At the Edge of Ireland (11 page)

Signs at Glengarriff pointed enticingly southward to Bantry, a delightful market town (famous for the produce stands of local cheese makers and other artisans) arced around the eastern tip of Bantry Bay and watched over by the graceful Queen Anne–styled Bantry House, built around 1700 and home to an eclectic collection of art and ornate furnishings, and magnificent gardens. The two remaining southwest peninsulas of Sheep's Head and Mizen Head are to the south, and then eastward are Skibbereen and ultimately Kinsale, Cobh, and Cork. All very tempting destinations. But Anne, as usual, was the one to return us to a semblance of normalcy:

“Excuse me, but I wish you'd stop dreaming of driving south. We're here on Beara and there's now the rather significant question of precisely where are we going to live!”

“Live?”

“A house, a cottage, a bungalow. Y'know, preferably near the ocean, near a village with decent pubs and a well-stocked grocery store, and…”

“Ah, yes…”

“Y'remember now? We're got nowhere to live at the moment…like tonight, for example!”

“Well, the lady we spoke to on the phone said she had a couple of options…”

“Yes, that's true. So how about if we turn around, head back to Castletownbere, and go and take a look at what she's offering. They all seemed very charming on her Web site, but we need to go and check them out. Let's go…it'll be fun!” (Anne is always very convincing when she plays the role of trip coordinator.)

“Yes. You're right. Check them out. Definitely. Great idea.”

No reply. But it didn't matter, because I knew she was raring to set up a new home in a new place, with new places to food shop, new dishes to cook, and with who-knew-what experiences ahead.

And what the charming lady with the bungalows to rent had said to us about her properties turned out to be absolutely true.

Within a couple of hours we'd selected an almost brand-new fully furnished bungalow for a “just-affordable” rent close to that beautiful white Ballydonegan Beach just below Allihies. By sunset we were sitting at our outdoor picnic table sipping a fine fruity pinot noir together as the brilliant flare of evening light turned everything golden. Shadows eased slowly across amber grasses and we could hear the soft susurrus of surf on the sand and we were very, very happy, bathed together in tranquil splendor.

We had arrived safely on Beara, made our first “loop” journey, and were falling in love with the place already. And we still had months more to explore and learn all the nooks and nuances of this unspoilt “best secret place in Ireland.”

So—once again—
Sláinte!

E
ARLIER
I
PAID SINCERE HOMAGE TO
the late Pete McCarthy and his splendid romp of an Irish travelogue book—
McCarthy's Bar
. I also thanked him from the bottom of my soul for luring Anne and me here. “Here” being Beara, Castletownbere, and most specifically, MacCarthy's Bar on the main square in this hectic little harborside town.

MacCarthy's is the kind of Irish pub you enter and fall in love with in nanoseconds. Pete was no exception, and I quote once again with great affection and respect from his book:

I can sense that this place might be a contender in the Best Pub in the World competition. MacCarthy's is an effortless compromise. The front half is a grocer's shop with seats for drinkers; the back half, a bar with groceries. On the right as you enter is a tiny snug, once a matchmaker's booth where big-handed farmers arranged marriages between cousins who hadn't met. Aluminum kettles and saucepans hang from the ceiling, not for show, but for sale. Drinkers sit under shelves of long-life orange juice and sliced bread. There is a fridge full of dairy products. The well-stocked shelves behind the bar display eggs, tinned peaches and peas, Paxo stuffing, custard creams, baking powder, bananas, Uncle Ben's rice, nutmeg, onions, olive oil, Brillo pads, and soap: good news for hungry drinkers who need a wash.

The dense, luxuriantly-sculpted pint of stout is five minutes in the pouring, the precise amount of time needed to confess your entire life history to the skilled Irish bar person. I was jolted out of my introspection by a seventy-two-year-old woman who stood on a chair and sang “The Fields of Athenry.” She was a bit wobbly on her pins, on account of having suffered a stroke the previous week, but it went down well anyway. Everyone followed with songs of their own…I was in the dream Irish pub of the popular romantic imagination.

MacCarthy's Bar

And although Pete, from what I remember, didn't use the word
magic
in reference to this little gem of a watering hole, you could sense that aura in his words, and I will certainly use it. You see, that's the thing with MacCarthy's. You just never know when you open the creaking doors, swinging like those saloon bar doors in a spaghetti western and set in the pub's bold red-and-black facade, what little dramas and complexities of the human condition you'll find within. Sometimes, particularly in an off-season afternoon, it'll be like it used to be, with a couple quietly sharing a pot of tea at a small chipped table in the front snug room where marriages were once arranged like barter-transactions in an Arabian bazaar and where a selection of those vital groceries and other household necessities are on permanent display behind the counter and also over their heads, precariously balanced on little shelves. In the back room, divided from the front by a halfhearted attempt at a screen a yard or so wide and just enough to block the shenanigans of ardent beer-huggers, there's invariably a couple of local crusties, maybe a shepherd, a farmer, or a fisherman—one of those who sailed in the “small boaties” before the mammoth EU-approved megatrawlers appeared. And the conversation would be slow, measured, and full of serene pauses for joint mental cud-chewing to ingest the riches of shared information or age-honed insights.

And once in a while, a halfhearted attempt at a joke will rise like a semi-inflated balloon. “So—what's the definition of an Irish queer, then?”

An expectant silence.

“A man who prefers girls to drink.”

Grins and groans and more orders for stout.

And while nothing much was going on, the ladies who run this place, Adrienne MacCarthy and her sister Nicola, would make regular appearances to see if anyone had any sudden impetuous requirements in terms of groceries or Guinness or their glorious crab sandwiches with brown bread and lashings of Irish butter or the need for a little across-the-counter banter. They were always around. I never saw a man behind the counter and never asked why. It seemed just fine the way it was.

Of course there are occasions when a man's bicep-backed authority would be needed to separate a couple of tanked and cantankerous post-teenager town terrors. And it inevitably came from one of the regulars who, with a polite “by your leave” nod to one of the ladies, would launch into the fray initially with a “Now, c'mon, lads, c'mon…” If that failed to calm the pit bull tensions, there would be a stronger indication that the door would be the evening's denouement. Usually things ended in a kind of amicable blur of back slappings and proclamations of undivided brotherhood. In fact I don't think I've actually seen a real Irish fistfight here because, first, it's too small to get a good swing at anything other than your own glass, and second, because the mood is usually so pleasantly benign even when the place is packed. It invariably has the aura of a family gathering or even an Irish wake which, unlike wakes in other countries, are often renowned for their jolly games, pranks, and spirit of upbeat bonhomie. And a third reason too, which is maybe a little more subtle, is what I can only describe as the confessional spirit that seems to float around the tiny space, which is barely big enough for a dozen people comfortably but often hosts three times that number.

Whatever the size and spirit of the
craic
and no matter how intensely earsplitting the din, you'll invariably see and overhear the most personal and intimate of verbal intercourses. Perfect strangers, I should add, not entirely succumbed to the juice of the barley (“He has the drink taken, but not to unseemly excess,” in local police lingo), have told me about aspects of their lives that they possibly wouldn't even think of sharing with their spouses. Maybe for them it's a toss-up between a mumbled recitation of sins in the confessionals of the towering gray cathedrallike edifice up the street, or in the more relaxed raconteurship here with someone you've never met before and may never meet or remember again.

However, in the case of Adrienne, I guarantee you'll certainly remember your first meeting. There's an aura about her that lures you to the bar. She looks straight at you—gentle eyes from a pretty but proud face framed by long blond tresses. She exudes kindness, sensitivity, a quiet wisdom, and a sense of fun—frisky and bubbly—beneath her placid demeanor. You feel you could trust her with all your worldly woes and worries and that she'd find time to listen while pulling half a dozen pints, making change, taking orders for sandwiches, and smiling at someone's corny joke down the bar.

Following the publication of
McCarthy's Bar
, with a photograph of Adrienne's colorful little pub on the cover along with a behatted Peter and a nun in her black robe supping a pint of Guinness on a bench outside the front door, the place has become a bit of a shrine with travel book lovers.

“Every day I find I'm talking about him to strangers,” Adrienne told me. “I tell them the way he'd pop in after the publication of the book and peep his head around the door and sigh with relief when he saw that nothing had really changed. I think he dreaded that the popularity of his book would spoil things around here. But, except for a few extra visitors and blow-in residents, it's still a place for the locals really. Occasionally we'll get letters from people who loved his book—really sweet messages. Even poems and things. I think it's a great honor for Pete—and for us—all this affection and interest.

“But it happened so…accidentally, I suppose you'd say. Pete was at a bit of a loose end. He was working a lot with the BBC but was getting restless. So his agent suggested—with a name like McCarthy and despite a very English upbringing—he should do a book on Ireland. She said—‘Just go and you'll know what to write.' And after he'd spent a few days here in Castletownbere, he suddenly knew what he wanted to do, and the book just sort of wrote itself. And he was so grateful—to us—to the whole place. And then—surprise, surprise!—he called us a year or so later and said ‘I've written a bit of a book about Irish bars…' and I thought ‘Oh yeah…'

“‘What do you think about the title
McCarthy's Bar
?”

“And I said ‘Sounds great…”

“‘Do you mind if I put your pub on the cover…'

“And I said ‘No, that's fine. Think it'll sell a dozen or two…?' and then it turned out to be a best seller. It was on the charts for over a year. But you kind of just take that on board. There's no panic about it. It's just nice that people can come and chat…I mean, we were here long before Pete made us famous and that's what he liked. He even signed one of his books for me—‘To Adrienne, definitely the best bar in the world!'

“It's so nice to have that. We both really clicked the way you do with some people…It all began when he first came here. It was my birthday, and he looked a bit low, so I said ‘Why don't you come along?' and we had a great time and he just kind of became part of the family. He was quite well known on the BBC doing travelogues, but we didn't know any of that…and he was a stand-up comedian too…and you could see his wit and timing came through. But then he left after a couple of days and we didn't hear anything until he came back months later with his family. He did that a few times. And then, on his last visit, he said ‘You've made me so much a part of your family, and if anything ever happens to you or your mum, please contact me and I'll be right here for you.' But a couple of months later…it was me going to his funeral.”

Adrienne paused. Her eyes were moist but tears refused to leave the sanctuary of her eyes and she smiled: “Y'see—it still hurts. Even after all this time…”

“Sometimes the death of a close friend makes people go off and fulfill a few of their dreams, their life fantasies, before it gets too late. But you stayed on here,” I said.

“Well—you're right. And I sort of mixed them up a bit. Y'see, this place is not a family obligation—I love it here. I just enjoy people so much, and despite all the routines, you never know what each day will bring. And I have my adventures too—hill walking in the high Atlas Mountains, in the Himalayas. I finally went to our Skellig islands too—the hard way—climbing all those seven hundred steps to the top of Skellig Michael, where the monks lived in those tiny beehive huts. Most fantastic place I've ever been to. I just wanted to lie down on the ground and cry…It's wonderful to realize what we've got right here in front of our noses. I love it all so much. Even if I go to Cork for the day, when we get back to Glengarriff and the whole of Bantry Bay just opens up…my heart just goes aaaaaghh! What a place! I need so little. I enjoy life. I'm not interested in a lot of money. I just want to be surrounded by good, interesting people and maybe help bring them together a little. Beara attracts who it needs. There's just so much…right here!”