An Early Wake (2 page)

Rose looked up and saw her, then beckoned her over eagerly. “Maura, this is Timothy Reilly. He’s a student from Trinity up in Dublin and he’s here to work on a project, he says. Tim, this is Maura Donovan—she’s the owner here, since March. Mebbe you’d best explain what it is yer after.” Rose was as animated as Maura had seen her in a while, but then, Tim was a fairly attractive young man. He looked to be around twenty, putting him about five years younger than Maura, and he had an open, eager face.

“Nice to meet you, Tim,” Maura said. “What brings you to the Wild West of Cork?”

“It’s a pleasure, Maura. It’s the music that brings me—the music here at Sullivan’s.”

F
or a moment Maura stared blankly at Tim: this was the first she’d heard anything about music at Sullivan’s. She glanced at Rose, who shrugged, apparently as ignorant as Maura. She pulled out a stool and sat down next to the young man.

“Can I get you anything, Maura?” Rose asked.

“A coffee, please. Tim, are you set?” He had an empty cup in front of him, so he must have been here for a while, even though the pub wasn’t officially open yet.

“Another coffee would be grand, if you don’t mind, Rose.” He smiled at her.

Rose blushed. “Right away.”

Maura turned to face Tim. “So, what’s this about music?”

He cocked his head at her. “American, are you? How do you come to own this place?”

Maura noticed he hadn’t exactly answered her question, but by now she was used to the roundabout path most conversations here took. “I grew up in Boston, but my grandmother was the niece of the late owner, Michael Sullivan—that’d be Old Mick. I took over about six months ago.”

Tim looked disappointed. “So you’d know little about the history of the place? Did you know this Old Mick?”

Maura shook her head. “I never met the man, I’m afraid. And I kind of hit the ground running here, so there hasn’t been a lot of time to ask about what happened before I showed up. What are you looking for?”

Rose set two mugs of coffee on the bar in front of them. Tim smiled his thanks, and Rose’s blush returned. “As Rose here said, I’m a student at Trinity in Dublin—do you know it?”

“I haven’t seen Dublin yet, only this part of the country.” To be fair, Maura
had
seen the airport and the bus station, but she didn’t really think those counted. After arriving on a red-eye flight, she hadn’t noticed much about the scenery she’d passed on her way to Cork.

Tim filed that fact away. “I’m doing an arts degree in musicology.” When Maura stared blankly at his description, he explained, “It’s the history of music, and to finish I have to write a dissertation—that’s a long paper—so I’m here fer the research. The department requires we know a bit about playing music, and I’m not a bad aul player m’self, but what I’m looking to do is teach music history and theory. Do you know anything about Irish bands?” He looked hopefully at Maura.

She hated to disappoint him again, but she’d never been particularly interested in music. “You mean all that tin whistle and fiddle stuff?”

Tim smiled. “That’s the traditional side of things. Which is all good and well—and some of the tunes go back for centuries, so it’s interesting to see them surviving today and still being played. But what interests me now is more the contemporary scene, and how modern musicians have borrowed elements of the old forms and made them into something new.”

Maura glanced quickly at Rose, who had to know more than she did. “Like the Saw Doctors and the Cranberries,” Rose volunteered. “Is that what you mean, Tim?”

The names meant nothing to Maura. Were those current bands? Or ancient history?

He nodded vigorously. “Yes, but they’re not the only ones. Where do you come from, Maura? Did you mention Boston?”

“Yeah, I grew up in South Boston.”

“Grand—then surely you know of the Dropkick Murphys?”

Maura smiled. It was impossible to grow up in Southie and not know the Dropkick Murphys; impossible to work in any local bar and not hear their songs in the background, over and over. “Them I know.”

Tim beamed. “Well, there you go. They’re American, of course, but there’s still that element of the traditional in what they write, what they perform, even today. Maybe it’s in the genes, but that’s a study for a different department, for sure. What I’m looking at is the evolution of recent Irish music over the past couple of decades and its debt to the traditional.”

“That sounds interesting,” Maura said politely. “But where does Sullivan’s fit?”

Tim looked incredulous. “Do you not know? Sullivan’s was the heart of the music scene for this end of the country, back for a decade or more in the nineties.”

Back in the nineties, Tim would have been in diapers. Why would he be interested in the music? But then, Maura didn’t claim to understand how colleges worked. She had a vague idea that when you wrote a paper you had to do something that hadn’t been done before. In that case, writing about the history of Sullivan’s definitely qualified. Maura searched her memory and couldn’t recall anyone mentioning music and Sullivan’s in the same breath, although now that she thought of it, there were some posters of bands tacked up in the little-used back room . . . “Here? But this is the middle of nowhere!”

Tim nodded. “It is that, but who’s to question how these things come about? In its day, Sullivan’s drew players from all over. It was Mick Sullivan brought them together, and he sat in often enough. Or so I’m told.”

Old Mick had been a musician? One more thing Maura hadn’t known about him. He must have had a wealth of stories to tell. And Tim here had missed him by only six months. Too bad. “It’s a shame you can’t talk to him,” Maura said.

“It is,” he agreed. “I should have sorted things out sooner, but I’ve only just scratched the surface. But surely there are others around here who remember? Who knew the place back then?”

Maura and Rose exchanged looks. “Before I was born,” Rose said. “Me da might know.”

“Or Mick—young Mick, that is,” Maura explained to Tim. “No relation to Old Mick. But young Mick’s old enough to remember—he had to have been a teenager then, right, Rose?” Rose nodded.

“And where might I find these fellas?” Tim asked.

“Here,” Maura said promptly. “They’ll both be in sometime today—they work here. And they worked for Old Mick, before. I’m sure they’ll be happy to help. And, of course, there’s Billy Sheahan.”

“Who’s he?” Tim asked.

“An old friend of Old Mick’s—and I mean ‘old’ in both senses.” Maura smiled. “He’s in his eighties, and he and Old Mick were friends for decades. He usually comes in about now, and he’s here for most of the day.” Billy hadn’t yet arrived, but it was early yet. Maura wasn’t worried, since he lived on the ground floor at the other end of the building and could make his way to the pub blindfolded; once he arrived he’d stay most of the day, spinning tales for any tourists who wandered in and swapping stories with his local friends. Maura happened to know that most of Billy’s stories were true, although he wasn’t beyond throwing in a bit of creative detail, depending on his audience. She had come to realize that often in Ireland the telling of the story was more important than the truth of it. She had no idea what tourists made of him, but she was pretty sure they went away believing they’d had a taste of Auld Ireland.

“Brilliant! That’s exactly what I was hoping for—an oral history of the way things were. I’d planned to poke around for a few days anyway.”

“Do you have a place to stay?” Maura asked. So far her impression was that most people from outside County Cork assumed there were plenty of bed-and-breakfasts and hotels to be had, but the reality was a bit different: the Leap Inn, locally more often called Sheahan’s, across the street catered to fishermen and had only a handful of rooms; the hotel in Skibbereen was kind of upscale for a student; and the conference centers that were popping up here and there were probably far beyond his means.

“I thought I’d look for a hostel or the like,” he said. “Do you know of one?”

“I hear there’s one in Skibbereen, if you don’t mind dormitory style,” Rose volunteered.

“That’d be grand. By the way, what music do you listen to here now? I don’t see any jukebox in the place.”

“Nothing,” Maura admitted. “I don’t have time. There’s the television for the customers, for sports. When the place is busy, it’s too loud to hear anyway.” She spotted a couple of men coming in the door and excused herself to go over to greet them and take their orders as they settled themselves at a table. When she looked back, Rose and Tim were deep in conversation, no doubt comparing bands, local or other. For a moment Maura felt old, even though she was probably only a few years older than Tim. But, she told herself, she’d had much more life experience than a sheltered college student like Tim could have had. It was small comfort.

There were a half dozen people in the place by the time Old Billy Sheahan made his slow way into the pub, headed for his accustomed chair like a stately tugboat.

“Good morning to you, Maura, or, no, I should say, good afternoon,” Billy greeted her. “As the cold sets in, I move a bit slower.”

“That’s what Bridget said too. What can I get you?”

“A pint, if you will.”

“Coming up.” She went over to the bar and went behind it to start pulling Billy’s pint.

Rose turned to her and said tentatively, “Maura, would you mind if Tim and I went out for a bit of lunch? It’s quiet here.”

“Sure, go ahead. I think I can handle it.” She smiled to indicate her sarcasm. And she wanted some time to talk to Billy alone about this whole music thing, of which she knew absolutely nothing. She had trouble picturing any friend of Billy’s as a music guru, although Old Mick and Billy would have been in their late sixties back then. Now that she thought about it, she could name a lot of performers who were still going strong in their sixties and even seventies, touring and everything. Like the Rolling Stones. Maybe she’d been too quick to judge.

Rose and Tim went out the door, and Maura topped off Billy’s pint and took it over to him. She checked to make sure everyone else was well supplied with drink, then sat down next to Billy.

“Who’s that young man who left with our Rose?” he asked. “Not from around here, is he?”

“No, he’s a student, from Dublin, he says. His name’s Tim Reilly. He said he wants to find out about the music scene here in Sullivan’s in the nineties. It’s the first I’ve heard about it.”

Billy’s eyes lit up. “I hadn’t thought of that in years! This used to be quite the place to play.”

“So he was right about that?” Maura asked.

“Oh, yes, musicians would come from all over. Not for concerts, as such, but to—what should I call it? Jam?—with each other. Like a
seisiún
is for the traditional kind of music.”

“What they were playing wasn’t traditional?”

“No, these were players of popular stuff. Not always the lead singer of this band or the other, but a lot of the sidemen. Word would go out—don’t ask me how, it was before all this electronic nonsense—and the players would come together here of an evening, late, and settle in the back room and go on half the night. And people would come to hear them. I don’t know how they’d find out it was happenin’, but they’d start appearing early in the evening, and they’d stay ’til the end. Packed, the place was.”

“Was Old Mick a musician?”

“He’d been known to pick up a fiddle now and then, but mostly he kept the drinks flowing.”

“How’d they get around the regulations about closing times, if they stuck around all night? Even I know you can’t keep serving ’til dawn.” Maura knew there was some give-and-take, depending on the attitude of the gardaí, the local police, but she didn’t think the rules could be stretched that far.

“You’ll have heard the term ‘lock-in’?”

“Yes, but I’m not sure how it works.”

“If you want to keep yer pub open after legal closing time, you ask that yer patrons pay for their drinks beforehand, and then after closing time you lock yer doors and it becomes a private party, with no money changing hands.”

“Ah.” Maura could see a lot of room for interpretation of the law there, but it made a kind of sense. “What about you, Billy? Did you join in?”

He grinned. “You’ve never heard me sing, have you? Like a gate that needs greasin’. No, I’d keep an eye on the front of the house while Mick covered the back. Grand times they were.”

“That kid who was talking with Rose—he says he’s a student at Trinity, studying how popular music changed in Ireland in the nineties—not the old stuff. He seems to think Sullivan’s was like the center of the music universe, at least around here. Would you be willing to talk to him? I can’t tell him anything, and Rose is too young to have known about it then, but I’m sure you could fill his ear for quite a while. Do you mind if I turn him over to you?”

“I’m happy to go on about those days. And if he’s to be around fer a few days, then he and Rose can spend some time together as well.”

Maura was struck once again with how perceptive Billy was. He might look like a doddering old man, but he was shrewd enough to recognize that Rose was enjoying Tim’s company. “You playing matchmaker now, Billy? I don’t know how long Tim will be around, but he was asking about a place to stay.”

“Assuming he needs to get back to Dublin for the start of Michaelmas term, that’s not ’til late in the month. So he’s got a bit of time free.”

Michaelmas? Another label that meant nothing to Maura. In any case, Tim would have a week or two to find out whatever he needed for his paper or whatever. “When he comes back, I’ll tell him to talk to you.”

“My pleasure. You might tell him to talk to Mick as well.”

“You don’t mean Old Mick, do you?” Maura teased.

“Sure and he’s dead, isn’t he? No, Mick Nolan. He was still at school when all the bands were playing here, but he hung around as much as Mick would let him.”