McCarthy's Bar: A Journey of Discovery in Ireland (18 page)

A Buddhist retreat centre seems like a good antidote to the excesses of last night. It’s unlikely I’ll attain Nirvana, but there’s a fighting chance it might keep me out of the pub. When I arrived I was welcomed by a mild-mannered, smiley man with a faraway look in his eye, as though he were watching a particularly pleasing spider on the wall behind my head. He explained that the people in the centre itself were on year-long silent retreat, but there was a hostel, an old converted farmhouse that was open to anyone.

I was early enough to claim the only private room, for twelve quid a night. It’s finished in polished wood, like a chalet, with a hand-made double bed and wardrobe. There’s a book in my pocket called
A Doctor’s War
by Aidan MacCarthy. I have hazy recollections of someone passing it across the bar to me last night at the author’s daughter’s birthday party. I lie on the bed while the weather runs amok outside, and finish it by dusk. It’s a jaw-dropping account of life as an RAF doctor during the Second World War. He survived Dunkirk, capture by the Japanese in the Pacific, and being held prisoner in Nagasaki the day the atom bomb dropped, before cruising home in triumph aboard the
Queen Mary
, only to find his brother, a parish priest in London, had been killed in the last bombing raid of the war.

The book throws intriguing new light on life in the prison camps of the Pacific: ‘The Japanese and Korean guards had no scruples about masturbating in public, either solo or in dual operation. This form of sexual relief did not necessarily mean they were homosexual.’

You’d have your suspicions, though, wouldn’t you? I’ve decided to pay a lot more attention to the background action next time
Bridge on the River Kwai
is on the TV.

Around seven, I go downstairs to make an austere sandwich from some depressing ingredients I’ve picked up in town. A scary-looking man, gaunt but muscular, with a close-cropped scalp covered in tattoos, is sitting on the sofa reading.

‘Hello,’ I chirp breezily, thinking a bit of chat might help obliterate the haunting image of oriental prison guards tugging in tandem. He just stares at me, then turns back to his book.

At the kitchen end of the communal room two couples are serving dinner—two Spanish lads in their early twenties, and their Spanish and French girlfriends. Spotting my melancholy pot of hummus and half a cellophane-wrapped cucumber, they invite me to dine with them. Just like that. Haven’t even heard me speak. Then they top this by giving me the last of the bottle of red wine they’re sharing. It’s a simple, delicious meal of linguine with a fresh tomato sauce, and green salad dressed with olive oil. To follow, the French woman produces about a third of a Camembert, enough for a few slivers each. It’s sensational.

‘Did you buy this here or in France?’

‘Oh, in France.’

I try to explain my theory that the French and Italians keep all the good food for themselves, and send us all the substandard crap, only with the same labels on. I’m not sure they understand, but they’ve been delightful company.

And then it strikes me that they must be sleeping in the dormitories, which are single sex. Young love deserves better than that. The least I can do after their generosity is offer them my room, so they can cuddle each other while the storm rages outside. I could take one of the beds in the dorm with Tattooed Scary Man.

‘Goodnight,’ I say, and shoot off up to my room before anyone else has the same idea. I mean, it wasn’t as if they’d laid on a pudding or anything. Pudding might just have swung it.

Next morning they’re down at breakfast before me. Tattooed Scary Man is outside on the clifftop lawn, stripped to the waist, doing vigorous early morning trained killer exercises. As far as I can tell from a quick headcount, he hasn’t taken anyone out during the hours of darkness. It’s around eight thirty. A card on the notice-board says there’s a meditation class at nine fifteen each morning in the Shrine Room, open to anyone. A young Australian guy I said hello to yesterday afternoon is sweeping the kitchen floor, so I ask if the meditation would be suitable for novices. He tries to conceal his contempt, but fails.

‘I guess. However—inexperienced—you might be.’

Right.

‘Are you here to study, then?’

He stops brushing and gives a big sigh. ‘Study isn’t the right word.’

Oops. Sorry.

‘I’m here to do more practice.’

He resumes broom duties. Clearly I’m a right nuisance, so I decide to bombard him with small talk.

‘What part of Australia are you from, then?’

‘Melbourne.’ Sweep sweep, sweep sweep.

‘Really? Melbourne’s one of my favourite cities.’

He looks at me like I’m sick in the head. I give up and go for a shower.

There are two shower rooms next to each other on the ground floor, both empty. I go into one, and walk around barefoot for a bit in pools of other people’s second-hand water, before realising I haven’t brought a towel. So what’s the etiquette? Do they provide them? At twelve quid a night I shouldn’t think so. And I’m not about to go and ask my Aussie mate and look like a complete loser. There are two towels hanging by the sink. Are they communal or privately owned? By Scary Man, perhaps? In any case, they’re moist and warm, ideal for cultivating rare fungus and malignant bacteria; one of them also features an impressive collection of small dark curly hairs. In the airing cupboard I find a crisp piece of cloth that had been a towel in a former life, but has since graduated to plumbing maintenance. I dry myself on my T-shirt, put it on a radiator to dry, and head off to meditation.

Aussie has got there before me. He’s framed in one of the floor-to-ceiling windows that look out on the Atlantic. There’s an elaborate and colourful altar in one corner; a raised dais with some kind of lavishly upholstered throne; and assorted embroidered prayer cushions and moulded plastic chairs. The floor and walls are varnished wood.

‘Is there anything I need to know?’

This really makes his day.

‘You could take…a mat, I guess, or maybe a…plastic chair…would be better for you. It just depends oh…whether…’

He just tails off and stops talking in mid-sentence, like he can’t be bothered dealing with me because I’m not sufficiently spiritual; or maybe that’s paranoid and says more about me than him. I’d say, though, that a bit more contact with the Irish, and a bit less contemplation of his inner self, would give him better value for his Qantas round-the-world Apex supersaver. Mind you, he probably knows I think that, which is why he despised me in the first place.

The class is taken by a German woman of about thirty. There are just the three of us. She gives little readings from
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
, and, for my benefit, explains it’s better to keep eyes open as I look ahead. Apparently I shouldn’t be trying to think of anything, but I shouldn’t be trying to think of nothing either. Every few minutes she tings some finger-cymbals for us to take a little break, then tings them again for us to continue. It feels good. In my peripheral vision I get glimpses of a fishing boat bobbing below on turquoise sunlit water. There are three ponies grazing on scrub on the precipitous hillside. Mizen Head looms across the water. I feel myself slipping off into a place of deep spiritual calm, which is disturbed at regular intervals by worries about my exhaust.

When we finish after forty-five minutes, Aussie blanks me and leaves. I head out for the Tank.

Either a bird has flown up my exhaust, or someone’s put one there; there’s no other explanation.

I’ve pulled in at a scenic-view lay-by halfway along the road back to Castletownbere. The tuba-like tones of the exhaust seem deeper and louder. If I’m the young Australian Buddhist, then the exhaust is me: it’s getting on my nerves. I’ve never understood how cars work, beyond a long-standing conviction that petrol is crucial; so when it comes to identifying faults and fixing them, I haven’t got a clue. However, I do realise that it’s important for a man to be able to display the body language of the DIY mechanic if he is to command the respect of his peers, and avoid being mocked, or set upon with baseball bats; so I’m quite capable of giving a tyre a sharp tap with the toe-end of my boot, or saying, ‘Lift up the bonnet,’ and shaking my head pessimistically. Masculine protocol now requires that, without having the faintest idea what I’m looking for, I must lie on the ground and look under the car.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I’m able to diagnose the fault immediately. The end section of exhaust pipe, though shiny and uncorroded, has sheared, or been sheared, off; protruding from the rectangular box to which the pipe had been attached is a swathe of thick black feathers. There’s a dead bird stuck up my exhaust.

I give the feathers a tentative tug, like a Korean prison guard who’s new to the job. I’m afraid that the rotting carrion, decomposing in the poisonous fumes, will come away in my hand; but it won’t budge. The feathers are stiff and matted, and make my hand filthy. I seem to be holding the wing of some sort of blackbird or rook, whose large body must be wedged inside the exhaust box, the wrong side of a one-and-a-half-inch hole. How on earth am I going to get it out? And how the hell did it get in there in the first place?

As the Tank thunders down the hillside to Castletownbere, I consider the options. Either the bird just took a wrong turning and flew up the exhaust with tremendous force; or someone put it there. But who? The Italian bikers? Perhaps that’s why they were laughing when I woke. But why would they do that? Revenge for British taste in soft furnishings, perhaps; or punishment for putting tinned pineapple and chicken tikka on pizzas? Possible, but it doesn’t seem likely. I suppose Mr O’Sullivan could have done it for inflicting structural damage on the Virgin at half five in the morning. Or maybe I’d been targeted by some trainee youth wing of the IRA who’d seen the British registration plates on the car and, unaware of my Irish ancestry, had lashed out at British imperialism by, I dunno, sticking a dead bird up it.

This paranoid nonsense is all going through my head as I reach town. There are two garages by the main square. I park by the nearest and go in. Suddenly I realise who’s done it. Tattooed Scary Man! He’s obviously using the hostel as some kind of hiding place while he conducts a guerrilla campaign against society. He started by staring me out and refusing to speak. Now he’s ramming dead wildlife up my pipework.

‘Can I help you?’

A big red-faced man in his forties, wearing oily navy-blue overalls, is facing me. He’s got an assistant half his age, with a squint.

‘What? Oh, I’ve got a Volvo outside…’

There’s no easy way to say this.

‘What’s the problem?’

‘It’s…there’s ehm…there’s a dead bird up the exhaust.’

The assistant snorts so hard that a bubble of snot appears from his nostril and bursts on his lip. He wipes it with a freckly forearm. His boss tries to glare at him but only manages a smile.

‘Here, give us the keys, I’ll take a look at it for you. Come back in half an hour?’

The local school has just broken for lunch and the street is full of teenagers eating chips and chocolate, in some cases simultaneously. Clusters of lads are making a big production out of having a furtive smoke. They’re lurking outside phone boxes and by the public toilets on the waterfront, cigarettes in hand, rehearsing for the day when it’ll be their turn to slouch outside the church porch ingesting nicotine during mass.

I nip into a mini-mart to buy a paper. There’s a flier in the window advertising a raffle. ‘First Prize—Pilgrimage to Lourdes. Second Prize—Bottle of Brandy.’ I head for MacCarthy’s, order a half, and hide in the snug with my paper. I’m immediately spotted by Mrs MacCarthy Senior, who does what any self-respecting Irish woman of her generation would do, and makes me four rounds of ham and cheese sandwiches. Auntie Annie would have made eight, just to be on the safe side.

When I leave, the kids are on their way back to school, and the blue sky has turned overcast with an ominous build-up of dark cloud out to sea. With any luck they’ll have it out by now. Will they have had to take the exhaust off, or do they perhaps have some kind of special tongs or forceps to poke up the pipe and pull birds out, bit by bit if necessary? It could get quite messy. There’s a lot more to being a mechanic than I imagined.