Chapter 6: Ceili Night

On Friday night, Fiona marched the whole class to a pub in Salthill and told us we were not leaving until we could dance.

The place was a long low room with a stone floor and a turf fire.

A band of five sat in the corner on kitchen chairs, with a fiddle, a squeezebox, a bodhrán and two men who did nothing but grin.

"Set dancing," Fiona said. "Eight to a set. You'll hate it for twenty minutes and then you won't."

"I can't dance," I said.

"Nobody can. That's the secret. Go."

The retired German in the orange anorak had already taken my hand.

He was seventy-one and lethal.

"Left foot, Leah! No, the other left!"

The first figure, I crashed into the nurse.

The second, I went the wrong way around a boy of nineteen, who patiently turned me back by the elbow.

The third, I stepped on the German's foot and he yelped and said it was fine, it was his bad one.

I laughed so hard I had to stop.

That was the first time I noticed.

It had been a very long time since I had laughed out loud with my mouth open.

"Again," I said.

We started over.

The fiddler leaned toward the dancers and played faster, and the room began to stamp on the floor.

The squeezebox pushed in underneath, and a woman at the bar cheered every time a set came apart and put itself back together.

The tune was a jig.

I knew it.

It was one Danny used to play on the back steps in Worcester when he was fifteen, a little flat, with his tongue between his teeth.

My feet found the pattern.

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