The Road to McCarthy (33 page)

As I set out
to walk to the ground in the warm sunshine, past Trinity College and the Shelbourne, two men dressed as pints of Guinness are dancing on the pavement to the accompaniment of an experimental drum ensemble.

I’m getting close to the stadium when a jaunting car passes us, pulled by a big black horse and carrying four inebriated English management consultants who have put the weekend down to expenses. In most countries a vehicle like this would be driven by a man with a mustache wearing a bottle-green greatcoat with epaulettes and some kind of Prussian military hat, but this one’s in the charge of a ginger-haired teenage lad in a blue nylon tracksuit who looks as if he lives in a skip. Suddenly he’s standing up shouting “whoah!” and slamming on the brakes, or whatever you do to stop a horse that’s traveling at high speed towards a solid object. The horse digs all four hooves into the road and goes into a spectacular, spark-spraying skid as the four guys in the back stand up in terror and wait for the collision.

Thirty yards ahead a minibus taxi, impatient with waiting for a gap in the traffic, has pulled out of a side street trying to turn right, and is now directly in the horse’s path, blocking the lane. The crowd streaming towards the game have stopped and are watching in awe as the horse continues its cartoon skid, head back, nostrils flared, eyes lit, like Tom careering across a frozen lake bang on target for the ten-ton weight that Jerry has just slid into place. The result is as inevitable as today’s England victory. We’re already wincing in anticipation of the impact when the horse, heroically, finds that little bit of extra purchase and slithers to a halt four feet from the barely continent taxi driver, shaking his head nonchalantly as if to say, “Hey, what did you expect? I’m a horse from the streeets who dodges traffic for a living.”

The kid stands up to his full four feet ten, whip in hand, face contorted in anger, his hair much redder than it was twenty seconds ago. “You fuckn’ wanker!” he screams at the taxi driver, and everybody bursts into spontaneous applause. If we see anything on the field today to equal this we’re in for
a cracking afternoon. The two of them then launch into a bitter tirade of high-octane abuse. The cabby’s about a foot and a half taller than the Ginger Skid, but there’s a slightly hesitant quality to his use of obscenities that doesn’t really convince, as if he realizes he’s in the wrong and knows that sometime in the wee small hours the kid is going to break into his home through the letterbox and perforate his kidneys with a rusty screwdriver.

I pass through the turnstile to be confronted by a sign saying hot powers—not a fundamentalist preacher proclaiming the miraculous abilities of the Irish team, but a stall selling hot whiskey.

I can see sunshine on mountains as I take my seat in the stand. I’m quickly involved in a discussion about my allegiance dilemma with the couple in front of me. He’s Irish, she’s English, and they live in Edinburgh. The two teams run out and three national anthems are played, which takes a while. First there’s “God Save the Queen,” which isn’t the ugly experience you might expect given the history of the last 900 years; then there’s “The Soldier’s Song,” anthem of the Republic; and finally a new all-Ireland sporting anthem, “written,” according to the man on my left, “because the Royal Ulster Constabulary lads in the team said they couldn’t be singing that Fenian shite any longer.” The Irish rugby team, uniquely, has included both North and South since long before any of the recent cross-border initiatives were introduced. But it’s hard to make out the words of the new song. Everyone bellows out the chorus line, “Ireland, Ireland!” but there’s a kind of collective choral muttering on the next lines, as if not everyone’s on top of the words just yet. I’m only guessing, but it sounds like:

The match kicks off, and within five minutes one thing is crystal clear: If anyone’s going to be on the wrong end of a kicking this afternoon, it’s England.

Despite being offered at an absurd four to one on to win at the bookies next to Hot Powers, they are badly rattled by the unexpected ferocity of the Irish. This can only end one way. It’s just started, but already it’s all over. This presents me with a serious philosophical problem. Although I’m not totally at ease supporting either side against the other, I’ve decided it’s only fair to go with the underdog, which until now has been Ireland. However, with seventy-five of the eighty minutes still to play, it’s clear that England are now the undisputed whipping boys—so should I be shouting for them? Is it possible to be four to one on, yet still be underdogs? This is hopeless. I might as well be watching Poland versus Cambodia, for all the commitment I can muster. The Irish fans are singing “The Fields of Athenry” now—how can anyone be expected to beat a team who have three bloody anthems?—and the English are busting a gut trying to catch up, but there’s not a soul in the stadium believes it’s going to happen.

The game ends, and the whole stadium erupts into “In the Name of Love” by U2. Four anthems? This is getting out of control. I’m delighted that the Irish underdogs have won, but sorry that the English underdogs have lost. And now a very bizarre thing is happening. Though England have lost the game, they’re the overall winners of the Six Nations Tournament that also includes Wales, Scotland, France and Italy. They’re having to stand in a line, their abject faces projected onto a giant screen, and be presented with the Cromwell Memorial Cup, or whatever the thing is called, while the Irish players stand a few feet away laughing at them. I expect they’re all good friends after the game.

I find the day is leaving me
with the warmest of glows. On the most basic level, it’s so long since I’ve been to a big international sporting event that I’d quite forgotten just how vivid and uplifting an experience it is to be part of such a huge communal occasion. Television can’t even hint at it.

But best of all, I’ve seen the way an adversarial contest has managed to bring out what the two nations have in common, rather than what keeps them apart. I’ve seen no nationalistic hostility anywhere in the city. The occasion
has been marked by generosity of spirit, and has been a reminder of how many of us are connected by family and friendships that span the generations and the Irish Sea.

Back in the Coal Hole
sometime after midnight, I’m fumbling in my bag for an airline miniature of Drambuie I stored for a rainy or sunny day, or night, when I remember my copy of
To Hell or Barbados
. I pick it out and flick through the index looking for Montserrat. Last year I passed on Montserrat for St. Patrick’s Day and went to New York instead. The dark Cromwellian story of transportation and slavery has put the island back at the top of my list for this year’s celebrations. I wonder if you can fly direct from Dublin?

Montserrat is one of the few
remaining possessions of the British Empire, now referred to not as a colony but as an overseas territory. It is one of the Leeward Islands, discovered in 1493 by Columbus, who didn’t land there but just sailed past and named it after a monastery near Barcelona. It is pear—or perhaps pearl—shaped, eleven miles by seven at its widest point, green and mountainous, washed by warm tropical waters and cooled by the trade winds. Though volcanic in origin, there had been no volcanic activity there since long before Columbus’s day until 1995, when the Soufrière Hills started belching out gases and debris. Plymouth, the handsome old capital situated below the mountain at the water’s edge, was evacuated. In 1997 a series of devastating eruptions and pyroclastic avalanches buried Plymouth under meters of ash and rock, and wiped the airport and the villages of Kinsale and St. Patrick’s off the map forever. The southern half of the island was declared an exclusion zone and the population was reduced from 11,000 to fewer than 4,000, as families fled to Britain and the United States. Clare Short, the British government minister responsible for aid to the disaster zone, said that the homeless islanders “would be asking for golden elephants next.” It’s a line that didn’t play too well in the Caribbean, and has remained lodged in the popular memory.

Montserrat is also the only country in the world, apart from Ireland, where St. Patrick’s Day is a public holiday. And no, you can’t fly direct from Dublin or anywhere else. The airport was destroyed by the volcano.

SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTISTS BELIEVE
says a sign in the window of the first taxi in the queue at Antigua airport. It’s commendably honest, but not very snappy. mormons do it on the doorstep—that’s the kind of thing you need to get people’s attention these days. methodists do it on their knees. jehovah’s witnesses do it whether you want them to or not. catholics do it, but say they’re sorry afterwards. Three enormous cruise ships full of people in sun visors with turn-ups on their shorts are queuing to get into Antigua as the ferry to Montserrat leaves port, and I remember that a warm sea breeze on bare arms is one of the greatest sensations in the world. There are just thirteen of us on the 300-seater catamaran. Montserrat hasn’t had much of a tourist industry since the ash began to fall.

The journey’s only an hour, but everybody soon gets to know each other. There are three returning residents, a French film crew from Guadeloupe come to shoot inside the exclusion zone, and half a dozen day-trippers from resorts in Antigua. A mournful-looking American in his sixties is wearing a T-shirt bearing a picture of firefighters hosing down the Twin Towers above the legend united we stand united we pray. A pigeon-chested Englishman in a pale blue Millett’s polo shirt has struck up a conversation with him. They are discussing television.

“Been watching the BBC on satellite,” says United-We-Pray. “Something called
Ground Force?”

His speech has a monotone, automaton quality that’s clearly struck a chord with Millett, who says, “Oh.”

“Yeah. Real good. Gardening.” He looks Millett straight in the eye with a gaze of utmost gravity, as if he’s just told him his mother’s dead. Now his wife is joining in, eager to explain the concept of the program.

“They come home and they’re like, oh wow, you’ve changed the color!”

“We rented a videotape once from the library back home. Kew Gardens? That was neat.”

“So where is home?”

“Ohio. Not very exciting. I have a place, makes steel parts for the railroad.”

Millett extricates himself from the conversation before the excitement gets too much to bear and comes and joins me at the stern. He’s from Caterham, and is very knowledgeable on the subject of cheap booze warehouses in Copenhagen that cater to people who’ve driven over from Sweden on the bridge. Part of the bridge is a tunnel, apparently. As we talk he’s swigging from a cold can of fizzy orange, which I’m eyeing jealously because I’m very thirsty. There wasn’t a shop at the ferry port, and the cafeteria on the boat is closed because there are only thirteen of us. Millett has come prepared. He probably bought the can back home in Caterham, and has been keeping it cold in his minibar at the resort’s expense until he needed it. I wish he’d give me a swig. But no, he’s draining the can now, and shaking it in his hand to make sure it’s empty as we approach the cliffs of northern Montserrat and the mooring jetty, and now he’s—my God, I could have stopped him, I could have jumped on him, but it all happened so quickly—
THROWN THE CAN OVER HIS SHOULDER INTO THE CARIBBEAN!

“Ah, well. Nice talking to you, old son. Places to go. Volcanoes to see. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

The boat passes a small sandy beach, rounds a point and we’re entering a U-shaped harbor with a single jetty and minimal infrastructure. A wall of palm trees and green hillside is framed between the blues of the sea and sky. A few brightly painted wooden houses add variety to the relentless blues and greens. Immigration and Customs is in a tiny, pristine wooden building, painted pale blue, with shuttered windows and ceiling fans. A sign on the wall says:

A single vehicle is parked outside with its hood up. Two men are tinkering with the engine. It’s not a taxi, but an ancient black estate car that’s been converted into a hearse. irish’s funeral home says the lettering on the
side. “Looks like he’s broken down,” I say to one of the West Indian guys who was on the boat.

“Yeah,” he says. “I tink de engine die.”

In 1668
Lord William Willoughby, governor of Barbados, described Montserrat as “almost an Irish colony.” The census of 1678 supported his claim, showing a population of 761 English, 52 Scots and 992 Africans—but 1,869 Irish, more than the other three groups put together. Yet the island was a British possession; so how did the Irish become so predominant that even today the national symbol is Erin on a harp, and passports are stamped with a green shamrock?

Montserrat was first populated by Arawak and Carib Indians who were deprived of their lands in the traditional manner by forces of the British Empire. It was settled in 1632, largely by English and Irish Catholics who were unwelcome in other colonies because of their religion. While Catholicism wasn’t encouraged—it’s recorded that Father Stritch of Limerick used to disguise himself as a woodcutter and say Mass in the jungle—it was tolerated, and the Irish population began to swell. Cromwell helped by transporting some of the survivors of Drogheda and other massacres to Montserrat as well as to Barbados. Indentured Irish servants who had served their contracted time on Barbados, and others who had escaped, made their way to Montserrat to find work among their countrymen.

It seems to have been an uneasy tropical alliance between English and Irish. One English settler wrote: “These two nations accord not upon this island. The Irish are most malicious against the English.”

In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries the French had designs on Montserrat and its booming sugar economy, and launched a series of invasion attempts. The Irish residents of the island, resentful of religious and economic discrimination, were happy to assist. In 1665 they helped the French land at Kinsale, an Irish enclave in the southwest of the island named after the port in County Cork that in 1602 was the scene of one of the definitive battles in the fight for Irish independence, when the
English won a famous victory. In Kinsale, Montserrat, however, the French came out on top and laid waste to English possessions, leaving the Irish untouched. Two years later Crown forces once again took control, but it was clear the Irish were not to be trusted, and sectarian tensions remained close to the surface.