Jaywalking with the Irish

by Lonely Planet

  Dangerous the scene appeared; six chipper-stoked digestions does not make for good odds, without the potential for a Cuchulainn triple salmon flip out of trouble – and yet, I quickly discerned something decent about The Brother. He in fact listened thoughtfully, and hearing truth in my complaints, even promised that my family’s troubles would cease. We shook hands, and after a long moment of consideration, I put out my hand to each of the boys, telling them in their turns that, having been a teenager once myself, I would gladly forget everything if we could just move on. And so, and verily, was peace made . . . for a time.

  Nonetheless, the chop in our lives was not altogether smoothed. It soon became apparent that Jamie’s quest for employment was moving no faster than the strike-ridden public transportation whose plenary indulgences seemed to have long since expired. Her searches of the help-wanted ads uncovered S & M-sounding openings for “guillotine operators,” “Arctic drivers,” “rigid drivers,” “panel beaters,” and “abattoir” (slaughterhouse) workers, along with an insatiable demand for “I.T. specialists.” It seemed that the most interesting and creative jobs all lay in Dublin, which was three hours away by train, when those were running. This did not help. There were evenings when she was downcast, and she let me know it well.

  It was challenging, having so many aspects of our identities in flux. Anxiety and conflict increased. Not for nothing did Jamie’s favorite song become Stephen Foster’s hauntingly beautiful Appalachian/Irish crossover tune, “Hard Times Come Again No More.”

  I told a fellow customer in a downtown pub about my wife’s frustrations and formidable, if ignored, abilities. The man, who ran a successful local business, listened closely. A passionate socialist, he often proclaimed his desire to help the entire human race. Sip. He hated suffering of every kind. Puff. He hated capitalism. Clink. Religion, too. Sure, and let’s sip. He believed in the fundamental goodness of mankind and would dedicate his life to assisting same. Glug.

  “Have your wife call in the morning, and we’ll talk,” he said, outlining a position he would soon need to fill. Natch, he didn’t answer the next eight phone calls. But this of course merely underlined the first rule of adjusting to life in Ireland – never, ever, believe any promise that is made in a pub.

  This business of communicating in Cork was clearly very tricky. We were speaking the same language as everyone around us, but missing a certain inaudible nuance. Some friends finally explained that ours was a “who do you know” problem, that a secret grapevine ripples through every section of the island and that we had not yet established a personal identification code for gaining access to it. Quite simply, we were unknowns. The Irish like to deal with knowns, gossiped-from-head-to-foot knowns. If you want a plumber or a mechanic or a visitation by just about any human being who can stand upright in Ireland, you better have a name to mention – an influential solicitor, a distant cousin, or a friend of a friend of a friend – or you will officially be regarded as nonexistent. We hadn’t comprehended that we did not yet fully exist, which is a peculiar problem to confront after nearly five decades on earth.

  “How can we possibly know that you are who you say you are until six months have passed?” the bank employee had asked, obviously in earnest. Owen McIntyre confirmed our suspicions. He railed that the entire nation should be prosecuted for collusion in restraint of free trade, that supremely qualified native-born individuals with impeccable credentials garnered overseas were routinely frozen out of good jobs for the same “who-do-you-know” problem. An eccentric local poet scoffed, “Don’t you know that perestroika has never made it to Ireland? Think of how the Russians do business, with cash envelopes and veiled threats used to move every transaction forward. They’re ten times more open than us. Try Russia, you’ll find more opportunities there.”

  One day, we had an American-born neighbor in for tea, despite his protestations that he was only free for fifteen minutes. He stayed for ten times that, so much did he have to say about the exasperating, impenetrable, inscrutable, obstinate, obdurate, duplicitous, fawning, feigning, deceiving, and plain curious nature of Irish communication he had been puzzling over for the last five or six years since marrying his Cork wife. It had taken him ages to land a low-paying job in a nursery school, despite having lengthy experience in the same line in the States. Rough going, he warned, lay in our path still – but he swore it was somehow worth it.

  Another time, we met an English tourist who did not hedge words. “I’ve been here for three weeks,” he said, “and been mind-fucked every night. But I’ve never been laid once.”

  Somehow, the kids for their part were adapting more smoothly. Laura was off to weekend sleepovers in grand country houses, while the boys worked on their continuing transformation into Cork street urchins. Owen fell into the requisite lilt. “I will, yeah,” he’d say when asked to take out the garbage, pronouncing “will” as if it had three Es while insisting that we call the stuff “rubbish” and its destination a “wheelie bin.” Alas, as much as he loved studying Irish in school, he became too self-conscious to don the Paddy hat anymore.

  In Connecticut, the kids would by now be sledding, skiing, and gliding across frozen ponds. In Ireland, their element was mud. Harris, called “dirt boy” for similar proclivities as a toddler, took to the stuff passionately, wrestling down anybody within arm’s reach in our garden to ensure that they were both filthy within seconds. One night, however, the children at last got to taste an Irish version of their former wintry element. A traveling theater troupe flung magic over an otherwise dreary evening in the old market square called Cornmarket Street. Hoary characters on stilts and in dragon suits emerged from the blackness to the roar of eerie electronic music, while hundreds of children watched in rapture. Suddenly, a huge fan-like contraption blew torrents of white Styrofoam flakes over the crowd. The children raised their hands in wonder as the stuff spilled onto their hair and down their necks. It was just as Ray Bradbury had described in his story of that other meteorological transformation when the sight of the never-before-seen sun shocked witnesses. Then the machine coughed up its last flurry, and the mist wrapped its forgetfulness back around the night.

  We walked by the Lee and savored the fairy-tale-like upside-down reflections of the lit-up buildings on the dark water, the shimmering green light that is played on the bridges every night. Our new home, half built on dream.

  Cork could not be fixed in time. The Christmas season crescendoed onward, not like a familiar reference point but an extravaganza choreographed by Cecil B. DeMille. The streets filled with new faces by the thousands, as if country people had suddenly been vacuumed from every hollow to join in a frenzy of common shopping, jaywalking, and tribal socializing. The restaurants and pubs were jammed; the shops became mauled the way they once were in Irish country towns on cattle-trading Saturdays. Toy stores were laid waste and clothing shops saw their goods strewn wildly about the floor in this 3.2 billion-punt cattle mart that is Christmas in Ireland. Only the limply hanging turkeys in the English Market remained calm.

  In the newspaper, there was no notice of a Messiah concert or caroling festival, and few signs of the religious spirit of Christmas past, but the churches took in throngs of the devout. Cork has enough splendid churches to dazzle any visitor, the most famous being a French Gothic fantasia named St. Fin Barre’s with elegant 240-foot spires that enchant every view of the town. That flower of Protestantism is named after the founder of the eighth-century monastic settlement that planted the seeds of modern Cork, before the Danes thundered in with their broadswords and created the first real town in this part of the tribal island.

  On the streets, there were buskers everywhere, including the minstrel with the saw, now making magic with “Come All Ye Faithful” and “Holy Night.” The corners teemed with volunteers shaking collection buckets in search of donations for the old, the poor, orphans, sick children, a new hospital ward, the lifeboat service – you name it. So there lay Christmas.

  Me, I kept far
from the maddening shopping crowds until the last possible minute. But the appropriate presents were finally hoarded, and with relief I entered the Hi-B on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, having tucked in my pocket a small gift for Esther, a token of appreciation for all the kindness she had bestowed. Despite the bedlam inside, a moment arose to discreetly make the transfer.

  Esther, topped with a red Santa hat and sporting flashing Rudolph bulbs on either ear, launched into a raucous chorus of “You better not shout, I’m telling you why,” that was joined by a hundred voices raised in mad unison. The mood at the North Pole could not have been more euphoric. But then Brian O’Donnell surfaced, waving his arms disparagingly.

  “You’re all being far too loud, like a rabble with no place to go,” the owner snapped, his tongue darting about his lips. The frigging scrooge. But then his business card did warn: “With a talent to abuse.”

  I noticed a journalist named Denis – wasn’t everybody? – helping Esther transport her various trinkets out the door – seven bags full, when I stopped counting. A few days later, I asked how many presents she had received.

  “One hundred and eighty four.”

  Our children did not make out that well, what with their treasured dog and the extended family that wreathed every previous Christmas with love having been left far, far behind on a day that featured endless rain and no snow. But the morning still brought them their small mountains of gifts. After Mass, and phone calls to our mothers, the kids’ new friends and several of ours came by to exchange cheer, and Jamie cooked a sumptuous goose. Yet we saw shadows over our shoulders. Sad rugby socks hung from the hearth in place of the lovingly embroidered needlepoint stockings that had been forgotten in packing. No better way to arouse parental guilt than falling down on the job at Christmas.

  The next morning we brought Laura to the airport for a present that required no apologies – a solo trip to visit a Parisian friend she had made back in Connecticut. Not even a teenager, she would venture by herself to Ariane Laporte-Bisquit’s family near the Eiffel Tower, and then visit the grandparents’ cognac-producing chateau in the south of France. And we were worried about her?

  Return to beginning of chapter

  Chapter 15

  New Year’s Eve and tick went the clock of our changed lives. We were standing in the middle of Bellevue Park with our neighbors and gathered masses of kids preparing to watch the annual fireworks sail up from the city below. One of the scrawnier troublemakers was there too, but even he was smiling, and I began to look at his visage with thoughts about how my sons could well be progressing toward their own difficulties in adolescence. Hadn’t I been insufferable at that confused stage myself? And how could one not smile tonight? All of Cork’s exuberance was due to burst forth above the spotlighted spires of the town’s fairy-tale churches. As midnight struck, laughter and song filled the air, and the kissing went on to extremes.

  The only problem: it was now 12:15, and not so much as a star graced the drizzling sky. Up and down the sidewalks, from between parked cars, and from high windows, people stared at their watches. Time crawled ahead, mobile phones were frantically dialed, but the wizard in charge was not taking calls. No fireworks materialized, not so much as a single dud.

  “For fuck’s sake,” our neighbor Diarmuid muttered, which is the all-purpose Irish refrain for expressing disgust.

  Of course, the timing or even the promise of the fireworks had never been confirmed in the regional newspaper, perhaps because the organizers had not thought of phoning them or vice versa. So naturally no explanation of the missing fireworks would ever be printed either. This was the mysterious Cork way, where you either hear about some magical event on the grapevine or are left standing out in the cold, wondering and muttering “For fuck’s sake” until your kids are shivering and your champagne has gone flat.

  The next day broke cold and gray – “for fuck’s sake” weather if ever it existed. But, lo, things changed as they always do in Ireland. Ever so slowly, the afternoon whispered wintry premonitions and finally released a display more wondrous than mere fireworks: snow. Regarded with all the awe of an eclipse, snow is a substance that is never taken for granted in Ireland. It is an epiphany, a mesmerizing force whose appearances Irish writers, like Joyce in his famous story “The Dead,” use as a stock reference to forces beyond human comprehension. If the Brits had had any wits about them, they would have pumped fake snow over the land at the start of every uprising.

  The boys went delirious as the first wet inch of the stuff landed, joining friends in slipping and sliding and tossing soggy grenades. A neighboring Zimbabwean college student and babysitter of our kids emerged squealing with delight, having never seen snow before. “It’s unreal! It’s magic!” she shouted. Darn right.

  We were bound for Dublin the next morning, although the trip in a snowbound Ireland was not easily made. The temperature had a bite to it at dawn, and there was such a depth of snowfall – nearly four inches, the heaviest storm since 1983 – that scarcely a Cork car was moving, certainly not one on our prodigious slope, and we didn’t intend to try driving either. So we trudged, slipped, and slid the downhill mile to the station and made it to the capital city fairly much on schedule, staring in amazement the entire way at an eternally green land that had turned ghostly white.

  At the other end of the line, a couple with their own Irish saga collected us at Dublin’s Heuston Station, across from the Parkgate Street army barracks where I’d once stolen carrots for Bun’s elixir. We first met Dave and Rose Van Buren at a mandatory Catholic retreat outside New York City for betrotheds needing to scrub away their various states of sin. Rose was a mercurial, dark-haired, trilling farm girl from Limerick; Dave a droll, black-bearded, and gentle-eyed native New York son working for a legal firm, while writing poetry on the side. We struck up an instant friendship, and in the years to follow our children became friends and we stayed friends after the homesick Rose dragged her beau back to Ireland a decade before, while nudging us to follow.

  Dave was now managing an Irish Internet chat site called “Paddynet,” an idea with the dangerous potential to clog up global communications should the populace ever set to electronic chatting as obsessively as it gabs via mobile phones. Rose toiled as a part-time nurse, when not tending to a brood recently expanded to five. With much to discuss, we set to a meal in a slick new emporium with foot-deep cushions and television screens flitting with the sparking hooves of Irish export step dancers. Then off we maneuvered down the road that bisects Dublin’s vast Phoenix Park, where a motorcyclist commenced walking his machine like a recalcitrant cow through the drifts ahead.

  The Van Burens own a classic semidetached Irish house, identical to its neighbors, in one of those endless recent developments that ring Ireland’s cities. Their “park” in Castleknock, where the Norman conqueror Strongbow smashed through the 1171 siege of Dublin by Irish earls and allied Norsemen, is the kind of place a passerby can easily underestimate. But the Van Burens’ children play with countless friends in the security of a cul-de-sac where every window hosts not only squinting but protective eyes, and the adults all know each other and socialize as regularly as fish in a common bend of a stream. To our kids, this family, cramped in their modest abode that was as tight as Mother Hubbard’s shoe – and in fact had a mother-in-law in it somewhere – were wealthier than us, because three times more children played outside their door than our own. “The politics of the street,” as Rose put it, was their life, with of course a little prying and one-upsmanship thrown in.

  Supper for thirteen materialized in the form of frozen pizza and chips. Nobody minded because Ireland remains a place where the old saw of “the more the merrier” is the first rule of life, and pretensions to superior manners are generally reviled. Sisters and neighbors kept filing in and children vanished in an aunt’s embrace.

  “There are moments when you want to scream, and it’s a challenge even finding the kids’ shoes in the morning, but we have a good lif
e here, you know,” said our placid host, the son of a prosperous Westchester County, New York, family who had by now “gone Irish” hook, line, and sinker.

  “Half of our friends live right next door,” Dave smiled contentedly. “We never once could find a sense of community like this in America, and the coldness of our life there drove Rose nuts.”

  The Van Burens’ doorbell resumed ringing. By 9 p.m. maybe forty people had jammed together in their small rooms, including a half-dozen of Dave’s fellow participants in that rarity of rarities – an Irish barbershop chorus. The baritones hummed and serenaded as the children shimmied with joy at the sound of their father’s deep, sonorous voice. By the end of that evening, Jamie and I set to euphoric warbling along with our fellow guests, while our three kids watched the scene with bedazzled amazement.

  Alas, Dublin the next day did not seem quite so perfect. Glassy skyscrapers hulked like pillboxes of rising wealth over the carefree, vagabond city I had once known, while huge cranes stood ready to hoist faceless new Lego-bits of Ireland’s stealthily traded affluence into place. Ten-room brownstone office buildings at the most fashionable Stephen’s Green addresses were being let for nearly US$200,000 per year. And the traffic was insufferable. A recent survey had noted that of all the world’s cities, Dublin is second only to Calcutta in the length of time it takes to deliver a package three miles – forty-five minutes.

  It was cold. The minstrel who enchanted Cork by bowing his bent saw appeared on bustling Grafton Street, looking like a lost beggar before the indifferent masses filing in and out of glamorous shops. The bearded, unkempt rogues of old were no longer wavering between fabled watering holes, their routes having been taken over by seekers of cosmetics and Italian shoes. My creamy-skinned old chanteuse of a girlfriend who had a dresser drawer as her crib, where was she? The passionate but kindly young communist with whom I had stolen carrots for Bun’s whiskey, had he even existed? In the middle of my left palm, there remained a small hole from a long sliver that had jammed in while a friend and I painted County Meath stud-farm fences for the “nobs.” This was my only keepsake now.