Blasket Spirit (15 page)

‘Where’s Peig’s house?’

‘Do you have a book of wild flowers of the island?’

‘Can you show me where Tomas Crow Hane lives? He’s dead? No!’

‘Do you take Visa?’

‘Where do you live? How long do you stay out here?’

‘How long will it take me to walk around the island?’

‘Do you know which cottage Charlie Haughey lives in?’

‘Can you show me where Peig’s son fell off the cliff?’

‘Can I buy a holiday house out here?’

‘Who owns the island?’

‘Do you pray a lot out here?’

‘Can you show me how the spinning wheel works?’

‘Gee, it’s dark in here. Can you turn on the light, ma’am? You gotta be kiddin’! Marcia, this lady’s got no electricity. Can you believe that?’

‘You mean you’ve gotten no television, period? How can you live?’

I escaped into the blazing sunshine with yet another tray of teas, leaving Al and Marcia hunting for light switches.

‘You’re keeping busy?’ Páidí smiled at me from outside the wall. Páid, with the smiling blue eyes, was beside him. ‘We’re in collecting the wool.’

‘Come in and have a cup of tea.’

The two men leaned on the wall and looked out across the Blasket Sound while I returned inside.

‘You’re a Fennelly, aren’t you?’

‘I am,’ I answered the silhouette by the window.

‘I’m Martin O’Halloran from Callan. Whose daughter are you then?’

‘Frank was my father. Did you know him?’

‘Of course.’ As I made the tea, we talked of my father, my brother William, the farm, and of Callan. After a few minutes, another man handed me money for some postcards and introduced himself.

‘Tim O’Sullivan. I think I know one of your uncles. Nial?’

When he told me that he worked with the Department of Finance, I became even more addled, calculating change. I couldn’t subtract and talk at the same time. In fact, I couldn’t even do the former to start with, so with the help of Tim, from the Department of Finance, change was issued to all in the shop in record time. More and more people filed in and out of the tiny room, each a fresh wave from another place.

By mid-afternoon I was punch drunk. I slumped on the edge of a bench by Páid and Páidí, watching the steady stream of visitors enter and leave the doorway. Only as one emerged, holding up an item enquiringly, did I volunteer my services.

‘That’s it; you have to pace yourself. It’s like drinking pints,’ a great stomach of a man winked at me, as he melted on the other bench in the sunshine. I smiled, flopping back down with a mug of water. ‘Tell me what happened to that rusty ol’ wreck that used to be on Coumenoule Beach?’ he asked.

I remembered the wreck but knew nothing about it. Páidí filled in all the facts.

‘They removed it for the shooting of that Tom Cruise film in 1991. It was a Spanish boat on its maiden voyage from Spain to Iceland, ran aground there, at the foot of the cliffs, in a storm in 1982.’

‘Was there loss of life?’ a German lady with impeccable English asked.

‘No, thank God. All fifteen crew were airlifted off.’

‘Are there many wrecks off the islands here?’

‘There are. Not so many in recent years, but a lot in the old days.’

‘On your way back, you’ll cross over the wreck of one of the Spanish Armada ships.’

‘There must be very little of it remaining. That was in the 1500s I believe.’

‘That’s right. It was November 1588,’ Páidí said.

‘When I came across to the island, the ferryman located the exact spot for someone, using the GPS. The ship was called the
Santa Maria Della Rosa
. It’s lying in about thirty-five metres of water just southeast of what he called the Stromboli Reef.’ I pointed to where I thought it was.

Páidí corrected me, indicating a point farther east and continued. ‘There’s not much to see now, but the odd dive boat still goes out. They say there’s ballast, pewter, arquebuses and shot still lying around.’

The three German ladies looked out over the sparkling water to where Páidí had pointed.

The large, sweating man was not impressed. ‘And what would you be wanting to dive into thirty-five metres of freezing cold water for, in the name o’ Jaysus, with nothing to see but a lump of ol’ ballast? By God, there must have been hundreds drowned.’

‘There was only one survivor off the
Santa Maria
: a young boy who managed to swim to shore into the island here,’ Páidí said.

‘For all the good it did him. Didn’t they hand him over to the authorities on the mainland, and he was hanged,’ Páid added quietly, as he stared out to sea.

‘It is difficult to imagine a storm, looking at the sea now.’ The German lady who spoke introduced herself as Karin Urbach. Her friends were Franke and Brigitte. While I served them coffees, they continued to talk of wrecks with Páidí and Páid.

‘I have read
The Islandman
by Tomás Ó Croimhthain,’ she told her friends while still speaking in English, so as to include the men. ‘He talks of the wrecks that the First World War brought into the shore as salvation for the islanders. Barrels of tea, flour, spices, cotton and even palm oil were washed ashore. They were able to trade with these, even if they didn’t use them themselves.’

‘That’s right,’ Páidí said. ‘Some of the wreckage from the
Luisitania
herself was washed up here.’

‘There was the body of an officer too, wasn’t there?’ I asked.

‘There was, and it was Muiris Ó Súilleabháin who found it.’

‘Páidí, what’s the big house on the mainland there which looks like a church of some kind?’ I had wondered about it for a while.

‘That’s the Cranberries’ house in Dún Chaoin. It just sold for a million.’

‘Oh, may I see?’ Brigitte, who had been the quietest of the three, took the binoculars. Everyone took it in turns to have a look. An American teenager came out of the door and asked where Tom Cruise’s house was. As I tried to explain that the house had been built only for the film
Far and Away
and that Tom Cruise did not actually have a house in Kerry, Páidí and Páid waved and set off down to the
clochán
to gather up the wool.

‘What is that tower at the top of the hill?’ asked a returning walker.

‘It’s a Napoleonic tower, built in the nineteenth century. It was –’

‘What’s that movie Robert Mitchum starred in? It was set here,’ the American girl’s mother interrupted.

‘That was
Ryan’s Daughter
’, I said. For once I wished that I had a watch. Where was Sue’s ferry? How could it take so long?

‘That’s right. He and Sarah Miles had sex in a bed of bluebells. It was awesome.’

‘That wasn’t Robert Mitchum,’ her husband said.

‘Honey, you know nothing about movies. It
was
Robert Mitchum. I saw every movie that gorgeous man ever starred in.’

‘It was not Robert Mitchum,’ he muttered, adjusting his baseball cap.

‘It was Robert Mitchum!’ Her voice was shrill.

‘It was
not
Robert Mitchum.’

‘No, and I suppose it was not you who drove on the wrong side of the road into that Dingle roundabout either, was it?’ She was screaming with rage. ‘It was Sarah Miles and Robert Mitchum making out in the bluebells.’ Her voice was startling. This was followed by dead silence in the shop, for the first time that day. The three German ladies looked awkwardly into their coffees, while two walkers made an about-turn at the entrance.

I broke the silence. ‘It was actually Sarah Miles and Christopher Jones making love in the bluebells. It was not Robert Mitchum,’ I said as I headed in with some empty mugs. When I dared to come back out, the couple and their daughter had left, and the German ladies were packing up to leave.

‘That was rather brave of you,’ Karin announced laughing. ‘I wouldn’t like to be her husband on the way across. We might wait for the next ferry; it looks like there will be another at six.’

The American woman’s angry words faded over the side of the cliff and we breathed a sigh of relief. Gradually, the visitors filtered down through the ruins to the landing slip. Their tideline was visible in the form of abandoned plastic bottles and a red chocolate wrapper, tumbling lazily along the path.

‘Should we leave now? Perhaps this one is the last.’ Franke asked anxiously.

‘No, you’re all right,’ I called. ‘Sue didn’t come over on that one, so there’s definitely another. Anyway, there’s more than a ferryload on the slipway. You’ve got another hour.’

‘That’s great. I’m going to have a walk on the beach,’ Karin announced, while the Franke and Brigitte decided to relax in the sunshine. I began to clear and wash up. Then I caught up on my sales entries in Sue’s little notebook. The maps had sold out like the scones. I had sold quite a few wool garments and was delighted with my achievement. One or two stragglers appeared and bought postcards as they hurried down to the slipway. As the blue and white ferry
Oileán na nÓg
motored towards the island, a man strode back down the hill towards the shop.

‘Mind if I take a photo of the spinning wheel?’ he asked.

‘Fire ahead.’

The man went into the little yard and snapped the spinning wheel from different angles. ‘There’s only a small fee,’ I called over the wall as I chased a red chocolate wrapper along the path.

‘And what might that be?’ I was glad he was still laughing when I presented him with five plastic bottles and a ball of plastic cling film. The photographer from Real Ireland Calendars accepted the trade gallantly. Just then Karin came over the path carrying a bag full of plastic bottles and crisp bags.

‘I got my trousers wet chasing this bag in and out of the waves.’

‘Thank you,’ the photographer said before I could say anything. ‘We don’t seem to be as environmentally aware as you are in Germany.’

‘I do not mean to be insulting, but may I ask why Ireland is so dirty? When we arrived in Dublin, it was the first thing to shock us, and the whole countryside is similar.’

Brigitte and Franke joined us outside the wall, Brigitte adding, in slow, deliberate pronunciation, ‘The plastic is like Christmas balls hanging on
sie
hedgerows in Ireland, and
sie
Irish people drop
sie
litter everywhere.’

The man nodded. ‘I am not insulted, just embarrassed. It is something we are acutely aware of when we visit other European countries. We do have a huge waste problem, however. I think it is being dealt with now, because the government plans to build a number of incinerators.’

Karin looked at him in disbelief. ‘But you have a tiny population. Why do you choose the worst option, and what is for us in Germany the most expensive polluter of all? Recycling seems to be unheard of in your country. People burn and dump under one’s nose. There are no bottle refunds. Why there are no glass milk bottles? In Germany even Coca-Cola must have a glass bottle but in Ireland we only get plastic and more plastic.’

The photographer was at a loss for words.

‘Perhaps in Ireland we have become a consumer throw-away society too fast. Environmental education and services haven’t kept pace.’

‘Near where we park our car there are many, many things on
sie
cliff falling to
sie
sea – fridge, mattress from beds, old cooker and much plastic bags.’ Brigitte was getting more and more animated, reporting what she had seen. The photographer suggested that they all should head towards the ferry. Brigitte was not going to be distracted that easily. ‘Is a very bad situation. Irish people will have big regret in
sie
future.’

I strolled down with them to give Sue a hand with the gas bottles and shopping bags. ‘Thanks for taking the rubbish,’ I said to Karin.

‘Maybe we might write a letter to your national papers while we are here. The waste problem is like a bathtub overflowing. Experts will suggest expensive pumps, storage facilities, evaporators and goodness knows what, whereas all one has to do is turn off the tap.’

I waved goodbye to the three German ladies and the photographer. Donie the dolphin swam by the side of the dinghy as Karin clutched her plastic bag of litter. That image and that of Brigitte’s cliff dump struck me as great material for the photographer’s
Real Ireland
calendar but naturally, they would not feature.

‘Well, how did you survive?’ Sue had shed her shoes already and was loading boxes of vegetables and turf briquettes into a fish box. I loaded a backpack full of flour, sugar, meat and milk into another box, and set off at a snail’s pace. By the time we had climbed up the rough ground of the slipway, I couldn’t speak. We made several trips up and down, dragging full gas bottles and boxes of supplies.

‘You’ve sold more than I would sell in a week.’

I was so surprised and delighted but exhausted after my first day, thrust into the world again. After a cup of tea and Sue’s traffic report from Dingle, I felt sure that I had got the better deal that day.

The sun was sinking fast west of Inis Tuaisceart as I set off up the hill. I dropped my shopping in the hut, grabbed my sweater and pulled the door closed. The donkey was behind me, trying to get in once more. I was convinced that somewhere in her race memory she knew that her ancestors had been housed there. Nothing would satisfy her until she foaled on my bunk. I halved one of my new treasured apples and presented her with half. She knew I was hoarding the rest in my pocket and followed me, nudging my back until I gave in. As I patted her, I heard shouts and squeals over the roar of the surf. Down on the White Strand, Michael and Sarah were jumping and splashing in the waves. I was pleased that they were staying in on the island. I gave two fingers in the direction of the Sleeping Giant. Despite him, I was alive again. I smiled, hugged the sweater tightly around me and climbed up the northern path, to watch an orange sun sink into the sea.

T
he transition from the warmth of my sleeping bag to the icy cold of the Atlantic Ocean never got easier. There was the battering by freezing waves, followed by the frenzy of breathless kicking, before my skin was adequately numbed. Then I could lie back, floating over the swell, looking back up the cliffs, into the island.