Jaywalking with the Irish (8 page)

Unfortunately, our approach was intercepted by a demonic wasp, the species in these isles being avid dive-bombers of all things fragrant in late August – cans of cola, glasses of wine, a section of peach, you name it. Just as the mooring hove into sight, this kamikaze zeroed in on my redolent nostrils. I swiped in self-defense, knocking my absurdly expensive brand-new, glare-resistant, graduated bifocal glasses into ten feet of some of the
fastest-flowing and most impenetrable alluvium in the world, a fluid so black it could be poured by the pint from a Guinness tap and no one would glean the difference.

The afternoon seemed ruined, and my wallet hit hard. Desperate, I sought help in a pub across the way, extracting from quiet drinkers the names of a half-dozen scuba divers, all of whom turned out to be on holiday somewhere else – endlessly forbearing no longer, the modern Irish travel with world-class abandon these days (Tenerife, Capetown, Crete, Thailand, and Australia being standard fare). My phone calls were pathetic, because the punters, which seasoned drinkers in Ireland are sometimes called, ended up having to dial the various numbers themselves, seeing as I could no longer see.

Just when I was about to give up, someone suggested the name of one Vincent Fahr, a Cork City fireman who doubled as a volunteer harbor search-and-rescue man. Vincent, in the middle of his dinner when I rang, heard my plight and my foreign accent, and was on the scene within ten minutes, to the undoubted relief of the punters.

Rugged and friendly, Vincent hurriedly donned his wetsuit, oxygen tank, and mask and prepared to descend into the water that was growing blacker with every thickening cloud.

“Aren’t you going to take a flashlight?” I asked, forgetting that the Irish called them “torches.”

No. Vincent explained that he would feel his way through the foul bottom muck inch-by-inch with his bare fingers, because his movements would unleash blizzards of muddy sediment that would render a light useless.

Having recovered all manner of lost treasures and even drowned bodies previously, Vincent seemed confident when he disappeared into what can only be described as the watery equivalent of the La Brea Tar Pits. At first, our hopes rose as frequently as the erratic trails of bubbles signifying his eel-like explorations of the ooze now at least fourteen feet below. But there was no joy. A lavish yacht drifted past with its crew tinkling wine goblets, while the water grew depressingly more opaque. Our children, originally fascinated, lost interest as Vincent’s bubbles
crisscrossed the gloaming water. Having never discussed his fee, I busied myself with counting his exhalations, figuring a thousand bubbles might easily cost me a (pre-euro) punt, and there seemed to be millions of them. For nearly an hour, Vincent groped his way through oblivion, and by my calculations our bank account was nearly exhausted.

“The man’s determined to find your glasses,” said my wife.

“Who knows where the tide has moved them?” countered Laura.

Suddenly, after fingering the muck so interminably, Vincent Fahr blasted up through the dark surface like Neptune with a trident, his fist holding a pair of eyeglasses instead. “Are these them?” he asked.

Our roars of “eureka!” were so raucous, we could have been banned then and there from the decorous confines of every yacht club on earth. But we had found a hero in Vincent; Vincent had refused to let us down. Vincent was living proof that a spirit of selfless dedication still runs down the Irish backbone. Vincent had crawled through an ooze from Styx, just to help us.

“How much is it going to cost?” a niggling inner voice began to ask as I slapped him on the back. “You’re incredible,” Vincent was told as he loaded his gear back into his car. A long pause ensued while the happy smiling continued.

“What do we owe you, Vincent?” I coughed.

“Why, that’s up to yourself.”

Could there be any worse response, I thought, while beginning to fork over a sheaf of twenties.

“Stop right there,” Vincent interrupted after seeing the first note.

“Wait a minute. We interrupted your dinner; had you crawling in the mud for an hour; you used a full tank of oxygen and all to fetch a pair of eyeglasses – that’s not reasonable. Take at least two.”

Vincent Fahr offered a slow Sphinx-like smile, and sheepishly reached for a single bill, protesting that even that was too much.

“Welcome to Crosshaven,” he said and turned away to arrange the gear in his “boot.”

And this was Cork. This was the Ireland we had been seeking, full of kindness and welcomes yet for a family from afar sailing forth on its hopes. Veiled warnings some had offered had no bearing, not for us.

Return to beginning of chapter

August eased toward autumn, and things seemed to keep falling sweetly into place. True, the Chief Scowler and his trusty sidekick kept parking their awful adolescence behind our now closed gate for a quick afternoon snigger and rock toss at the younger children, followed by a dumping of their astonishing number of junk-food packets in our lane. But these episodes usually were more brainless than bothersome, and we figured they’d just peter out in due time.

In reality, the only thing that shattered our peace was the now constant decibel-blasting cannonades our doorbell released as streams of neighborhood kids called for the boys, and sometimes Laura as well. Jamie, for her part, claimed the infernal noisemaker was a harbinger of happiness.

Meanwhile, I began teaching the Irish kids a thing or two about our North American sports, organizing street versions of ice hockey, or the fluttering plastic Wiffle-ball version of baseball. Our children, in turn, mastered the local game of “tip the can,” which is a variant of hide-and-seek developed to suit an urban Irish childhood in the frequent company of parked cars.

The kids’ busy confraternity had the added benefit of allowing their father to sneak off for his own explorations. On a couple of further late-afternoon visits to the Hi-B (a place Jamie so far avoided), I got to know a marvelous character named Owen McIntyre, newly recruited to start an environmental law program at the redundantly named University College Cork, where the autumn term had not yet begun. A glorious talker with a hyper intellect and irrepressible self-confidence, Owen hailed from distant Donegal, perhaps the least spoilt county in Ireland. He nonetheless epitomized the country’s new vigor, free of Famine-legacy poor-mouthing, begrudgery, secrecy, and distrust.

You want to talk about the bazaars in Turkmenistan? Owen’s been there and will tell you about that. Vodka swilling in Moscow? Getting stuck on a mountainside with Serbian toughs? Just turn the switch, and his stories fly forth. So here he was now with his raven-haired partner, Maria (“partner” referring to the unmarried, protracted state of mortal sin that about a third of all Irish Catholics now opt for as a thumb-nosing to the once almighty Church). As new to Cork as ourselves, they were inquisitive, enthusiastic, and vital. That Owen was fifteen years younger mattered nothing, just as my age divide with Bun only seasoned that relationship.

“Aye, it’s an extraordinary thing that your family is doing. I admire it greatly and I can well surmise that your wife must be a remarkable spirit. I know I can speak for Maria as well in saying that we would be honored to meet her,” said the loquacious Owen.

“Absolutely,” agreed Maria, a Connemara native brought up in London and thus possessing a uniquely mellifluous accent, in this country where subtle shifts in intonation can typically be pegged with one sentence. “We should meet as a foursome.”

“Why not right now?” I demanded. “Come to our house. I’ll phone Jamie to make sure it’s okay.”

“That’s fine with me,” the wife, being a game one, said.

In about twenty-seven minutes we were all lounging in the sun wok of our stone-walled patio, while Jamie soon set to ferrying out plates of steaming pasta tossed with black olives and sautéed chicken. The conversation so easily ranged the world, while the children blessedly played elsewhere, that the pop of corks assumed a certain rhythm as dusk settled.

“Perhaps we should take a nightcap to the roof? You can see all of Cork from up there,” I suggested. A go-for-it look did I get from Owen, and Maria and Jamie were by now giggling so fervidly that resistance from those two was not on the cards.

Out the top window we all noisily clambered to our rooftop viewing pad. Across the road, shades lifted and curtains parted. In silence, we beheld the astonishing panoramic views. Window panes from houses on every hill fired into prisms of liquid silver and bronze. Whorls of clouds whispered across the darkening sky.

The vista evidently inspired Owen. “Jamie, David,” he blurted in a rush that halved the first vowel in each of our names, “I hope you will accept a few words of an attempt at an Irish welcome, in gratitude for your gracious hospitality and that exquisite dinner.”

My wife’s rapt gaze said work away. For Owen is not only charming, but tall, handsome, and exceedingly flirtatious when he hits overdrive.

“Jamie, with your beauty and grace, you shouldn’t seek employment – it should seek you, unless this town is comatose beyond hope. I know that I can speak for Maria as well as myself in saying” – here a huge jet rumbled across the heavens – “we have enjoyed your company as much as that of anyone we have met in years.”

Translate the above to an American male leaving a dinner party: “Thanks, pal.”

Female version: “That was neat.”

Hang on, though. Owen McIntyre, under the merest sliver of rising moon, was still waxing. “Would it be too much for me to touch my glass to yours, Jamie, to wish you and your family every joy?”

How in the name of Bono could one say no to this verbiage? So I had no problem with the extra second, or was it ten or twenty, it took for the traditional quick clink to proceed my way. In fact, I refilled everyone’s glasses, just to keep hands busy.

“Aye,” Owen pressed forward. “We have had some wine tonight, of course. But what I want to say is that on evenings like this, the drinks are almost an afterthought. They merely help like-minded souls come to understand one another a touch quicker. What I am saying to ye now, and I sincerely hope that I am not being too forward, is that it has been a great pleasure to share your company, David. It has been a privilege, and I feel that we are on the way to becoming friends for a long time.”

Clink. By all means, clink. A casual observer could be forgiven for thinking that our pressed-together glasses were holding the two of us up. But I was actually deeply pondering all the while the ties that unite a certain gene pool all over this earth: about shoeless forebears eking sustenance out of godforsaken plots in the west of Ireland’s hardscrabble; slaving through the penal colonies in
Australia; digging the canals and railway beds of North America; or changing English sheets through eternal spinsterhood, or something like that. Well, come to this roof high above Cork City on such a starry night, you forlorn Gaels of yore, and you will rejoice in what has become of the land of your blood, I think I thought.

“Look out, Owen!” Maria suddenly cried as her beloved abruptly leaned over the edge of our roof’s hip-high wall with one hand lunging for a passing luna moth – at least that’s what he said it was, though it looked like a bat to me.

“It’s time to go. This has been lovely,” Maria said with simple grace, as she shoved my dear new friend headfirst toward the open window, nearly four feet above our deck.

After ushering our visitors down the stairs, Jamie and I returned to our eyrie. “Look at how blissfully unhurried our new lives have become,” I said, then continued into a speech about how conversations here, especially with Owen, amounted to a verbal equivalent to Cubism, with small utterances splintering into tangents that kept redefining whatever it was that was struggling to be said. “Even the way they pour pints is unhurried,” I summed up, as Jamie hoisted herself through the window, having heard enough.

In the morning my beautiful, loving wife gave me a jab in the ribs. “Hey, wake up. We promised the kids a field trip to Clonakilty. Remember the music festival and all that?”

“I’m still feeling unhurried,” I groaned, reaching for a pillow.

“Ditch the Oirish act,” Jamie commanded. In minutes, she had herded the children and my reluctant self into the car.

In about three miles we learned that “unhurried” no longer describes Irish driving. In years past, we’d shared “bockety” lanes with phalanxes of sheep and meandered on rural byways whose grassy verges were called the “long acre,” thanks to cows nonchalantly helping themselves to the pickings there. But that was before the Celtic Tiger quintupled Ireland’s yearly car acquisition rate and made the once-sleepy island the per-capita king of automobile purchasing in Europe. Our guests of the last evening had pointed out that the Republic’s citizens now pony up about £10,000 in tax alone for the privilege of driving their fancy new wheels – a sum
that not long ago would have garnered a fine house. Consequently, they work many extra hours to pay for their gilded coupes and thus have to drive very fast to get where they are going so that they can relax.

But we were scarcely prepared for the new ferocity on wheels. The newspapers often described hour-long jams in Dublin and half-hour ones clogging up smaller cities like Limerick, Galway, and Waterford, but rarely mentioned the time-stopping black holes where all forward motion ceases at random points across the island; these are called roundabouts. England, France, and Boston have them too, but Ireland’s are different, a kind of vehicular Pamplona.

Until now, driving on the left hadn’t been too difficult, partly because we mostly walked. But then, we hadn’t yet met up with a particular ring of Cork madness known as the Kinsale roundabout. This engineering marvel splices the four busiest roads in the county – one diverting tens of thousands of cars through the new Cork harbor tunnel, another serving as the main south artery out of the city, a third as the northbound connection from the airport that attracts 1.9 million passengers a year, a fourth sucking traffic in from the west – into a lanyard of perpetual bedlam. Handsome plantings are rumored to sprout from the grassy center of the Kinsale roundabout, but we certainly weren’t about to gaze upon them, what with hundreds of vehicles simultaneously converging from all angles.

“Stay on the left? The left of what?” I cried to Jamie as two lanes of traffic screamed past on that side and two more jockeyed on our right, before one of each of these abruptly vanished, forcing its cars to veer into the dead center of the revolving mess.

We went around twice, struggling to read the typically cryptic Irish road signs while steering for dear life. Finally I careered onto the open road. Relief was short-lived. The N71, like many of Ireland’s new highways, was surprisingly good (thanks to vast, never-to-be-requited European Union investments) – for a stretch. But motorists at our rear zoomed perilously close, assuming the demeanor of Luftwaffe pilots with a fresh kill in their gun sights. And why not? At that point there were almost no traffic police
or radar speed traps in Ireland, and no one ever issued tickets for strafing within three feet of the next car. Not surprisingly, Ireland has the second-highest rate of road fatalities in Europe, more than double those of jam-packed Britain, triple icy Norway’s, and just behind those found on the sheep-clotted hairpin mountain turns of Portugal. Statistics say that Ireland is the seventh most dangerous place to drive on earth, with the top five entrants coming from the far ends of the Third World. Of course, Owen McIntyre had pointed out that a quarter of all Irish motorists have never been trained or even tested – the ubiquitous L sticker on many of the nation’s cars means Learning Permit and most are bleached by years of exposure to rarely seen sunlight due to loopholes and delays without end in the country’s motor vehicle system. The cardinal rule is: when in doubt, accelerate.

Centuries ago, the ancient Celts were famous for cattle raids in which bands of largely naked individuals on horseback would swoop down upon unsuspecting neighbors or best friends. Screaming deliriously, they would issue a thump on the head and make off with a cow, then celebrate the feat with a night of mead drinking and bardic poetry while the heifer wandered back to its owner, who would enjoy the same pastime the next evening.

On this particular Saturday, barristers in Jaguars, eighteen-year-olds in
Mad Max
motorcycle gear, and old farmers in smoke-belching bangers were gleefully pursuing the same adrenalin-pumping ritual. When discovering our attempt at enjoying a pleasant drive, they all suddenly materialized in waves, flashing their headlights, leaning on their horns, and accelerating within side-mirror inches of the dawdling sixty-mile-an-hour motorist from afar before finally “overtaking” into the face of oncoming traffic.

A bit worse for wear, we made it the thirty-some miles to Clonakilty, a pretty town with trim houses painted in the lovely pastels the Irish use to defeat the winter murk – vermilion and aquamarine, lavender, plum, and peach are just a few of the improbable hues that one discovers upon entering “Clon.” One stretch is so self-consciously florid that local wags call those dwellings “the Smartie houses,” seeing that they resemble the colors of an English candy called Smarties.

Life in these parts was once anything but bright. The brutal legacy of the Famine in the west of Ireland was in fact the anvil of future revenge. In an 1846 letter to the Duke of Wellington, a Cork merchant named Nicholas Cummins captured a few choice vignettes from the nearby hamlet of Myross, today as sweet-looking as could be. Cummins could have been talking about any parish in this region, whose ruthless landlords kept exporting grain to England in the midst of the Famine’s unspeakable want: