Billy was no good in the mornings. Come to think of it, he was no good in the afternoons and evenings either. But when he woke up, he was never in the best of moods and he liked to come to consciousness gradually, one eyelid at a time. For this coach holiday in Ireland, however, they had to be up at the crack of dawn. So he shook off his moroseness and got on with his packing, Laura having completed hers a week ago.
‘What clothes should I pack for Ireland in August?’ he asked
‘Everything,’ she said, ‘but especially a mac.’
They dressed quickly in their smartest holiday gear and closed up their suitcases. As they were about to leave the house, Laura noticed that Billy had sprouted one or two errant hairs in his nose and ears and had developed eyebrows that rivalled Denis Flealey’s. There was nothing for it but to give him a final trim before setting out.
‘We can’t have you looking like an old man on this trip,’ she said.
They took a taxi to Lower Mosley Street bus station where they boarded a minibus waiting to take them to a central joining point in Rainhill in Lancashire. They had been travelling about half an hour and were well on their way when
Laura turned to him and said, ‘Who will water the plants while we’re away?’
‘Laura, we’re only away for a week and I think the plants will survive somehow.’
‘And I think I may have left a pan of water boiling on the stove. It’ll dry up and the place will fill with smoke. Can you remember? Did you see me turn it off or perhaps you turned it off?’
‘Not a chance, Laura.You know I’m not allowed to meddle in the kitchen.’
‘Then the pan’ll burst into flames and the whole place’ll burn down.’
‘So we can look forward to coming back to find the house gutted or blown to smithereens. Not to worry though ’cos it’s fully insured. Wait a minute. Did I renew the insurance? I forget.’
He received a sharp dig in the ribs for his pains.
At the assembly park, they found an impressive collection of around thirty buses ready to take their passengers to all points of the compass, to far-flung destinations in Britain and across Europe. It took them a little time to locate their coach but eventually they recognized it by the large notice stuck on the front window informing the world at large that this coach would be visiting Cork and Blarney Castle.
A young Irishman greeted them with a friendly smile.
‘Good morning. I’m Colin Murphy and I m going to be your driver and tour guide for the next seven days. Welcome aboard. I’ll put your suitcases in the luggage compartment.’
They climbed onto the coach and were taken aback when they saw that the bus was already full and the only place available was a bench seat at the back. The bus had been designed to give maximum discomfort. Friends had warned them to avoid this particular seat.
‘You’ll be thrown around like the inside of a cocktail shaker,’ they said.
As they made their way to the rear, giving friendly nods to their fellow passengers, one thing became patently obvious. This was no trip for the under-thirties seeking sea, sand and sex because the coach was packed to the gunnels with silverheaded seniors and there was a powerful pong of Sloan’s Liniment and Vick’s VapoRub. The two old girls in the seat immediately in front of them looked like a pair of nonagenarian twins out on licence from an Eastbourne nursing home.
‘At least we’ll have plenty of room,’ he said to Laura in consolation. ‘This seat can accommodate at least three so we should be able to stretch out.’
Then the last two passengers joined the coach.The two old codgers that wheezed up the aisle could not have been more dissimilar. One look at them and Billy realized that God had a subtle sense of humour after all. They were straight out of a Bertram Mills circus. Little and Large weren’t in it. The thin one was a long streak of melancholy while his corpulent companion who seemed to have a clownish smile permanently etched on his features was a mountain of blubber. His shape - or lack of it - was reminiscent of the great glutinous blob in the Quatermass Experiment. And what’s more, he was heading straight for Billy. He plonked himself down, right next to him. Politely Billy hoisted up to make room and that was the last time he took a normal breath for the rest of the trip.
‘I’m Stanley,’ the skinny one said, ‘and this is my brother Oliver.’
‘Pleased to meet you,’ Laura and Billy chorused.
Stanley and Oliver! Billy thought. Their parents must have been aficionados of the comic pair and named their sons after them.
The journey began on time at 10 a.m. and they were soon
bowling along the M62 towards Holyhead where they were to board the three o’clock ferry to Dun Laoghaire. Through the PA system, Colin played the music of the thirties and forties, interspersed with nursing-home top ten favourites, like ‘Dolly Gray’, ‘Lily of Laguna’, and ‘Nellie Dean’. Most of the passengers knew the lyrics by heart and sang out in their cracked voices.
‘It looks as if things are going to go smoothly and on time,’ Laura remarked. ‘I hope you’re not too uncomfortable there.’
‘At the moment I’m squashed between Charybdis and Scylla but when I learn to survive without oxygen, I’ll be fine,’ he panted. ‘At the speed we’re travelling, though, it shouldn’t be too long before we’re in Holyhead.’
He spoke too soon because twenty minutes into the journey, they were overtaken by a police car signalling them to turn off at the Burtonwood service station which they were approaching.
‘No need to worry, folks,’ Colin called out cheerfully through his microphone. ‘The traffic people simply want to carry out a routine check to make sure we’re roadworthy, that’s all. Shouldn’t take too long.’
They pulled in at the section reserved for heavy vehicles and joined a line of buses awaiting inspection.
‘You could give the old legs a stretch out here, if you like,’ Colin continued.
It was only then that Billy came to full realization of just how old and decrepit his fellow wrinklies were. As they struggled to their feet, there was wheezing and creaking of joints. ‘It’s your knees what go first,’ remarked a white-haired gentleman loudly to the other passengers who nodded and murmured in agreement. Meanwhile Oliver took out a hip flask of whisky and began guzzling.
‘I only drink to forget I’m an alcoholic and to make people more interesting,’ he explained.
‘The inspection usually takes about an hour,’ said the lugubrious Stanley. ‘This is my fourth coach trip this year, so I should know.’
‘Is it always Ireland you visit?’ Billy asked.
‘No, we go to different places. Maybe England, maybe the continent. We change about according to what takes our fancy.’
‘Or what fancies he can take,’ his brother smirked between tipples of Scotch. ‘He collects souvenirs, you see.’
‘That’s interesting,’ Laura said.‘I like collecting mementos of places visited. I hope to get one or two on this trip.’
‘And so do I!’ Stanley added, winking at his brother.
By this time, the bus had emptied and they were able to join the other passengers who were sitting disconsolately on a low wall a few yards away. The evacuation had taken twenty-five minutes.
Stanley’s estimate proved to be accurate as the police mechanics checked the electrical system, ignition, brakes, tyre pressures, windows and door security. The coach was given a clean bill of health but they were now one hour behind schedule and to make up for lost time Cohn had to put his foot down. Before long they were in North Wales.
‘Hold on to your hats, folks,’ he said as they whizzed along the A55.
They made the three o’clock ferry but only just.
They drove straight onto the boat and into the lower deck parking bay.
‘The crossing will take about three hours,’ Colin told them. ‘We should be in Dun Laoghaire about six o’clock. You must be back on this bus by half past five at the latest so that we can make a quick getaway. We’re not allowed to linger and all vehicles have to leave in strict order. Remember where we are. B Deck.’
More wheezing, more creaking as they disembarked.
It was a smooth crossing and Billy relished being released
from the crushing weight of his Brobdingnagian fellow traveller and the opportunity to stretch his limbs. Laura and he utilized the three-hour voyage enjoying tea and buns in the cavernous refreshment hall, circumnavigating the decks, standing at the ship’s rail to breathe in the ozone, and gazing meditatively into the grey waters of the Irish Sea.
Promptly at five thirty they descended into the bowels of the ship to find their bus and were relieved to find that by five fifty-five, their coach was ready to disembark. Shortly after that Cohn drove off the ferry and up the long ramp to the main road where they halted for a final roster before setting off to their first night’s accommodation, the Wild Geese Hotel.
It was discovered that the two old ladies were missing.
‘Oh, my God!’ Cohn exclaimed. ‘They must still be on the boat. They could be anywhere. I’ll have to go back and organize a search party.’
There was an audible sigh as they realized that they were to be held up yet again. To make matters worse, it was raining. Nothing unusual in that, Billy thought. Not in Ireland. After all, how had it come to earn the title, the ‘Emerald Isle’?
Colin came back after half an hour. ‘We can do nothing now but wait. It’s a very big boat and this may take some time.’
‘Perhaps they’ve fallen overboard,’ someone offered.
‘Maybe they jumped or were pushed overboard,’ Stanley suggested mournfully.
A little while later, the sirens of two Irish police cars were heard as the Garda arrived on the scene. One car drove straight onto the boat to investigate while the other parked next to their coach. Two officers came onto the bus and began questioning everyone as in an Agatha Christie thriller.
‘Did anyone see the two old ladies? 3^/fien and where did you last see them? Did they seem happy or depressed? Was there any talk about jumping overboard? Billy looked around
for Colonel Mustard and Miss Scarlett and the other characters.
No one could shed any light on the subject, though one passenger reported that the two old ladies had complained they were on the wrong bus and had been hoping to go on a pilgrimage to Knock instead of Cork, but the two places sounded so much like each other. ‘Cork — Knock,’ Billy whispered to himself. ‘How could they get those two names mixed up?’
‘Fancy wanting to spend your holiday on a pilgrimage,’ Stanley commented.
‘Don’t knock it!’ Billy said.
Laura resisted the temptation to fall in the aisle helpless with laughter. Instead, she said. ‘Did I ever tell you that you’re corny?’
‘Yes, every day since we married thirty-three years ago.’
Time dragged by. The hour turned into two. Then three.
‘Ah, the poor old buggers,’ Stanley said to his brother. ‘Who’d have thought that two nice old ladies would have made a suicide pact because they’d got on the wrong bus?’
His brother didn’t answer - he was too busy knocking back the duty-free Jameson’s he’d bought on board.
Then the first police car emerged from the ship with the two old biddies sitting beside a cop at the back.
‘They’d fallen asleep in a remote part of the boat,’ an officer explained.
Shamefacedly, the two old dears returned to their places.
Outside, the police officers could be heard talking to Colin, their driver.
‘You’ve got a right lot this time, Colin. Where in God’s name did you get them?’
‘Most of ’em look as if they’ve got one foot in the grave,’ added his companion. ‘Maybe you should just drive them straight to the knacker’s yard at Glasnevin Cemetery and have done with it.’
‘ Ah, hah. But I’d be out of a work then, wouldn’t I?’ said their driver.‘I’ve found in this job you’ve got to be forever on the alert with old fogies like this.You never know what they’ll get up to next. Anyway, thanks again, lads!’
Colin got back in the bus and they set off again. He ignored the officer’s cemetery suggestion and drove them to their three-star accommodation just outside Bray. From the way the manageress Moira Maguire and Colin exchanged osculatory greetings, it was evident that their arrangement was more than a business one.
‘Kissy-kissy kickbacks,’ Stanley said with a wink.
‘How do you mean?’ Laura asked.
‘Colin’s reward for bringing the coach party here. Sometimes it’s money; sometimes it’s honey, like now.’
Despite the warm welcome accorded to Colin, they found they’d arrived too late for supper and had to make do with sandwiches which the kitchen staff very kindly made up. At least they could get a good night’s sleep, they thought, so as to be ready for an early start the next day. But they hadn’t reckoned on the ceilidh which was being celebrated in the bar below. As they were about to drop off, the fiddles struck up, accompanied by the thump-thumpety-thump of the bodhran, penny whistles, and foot stamping.
‘Beautiful fiddling,’ Billy remarked. ‘But when does that di Hill y—i dum dum stop?’
In the early hours was the answer. Not a good start to their holiday.
Next morning at six o’clock sharp, they were roused from slumber by early morning telephone calls arranged by Colin, their solicitous warder. With much bitching and bellyaching, the company went down to a breakfast of bacon and eggs. This was one meal the Irish did not stint on. The rashers were big enough to feed a gang of hungry navvies.
‘Come on, folks,’ Colin said, ushering the stragglers
along. ‘No need to hang around here all morning. We’ve a long way to go today. We’ve to make Midleton by four o’clock.’
‘This is supposed to be a holiday,’ Billy muttered to Laura. ‘If I’d wanted this hurry-hurry kind of pressure, we could have stayed home.’
It was still drizzling when they re-mounted their coach an hour later. Billy returned to his place between the two brothers.
‘That stay was short and sweet,’ Laura remarked. ‘We hardly had time to catch our breath.’
‘Breath! Don’t talk to me about breath!’ Billy gasped from his pinioned position.
‘I really enjoyed the stay at that hotel,’ Stanley declared. ‘I got a lot out of it.’
‘How do you mean?’ Laura asked. ‘Did you take the soap, shampoos, and hair conditioner? I sometimes help myself to those. They’re free and all part of the service.’
‘No,’ Stanley replied. ‘I mean these.’
So saying, he produced three ashtrays and four coat hangers, all marked Wild Geese Hotel.
‘That’s his little hobby,’ his brother explained.‘Now mine is to be found at the first stop after lunch between Youghal and Cork.’
At eleven o’clock they stopped at a roadside cafeteria for coffee and a visit to a craft centre.
‘More kickback’, Stanley whispered. ‘It’s a racket.’
‘I think you’ll find Arklow interesting,’ Cohn told them, ‘and you’ll be able to buy good souvenirs at the shop. The place is famous for its knitted woollen jerseys worn by the fishermen.’Then with a broad grin, he added,‘By law, English tourists must buy a minimum of two, of which at least one must be green. You’ll be checked at the docks and won’t be allowed to leave the country unless you have the documentation for them.’
‘I notice you never wear green, Colin,’ Billy remarked as he disembarked. ‘Why is that?’
‘Reminds me too much of seven hundred years of national tragedies and also our Irish soccer teams.’ Giving Billy a wink through the rear-view mirror, he said.‘Not only that, it doesn’t suit my skin colour. Anyway, we’ll be here in Arklow for fortyfive minutes.’
It sounded like a reasonable enough time to order coffee and have a look round the shop but he’d not taken account of the time needed to unload and reload the passengers. This left them about ten minutes in the establishment. Billy thought this might be his big chance to change seats. After all, no one had actually reserved particular places. He nipped back onto the bus and took a seat about halfway down. It wasn’t long before he heard the now-familiar, ‘Time to get back on the bus! No dawdling!’ from Cohn who was beginning to sound like Lewis Carroll’s White Rabbit with his ‘No time! No time!’ as he rushed around the shop gathering in the strays.
Billy sat defiantly in his new seat and awaited the consequences. It didn’t take long. Two minutes later, a big, burly man with a menacing smile placed a callused hand the size of a shovel on his shoulder.
‘You wouldn’t by any chance have taken my seat by accident?’ he said.
‘Why is it your seat?’ Billy protested. ‘Did you reserve it or pay a special fee for it? Is it a family heirloom, or what?’
‘I want no arguments,’ the man said, tightening his grip on Billy’s shoulder. ‘You’ll either get out of my seat or I’ll break your face.’
At this point, Colin intervened to prevent a murder. Billy’s.
‘Please return to your own seat,’ he admonished, ‘before someone gets hurt.’
Reluctantly Billy got up and went to his place at the back. He still wasn’t happy. ‘By what right does anyone lay claim to
a specific seat? No one told me you could reserve a particular place.’
‘It’s a case of first come, first served,’ Colin replied. ‘However, in the interests of justice, we’ll have democratic choice.’ He addressed the passengers. ‘Raise your hand anyone who wants the back seat.’
No one did.
‘Next, hands up all those who would like to change their seats.’
Everyone did, except the old lady sitting immediately behind him.
‘In that case,’ Colin said, ‘you’ll all stop where you are. I’m not going to spend the rest of this tour trying to satisfy everyone’s requirements.’
Billy had to resign himself to his place in the human vice. It’d been worth the try, though.
As they set off for the next leg of their journey, he said to Laura, ‘When you consider how long it takes to debus, the best seat is the one just behind the driver at the front.The occupant is first off and last one back on.’
The seat he was referring to had been taken by a toothless old crone who at that moment was engaging Colin in earnest conversation, handing him handfuls of peanuts as she did so.
‘That’s very kind of you, Bridget,’ said Colin. ‘It’s nice to have something to chew on during these long journeys. Helps to relieve the boredom.’
‘So glad you like ’em,’ the old dear rejoined. ‘Here, have some more.’
For the next hour or so, she continued to ply Colin with what seemed like an endless supply of nuts.
Eventually, Colin felt he’d eaten enough.
I won’t have any more,’ he said. ‘I must have eaten about fifty peanuts already. But why don’t you eat them yourself?’
The old lady rewarded him with a gummy smile. ‘Shure I can’t chew ’em ’cos I forgot to bring me teeth,’ she croaked.
‘Then why buy ’em?’ he asked.
‘Ah, I just loves to suck the chocolate offa dem,’ she replied.
Appropriately for an Irishman, Colin turned green and for the rest of the two-hour journey was strangely quiet.
The man with the big hands decided to start a game of bingo and came round handing out cards. Laura and Billy had never played it in their lives and this wasn’t the time to start, especially as they were passing through the most beautiful countryside. So they turned down the offer to join in. They couldn’t see the point in spending so much money on a coach tour if they were going to spend it with their eyes glued down on a piece of paper crossing off numbers.
‘Shure, it’ll help kill the time,’ said an elderly lady.
Lunch was celebrated at Kathleen’s Cottage just outside Wexford. The company sat at four long tables, twelve to a table. Laura and Billy sat opposite their two companions, with the two frustrated Knock pilgrims next to them. In the few hours sitting on the coach, everyone had worked up a good appetite and when the starter course of Blarney Salad described on the menu as crisp lettuce leaves and crunchy pan-fried black pudding pieces topped with a soft egg mayonnaise’ arrived, everyone tucked in heartily. Stanley and Oliver in particular ate ravenously, smacking their lips and even licking and sucking the prongs of their forks so as to savour every last morsel. The first course finished, everyone helped the waitress by passing down their plates and cutlery to the head of the table where they were stacked up neatly ready for collection. They looked forward to the main course described as ‘delicious meat balls flavoured with onion and garlic, cooked in a thick tomato sauce with cabbage and
potato wedges’.
‘No, no,’ the young waitress said when she saw the plates piled up.‘You weren’t supposed to pass them down.You’ll need to keep everything for the next course.
The plates and cutlery were quickly passed back down the table but nobody was sure which items had been theirs. Laura and Billy suddenly lost their appetites and decided not to have the main course after all. The two brothers, however, did not seem fazed by the mix-up and ate not only their own food but theirs too. The ice-cream dessert, though, was a different matter as they were given fresh crockery and a clean spoon.
‘Well, I didn’t think much of those arrangements,’ Billy remarked to Stanley on the way out. ‘Why on earth did Colin choose such a dump? No, don’t tell me. Kickbacks?’
‘Dead right,’ he replied, ‘and from Kathleen herself. It happens on most coach tours. It’s the only way the driver can make a decent living.’
Everyone processed back onto the bus and a couple of hours later they passed through an idyllic landscape in a beautiful rural setting. They turned off the main road into what looked like an industrial estate. Now they saw what Oliver had been getting at when he spoke of his own little hobby because they found themselves in the middle of an alcoholic’s dream. This was Midleton, the location of Ireland’s largest distillery.
‘For me,’ Oliver said reverentially, ‘this is the little part of heaven that fell out of the sky one day. This place produces Ireland’s finest whiskeys: Jameson, Power, Paddy andTullamore Dew. “Give every man his Dew” is the advertising slogan.’
‘We shall be stopping here for one hour and then we must leave on time. Stragglers will be left behind,’ Cohn informed the company.
Once again, he hadn’t allowed for the off-and-on routine. There wasn’t nearly enough time to look round, considering how complex the plant was, and they had to content themselves with the brief summary given by the general manager. He was in the middle of a sentence explaining the difference between Irish and Scottish whiskeys when Colin
interrupted.‘Sorry, folks. No time now. Everybody back on the bus if we’re to make the hotel at a reasonable hour.’
Everyone duly obeyed and settled back in the coach only to discover that Oliver was missing. Alarmed, Stanley alerted the driver. ‘We’ll wait a quarter of an hour and then we must go.’The fifteen minutes passed and Colin said,‘That’s it. We’ve got to leave. He’ll have to find his own way to Cork. He shouldn’t have a problem as it’s not too far and there’s a local bus service.’
They checked in at the Ned Kelly Retreat in Cork and settled in for the night. The room was small but comfortable with its own tiny en suite bathroom. No doubt Stanley will stock up with free toiletries, they thought.
The hotel was nothing to write home about so they didn’t. This time there was no ceilidh, thank the Lord, and they had a restful night after a couple of nightcaps in the bar. It was there that they saw how kind, conscientious and popular Colin, their driver, was. He seemed to know everybody in the hotels across Ireland. Billy offered to buy him a drink but he turned it down.
‘Thanks a million,’ he said,‘but I must say no.You see, I took the pledge when I was a youngster. Anyway, it wouldn’t do if your driver was caught drinkin’.’
Billy had to admit he had a point. The same considerations did not apply to a red-faced farmer who was putting it away like nobody’s business.
‘Now, Declan,’ said Colin addressing him. ‘I think you’ve had enough for tonight. You’ll never get up for work tomorrow the way you’re going on. I hope you’re not thinking of driving home, the state you’re in.’
‘And why not?’ Farmer Declan said.‘I have a special button on the dashboard marked “drunk driving”. I have only to pull that and the car drives itself back.’
‘And then you’ll lose your licence, Declan,’ Colin told him. ‘Look, drink up and I’ll drive you back.’
‘That is very kind of you, Colin,’ Declan spluttered. ‘But then how will you get back to the hotel yourself?’
‘It’s a lovely night so I’ll walk back. It’s only a couple of miles.’
‘You’ll do no such thing, Colin. I won’t hear of it. I’ll drive you back.’
As Colin said to Billy later, ‘You couldn’t make ’em up.’
Next morning, the travellers were free to explore the picturepostcard town of Cork. It was still raining but Billy didn’t mind one bit as it meant a day off from the human clamp on the back seat and that was sufficient reward for him. Cork brought back memories of the summer holidays in 1948 when he and his good friend and fellow teacher at St Anselm’s School had embarked on a cycling holiday round Ireland.They had ‘cycled’ from Dublin to Cork in just two hours and when they told the drinkers at the bar of their incredible achievement, they were treated to free pints of porter. Billy omitted to tell the barflies that they had picked up a lift outside Dublin for themselves and their bikes and had roared down the road at ninety miles an hour. Billy now showed Laura the places he and Alex had visited all those years ago: the numerous boarding houses named after saints and their despair at not being able to find anything despite going through the litany of the saints; the famous Skiddy Almshouse; and the beautiful St Finbar’s Cathedral with its twin spires.
They got back to their hotel late that evening but there was still no sign of Oliver. Stanley had become truly worried though he still found time to show them the pair of luxurious bath towels he’d filched.
\
Next morning, Oliver turned up as they were about to set off for Mizen Head, the most south-westerly point on the Atlantic Ocean. He looked haggard, his clothes and hair unkempt and he had a bandage round his left hand.
‘I became distracted,’ he explained. ‘When we went into
that distillery, I thought I’d died and gone to paradise. After you’d all gone, I was taken on a tour of all the departments, malting, mashing, fermentation and distilling, and I sampled each of their famous whiskeys. At the end I bought a gift set of each one of them.’
‘And what’s with the bandage round your hand?’ Billy asked.
‘As I was coming out of the last distillery, some idiot stood on my hand. Anyway, I missed the last bus into Cork and had to sleep in a bus shelter. I caught the first bus out this morning.’
The journey to Mizen Head was a long one and Oliver soon fell asleep, snoring loudly and with his head on Billy’s shoulder. As the coach bounced around, Oliver’s head gradually slid down Billy’s body till his face was precariously close to his crotch. If it slides any further, he thought, I’ll thump him.
They drove on and came to the most dangerous leg of the journey. The roads through the mountains had not been designed to take modern coaches and were much too narrow. This section of the tour took them along a series of sharp hairpin bends with precipitous cliffs to their left. In order to get round the worst bends, Colin had to reverse ever so gently to avoid backing into a ravine and then edge forward gingerly to complete the turn.
‘This is good practice,’ he laughed, ‘for when I take my driving test next week.’
He was joking of course. Or was he?
Colin also judged it to be the ideal time to sing Irish ballads and make wisecracks about death and mortality.
‘I hope you’ve all made your wills and taken out accident insurance,’ he guffawed as he negotiated a blind bend on the brink of a vertical drop with a panoramic view of the surrounding hills.
Nobody appreciated his humour.
Several passengers took out rosary beads, and the shrieks of the elderly twins, ‘God help us, he’s going to kill us all,’ did nothing to boost their confidence. Billy’s screams didn’t help either.
‘Now, aren’t you glad you decided not to drive?’ whispered Laura by his side.
She never misses a chance to put me in my place, he thought, which is in the wrong. But this time he had to agree.
As they descended from the vertiginous ride through the mountains, they were treated to a view of the lush green countryside. They reached Mizen Head a little time later and had a breathtaking view of the wild Atlantic Ocean dashing itself against the rocks.
‘You’ll get a better view if you disembark,’ Colin suggested.
The exodus began. By the time they stepped out into the air, there were five minutes left to enjoy the scene.
‘On the next coach holiday,’ Billy said to Laura,‘we’ll make sure we get the seat immediately behind the driver.’
Then he thought, next coach holiday? What am I saying? I must be going off my chump.
Oliver was oblivious to the glorious view as he was still snoring with a noise like an overfed hog while brother Stanley decided not to bother getting out of the bus.
‘If you’ve seen one sea view, you’ve seen ’em all,’ he proclaimed.
After their Mizen visit, they stayed the night in Bantry, made famous in the single line of the song ‘Star of the County Down’ - ‘From Bantry Bay up to Derry Quay and from Galway to Dublin Town’. Next day they drove over to Blarney where inevitably they were expected to take part in the ancient custom of kissing the Blarney Stone which was supposed to endow the performer with the gift of the gab. The last time Billy had visited this place he’d carried out the tradition all right but later found out that what he’d put his lips to was an imitation stone placed there for unsuspecting tourists
like him. The real one was high up in an inaccessible place and he was determined to reach it even if he broke his neck in the attempt.
‘We’ll see if it pays off if ever I put pen to paper,’ he remarked to Laura.
No true Irishman would ever dream of putting himself out for such a stupid exercise because for him blarney was an inherited gift passed down through countless generations via his mother’s milk. The word ‘blarney’, not unlike the Americans’ ‘baloney,’ meant persuasive talk or humbug, the kind of thing Alex and Billy had met on their cycling tour in Galway when, being lost on a country road, they asked an old farmer for directions to Dunluce Castle.
‘Well, now,’ he said, wrinkling his brow and scratching his head. ‘I’ve lived in this county for over sixty years and I can’t say I’ve ever heard of the place.’
Alex and Billy cycled on. They had covered about a quarter of a mile downhill when they heard the old farmer yelling out to them. When they looked back, they saw that he’d been joined by another man.
‘Perhaps he’s remembered where the castle is,’ Alex said.
Panting, they walked back to the pair, pushing their bikes up the steep hill.
‘This is my brother,’ declared the old farmer. ‘He’s hved around here for sixty-five years and he doesn’t know either.’
They had met a similar example in their last hotel when the porter who picked up their bags said,‘Follow me, sir. I’m right behind you.’
They drove from Blarney to Enniskerry for their overnight stay before embarking on the Dun Laoghaire ferry back to Holyhead. Back in England, they boarded their coach for the final run to Lancashire. Oliver was still three sheets to the wind, having topped up with more duty free. Stanley, who was normally a regular bag of bones, seemed to have put on
considerable weight overnight, which puzzled them for a while.
‘I cannot remember ever enjoying a holiday as much as this one,’ Stanley said as they left Holyhead. ‘I set off with just a toothbrush and comb and now my cup and case are full to the brim. I rounded it all off at that last hotel in Enniskerry. I couldn’t resist the temptation of the soft woollen bathrobe and just before we checked out I helped myself to the silk curtains by wrapping them round my body. They should look good on my bedroom windows at home. I’m so looking forward to our next coach tour in Italy.’
‘He’d have taken the television and the telephone,’ his brother Oliver remarked, ‘but he couldn’t get them into his suitcase.’
‘I really enjoyed that break,’ Laura said when they reached home, ‘and I’m especially relieved now that I know I didn’t leave the pan on the stove after all. I feel completely refreshed, don’t you?’
Billy grimaced.‘If you find being rattled around in a tin can with a lot of obnoxious people in the pouring rain enjoyable, then yes, it was. Now I need six months’ complete rest to recover. That was the worst vacation I’ve ever had. It was like Alice in Wonderland complete with the Mad Hatter and the White Rabbit with his stopwatch. When we set off a week ago, I was a young middle-aged athlete and I’ve come back a doddering old man.’
Billy couldn’t wait to tell his friends about it, though. He met up with them in their usual pub, the Pineapple, near Granada Studios. It was centrally situated and convenient for everyone and so they had become accustomed to meeting there. In addition there was always the added thrill of catching sight of a visiting television celebrity, such as a Coronation Street star. Years ago, they had seen Pat Phoenix and Violet Carson who had played the parts of Elsie Tanner and the hair-netted
Ena Sharpies. Today various well-known actors sometimes called in for a drink, like Johnny Briggs and William Roache who took the roles of Mike Baldwin and Ken Barlow. Knowing they had come in for a drink and to relax, the Smokers’ Club gang made a point of not staring at them but treated them like ordinary blokes.
The evening began with the usual bellyaching. Titch opened the proceedings after returning from the gents.
‘If there’s one thing that gets on my wick,’ he began, ‘it’s underpants with an aperture that’s impossible to find. I nearly wet myself just now.’
‘If that’s all that’s worrying you,’ Nobby retorted, ‘then you’re lucky. I’ve just had a big barney with my tax inspector and what really burns me up are those little cartoons you see on telly, making out that the inspector’s a nice friendly little bloke in a bowler hat who’ll treat you kindly with a big smile and lots of jokes. I found mine to be a vicious buccaneer out to grab every penny he can.’
‘Now, two kinds of people send up hackles,’ Oscar said, anxious to add to the general squawking, ‘and I cannot make up my mind which I despise the more: people who corrupt our beautiful English language by adopting Americanisms from the television and the cinema. All around us we hear words like “lootenant” and “skedule”, and if you’re in a pub somebody orders a whisky and soda “on the rocks , or in a restaurant “a coupla fried eggs, sunny side up”. I can understand why the French moan about their language being mangled into Franglais.The other group of people who come close to giving me apoplexy are the philistines at symphony concerts who wait till we’ve reached the tender pianissimo passage of a violin concerto before deciding to crinkle a bag of toffees or those who hum the theme being played by the orchestra. Last week I was at a Halle performance of Tchaikowski’s Pathetique and some harpy behind me was humming “This is the story of a starry night”. I ask you!’
Oscar turned to Billy for a contribution to the whingeing session.
‘So, how was the holiday?’ he asked, hoping to hear him sound off. ‘A week incarcerated in a coach with a bunch of old fogies! You must have had a great time!’
Billy disappointed them by adopting a positive tone.
‘A great time? Only the best holiday we’ve ever had, that’s all,’ he told them, lying through his teeth. Maybe that kissing of the Blarney Stone was beginning to work its magic after all. Besides which, who was going to come back after spending a fortune on a holiday and then tell everybody they’d had a lousy time?
‘But what did you do? You were just sitting on a bus!’ Nobby protested.
‘True, but we enjoyed stimulating company. One man was heavily invested in hotel stocks and another man I became very close to was in whisky. And every morning we got up early and visited places. We saw the sights.’
‘Where did you go?’ from Titch.
‘We went wherever we went.’
And what on earth did you do after that?’ Oscar sneered.
‘We came back from wherever we’d been. And this was Ireland and I’ve never seen such colour. Forty different shades of green. Everything was green! The fields, the trees, the grass, the sky, even the faces of the passengers, and on one memorable occasion the driver.’
‘If there’s one other thing I really hate,’ Oscar drawled, ‘it’s people who lie so unconvincingly about their holiday. But then, as my great hero Oscar Wilde once remarked, “If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out.
So now the holiday was over and it was back to reality. So far, Billy’s retirement had been a series of mini disasters. Shopping was out; he’d tried the get-fit routine, the sports centre,
cycling, tennis, and nothing had really worked. Who knows? he thought. I may still have years and years of retirement ahead of me, and it’s time I put my first cunning plan into action, namely coaching private students.
Chapter Six