McCarthy's Bar: A Journey of Discovery in Ireland (20 page)

‘Yes. Iz very good. Some rain but…’ He shrugs and smiles while deftly sealing a dozen flaps with Velcro.

‘Where are you from?’

‘We are coming from Brussels. Yesterday we are hearing that a very rare bird is landing here. So we make phone call, find it is true, and now…’

To emphasise his sanity, his mate joins in.

‘Now, we make long walk. See if we can find him. Haf a nice day.’

And off they go, striding purposefully into the deluge. Quite frankly, this kind of behaviour alarms me.

Back on the mainland I get straight into the car, steam up the windscreen, and drive back towards the hostel. When I reach the turning I carry straight on and drive to MacCarthy’s where, during the next few hours, at least three people I’ve never met before will make jokes about the bird up my exhaust.

A fuggy bar in a fishing port is a great place to spend a rainy afternoon. It’s some time after dark when I realise I’ve drunk enough to ward off the pneumonia and would be better off in bed. Driving’s out of the question, so I go to the pay phone in the hall and call a taxi. Is there, I wonder, any chance of a cab in the next half-hour or so?

‘I will be outside in three minutes. You will be outside? Three minutes?’

For West Cork, this seems an unusually urgent approach to time; still, I drink up, say my goodbyes and sure enough there he is, outside in a minibus, three minutes on the dot. The rain has eased off into a dewy, garden-sprinkler kind of affair. As we head up the main street, a parked car full of kids pulls out suddenly and almost clips our wing mirror.

‘That was close,’ I say.

‘No,’ says the driver.

‘What?’

‘No. I am not Klaus.’

‘What?’

‘You say I was Klaus. I am not Klaus. My name is Hans.’

‘So you are Hans?’

‘Yes. I am Hans, not Klaus.’

‘Where are you from, Hans?’ As if I don’t know by now.

‘I am from Germany. Twenty years my wife and I are coming here. Two years ago we make opportunity to buy this business. So here we are.’

I’d sing him ‘Please Be Nice to the Germans’ but I can’t remember the words. Clearly, this part of Ireland holds genuine attractions for German people; but unlike me, still just flirting with this sense of belonging, Hans has actually done something about it and moved here. Perhaps he deserves it more than I do. I ask him what he likes so much about Ireland. He thinks for a long time, then speaks slowly and deliberately.

‘The people. I loff their carefree imperfection.’

I pay the fare and ask for a receipt, a life-long instinct among the self-employed. He produces a receipt book with Receipt Book printed on the front and carefully writes one out, noting date, time, pick-up point and destination; then whips out an ink pad and rubber stamp from the glove compartment, validates the receipt, and hands it to me. Not much sign that the old carefree imperfection is catching, then.

He drives off to collect his next fare, who is expecting him in eighteen minutes and thirty-two seconds precisely. By then I’ll be fast asleep, but that’s the Great Outdoors for you. There’s nothing quite like a short walk in the rain, followed by four or five hours in the pub, to make you appreciate your bed.

Next morning I have to move out of the hostel because the room’s booked. I pay my ₤24 to a young French woman, then take a walk along the cliffs. There’s been a transformation in the weather: the sky is blue, the water calm and aquamarine, the sun warm on my face. I chat for a while with a nice man from Norwich who’s behind the counter in the Buddhist paraphernalia shop. He says they’ve got a couple of cottages to rent, with the same spectacular view. I may come back and rent one.

But not until I’ve seen a photo in the paper confirming that Tattooed Scary Man has been arrested and charged.

The story of the children of Lir is one of the most celebrated of Irish legends. Lir, a king of an ancient Irish race called the Tuatha de Danaan, had four children: a daughter, Fionnuala, and three sons, Aodh, Fiacra and Conn. When their mother died Lir married again, but his new wife was jealous of the love the father had for his children. Enlisting the help of a druid, she turned them into swans, condemning them to spend 300 years on the cold water of Lake Darvra in Westmeath, 300 years on the Sea of Moyle between Ireland and Scotland, and a final 300 years on the Atlantic off the west coast of Ireland. At the end of this time the spell was broken by the tolling of a church bell, St Patrick and Christianity having arrived in Ireland during the 900-year interim. Transformed back into very old human beings indeed, they died close to the spot where they came ashore.

I knew the story already, but it wasn’t until yesterday evening in MacCarthy’s that I realised that the place where they came ashore and died is reputed to be at the village of Allihies, a twelve-mile drive from Castletownbere on the northern side of the peninsula. It’s just eight or nine miles if you walk across the mountains.

Con, the man who’d told me the story, had arranged to meet me down in town. He turns up with a reassuring little backpack of water, chocolate and apples, and his trousers tucked into his socks, like a serious hiker. I feel in safe hands. When we got chatting in MacCarthy’s it only took a few minutes to establish an unexpected connection. As a young man in the sixties he’d been a teacher in Drimoleague, where he’d lodged with a close friend of my mother’s. We used to visit there all the time. When I was a small boy, I’d almost certainly met him.

We spend the day walking a section of the Beara Way, a route that runs 100 miles around the peninsula. Away from the road, you’re travelling through history. We begin in the ruins of a Bronze Age settlement, where the shapes of houses are clearly visible in the boggy land; then go down to the stone circle where the Italians found me sleeping. There are thirteen stones.

‘Always an odd number, we don’t know why.’

And so it goes on. Famine houses abandoned in the 1840s; then a ring fort sitting in a field of sheep with wooden pallets leaning against it. We pass through an old-style farmyard, turkeys and chickens running free, yard and stone outbuildings so comprehensively covered in manure it looks as though they’ve been sprayed with the stuff. And then there’s a steep climb, and Castletownbere is twinkling far below us in the afternoon sun, like a Mediterranean resort. Just a day later, and Dursey would have passed for Crete.

We’ve risen a long way very quickly, and suddenly, without warning, we’re on top of the world, looking down into a huge natural amphitheatre enclosed by mountains on three sides and the Atlantic on the fourth. Across to our right, snaking up the foot of a hillside, is a row of garishly painted houses, all bright reds, blues, greens and pinks. Behind and above the village on the gaunt grey mountainside stand several stone towers, like ancient temples: the copper mines of Allihies.

They’ve mined copper on these mountainsides since the Bronze Age. The mines have been closed since the late nineteenth century, but at one time this was the richest copper-producing area in Europe. Between the barren rock, tiny overgrown fields are still visible, where they tried to grow potatoes to feed the 6,000 people who once lived here. There are fewer than 600 in the area today.

We drop down into Allihies and stop for a pint at O’Neills. O’Neill himself isn’t in, but out campaigning for the Euro elections. I’ve seen his face on the telegraph poles. We sit outside on a south-facing bench in the evening sun. Below us is a beautiful beach, formed not from sand, but from the residue of the copper grindings from the Allihies mines. In the playground across the road, children are swearing loudly. It’s quite idyllic.

‘Will I show you where the children of Lir are buried?’

We walk another five or ten minutes round some confusing lanes, then stop by the roadside.

‘Now look at the road there. Perfectly straight, isn’t it? But follow the fence along the side and you’ll see it curves in, then back out for no reason. When the men were putting up that fence years ago they wouldn’t touch that spot. That’s where the children of Lir are buried.’

We cross the road, two grown men in search of hard physical evidence that four children had been turned into swans for 900 years.

‘I haven’t been here for twenty years or more. Not since my children were small. See. There.’

He’s pointing at a large round white stone on the grass by the roadside. A tarnished Irish penny and a small dead flower are lying on it.

‘That’s the biggest of them. That marks Fionnuala’s grave. But I’m sure there used to be three others.’

There’s no sign of them. It’s just an overgrown patch of coarse, tufty grass, but I feel compelled to look. Dropping to my knees, I start tearing at the grass with my fingers, looking for the shape of a stone. Nothing. I tear off more layers of grass and earth then, suddenly, a gleaming white stone the size of a bowling ball is looking up at me. I pull at the grass again, more carefully now, and fold it back to reveal the other two. ‘There now,’ says Con triumphantly.

I feel the hairs on my neck rise. I look around. Nothing. No one. No sign. No plaque. No little grotto selling books and souvenirs. The grass and soil have been undisturbed, I’d say, for a decade or more.

I get down on my knees and replace the earth and grass as carefully as I can. We tamp it down with our feet, leaving no sign that we’ve been there. Walking back into town we come to a T-junction. From our right, a ten-year-old girl rides past on a horse, bareback, eating a packet of crisps. A fork-lift truck comes swerving down the hill from the opposite direction. It’s being steered by a two-year-old boy sitting on his father’s lap. Real life is taking on a vivid, mythic quality.

Con’s wife has driven over from Castletownbere to take him back, but I’m not inclined to leave. After a drink and some home-made seafood chowder, I get a room in a B&B along the street and sit up in bed for a while reading. A double-page spread in the local rag catches my eye. ADVERTISING FEATURE says the headline, a form of words usually seen above a flattering review of a restaurant that’s been written by its owner. It’s a piece about a new hotel development. My heart sinks.

‘The Beara Peninsula has been famed for its wild beauty for many long years and although its enormous potential for tourist development’—Aagh!—‘
tourist development
has yet to be fully realised, the Hideously Inappropriate Brand New Wilderness Hotel will go a long way to helping that situation.’

I’d stay away if I were you. Don’t go. There’s no tourism infrastructure, you see. Nothing to do. It rains all the time. You can’t get Singapore noodles, even with money to burn. And there’s a Tattooed Scary Man on the loose. All in all, you’d have a terrible time. I’d go somewhere else if I were you.

I’m told Killarney’s very nice.