In Search of the Missing

by Mick McCarthy

  We descended to the valley floor and found the roadway leading out of the valley. We were all very tired, hungry and thirsty. The two girls plonked themselves down on the roadside and refused to go any further. I decided to walk on alone and try to get some help. As I walked down the roadway and on past the lake, I spotted two women and some children playing near the lake shore. I approached the women and explained my predicament. But out of embarrassment I lied a little. By this time, I knew where we were in relation to the van, and just could not bring myself to tell the truth. I pretended that we had intended walking over the mountain and back by road to our van but that it had taken longer than we expected. I asked if anyone had a car to take us back by road to the van. When I explained where I had parked my van, they both laughed. I doubt if they believed my yarn as they asked if I realised that my van was at least fourteen miles away, over the Healy Pass!

  One of the women hopped into her Mini Minor and gave me a lift back, and during the journey we discovered that we had a mutual friend living in Fermoy who had actually recently donated a pup to me for search and rescue. What a small world! At times, I thought we wouldn’t make it over the Healy Pass as the little car struggled on some of the hills, but eventually we did – was I glad to see my old van.

  Having thanked the kind woman, I drove back to Glandore Lake to collect Marie and Michelle. We were now under pressure as Michelle was on duty at midnight, and we had to head back to Cork immediately. On our way, we stopped at a phone box to contact Michelle’s boyfriend and explain what had happened. He had found our van and realised that we had gone up the mountain. As the day went on, he began to panic and made up his mind that he would contact the gardaí at midnight if there was still no sign of us. We drove on as quickly as possible, and arrived outside the Mercy Hospital in Cork at just five minutes to midnight. Michelle was exhausted, and had to face a twelve-hour shift before getting the chance to have a rest.

  But our memorable day on Hungry Hill taught me some very valuable lessons. No matter how experienced you are in climbing, never be arrogant about your abilities to find your way out of trouble on the hills. Use and trust your map and compass. Always take sufficient gear and food regardless of how short your walk may be, and leave a route map on your windscreen. Today, there should be no excuse for anyone getting lost on a mountain, especially now that we have the use of the Global Positioning System – a neat device the size of a pack of cards that can show a climber’s exact position on a mountain. Even before setting off, climbers can now download all mountain routes and mark out the path they intend to take. Of course, every climber should still carry a map and compass, and be well up on how to use them.

  With hill climbing, one thing is definite: the hills, no matter how small and innocent they may appear, and the weather show no mercy, not even if you’re only stopping off for a doddle of a climb on the way to your daughter’s boyfriend’s home for tea!

  Frolics on Caroline Street and Beyond

  Search and rescue is a serious business. But working at the glass company balanced it because my workmates were always up for a laugh, just like my uncle, Danny Gleeson, who was a consummate prankster.

  At some stage or other, all of my uncles emigrated to England for work. My uncle Danny, my mother’s brother, went there in the early 1950s. When, some years later, he returned home to Knockraha for good, he brought back with him a load of gadgets, including a microphone, which looked like a large mug and from which he could project his own voice out through the wireless, or radio, as we call it today.

  My grandmother’s house was situated in a laneway close to the village church, and every Sunday morning after Mass, a crowd of locals gathered there for a chat, a cup of tea and a listen to the radio. It was their only way of meeting up, and many of them were related. Among them was Larry Maher, father of Tommy Maher, who runs Maher’s sports shops. At one particular Sunday morning gathering, Uncle Danny decided to strike.

  The crowd was chatting away in the front room, with the radio blaring at full blast in the background. Uncle Danny positioned himself in the parlour. In one hand, he held his imported microphone – which he had already plugged into the radio with a long wire – and in the other he had a speech he’d written about Larry Maher. By then, all of us children had been hunted from the front room as we were not allowed to stay in the same room as the adults. We were in on the act, and stood looking up in awe at Uncle Danny, bursting with excitement. In our humdrum lives, where every day and week was the same, this was a huge event.

  In the midst of all the talking, the crowd happened to hear Larry Maher from Knockraha mentioned on the radio. They stopped the chatter immediately and silence fell on the room as the gathering tuned in to hear Uncle Danny – pretending to be part of a news broadcast – spinning some outrageous yarn about Larry. Everyone was taken aback, none more so than Larry himself, who stood there in the middle of the group, open-mouthed, totally puzzled, baffled and enraged by the lies being aired about him. But nobody recognised Uncle Danny’s voice, and everyone was convinced that they were listening to a genuine newsreader.

  There was holy murder. The whole crowd turned on Larry and interrogated him as to why he had never mentioned the contents of the radio report. They quizzed him left, right and centre. Poor Larry shook his head, and kept repeating in his native Tipperary accent, ‘I don’t know anything about it!’ But his answer didn’t appease the mob. They were now even more annoyed, full sure that Larry was withholding information from them. They were out for his blood.

  To avoid a punch-up, Uncle Danny had to abruptly abandon his live radio broadcast, dash into the front room, and admit that it was all a practical joke. But nobody was buying it. He had to run back out again to the parlour, collect the microphone, and show them how it worked before he eventually succeeded in persuading them that it was all a wind-up. In only a matter of minutes, he had almost started, and barely averted, a civil war.

  If there was a local concert being run, Uncle Danny was sure to appear. He was a fine singer, and, like Neil Powell during training weekends in Wicklow, loved to sing funny songs, such as Slim Dusty’s ‘The Pub with no Beer’, a song he sang so often that I can remember every word to this day. But no matter what he sang, his audience hung onto his every word. He could fire them up with a powerful rendition of ‘Seán South from Garryowen’ or reduce them to tears with ‘Noreen Bawn’.

  In those days, owning a car was a novelty, and Uncle Danny cut a dash as he drove up and down the village in his small, one-door, three-wheel bubble car. It looked like something from a cartoon, with one wheel to the front, two to the back and the door lying above the front wheel. The mere sight of the car brought a smile to all the villagers, not only because of its funny shape but also because anyone wanting a spin had to step up the front to get inside, as it had no doors at either side. Uncle Danny always parked the car in my grandmother’s laneway. One day, I was lying down on the ground when the car took off, with Uncle Danny inside, and rolled over my legs. But it was so light, it didn’t leave a mark.

  Uncle Danny was a cheerful, fun-loving character, and people loved him for his good humour, which he never lost, least of all when the chips were down. Even when he was lying at death’s door in his hospital bed, having suffered a heart attack, the doctors and nurses couldn’t get over the fact that he was still slagging them off and cracking jokes right up till the very end.

  In the glass company, we had plenty of pranksters, but few could outdo Denis Galvin, the father of Ricky, who is well known in the tyre business in Cork city and also on the showband scene. When it came to playing tricks, Denis was a master, just like Uncle Danny. He worked with us as a driver and glass packer. In appearance, he was bald and had a glass eye. He was an out-and-out gentleman, very well read and highly intelligent. And he knew exactly which buttons to press when it came to giving the girls in the office the fright of their lives.

  The glass business at that time operated from a shop in the middle of Cor
k’s Caroline Street, which is the side street joining Maylor Street to Oliver Plunkett Street. Only a few doors down towards Patrick Street and at the back of Cash’s, a coffin maker ran a business supplying coffins to customers from both the city and county. Once the coffin maker finished a coffin, he had a habit of standing it up against the wall outside his shop door, ready for collection or delivery. On one particular day, when the city was covered in snow, he had three coffins lined up outside. Denis Galvin spotted the chance for a wind-up, and decided to make the most of it.

  At lunch time, we had an hour and a quarter free, and the girls in the office always headed to the shops for a bit of window shopping. Usually, they’d return in high spirits, arms linked and chatting away. As Margaret Lynch and two other girls from the office were returning after their lunch break, the bold Denis was lying in wait, and as the girls neared the coffin-maker’s shop, two of the coffins were still standing upright outside on the pavement. But the third was now flat on the ground, with the lid off. Denis was lying inside, with his hands neatly crossed on his chest. To make himself look even more terrifying, he had whipped out his glass eye.

  On that day, I had stayed inside typing up some songs. Denis had already told us of his plan. As the time drew near for the girls to return, we all stationed ourselves upstairs, peering excitedly out the top windows, and waiting impatiently for the fun to begin.

  Engrossed in conversation, the three girls came plodding along in the snow. We did our best to hold back the laughter, knowing the surprise that lay in store for them. They approached the coffins, and just as they were passing, the baldy-headed, one-eyed Denis raised himself slowly. ‘Hello girls,’ he said in a deep, drawn-out voice, before rigidly easing himself back down again. There was pandemonium. The three girls screamed their heads off, and sprinted up the street as if they were taking part in a marathon.

  Like Denis, another colleague – with the same name as myself, Mick McCarthy – was a thorough gentleman and also very well read. Mick was a Blackpool man and a great hurler – a megastar in his day. He had played on the same Glen Rovers team as Jack Lynch and had served as a Cork selector. Nobody called Mick by his real name. He was known to everyone as Langton – perhaps because his on-pitch talents matched those of a former Kilkenny hurling captain, Jim Langton, who was later included in the GAA Hurling Team of the Millennium.

  Our Langton was always being quoted about hurling matters in the newspapers. He was a mine of information on hurlers down through the decades – going back as far as the 1920s – and could sing off hurling facts and figures as fast as Jimmy McGee. He spoke incessantly about hurling, and people often dropped in to him just to settle an argument on some minor hurling detail. All the hurling fraternity were regular customers of his, and they’d arrive in their droves just to be served by him.

  Langton had charge of making frames and framing. People would come pouring in from UCC (University College, Cork) with their scrolls to be framed, and would ask to be served by Langton, who would be called down from upstairs and could be relied upon to charm the lot of them. Langton would engage in a big chat about hurling. Then he’d neatly roll up the scrolls and place them in a drawer. They rarely saw the light of day after that as Langton would forget about them, but he was a great man to come up with an excuse when it came to pacifying a customer. At the time, we used to import material for making frames. One morning, the sinking of a cargo ship featured on the front page of the Cork Examiner. Later that day, I overheard Langton saying to a customer, ‘That cargo ship that went down in the North Sea, your frame was inside it. Look, there’s a write-up about the ship here in the paper.’ And he got away with it! Nobody ever had a cross word to say about him even though years after his death customers were still coming in looking for the frames he’d promised them.

  While we always had the craic at work, we worked very hard and happily carried out our tasks. We showed a great sense of loyalty to the bosses and to the company. But then the company treated us all very well, too. When I married and needed to get a loan to buy a house, the company signed up as guarantor. At the time, farmer friends were urging me to buy a site out in the country near where I had grown up, which I could have bought for around £200. But times were different then. I wasn’t willing to take the chance, and ended up buying a house in the city instead.

  When it came to looking for time off for search-and-rescue work, the company always obliged, except during the stint of one managing director, who refused to let me go on searches during the working week. Some of the other volunteers had great difficulty with their employers when it came to call-outs, although certain companies did draw up a deal and gave volunteers a set number of days off each year.

  Every day I took off for search and rescue had to come out of my holidays, except in one case recently, where the managing director offered to pay my wages for a week while I went out on a search. If ever I went over the holiday limit, my pay packet was docked. For the first twelve years in SARDA, I used up every single day of my holidays going out on search-and-rescue missions. Not taking a holiday with my wife and family certainly didn’t help my marriage, which was already on a downward spiral. The warning signs for a crash landing were flashing before my eyes. But I chose to ignore them completely.

  Equinox

  At heart, I’ve always been a loner – always have been and always will be. Give me a day walking in the woods or the mountains with just a dog for company and I’m in heaven – total bliss, without a care in the world. Many times I’ve said to friends, ‘Once I had a guitar, a dog and a tent, I’d happily live in the woods.’ But that was all gobbledygook, only macho talk, as I quickly learned when my marriage fell apart and I found myself sinking to the bottom of the deepest, darkest hole of depression, weighed down with loneliness and despair.

  All my life I’d spent hours on my own, going off night after night to train the dogs, pounding the roads, and often not returning home until the lights were out and everyone was warmly tucked up in bed. But living on my own was a totally different ball game. I couldn’t hack it.

  In the early years, when the cracks first appeared in my marriage, I ignored them; I pretended they weren’t there. Often, in later years, I tried to repair the damage. I wanted to make a go of it, to hang on in there, not give up without a fight, but at other times I walked away, left it all behind, for short spells, long spells, only to return again, to give it another go, start all over as if we had no baggage, a clean slate. I carried on like that for twelve years, coming and going, unable to make the final break, to walk away forever from my family, my life, my home.

  At one point, when we were on the verge of yet another split, I decided to give up the dogs altogether. By now, I was at the top of the pecking order at SARDA, having been involved since we first got together in Laragh way back in 1987. But it was worth a try. I’d nothing left to put on the table, no other card to play. The dogs had to go. They were the ultimate sacrifice. It might be too little too late, but it was the best I could do.

  I took a leave of absence from SARDA. By now, Dex had reached old age and was suffering. I knew it was time to put him to sleep and end his pain. I gave my second certified search dog, Eiger, on loan to SARDA. Then I got down to the business of sorting out my difficulties at home. But it proved an uphill battle, with too much water under the bridge and no hope of improvement. Giving up the dogs made no difference. The gel just wasn’t there. The writing was on the wall, clear and bright, in big, capital letters and bold print, urging me to make the final move.

  I packed up and left, just like I’d done time and time again. But this time was different. I wasn’t coming back. After thirty-two years, the marriage was finally over, finished. One evening, shortly after making the final break, I drove out to my mother’s house in Riverstown for a chat with my sister about my new-found permanent status. We’d always been very close, and, because we worked together, saw each other almost every day of the year. My mother was out in the backyard hanging o
ut some washing – always on the go, never idle, just like she was when we were kids. We hadn’t spoken to each other for years – not since the night my father came home from Carrigtwohill with a Yorkshire terrier she didn’t want. She got odd with me over it simply because I was with him when he bought the dog. She hadn’t uttered a word to me since, not for fifteen years.

  But I was every bit as stubborn as she was, and wouldn’t make the first move. I wouldn’t cross the line, shake her hand or put the past behind us. In a way, it suited me to keep my distance. Even though I was now a grown man in my fifties, she still scared the hell out of me, and I still half expected her to give me a clatter around the ear.

  I was chatting away to my sister, telling her about my situation, when, out of the blue, my mother – referring to my wife – shouted in through the open kitchen window, ‘Is that woman at you again, Mikey?’ I nearly fell off the chair in amazement. Was that my mother’s voice I heard, talking to me, calling me by my name, having disowned me for all those years? Already, she was taking sides, lining up with me, preparing for the fight, even though my wife had always been up and down to her, helping her out in the house almost every day of the year. They were like two peas in a pod when they got together. But it shouldn’t have come as a surprise because we all know that blood is thicker than water, especially when the going gets tough.

  My sister and I sat there, waiting for my mother’s next move. Dressed in her floral apron and armed with her empty washing basket and peg bucket, she came in with the stride of a sergeant major and looked me straight in the eye, as my sister and I stared up at her in awe, still reeling from the shock of hearing her talk to me. By the look of her, you’d swear nothing had ever happened between us – that we’d been best buddies for all those long years of silence. ‘There’s a place for you here, Mikey,’ she said, laying a hand on my shoulder. But pride got the better of me. ‘No, Mam. I’ll sort it out,’ I said.