I needed a drink. I had three, and two dishes of salted peanuts. I organised my documents, including sales slips as I was not going to go through last year's fracas with your friendly, alert, penny-pinching, peel-paring, petty-pawed excise officials.
Two guys tried to pick me up: the light in the bar was bad or they'd've seen I was old enough to be their mother. I must have presented them a challenge because I didn't encourage them in spite of the fact that the sun was shining, the forecast clear, and there was no likelihood that I'd be grounded in New York. Once bit, twice shy. They did buy me another drink.
I recall boarding the damned plane, but that's all. Mid-week, off-season, the passengers were almost outnumbered by staff and the entire mid-section of the Jumbo was unused. I got a blanket and a pillow or two from the stewardess, fixed the armrests and curled up for sleep. I missed my in-flight dinner, but I really slept. I only woke when the stewardess roused me with juice, coffee and roll.
But Ireland was under the wings and I felt relieved and rested.
Mairead's car was not in the blacktopped parking slot in front of the house so she was at work. She kept erratic hours and I hadn't told her when I'd be returning, but it is flat to come home to an empty place. My battered green Peugeot 404 was tucked in by the fuschia hedge, looking dustier than ever with rain splotches. As I paid off the taxi, (my last extravagance for a long while) I hoped that the Peug's battery was okay. Mairead had promised to use the car enough to keep it running.
Baggins came charging out of nowhere, white-tipped black-tail threatening to wind off his tailbone in his ecstasy at seeing me. Where had I been so long? So glad I was home, lick-lick, bark-bark, getting under my feet, impeding my progress up the front stairs. I gave up at his importunities, knelt and accepted the one lick-kiss which he felt his due, then he wiggle-waggled and barged at me with body and nose to reassure me of his welcome all over again. I wonder if the Irish had a dog in mind when they say 'cead mille failte' - a thousand welcomes. A dog certainly tries.
The house had the still, un-lived-in quality, airless and dry, but clean. Mrs. Munday who comes to me on Tuesday had not evidently come to do her weekly good-turn. I like to come home to a clean house, but a very tidy one makes me uncomfortable for some obscure reason. My room, when I lugged my growing-heavier-with-every-step case up the stairs, looked unfamiliar, austere and depressing. I'd tidied everything before I left, so that the desk, bare of my usual novelistic clutter, looked more accusatory than clean. There was a neat pile of letters in all sizes and types of envelopes: quite a few airmails and air letters, too, and some half dozen manila envelopes and a couple of book mailers. I sighed: too much too soon. I like my mail in small doses so I can savour it with the second cup of coffee. Generally speaking my first daily contact with the world is Mr. Murphy, the bike-pedalling mailman, resembling, but better looking than, Barry Fitzgerald.
I opened the meadow window and breathed in the crisp cool air: Ireland was its misty self, but the grass was brilliant green, dotted here and there with early weed flowers, white, pinkish and tiny blue stars. The room began to breathe again, too, coming alive with my return and clutter. I opened the mountain window, but my usual view was obscured by the 'soft' weather.
I must have stood looking out the window in thanks-giving for some while. The bleat of a motorist on the winding road outside my oasis penetrated my abstraction. I threw off my cloak, opened my case which I hadn't relocked after customs (the man had passed me with no more than a glance at my carefully annotated figures) and I hauled out all the washables. I shucked out of the clothes I'd travelled in, including the underthings, found a fresh change from my drawers and closets. I'd bathe later when the water was hot enough: right now just the change made me feel less sticky. Trailing laddered panty hose and dirty jerseys, I clumped downstairs to the kitchen and stuffed the washing machine with the first load. The lingerie could dry by the fire, the other things on the line if the sun stayed out.
The refrigerator was not fulclass="underline" what was available did not tempt my appetite. The freezer's contents were likewise unappealing, and unidentifiable. I'd better shop for immediate foodstuffs. Mairead hated to cook and would exist for months on a diet of fried eggs, sausages and mash. She would even descend to using packaged potatoes, an anathema to me. I made myself coffee, using the last of the milk in the fridge. Mairead also had a thing about putting out milk bottles and there were a dozen waiting to be returned. Important things like a full bowl of fresh water for Baggins, plenty of canned and dried food for him, had not been neglected.
From the window over the kitchen sink I could survey my kitchen garden. My lettuces were thriving, the beets and carrots sprouting with vigour, the onion sets rising from the ground with green spires. By the walk, last year's glads were piercing the moist dirt which had been weeded, and the roses were pruned and ruddy-leaved with new growth.
And in Colorado, the snows were drifted deep and thick… And, I added briskly, in Pennsylvania they still had that brown stuff that grass turned into in a stateside east-coast winter.
How glad Tim would be to return to green Ireland! As glad as I was? Or was I?
I found my jacket, my car keys, raced upstairs to retrieve my purse and left my home. The car started, the chain rattling comfortably. I'd often wondered in whimsy if ghost chains sounded at all like a Peugeot's inner workings.
And so I picked up the threads of my Irish life, about where I'd left it six weeks before when I'd gone blithely off on my tour.
But I wasn't the same person.
My friend, Mairead, arrived home from her boutique at 6:15, utterly knackered as she was prone to say.
'You're back early,' she remarked, standing in the door-way and glowering at me where I sat going through the mail pile. 'Whyn't you let a person know? Christ, I could have closed the shop.' Which she did at the drop of a hat. Mairead has really red hair, she walks as if her bones might fall away from the joints at any moment, because she had no meat on her at all. She believes in nobody and nothing, argues with me on every topic imaginable so that it is surprising our friendship survives; she derides my philosophy and theories, reads all my books in manuscript and print and consistently reserves her judgment, remaining in her aloof way, my closest and most valued friend. 'You didn't think to bring in any Carlsburg?'
'Yes, I noticed you'd drunk it all,' and as she sagged into the couch, I rose to refill my own and get one for her.
'Ah, that reaches those unrefreshed places,' she said, swigging down half the glass.
She did look exhausted, dark smudges under her darker eyes. Her hand was shaking a bit and I suspected that Mairead hadn't been eating properly again. She not only manages the boutique, but does the buying of European giftie-type thingies twice or three times a year.
'How'd it go, pet?' she asked me, meaning the trip.
'Great,' I replied with an equal lack of enthusiasm.
'Oh, like that, huh? I told you I thought they wouldn't pay you just for talking.'
I laughed. That had been one of her arguments: who would pay someone for just talking?
'Oh, I got paid. As soon as I stopped talking, my hand went out for the cheque.'
She raised her eyebrows, mockingly. 'Well, well. And did you see my boyfriend?'
Mairead is genuinely fond of Tim: they have a running battle of insults, digs, innuendoes and arguments which get extremely heated at times, occasionally to the point of my frantic intervention. So I told her all about my visits with Tim, and about Trish and her research on lilting.