The Tour

by Jean Grainger

  Sensing he had not made a good enough pitch, Dylan said: ‘Look, I know there are loads of people applying for this course. And they probably all have more experience than me. But I swear to you, if you give me a chance, I’ll work so hard. Those other people probably come from families where traditional music is played all the time, and so they’ll get a chance to learn in lots of different ways. But for me, this is my only shot. If I don’t get this, I guess I’ll just go back to the States but I can’t imagine anyone there could teach me the pipes…not in the kind of world that I live in anyhow. If you let me on this course, you’d be doing much more than giving an American kid a chance to play the pipes. I’m kinda alone, so you’d be kinda saving my life.’

  He felt his ears burning red. He had never spoken so candidly to anyone in his entire life.

  ‘And if we were to offer you a place, are you in a financial position to pay your fees, upkeep and so on?’

  Dylan shifted uneasily in the chair. He knew that his mother would probably refuse. Although hell, he thought, surely she can’t be as broke as she makes out. She’s divorced four rich guys for God’s sake. That’s a lot of alimony.

  ‘Er… yes Ma’am. My mother will pay the fees. She’s very supportive of my music.’

  Laoise looked up from her mobile as Dylan emerged from the interview room. She said nothing, just stood up and walked down the stairs behind him. As they got into the car he spoke his first words: ‘Did your Mom freak out about the car?’

  ‘Ah don’t mind her,’ replied Laoise breezily. ‘She’ll eventually cool down. She had to get the bus back from Killarney though, and she went to the Guards ‘cause she thought it was robbed, but she’ll be grand.’

  Dylan watched her as she reversed the car erratically out of the parking space. She had more confidence in her little finger than he had in his whole body. He wondered if that was how kids who grew up with two loving parents turned out. Suddenly, he heard himself saying, ‘Hey Laoise, you know who was in there right?’

  ‘Yeah, Mam said it when she rang me. I had seventeen missed calls from her so she was kinda pissed off by the time I answered. She only told me when I admitted to her where we were.’

  Dylan winced as the wing mirror on his side of the car tipped the wing mirrors of at least a dozen cars parked along the street.

  ‘Your Dad never said he knew me or anything. He just asked me questions like everything was normal. Do you think he’s angry or what?’

  Laoise laughed. ‘Nah, he’s cool. It’s my Mam who has forty fits a day. He loves the pipes and he knows you genuinely want to play them, so he would encourage you. He won’t rat us out. I’m in enough trouble already but I know he’ll try to calm her down. It’s always been like this since I was a kid. The pair of them, with their good cop, bad cop routine.’

  Dylan looked out the window as a dog narrowly missed being flattened as a result of Laoise’s inexpert driving.

  ‘Y’know, I’m always saying it but, seriously, you are so lucky. I wish I had folks like yours.’

  ‘You won’t be saying that when my Mam tries to beat seven kinds of shit out of you for making me rob her car,’ Laoise laughed.

  ‘What?’ Dylan exploded ‘It was your idea! Jesus, Laoise!

  Don’t tell me you said I made you take the car.’ ‘Relax will ya?’ Laoise said with a cackling laugh.

  ‘She has a wicked temper but it blows over quickly. All you have to do is just, like, chill man. You worry too much!’

  As Laoise eased the car into the driveway of her house, Dylan felt sick for the third time that day. He had made her stop at a shop to buy Siobhán some flowers to apologise. He knew she wasn’t bothered about her parents’ reaction, but he was a stranger, and that was a different story.

  ‘C’mon,’ Laoise nudged him gently, ‘she’ll be grand, honestly.’

  ‘Well?’ demanded Siobhán as she stood at the front door. ‘What have the pair of you to say for yourselves?’

  Before Laoise could open her mouth, Dylan said ‘Siobhán, we are really, really, sorry. I guess we just got carried away ‘cause the lady on the phone said we only had an hour to get to the interview. I never should have allowed Laoise to drive me there. And I’m so sorry about you having to get the bus, and going to the police and everything. It’s totally my fault and I just got you these flowers to say how sorry I am. I…em…well, I’m just really sorry I guess’ he finished lamely.

  ‘Yes, well thank you Dylan. Actually it’s not your fault. Laoise knows she’s not supposed to drive on her own. You could both have been killed! Not to mention the fact that I could get done for wasting Garda time trying to convince them my car was stolen. Honestly Laoise,’ she turned to her daughter ‘when are you going to grow up? I don’t know what your father is going to say when he hears about his latest stunt. After the tattoo, you promised no more crazy behaviour and then you go and do this!’

  Laoise knew that once her Mam threatened her with

  “when your father gets home” she was pretty much home and dry. Her Dad never managed to stay cross with her for long. Often, after her mother had banished Laoise to her room for her behaviour, she would follow this by dispatching Diarmuid to the room to reprimand his youngest daughter. The conversation always went along the lines of: “Don’t be upsetting your mother, and when she asks, tell her that I nearly killed you.”

  Laoise always looked suitably chastened after the encounter with her father, and somehow managed to make her mother feel that she had suffered some consequences after all. The exasperated nuns at St Angela’s told Siobhán that Laoise was the school’s “enfant terrible”, the total opposite of her much better behaved older sister, Éadaoin. Diarmuid and Siobhán often wondered if the fact that Laoise was the youngest, and that they had spoiled her, was the reason she was so incorrigible. But no matter how bad her behaviour was at times though, she always managed to make them laugh.

  Laoise and Dylan were sitting at the counter in the kitchen eating toasted cheese sandwiches when they heard the key turning in the front door. Dylan paled and the piece of sandwich he was eating stuck in his throat.

  ‘How’s everyone?’ Diarmuid asked pleasantly as he gave Siobhán a kiss on the cheek and pulled Laoise’s hair playfully.

  ‘Grand,’ said Laoise innocently. ‘How was your day?

  Meet anyone interesting?’

  Diarmuid sat in his favourite chair and raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Now Miss, I hear that you’ve been driving your poor mother insane again with your antics. And you think I’m going to buy you a harp? Now get upstairs and clean Cathal’s room.’

  ‘What? It’s not even my stuff in there!’ she protested ‘It’s all yours and Cathal’s and Éadaoin’s, and anyway it would take hours, it’s like a skip in there.’

  Diarmuid smiled. ‘Which is precisely why you need to tidy it, my dear.’

  Laoise was outraged, ‘You’re only making me do it ‘cause if I don’t, you’ll have to do it yourself! That like, so unfair. It’s all pipes rubbish, and bits of paper. I wouldn’t know what to do with all of it. I’d probably wind up throwing out something really valuable.’

  ‘I’ll chance it. Don’t forget who’s forking out for a harp for you. If you asked nicely, I’m sure a certain young American gentleman would help you, given that I am apparently offering my services as his sponsor. And if he is going to study here, then he needs a bedroom. And since the only one not in use is full of stuff, then it would be in his interest, as well as yours, to tidy it up.’

  For a second, Laoise and Dylan just gaped at each other. Did Diarmuid just say that Dylan had got the place and that he could stay in their house? Surely, he was imagining things. Laoise launched herself on her father.

  ‘You’re not messing now are you? Did he get it? Can he stay?’ she screeched with excitement. Diarmuid’s smile told them everything they wanted to hear.

  ‘Yes he got it, and yes he can stay here, under certain terms and conditions mind you,’ he repl
ied, his words barely audible over Laoise’s screams.

  Dylan eventually found his voice. ‘I…I don’t know what to say. I…are you sure? I won’t be in the way?’

  ‘God Almighty child, will you calm down,’ Diarmuid rebuked his daughter. ‘Go out and help your mother. I want to talk to Dylan.’

  Reluctantly, Laoise left the kitchen.

  ‘I just don’t know how to thank you…’ Dylan began ‘Hang on now one minute,’ Diarmuid interrupted,

  ‘before we finalise anything, I need to explain the terms and conditions of this arrangement. So, listen carefully. Firstly, myself and Siobhán need to meet your mother to make sure this is OK with her. So we will go down to Kerry tomorrow and, hopefully, meet up with her and make all the arrangements. Secondly, while you are under my roof, you have your room and my daughter has hers. I don’t know what’s going on with the pair of you, and up to a point I don’t mind. But she is my baby girl and I won’t stand for any messing. She can be a bit of a divil sometimes, so I’m relying on you to be a bit more sensible. No more stunts like today d’you hear me? Are we clear?’

  Dylan nodded. ‘Crystal’.

  ‘And finally,’ Diarmuid continued, ‘you are coming here to learn to play the pipes. I want you to work hard at it. It won’t be easy and there’ll be days when you’ll be sick of it. But I took a chance on you today, so don’t make me look like an eejit right?’

  Diarmuid took a tin whistle out of his coat pocket. ‘Right, start with that’ he said ‘You have a week until the course begins. Let me see if you can make any fist of the whistle before we go any further.’ Taking one of his own whistles out of a drawer, he gave a quick demonstration, and then handed it to Dylan. After a few false starts, Dylan made a reasonable attempt at a simple tune.

  Delighted with his progress, he grinned broadly and said: ‘Thanks Diarmuid, this is awesome. I’m gonna practise every day I swear.’

  ‘You’ll be grand. It just takes perseverance and willpower and plenty of practice. You have the makings of a piper.’

  ‘Diarmuid, I don’t know how to thank you and Siobhán. I mean no one has ever taken this much interest in me before. Sure you can meet my mother, but I gotta tell you, she doesn’t care what I do or where I live so long as I don’t come looking to her for anything. I don’t know who my father is so that’s no problem. My Grandma will lend me the money for my rent and all that, I know she will, and maybe I could get a part-time job in between my music studies to pay you back. I know my mother will bitch about paying the fees for the college, but she’ll be so glad to see the back of me she’ll pay in the end.’

  ‘Well the fees are expensive and, eventually, you’ll have to buy a set of pipes, but I’ll lend you a set in the meantime. But if you can pay your tuition, we will put you up. We won’t be taking any money from you. You can eat and sleep here and just chip in with the housework and cutting the grass, putting out the bins and all that. Don’t worry. Siobhán will come up with plenty of jobs for you to do.’

  Dylan opened his mouth to object but Diarmuid got in ahead of him. ‘Look Dylan, I benefited from good people helping me when I was starting out playing music. I hadn’t a bob and I used to land up at various houses and I got fed. Pipe masters taught me for nothing and even lent me pipes until I could afford my own. I’m just paying it back into the system with you. You seem like a nice young lad especially now that I’ve seen you without all that muck on your head. So, if it’s a chance you want, here it is.’

  Dylan beamed. ‘Look about the Laoise thing…she is incredible and funny and so talented and…well, gorgeous. But this is your home and I won’t do anything that would let you down. I’ll try my best to learn quickly and I won’t be a burden. I promise.’

  Diarmuid returned to his favourite chair and opened the newspaper. ‘Good man. Stick on the kettle will you? I’d love a cup of tea.’

  Chapter 27

  Corlene took a deep breath as she read the name of the small establishment. She wasn’t at all sure she had the right place, as it seemed to be half bar and half some kind of store, if she was to judge by the stuff in one of the front windows. It contained a large sign bearing the slogan Guinness is Good For You and a graphic of a man pulling what looked like an old-fashioned cart. One of the other windows contained a display of what seemed to be a random collection of objects and what she presumed were grocery products with very faded packaging; Corlene noted a box of Kellogg’s Cornflakes, a large card with several pairs of what appeared to be shoe laces attached, a box of what looked like mousetraps, a bar of soap called Sunlight and several cans of fruit, dog food and beans. Perhaps it was one of those mock retro bars that were becoming so popular at home she thought.

  The voice on the phone had been quite indistinct but she was sure the man had said “Pajo’s”. She looked again. Yes, that was the definitely the name inscribed on the frosted glass in front of her. As she pushed the door, an overhead bell rang loudly. The room was almost pitch dark, and it took a while for her eyes to become accustomed to her surroundings.

  A pungent odour assailed her senses. As best she could tell, the various components of the smell comprised manure, sour milk, beer and cigarette smoke. By now her eyes could make out a long counter running down the side of the room, and in front of it a few timber bar stools. On a shelf above the counter sat a variety of products, presumably for sale. Below the shelf, piled against the back wall, lay large sacks of what appeared to be grain or potatoes or something.

  This is like a movie set, she thought, running her eyes over her surroundings one more time. As she returned her gaze to behind the counter, she spotted a woman, stooped with old age, cleaning a glass with a rag. She looked like a witch, with wild grey hair and a face so creased and lined it was almost impossible to see her eyes.

  ‘Arrooolosht?’ the woman said

  ‘Excuse me?’ replied Corlene, no clue whatsoever as to what the old woman had just said.

  ‘Aar oooh losht?’ the woman repeated again. Perhaps she was speaking Irish, thought Corlene.

  ‘I – am – looking – for – Pajo’s – bar,’ Corlene enunciated slowly.

  ‘Ooh found it,’ replied the woman with a sinister cackle.

  Corlene was bewildered, and by now feeling a little nervous. Desperation forced her to try again. ‘I – am – looking – for – Pa…’

  The woman observed her for a second or two and then put down the glass she had succeeded in making even filthier as a result of rag-wiping efforts.

  ‘Shtay there letchoo, ‘till I call him,’ she mumbled, as she shuffled off.

  Corlene wasn’t sure if the woman had understood her or not, but decided it was best to wait. She considered sitting down but then thought the better of it. Not just because every surface in the place seemed to be filthy, but also because she presented a shapelier figure standing up. A second but equally important reason for remaining standing was that her ultra-strong underwear was putting up a tough fight against her tummy bulge. She knew from experience that her underwear lost the fight whenever she sat down. So, for both of these reasons Corlene stayed where she was, standing in the middle of the floor.

  The silence was broken by the sound of the woman returning, this time accompanied by a small, fat man whose girth seemed to take up the full width of the doorway. He stood looking Corlene up and down, without uttering a word. From what she could make out, he was almost entirely bald except for a rim of hair that grew in wisps over his collar. His face was adorned by a pair of glasses with lenses so thick they could have been made from the bottoms of jam jars and, worse, what appeared to be his last two or three remaining teeth were an alarming shade of yellow. The sleeves of his horrible, hairy suit jacket were so shiny Corlene would have bet money, if she’d had any money, that neither jacket nor sleeves had ever been within a mile of a dry cleaner. Under his hideous jacket he wore an equally hideous mustard polyester shirt with a long pointed collar in a style that may have been popular in the early 1970s. His tr
ousers, which appeared to be on the short side, were held up by a piece of yellow string. On his feet he wore manure-encrusted wellington boots.

  Calm down, calm down, Corlene told herself silently. This is nothing more than a misunderstanding. I will leave here, go down the street to the other Pajo’s Bar, where a sophisticated, casually dressed man will be anxiously checking his watch while sipping a martini and helping himself to the olives supplied by the young waiter. How she and the sophisticated, casually dressed man will laugh their heads off when she regales him with the story of the old crone and this,…this leech-like nightmare of a creature standing in front of her, assessing her as if she was nothing more than a piece of meat.

  She had almost reached a state of calm at the prospect of meeting her real date when she became aware that the creature was walking around her in circles. Before she could react, he gave her a massive whack on her rear end – much in the style of a farmer at a cattle fair – and growled ‘You’ll do.’

  Wheeling around towards the old crone, he wheezed: ‘She’s grand eh Mam? No spring chicken like, but she’ll do.’

  Oh God, she thought, this is the right pub after all. There will be no casually dressed landowner, no martini, and no olives. This was it. This was what she was reduced to. As she looked into the eyes of this hideous creature, and the old woman who was presumably his mother, the true depths of her situation struck her. Even she could do nothing with this guy. He was beyond all help.

  With as much dignity as she could muster, she looked the pair of them in the eye and said: ‘I’m afraid there’s been a terrible mistake. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go.’

  Turning on her heel, she half limped, half ran out of the door and didn’t stop until she found a park bench, where she collapsed and slowly came to terms with the fact that she had burned her last bridge.