Learning to Love Ireland (8 page)

Everyone seems happy and relaxed – it's a pleasant change from the stressed atmosphere of the city during the week. I'm tempted to buy a denim shirt with Peanuts characters embroidered on the front pockets. There are a number of marks on it, though, so I decide not to put my last tin of stain remover to the test. Cheryl chooses a brightly checked long-sleeved shirt for herself...

Children run among the stalls chasing each other, while their mothers chat and linger over potential purchases. Secondhand dealers bargain animatedly, gesturing at clothing selected from the piles in front of them. The latest beat pulsates from portable radios. An ice cream vendor relaxes against his bike, waiting for customers...

A long time ago, it seemed, in a city far, far away...

The package of replacement documents finally arrived from South Africa. The University of KwaZulu-Natal and the University of South Africa had, as before, been efficient and helpful. The UKZN logo, its colourful Zulu shield an expression of the new ‘rainbow nation', was very different from the staid old coat of arms of the University of Natal.

A few weeks later, I received a notification from John informing me that they had recognised my degree and diploma, and had decided that both were comparable to Level 7 on the Irish National Framework of Qualifications.

Good news and bad news.

I argued (respectfully) that my Higher Education Diploma was a two-year post graduate qualification and, as such, couldn't possibly be viewed as being on a par with my degree. I suggested that it should equate to a Level 8 award, and asked them to reconsider their assessment.

I wasn't holding my breath this time.

C
HAPTER
S
IX

He was a nice-looking, tall young man. Definitely younger than both Sean and Brian. He told me that he hadn't had much experience of interviewing, and suggested we chat informally.

The young lady they'd employed previously hadn't been particularly motivated. He admitted that he'd clashed with her. Often she would burst into tears, a practice he'd found infuriating. He needed help in the office, as he was in charge of sales and had neither the time nor the desire to be chained to a computer when he could be out selling. He wanted someone who could chase up orders, answer emails and sort out quotations. And, above all, he didn't want any drama.

He asked about ‘Reading the Future'. I told him that I'd just been engaged to deliver another series of lectures on the same topic to a reading group at the Wexford Library, a commitment I would need to honour.

That shouldn't be a problem, he assured me. Was I a clairvoyant?

I promised him that if he gave me the job, I'd avoid bursting into tears. And, no, I wasn't a clairvoyant. ‘Reading the Future' didn't have anything to do with astrology or tea leaves.

His final question was: ‘Why do you want to work?'

Why did I want to work?

Larry and I had worked very hard to establish Alfa. And we'd worked even harder when Zimbabwe's economy collapsed and hyperinflation threatened to ruin our company.

‘Because I've worked all my life,' I said. Because I've never thought of not working. Because the need to achieve is an integral part of who I am. Because I want to earn money. Because...'

What a strange question.

As I rose to leave, I found that my fashionable new scarf had acquired a life of its own. A buckle on my handbag had latched onto it, and one end was unravelling at a furious pace. Tattered tails of wool were making their way towards the floor. I eased it off, hoping he hadn't noticed, and crammed what was left of it into the bag.

Naturally, there were other applicants.

For the moment, I had plenty to do. Although I would be lecturing on the same subject, the world was changing all the time. There were aspects of my presentation that I wanted to develop and improve. Each group or class would have a different ‘personality', especially in an informal setting where there would be interaction and discussion.

After a couple of weeks had gone by, I began to feel really despondent. I'd thought that the interview had gone well (apart from the scarf) and that I'd impressed him with my obvious maturity and desire to work.

Then he phoned and offered me the position. The wages weren't great, but I'd found a job at last.

Actually getting to work was one of the things that worried me most. After two dummy runs, I knew where to go. Enniscorthy's narrow streets were very different from Bulawayo's wide, tree-lined roads, which had been designed by Leander Starr Jameson (one of Rhodesia's founders) so that a team of sixteen oxen could turn around in them.

Unfortunately, there was a school on my route. Parents parked in long lines on the kerb so that they could watch their children walk through the gates. Other motorists simply had to wait until the kids were off-loaded. Then, within metres of each other, there were two or three pedestrian crossings across which more parents and children streamed.

In County Wexford, pedestrians cross confidently in front of traffic, pedestrian crossing or not. I'm ashamed to say that, in Zimbabwe, pedestrians are considered a nuisance. Courage and speed are essential if one is to cross a busy road successfully. Everyone knew the cautionary tale about a young tourist who trustingly used a pedestrian crossing on the Enterprise Road in Harare.

She was killed.

African drivers (both black and white) are not programmed to give way to pedestrians.

I've heard local people here complaining about the bad driving, the dreadful postal system and the trains that are always late.

They don't know how fortunate they are.

The postal system in Ireland is excellent. There is a pretty good chance you will receive a letter posted from Derry the very next day in Gorey. It takes weeks to get a parcel to Glyn in Durban and sometimes months to someone in Zimbabwe. That's if it ever gets there. And if it does arrive, it may well have been opened by customs or a mail sorter hoping to find a couple of US dollars or English pounds.

On my first day at work, my car and I arrived in one piece, but there was no one to report to. The large office building appeared deserted. Then I heard faint music. I opened a door at the end of a passage, and found myself in a long room partitioned into a series of cages. Frantic barking interrupted the soothing melody, as dogs threw themselves at the wire of their cages. I hastily closed the door again, hoping that my duties wouldn't involve mucking out kennels.

Stephen arrived shortly afterwards. The job sounded more complicated than it had at the interview, and I tried to write everything down. Another young man put his head round our door, and he and Stephen exchanged a few words. He didn't even glance at me. I asked who he was and Stephen looked surprised.

‘Oh, that's Fintan,' he said. ‘The boss.'

‘But you didn't introduce us,' I said, horrified.

It took me a while to work out the chain of command, since Stephen wasn't big on clarification. Young guys wandered in and out. Who was management, and who wasn't? I felt that I was lagging behind all the time, and that important pieces of the jigsaw had been misplaced somewhere.

I wasn't at all clear who ‘yer man' was. The term seemed to refer to everyone from the accountant to the guy in the little green van who delivered the mail. But there didn't seem to be a ‘yer woman'. There was a ‘herself', though, as well as a ‘himself'. Once a week a large white van would arrive in the yard and the driver would ask, ‘Where's herself then? She said she wanted chocolate biscuits, detergent and toilet paper.' I had learned during our ECDL course that ‘lads' meant everyone, and that there didn't seem to be any ‘lassies' in Ireland.

It didn't help that I found the accents difficult and that I had to ask everyone to repeat their comments and requests. ‘Who did you say you wanted? I'm sorry; I didn't quite catch your name. I'm so sorry would you mind repeating that? This line's very bad today. Where did you say you were phoning from? I'm sorry, would you mind spelling that for me?'

On one occasion I answered the phone and listened to someone rattling off a spiel in what sounded like a foreign language. Eventually, without pausing for breath, she finished what she had to say with the words ‘franking machine'. ‘No, thanks,' I said, relieved.

Irish people, for some reason, speak very quickly, while people from the southern hemisphere speak languidly or lazily. We don't seem to be in the same dreadful hurry. Perhaps it's something to do with the climate.

‘Phone that architect in Wexford right away. Ask him to email the plans to us... I'm off to pick up a sandwich – then I'll be in to collect them. I've a meeting in Kilmuckridge at 2.30...'

There was no telephone directory in our office. Come to think of it, I'd never seen a directory in either of the company's offices. Then I remembered that weird ad on TV featuring two lads with ginger moustaches and green track suits prancing round a race track. They slap their thighs with imaginary whips and urge one another on chanting: ‘One, one, eight, fifty: directory enquiries; one, one, eight, fifty: directory enquiries...'

Stephen always delivered instructions like a soldier firing rounds from an AK47 rifle. Sometimes he'd finish with: ‘You know yourself'. What did I know myself? I wasn't at all sure.

My colleagues found my accent rather peculiar, too. Half the time they said I sounded ‘proper' and very English, and half the time they mocked my horrible habits of saying ‘ja' instead of ‘yes', and ‘shame' when I was offering sympathy.

If they felt that people expected too much, their response was simply: ‘Fuck them!' ‘Fuck' (or ‘feck' if they were making an effort to be polite) seemed to be the most popular word in the Irish vocabulary.

Alfa's mission statement, ‘Care; Service; Value', sounded insipid by comparison.

Stephen found me very slow.

And I found his habit of prefacing everything with: ‘But don't you remember...?' most disconcerting.

‘But don't you remember that I told you to check on the availability of code 32-5676Y? We need to order two for my customer in New Ross immediately. Don't you remember they're on that quotation we were doing last week? Don't you remember that I told you to make a separate folder for emails from The Global Market? Don't you remember that I told you to save that image to “My Pictures”?'

I used to pride myself on my excellent memory. What was happening to me? Was I in the first stages of Alzheimer's? I kept trying to explain that things weren't yet ‘real' to me. That I was ‘getting there', but that it might take a little while. What I didn't say was that he was so impatient that I became nervous, and couldn't seem to think clearly. That when he stood over me, wanting me to type something quickly, my fingers unerringly found the wrong keys.

Was he wishing that he'd employed someone younger? Did he think I was an elderly half-wit making excuses for her incompetence?

I wanted him to show me how to do things on the computer at a pace I could follow. I needed to write things down, so that I could refer to them later.

‘No time now. Sorry. Can't go over it AGAIN. Must rush. We'll do it together next week. Cheers...'

Oh feck...

It took a while, but we became friends.

He showed me a narrow back road that bypassed both the school and the town. I got lost the first time I used it and nearly landed up in Bunclody on my way home to Gorey. Stephen said that it was good for me. I had to learn to explore.

He was an excellent salesperson. He would describe our products to customers in vivid, enthusiastic terms, elaborating on their features and desirability. He would drive from Wexford to Dublin and on to Limerick without turning a hair. I'd get frenetic phone calls instructing me to phone our supplier in Europe to find out where the feck our goods were. Or he'd demand to know why the courier hadn't delivered the carton we were expecting. What the feck was going on? And I must stop being so nice (weak) on the phone. These fecking people must move their fecking arses. You know yourself.

I began to enjoy running the office.

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN

I'd requested
A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
by Robert Olen Butler. This wasn't available, but the library had a copy of
Mr Spaceman.
I was unimpressed by the dust jacket in blue and yellow, featuring a pair of feet in takkies (Zimbabwe-speak for ‘tennis shoes'). It looked like an old-fashioned child's book.

Once I began reading, I changed my mind very quickly.

Desi, an alien spaceman, has been given the task of studying the people of Earth. They are a strange lot. He ‘quakes in the turbulence' of their words and thoughts. Intermittently, he beams human beings onto his space ship, listens to their dreams, hopes and fears, and then returns them to earth, none the worse for an experience they don't remember. He is disturbed by the yearnings of these ‘primary creatures', many of whom are conscious only of a restless, unfulfilled longing. ‘Dashing somewhere, all of them were seeking something...'

Desi is unable to find anyone who leads a life of ‘bland contentedness'. Nobody is happy. Each person he encounters yearns, often for something he is unable to identify.

I yearned for a home of our own. The pleasant, compact little house we rented was perfectly located – both the railway station and the bus stop were just down the road – a brisk five minute walk. The shops were virtually on our doorstep.

But it wasn't ours.

I missed the home we'd left behind in Zimbabwe. I missed the large, uncluttered rooms and our own furniture. The furniture in the Gorey house was unpretentiously second-hand. I hated the battered, grey lounge suite with its ragged fringe and its ugly orange tasselled cushions. I hated the orange curtains and the worn, grey mat. We'd asked if we could replace them at our own expense, but had been told that this would not be possible.

The idea of having our own place began to consume me.

It could be in a country village with hills in the distance, overlooking rolling green fields. A small, modern house, preferably a bungalow, without stairs – we had to be sensible and think of the future when we were old and doddery. Ideally it would have three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a well laid-out garden with a lawn, flower beds and a few shrubs.

Or it could be a little house near the sea. Cuddled up safely in our warm bed, we'd listen to the crash of the waves on stormy nights. In more temperate weather, we'd wander down to the beach and watch the gulls swooping and soaring, breathe in the fresh, salty air and get our feet wet on the warmer days.

We'd been in Ireland for a year now, but we hadn't experienced many ‘warmer' days. Not what Africans would call warm, anyway. There had been only one or two days in the entire year when we'd taken off our jumpers. It was strange (and impressive) to see people wandering about town in T-shirts on days when we were shivering as usual. The locals had been very unhappy about the summer of 2007 – it had been a great disappointment. The priest at St Michael's had prayed for a good summer for his younger parishioners to compensate for the stress of the Leaving Certificate exams. We'd been told that the ‘sunny south-east' had the best climate in Ireland. If that were true, what was the rest of the country like?

Gorey is a pleasant town with excellent shopping facilities and even that rarity in Ireland, a busy main street with lots of little shops and cafés. It has easy access to Dublin and the North. If you want to live somewhere practical, Gorey is the place for you. Enniscorthy is more striking with its quaint cobbled streets winding down to the banks of the Slaney River. Picturesque Wexford Town has a long wooden promenade with fishing boats at the quayside and flotillas of sailing boats out on the water.

Tranquil, pretty Bunclody is situated on the Carlow border near Mount Leinster. We had lunch there one day at the Chantry Restaurant in an elegant Georgian building that had once been a Methodist church. The River Clody meandered through the lush garden below.

‘Historic Ferns' was also a possibility. The town was the ancient capital of the Kingdom of Leinster, once the seat of Dermot MacMurrough, King of Leinster, who was responsible for bringing the Normans to Ireland. I loved the ruined 13
^th
century Norman castle, probably built by William Marshall, son-in-law of Richard de Clare (Strongbow) and Aoife (Dermot MacMurrough's daughter).

I always looked forward to reaching that point on the N11 when the Ferns towers suddenly reared up, dominating the more recent buildings of the town ahead. One evening, I came upon a perfect rainbow positioned directly above the silhouetted turrets of the castle. It seemed to move with me, trailing its luminous fingers over fields and across hedges. Strobe-like flashes of sunshine illuminated droplets of rain on leaves and branches. Although it was fading, the rainbow continued to travel ahead of me. It was only when I left the N11 for Gorey that it finally disappeared.

By this time, I was confidently travelling 26 kilometres to work every day, so any of these towns would be suitable in terms of distance. The most pressing problem was how to get a mortgage, since we were too old for the bank to consider us an acceptable risk.

Larry appreciated the practicalities of living in Gorey and had little enthusiasm for frenetic house-hunting. All he wanted to do was get on with his book. He had a chair and a computer. The ugly furniture wasn't keeping
him
awake at night.

My favourite property websites were Daft.ie and MyHome. ie. I compiled lists of possible properties and estate agents. I contacted a number of these and they sent me pamphlets and brochures. I would study these in the evenings (having sneaked a quick online glance at the latest additions if things were quiet at work), and then I would coax Larry away from the chapter he was writing.

‘What do you think of this one? It has four bedrooms, a large kitchen and what looks like a very pretty garden. Only one bathroom? You're right. Shame. I love the photos of the garden. It looks established and well-maintained. And this one? Appears to be built from concrete blocks? Oh, you're concerned about effective insulation? OK. You've obviously got to be happy. And warm. How about this one? I know how much you like thatch. Doesn't it look rustic? Ja, you're right, I suppose. “Needs attention” – could mean anything. Now this one looks perfect. It's only a couple of thousand more than we're thinking of spending. There are two bathrooms and three loos. And a fantastic garden. And a large kitchen. It was built ten years ago and it looks structurally strong. It's on the main road? Oh, you think it would be noisy and a security risk?'

Damn. Back to the drawing board.

Or perhaps I'd better cook dinner in my cramped kitchen.

Or do the ironing.

Or vacuum the bloody awful carpet.

The first property we actually visited was in Kiltealy, an attractive village near Enniscorthy in the foothills of the Blackstairs Mountains. We had no appointment to view, having driven out on a whim one Saturday afternoon. No one was there, so we decided to be daring and have a quick look around. After all, we were potential buyers, weren't we? We sidled round the side of the house and peered through the windows...

...and returned to the front.

Where...

...there were now two cars parked in the driveway...

Our lame apologies were graciously accepted. The young woman, despite finding strangers trespassing on her property, offered to show us around if we would give her five minutes to tidy up ‘the worst of the mess' that four young children had made.

It was a nice house, but it didn't say ‘wow'.

It just said ‘ordinary'.

When we first saw the house we bought in Bulawayo in 1977, it said ‘wow'. We
had
to have it. It cost a little more than we could afford, but we found that extra bit. There was no hesitation. We both fell in love with it instantly and it nurtured us for twenty years. We added a swimming pool, a borehole, electric gates, sturdy burglar bars, a wall and an enclosed patio. The garden was looking wonderful when we left.

We didn't want ‘ordinary'.

We looked at a number of properties in and around Bunclody. On the outskirts of town, there was an attractive two-storey house with a red roof. But it didn't have its own entrance. You had to use someone else's driveway. There was a box-like bungalow falling into disrepair in a quiet cul de sac. A semidetached stone house in a lane off the main street was very pretty, but it had no bath, only a shower. I couldn't imagine the rest of my life without hot baths.

I assumed that it was going to be a long haul.

But I was wrong. It was over very quickly.

I began to suspect that Larry was letting me run with my fixation until I got the whole irritating thing out of my system (or so he hoped). He wasn't convinced that it was the right time to buy. We couldn't afford it. Our lives weren't stable. I'd been working for only two months.

I felt resentful. I WANTED my own house, damn it.

Then the lights began to go out in the United States.

On 6 September 2008, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (two US government-sponsored enterprises), were placed into conservatorship run by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Together they held or guaranteed $5.4 trillion of mortgages. If they had failed, the damage to the US mortgage and housing markets would have been huge. On 15 September, Lehman Brothers, a 158 year-old bank, filed for bankruptcy protection, causing the biggest upheaval experienced on Wall Street in decades. This is considered to be the watershed event that changed the rules of the game for those Wall Street banks that were thought to be ‘too big to fail'.

The property market worldwide shuddered and ground to a standstill.

The Celtic tiger slunk back into its lair, as the threatened recession became a reality. The economy began its downhill slide.

My job was at risk.

Buying a house would have been a disaster.

It suddenly became essential for my sanity to get rid of the ghastly, musty lounge suite and those vile orange curtains and cushions. So I approached the manager of our complex again, and this time she said ‘yes'. Perhaps she had decided that we were reasonable tenants.

We bought a dark brown leather suite, a brown and tan carpet and cream curtains and cushions. The living room was instantly transformed, and I felt much happier. As ever, though, I was struck by the difference between life here and life in Zimbabwe. People there would have been falling over themselves to annex the old furniture. We had to pay €50 to have it removed. I certainly wasn't complaining – I'd have paid more to see the last of it.

I had another reason for being so stressed about the furniture. Old friends were coming from Australia to visit us.

One afternoon, while we were still in Zim, I'd received a phone call from a distraught Nina. Her husband had attracted the attention of Zimbabwe's Central Intelligence Organisation, or ‘secret police'. ‘We're in Jo'burg. And I don't know when we'll be back. We had a tip-off this morning that the CIO was on its way to arrest and interrogate Ian about foreign currency dealings. As you know, he had government approval for everything, but they've obviously done one of their 360°s. With his heart condition and his diabetes, he'd never have survived one of their jail cells. We barely had time to pack a suitcase. Thank God there was a flight to South Africa this morning.'

They never saw their home in Bulawayo again.

It was great to hear how happy Nina and Ian were in Australia. It hadn't taken them long to settle – they were delighted to be with their family again. Teresa and Anthony had moved to Perth some years before, and they'd missed them terribly. Nina spent much of her time now looking after her grandchildren. Ian still played golf as often as possible and had an interest in two or three businesses. They both loved the climate in Perth – it was similar to the type of weather they'd been used to in Bulawayo – and they enjoyed being near the sea. They had a ready-made social circle – over the years many of their friends from Zimbabwe and South Africa had immigrated to Perth. They said they'd never go back to Zimbabwe, even for a visit. Apart from the fact that the CIO might still be interested in Ian, they no longer considered themselves to be Zimbabweans. They were Australians.

Was I Irish or Zimbabwean? I wasn't sure.

When I thought about Zimbabwe and Bulawayo, I felt desolate.