The Road to McCarthy (17 page)

As I leave the diner I spot a payphone in the corner and decide to seize the moment to reserve a seat for
Howie the Rookie
.

The show is sold out for the rest of the run.

Bloated and egg-bound, I head out onto the street. Most people are dressed stylishly and effectively against the cold, in marked contrast to the Oxfam Spring Collection on the railway station platform yesterday morning. I’m puzzled, though, when I see first one person, then another, and another all wearing thick knitted headbands round their foreheads and ears, leaving their heads, frequently bald, sticking out the top like an egg—I can’t stop thinking of eggs just now—without a cozy. Is it a fashion statement? Or just an economy hat, a factory second bought cheap because the middle bit, the warm, important bit, is missing? I’ve always presumed that people who don’t wear hats in cold weather just can’t be bothered to lift their hands up and put something on their head. But if you’re going to take the trouble to put something up there, it might as well have a middle.

I go to the subway and take the downtown 6 train to Grand Central Station, then walk to the New York Public Library, where I will spend the day finding out about St. Patrick’s Day in America, and keeping warm.

It’s dark
when I leave the library, and the snow has thawed. The streets are wet and slushy as I splash through the rush-hour crowds along 34
^th
Street towards Madison Square Garden. Towering Gotham-Gothic buildings on the north side of the street vividly evoke the old New York. I’m surprised how many parts of town have retained this classic early-twentieth-century feel.

Opposite Madison Square Garden on Eighth Avenue is Tír na nÓg, an upmarket Irish theme pub and restaurant with grand mock-heroic-heraldic, ancient-Druidy, high-chieftain-of-Ireland décor. It’s packed with ice hockey fans warming up for the New York Rangers seven o’clock puck-off across the street. This isn’t a great place for two people who’ve never met to try and find each other, so I stand near the bar looking hot and anxious in the hope that’s what the other guy will be expecting. It seems to do the trick.

John McCarthy is the New York representative of the Clan McCarthy Association, with which our man in Tangier was involved before his fall from grace, and has met Terence on several occasions. He’s a banker, just back from a two-year posting to Surrey, which he loved. His brother, though, refused point-blank to visit him because of what England has done to Ireland. “He says he’ll never set foot there as long as he lives,” says John. I’ve never heard of anyone boycotting Surrey for ideological reasons—though it could catch on in Lancashire and Yorkshire—and I’m intrigued. As the hockey fans leave the bar and the noise subsides, I ask about his brother’s refusal to sully his shoes with the morally tainted soil of Esher. Is this because they’re Irish immigrants?

“Not really. Our McCarthys got here way before the American Revolution. They backed the wrong side and had to run away to Ontario. But my mother’s grandmother was Irish. That’s good enough in this town.”

John has an intriguing angle on the MacCarthy Mór controversy.

“You must remember that Hollywood movies have happy endings. Americans are very nostalgic people.”

He breaks off to order more drinks while I try to figure out where this is going.

“Here’s the way I see it. I’ve read Terence’s books and I thought they
were great stories. I read ’em, I close ’em, and I put ’em back on the shelf. And d’you know what? I don’t want to know whether they’re true or not.”

He takes a drink and a pause for thought.

“It doesn’t actually matter whether they’re true, or whether his claim to be prince of Desmond was true. The point was, it brought people together. It was a fraternal organization. C’mon! We knew we weren’t really related. So what? It was a starting point. It’s shot to hell now with this scandal. Only the Irish government can sort this out. And there’s some people put a lot of work into this clan thing. And a lot of money. Hell, we’re Americans. Business is important to us. And there could have been a lot of tourist business generated by this clan thing.”

He says I should try and make contact with the head of the clan association, Larry McCarthy, who has had extensive dealings with the former MacCarthy Mór. Unfortunately he lives 2,000 miles away in Montana.

“We once went to Montana to buy a dog. Sure is beautiful country out there.”

The apartment
I’m staying in is the home of an old pal from England who’s been in New York for ten years. Once upon a time Phil used to play saxophone in a punk band and appear on
Top of the Pops
, but now he’s got a job instead. One of his riffs is very famous. You probably wouldn’t know what it’s called, but you’d recognize it if you heard it.
Der der der duh der, Der der der duh der
. Yeah, that’s the one.

We’re in a bar in the East Village called St. Dymphna’s, who was the Irish patron saint of lunatics, or lunatic asylums, or something. A Mexican waiter is decanting HP Sauce from one bottle to another so slowly he looks like a sculpture. Van Morrison is on the stereo, and a couple on bar stools are kissing with tongues. Phil’s telling me about the time the band supported the Jam on tour, for no money, staying in semiderelict flophouses and generally living like beasts. He and the guitar player were in a chip shop one night after the gig, surrounded by concertgoers who didn’t recognize them, when the football crowd on the TV all started singing along to their
hit. The chip-buying Jam fans all joined in. They took in their anonymous moment of superstardom, then ordered two bags of chips because they didn’t have enough money for fish.

When they came over to play at CBGB’s in New York, Phil went missing with some people he met in a bar, and didn’t reappear till the night of the show three days later. He still can’t piece together quite what happened. At the time, many of us took it as a sign that this was the city for him, and that’s how it’s turned out. He married a New Yorker, and now has two sons. One of them put a raisin up his nose recently and they couldn’t get it out.

“It started to swell and turn back into a grape. We had to take him to emergency.”

Lucky it wasn’t a prune.

The extended happy hour with three-dollar Guinness comes to a sad conclusion and we get a cab to Rocky Sullivan’s. On the way, Phil tells me about the bar where all the beer is free during
Monday Night Football
on TV, until the first person has to go and take a leak. It could take years to recover from the mental trauma and bladder damage. I expect the real hardcore fans just wet themselves and front it out. If the bartender objected, you could claim it was spillage.

Seanchai
, I’ve discovered, is Gaelic for
storyteller
. As we walk down the steps and pay our ten dollars to someone who looks like an off-duty cop, they launch into an Irish hip-hop version of the Beach Boys’ “Do It Again,” which shows a commendably eclectic range of influences, but isn’t quite what I’d been expecting. To be honest, I don’t know what I’d been expecting.

I suppose I’d been hoping for a band and a bar that might serve as a symbol of what Irishness has become in the intense crucible of urban New York, and as I watch and listen it turns out that’s exactly what I’ve got. There’s a full-on rock-and-roll electric guitar player, a hissy on mandolin, a teenage Brooklyn girl scratching the turntables, a tough-looking American guy rapping and playing the uillean pipes and the bodhran, and a young Irish woman with a pierced nose and a pure voice that soars over the whole rhythmic mix. She sings a spine-tingling version of “Something Inside So
Strong” accompanied by just the bodhran, then goes straight into a raucous “Thirty Years On,” a song about Bloody Sunday. “Garvaghy Road” is about the Drumcree protest, and by now a pattern is emerging. I don’t believe Ian Paisley would feel at home here; nor is it a place where Terence Mac-Carthy’s theory of Ireland being an invention of the English would go down that well. The music is a rallying cry for nationalists and republicans. It’s at times like this one has to face up to the confusing responsibilities of having an Irish Catholic mother and an English Protestant father. Celebrate and honor both traditions, and denounce injustice wherever you find it. And if they start hitting you with chair legs, try and cover your groin.

The set finishes with “The Fields of Athenry,” the song I heard warbled to death in Cobh. Tonight, though, it’s transformed into an anthem of passion and beauty. This woman has a wonderful voice. The band goes off, even though there’s nowhere to go except stand next to the stage, then come back on for an encore.

The crowd goes wild. This is the band’s calling card. The tough-looking guy has taken over on lead vocals, and you know he means it. Then the storm is over and they’ve gone. I ask Phil what he thinks, and he says, “They’d sound great with a saxophone player.”

It’s always intimidating to approach performers after a show, because some of them are arrogant bastards who would rather eat soil than speak to a member of the audience, but I decide to risk the humiliation. They’re happy to talk. Rachel, the singer, is in her twenties and comes from Dublin. Chris, who sings and plays the pipes, is in his thirties, and also co-owns the bar. He grew up in Brooklyn but spent summers with family in Ireland, where he learned to play traditional instruments. This has left him with a curious accent that sounds three parts Brooklyn to one part Donegal. What’s even more curious is that he was a cop on the streets of New York
until he got a record company advance to buy some studio time. He got it free from a friend, and spent the money on the bar instead.

“My buddy and I realized we had nowhere to drink any more because our favorite bar had been turned into a fuggin’ Irish theme pub.”

“But isn’t this place an Irish pub?”

He narrows his eyes as if I’m much more stupid than he’d realized. “No. It ain’t themed. It’s a New York bar, but with an Irish influence. It’s like the music. It couldn’t come out of any place but this city.”

I tell him I’m booked to do a reading during St. Patrick’s week. There’s a twinkle in his eye but I’m not sure what it means.

“So you’re the guy. Have they warned you?”

“They have.”

He doesn’t say anything, so I fill the gap. “Do you think it’ll be okay?”

“Maybe. Could go either way.”

We arrange to meet for a drink on Sunday night and discuss a strategy that will ensure my safety. Chicken wire would be an option, but it’s probably too late to install it.

Back at the apartment I make a right turn out of the elevator, as usual, but Phil stops me.

“No, not that way. This way.”

He heads left. I could have sworn it was right, but he’s been doing it for years, so I suppose he must know. Mind you, he looks a bit out of it, gazing around in confusion, as if his sax player’s brain has been removed and replaced with a drummer’s. Then he says, “Are we in the right building?”

I confirm that we are. He walks right up to the wall and stares hard at a framed painting just beyond the end of his nose.

“Hey. This is all wrong!” The light of realization is dawning on his face. “This is the wrong picture! I know what they’ve done! They’ve changed the art!
They’ve changed all the art around
while we’ve been out.”

I explain they haven’t changed the art, he’s just walked in the wrong direction, and guide him to his apartment door. We open it as quietly as we can so as not to wake up the children, and wake up the children.

Next morning
is Saturday. The kids are off school and Phil is in bed with no sign that his emergence is imminent. One of the boys looks at me quizzically.

“Why does Daddy drink so much beer when you’re here?”

I explain that Daddy is a vegetarian, so beer is good for him because it’s a meat substitute, but he doesn’t seem to get it. I suppose you can’t blame the boy. I think the school syllabus is different over here.

Phil still hasn’t emerged when I head out for lunch.

I’ve decided it’s time for some noodles. Less assertive than pasta, more comforting than the potato, they are the perfect food for the fragile solo traveler, and also make a nice change from toasted ham-and-cheese sandwiches. New York Noodle Town on the Bowery in Chinatown looks just the job. The tiny formica tables are crammed with people of all races, ages and states of mental health. There are two round communal tables for solo diners. I go and join a very old Chinese guy who’s drinking tea, and a younger man in a leather jacket who is shouting into a cell phone in a language I don’t recognize. His aggrieved, indignant tone conveys a real sense of menace, as if he’s speaking to a store that just sold him a faulty electrical appliance, or berating a hit man who’s killed the wrong guy.

My roast duck and green vegetables with noodles is one of the bargains of world cuisine at $3.95, which includes tea and tax. I could have had a starter of cold jellyfish for an extra $3.50, but I didn’t, because I’ve had it before. There’s also an extensive and impressive porridge menu, all of it very competitively priced by international porridge standards. Pig’s stomach porridge, for example, is only $2.95, while house special porridge is $9.95, though that does serve four, or more than four if they’re not very keen on porridge. Shrimp porridge is $5.50, but for a dollar more you may as well go for the most expensive item on the menu, which is frog porridge. I picture a big pan of oatmeal, bubbling and spluttering on a fierce gas burner as scores of tiny frogs perform a desperate but doomed breaststroke in a heroic bid to escape the nutritious, all-consuming lava. We’ve got frogs in the garden. Maybe I should make some when I get home.