Two Walls and a Roof

by John Michael Cahill

  Ireland. A new beginning

  In 2003, after an eternity of partings, I finally picked JoAnn up in Shannon Airport, bringing her home at long last. Having had some idea of what she had gone through over the previous months, I didn’t expect a model to arrive out the gate, but the person who did come out was almost unknown to me. She looked terrible, and as she took my little bunch of flowers, the first thing I noticed about her was how cracked and broken her fingernails were. The second was that she had trouble even holding my flowers, as her poor hands were bent inwards and it was very painful for her to grip anything, even my few roses. I was deeply shocked, feeling in some way responsible for what had happened to this once beautiful woman that I had met in St Louis not too many years earlier.

  She began to shiver physically as we left the terminal, and even though it was a cold, damp, dark morning, I believe the weather was not the reason for her discomfort. I am quite sure that on her sleepless journey across the sea, she had asked herself a thousand questions, and every answer must have filled her with self doubt, and an anxiety for what might lay ahead for her.

  My JoAnn had left her two small children, her two older ones as well, her family and numerous friends for a man she barely knew who was living five thousand miles across the ocean. She had no idea when, if ever, she would see her family again, and as well as all that, she was then immersed in a bitter divorce with her husband. As if that was not bad enough, she had no friends to turn to here if it all went wrong between us. Nor had she any money, and finally, she could not even drive here. She sat into my car and began to cry uncontrollably. Nothing I said or did was of any help to her, and between sobs and tears we drove home to Mallow to begin our new life together. As we drove, it dawned on me very quickly that the woman I had planned to marry loved me far more than I had ever imagined, and as a result of that love and the terrible sacrifices she had to make, she had become a physical and emotional wreck. I believed too that I was responsible, in part at least, if not in full, for it all. There and then I made a promise to love her even more, and so as to show her I meant it, I would give her a little flower every single day for the rest of our lives. I have kept that promise, never missing a day in years. When she is abroad I draw squares on a sheet of paper, adding my flower and my thoughts for the day to the square. Then when she returns she has my flowers to help her get over the homesickness.

  An hour or so later we drove into Mallow, and I soon put her to bed where she slept for almost a day. Next day she rose up, transformed. It was as if a long dark dream had ended. While there was still a very long way to go, especially in overcoming the pain of missing her children and her homeland, she began to transform another woman’s house into her very own little home in Avondale Park.

  By 2004, with both our divorces finalized, we were at long last free to marry. We decided to wait no longer and got married in the Caribbean island of Jamaica. It would be just the two of us. All we wanted was a simple ceremony, and a break from all the stress of the past number of years, so we set off in late April for Montego Bay, Jamaica. The first person we met outside of the airport terminal, and even before we got on the transit bus, openly offered us drugs. I almost fell over with surprise, but politely refused. That night we went to bed early and slept through one of the worst tropical storms ever to hit the area, and we never even heard a sound. Next day the roads were all gone and the beach was deserted as a cleanup began. This was a stormy beginning to one of the most amazing holidays I have ever had in my life.

  We hired a driver and a car, and he took us to see Kingston, New Seville, and Rick’s Café, one of the most famous bars in the world. There, every evening, thousands of tourists come to see the cliff divers who are insane enough to dive from death-defying heights into the sea for money. I saw some Americans do it as well, and figured that the only way they were mad enough to try this stunt was because they too had met the same guy we did, and did not refuse the drugs. It was wonderful to sit in the sun, hear the Bob Marley music playing and just chill out, then ultimately buy the t-shirt.

  Our wedding day came and was as simple as it could be. The hotel presented us with a bottle of champagne and a complimentary horse and buggy ride along the torn up roads. After a bit of unnerving driving, the Jamaican driver, probably also on the ganja, decided that he and the horse had had enough, so he tried to wheel the horse around in the middle of the main road and return home. This was almost the end of us, as none of the cars would stop for him, so he had no choice but to make a mad burst across the road, whipping and shouting insults at the poor horse, who was surely as scared as we were. In this mad lurching forward we almost fell out the back of the buggy, ending our honeymoon, but we just collapsed laughing. I gave him the bottle of champagne as a token of our thanks for the ride, and he almost hugged me, probably believing we too were as high as he was and didn’t know the value of the drink.

  Next day we headed off for an amazing adventure to a place called the Dunns River Falls. Here you hired river shoes, and if you were ‘quite mad’ you entered a waterfall under the strict supervision of a local guide, and began your ascent about half way up the falls. From that point on, you literally climbed your way to the top of this huge cascading waterfall which is at least two hundred feet above the sea floor below. The challenge is to do this climb from within the actual waterfall, carefully picking your steps, and trying not to slip to your death way down in the sea. It is an exhilarating experience and everyone should try it at least once in their lifetime.

  When I looked at how all this was done, I felt that we should do it ‘right’ and literally climb these falls from where they enter the open sea. Unlike the others, we would begin in the waves and climb up out of it. No one was doing it this way and I felt that they were a lot of ‘ould women’, and we would do it the way Irish men did it. There was no need to bother with an expensive guide, and of course I’d ignore all the warnings about drowning and falling hundreds of feet, or slipping on rocks like glass. All of that was for wimps and old people, and against her better judgment I persuaded my new wife to follow me upwards. We would scoff at the millions of gallons of water pouring down upon us and climb like the Irish did; we would climb from the sea up.

  It was an amazing experience to walk out across a beach, then into the sea, and start where this torrent fell down upon your head. I’ll never forget it. We climbed and slipped and laughed and held each other close and almost suffocated often. I believe I drank well over a gallon of water that day but cared nothing, and feeling quite invincible, I pushed and pulled JoAnn up through the Dunns River Falls. After an hour of struggling we got to the area where the ‘quite mad people’ used to begin their trek. By then we, the certifiable lunatics, were seasoned veterans, well over the worst of it and we almost flew to the top. I was exhilarated it was so exciting and dangerous, and I wanted to redo the whole thing again, but JoAnn began shaking in terror when she looked back down and saw where we had come from, and she flatly refused. Aside from the wedding, that falls adventure was the highpoint of our holiday for me, and even though we did do a lot more fun stuff, nothing could compare to the sheer terror of possibly drowning or falling from a great height into the sea below.

  We reluctantly left that wonderful romantic island of Jamaica, and on landing in Cork, we discovered that once again my bags had gone missing. When they were finally delivered, all our clothes were ruined because we had bought some bags of Blue Mountain Coffee in those same mountains, and I believe they showed up on the x-ray machines as drugs. It’s quite likely that the security services just stabbed our coffee bags to see the contents and didn’t bother to reseal or bag them, so we had no coffee and no clothes, but we were married at long last and who cared about clothes after that.

  In the mid nineties Ireland had spawned a Celtic Tiger that we now know was fuelled by a combination of political corruption from the highest level to the lowest, and a banking business that thrived on pure greed. Our little country was booming. U2 were the b
est band in the world, becoming Ireland’s musical ambassadors, Riverdance and Michael Flatley’s dancing phenomenon had captivated the whole world, and being Irish was just about as great as it could get. JoAnn and I partook in this great wave of prosperity, and we went on many trips abroad, as well as her going back to the US frequently. Fortunately we did not go into the insanity of the property boom, but at the time all boats were rising, including ours, and we spent our extra cash on creating memories stored up for the future.

  I had always longed to see Rome, and for our first wedding anniversary I had secretly planned to take JoAnn there and show her ‘the angel pictures’; her strange name for the Sistine Chapel. This was supposed to be a great surprise, and I had it all booked with a travel agent in Cork. Not having heard from them as the day approached, I rang them to discover that they had got the month wrong. All they could then offer at such short notice was a trip to Malaga in Spain. I was really annoyed and disappointed, but it was either we take it or got into a long battle over money. By then our day would have passed. Besides, I had got a feeling to just run with it, so somewhat disappointed we landed in Malaga and began a weekend break in the sun.

  With nothing planned and time to spare, we decided on a whim to cross Spain to Seville for a day, revisit the cathedral and marry each other all over again. When we arrived there the beautiful church was being refurbished, and the day we arrived turned out to be quite special. The cathedral had been closed to tourists for the previous weeks and would be closed again for a similar time from the next day onwards, but by some unseen power it just happened to be open on the one day we got there to remarry, so we did, and thanked God for all that we had. Then we returned to Malaga excited and exhausted.

  Our hotel was outside Malaga and had a beautiful beach at the end of its grounds. We loved our time there laying in the sun, reading books and eating their strange foods. On the night before we returned home, we took a taxi into the centre of the city for a last look and got lost right away. It was wonderful to walk around that ancient Roman city and feel the atmosphere of bygone days. We took in the sounds and the smells, and the smiles from Spanish people who could see we were very happy to be there. Then one of the many really strange things that happen to us happened that evening. We were walking along as lost as could be, when all of a sudden I got a really strong feeling of certainty inside me that I would be guided to what I used to call ‘my window’.

  This was the front window of an art shop located down a small back street somewhere in the city, and I have no idea where it is still. However, fifteen years earlier I had been walking alone in Malaga one evening and came across this particular art shop window. It had nothing special in it at all, neither did anything unusual happen there, nor did I go into the shop, but that day for some reason I had stared at the window for a long time, memorizing every detail. It had an easel with a blank canvas, a stick figure, paints and brushes in a pottery jar, as well as some drawing books on small shelves over to one side. For years after that day and quite at random, this window would return to my mind in perfect detail, but I never knew why. It was as if it had some great significance that I was not being allowed to forget.

  I suddenly stopped in the street and told JoAnn that I would now describe a window to her that could not possibly still exist after fifteen years, but that I was sure we would see if she followed me down some nearby alleyways. JoAnn listened without comment, and then I began walking, being guided purely by instinct. After only five minutes or so we arrived at ‘my window’. It was exactly as I had described it, down to the smallest detail. We both stood looking on in total amazement at this incredible sight. No one would expect that a window would remain unchanged in all those years, but it had. I still do not know what the significance is, but I am sure it was no accident that the travel agent got my dates wrong, and we were meant to remarry in Seville and see my window.

  Over the next five years we went on holidays all over Europe. Courtesy of Ryanair we saw the Unesco city of Carcasonne in France and the Alhambra Palace in Granada, Spain. We went to Amsterdam in the winter, deliberately missing Anne Frank’s house, but taking a boat trip beneath it, and going to the red light district, which was heavily populated by Japanese tourists with a zillion flashing cameras. They seemed to travel in groups of twenty or so, for ‘moral protection’ no doubt. I think we both loved the place. There was a great sense of freedom in the city, but also what appeared to be a great drug problem too, especially late at night. My lasting memories from that trip were twofold: one was the amazing chocolate sweets they gave you after a meal, and the other was a visit we made to a sex museum, which literally was an eye opener for both of us. The only downside was that JoAnn bought about a hundred tulip bulbs in a market and not a single one became a flower. I think they saw us coming.

  On another one of our trips JoAnn’s twenty-something year old daughter Jessica, a beautiful tall girl, arrived for a holiday in Ireland and I decided to show my guests the city of London, one of my all time favourite places on earth. I booked us a triple room in North London, and that’s where our first troubles began. We had taken the bus into central London and made our way to ‘Paki land’ only to discover that the room I had booked was a small pokey pigsty. My Americans were used to a very high standard of room, and the place I had booked online bore no resemblance whatsoever to the thumbnail pictures I had squinted at on my laptop. They were shocked at the size of the room and how dirty it was. The only place I had ever seen that was smaller was in New York, but that room had been spotlessly clean, unlike our ‘Indian or Paki’ abode. I think the managers of that excuse for a hotel deliberately spoke poor English just in case we might complain, and JoAnn did want to leave immediately. I tried my best to assure my guests that all we would be doing there was sleeping, but my words were of little comfort and fell on at least one set of deaf ears. I couldn’t help notice the ancient, stained and mouldy bedspreads. They were so nasty that they could easily have passed as Afghan rugs which had once been used by goat herders, until the goats had refused to sleep on them any longer, and their owners had then sold them on to our Pakis. Even I, who came from the era of hairy blankets and savage fleas, became scared to pull back the sheets, just in case some uncatalogued insect bit me in the night, and I never woke up again. But all we could do was make the best of it, and we hit the town, taking a Red Bus tour of central London to get our minds off the filthy place. The bus tour was brilliant, and while on it, Jessica found a brochure.

  She had always been interested in the spooky side of London, and after she read the brochure describing ‘A Jack the Ripper Tour’ I knew that we were going to be going on it one way or another. By pure luck we got a cancellation, and even though it was going to cost each of us about a hundred dollars in English pounds, we decided to do it as a once in a lifetime adventure. The brochure had painted this amazing picture of a three hour tour. It included a guided coach tour of old London, with the highpoint of the tour being a sunset cruise along the River Thames. Then after this cruise the whole group would be taken to see some old dungeons, and finally we would all end in a real English pub, frequented by the Ripper and many of his victims. Jessica became very excited as we drank high tea in a posh hotel, known to be the last pickup point for the tour. While still drinking our overpriced brew, in runs a small man shouting, “Ripper Tour, party of three, where are you? Ripper Tour, come on will ye, we’re late”. He repeated this a few times as he ran up and down the foyer before we realized he was talking about us. My laidback Americans sauntered over to him while I tried to find a waiter to pay for the tea. Our tour guide was in a panic as he tried to rush the ladies to the door, then hardly gone but a minute he ran back inside to tell me, “If you’re not out in ten seconds, we’re leaving. We’re late, can’t you see that”. It was at that point that I realized he was as Irish as I am, and knowing how we treat time, I decided to wait for my change rather than leave the expected tip of a ‘tenner’ to the snotty waiter.

 
; I’m running down the foyer when our tour man once again pokes his head in the foyer and shouts, “Bus is going, NOW”, so I dashed for the door almost knocking over some old codger coming in. The little coach was full up in the front, and when I arrived out I saw our guide wrench open the back door and begin pushing JoAnn and Jessica into the back of his minibus. I asked if I should pay him now, and then he realized I was one of his own kind and says, “Yerra not at all boy, you can pay me later. Sure we’re late, hop now will you, or we’ll miss the ould ship”. I hopped in and he slammed the doors. Then he ran round to the front shouting, “On Cedric, on, and don’t spare those English horses”. Cedric the driver gunned the engine, and we shot out into London’s rush hour traffic. Instinctively I felt it was going to be a very interesting evening.

  All this excitement has been great for us so far, and the three of us began to laugh at this poor man with his distinctive Dublin accent in the middle of London. Soon I noticed two really sour-faced, middle-aged Americans sitting in the seats next to us. They made it very clear too that they didn’t like us at all. We were probably too happy for them. “Well some people can never be on time for anything…No they can’t dear, and now we are all going to be late because of them. This is not good enough”. This remark was pointedly aimed at the three of us, who then laughed even more just to annoy them. By then Cedric was stuck in the crawling traffic, and our guide, who was probably called Paddy, began his touring spiel. He told us about London’s history, alluding quite often to England’s many ‘conquests’. I soon got the impression that he didn’t like the English one bit. He showed us the Tower of London, describing the many heads lost there, and some Roman ruins, but much of this we already knew from our earlier Red Bus tour, so we talked and laughed, ignoring him completely. This laughter and talk was maddening the two sourpusses beside us even more by then, and every time I took a sneak look at them, they were glaring back at us. Taking the odd break from his ‘conquests’, our guide began taking a shine to a much nicer American lady who was sitting beside him up front. He started to chat her up with his old Irish Blarney. However, unknown to him, or maybe he didn’t care, he had left his microphone turned on, and between his outbursts on the ‘English oppressor’, we got to hear him try and make a date with the American woman. It was simply hilarious listening to him making his play for this nice lady. “And where are you from dear lady? Oh New York is it, sure I know it well”. While Paddy was making good progress, we seemed to be making none, so he announced that it was not looking too good for the Thames River Cruise, simply because we were stuck in the “bloody English rush hour traffic”. Paddy assured us all though that he could give us just as good a tour on his bus as you’d get on any ould English ship on their river. At that news the sourpusses went ballistic, shouting out loud enough for all to hear that the Thames River Cruise was the reason they took the tour in the first place. As expected, some others began bitching as well, and Paddy soon came under severe pressure to get us to the boat. His next announcement was that Cedric, our driver and his very good friend, would now take drastic action. Then suddenly our minibus almost flipped over as Cedric made a sudden and very sharp illegal U-turn in the middle of London’s traffic. This had to be illegal, and to escape detection he drove up over a footpath, landing back on the road with a loud bang. Then he headed off down a narrow street at high speed. As we flew down this street, Paddy, who was by then really agitated, added a new titbit of information telling us that the house we had just passed was the home of the ex British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and he offered a reward for anyone who would do him a favour and shoot her. I nearly fell out of the seat at that shocking news. Obviously he had no love for the British, and despite our traffic problems, here he was preaching terrorism against a famous English politician who actually was ill at the time.