McCarthy's Bar: A Journey of Discovery in Ireland (47 page)

I suppose there’s a lesson here for me. Where’s the incentive to be frugal with life’s pleasures, to save up the pages in your book for later, if you’re going to be plunged into the darkened abyss at some arbitrary hour? If life is a book, then read it while you can. Don’t save up any pages for later, because there might not be one.

Nothing for it then. I’ll have to go to sleep.

22.20 Day Two
Can’t get to sleep.

22.30 Day Two
Well this is great, isn’t it? I’m tired and aching like I’ve been awake for a month, being dragged face down over cobbled streets behind a turbo-charged Land-Rover driven by Mad Frankie Fraser—but can I get to sleep? No. I’m just lying here, staring at the metal grille underneath Seamus’s mattress, or else at the big beefy bloke across to my left, who still hasn’t budged or made a sound. Maybe he’s playing possum, and taking everything in. He could be an informer, waiting his moment to see if anyone has a sly snack, or goes to sleep with their hands inside the bedclothes, so he can report them to the Enforcer first thing in the morning. I try counting sheep, but I don’t think that’s ever worked for anyone, has it?

I’ll count Paisleys instead. Little Ian Paisleys, jumping over a stile. Oh, hang on. He’s refusing. Won’t jump it. Won’t even discuss it. Right. Better get the cattle prod then. Whoah, there he goes! And another! Three Paisleys. Four. Christ, you wouldn’t want to be stuck in a lift with all of them, would you. Five. Six…

06.20 Day Three
Woke just the once in the night, with a start, to a terrifying sound. Took several seconds before I remembered I was in a room full of battered and exhausted religious fanatics. Forty-seven malnourished men can make a surprising amount of noise. Never again do I expect to experience Dolby sensurround quadrophonic Nicam digital snoring of such exceptional quality. There was none of that horrid, gruff, pig-like snorting, because no one here was drunk; but all other tones were represented, all pitches, all time signatures and notes—breathy, chesty, nasal, menacing, wheezing, shrill, purring, a great variegated polyrhythmic wall of sound coming out of the all-enveloping darkness. Just a dozen more Paisleys, though, and I was fast asleep again.

We were woken, as promised, by a bell at six, though no one had mentioned the bleeper that went off at ten to, to let us know we’d be woken in ten minutes. If I can find a suggestion box, I’ll propose a hooter to give ten minutes warning of the bleeper. A couple of cockerels, and a chained-up dog that’s been fasting for three days, should make it almost certain nobody would oversleep.

By the time I made it to the bathroom it was full of the midnight snorers, all in old-fashioned underpants, stripped to the waist, and smelling of toothpaste and non-sissy soap. I padded round for a bit in other people’s drips to soothe my aching feet, then joined the wave of humanity rolling towards the basilica under startlingly clear blue skies. The penitential Beds were empty, because NO ONE IS ALLOWED ON THEM TILL AFTER MASS! DYA HEAR? I found myself walking next to Seamus, my bunk mate.

‘Morning, Peter. How are you?’

‘I’m good, thanks.’

‘Tired?’

‘Not really, no.’

‘Nor me. I reckon that’s because we’ve not been eating.’

He must be close to breaking point. What the hell can he mean?

‘How’s that then?’

‘Well, eating uses up a lot of energy, you know, with all that digesting. So the less we eat, the less tired we become.’

08.10 Day Three
Six thirty mass was more comforting than anticipated. There was more celestial warbling from Kind Priest, which is very soothing when you’re feeling like this. There’s no denying the tremendous sense of community and shared experience among the pilgrims. They have so many common assumptions, about life, salvation, and everything else, that they’re never stuck for anything to talk to each other about. You can see how shared belief can have a positive effect and make a country cohesive. Mind you, that’s what Pol Pot thought, too.

As the service ended, those pilgrims who, in the old days, would have been first to put their hands up when they came looking for volunteers to be martyred, were sprinting barefoot out of the door to get to the front of the penitential queue. Everyone’s expected to soak up one final drubbing on the beds before leaving. At the moment there’s a bit of an undignified scramble to kiss St Patrick’s cross. I was just talking to a brighteyed mother of four from Derry who comes every year, without her family. I asked her what she gets out of it.

‘For three days I can just live in the Now.’

I know exactly what she means. When you throw yourself into something like this, your life is so filled by the sheer physical business of it that there’s no room left for the worries of everyday life. Other concerns get pushed into the background. You don’t even have the stress of going shopping or spending time deciding what to eat, if you’re not allowed to eat.

People are peeling off Himalayan headgear and Arctic foundation garments as they move around the stones, because the sun’s quite hot now. Sunburned feet must be a real possibility. Good job I haven’t washed them then. All that dirt must be at least factor 25. And why would I want to wash it off anyway? These mucky abrasions are a sign to the world that my soul has been cleansed, or at least that I’ve had a fair old crack at it. Leaving here and going back to the real world will be like coming back from Spain with a suntan. You’ll want to leave your shoes off for a couple of weeks so everyone’ll know where you’ve been.

Go on. What are you waiting for? Back on the beds, just one more time.

Noon Day Three
The lake is shimmering like the Mediterranean under a bright sun as we cross back to the mainland. If it were a film, this would be a grotesque cliche, sin and gloom transformed into grace and sunlight by the redemptive magic of the pilgrimage. As it’s actually happening, I’m doing my best to ignore its symbolic significance, and just enjoy the weather. I can’t deny, though, that I’m feeling good. There’s a crispness and clearness to things that has nothing to do with the sunlight. This has been powerful medicine. If it can do this to me, what must the true believers be feeling?

As we got on the boat a few minutes ago, Kind Priest was there to shake each of us by the hand, while the Enforcer harassed those stragglers who were too exhausted to stand, treading on their fingertips where necessary. I’m only guessing here, obviously. Anyway, perhaps Kind Priest had picked up on my accent, because as he shook my hand, he said to me, ‘And where are you from?’

I hesitated. I don’t know why. ‘Er…from England.’

He looked quizzical.

‘England, and Cork.’

He smiled. ‘So where’s your home?’

‘I’m still trying to work that one out.’

‘Good luck to you now. God bless.’

A week has passed since I came ashore in Donegal and devastated my newly-cleansed system by breaking fast in ill-advised style.

For the next few days, as I adjusted to escape from the rigours of Lough Derg, life took on a heightened, dream-like quality. My dislocated consciousness finally seems to have returned to normal; the stories in today’s breakfast newspaper, on the other hand, are as spaced out as ever.

John O’Connor, 65, a farmer, appeared in Killorglin District Court yesterday on a charge of being drunk and disorderly. When asked to plead, he responded that he did not recognise the court. When the presiding magistrate asked him why, O’Connor responded, ‘because it has been painted since the last time I was here’. After a few minutes’ laughter, O’Connor was sentenced to two months for contempt.

After a few days in Donegal recovering from Lough Derg, I’ve come back to West Cork to recover from the few days in Donegal. On the long drive down yesterday, I was listening to a radio feature about the boom in country house hotels, both in England and in Ireland. They interviewed a couple who were paying ₤200 a night for a room in a place with a health spa, where for an extra thirty quid they could have organic algae therapy. When the reporter asked if this wasn’t a bit expensive, the woman said no, because they’d leave the algae on all day if you asked them to. Because it was radio, you couldn’t tell whether the sleeves on her jacket fastened at the front or the back.

With every country house hotel in the country to choose from, I had no doubt where I wanted to be. The Convent, where my sanity was restored after the night on the ferry, is the place I need to be right now. It is crisp white linen for my aching body, compost for my well-ploughed soul. It has people instead of staff, there’s no TV, and a room for the night costs less than half an hour in the algae trough at Conyuppy House.

When I went down to the village before breakfast to get the paper, Mrs Herlihy who owns the shop was in the street, swatting flies on the outside of her front window. In a comedy film, you’d edit it out as over the top. A Dutch woman with a pierced nose was in the shop ahead of me. She asked for tampons. Mrs Herlihy recoiled several feet, like a priest conducting a particularly difficult exorcism.

‘I only have the other type.’

She indicated the non-sinful kind, pre-wrapped in brown paper on the shelf.

‘Scho do you know where I could get schum?’

‘You might try the petrol station.’

I had the dry toast and black tea for breakfast. No, sorry, I’m still getting the flashbacks. Kippers it was, and two poached eggs, while I watched the two couples at the table by the stained-glass window. Everyone knows what happened last night. There are no secrets here. After another great dinner—bouillabaisse with monkfish and langoustines, herb salad from the garden, fresh-caught mackerel fillets in tamarind and chilli—they took a couple of bottles of Aussie Shiraz through to the lounge for a nightcap. Some time in the middle of the night one of the guys got up for a pee, opened his first-floor window, and woke up when he hit the ground below. Luckily, he landed on the lawn, not the stone, the gravel, or the big blue Volvo. He came back in through the front door, went back to his room where his wife was still sleeping, and got back into bed. This morning he couldn’t remember whether it had happened or he’d dreamed it, until his wife pointed out the damage to his teeth.

After breakfast I go down to the abbey to dip the peculiar spot on my elbow in the wart-curing well, then drive out to an enormous deserted beach and walk along it. It feels good to be back in Cork. I still have things to do here, but first a spot of lunch might be in order. It’s an age since I treated myself to a toasted special. I drive at random round the narrow unmarked lanes that criss-cross the headland, and end up in a village of a dozen or so houses that doesn’t seem to be marked on my map.

The pub, which is attached to the shop, is a single basic room with a concrete floor. On stools at the bar a red-faced Irish farmer and a fat German in a yachting cap are deep in bizarre conversation. There’s no menu, but of course, says the lady behind the bar, she’ll do me a toasted sandwich. While I’m waiting for my pint to settle, I wander round looking at the photos on the wall. There are lots of boats, and people grinning with big dead fish. There’s a black and white photo of the SS
Norwegian
sinking in 1917. Next to it is another photo, of Guinness barrels being salvaged from the SS
Norwegian
. Further along the wall is a photo of Jimi Hendrix driving a tractor.

I zoom in for a closer look. It appears to be a 1960s advert for farm equipment. Jimi is grinning, and so are the two guys from his band who are hanging off the tractor with him—Mitch Mitchell, says the caption, and Noel Redding.

‘Here’s your pint. I’ll make your sandwich now so.’

Next to it is a yellowing newspaper cutting, picturing Noel Redding outside his farmhouse in West Cork. So that was why the Woodstock veteran was playing in the pub in Clonakilty all those months ago.

‘Ah, you’re interested in Jimi Hendrix, are you?’

It’s an odd question to be asked by an elderly lady in a deserted pub, but I feel like I lost touch with the humdrum and the predictable a long time ago.

‘Not really, no. I always found him a bit too, er…’

‘I know. I know. Very noisy.’

I remember the pub near the docks the night I got the ferry. ‘He’s still very big in Wales though.’

‘Is that so? I must tell Noel.’

‘So does he live round here then?’

‘Just across the road.’

She looks at her watch.

‘I’d say he’ll be in in about ten minutes. Will I introduce you to him?’

‘No!’ I don’t want to bother the man. He probably gets enough grief from Hendrix obsessives in places like Ohio, with their own websites and automatic weapons. ‘Please, no thanks. I’m sure he’d prefer to be private.’

She gives me a puzzled look, as if she hasn’t come across the concept before. A quarter of an hour later I’ve just scalded my tongue on the molten cheese, ham, tomato and onion, when the door opens and a slight figure in woolly hat and glasses comes in, followed by a woman in her seventies wearing a neck brace. The lady behind the bar turns to me conspiratorially.