Learning to Love Ireland (16 page)

‘It's set in rural Mississippi in the 1970s, so Larry, who is white, and Silas, who is black, are unlikely boyhood friends. After a young girl disappears, Larry is blamed, and the cloud of suspicion that hangs over him from this moment on never lifts. He's ostracised by the local community and becomes isolated and withdrawn. Silas, on the other hand, becomes a successful baseball player and, as a mature adult, the town's policeman.

Then another young girl goes missing and, twenty years on, the finger of suspicion once again points at Larry.'

‘Usually it's the black guy who's suspected of raping and killing the white girl, especially in the Deep South,' said Bridget. ‘Remember John Coffey in
The Green Mile
?
Or Tom Robinson? I thought Franklin's treatment of racial issues was refreshingly different.'

‘I read
Bel Canto,'
said Helen, picking up her notes.

Angie had told us at the previous meeting that her sister had raved about it. Angie hadn't had time to read it herself, so she'd lent me the copy she'd bought.

‘I was disappointed,' Helen said. ‘It just went on and on with those kidnapped people lying on the floor for days on end. I would have expected a hostage situation to be more exciting.'

Everyone was looking at me, not at Helen.

‘Oh,
you
liked it, then?' Helen asked, smiling. They'd all heard my surprised squawk.

Did I like it? I thought it was right up there with
The Siege of Krishnapur, To Kill a Mockingbird
and
The Road.
I'd found the situation anything but tedious, and had been fascinated by the way Ann Patchett had developed the characters and relationships of the strange group of people shut up together in the vice-president's residence in some unnamed South American country. A famous lyric soprano had been hired to entertain the assembled guests – many of whom were important diplomats. The Japanese guest of honour was passionate about opera, and his hosts were hoping to induce him to invest in their country.

I'd wished the story would go on and on. The author's relaxed, conspiratorial style had lulled me into a sense of false security. I'd wished the military presence outside the house would simply melt away and leave everyone inside to get on with their lives.

‘I wasn't at all impressed with the ending,' said Helen. ‘It was most unsatisfactory.'

I'd felt there were two conclusions: the first when the hostage crisis was brought to a close and the second when the book ended. Should the book have ended when the siege ended? I'd lain awake for hours trying to decide. I'd I found the author's gentle resolution disquieting, even shocking.

It was wonderful to have a book club once again.

C
HAPTER
S
IXTEEN

We'd got used to the neat little house in Tara Close and had grown fond of our neighbours. We were safe there, watched over by the conscientious, generous personnel who ran the complex. When darkness fell, the solid wooden gate swung closed to shield our small community from Gorey's night-life. CCTV cameras positioned all around the Close tracked any and every movement. Exterior lights operating on motion sensors lit up the buildings and driveway the moment someone opened the pedestrian gate. And each resident could summon help instantly simply by pressing his or her ‘alert' button.

As the years had passed, I'd become more accustomed to the idea of growing old there.

I'd almost given up on the idea of wanting to own a house. After all, most people our age were downsizing (perhaps for the second time) – jettisoning their superfluous belongings and focusing on keeping warm, healthy and active. ‘Wanting' and ‘needing' were two entirely different concepts, anyway.

At our age, we had to be practical.

Then
The Economist
featured an article about Irish residential property prices, which, it maintained, were 5% lower than they should be. Of the 21 countries covered in a 2012 survey, property prices were undervalued in only six other countries. Irish prices had fallen further than those in any of the other 20 countries, when measured against both 2007 and 2011.

There were large numbers of Irish property owners in negative equity. Many needed to sell the second homes they'd bought as investments during the boom years. But it was a Catch 22 situation, because prospective buyers couldn't obtain mortgages to buy these desirable ‘holiday homes': the banks weren't lending.

Would the slump continue, or had the property market finally reached the bottom?

Should we take advantage of the favourable buyers' market and use the limited funds from the fire-sale of our house and business in Zimbabwe to buy something small of our own?

Sean and Brian urged us to go for it.

The perfect place would be a small detached house within walking distance of Gorey. (There'd come a time when we'd be too old to drive.) Ideally, there should be three bedrooms – one for us, one for visitors and one we could use as a study. Two bathrooms were desirable – two toilets essential. It would, no doubt, have to be in an estate or ‘development'. Which wasn't such a bad idea – neighbours (like ours at Tara Close) could be really nice and helpful.

We were surprised, however, to find that estate agents didn't seem particularly eager to deliver our dream house...

‘Mr Murphy is out valuing properties at the minute. He'll be back in tomorrow. Oh, you want me to take your name? Mr Farren? OK, I'll tell him. Oh, you want me to take your phone number, as well? Right...'

‘This brochure covers everything on our list. There doesn't seem to be anything in your price range at the moment. I'd advise you to keep checking our website for residential properties coming onto the market. Oh, you want me to take your name? Right...'

‘We did have a few properties in your price range last month, but they were snapped up immediately. They don't stay on our books for more than a couple of hours, so you have to be very alert. Nothing in that bracket has come through this month, so far. You'd like us to phone you if something comes up? Well, yes, we can, of course, but it would probably be better if you just kept checking our website...'

‘No, I'm afraid estate agents don't work on Saturdays...'

So it looked as though it was going to be up to us and Daft.ie.

We were very enthusiastic. It was our first day out viewing houses and it was going to be exciting. We were much more knowledgeable now than we'd been in 2007. I clutched a clipboard with brochures and printouts from Daft and other property websites. Any possibilities were going to be rated on a 1-10 basis. We'd brought umbrellas, because we always took umbrellas with us, even when the sun was shining.

It began to rain as we reached our destination ten minutes later – the large up-market estate near the Ashdown Park Hotel where Larry went to gym. It was well laid out with nice, neat two-storey houses, all outside our price range. But, hey, it was a buyers' market and we knew it was all about being able to offer cash.

In the section closer to the main road, boisterous children rode bicycles and kicked footballs. Dogs bounded about barking wildly, obviously keen to join in. We hoped that we'll find a more sedate sector further in. But, as we progressed, making careful observations on our clipboard, we noticed that there were fewer ‘For Sale' signs. The houses were bigger, with beautifully kept gardens, their paintwork was pristine and there was often more than one car in the driveway.

We shook the rain off our umbrellas, closed them and trekked off in the opposite direction, telling ourselves that, after all, the chase was half the fun.

We walked as far as the monument and took a right. We were heading for an older estate this time, about 2 kilometres away up the Carnew Road. The chilly wind hurt my ears. According to Daft, the bungalow we were looking for was on the books of several local agents, which probably meant that the owner was anxious to sell. Green parklands near the entrance had been recently manicured – a good sign. A meandering road led us through an estate of very ordinary bungalows that could have done with a coat of paint. The one we were looking for was also unexciting. It might have been a detached house in theory, but it was right on top of the house next door. There were a few dreary, dusty shrubs in front.

‘Does nothing for me,' I said to Larry.

He sighed.

It was beginning to get dark and the lights were coming on in the houses around us. It was only when we were back at Tara Close, cold, damp and desperate for a cup of tea that we realised that we hadn't made a single note about the bungalow on our clipboard.

Straight after work the following day, we set off along the Carnew Road again. This time we were looking for a bungalow with four bedrooms near a service station. We chose not to use the car since we needed the exercise, and walking gave us the opportunity to draw comparisons. We trudged on and on, until we found ourselves well beyond the outskirts of town. We rounded bend after bend, and began to suspect that the service station had closed down like so many other businesses of its type. Larry was wearing his new shoes – he needed to ‘break them in', he said. But his heels were beginning to blister, and his patience was wearing thin.

‘Are you sure you took down the right directions?' he asked, snatching the clipboard.

Just then, the service station emerged through the dusk on our right and we turned down the lane on the opposite side of the road, where dark branches had knitted themselves into a low roof above us. The house didn't look much like the one in the photograph – a pleasant, comfortable dwelling under lots of blue sky. It obviously hadn't been occupied for ages. Peering through the dirty windows, we were unable to form an impression of the rooms hidden behind the piles of junk. (Other people's rejects seem so much more disreputable than one's own.) We worked our way round to the back – an overgrown mess of brambles and discarded building materials interspersed with rusty pipes.

‘Don't you think it has potential?' Larry asked. (He must have forgotten that DIY wasn't one of his hobbies.)

When I'd stopped shrieking silently, I said that it didn't have good vibes. Not for me. This wasn't very clever, since I'd come to understand over the years that men didn't relate to vibes – good or bad. Especially when their feet were blistered and bleeding and the journey home would take at least an hour along a busy road in the dark.

‘You're so bloody fussy,' Larry hissed, limping out into the lane.

He stopped cursing after his ruined feet had been settled in a basin of warm water liberally laced with dettol, his bloody socks had been chucked in the bin, his dusty new shoes had been thrown under the stairs and a glass of wine was standing on the table beside him.

Our house-hunting excursions in Gorey reminded me of our trip to the annual Gifts and Premium Fair at the Convention and Exhibition Centre in Hong Kong in 1997. The fair took place over four days in a state-of-the-art building in Wanchai, one of the busiest commercial areas on the northern shore of Hong Kong Island. Between 3,000 and 4,000 international exhibitors participated each year.

Neither Bulawayo's Trade Fair nor Harare's Agricultural Show had prepared me for this massive spectacle. On level one, display after display of clocks, pens, business-card holders, telephone indexes, folios, briefcases, key-rings and magnets vied for our attention. We noted prices and minimum order quantities on our clipboards and collected brochures and pricelists. After three or four hours of intense deliberation, we took an escalator to level two and found... clocks, pens, business-card holders, telephone indexes, folios, briefcases, key-rings and magnets... all disconcertingly similar to those on level one.

By this time, our concentration levels were down to 20%, our feet were aching and we were starving. You had to be in a restaurant if you wanted to sit down – there was no space for chairs anywhere else. The food was extremely expensive and mostly Chinese. We loved the European version of Chinese food, but it didn't bear much resemblance to the real thing. In desperation, Larry forced down an authentic slimy green morsel and promptly had to rush off to the loo. After that we stuck to expensive cheese sandwiches.

On level three, each exhibit appeared identical to the one we'd just viewed... We became sore-footed zombies moving vacantly up and down the aisles, unresisting particles in the huge crowd...

‘If you're looking for something in Gorey in
that
price bracket it'll probably have to be a “starter home”,' he said. ‘I've only got one at the moment. They get snapped up very quickly.'

We'd decided to visit a different batch of estate agents.

His desirable ‘starter home' was a narrow, semi-detached structure with small rooms, an absence of built-in cupboards (or ‘presses') and a tiny concreted yard instead of a garden, where your kids could keep their bikes and scooters. In the identical starter home next door, your neighbour was a motor-cycle enthusiast. The engine parts stacked up against the wall you shared, along with the oily rags, greasy containers and metres of wiring and cabling gave him extra privacy, since they concealed his front door. This might explain why the photograph of your house had been taken from such an odd angle...

We discovered that there was a ‘ghost estate' just above pretty Hollyfort Village, where several impressive mansions overlooking a sweep of green fields stood empty and forlorn. Some of them had obviously been vandalised. They had been advertised in the Celtic Tiger years as perfect locations for parents wanting their children to attend good schools in ‘a healthy country environment'.

‘Keep out!' the sign on the fence warned.

‘Danger!'

‘No Entry!'