McCarthy's Bar: A Journey of Discovery in Ireland (24 page)

Underneath the stand, clusters of compulsive gamblers are watching TVs showing live horse-racing from England, live greyhound-racing from Scotland, and live darts from the hill tribes of northern Laos. But more vivid than the punters, and more numerous, are the real stars of the show, the bookies. With these guys around, thoroughbred Arab stallions are mere background action. Two long lines of over-the-top and frankly terrifying characters face each other along the home straight like infantry before a battle, right down to the way they scrutinise each other through field glasses.

No two are alike. Their faces have been cast with all the precision, variety and attention to detail of minor characters in an early Martin Scorsese movie. There’s a French accountant, immaculate in black designer suit and open-fronted ₤500 raincoat; a gangster, or jazz singer, in a chalk-stripe Bugsy Malone suit and black Van Morrison trilby; a Bob Hoskins thug in T-shirt and Rolex; there are straw hats, titfers, flat caps, binoculars. ‘Sterling bets paid in sterling, boys, taking bets now on Leicester and Doncaster!’ There’s one like a headmaster, one like a bent bank manager, and even one who looks like a bookie. This is a police line-up costumed by Shirley Russell and Vivienne Westwood. They’re making strange gestures, talking into lapel mikes, and gazing through binoculars, while behind them Steerpikeish youths and no-nonsense slabs of uncompromising womanhood scribble in mysterious ledgers. As I don’t know anything about betting, I haven’t a clue what’s going on; but that doesn’t really matter. I once saw an avant-garde Polish production of an obscure essay by Goethe, and that made for compulsive viewing too.

‘As for the races themselves,’ said Thackeray, ‘I won’t pretend to say that they were better or worse than other such amusements,’ and I couldn’t say fairer than that. Just before the last race I drift off back to town in the warm drizzle, wishing I dared be a betting man, and thinking what a good word fustigation is.

I read my book and have a couple of pints in a cramped, dark, sawdust-strewn bar that I suspect used to be a spacious, bright, carpeted bar until the heritage refurbishers got hold of it. By the time I’ve treated myself to another handsome supper of toasted special and chips, and spent a little while looking up the symptoms of scurvy, it’s past ten, so I start to drift back in the general direction of Dead Kid’s. The rain’s cleared, it’s a warm evening and there’s still light in the sky. I turn a corner to be confronted by the most annoying street performer on the planet: that bloke who paints his face gold, stands dead still, and then moves his head to stare at you when you walk past. I suppose it’s all very well in a soft venue like Killarney, but he’d be well advised not to try it in Newcastle at half past ten on a Saturday night.

There’s loud music coming from a pub next to the hotel where the English receptionist slandered the Irish hotel industry. Inside, it’s mayhem. An enormous room is packed with people who lost all inhibition around the time my horse was running in the two thirty. To my left, they’re four deep at the bar and gripped with the terror that they may not get served. To my right, an electric band is belting out Celt rock at high volume. Last night’s pecking order is reversed. The tourists, grinning and keeping time with their heads like nodding dogs, are at the back, where there’s less chance of getting splashed or trampled. At the front Killarney’s teenies and early twenties are going mental, pogo-ing in scrum formation and bouncing off each other and the walls like human pinballs. Perhaps it’s the last day of exams; or maybe it’s just Thursday. Right next to me a downy lad of about sixteen and a blonde girl he’s just met start snogging carnivorously. His two mates stand eighteen inches away staring, grinning and nodding to each other as if to say, ‘Jeez, will you look at that?’ Then suddenly, they’re all at it, chewing, tongueing and groping in a last-gasp hormonal surge. Coincidentally, I’ve just been reading what Thackeray had to say about snogging, on Race Day, in Killarney.

And here, lest the fair public may have a bad opinion of the personage who talks of kissing with such awful levity, let it be said there are no more innocent girls in the world than the Irish girls. One has but to walk through an English and Irish town and see how much superior is the morality of the latter. That great terror striker, the confessional, is before the Irish girl, and sooner or later her sins must be told there.

Mind you, that was before pierced tongues, alcopops, and the ex-Bishop of Galway’s kid.

Suddenly there’s an eerie moment of stillness, as if the room is gathering its collective breath, and then the band launch into a blistering up-tempo version of the
National Anthem
. All around me people are dancing, bouncing, embracing, singing, shouting, kissing and falling down—to the National Anthem. As a symbol of a nation who know how to have a good time, it would take some beating. Closing time in the British Legion was never like this.

The door of the B&B is just closing as I approach, so I open it again. There’s a startled Irish couple in the hall, who mumble a flustered ‘hello’ as they feign interest in a leaflet about something called the Kerry Experience. They don’t fool me though. It’s obvious they are clandestine snoggers who have panicked at the sound of the door opening, in case it’s the landlady returning home. Like everyone who has stayed in an Irish B&B, they know full well that displays of lustful abandon are just not on, especially right underneath a technicolour crucifixion. All those holy pictures are on the walls for a purpose. These places are family homes, where you may sleep, and eat large quantities of pork products for breakfast, but the fun ends there. It doesn’t matter whether you’re here to celebrate your silver wedding, or you’ve just met in the pub that evening: same rules apply. Just pack it in, will you, and go and get some sleep.

On the upstairs landing, I pause outside my room. There’s a strange smell of burning that wasn’t there before. Immediately I sense something is wrong. It could be the intuition that only comes with years of experience, or it might be the fact that my big blue suitcase is out here in the corridor. What the hell is going on?

I look at my door to check the room number. There isn’t one. So it’s definitely the right room then. Look, there’s the big split in the plywood where they damaged the door getting the body out.

Suddenly, I have an image of Andy Sipowicz on
NYPD Blue
breaking down a tenement door with his shoulder; once he’s in he starts shooting the crack dealers as they climb out of the window onto the fire escape. Perhaps I should try a less confrontational approach. I take a tentative hold of the door knob and give it a half-hearted limp-wristed twist. The door opens gently and I flick on the light, a bare ceiling bulb, slightly off centre. The room’s full of smoke and someone’s in my bed.

Dead Kid?

Only thing is, he isn’t dead.

He’s sitting up with the duvet around him, smoking something.

‘Oh, hiya. Sorry about the bed. Didn’t you see the note?’

‘Note? What note?’

‘Me ma said she’d write you a note and put it on the door. Did she not write you a note? Thing is I came home, like, but she has another room for you so that’s all right. It’s en-suite’n’ all, that’s if you don’t mind. Or I can go along there so.’

‘No, no, it’s all right, I’ll go. Which room number is it?’

‘It doesn’t have a number. None of the rooms have numbers. It’s the front room. We just call it, you know, the front room. Bang the door shut then, will ya, I don’t want Ma to smell.’ He takes a long drag. From the street, there’s the sound of drunken teenagers hitting fresh air.

‘Did she tell ya I was in Dublin?’

‘Yes, she said you were away. Sorry to…’

‘Hey, no problem. You’re the one who’s paying. Feckin’ bed isn’t long enough though, is it? Did yer feet stick out the bottom? How much did she charge you?’

Dead Kid is eighteen or nineteen, lean and tough-looking, with short dark hair and an earring. He says he works at one of the big hotels and has a girlfriend there, a French girl whom he stays with a lot of the time. His ma doesn’t mind; it’s just that she doesn’t want anyone else to know.

‘So if anyone asks, she says I’m gone to Dublin.’

It’d be hard not to like him. After all, there’s no reason for him to tell me any of this stuff, so in return I tell him I’m on my way to a pilgrimage in Donegal. He stubs out the roach.

‘What, Lough Derg do you mean? My grandmother used to do it every year. Sort of a holiday, only with bruises. You must be mental. Pass the papers, will you?’

As he rolls another, he tells me about working at the hotel. The Germans are the bossiest, he says, and the least friendly, but the Americans are the funniest. What about the English? I wonder.

‘Too mean to pay the prices. Can’t say I blame ’em.’

He tells me about the busload of Americans they had in a while ago.

‘’Twas one of those thirteen countries in ten days kind of a deal. They arrive late at night and next morning before breakfast this big lady comes to the front desk and asks do we have a map of Wales? So we look, but I know we haven’t, so the girl on reception says to her, “No, I’m sorry, we just have the maps of Ireland.” And the woman says to her, “Ah, don’t worry, honey, I don’t think we’re going there this time.”

He leans forward, proffering the Killarney Carrot.

‘So do you want to light this, or shall I?’

‘Hello there, Donal, thanks for phoning in, and how are you today?’

‘Well, I’m on dialysis, so not too good really.’

‘Oh. Right. Well, I’m sorry to hear that Donal. What was it you were wanting to talk about anyway?’

‘Calor Gas.’

‘Of course you were.’

The radio’s turned up loud as I sit in the traffic trying to get out of the centre of Killarney. It’s a slow business. If aliens landed, you’d be hard pressed to explain to them the difference between Killarney traffic, and parking. You’re dealing in very fine nuances here. I suppose that traffic implies, at least on some subliminal level, the intention of moving. But on mornings like this it’s a purely academic distinction; because, whether you’re sitting in it or not, the car’s going nowhere.

The pony and traps are out in force this morning too. So the non-journey through town provides plenty of opportunity to stare at a stationary horse’s arse, which isn’t something you can do when you’re whizzing through the countryside at fifty miles an hour. The cars gridlocked closest to me all seem to be brand new—no one seems keen to be seen driving an old banger in Ireland any more, except me and a few old farmers on outlying islands—and their state-of-the-art stereos are all booming out bass-heavy dance music, and adverts for tiling centres that are also happy to handle all your grouting needs. The blue Tank’s own-brand Volvo radio, however, isn’t keen on music. It only does phone-ins.

‘So, what you’re saying, Donal, is that you can’t lift the gas cylinders because of the dialysis.’

‘That’s right. And my brother now, he used to lift them for me, but he can’t any more because of the triple by-pass, d’ye see?’

‘I do see, Donal. Course I do.’