We stepped off the train in Wexford and we may as well have been in a foreign country. It’s hard to describe how, but it was just so different from Dublin. It was even warmer for a start! I was sweating buckets before we left the station. The town was weird; the shops were all different colours and one of them had a straw roof. There were two horses just randomly tied to lamp posts, eating feed from bags. There was a man and a donkey walking down the centre of the road, and instead of beeping him all the cars just went around him. The strangest thing of all was everyone waved at each other and said hello and stopped to talk about the weather and how good it was. The accents were odd – some of them I couldn’t even understand. The only thing that felt familiar was the green, white and gold bunting that hung around the lamp posts and fluttered above the town.
Sumo stopped dead at a shop that had buckets and spades outside and a picture of ice-cream cones in the window. He turned to us. ‘These are the best ice-cream cones ever,’ he said before putting out his hand. ‘Money me.’
I took out a fiver and handed it to him.
‘You won’t be sorry,’ he said.
He came out minutes later with five large cones with chocolate flakes sticking out of them. He handed them out. Sumo was wrong about many things, but he was not wrong about those cones. They were and still are the best ice-cream cones I’d ever tasted.
We walked around, soaking the place up. Strangers said hello and we said, ‘Hiya,’ back to them. It was nice. It was new and exotic and weird and even a bit cool. It was scary too. We didn’t know if the people of Wexford were aware that five kids from Dublin were fugitives on the run. Maybe our photo was in every police station in Ireland by now. We might even be in the national newspapers or on the telly!!!
At one point we saw a police car. Walker yelped and ran into a shop. Johnny J grabbed Charlie and they ducked behind a car. I turned my back to the car and pretended I was looking in a clothes-shop window. Sumo just stood in the middle of the street, frozen to the spot, his face covered in a pink silk scarf. The police car passed and disappeared. We all turned to Sumo.
‘You’ve got to stop freezing, Sumo!’ Walker said.
‘Sorry,’ Sumo said.
Charlie went into a comic shop, and when she came out, she handed Sumo a Star Wars Wookie mask. ‘Put that on,’ she said.
‘Cool,’ Sumo said. ‘This is even better than Vader.’ He put it on and gave her back her scarf. ‘Better?’ he asked.
‘Much better,’ I said.
‘It suits you,’ Charlie said, and she was right, it did.
We walked around for a while. We couldn’t see a taxi rank and we weren’t sure where the bus station was, so Walker appointed Sumo our Wexford Liaison Officer and/or Guide (which meant he was to do all the talking).
Sumo approached a youngish fellow sitting on a tractor, drinking out of a flask and smoking a cigarette. He had a trailer half filled with straw attached. A three-legged dog was asleep on one of the wrapped bales.
‘Hiya, can you tell us how long it would take to walk to Strawberry Beach?’ Sumo said.
‘Well, Wookie, that depends. How quick are you on your feet?’ the fellow asked.
‘Quick enough.’
‘Yeah, but on a scale of one to ten? One being “walking on broken legs slow” and ten being “Stephen Roche on a bike fast”?’fn1
Sumo thought about it. ‘I’d say we’re about a solid five,’ he said.
The guy took a long drag from his cigarette. ‘Well then, I’d say you’d be walking for about forty-five minutes.’
‘Which way?’ Sumo said.
The guy pointed. ‘That way.’
‘Is it a straight run?’
‘If crooked is straight.’
‘No, it’s not.’ Sumo was muddled.
‘Correct, there’s more twists and turns than a Stephen King novel.’
‘Right,’ Sumo said. ‘Thanks.’
He turned to us. ‘He’s very hard to talk to.’
The guy laughed. ‘I’m just playing with you. Forgive me, kiddo, it’s the Wexford way. Get on the trailer.’
I pointed to myself and said, ‘All of us?’
‘Go on. I’m passing that way.’
We jumped aboard and soon we were travelling down the twisting, turning roads of Wexford, blinking at the blue sky, the sun beating down, a three-legged dog panting at us and our stomachs full of ice cream. I missed my mam and dad, Rachel and even Rich. I was worried about going to prison and knew life would never be quite the same again, but right then and there, I was having fun.
He pulled up at an old wooden sign with red strawberries on it, but it was missing its S and Y, so it read ‘trawberr Beach Park’.
‘Betty Bloomers will take care of you,’ he said as we got off the trailer and thanked him.
‘Who’s Betty Bloomers?’ I asked, just as a woman came out, with a head full of black curls and a short patterned dress and what looked like long knickers with frills peeping from just under the dress.
‘She’s Betty Bloomers,’ Sumo said.
‘What can I do for you?’
‘I’d like to stay in my aunt’s caravan.’
‘Does she know you’re coming?’
‘It’s a surprise,’ he stammered.
‘Who’s your aunt?’
Sumo gave the name, and also mentioned his uncle who’d died and their dog who was still alive, as far as he knew.
‘I’m really sorry, but your aunt sold the caravan.’
‘When?’
‘Last spring.’
‘Oh.’
‘Can you rent us another caravan?’ Johnny J asked.
‘I’m sorry, we’re full.’
‘Any other parks around here that we can try?’ Johnny J said.
She thought about it for a moment. ‘Is it just you five?’ she said.
‘Yeah.’
‘Where are your parents?’
‘At home.’
‘And they let you come to Wexford alone?’
‘We’re older than we look,’ Charlie said.
The woman said, ‘Hmmmmmmmmmm.’ She was staring at Sumo in his Wookie mask. She didn’t look convinced. ‘Business is booming down here. With the matches and all, half the country has taken holidays, but I know a man who has a caravan on his land. It’s doing nothing, so maybe he’ll let you stay.’
‘We have money,’ I said.
‘Well, I hope so – he’s as miserable as sin, this fella. Give me a minute.’ She went inside to make a telephone call.
We sat down on the ground and waited.
‘Do you think she’s calling the police?’ Charlie said.
‘I don’t know, but get ready to run.’ We waited nervously, all ready to run for the hills if we noticed anything out of place.
Betty Bloomers came out after a few minutes. ‘He’ll give it to you for one pound a day if you milk his cows, feed the hens and help him fix one of the fences.’
No one had been expecting that. We just stared at her blankly, waiting for her to say that she was joking.
‘It sleeps six,’ she said.
‘OK,’ Johnny J said.
‘Good. I’ll tell him,’ she said. ‘Oh, and he said he’d feed you, but only if you do the cooking.’
‘None of us can cook,’ I said.
‘I can make scrambled eggs and ham-and-mushroom omelettes,’ Charlie said.
‘I can make vegetable soup and spaghetti bolognese,’ Johnny J said. I did not know that about him.
‘Great,’ she said. ‘It’s a deal.’ She took a pen and paper out of her pocket. ‘Now, the farm is called Jimbo’s and there’s a scarecrow at the gate,’ she said as she scribbled on the page. ‘Here are the directions.’ She handed me the page. ‘If you get lost, look for smoke – he lights a turf fire even on a hot day.’
We thanked her and moved to leave.
‘And whatever you do, don’t make him angry.’
‘Why?’ Sumo said. ‘What happens?’
‘Well, you wouldn’t like him when he’s angry,’ she said in a tone of voice that suggested she was foreshadowing evil.
‘How do you know?’ Sumo said, and he sounded scared.
‘He’s my daddy,’ she said brightly, and she winked and went inside.
So we had a choice: become slaves to a mean and angry man, or sleep outside.
‘He can’t be that bad,’ Walker said, and he started walking toward the old man, the smoke and the scarecrow.