McCarthy's Bar: A Journey of Discovery in Ireland (29 page)

My lapse of concentration—or fear, if you prefer to call it that—means I’m still struggling to loosen the wheel nuts when I hear the voice.

Why don’t ya hit it with a rock?’

A tiny little lady has suddenly materialised at my side. She’s wearing an apron, and tartan mules, and is about sixty years old. Perhaps she’s crossed over from the spirit world. I can’t see where else she could have appeared from.

‘Nervous of the cows, are ya? Ah, they’re just interested. They don’t have a vertical take-off capability so you should be safe enough. I live in the bungalow there above, and I saw you struggling and I wondered if you were needing any help. You need to hit them nuts with a rock, or will I get ye a hammer?’

I tell her I’m sure I’ll have it free in a minute.

‘Didn’t I have a puncture myself only last week in my son’s car? He’s gone to America. Philadelphia first, then New York, then just travelling around. He loves it over there. But wasn’t his spare punctured as well? Isn’t that a terrible trick to play on your own mother? Eighty pounds I had to spend. He’s hoping to get a green card so he can work over there. I’ll be sorry to see him go, but you can’t hold the young people back, can you? Are ye sure I can’t get you a hammer? Would you like to use the telephone? Will I make you a cup of tea? Come over and wash your hands when you’ve finished.’

I give a yank on the wheel brace, which frees the stubborn nut. When I look again there’s no sign of her anywhere. Strangely, the cows are all 100 yards away too, and I didn’t see them go either. There’s clearly some kind of mystical faerie Tír-na-nÓggish vibe going on between them and her. I tighten the nuts and lower the Tank to the ground in a flurry of self-congratulatory testosterone. I’ve got oil on my hands now, and dirty fingernails, just like men with proper jobs. I go up the lane to the Enchanted Bungalow to wash my hands.

There’s no doubt that, in general, people are much less guarded in Ireland than in England, especially in the west. Rather than putting on a polite front, they don’t mind you seeing and hearing the stuff that goes on, so in my experience an ordinary day usually turns out to be more colourful than an ordinary day back home. Little things happen to mark moments out from the humdrum.

I’m thinking this as I walk out of the bathroom to find the tiny lady pointing a banana at me. There’s a moment of uneasy silence, then she says, ‘Would you like a banana?’

‘Er, no thanks, I’m fine.’

‘A biscuit then? You’ll have a biscuit? And a cup of tea?’

While the tea brews, she takes out the biscuits, and apologises for the fact they’re in an old tin. Then she points out some other old tins on the shelves and apologises for them as well.

‘So is it England you’re from? I was there twice. I didn’t like it much.’

I tell her my family are from Cork.

‘Didn’t I meet a woman from Cork in the town this morning? Loaded with shopping she was and she’d lost her car, well, not lost really so much as couldn’t remember where she’d put it, and there are five car parks in the town now. So we retraced her steps and we found it eventually. I’m told Cork is very nice. Cars can be a problem though, can’t they? I was driving my daughter’s boy home at about eleven o’clock at night once, in the dark, and there was a car just sitting right close behind us with the headlights full on, so when it passed at a roundabout my grandson shook his fist at them and didn’t they go berserk? Pulled alongside shouting at us, and tried to force us off the road and chased us and tried to trap us down a narrow lane. Sure, we were terrified, so when I got home I went to the garda because he’s a friend of mine, or of my husband’s at any rate, but I know him, and he traced the car number. Turned out it was a local fella and there’s me thinking it must be, y’know, itinerants. This fella comes from a lovely family but that’s how he’s turned out anyway. And a few weeks later didn’t his brother fall off a balcony in the Canary Islands and kill himself? It’s the poor parents I feel sorry for, and her with brittle bones. Will ya have milk and sugar?’

It’s no coincidence that the style of writing known as stream of consciousness was pioneered by Irish authors. Critics have missed the point, however, in regarding it as a radical, experimental reaction against literary convention. For many Irish people, the avant-garde monologue is the most commonplace form of everyday speech; and a very liberating thing it is too. Like the best kind of journey, it’s always liable to veer off in entirely unexpected directions and lead you to destinations you might never otherwise have considered.

So by the time I’ve finished my tea she’s gone off on sustained, inventive riffs about Kosovo, and why she doesn’t like anchovies, and the theological ramifications of Sinead O’Connor being ordained a priest—‘When Bono becomes Pope, he can make her a bishop’—before explaining the entire history of the County Clare hurling team. Apparently they had decades of failure, followed by a small amount of recent success. Remarkable, really. By the time we’ve finished the second pot, I’ve already mentally postponed the drive to Galway to another day. It’s no surprise that the Spanish concept of
mañana
is said to be too urgent-sounding to be satisfactorily translated into Irish.

I thank her profusely for the tea and hospitality, which isn’t really what you expect when you get a puncture. As we stand at the gate she turns to me.

‘I’d say you feel very relaxed in this country. It suits you. Are ye perhaps thinking of coming to live over here?’

‘Maybe.’

‘There’s plenty who do, you know. Plenty of Germans. Now, I’ve got nothing against them, but the first thing they do is put great big fences up everywhere, then two years later they sell up and go back home, because no one’s hurrying except them, and it seems to get on their nerves. Well, good luck to you now. I’ve enjoyed our conversation. No one ever had time for a chat when I was in England. Mind you, I was in Epsom. Dreadful place. Were you ever there…’

Her anti-Epsom diatribe gradually fades out as I edge towards the car. When I turn to wave, she’s disappeared; the cows too are nowhere to be seen.

‘Well, we played a reggae record the other day, and as it was sunny for a while earlier today, I think I’ll play another one.’ The perpetual radio phone-in has been interrupted without warning by a music programme. My attention, though, is on the road signs, on the off-chance that they’ll give some indication of where I am. At the moment, that doesn’t seem likely. ‘Tom Duffy’s Irish Circus’, they say. ‘Fourteen-foot snakes.’ ‘Crocodiles.’ Then suddenly, without warning, I’m at a junction with the main Limerick-Galway road. To my left, the sign assures me, is Galway, but it’s a very long way; but to the right, it teases, is Bunratty, and that’s no distance at all. I turn towards Bunratty to get my tyre fixed and have a late lunch. Since refusing one in the bathroom doorway, I’ve been craving bananas.

It’s not until I’ve bought a bunch and dropped off the tyre and taken a walk that I recall Bunratty is one of the top tourist destinations in the country. It’s just a few miles from Shannon airport, which means that coachloads of people who were in the Scottish Highlands yesterday, and have to be in a Belgian chocolate factory tomorrow, can come and experience the real Ireland for a day, without having to waste time driving around looking for it. There’s a castle and a Folk Park, and an old thatched pub called Durty Nellie’s. I have a dim recollection of coming here as a teenager when we were visiting my aunt and uncle and cousins in Limerick, though there was no Folk Park then. The whole country shared that job in those days, but no one had thought to sell tickets.

It’s almost four o’clock, the deadline for admission; but I have an irrational hatred of guided tours, historical re-enactments and anything themed. I can’t stand cruises either, but that isn’t relevant at the moment. Still, the guy said to come back for the tyre around five; so why not confront my prejudices for an hour? If I’m on the road by six I can get halfway to Galway, then stop somewhere for the night. I park among the coaches and family cars and join the nearest queue.

Bunratty Castle is a well-preserved, crenellated stone hulk on a creek of the Shannon estuary just a few miles north of Limerick. Though it featured in the Anglo-Norman troubles of the thirteenth century, most of the structure that survives dates from the fifteenth. I push my way through a coachload of amorous teenagers from Limoges and make my way into an impressive baronial hall. A guided tour is just beginning, so I latch on. The guide, a flame-haired young Irish woman, is extremely animated, but it’s hard to catch her accent. She’s been talking for the best part of two minutes before it dawns on me that she’s speaking French. I’m deeply embarrassed. In France I usually recognise it almost immediately. I try to cover up my mistake by adopting the patronising smile of someone who already knows this bit, and slope off. But the stairwells and passageways are a congested collision of multilingual day-trippers. I haven’t been processed through an Attraction like this since Graceland, but at least Graceland was funny. You’re expecting a mansion, but you get an early Barrett executive home with zebra-print lino.

Outside in the Folk Park there’s a collection of traditional thatched stone-floored cottages, showing the way of life of the small farmer, the blacksmith, and so on. They’re kitted out with old beds and cupboards, and a collection of holy pictures that range in tone from the fairly gloomy to the deeply scary. These would have hung in almost every Irish home until 1961, when the Vatican had them replaced by pictures of President Kennedy. Despite myself, I find the cottages quite atmospheric; they’re intended to be nineteenth century, but they’re not far removed from my recollections of Auntie Annie’s house in Dunmanway. The smell of smouldering turf compounds the effect. At any moment a wizened little lady dressed in black could leap out and start force-feeding me ham and potatoes.

Suddenly, a woman does appear in the doorway, but she’s unencumbered by cold meats or spuds, so she can’t be a relative. She has a friend who’s smoking a cigarette. They’re smartly turned out and in their fifties. I’m lurking in the shadows in the corner where they can’t see me, fascinated to find out what they’ll make of it.

They gaze fixedly in silence for what seems like an eternity. Then she takes a long, luxuriant, career-smoker’s draw on her cigarette and says, ‘
Ce n’est pas grand.
’

‘
Non. C’est petit.
’

And that’s it. They turn and go.

There’s laughter coming from the cottage opposite. A small knot of people are gathered in the doorway, and there’s the sound of raised voices from inside. I push my way through and find three actors sitting round a kitchen table drinking and conducting a lively discussion, or possibly a violent argument, in the Irish language. The assembled Euro-trippers are gazing at them with the same benign fascination they bestow on traditional musicians in pubs. The performers are good; young men in their twenties, there’s a real commitment about what they’re doing, even if none of us can understand it. They’re dressed simply, in dark suits and ties, as if in the scenario they’re enacting they’ve just come back from church. Hang on, though. They’re wearing watches, and one of them’s just lit up a filter-tip with a Zippo lighter.

‘Ah, come on, lads, give me a break. I’ve asked you once already.’

There’s a security man standing in the doorway. He has an easy, non-confrontational manner not usually associated with policemen who’ve taken early retirement.

‘We’ll be closing soon anyway. Come on now, the pub’s open above if you’re still wanting a drink.’

The baffled tourists part and let the lads through. Suddenly, it’s a theatre without a show. So who were they?

‘I’d say they’re down from Connemara. Course they speak beautiful Irish up there.’

‘Do they work here then?’

‘Ah no, they’re just down for a wedding at the hotel opposite the castle there. Had a few drinks, then came over here for the craic. Pretending to be exhibits, like. Just having a bit of a laugh with the tourists. I’d say they meant no harm.’

Beyond the cottages sits a reconstruction of a traditional Irish main street, which seems a bit pointless when the country’s stuffed with the real thing. There are a few shops, a schoolroom, and just the one pub, which seems hopelessly inauthentic. All around me people are taking photographs of each other outside the kind of shopfronts you’ll find in any small town in Ireland. I stroll up the street, a blur in the back of all their holiday snaps, and head for the school.

There are separate entrances for boys and girls. Inside the classroom, rows of traditional desks are packed with tourists pretending to be school kids. In front of them, a severe-looking sixty-year-old teacher is pointing at Irish words, chalked on a board. As I walk in I realise too late there’s nowhere for me to sit. He spots me, and is on to me quicker than a Christian Brother’s blackboard duster.

‘You, boy. Where have you been?’

There’s a ripple of laughter, then all eyes are on me, glad it’s not them. I know it’s silly, but I’m embarrassed. This is exactly how the Brothers made me feel on more occasions than I care to remember.