McCarthy's Bar: A Journey of Discovery in Ireland (52 page)

I’m looking out to sea watching a ferry coming in when I realise it’s the one that will take me back to England. I look at my watch. Better get a move on.

As I pass the forty-foot pool, a man of sixty or so is sitting on the wall, shirt and trousers on, drying his feet.

‘Ah, what’s the hurry?’

Just like the old man who stopped me in Westport that morning.

‘Have a swim, why don’t you? You need no togs, nor even a towel. Go on. It’s the best thing in the world. Twenty-five years I’ve been doing this, and I never felt more alive.’

‘I can’t. I’ve a boat to catch.’

‘What part of England are you from? I was down near Bristol a little while ago. Beautiful part of the world. My parents always told me the best things in life were free, but of course I had to go the other way before I ended up swimming here and believing them. I tell you though, this is the place to be now.’

‘This pool?’

‘No! Dun Laoghaire. Dublin. Ireland. There’s a buzz in the air, but people still have time for you. Still talk to you.’

I wish I was making him up, but I’m not. He’s real. There he stands, large as fiction, as if he’s been sent along by an another author to provide my final conversation. He’s looking me in the eye, and I know what he’s going to say, but he’s going to say it anyway.

‘This’d be a place for you to live.’

He holds my gaze for a second or two, then goes back to drying his feet.

‘Good luck now.’

Yeah. Good luck.

I am grateful to many people in Ireland for their help, hospitality, and stories, in particular Adrienne MacCarthy, Dominic Mogridge, Paul Buckley, Con McLoughlin, Karen Austin, Noel Mannion, Sean McCarthy, Con McCarthy, Connie Murphy and Dara Molloy. I am indebted to Sebastian Barfield for research, and to Angela Herlihy and Mary Pachnos for professional wisdom and infectious enthusiasm. I also thank my family for their support, and for keeping straight faces whenever I referred to wandering round the mountains and bars of the west of Ireland as ‘going to work’. No job was ever this much fun.

I took some books with me, and picked up others along the way. They include:

The Irish Sketchbook 1842
, W. M. Thackeray (Sutton, 1990);

T
he Trouble with the Irish (or the English Depending on Your Point of View)
, L. P. O’Connor Wibberley (Holt & Co., NY, 1956);

West Cork, A Sort of History, Like
, Tony Brehony (Kestrel, 1997);

Exploring West Cork
, Jack Roberts (Key, 1988);

A Doctor’s War
, Aidan MacCarthy (Robson, 1979);

Discover Dursey
, Penelope Durrell (Ballinacarriga, 1996);

Father’s Music
, Dermot Bolger (Flamingo, 1998);

Roadkill
, Kinky Friedman (Faber and Faber, 1998);

Pocket Guide to Árainn—Legends in the Landscape
, Dara O’Maoildhia (Aisling Arann, 1998);

Beara—A Journey Through History
, Daniel M. O’Brien (Beara Historical Society, 1991);

Westport House and the Brownes
, the 10th Marquess of Sligo (Westport House, 1998);

Illustrated Road Book of Ireland (Automobile Association 1963)
.

In case you’re thinking of writing to the Tourist Board for a copy of
100 Best B&Bs Run By Mad Nosey Religious Fanatics
, I made that one up.

I’d also like to thank the late Mike Mann. Not for anything in particular, I’d just like to thank him, that’s all. Come to think of it, he did let me write the prologue in his kitchen.

—P McC, March 2000