So down through the southern counties of Leinster and into the fat-lands of Munster, wide valleys and high, green hills and large, pondering cattle; and town after town looking radiant. Flowers and brilliant colours abounding; people sitting in the sun and laughing; pleasure and happiness everywhere. Who could be luckier than us to live at such times amid such prosperity now that God has sent us a summer worthy of the name? Bliss it was to be alive, and to be Irish a very glorious heaven as I drove into a very busy Bantry amidst the loveliest people in Europe!
But not a parking space to be had. Yet stay - a couple were approaching their car. I called over: were they leaving? In a couple of minutes, they said. I waited, my indicator flashing, giving them enough space to reverse. As they withdrew, another car darted into the now-empty space.
Another space
A moment's homicidal disbelief before the decision: be diplomatic. I approached the driver, a young woman with Cork number-plates on her car.
Me: That is my parking space; I was waiting there with my indicator on.
Her: Really? I was wondering what you were doing. Well I won't be long if you want to wait. And sure won't another space be available soon? But look, do you mind? I can't be hanging round all day talking to you, I've got a lot to do.
Me: You don't think that courtesy demands that you say sorry, a simple misunderstanding, and offer to leave the space?
Her: Look, I'm in a hurry: your parking problems are not mine, OK? Now you've kept me long enough, and I've got a busy afternoon, so if you don't mind? She smiled that sweet little-girl smile of a young woman getting her way by cheating, and cockily swinging her car keys, she walked away, a smirk of triumph on her face, and within my mind, a car-jack in her brain. Would anyone in Ireland ever have behaved like that odious tossette 10 years ago, or would any man today?
I was enduring these unutterable pleasures so that I could be present for the launch of Lavinia Greacen's splendid biography of the great J. G. Farrell in the quite marvellous environs of Bantry House. Later that evening, various people who knew and loved J.G. spoke about him and Lavinia hauntingly and movingly described the last moments and deeds of his life. (I hope to write about the biography soon.) Wine followed, then dinner; and so to bed after midnight, at a nearby B & B into which I was already booked. Even as I approached my bedroom door, I thought I could hear noises of movement within. I opened it and a voice inside cried, "Don't come in!"
Headmasterly voice
I stepped back onto the landing. Jesus Mary and St Joseph. First someone steals my car-parking space; and now someone else has grabbed my bloody bed. Welcome to Bantry. Time to be stern. "OUT", I cried. "Don't come in," replied a faltering, panic-stricken voice within. There was the sound of bedclothes being unravelled, of limbs unlocking. An odd, headmasterly voice formed in the region of my tonsils, and I heard it declare: "Listen. I want you out of this room immediately." I almost added, And report to me in my study in five minutes' time, but I repressed that speech, satisfying myself with a magisterial tap of an indignant foot, assuming that a couple of teenagers had nipped into a deserted bedroom for a bit of action.
After a further minute or two of waiting, I became positively imperial: "Out now, if you please, or I'm coming in." At length a middle-aged couple emerged in an ecstasy of embarrassment, still tucking in shirt-flaps and fumbling at buttons. "Frightfully sorry," they mumbled, "a fearful mix-up, we had no idea. . ."
The poor creatures were perfectly genuine and perfectly stricken. They were English tourists who had been booked in months ago, paying in advance. They had arrived late and, unable to find anyone in this Marie Celeste of a B & B, had gone into the only unoccupied room they could find. They acknowledged the room was mine, for I had the key. They would sleep in the lounge, they said pluckily, like Bantry's answer to Captain Oates.
"Ridiculous," I replied. "Let's find another room." After a few knocks and more vigorous enquiries than a polite English couple would have managed unaccompanied, we found it. I told them to return to their room and I would make do with the new room. They undulated with gratitude and embarrassment. The best of friends, we went to our respective beds.
Breakfast
We met at breakfast and my, how we laughed: dear me, what a silly little mix-up, ha ha ha. They were on a walking holiday. She was a schoolteacher, he worked for the RAF. Wing commander actually, and terribly, terribly Englishly nice, not remotely bandits-nine-o'clock-high, and let's-give-them-what-for chaps, remember Coventry. They explained: their Aer Lingus plane had been late from Heathrow. (Aer Lingus late? Astonishing.) And when they thought of how they'd rushed from the church to get to a plane that wasn't there, ha ha ha.
Church? Yes, church, they said, smiling. They were married yesterday. Yesterday? Yes, yesterday. So last night was. . ? Exactly. Their wedding night.
Coitus Interruptus Myers.