked up his suitcase and then walked toward the open door of his house, where his wife leaned against the door regarding the two of them with affection. It would be hard to choose who was enjoying the joke more, her husband or their son.

When the man reached the door, he set his son down and then he and his wife embraced. Michael briefly watched the two of them kissing and then looked away. He began twisting his body back and forth at the waist and punching the air with his small fists. He hummed one of the wordless songs he had made up. His father turned back to him and said, ‘Michael, can you take my bag upstairs?’

Michael nodded his head vigorously. He grabbed the handle of the bag with both hands and lifted it up. He put his right knee under the bag and pushed it up toward his chest until he was able to put both arms under it. He had to shift from side to side and place each foot down carefully as he climbed the steps. As he started up the staircase to the upper floor, he heard his father say, ‘He’s growing up so fast.’ That made him feel very proud. He tried to stand a bit taller and to carry the suitcase as if it were light as a feather. And he found that it wasn’t heavy at all, not for a boy who eats two dinosaur eggs for breakfast every day.

******

‘Would you like me to tell you a story?’ Michael’s father waited to speak until his son had finished his prayers and stood up.

‘Yes, please.’ Michael climbed into his bed and pushed his feet under the sheet all the way down to the bottom and pulled the covers up to his chin. There had been a special dinner to mark his father’s return. There had even been one of his favourite treats, chocolate ice cream. His father had praised him for eating everything on his plate, even the peas, which he really didn’t like very much, and he received a much larger serving of ice cream than he was usually given. After watching the half-hour of television he was allowed on weekday nights, he had then bathed himself and put on his pyjamas. Bathing himself was a recent change, one that he took as proof that he was growing up. The privilege had been part of a bargain with his mother. He had to hang his clothes up and keep his own bedroom neat, and he had to remember to say his prayers without being prompted.

‘Your mother says that you’ve been having nightmares.’

Michael instantly felt guilty. He knew that big boys didn’t have nightmares, but he did have them, frightening dreams about being chased by ogres who wanted to gobble him up in one bite and about falling from the roofs of tall buildings and about being lost and alone. The only way he could escape was to wake himself up, and then he would lie there trembling and trying not to cry. The nightmares felt so real. The Murphy would come into his bedroom and hop up on his bed and try to comfort him, but even the cat’s purring couldn’t drown out his sobbing, no matter how quiet he tried to be. And then his mother would push the door all the way open so that the light from the hallway shone into every corner, and she would pull the chair up and sit beside his bed and hold his hand and stroke his head, and tell him that it was just a dream. Nothing to worry about, it wasn’t real. It was all in his mind.

But the dreams were real. He would have liked to deny that he was having nightmares, so that his father wouldn’t think that he was being a coward and a little boy. But even the sound of the word made the breath freeze in his chest and his stomach lurch. As soon as his father said the word, the bad dreams crept into the room and hid in the dark corners, waiting in the shadows for his father to leave and Michael to fall asleep so that they could come out and crawl into Michael’s mind, where they were all too real.

But Michael also knew that good boys didn’t lie. ‘Sometimes,’ he admitted. He plucked a bit of the sheet between his fingers and worried at it. He hoped that his admission would not bring one of his father’s lectures.

‘I brought you a present from Dunfanaghy that will cure those nightmares. You grandmother bought it for you. So tomorrow you must write her a thank-you letter. I’ll help you write it and address the envelope for you.’

Michael shook his head yes and sat up a bit in bed. His father wasn’t holding anything that looked like a present.

His father stepped outside the door to Michael’s bedroom and picked a box off the hall table. It was a small box, a cube about three inches on a side. It was a dark shiny blue in colour, with a lighter blue ribbon tied around it. Large silver stars pasted on the sides of the box held the ribbon in place. ‘You can hold it for now, but you can’t open it. First you must listen to the story that comes with the box.’

Michael nodded and held out his hand for the box. ‘But it’s light. There’s nothing in it.’

‘Would your grandmother give you an empty box? Shame on you, Michael Orrin, for thinking such a thing.’

Michael nodded. ‘I’m sorry.’ He knew his father wasn’t really angry with him. He was just teasing, like earlier when he had pretended not to recognise Michael. It was just a game they were playing. He quietly hefted the box again, moving it only just enough to test the weight. It was empty, he was certain of that, but he didn’t say anything.

‘Turn it over. There’s a message for you on the bottom.’

Michael twisted the box around until the writing on the label was upright. He stumbled over most of the words, sounding out as many of the letters as he could. ‘Made Just for Master Míchaél Odhrán at Mr Carnoughbhain’s Little Shop of Dreams. Lansboighy, Dún Na nGall, Éire.’

His father took the box and tilted it so that he could read it. ‘Made Just for Master Michael Orrin at Mr Carnovan’s Little Shop of Dreams, Lansby, Donegal, Ireland.’

‘The words are spelt all funny.’

‘That’s because they’re the proper Irish spellings. It’s filled with Irish magic, and it wouldn’t work half as well if Mr Carnovan used those cut-off, unimaginative spellings we favour nowadays, would it?’

Michael shook his head no. He had great respect for magic, especially Irish magic. ‘Where is Lansby?’

‘Well, that’s part of the story you have to listen to.’ His father handed him back the box. ‘Now, don’t open it. You can hold it, but don’t open it. You’ll soon understand why.’ His father pulled the chair away from the wall and sat down next to Michael’s bed.

‘Now, you asked where Lansby is. Well, many people have asked that same question, Michael, for Lansby is a difficult place to find. The village appears on no map. You could take the biggest map of Donegal you could find and take out the strongest magnifying glass in all the world and look and look and look and still you would be no wiser how to get to Lansby. And the locals like it that way. They want to be left alone, and they long ago switched all the fingerposts that should point to Lansby so that they direct the ignorant to Maghum instead. And since as a destination Maghum is much superior to Lansby, few travellers complain of the deception. Or for that matter, either care or know that they have been deceived. “Oh,” they say to their friends, “we had ever so lovely a time at Lansby, or, as the locals call it, Maghum. And it’s such an easy drive. Just take the N56 east out of Dunfanaghy and drive straight into Sheephaven Bay and just follow the road along the bottom of the Bay until you come out the other side, and there you are in Lansby.” Of course, the Maghumies are quite happy to go along with the trick. As long as the tourists spend their money in their village, the inhabitants of that seaside resort care not one skittle, not a jot or a tittle, not even a fine blue tiddlywink, that the visitors believe themselves to be in Lansby.

‘Not even the postman can find Lansby. You remember Mrs Gilsenan who runs the post office at Dunfanaghy. Some day you must ask her to show you all the letters she has for people in Lansby. Every morning Mr Nugent, the postman, goes out in his van with a stack of letters for Lansby, and every evening he returns. And when he does, he dumps all the letters for Lansby in a special bin. There are so many letters that they spill out of the bin and pile up on the floor. There are so many that it’s been years since Mrs Gilsenan last saw the back door to the post office. A mountain of letters like a great pyramid. All the letters that never get answered, all the postcards with their pretty pictures of white sand beaches and palm trees and their “wish you were here, having a lovely time” that never get read. All of them end up in that bin of undelivered mail for Lansby.

‘ “Not found it again, Mr Nugent?” Mrs Gilsenan asks.

‘ “No, Mrs Gilsenan, I have not,” replies Mr Nugent, “I am thinking that none but the devil knows the road to Lansby. And as far as I am concerned, he may keep that knowledge to his self.”

‘Now, only those with great courage and persistence ever find Lansby. I know you know what courage is, Michael, but do you know what persistence is?’

‘It means to keep at something until you are finished.’

‘Yes, precisely.’ His father nodded in approval and continued with his story. ‘Now, even the inhabitants of Lansby sometimes forget where it is. Indeed, I have seen this with my own eyes, Michael. Sometimes a man from Lansby comes to Dunfanaghy to go shopping, for Lansby is but a small place and it lacks many things. And when he gets finished with his shopping and all his bags are overflowing with big yellow cheeses and sardines in red tins and good strong brown rope to hang the washing from and pens that never run out of black and green and blue ink and a bone with a bit of meat on it that he got from the butcher for the soup pot, he will stand there in the market square at Dunfanaghy looking first to the east, and then to the west, and then to the south and perhaps even to the north, although everyone knows that there’s only your grandmother’s house north of Dunfanaghy. The poor befuddled man scratches his noggin and stares in every direction for a hint of the road that leads to Lansby. Many an unfortunate Lansbian wanders the hills of Donegal for days searching for his home, asking every man, woman, or child he meets to point out the road.

‘And if that were all the story to be told, it would be quite a minor tale indeed. But Lansby is where Mr Carnovan has made his home and where he has his Little Shop of Dreams. How Mr Carnovan came to settle in Lansby is a long story, and I shall tell it to you another time. For now he is there, and that is all that needs to be said at this point.

continues