A Mad and Wonderful Thing (31 page)

‘Do you ever think, Bob, about who we are?'

Who who is, son?

‘Man. The human race. We're a pretty fucked-up animal.'

There are many faces of man
, Bob says, lifting his head and turning to me.
There are many rooms in my father's house.

‘That's what Aisling would say. She always comes out with the God stuff.'

We are all a gathering
, he continues.
In each of us there is a multitude. To be human is to be a confusion of many.

I walk on to West Cork, and in Glandore I find a sheltered cove below a small pub. The weather has improved again, so I sleep in the open air under a moon whose reflected light is carried to shore on a turquoise tide. In the morning, I am thinking of my brain again, about all those cells and connections, about thoughts and actions, and about who is controlling whom. Bob sits behind me on a concrete slab cast against the rock face. He is looking out across the water, with his two legs dangling from the slab.

‘Bob,' I ask him, ‘do I use my brain to think things out, or does my brain use me to act things out?'

Later that day, as I rest in a hostel in Clonakilty, I think about Bob, the Bob I knew alive, the Bob who sat across the bench as we ate lunch in the oil store. And although he carried contentment as lightly as others might carry a morning newspaper, I thought then that sometimes there was a shadow about him. I asked him once if he found life lonely. I asked him if he would not have liked his own family.

‘I had my own family,' he told me. ‘But I know what you mean. We can have two families: the one we come from, and the one we make. There is nothing on Earth that I would rather have done than to have made my own family. But it's just me …' he looked to me, ‘and you.'

‘Wasn't it ever possible?' I asked him.

He lifted a teapot and poured the tea into two mugs, adding a little milk to each. He pushed my mug across to me. ‘Her name was Ellen. Ellen Finnegan. She was a funny girl, Johnny, a funny girl. She lived life at a hundred miles an hour. She was all go. She lived in Faughart, and every day she rode a yellow bicycle into town. She worked in the post office as a cashier. It's where I met her. It's where I asked her out — the post office. Though we never really went out, just the occasional bike ride to Blackrock. Every day I walked her out as far as Dowdallshill. And if she was coming in on a Saturday, I would go out to meet her, and we would race in as far as the big bridge. I would have gone anywhere just to see those red cheeks and her laughing face, her headscarf loose around her neck, her dark hair flowing. But Dundalk was too small for Ellen Finnegan — she wanted to see the world. She asked me to go, Johnny, to just give up our jobs and jump ship. She was fearless. But I couldn't leave; it just wasn't possible. She went to Birmingham, and for two years we wrote every week, and then the letters stopped. I was afraid to discover why. Then one day she wrote. I kept that letter for over three months before I opened it. It was better to live with the despair and anguish of futile hope than with the pain and desolation of pure loss. I knew what it would say, and I was right. She had met someone else, an American, and they were off to Chicago. I knew it was everything she had ever wanted. I never heard from her again. I can still see her laughing face. I never risked love again — the pain was too much.'

I watched my old friend across the workbench. I said nothing. I knew that in his head he was seeing the girl on the yellow bicycle. I also knew he had sacrificed a life with that girl to stay and care for an ailing mother and a troubled sister. And now they were all gone.

‘It is a cruel deal we get in this life, son,' he said to me, as he cradled the mug of tea in his weathered hands. ‘Chance can come when we are young and ill-equipped.'

We sat on in a sure silence, secure in each other's presence, as easy with each other's leanings as the meadow grass that sways in a summer's breeze. After a while I got up and touched his head before leaving the oil store.

In the ninth and tenth week, I walk the south and south-east coasts through Cork, Waterford, and Wexford, and in the eleventh I climb inland to spend some days among the stony mountains of Wicklow. As I come down from the mountains, Dublin spreads out to the sea before me and I know I am almost finished and home. I am excited as I am to meet Aisling in the city centre, and I have so much to tell her. I wait for her in a café that is half-filled with women who sit in pairs and serve each other revelations across tables to returns of shock, surprise, concern, and agreement. You wouldn't get better in the Abbey. Three girls enter and pay separately for their orders; they look too young and too poor to push for the communal bill. I am early and so, too, when she arrives, is Aisling. I know something is different when she walks in. I run and take her in my arms, and pull her close and tight.

‘You're pregnant, aren't you, Aisling Flannery?'

‘Jesus, Johnny. How could you possibly know that?'

‘Just a mad guess.'

‘So, what do you think?'

‘I think it's fantastic. I think it's the best thing ever.'

Aisling breaks and cries. ‘It won't be easy. How will we manage?'

‘We'll manage fine — better than fine. It will be mad stuff altogether. Don't worry about a single thing.'

Aisling is still crying, but laughing too at the same time in the tricky way that only children and girls can.

‘What will everyone say?'

‘Everyone will say it's a great thing. And those that don't, don't matter.'

‘Are you sure?'

‘Sure about what?'

‘Sure about the baby?' she asks. ‘Sure about me?'

‘I sure am. Are you happy?'

‘Yes.'

‘Are you well?'

‘Yes.'

‘Then, Aisling Flannery, this is a great day. Shall I sing you a song?'

‘No.'

We leave the café to get air and to hold each other, and then we go in again and order coffee and cake.

‘We will call her Cora, if we have a girl. Won't we?' she says to me as we travel on the bus to her flat.

‘Yes, Aisling,' I say, looking into eyes that are the rustic-gold-speckled brown of the fading fern of autumn. ‘We will. And may the gods above grant us that blessing.'

‘And if he's a boy?'

‘Well,' I say, pulling her close. ‘We'll have to think on that one.'

I stay in Dublin for five days, where I cook for Aisling, tell her about my great amble around Ireland, sing songs, and kiss her belly. We make plans, and then I finish the walk to Dundalk.

It is now midsummer, and when the sun shines it bounces off rich greens and yellows. It has taken twelve weeks for me to walk around the island.

‘What do you make of Aisling's news?' I ask Bob, on the morning of the final day.

I think it's mighty news altogether
, he answers, and pats my shoulder.

It is midday when I approach Dundalk from the south. A pub sits at a junction where roads continue north to the town and east to the edge of the bay. I remove my backpack and enter through an open door. The pub is empty, chairs and stools are upside-down on tables, and barstools are stacked against the far wall. A folded
Irish Times
is on a shelf near the door. I lift the newspaper from the shelf and walk to the bar.

‘Hello?' I call out. ‘Hello?'

There is no answer. I take a barstool from the far wall to the bar, sit, and spread the newspaper open on the dark counter.

I am reading the sports pages when there is a sound, and I turn to see a girl enter through a side door, pushing a pink mop-bucket before her.

‘Oh, hi,' she says. ‘We're not really open.'

‘That's okay,' I tell her. ‘I'm not really thirsty. I just popped in to read your newspaper.'

She looks at me for a while before she speaks. ‘You can stay if you want. I'll be making tea when I finish this.'

She cleans the pub around me, reorganising chairs and tables as she goes, pulling the pink bucket behind her with a long mop-handle. I watch her as she works. She has an easy, athletic movement, and under a black top and a short, black skirt there is a fit and toned body. She faces away from me, stroking the long mop across the floor and under tables. There is rhythm in her action, a slight alternate pumping of her arse — left then right, left then right, left then right. It is a beautiful thing.

‘Are you watching me?' she asks.

‘No,' I tell her, quickly returning to the newspaper. ‘Just daydreaming.'

A second girl enters. She has a similar shape to the first; but where the first wears black, the second wears white; and where the first has brown hair tied behind her in a ponytail, the second has blonde; and where the first has dark eyes, the second has bright-blue. As the girls prepare the pub for the day's business, I learn that they are cousins, and they learn of my long walk — everyone loves a story — and when they finish I persuade them to add toast to the tea we share.

When the pot is drained and the toast is finished, I make my farewells and take the road east to the wide and shallow inlet of Dundalk Bay. At the coast, I look out over a level, dark earth. Only at full flood does the bay carry water; at ebb-tide the sea retreats well beyond where the human eye can find it, and the bay appears as a broad expanse of flat sands. A river has cut itself into the seabed, running parallel to the shore before turning and pouring into the eastern horizon. Halfway along the shore is the village of Blackrock, and where the flat plain meets the northern arm of mountain is the town of Dundalk.

It is a fine day, and patches of heat fall through broken cloud. I remove my boots and socks, and tie them to my backpack. I step out onto the sands and push north. I cross the river and walk out into the bay, travelling south to north about a half-mile from the shore. A blue boat sits on the sands, lying on its side like a dog might fall in the shade on a hot day. The hull of the boat faces south, and I stop and rest against it, sitting on the wet sands. To the south, north, and west is land, and to the east is the unseen sea, and beyond that is England. A marine rope hangs over the side of the boat, and I play with it as I sit. The sun finds me, and I look up to the hot light with closed eyes. Behind my eyelids I play with burning, mingling shapes.

The water sparkles as they emerge, rising to stand side by side in the low tide. They both face me, pushing the water back from their faces and into their ponytails. They reach out to me, they beckon with fingers, hands, arms, and eyes. And those faces. The girl with the brown hair turns as the tide rises. I watch the rhythm in her movement, the slight alternate pumping of her arse — left then right, left then right, left then right. It is a beautiful thing. I too rise. It is then I find that in my idle play I have tied the rope around my waist, and now I can't get the knot undone. The girl with the blonde hair steps closer, just beyond my reach. She stands, her legs slightly apart, as the tide rises and a wave catches her where her long legs meet her waist. She gives a short gasp as the wave passes through her — a gasp of surprise, but with a kind of joy. She looks to me as the next wave approaches. Again she gasps as the wave passes, the water soaking the lower half of the short, white skirt. A third wave approaches, and this time a tremble follows the gasp, and she buckles as the tremble passes. She looks on me with her head held at a curious slant. The girl in the black continues to pump in the water. A fourth wave approaches. I desperately try to free the knot, but the rope has welded; I strain against the hold, but I cannot get free from the boat. The wave hits, and the gasp becomes a groan, and when the next wave hits the groan becomes a call. The water rises and sparkles. I feel a cold wetness. I open my eyes, and water surrounds me.

I get to my feet. I pull at the rope, but the damned thing is tied tight around my waist. How did I do that? The tide is rising, and I panic as I pull at the knot. How did this happen? I pull and grab, but the knot will not give. And the water rises. I hear Bob laughing. I turn and see him sitting in the boat.

Just jump in the boat, son
, he says.

I scramble into the boat, and as soon as I do, the knot loosens and the rope falls away. I lift the backpack into the boat and then I lie on the damp wood, looking up to the sky as the boat bobbles in the tide. I wait for the tide to turn, and as I do I look across the water to Blackrock. The village looks different from this view, and when the bay empties and the boat falls, I cross the wet sands to the shore.

I walk along Blackrock's high street in wet jeans. I pass the window of Ramie Knoll's bric-a-brac shop, and stop to look at a framed copy of Robert Emmet's speech from the dock. I scan the familiar text that I know so well:

… martyred heroes who have shed their blood on the scaffold and in the field, in defence of their country and of virtue
…
the emancipation of my country from the super-inhuman
…
I will make the last use of that life in doing justice to that reputation which is to live after me … my country's liberty and independence … when my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written …