The Sheila Variations

From Cork to Kinsale

I was working on a piece yesterday that reminded me of something I had written on the blog a couple of years ago, after Allison and I came back from our trip to Ireland. Thought I would post it again with a couple of wee edits.

We were headed for Kinsale. We were very close, only 20 or so miles away. We knew our way to Cork, and after that, all we knew was: we needed to head almost directly south. And there would be Kinsale.

In our dreams.

I was Driver at this point, and Allison was Navigator. It was dark now. It was about 6:00 pm, and I had promised Jimmy at the B&B in Kinsale that we would be there by 7, because he had to leave at 7. Cork, obviously, is a city, and I find that driving in the city is far more stressful than a long inter-county roadway, even with all the roundabouts. So we pretty much promptly got lost. We didn't know where we were, or how to get where we were going, etc. I also had to pee. So I did one of those highly dreaded RIGHT HAND TURNS and we pulled into a gas station.

Allison asked a young guy pumping gas for directions. (One thing: I found, in my experience over there, that the Irish are incapable of giving bad directions. We got absolutely awesome directions from no matter who we asked, but this particular time was particularly good)

The young guy started telling Allison where she needed to go to get to Kinsale, and then almost immediately stopped himself. "My mother's inside - we should wait for her to come out. She's great at directions."

Boy, was she ever.

Allison and I LOVED these people.

This mother was so unbelievably generous with us, she gave us sterling directions, and we didn't realize how sterling they were until we were on the road again, and at every single point when we COULD have got confused, then there would come the landmark she had told us about, with tips on what to do and how to handle it.

"Wait - where are we?"
"Oh ... there's the river and the trees ... she told us we'd see that when we came round the bend ... this is the right way ..."

She even got into our heads, in anticipation of what we might be thinking at any certain point. "Now, you're probably gonna think that you should bear to the left, but that is not the case. Keep goin' straight. Stay firm."

She drew us an awesome map. Her son hung around with us, too, validating his mother. "Yeah, that's right ... then you go through the Tunnel ... right ..."

Oh, and a sidenote about Americans driving in Ireland: a couple weeks before we arrived, two Americans were driving along somewhere in Ireland, blithely on the wrong side of the road, and crashed head-on into a car coming the other way. This is probably not noteworthy at all, as Americans are always driving on the wrong freakin' side of the road all over Europe (there were stickers placed throughout the car reminding us in panicky huge letters to "DRIVE LEFT"), but what made this one kind of funny (and it was mentioned to us time and time again during our travels) was that the car they crashed into was being driven by a Minister of Parliament. Everyone kind of cackled with glee over that one. "Did ya hear about those Americans who crashed into the Minister of Parliament??" Again, it's not funny because the two Americans (in their tiny car) were badly hurt while the Minister of Parliament, in his enormous official car, was untouched. I believe the Americans are still in the hospital.

So the lady we met at the gas pump in Cork was the first person on our journey to tell us about the Americans crashing into the Minister of Parliament. She would not be the last.

We stood by the gas pumps, as she drew her map, all of us chatting up a storm: how did we find it driving on the other side of the road, where have we been, what our plans were. "Oh, you'll love Kinsale. It is very sweet indeed." We also chatted quite a bit about something that she called "the hairy roundabout", which was basically between Cork and Kinsale. She gave us profuse warnings about this "hairy roundabout", and put the fear of God into us. It was south of Cork, and apparently many many many cars have crashed there, it is a notoriously dangerous roundabout, famous all over Ireland, and she made it sound like a shrieking chaos of hell. She reiterated to us endlessly: We had to get ourselves into a certain lane, otherwise we would get stuck in the roundabout forever.

And we followed her instructions to the letter, and lo and behold, we were in Kinsale at 7:01. With poor Jimmy waiting for us at the door. Not too shabby!

As we stood around the car, and she walked us through the directions, another car drove up. She glanced up and waved. Informed us, "That's my husband."

Then another car pulled up to one of the other pumps, she waved to the driver of that car, and informed us, "If I weren't married to my husband, I'd be married to him."

And one by one, all of these various people - her husband, and the guy she'd be married to if she wasn't married to her husband, joined our little coterie and looked at the map, and gave us suggestions, adding detail and contrast to what was already there. We were a small jovial party by Gas Pump # 2.

Our ring-leader woman would introduce us to every new arrival: "These two American girls are trying to get to Kinsale ..."

Every new arrival informed us of the "Americans crashing into the Minister of Parliament". And every new arrival put the fear of God into us about "the hairy roundabout".

More suggestions came in, adding, clarifying, until we had the most specific set of directions EVER GIVEN for a 20 mile drive. She even gave us emotional directions for "the hairy roundabout":

"Just stay calm ... stay calm ... get yourselves in the right lane, and stay calm ..."

Allison and I drove off waving hail and farewell (or should I say Ave atque vale) to all of our new-found friends at the gas station in Cork.

After making our way successfully through the "hairy roundabout" (we did yoga breathing to stay calm, and yes, it was just as bad as she had warned), we started to see signs, finally, for Kinsale. Our destination. We had time constraints. Jimmy needed to go somewhere at 7, and so we needed to reach the B&B before then.

Allison drove us to Kinsale. The road was a two-way road, and yet by US standards, the road was only big enough to for one car. Thankfully, everyone still pretty much drives very small cars over there because an SUV on this road would be an utter disaster. The headlights shrieked up at us through the dark, the road was winding, it was night-time, there were no street lamps, and a line of cars stretched out behind us because we were driving so slowly (Allison: "I'm sorry, I just can't drive any faster than this." Me: "You do what you need to do. They can just wait.") we were a bit stressed.

The "hairy roundabout" had chafed our nerves tremendously.

But then, at last, Kinsale. I could smell the salt air when I rolled down the window, so I knew we were very close. We still needed to find our way to Jimmy's B&B, but from our street map of Kinsale the Town, it seemed like a pretty wee place, not too difficult to navigate.

It was now 6:50.

We immediately found ourselves in the middle of town, which was so adorable that it made my heart ache. I mean, we had heard about the quaintness and the beauty of Kinsale, and I had been there as a young girl, only retained no memory of it, but the reports of its beauty were almost under-played. It is one of the sweetest prettiest places I have ever seen. However, we could not ogle the sights, or the harbor, because we had to find Jimmy. Time was running out.

Randomly, we took a left-hand turn, and as we both glanced to our right, we saw an odd sight. We saw a line of people stretching down the sidewalk, there had to be hundreds of people (not an exaggeration) clustered along the street, all standing in line. But for what?

Allison wondered, "Is that a night-club or something?"

But ... it was only 6:51? A line into a nightclub at 6:51? In Kinsale?

We left that mystery behind us, drove around for a bit, on streets that were teeny, lined with shops, sudden curves, sudden hills, all adorable, but confusing, with no street signs.

At last, we asked a couple of people for directions. True to form, they gave us awesome directions. Directly to Jimmy's door. They knew Jimmy. Of course they did. "Give 'im my best, won't you girls?"

The B&B was right next to a massive Catholic church, and we parked in the church parking lot. It was 7:01. I could see a man standing in the golden glow of lamplight coming out of the open door of the B&B, and cried, "That's Jimmy!" There was a wintry breath in the air, the bite of the nearby water, a different feeling in the air than the windy mountainous energy of Wicklow. The moon was high, and waxing. Beautiful. Soaring above the church.

Allison and I left our bags in the car and ran up the steps of the B&B, apologizing. "I am so sorry - we truly thought we would be here at 7!"

Jimmy, of course, was lovely, kind, understanding. "I know how it is ... time when you're traveling and all that ..."

He said to us, "There's a funeral next door tonight at 7 ... A local guy died, so I'm going to go over to go to the funeral, and I'll be back in about half an hour..."

Good Lord, I felt like an ass. I had assumed he was maybe going out with friends. Instead, he had to go to a funeral. Jesus.

I said, "God, I am so sorry."

"Oh, no problem, Sheila, no problem ... You're fine parked where you are. Why don't you bring your bags in now, so that you won't have to walk through the procession ..."

I wasn't sure what he was talking about, but Allison and I went back to our car, shivering in the night-cold, to grab our bags.

And then came the procession he had told us about.

The "procession" was the huge crowd of people we had seen in the center of town.

We found out later that what happened was: they all gathered at the funeral home, almost the entire town, down on Market Street, and then walked, as a group (hundreds and hundreds of people) up to the church.

Allison and I didn't feel right walking through the funeral procession with our bags, so we stood back, in the shadows, and just watched.

It was cold enough to see everyone's breaths. The hearse had led the way, and then stopped outside the church. The procession, which filled the street in front of the B&B, and then curved away out of sight and down the hill, the procession must have been half-a-mile long, stood quietly, stamping in the cold, hands in pockets, clouds of frosty breath in the air. There were old people, little children, there were couples holding hands, there were teenagers with their parents. Everyone was there. Holding rosary beads, mass cards.

The coffin was lifted out of the hearse, and the pall-bearers lifted it up over their heads, so that it appeared to float through the air, and then they walked it up the long ramp into the lit-up brick church.

The procession didn't move, they had all halted as one to stand watch as the coffin was carried into the church. I could hear prayers being murmured, people crossed themselves. Everything trembled with silence and intensity. Allison and I were frozen to the spot.

We had come across a private moment. The private moment of a small community. Not for outsiders. The inner life of the small town revealed to us, observers. A rarity indeed. We didn't want to intrude, or break it up, or ignore it. We just watched.

When the gleaming coffin had floated its way into the church, the procession started to move. And that's when we really saw how many people there were. The line just kept coming from around the corner, as everyone walked up the steps and into the church for the funeral. More people just kept coming, silently, respectfully, maybe you would hear the chatter of a child here and there, but for the most part ... silence.

Jimmy later told me all about the man who had died. He was only 62, he was a musician, and played with a number of local bands. He knew everyone in town. He hadn't even been sick, but apparently he fell down over the summer, and X-rays revealed that he was riddled with cancer. Nothing to be done at that point, really, and he died in November.

Allison and I kept coming back to it, over the rest of our journey. "Member the funeral in Kinsale?" We felt that we had witnessed something very special, very private. I felt honored to be there, but also a little bit like it wasn't something for us to witness. All we could do was stand back, and be quiet and still. It was a town mourning its dead. With throngs and throngs and throngs of quiet chilly people coming up the hill, around the corner, up the hill, around the corner, up the hill ... in an endless flood.

Posted by sheila | TrackBack