That night the doorbell began buzzing, with the word out that we wanted to say some goodbyes. In they came, people from every aspect of our Cork lives – the neighbors from our Bellevue Park village, the school parents who had looked so lovingly after our kids, the marvelous pub originals, the crowd from Jamie’s Cork Opera House, and, a bit later, Paddy Wilkinson. They showered us with gifts, they brought laughter, they filled our house with warmth. There was dancing until, oh, around midnight. Some then had to leave.
Those remaining drew close. Somebody speechified about how deeply we would be missed; I grabbed a marvelous Australian transplant and said, forget that, Amy is carrying our spirit forward now. Too serious, Diarmuid said, and started a little song. The pause at the end was touching – for maybe three seconds. Time for another. So someone else closed her eyes, and delivered a ballad no one knew was in her. This was followed by about seventy more songs, never with a moment’s surcease, many delivered in rousing choral fashion, many with the Opera House ladies stepping forward for dance routines in the night that promised to go on forever.
Close to dawn, the first soldier fell and was helped away; the canary in the coal mine. Jamie and I, now alone in the silence, held each other’s hands. We were more happy than sad. We had been loved, for God’s sake.
Is there any wonder that as I write these words we are scheming and dreaming to one day return to our house in Cork?
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Acknowledgements
The encounter with Ireland that this book describes was made possible by many beneficent spirits. First of all, our families, whose astounding selflessness blessed our passage; Mick and Hylda Buckley, who opened some of the first gates to Cork; the hearty souls of Bellevue Park, who accepted us with every Irish blessing; and Paddy and Anne Wilkson, who kept the link alive for decades. Gratitude is in fact owed to more Corkonians than can be mentioned here – to people like Peter Murray and John McMonigle, who nearly lifted the Cork magazine idea into being; to Gerry Barnes and the damsels at the Opera House.
Special thanks are in order for those who helped refine the book through its growth pains: Jonathan Williams, Owen McIntyre, and the gentleman and poet Tom McCarthy in the earlier going; and the gifted Lonely Planet editors Janet Austin and Meaghan Amor through the many stops and starts to the home stretch. But Jamie – here was the muse, the partner in jaywalking who turned dream to reality.
A number of texts were also helpful in writing of this book, particularly The Cork Anthology (Cork University Press, 1993), edited by Sean Dunne; Discovering Cork (Brandon Book Publishers Ltd., 1991) by Daphne D. C. Pochin Mould; and The Lie of the Land: Journeys through Literary Cork (Cork University Press, 1999) by Mary Leland. Other historical background came from The Coast of West Cork (Appletree Press Ltd., 1972) by Peter Sommerville-Large; Sneem, The Knot in the Ring (Sneem Tourist Association, 1986) by T. E. Stoakley; The Secret Places of West Cork (Royal Carbery Books, 1990) by John M. Feehan; Irish Country Towns (Mercier Press, Cork, 1994), edited by Anngret Sims and J. H. Andrews; Narrative of a Journey from Oxford to Skibbereen During the Year of the Famine (Oxford, 1847, reprinted by Cork Corporation 1996) by Lord Duferin and the Hon. G. F. Boyle; and Clonakility, a History (Litho Press, Midleton, Cork, 1999) by Michael J. Collins.
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Jaywalking with the Irish Page 26
