Close Encounters - Part 2

However, as soon as Joe was on board, Geraldine pointed the van back to the M50. At the turn-off for the N5, Joe said nothing. And so, we relaxed and continued on to Mayo. The others were on the way by now, as well, with Seamus intact. Niamh had diagnosed a chest infection, which [as well as the hard life] may have been contributing to his fits.

That evening, after Joe had left the party, and was sitting in a bar in Mulranny, the TV crew came back from the hall for a drink and Joe got into conversation and apologised for leaving so abruptly. He had missed a lovely day where we were all made to feel like homecoming heroes. But maybe this type of attention is too much, if you feel your life hasn’t turned out the way you wanted it to… What is there to celebrate?

That evening, while Joe was still in the pub, the 6 o’clock news came on while we were sitting in our cottages having tea, chatting, relaxing. And towards the end they showed a familiar banner: ‘Cead mile failte’ and a short (very short, milliseconds only) shot of us entering the village hall at Mulranny. Then there I am talking, looking like somebody else and there’s Jerry Cowley. We lean forward in our chairs, mouths open. We can’t believe that this is on TV, just a couple of hours after the party. Then they showed us dancing, pulling crackers, having a good time but very discretely, backs of heads, hands, no faces, except for that tiny segment at the start, before Joe lost his nerve and shot off to the pub.

Later that evening we got a call from Joe’s brother, Gerry, and he arrived the next day on his way from work. He brought Joe home to visit their mother and spent a lot of time with us and with Joe throughout the week. The brothers talked about Gerry’s times in London, ‘on the tear’. And later Joe said, ‘Do you see him now? My God, he was worse than even I am with the drink! And now…he has his own business and a family.’
Joe had something to think about, and after a moment he said, ‘You know, I would never have contacted him. How did he know I was here?’
I mumbled something about Jerry Cowley, thinking I’d better say nothing about that split-second Joe was on the news.

While we were there, we were invited for a very special lunch one day in Foxford, by a group of local Mayo people, who have got together a support group for homeless emigrants in Britain. We were given a conducted tour of the local woollen mills. There we had a Christmas dinner in the restaurant attached to the mills and were treated to carol singing by local schoolchildren, one of whom, about 10 years old, sang the ‘Rocks of Bawn’ in the most beautiful haunting voice - we were all in tears. Peter was delegated to thank them from us all and he declared the rest of the day a school holiday.

On the way back, we stopped off in Swinford at Mellets pub, where we met Sheila Mellett, an old friend of John’s, who had collected some money for us. We sat around the fire, playing cards, and gave some of the money back over the bar in exchange for drinks. We were also picking up BBC Joe (so called because he worked there as a chef in his salad days) whose brother Austin lives in Swinford and who he hadn’t seen for 35 years. Everyone in the town knew Austin, as he was a guard [policeman] before he retired, and he now has a new profession as a sign writer and part time scene painter for the theatre group in Kiltimagh. He had to leave early to prepare for the upcoming panto but would visit often during the week.

Patricia works in Conway House, which is a big hostel in Kilburn, which originally catered for younger Irish men. These days the target client group has had to change, to reflect the local community, which now includes many Eastern Europeans and Africans. There are still a lot of Irish men living there, though, most of whom would have come over in the 1980’s and who are now in their late 30’s to early 40’s. Three of these men were staying together in one of the cottages with Patricia. Eunan had decided he would go home to Tyrone to visit his family and early in the week we drove him to Charlestown to catch a bus home. On the way, we dropped off Geraldine, one of our volunteers, at Knock airport. She had to return to London to go back to work. That evening one of the other lads, Con decided that he too would like to go home to visit his family in Donegal and we discussed dropping him off at a bus stop in Castlebar the next day but we also tried to persuade him to wait till the spring when we would be running a trip to Donegal.

The next morning, Patricia was in a panic, Con had disappeared. Dominic the other person in the house said that he had gone off hitch-hiking in the early hours of the morning. We went out to look for him on the road but there was no sign of Con. A storm was lashing the area with wind and driving rain and we just hoped he was warm and snug in a car on the way to Donegal and the brother he hadn’t seen for 20-odd years. We rang Con’s brother to say that he was on his way and asked him to get in touch when he turned up. Con was used to living rough and fending for himself and we had no real worries...still you can’t help wondering. And wonder we did, until the following evening, when Con’s brother contacted us to say he had arrived safely the night before. He had asked Con to call us straight away, but I reckon Con was feeling a little bit disgruntled with us, and wanted to let us stew.

Safe-Home, the return to Ireland project which places older emigrants who wish to return home in sheltered accommodation all over Ireland, is based in Mulranny, which, because of the local TD and the St. Brendan’s village care home, is the capital city of returning emigrants, although it has a population of only a few hundred. During the last two centuries Mulranny was also a very fashionable holiday destination for the privileged elite of Ireland, because of the Great Southern Hotel based there on the side of the hill overlooking Clew bay. Recently, the magnificent old building had fallen into disuse and disrepair and had the faded elegance of a lost remnant of Ireland’s colonial past. The railway used to run right past the hotel at the back and it had its own stop, and separate platforms for guests and servants. The swimming pool was the biggest in Ireland, at the time, and was the only heated pool in the country. Many famous guests stayed there in its heyday, including John and Yoko Lennon, who owned an island in the bay. During a previous visit, Jerry Cowley had taken us for walks in the grounds, with bluebells and rhododendrons growing wild in the railway cuttings, and showed us plans for a housing development for returning emigrants he hoped to get off the ground nearby.

The building has been sold to a big hotel chain, which was radically re-altering the grounds but seemed to be restoring the hotel to its old glory. While we were there the construction workers were hard at it, trying to get the bar open for a grand opening, shortly before we were due to leave. The swimming pool is now gone and new apartments in a modern Scandinavian style are being built over it and the railway lines and out buildings. All in all, it must be a positive development for the area, but it’s bound to have an effect on the character of the place. Mulranny’s gentle charm may change because of it. And Jerry didn’t get the planning permission he needed for the emigrants homes, either.

Seamus was getting healthier by the day. Jerry Cowley came to see him and prescribed some more medication. And Seamus slowly came off the drink. He’d had to deal with shocking events in his life, and the anger bottled up inside him occasionally exploded to the surface. But, as he placed more trust in us, and with the medication, he relaxed and started to enjoy the company and peaceful surroundings. Seamus had been living in an abandoned car in north London, which is no place to try to get your life back together. John had plans to get him into rehab after Christmas. One day, we went for a walk on the shores of Clew bay and Seamus picked up seaweed, breaking off the stalks, and chewing them, telling us it was nature’s toothpaste and about how, as a boy, he collected tons of the stuff in Donegal to take to a local factory, where they extracted iodine from it.

Danny was also in need of medication later in the week, as he had come away without his full supply, and Jerry came to see him one evening. One side effect caused by Danny’s years of heavy drinking was that he was very distrustful and suspicious of everyone. And it took a long time for anyone to gain his trust, but Jerry spent over an hour in his room calmly talking to Danny. Eventually, Danny opened up to Jerry, who was then able to prescribe the required medication. Danny also built up a great relationship with Amanda, who was the matriarch of or little gathering. Most days she had about eight for breakfast and dinner. She had to leave early too, waving goodbye at Knock, off to a wedding in Leeds for the weekend, where hopefully someone else was doing the cooking.

Sean had gone to stay with his 95-year-old mother at the beginning of the week and John drove out to collect him in Crosmolina on the day before we were leaving. Sean had been on his best behaviour at his mother’s and reckoned he deserved a good drink. So, he went straight to Doherty’s when he arrived back in Mulranny. That evening, we went down to collect him and a few others who were saying their farewells to Mulranny, but there was no sign of Sean. We heard that he had gone off with a cousin, who he had met in the smoking shack at the back of the pub. Sean knew he had two cousins in the village, but he hadn’t seen them in over 40 years. Then he had got chatting with a local woman over a smoke (which is the latest way of striking up new acquaintances in modern Ireland), as they shivered under a canopy in the pub yard, only to discover that they were long-lost cousins. The cousin invited him out to her house, at the end of the town, apparently near enough to where we were staying. Sean knew that we were leaving early in the morning so we expected him back.

At three o’ clock we were ready to go, but there was no sign of Sean. We didn’t know where the cousins lived and although we drove around, looking, we had no hope of finding him at that hour of the night. In the end, we packed up the minibuses with everyone and their luggage, including Sean’s, and left the cottages. We had one last drive around the area before we left, and we were sitting at the junction onto the main road, when I saw two figures in the distance walking towards us, more than a little unsteadily. Once again I was reminded of Close Encounters. I jumped out of the minibus and ran towards them. One of them was Sean, and the other was the night-watchman of the hotel building site. Sean was covered in mud and holding his chest, but said that he was ok. The watchman had found him at the bottom of a ditch at the side of the road, where they were putting in pipes for the new hotel. Sean had been trying to find has way back to the cottages and had fallen in. Luckily, someone was there to hear him calling out in the night. We got Sean on board, and warmed up, and he said he felt fine. The cousin had given him brandy and that was his downfall, he said. Sure, he never touches the stuff.

We were a sad group at Dun Laoghaire, later that morning, waiting for the ferry. I was catching a few winks in the drivers seat, when a knock on the van door woke me up. ‘Is Joe here?’ He was just behind me. Joe’s other brother, and two sisters, were there to see him off. And to wish him a swift return to Ireland, after so many years away. Arriving in London, after a long and tiring journey, both of our minibuses packed up. I was driving the London Irish Centre bus, which sprung a fuel leak as we came off the M1. I managed to drop everyone off at their homes and made it to the church car park in Kilburn, where the bus lives, before it packed up. Our own Aisling bus, that John was driving, lost a wheel-bearing, as he arrived in Cricklewood. He managed to get everyone off and the bus home to Camden before the wheel seized up.

Oh, and Sean got all the way home to Arlington House, without any complaints. But I asked the workers in the hostel to keep an eye on him. Sally went to see him in the morning, in his room, and found him white as a sheet and shivering. She called an ambulance, which took him to the Royal Free Hospital. He had four broken ribs, two fractured ribs and a punctured lung. Must be from another planet.

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