1998 - Round Ireland with a fridge (20 page)

‘We have one team with all the questions right tonight, so good going there.’ He then read out the answers, ‘…and that one was of course one of the toughest questions of the night but the answer was…Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes.’

I looked at Roisin. She smiled back. A full smile this time, none of that half smile business. She saved that for losers.

‘…and so we come to the final question of the night. What was Neil Diamond’s first number-one hit as a writer? And the answer of course is ‘I’m A Believer’ by The Monkees:’

I didn’t look at Roisin, but apologised to the rest of my team.

‘I’m sorry, I thought it was ‘Red Red Wine’,’ I mumbled to the floor.

‘Ah, who cares?’ said Declan, generously.

§

I was born into the wrong generation. How I would have loved to have been a dashing young man in the 1930
s
and 1940
s
when dance bands and orchestras played at dancehalls, and you could hold your partner close and whisper sweet nothings as you waltzed her into your heart.

I have never liked discos. I have never understood why, in a place specifically designed for people to meet each other, an environment has been created in which you can’t be heard unless you shout. Shouting is unattractive. It’s certainly not my style, and I doubt that it brings out the best in most of us. Why have we put together a twilight entertainment world which is tailor made for the Reverend Ian Paisley? For my own part I have always preferred a gentler approach to courtship, and there is no doubt about it, dry remarks lose something when bellowed.

These places are great levellers intellectually, the sharpest mind reduced to the level of the lowest common denominator—that of being understood. At one of these ‘Nitespots’ (and that’s another irritation—spell ‘night’ correctly or don’t spell it at all) a typical exchange might be:

TONY: (Shouting at a girl)
Would you like to dance?

GIRL: (Shouting back)
What?

TONY: (Shouting louder)
Would you like to dance?

GIRL: (Shouting)
Yes, I have. But just on a school trip to Calais
.

TONY: (Shouting a bit louder still, directly into the girl’s ear)
Not, have you been to France?—Would you like to dance?

GIRL: (Shouting)
Yes please, I’ll have a large gin and tonic
.

TONY: (Under his breath)
Greedy cow
.

GIRL:
I heard that
.

The club we were now in, which was in the basement of Murphys, had all the unpleasant features that I had come to associate with these places—overcrowded dancefloor, booming bass, strobe lighting and mindless remarks from the DJ. Perfect for making me feel uncomfortable. I felt I had gone back in time and was reliving one of countless unsatisfactory teenage evenings. It was a nightmare, but most of all because I had completely lost Roisin.

She was here, at least she had said she was coming, but I couldn’t see her anywhere in this crowded sweaty hellhole. Naturally, were I to bump into Roisin and find myself marching off hand in hand with her to the dancefloor, I would have found the whole ambience entirely more agreeable. As it was, I was reduced to drinking beer and watching girls dancing. Man at his most atavistic.

I engaged in a brief social shouting match with an English girl from Finchley. Thinking how awful it would be if Roisin was somewhere in the club and just saw me standing around like somebody’s Dad, I asked the Finchley girl to dance.

She replied that she
had
been to France, having made two visits to a penfriend in Lyons. I took this as a cue to return to my solitary position by the dancefloor and resume my role as a steady drinker.

It must have been quite close to the end of the evening when I put my pint down, marched on to the dancefloor, and did my little jig with as much dignity as I could muster. Nobody had asked me to dance and no one was dancing with me. I suppose this is the one advantage of the modern discotheque. Had I been doing this on my own at the 1930
s
dancehall I would have been thrown out A girl suddenly grabbed me and started swinging me about by my arms. It wasn’t clear whether she was dancing with me or trying to soften me up for interrogation. Had an interrogation followed, I surely would have spilled the beans. She continued to swing me around until I was close to exhaustion. I wouldn’t have minded but I hadn’t even asked her if she’d been to France. When the record finished, the lights came up, and that was it, the night was over.

Except of course that no one was in a hurry to leave. Why should they be? With the music no longer blaring, here was the first opportunity for people to talk to each other.

On my way out, I bumped into Roisin who was in the queue for the cloakroom.

‘Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you,’ I said.

‘I’ve been talking to Paul.’

‘Who’s Paul?’ .

‘Paul is who asked me out this evening. This is our second date.’

‘Oh.’ I felt two hours of drink swell inside me. ‘I think you’re lovely, you know.’

‘Do you? That’s nice.’ She seemed genuinely chuffed, although presumably she could spot ‘3 am drunken boy at disco’ talk, when she heard it The thing is, I really meant it.

‘Do you like him?’ I said.

‘Who?’

‘Paul—second-date man.’

She hesitated and, like a politician, chose her words carefully. ‘He’s a lot more local than you are.’

She had a point.

In the brief conversation that followed I broke the fridge news to her, which she assimilated with surprising ease, and then I took her address promising to send her flowers in the morning.

‘You won’t. You’re just saying that,’ she insisted.

‘You’ll see. You’ll get the flowers. You’re my princess and princesses merit flowers.’

I don’t know whether Paul heard these last words as he arrived at his date’s side, but he didn’t look too pleased with me. I gave him an apologetic shrug, kissed Roisin on the hand, and set off on the long walk back to my lodgings. I fell into bed, and with a ringing in my ears and a spinning of the room, wondered how long it would be before the next time I didn’t sleep alone. It was like being nineteen all over again.

Freedom

W
estport was next. At breakfast Marjorie had said it was a lovely little town, and that I should go to Matt Molloy’s pub and get Mick Levell to sing the ‘Lotto Song’. This had made absolutely no sense to me, and for that reason alone it seemed an apposite destination.

Outside the florists, Martin the taxi driver had waited patiently in his taxi as I had collected my second bouquet of the trip, and he was doing the same now as I nervously walked up the path to Roisin’s front door. Even though he was clearly amused by my decision to deliver these flowers, he had agreed that it was the right thing to do.

‘Ah, if you said you’d bring her flowers, then bring her flowers. What harm can it do?’

She lived in a small residential estate, at number twenty-four. As I rang the bell, I felt more nerves than I had before performing at the Royal Gala. I didn’t know what to expect. The door opened and there was lovely Roisin, not wearing any make-up, unlike the night before, but somehow looking fresher for it. I smiled and brandished the flowers.

‘Hello, remember me?’

She looked absolutely horrified. Then she put her forefinger over her mouth indicating to me to be quiet and did something which I thought only happened in poor situation comedies. For the benefit of someone inside the house, she announced to me in a loud voice, ‘NO THANK YOU, NOT TODAY—WE DON’T NEED ANY.’

Oh no! Somebody was inside who shouldn’t know about me. I began to panic. God, what had I done? Perhaps last night things between her and second-date Paul had moved on a pace and he was in there, having stayed the night. Perhaps he had a vicious temper, a criminal record, and a penchant for brandishing things less benign than flowers. Was Martin’s question on the subject of the flowers—‘What harm can they do?’—about to be comprehensively answered?

Roisin leant forward and whispered to me. Even in these uneasy circumstances, it felt good to be close to her.

‘My aunt’s in the house.’

Her aunt? So what? What’s so special about her aunt? This was a new one on me. A jealous aunt?

Roisin must have known from the look of disbelief on my face that I was in need of elucidation.

‘Look, I didn’t tell you this last night, but I’m recently separated from my husband, and the family don’t know about Paul, let alone…’

‘The idiot with the flowers.’

‘Yes. I mean no. Not at all. You’re not an eejit.’

I bloody was. What if the husband were to turn up now? The jealous, violent psychopath of a husband.

‘YES, WELL THANK YOU. TRYAGAIN NEXT WEEK,’ announced Roisin for the benefit of the Aunt.

‘I’d better go.’

‘I’m sorry.’

This had all been rather disappointing. I handed her the flowers.

‘Thank you, Tony. That’s sweet.’

‘Look, I’ve got a mobile phone, I’ll give you the number, if you ever feel like giving me a call.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Although you’re hardly likely to.’

‘No, I will.’ She looked me in the eye. ‘I
will
call.’

Something about that look led me to believe that Roisin would call. She wasn’t out of my life forever. Not just yet, anyway.

I got back into the taxi of the gently smirking Martin, leaving Roisin to explain to her Aunt why a tradesman had brought her a bouquet of flowers.

‘I’ve done a receipt for you,’ said Martin as he helped unload me and my stuff by the roadside. He handed it to me. It read:

DATE: 19
th
May

TO: Dublin Road, Ballina

FROM: Marjorie’s

DRIVER’S NAME: Martin McGurty

FARE: £0.00.

‘Thanks, that’s really so kind Martin.’

Especially given the amount of his time I had taken up with florists and doorstep dramas.

‘I couldn’t take money off ‘the Fridge Man’ now, could I?’

I couldn’t argue with the logic, and was extremely grateful that this sentiment seemed to be shared by quite so many of his countrymen.

§

It was a beautiful day, and the sun shone down on me as I stuck out the thumb of destiny once more. By way of a coincidence, the best spot for my hitching turned out to be just round the corner from Roisin’s house, and I could actually see her frontdoor from the roadside. It occurred to me that I could see when the aunt left, and
ft
she did, I could make my way back to the house and Roisin and I could spend a blissful afternoon making love.

Twenty minutes later, the chances of that were ruined when Michael pulled his red Toyota over to the side of the road and invited me on board.

Killjoy.

Michael was a self-employed builder who was headed for Swinford. He had heard nothing about my trip but thought it seemed a fun project. As we talked, the subject turned to the forthcoming general election, and I made the mistake of asking how the electoral system worked. As Michael explained it, I discovered that it wasn’t that simple.

‘The system we have works on the basis of a single transferable vote. You’ve only got one vote, but you may vote for everybody on the ballot paper.’

Already I was lost. He went on.

‘You vote with your choice, one through six, or ten, or however many people is on the ballot paper. If the person you vote number one for is eliminated then your number two vote becomes a number one vote for the second person that you chose.’

Ah, it’s all falling into place now.

‘…and thus your votes may be distributed until the fourth or fifth or sixth count until somebody is finally elected.’

No, you’ve lost me again.

‘It seems very complex, but it’s not actually.’

Come off it Michael, it is.

‘It was devised by the British so that a plethora of small parties would be elected and it would lead to division and a lack of cohesion. However the system works very well in Ireland in that it reflects the exact wishes of the electorate.’

As our conversation developed, Michael impressed me with not only his extensive knowledge of Ireland’s electoral system but also by the way he articulated it.

‘You know your stuff,’ I said.

‘Well, I’m interested. Not in a party political sense but in a general sense. The philosophy of ‘consent to be governed’ is something that interests me. Over here we consent to be governed in such a way, and where you come from, you consent to be governed in another. The problem in Northern Ireland is that there is no broad Consent to be governed, and that is what distorts their society.’

I was finding that it wasn’t uncommon to run into someone with Michael’s eloquent self expression. The people here liked to talk, and they did it very well.

He dropped me at a T junction where an arterial road from Swinford joined the main N5 road, which he told me had been built with the help of an EC grant. When he turned around to the back seat to sign the fridge, he laughed heartily when he saw the words ‘Mo Chuisneoir’ taped to its front.

‘That means ‘My fridge’ doesn’t it?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve seen it all now.’

About half a mile up the road I could see another hitcher. I had little choice but to start hitching where Michael had dropped me, but effectively by doing so, I was pushing in front of this other fellow. That didn’t seem right, and it made me feel uncomfortable. No doubt I was experiencing some kind of inherited British need to play fair with regard to queuing. I think its roots are in the colonial thing. Shooting hordes of insubordinate natives was acceptable when ‘needs must’, but jumping a queue was
always
quite intolerable. The whole
raison d’etre
for a vast British Empire had been a desire to teach the ignorant peoples of the world how to queue correctly. We British lead the world in queuing. (Well, we used to, until a few other countries pushed in front of us.) And here was I flouting my responsibility as a good British Citizen to respect this most basic of all human rights.