Blasket Spirit Read online

  ‘We sell a very good map and guide, if you’d like it.’

  ‘No, thank you,’ his wife interrupted. ‘We’ve wasted enough money this holiday. We’ll wait till you’re ready.’

  The tall Scottish man was still there, gazing over the island.

  ‘We’ll have cake with the coffees,’ the larger of the American ladies added as I walked past.

  ‘How much for this, please?’ The three French girls held out one postcard to me. I took the card, escaping inside to find the price, get the boy change and make the coffees. I stopped in panic. Differently priced baskets of hats were emptied and strewn everywhere. I had no idea which hat belonged to which basket. I attempted to put order on it and make coffees as two Cork ladies came in. They were fascinated with the natural dyes. I explained as much as I had gleaned from Sue. Before re-emerging with the coffees, I had sold two scarves, two maps and a postcard each to five children. I came into the sunshine, relieved; I had sold something! As I set the milk and sugar on the upended box and presented two steaming mugs of coffee and a plate of scones to my customers, I felt quite proud of myself. I offered the tall man a cup of tea and thanked him for his help. Just then, I overheard one of the Americans commenting on my bare feet. I paused as she continued.

  ‘It couldn’t be hygienic, making food like that.’

  ‘The whole place is primitive. I don’t understand how the receptionist would be allowed recommend this as a trip.’

  The Scottish man smiled reassuringly at me. ‘I’d love a cup of tea, thank you, and those scones look great. Sarah, come over for some tea!’ A young girl, who was kneeling patiently outside a rabbit hole, looked up.

  ‘I think he’s gone out the back door, Dad.’ She looked about twelve, fair-skinned and fair-haired. Her shoulders and nose were going pink already. As I made a pot of tea, I could hear her chattering. ‘I’ve counted eleven rabbits already, Dad. There are holes everywhere. Look at the two donkeys over there, at that funny house with the round top. Can I feed them?’ The doorway darkened as more visitors came in. They stopped immediately, allowing their eyes to adjust. A man in an Australian hat – the kind with corks on strings – stood in the doorway with a woman and children.

  ‘Dia dhuit,’ was all I could understand as he spoke to me at full speed. I apologised once more for my lack of Irish. ‘No need to apologise, I didn’t let you get a word in.’ Liam introduced himself and his family. He was a lecturer in University College Cork and was a frequent visitor to the island.

  Another older couple came in, speaking Irish too. I could just pick up that they were from Cashel, County Tipperary, as I hurried in and out with teapots and mugs. They held Joan and Ray Stagles’s book open and were trying to find Tomás Ó Croimhthain’s house on the map. Taking care not to drop jam on the page, I pointed it out.

  Outside, while I poured the tea, introductions were made. The lady from Cashel was fascinated with Tomás Ó Croimhthain, recalling how he never married the girl that he truly loved, because his sister did not think it was a suitable match. Liam suggested that it was Tomás Ó Criomhthain who had given us the truest account of island life because he had spent all seventy-one years of his life on the island. Peig, on the other hand, was by birth a mainlander, only coming to the island after her wedding. Muiris Ó Súilleabháin had left the island and spent most of his life in the city. As I went in and out serving, clearing and selling, I picked up snatches of the conversation, which switched between Irish and English.

  When the next ferry came into sight, the American women who had been watching for it through my binoculars stood up to leave. ‘Well, this was a waste of a morning. There’s nothing to see out here.’

  ‘Bunratty Castle was much better. Where is the restroom, dear?’

  ‘Sorry there’s none here. You’ll have to go up to the cafe.’ They looked at me in disdain. Once again, my bare feet seemed to be the focus of attention.

  ‘I think we might just wait till we get back to the hotel, Dorothy.’ Without another word, they brushed past me and began stepping sideways heavily down the hill. I was still smarting from their dismissal as Sarah’s father strode down the hill past them, retrieving two backpacks that were lying abandoned at the clifftop.

  ‘Goodbye, ladies,’ he called. ‘What a pity you can’t stay over. Maybe next year!’

  Meanwhile, Sarah was delighted to carry mugs and plates in and out for me. Washing up in a basin, out on the grass, was her idea of ‘heaven’. She told me that she and Michael, her father, had been on the island before when she was very small, but she did not remember. Her mother had been with them then. She asked me if she could help for a while. I told her I would be delighted, if her father did not mind, but it would be a shame to lose out on seeing the island too.

  ‘We’re staying for a few days, so I’ve got lots of time.’

  After three pots of tea and much chat, the Cashel couple decided to leave. ‘Can you suggest a walk for us? We need to be back for the four o’clock ferry.’ I did not realise it at the time, but it was to be the first of countless walks that I would tailor to suit visitors during my stay on the island.

  Liam and his family left to explore the village, while Sarah and her father went up the hill to drop their bags in Peig’s hostel. Dozens of groups and couples filed in and out during the morning. By one o’clock, I was exhausted and there was no respite. I had become historian, tour guide, walk planner, tea-maker, first aider and listener to family trees. I wondered at Sue’s stamina.

  ‘Where’s Peig’s house?’

  ‘Do you have a book of wild flowers of the island?’

  ‘Can you show me where Tomas Crow Hane lives? He’s dead? No!’

  ‘Do you take Visa?’

  ‘Where do you live? How long do you stay out here?’

  ‘How long will it take me to walk around the island?’

  ‘Do you know which cottage Charlie Haughey lives in?’

  ‘Can you show me where Peig’s son fell off the cliff?’

  ‘Can I buy a holiday house out here?’

  ‘Who owns the island?’

  ‘Do you pray a lot out here?’

  ‘Can you show me how the spinning wheel works?’

  ‘Gee, it’s dark in here. Can you turn on the light, ma’am? You gotta be kiddin’! Marcia, this lady’s got no electricity. Can you believe that?’

  ‘You mean you’ve gotten no television, period? How can you live?’

  I escaped into the blazing sunshine with yet another tray of teas, leaving Al and Marcia hunting for light switches.

  ‘You’re keeping busy?’ Páidí smiled at me from outside the wall. Páid, with the smiling blue eyes, was beside him. ‘We’re in collecting the wool.’

  ‘Come in and have a cup of tea.’

  The two men leaned on the wall and looked out across the Blasket Sound while I returned inside.

  ‘You’re a Fennelly, aren’t you?’

  ‘I am,’ I answered the silhouette by the window.

  ‘I’m Martin O’Halloran from Callan. Whose daughter are you then?’

  ‘Frank was my father. Did you know him?’

  ‘Of course.’ As I made the tea, we talked of my father, my brother William, the farm, and of Callan. After a few minutes, another man handed me money for some postcards and introduced himself.

  ‘Tim O’Sullivan. I think I know one of your uncles. Nial?’

  When he told me that he worked with the Department of Finance, I became even more addled, calculating change. I couldn’t subtract and talk at the same time. In fact, I couldn’t even do the former to start with, so with the help of Tim, from the Department of Finance, change was issued to all in the shop in record time. More and more people filed in and out of the tiny room, each a fresh wave from another place.

  By mid-afternoon I was punch drunk. I slumped on the edge of a bench by Páid and Páidí, watching the steady stream of visitors enter and leave the doorway. Only as one emerged, holding up an item enquiringly, did
I volunteer my services.

  ‘That’s it; you have to pace yourself. It’s like drinking pints,’ a great stomach of a man winked at me, as he melted on the other bench in the sunshine. I smiled, flopping back down with a mug of water. ‘Tell me what happened to that rusty ol’ wreck that used to be on Coumenoule Beach?’ he asked.

  I remembered the wreck but knew nothing about it. Páidí filled in all the facts.

  ‘They removed it for the shooting of that Tom Cruise film in 1991. It was a Spanish boat on its maiden voyage from Spain to Iceland, ran aground there, at the foot of the cliffs, in a storm in 1982.’

  ‘Was there loss of life?’ a German lady with impeccable English asked.

  ‘No, thank God. All fifteen crew were airlifted off.’

  ‘Are there many wrecks off the islands here?’

  ‘There are. Not so many in recent years, but a lot in the old days.’

  ‘On your way back, you’ll cross over the wreck of one of the Spanish Armada ships.’

  ‘There must be very little of it remaining. That was in the 1500s I believe.’

  ‘That’s right. It was November 1588,’ Páidí said.

  ‘When I came across to the island, the ferryman located the exact spot for someone, using the GPS. The ship was called the Santa Maria Della Rosa. It’s lying in about thirty-five metres of water just southeast of what he called the Stromboli Reef.’ I pointed to where I thought it was.

  Páidí corrected me, indicating a point farther east and continued. ‘There’s not much to see now, but the odd dive boat still goes out. They say there’s ballast, pewter, arquebuses and shot still lying around.’

  The three German ladies looked out over the sparkling water to where Páidí had pointed.

  The large, sweating man was not impressed. ‘And what would you be wanting to dive into thirty-five metres of freezing cold water for, in the name o’ Jaysus, with nothing to see but a lump of ol’ ballast? By God, there must have been hundreds drowned.’

  ‘There was only one survivor off the Santa Maria: a young boy who managed to swim to shore into the island here,’ Páidí said.

  ‘For all the good it did him. Didn’t they hand him over to the authorities on the mainland, and he was hanged,’ Páid added quietly, as he stared out to sea.

  ‘It is difficult to imagine a storm, looking at the sea now.’ The German lady who spoke introduced herself as Karin Urbach. Her friends were Franke and Brigitte. While I served them coffees, they continued to talk of wrecks with Páidí and Páid.

  ‘I have read The Islandman by Tomás Ó Croimhthain,’ she told her friends while still speaking in English, so as to include the men. ‘He talks of the wrecks that the First World War brought into the shore as salvation for the islanders. Barrels of tea, flour, spices, cotton and even palm oil were washed ashore. They were able to trade with these, even if they didn’t use them themselves.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Páidí said. ‘Some of the wreckage from the Luisitania herself was washed up here.’

  ‘There was the body of an officer too, wasn’t there?’ I asked.

  ‘There was, and it was Muiris Ó Súilleabháin who found it.’

  ‘Páidí, what’s the big house on the mainland there which looks like a church of some kind?’ I had wondered about it for a while.

  ‘That’s the Cranberries’ house in Dún Chaoin. It just sold for a million.’

  ‘Oh, may I see?’ Brigitte, who had been the quietest of the three, took the binoculars. Everyone took it in turns to have a look. An American teenager came out of the door and asked where Tom Cruise’s house was. As I tried to explain that the house had been built only for the film Far and Away and that Tom Cruise did not actually have a house in Kerry, Páidí and Páid waved and set off down to the clochán to gather up the wool.

  ‘What is that tower at the top of the hill?’ asked a returning walker.

  ‘It’s a Napoleonic tower, built in the nineteenth century. It was –’

  ‘What’s that movie Robert Mitchum starred in? It was set here,’ the American girl’s mother interrupted.

  ‘That was Ryan’s Daughter’, I said. For once I wished that I had a watch. Where was Sue’s ferry? How could it take so long?

  ‘That’s right. He and Sarah Miles had sex in a bed of bluebells. It was awesome.’

  ‘That wasn’t Robert Mitchum,’ her husband said.

  ‘Honey, you know nothing about movies. It was Robert Mitchum. I saw every movie that gorgeous man ever starred in.’

  ‘It was not Robert Mitchum,’ he muttered, adjusting his baseball cap.

  ‘It was Robert Mitchum!’ Her voice was shrill.

  ‘It was not Robert Mitchum.’

  ‘No, and I suppose it was not you who drove on the wrong side of the road into that Dingle roundabout either, was it?’ She was screaming with rage. ‘It was Sarah Miles and Robert Mitchum making out in the bluebells.’ Her voice was startling. This was followed by dead silence in the shop, for the first time that day. The three German ladies looked awkwardly into their coffees, while two walkers made an about-turn at the entrance.

  I broke the silence. ‘It was actually Sarah Miles and Christopher Jones making love in the bluebells. It was not Robert Mitchum,’ I said as I headed in with some empty mugs. When I dared to come back out, the couple and their daughter had left, and the German ladies were packing up to leave.

  ‘That was rather brave of you,’ Karin announced laughing. ‘I wouldn’t like to be her husband on the way across. We might wait for the next ferry; it looks like there will be another at six.’

  The American woman’s angry words faded over the side of the cliff and we breathed a sigh of relief. Gradually, the visitors filtered down through the ruins to the landing slip. Their tideline was visible in the form of abandoned plastic bottles and a red chocolate wrapper, tumbling lazily along the path.

  ‘Should we leave now? Perhaps this one is the last.’ Franke asked anxiously.

  ‘No, you’re all right,’ I called. ‘Sue didn’t come over on that one, so there’s definitely another. Anyway, there’s more than a ferryload on the slipway. You’ve got another hour.’

  ‘That’s great. I’m going to have a walk on the beach,’ Karin announced, while the Franke and Brigitte decided to relax in the sunshine. I began to clear and wash up. Then I caught up on my sales entries in Sue’s little notebook. The maps had sold out like the scones. I had sold quite a few wool garments and was delighted with my achievement. One or two stragglers appeared and bought postcards as they hurried down to the slipway. As the blue and white ferry Oileán na nÓg motored towards the island, a man strode back down the hill towards the shop.

  ‘Mind if I take a photo of the spinning wheel?’ he asked.

  ‘Fire ahead.’

  The man went into the little yard and snapped the spinning wheel from different angles. ‘There’s only a small fee,’ I called over the wall as I chased a red chocolate wrapper along the path.

  ‘And what might that be?’ I was glad he was still laughing when I presented him with five plastic bottles and a ball of plastic cling film. The photographer from Real Ireland Calendars accepted the trade gallantly. Just then Karin came over the path carrying a bag full of plastic bottles and crisp bags.

  ‘I got my trousers wet chasing this bag in and out of the waves.’

  ‘Thank you,’ the photographer said before I could say anything. ‘We don’t seem to be as environmentally aware as you are in Germany.’

  ‘I do not mean to be insulting, but may I ask why Ireland is so dirty? When we arrived in Dublin, it was the first thing to shock us, and the whole countryside is similar.’

  Brigitte and Franke joined us outside the wall, Brigitte adding, in slow, deliberate pronunciation, ‘The plastic is like Christmas balls hanging on sie hedgerows in Ireland, and sie Irish people drop sie litter everywhere.’

  The man nodded. ‘I am not insulted, just embarrassed. It is something we are acutely aware of when we v
isit other European countries. We do have a huge waste problem, however. I think it is being dealt with now, because the government plans to build a number of incinerators.’

  Karin looked at him in disbelief. ‘But you have a tiny population. Why do you choose the worst option, and what is for us in Germany the most expensive polluter of all? Recycling seems to be unheard of in your country. People burn and dump under one’s nose. There are no bottle refunds. Why there are no glass milk bottles? In Germany even Coca-Cola must have a glass bottle but in Ireland we only get plastic and more plastic.’

  The photographer was at a loss for words.

  ‘Perhaps in Ireland we have become a consumer throw-away society too fast. Environmental education and services haven’t kept pace.’

  ‘Near where we park our car there are many, many things on sie cliff falling to sie sea – fridge, mattress from beds, old cooker and much plastic bags.’ Brigitte was getting more and more animated, reporting what she had seen. The photographer suggested that they all should head towards the ferry. Brigitte was not going to be distracted that easily. ‘Is a very bad situation. Irish people will have big regret in sie future.’

  I strolled down with them to give Sue a hand with the gas bottles and shopping bags. ‘Thanks for taking the rubbish,’ I said to Karin.

  ‘Maybe we might write a letter to your national papers while we are here. The waste problem is like a bathtub overflowing. Experts will suggest expensive pumps, storage facilities, evaporators and goodness knows what, whereas all one has to do is turn off the tap.’

  I waved goodbye to the three German ladies and the photographer. Donie the dolphin swam by the side of the dinghy as Karin clutched her plastic bag of litter. That image and that of Brigitte’s cliff dump struck me as great material for the photographer’s Real Ireland calendar but naturally, they would not feature.

  ‘Well, how did you survive?’ Sue had shed her shoes already and was loading boxes of vegetables and turf briquettes into a fish box. I loaded a backpack full of flour, sugar, meat and milk into another box, and set off at a snail’s pace. By the time we had climbed up the rough ground of the slipway, I couldn’t speak. We made several trips up and down, dragging full gas bottles and boxes of supplies.