McCarthy's Bar: A Journey of Discovery in Ireland (9 page)

Fair enough.

‘Or I could give you his cellphone number, if you like.’

Two hours later I’m in Dominic’s house, pondering the complexity of life with a mobile, but without a bathroom or toilet. The place is like a junk shop that’s recently been ransacked by burglars who were interrupted before they could take anything away. Guitars, fishing rods, tools, plates, toys, hats, sticks, vegetables, an accordion, books, a bridle, some reins, a crossbow, a PA system and some animals all jostle for space among the battered pieces of furniture. There’s a Belfast sink, and a cast-iron cooking range like Auntie Annie’s, only older. Seven-year-old Merry runs in and out, occasionally catching me a friendly blow between the eyes with a shot from his spudgun.

‘I know it looks a mess,’ grins Dominic, opening two cans of Murphy’s, and producing a packet of cigarette papers from underneath a cat, ‘but I know where everything is.’

He’s not had an easy life, and not always looked after himself, and it shows in his face, which looks older than his thirty-four years. After living as a traveller in England, he came to Ireland for a weekend festival. Twelve years, three kids, and a gypsy caravan later, he’s a home-owner. And in a country that’s traditionally exported its young men to work in the English building trade, he’s a builder.

There’s an uninterrupted view north-west to the mountains. It’s six miles into town. The house and a big chunk of land cost ₤12,000, which wouldn’t have bought a garage back in Brighton. It’s a one-up one-down in need, as the estate agent would write, stifling a smirk, of some modernisation and improvement. To someone from a carefully preserved English cottage, or a freshly carpeted Irish bungalow, it might look like hippy squalor; but it could suggest something else. The intricate jumble of life’s essentials, tools and fuel, children and animals, music and alcohol, crammed together under one roof with not quite enough money to go round, is like a re-creation of a rural Irish way of life that has all but disappeared.

‘Have y’seen me hat?’

He takes down a thickly woven bonnet from a shelf where it’s been sitting, along with a photo of his parents, some carrots, and a sword. I try it on. It’s snug and warm, and feels like raw wool, possibly from some obscure Peruvian llama-goat hybrid.

‘It’s me dreadlocks. Wove it myself, when I had them cut off. Won a few pints off farmers in town, trying to guess what it’s made of.’

He picks up the squeeze-box and starts to play and sing, head thrown back, eyes closed, rocking back and forth and roaring in a gruff, tuneful voice. His hands, scratched and ingrained with concrete and brick dust, are as battered as the keyboard of the old Italian accordion. Merry comes and sits on my lap, pulling funny faces, cheeks puffed out as if by giant gobstoppers. Then he puts his fingers into his mouth and produces the two widgets he’s hacked out of the Murphy’s cans. I’m impressed. I’ve never seen a widget before.

We’ve been joined during the music by two women, one Irish, one Scottish, vividly tattooed, and extravagantly pierced about the face. They’re affectionate to Merry, who likes his hugs. Dub reggae is booming out of the sound system now. Dom says it’s always been a party house. The couple who lived here before him were into all-night card sessions. When he first moved in, an old man used to turn up with a bottle of whiskey in the middle of the night, looking for a game of poker. He’d tap on the window, then see Dominic and remember the other people had moved. ‘Ah, feckit,’ he’d say. ‘D’you fancy a game anyway?’

Around seven o’clock we bump-start a car that has an unusual open-plan area where the front passenger seat used to be, and I follow them to a party that’s going to run until Sunday night.

It’s Friday.

‘The way I see it, we’re repopulating a place that lost its people to famine and emigration,’ says Dominic.

We’re walking up a long potholed lane towards a stone ruin on a hill. I don’t think the repmobile would have coped. Midges are biting, and Merry is talking to his Granddad on a toy cellphone. Music of the Afro-Celtic-Anarcho-Psychedelic persuasion is drifting towards us on a chill evening breeze, and I feel as inconspicuous as Prince Charles trying to score at the Notting Hill Carnival. I try to loosen up. After all, what’s the worst that can happen? That someone will take me for some sort of narc or undercover snooper, beat me senseless, pump me full of crack, magic mushrooms and superglue, and feed me to the enormous lurcher-wolfhound thing that’s just knocked me into a fuchsia bush?

Maybe it’ll be worse than that. Maybe I’ll be forced to join in the fire-juggling.

‘Come on,’ says Dominic. ‘I’ll introduce you to Danny.’

It’s Danny’s house and birthday party. He got an even better deal than Dominic—£7,000 for three acres and four stone walls, which he’s spent six years restoring, in between working five-day weeks as a builder. How many English builders are there out here, anyway? And if an Irishman on an English site is a Paddy, what do they call these fellas? Nigels? Jeremies?

He’s a lean man in his thirties, with close-cropped black hair, a silver earring, and black leather trousers, but I’d never criticise anyone’s dress sense on their birthday. He’s got a strong Norfolk accent, though he’s been out here nine years. Couldn’t afford to live in Norfolk, he says, because of commuters pushing prices up; couldn’t contemplate a council house in town; couldn’t live a travelling life because of prejudice, legislation and complaints about loud parties. But there’s space here. He says the house has been habitable for six months. He’s been living here with his wife and children for six years.

‘But look at that, man.’

We’re on a hilltop that falls away sharply into a small valley, with mountains beyond.

‘When you wake in the morning, and look out there, and it’s all full of mist down below you…we could never live like this in England.’

So does he feel part of the local community?

‘The Irish community? No. They tolerate me, but I’ll always be on the outside. Might be different one day for the kids. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t like it, though.’

He gives me the guided tour, proud as any first-time buyer. There’s no electricity, just candles and oil lamps. No mains water, so he’s dug a well. The fireplace in the living-room is so enormous it’s burning eight-foot logs. An eight-foot log is a tree, isn’t it? There’s a half-built minstrel gallery around the living-room. And a party going on.

There are maybe twenty-five or thirty adults round the place, and almost as many children. The adults, like adults at parties all round the world, are crowding into the kitchen for no apparent reason, where they are shouting, laughing, and getting intoxicated in the manner of their choice. Like a Friday night anywhere, I suppose, only with more body piercing. I’m intrigued that the adults are happy to get wild in front of the kids. A lot of people would disapprove, but on the other hand the kids haven’t been dumped with an unmotivated teenager who’s on £3 an hour.

They also don’t look like part of an alternative subculture. Not like the hippy kids who used to plague the fairs and festivals I used to perform at with Cliffhanger Theatre in the 1980s. These were wild-eyed, tie-dyed, sub-Lord of the Flies monsters, many of whom, I’m told, are now earning small fortunes as DJs and producers of ambient grooves for the post-E generation. Christ, they were bastards then, though, walking all over the stage, destroying performances. Then one day a psychopathic performance artist opened his show by urinating on the hippy kids. Some people say Flower Power died when Hell’s Angels killed a member of the audience at Altamont in 1969, but for many of us, this was the defining moment.

But these kids aren’t like that. The boys are just kick boxing, the girls polite, inquisitive, and dancing whenever the music isn’t too weird. They all seem to have English accents, but when I ask them are they English or Irish, the answer’s always the same.

‘Irish, of course.’

An hour has gone by, and Dominic is standing and swaying, belting out obscure ballads in the middle of the kitchen. Danny opens a birthday present to reveal a lavender-coloured bra. He strips off and puts it on, to cheers, laughter, flashbulbs and tequila. A very big, very loud, very wild man passes me a bottle of clear liquid, but I pass it on when he’s not looking, paranoid that it may have been spiked with something. Then I start to wonder if my paranoia means I’ve already been spiked. I start to feel foolish, pootling around in my hire car, with my sentimental memories, in the country where they’re actually living. I’m the one who should have bought the ruin, but I’m so clueless I’d have had to hire a builder. English, probably.

I find myself in the glow of the eight-foot fire talking to Dessy, one of the handful of Irish people here. Behind us, a man with a radical hairstyle and an Essex accent is swaying, eyes shut, to an imaginary soundtrack, while his son holds his hand. There’s a cheer from the kitchen, as Danny puts the bra on again. Dessy and I are reminiscing about the Christian Brothers. He tells me about his Latin teacher, Brother Theodore.

‘A tall bastard, so he was. A tall, thin, mean bastard, with a baldy head, like a lightbulb. He’d make us mark each other’s work, then for every wrong mark we got, we’d get a thump. That way’—he paused—‘we were implicated in each other’s pain.’

Most of us who’ve been through this kind of education say, ‘Well, it never did me any harm.’ With Dessy, I got the feeling it probably did.

‘There was a feeling of abject fear in that class. Whatever happened, you’d know that twenty minutes of each lesson would be dedicated to physical violence. Then, after that, he’d lighten up. Like some dreadful tension had been released.’

We had a Latin teacher who liked to dish it out too, a lay teacher, not a brother. He’d feign a blow to your head with his right, then belt you one from the blind side with his left when you weren’t braced for it. He inspired fear, but also admiration, as most of our class were hardened rugby league supporters who recognised a world-class act of brutality when they saw one.

Dessy is in his forties, with piercing green eyes, and a sense of danger about him; educated, but you get the feeling he’s been damaged somewhere along the line. He takes a lemonade bottle from his jacket and offers it.

‘Poteen. Best for miles around.’

This part of Cork has always been renowned for the quality of its moonshine. But how do I know I’m getting the right stuff? What if it’s been adulterated with bleach, or boot polish? Or Bailey’s Irish Cream?

‘He’s been making it fifty years. You’ll not get purer. Better than commercial whiskey, that’s for sure. Go on, give it a try.’

I decide to sip, but not inhale. It’s smooth, and smoky, and I don’t seem to be going blind.

‘Fancy a chaser?’

Dessy has two pills on his hand. He pops one in his mouth, and chugs it back with some poteen. I cling to the possibility that he’s a health fanatic who always takes his multivitamins in the evening.

‘No thanks. I’ll have to drive back soon.’

‘You shouldn’t go yet. This is very mellow acid. Things’ll be getting a lot livelier here soon.’

Livelier. Yes indeed. The old poteen-acid combo should do the trick. It’s at times like this that a lifetime’s exposure to the British gutter press comes into its own. I make my excuses and leave.