St. Patrick's Bed (Ashland, 3) (18 page)

There'd been one other trip—a big one. After my year of antibiotics, with renewed hope, Jeanne and I planned another vacation getaway. In July, two years ago, a month after Chuck Berry had watched the earth being turned out where I had just stood, we went to Ireland for a week. I'd never been. I'd listened to hand-me-down stories all my life. And I had to admit—the idea of a trip back to some roots held great romantic appeal. After 150 years, I'd be the first in my family to return.

We flew first class, paid the extra bucks for it—champagne, cheeses, smoked salmon, and hot, moist towels handed to us with silver tongs to wipe our hands and faces. Almost embarrassing. Almost. The other thing I remember about the flight over is the little girl in the seat ahead of us being afraid, watching her father comfort her, envying him.

In Dublin, we stayed at the Gresham on O'Connell Street, a four-star hotel picked from a guidebook acquired from the Irish Tourist Board back in Toronto. It was nice, but overpriced—in the same way as the Marriott in Cleveland.

After the obligatory catch-up day due to flight exhaustion and time difference, the next day of sightseeing and fish and chips and pubs and a fine Indian dinner at Saagar on Harcourt Road, we got into the swing of it. We had an Irish breakfast of eggs, sausages, bacon, black pudding, and beans, bought a handwoven-in-Sligo woolen blanket on Grafton Street, checked out of the hotel, rented a standard-shift Nissan Micra, and, literally, headed for the hills. We'd come across the ocean for romance, to make love. To make a baby. It wasn't going to happen in the Gresham. We didn't want it to happen in the Gresham. It was out there somewhere, under wild Irish skies, in the soft green mountains.

We were crazy. It was fun. It was exciting. In Rathmines, on the way south out of Dublin, we stopped at Quinnsworth Supermarket and bought fresh bread, salmon, cheese. Flying first class had made an impression. At the Off-Licence beside it, we bought beer and wine.

Glendalough, in the Wicklow Mountains, sounded promising. St. Kevin, in the sixth century, had chosen it as a place to become a hermit. Eventually, he founded a monastery there, and what remains today is an ancient monastic village: a series of churches, a stone tower, all in ruins, except for a small structure known as St. Kevin's Kitchen, dating from the eleventh and twelfth centuries. We'd seen pictures of a beautiful and desolate place, a glen with two lakes, the valley's sides rolling with woodland.

What we got was hundreds of tourists. Buses emptied on a regular basis, parking was nonexistent. We left our beer and wine in the car, wandered about, finally sat on a bench and ate our bread and cheese and salmon, drank mineral water that cost a pound a bottle.

A groundskeeper saw us sitting there, out of place, and spoke with us. He nodded in the direction of a group of young people. "Foreign exchange students," he said.

We looked at them, at the cameras slung over their necks.

"Like kindergarten students," he said. "That's the way they behave." Using tongs, he picked up a soiled condom from the grass at the edge of the path, shook his head, deposited it in his garbage bag, muttered something under his breath, left us there.

I knew there was someplace you could still go to be alone, to be a hermit if you wished. But it wasn't here. Not anymore. Not a Sunday afternoon in the summer at any rate. You could feel a bit of the magic, still there, just under the surface, but you couldn't get to it. St. Kevin, I thought, must be praying feverishly as he looked down.

We stayed in the mountains, drove west, saw a waterfall tumbling over a green hill. Near Carlow, we stopped to see a dolmen—the Brownshill Portal Tomb—dating from between 4000 and 3000 B.C. It was fenced off, with an explanatory "Office of Public Works" sign, otherwise untouched. The entrance to the burial chamber of a portal tomb is marked by two tall stones, covered with a single massive capstone that rests on them, sloping downward and to the rear. The sign said that this one weighed 150 tons and was probably the heaviest of its kind in Europe.

Unexcavated, it said. We stood amid the giant rocks, atop hidden pottery shards, stone beads, flint arrowheads, ornaments that had once been important to their bearers, atop the bones of farmers, warriors, druids—we didn't know—and gazed across the now-civilized fields, hay bundles stacked neatly.

In Castlecomer, north of Kilkenny, we pulled in at the Avalon Inn, ivy-covered, white wrought-iron fence, roses, rented a room. We had dinner at the Lion's Den in town. I had the pork chop, Jeanne the curry chicken. Both came with chips. Afterward, back at the Inn, tucked into a snuggery in the pub, we ordered a Jameson's and a Guinness each, finally relaxed, went upstairs. We made love in the shower.

We discovered that it wasn't easy to get lunch once you got into the countryside. Finally, in Newtown, a crossroads south of Tipperary, we stopped at a neat, whitewashed building with the name O'Brien and a Guinness sign on its exterior.

"How didjas end up here?" The gentleman setting the ham sandwiches and pints in front of us had gray hair, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

"Our Michelin Motoring Map," I said. "Scenic routes are marked with this heavy green line." I took it from my pocket, set it on the counter, showed him.

He looked at it, studied it, nodded. "They know a thing or two," he said. "Prettiest view in Ireland is only a couple miles from here." He pointed at a spot on 664, just north of where we were. "Have a look. You can see the whole of the Glen of Aherlow. The Gaity Mountains in the background. See for miles. Take your breath away."

"You're O'Brien," I said.

"I am," he said. "Do the lady and yourself a favor." He smiled, knowingly.

We went, we parked. Green and brown fields as far as the eye could see. The clouds touched the gray-purple mountains in the distance. We tried to guess how far away they were. Ten, twenty miles? We couldn't tell. It took our breath away.

Just as things began to creep into our heads, a car drove by, slowed, pulled over. We looked at one another, shrugged. Jeanne touched my arm, said softly, "Let's go."

A couple of hours later, south of Clogheen, in the Knock-mealdown Mountains, at a place called The Gap on our map, we parked again, got out, looked around. It sounds a little corny to say it, but it was stunning—so beautiful, it hurt our eyes. The slopes about us were green, brown, purple, fern- and heather-covered. In the distance was a stand of pines, a blue lake, isolated, nothing on it. In another direction, fields, fresh, flat, the horizon touching the sky. If O'Brien could see this, I thought, he might have to reassess his vistas.

I felt Jeanne beside me, close. "Whatta you think?" she asked.

I listened, looked around, eyes adjusting to the depths and distances. Silence. Solitude. It was sunny, sixtyish, white clouds dotting above.

I nodded. "I think so."

She smiled, white teeth glistening. A finger tucked a strand of hair behind an ear. For a moment, looking at her, I felt dizzy.

I slung the bag with the beer, wine, bread and cheese, the hand-woven blanket we'd purchased in Dublin, over my shoulder, and we headed up the slopes, toward the sky, away from the world. And we did what we came for.

Like the outdoor lovemaking at the cottage back on Paudash Lake in Ontario, everything was so right, so good, so perfect, the landscape became both erotic and sacred. St. Kevin had been right. Getting away from people could be a balm. He would have liked it here, I thought. Very much. I think he would have liked it even more if he'd had a woman with him.

In the late afternoon, the sun soft, we fell asleep, half- dressed, hidden among the ferns.

II

"Now
this
is a storm." I had to slow down. The Micra's windshield wipers could barely keep up with the rain, and the narrow road we were traversing—not to mention driving on the left-hand side—made me doubly cautious.

It was 3 P.M., two days later. We were on 344, in Connemara, County Galway, the brooding, wind- and rainswept Maumturk Mountains on our right, the Twelve Bens rising on our left.

"I have to go to the bathroom." Jeanne looked sideways at me.

I had to agree. It had been a while. "Not a bad idea."

I'd been trying to drive through the storm, get far enough north, see if it abated in Mayo or Sligo. But it was getting worse, blowing in off the Atlantic. The weather reports on the car radio were calling it a gale. I'd never been in a gale before.

"There." She pointed.

My gaze followed her finger. Light yellow, two stories, eight windows across, three peaks in the roof. A stone fence, crushed gravel driveway lined with painted white stones. "Must be a hotel. Or a lodge." Here, I thought. In the middle of nowhere.

"Let's see if we can use their bathroom."

Made sense. I welcomed the chance to stop. Any excuse would do, but this one was starting to make real good sense.

We'd spent last night in a B and B in Gort (fifteen Irish pounds per person), the previous evening in the Central Hotel, Mallow, County Cork (twenty pounds each). Walking through the doors of Lough Inagh Lodge, we knew we'd moved up a notch. The lady behind the desk was charitable, understanding, listened to our exotic accents, and steered us to the washrooms—the most immaculate we'd encountered in Ireland, including the four-star Gresham back in Dublin.

Finishing before Jeanne, I idled, strolled about. I wandered into a library, tastefully appointed, an open log fireplace surrounded by wing-back chairs, poked my head into the dining room, checked out the oak-paneled bar— again, complete with fireplace.

"This place is gorgeous."

I turned and looked at Jeanne, who had appeared behind me. "Not bad, is it?"

"Why don't we see if they've got a room?"

"It's the middle of the afternoon."

"Have you looked outside? Have you forgotten?"

I hadn't forgotten. "Might be a budget breaker."

"We can ask."

She was right. We could ask.

"We have one room. A cancellation. It's sixty pounds per person."

We were quiet for a minute. We translated it into dollars, first Canadian, then American. Either way, we could feel the Irish rain, wind, and fog settle onto our backs.

"Might be more than we want to spend."

"I understand."

And she did. It was completely understandable. With resignation, we understood it too.

A half hour later, the windshield wipers beating furiously, we pulled over, got out our maps, oriented ourselves again. Visibility on all sides was a couple of dozen feet. We were here, in Connemara, God's country, but we couldn't see it. A sudden gust of rain and wind lashed at the side of the car, rocking us slightly.

Jeanne sighed. "I don't know about you," she said, "but I've got my sixty pounds right here." She pulled the notes from her purse, fanned them out. She raised one eyebrow. "Where you gonna stay?"

It was a corner room on the second floor. With the rain and mist, gray clouds sliding up the mountains, the view across the lake was haunting. And the room itself—a canopy bed, sitting room, dressing room adjacent to the bathroom—it was everything one might expect for one's sixty pounds.

Jeanne wore her black dress to dinner: white wine, smoked salmon appetizer, leek and chive soup, prawns in garlic butter, white chocolate mousse dessert with kiwi coulis. We took our tea in the library, then retired to the dark-paneled bar, seated ourselves in front of the fireplace, pretended we could afford it all.

The bartender, in his early twenties, placed the Baileys in front of me and the Irish Mist on Jeanne's coaster.

"Any chance we could get you to put a peat fire on for us?" I nodded at the ornate, black iron hearth.

"No problem." He smiled. "We call it a turf fire."

"Oops."

"Have you one going in a minute."

We were the only ones in the room. Jeanne put her feet up on a wooden stool, settled back, let the warmth penetrate as the bartender stood back, ran a hand through dark, black, curly hair, watched the turf logs do their work.

"There," he said.

"It's great." Jeanne was glowing. "Thanks again."

"My pleasure."

"You from around here?" she asked.

"I'm from Galway. I rent a place nearby."

"Is this a summer job or full-time?"

"It's summer for me this year. But I hope to learn some of the business this way."

"You go to school in Galway?"

"No, Limerick. University of Limerick."

"I have a son about your age," she said. "Just started university last year. In Toronto."

I thought of Adam, his summer job, working at Mr. Lube on Overlea Boulevard, in the pit, staring up at the bottoms of automobiles while we sat here, tucked away from reality.

He looked surprised. "Excuse me for saying so, ma'am, but I wouldn't have picked your accent as Canadian."