Awkward, continued

It was a late afternoon in autumn, about six weeks after we had arrived in Ireland to live. After wandering along the River Suir under drooping amber chestnut leaves, I was sitting alone at a small table in front of the Lazy Bean café, staring across at the Charteris memorial in the centre of Cahir square.

The transition to life in Ireland had been harder than I had expected. Despite having my husband’s family around us – my mother-in-law as close as next door – I felt isolated, cut off. Our shipment of  belongings was still somewhere on the ocean,  so we had little in the house and no cosy chair or sofa on which to relax. Eircom, the phone company, had promised a landline, but weeks passed with no action. Mobile phone coverage was spotty and nearly non-existent in the house. Which meant, of course, we had no internet – no mobile connection, no DSL, no dial-up – no way to stay connected to the world at large.

Our new house, surrounded by hedges and green fields, was lovely, and I was happy to be there. But still, I was finding it hard to settle. I missed my friends. I missed the long telephone conversations and spontaneous email exchanges, the lunches out and shared shopping trips, the special bond with my young friend’s daughters.

As September became October, and the days grew slowly but perceptibly shorter, I took to driving the five kilometres to Cahir, the nearest town, in the late afternoons to have a cappuccino at the sidewalk café, hoping to find conversation and incipient friendship.

This afternoon, though, foreboded rain, and the square was abnormally quiet. So the other tables were empty when the three women arrived and sat down near me. They were dressed in light tan waterproof jackets, beige hiking trousers and thick-soled shoes. And, not unusually for tourists in Cahir, they spoke with American accents.

I overheard them discuss their next stop, now that they had seen Cahir’s 11^th century castle, the town’s big draw. Should they go to Cashel? What about a tramp along the river? Or would they continue further along towards Dublin? They looked at the guide book and considered the possibilities.

The irony of this tale lies in my normal reluctance to engage with American tourists. I usually observe them quietly, deliberately keeping my distance. I suffer, badly, from what might be called the ex-patriot disease, a kind of smug arrogance felt toward one’s former fellow countrymen and -women. Maybe it’s evidence of a childish insecurity. Maybe it’s a natural response to the vulnerability one has felt as a tourist, conscious of the poorly disguised contempt of some locals, the uneasy notion, hard to push aside, that one is being sneered at by supercilious merchants, waiters and hoteliers.

Or maybe it’s my character flaw alone, not generalised among other ex-pats. (Though I did meet, on St Patrick’s night here in Salzburg, another American near the ladies loo in an Irish pub. She was about 22 or 3, a student, who, in our brief conversation as we stood in the queue outside the locked door, was at pains to insist: ‘I’m not a tourist, you know. I live here.’)

So, for better or worse, I tend not to greet other Americans in restaurants or on buses. I don’t engage with them when I bump into them on the crowded streets of Salzburg or in the shops of Cahir. I hear their accents, I spot the matching windbreakers and new white shoes, and I lower my voice and turn away.

But that dull afternoon, the bright Georgian facades lining the square did not touch my heart as they usually did. The charm of the Charteris memorial faded, and the pewter sky lowered oppressively. I studied the women, who seemed interested in some of the same things that attracted me to South Tipperary. I told myself that they might welcome my experience of my new home, experience gained through study and dogged sightseeing during 20 years visiting the area.

I turned toward them as they huddled over their map and caught the eye of one. In her mid to late thirties, she had short curly hear and a square face with an expression of assurance.

I spoke.

‘Cashel is definitely worth a visit. The Rock is one of my favourite places in Ireland. It's magnificent.’

She stared at me, not speaking at first. Her companions, also about her age, looked at me and then back at her.

‘Ah.' She squeezed it out. 'Thanks.’ 

The three women nodded at me. Then they leaned in over their coffees, talking softly. After a few minutes, they stood and walked away toward the river without looking in my direction.

Undoubtedly, they didn’t see a resident but another tourist, middle-aged and on her own, likely to try to insert herself into their plans. A nuisance.

I think of the sixty-ish woman encountered at breakfast in a hotel in Clare one morning. Overhearing the American accents of myself and my companion, a well-travelled professor making a brief stop to see me in Ireland, the stranger had tried to join our conversation. The woman, on her own at the table next to ours, leaned toward us and commented on the breakfast. She asked what we thought of Ireland, told us about her job in America, and wondered about our flight times. Then she broached the idea of sharing a taxi to the airport.

Focussed on our own conversation and aware that our time together was short, we found this an intrusion, and, after a few short answers, ignored her completely. I felt a stab of sympathy as she absorbed this humiliation, finished her breakfast and left without a word. But I was greedy for private conversation with my friend, whose demanding schedule makes time very precious and our meetings infrequent. It was a case of letting our own needs prevail in the moment.

So I understood the women’s need to establish, as they say, a clear boundary. But, oh, the sting. Oh, the irony.

Oh, the loneliness.

Departures and Arrivals

Driving through the shrouded countryside on the way to Dublin Airport, I was aware of how much I love Ireland and of how much I will miss it. It is easy enough for an American visitor to love the gentle countryside and brightly painted towns. What came back to me during the drive was the emotional scent of my short stays here, the string of visits stretching over 20 years now, from my first arrival in 1988. The particular musk of the land and buildings recalled from those visits, the mixture of anxiety and regard I felt always on the last journeys to the airport each year, passports and tickets, paper then electronic, checked and rechecked, as we worried about shifting the bags from car hire return to departure gate, these sensations returned as we made our way in the darkness to catch the 6:45 flight to Salzburg via Frankfurt.

On our drive north in the early hours, I glimpsed fragments of road signs, place names written in English and Irish, quick flashing reflections in the head beams. Despite the darkness, I tried to picture the unseen landmarks, now familiar to me, thinking of how they will be soon, again, recalled not felt. It’s not that the landscape of Austria and Continental Europe won’t be as beautiful. Perhaps I’ll find it even more beautiful, but it won’t be felt as home, as Ireland now is.

One day earlier, I had been startled by a drift of light snow falling through dense silver morning fog. Lasting only 25 minutes, it was enough only to dust the yard. So I was surprised to see thick snow covering fields, trees, roofs, footpaths, cars and fences starting when we came to Durrow, a town about an hour northwest of our house in South Tipperary. The landscape was white and the roads slushy all the way to Dublin, where snow covered car parks and cars. Snow is not common here, and I had not expected it at all so late in February. The runways had been cleared, but the airport and all we could see beyond was covered in snow.

As it turned out, snow caused something like havoc all day. The aircraft we were supposed to board about 6:30 had been diverted to Manchester. It couldn’t get from Manchester to Dublin because of crew scheduling problems or because of heavy snow in England, I’m not sure which. As a result, our departure time was delayed until 11:30, which meant making our Salzburg connection in Frankfurt would be impossible. So they put us on a later Salzburg flight and checked our bags through. However, when we went to the boarding gate, it turned out the aircraft hadn’t left Manchester. Our flight was now pushed back to after 2, again making it impossible to make our Salzburg connection.

So despite having cleared security, we returned to check in and managed to get on a flight scheduled to leave at 12:30, though it was also delayed, a matter of 20 minutes or so. What’s more, they upgraded us to business class, a perk I’ve never received before, which meant we could wait in the relative comfort of the business lounge. Our luggage, however, had been tagged for the flight now scheduled to depart at 2:45, meaning it would arrive in Frankfurt after we had left there. There was nothing to do about that, they told us, except notify Lufthansa/Austrian Air’s lost and found when we arrived in Salzburg.

Our flight touched down in Frankfurt at more or less the scheduled boarding time for our Salzburg connection. All passengers from the flight boarded a bus, which took us to a point from which we could go to baggage claim or boarding gates. First though, we had to join the passport queue. Travelling on an EU passport is easy enough in Europe, but my anxiety grew as the line shuffled forward. A few metres along, we joined even slower queues for security. Their thoroughness, demanding every one take off all coats and jackets, belts and watches, methodically putting everything in deep trays, meant the line crawled forward. Our flight was scheduled to depart in just minutes. My stomach swelled with anxiety as people behind us pushed forward; others asked to jump the queue, claiming connecting flights.

‘We have connecting flights too!’ said the woman in front of us and I as we waved our boarding passes and shook our heads.

Just as I finally handed over my coat and handbag and lifted my heavy carry-on onto the belt, I turned around to say something to my husband. Instead, there was a stranger, behind whom I could see Himself.

‘We have connecting flights too!’ I yelled at him.

‘Yes, yes! But I have a phone call,’ he said, which seemed a non sequitur. He pushed forward, despite me. Furious, I grabbed my things from the tray and stomped forward, thinking to find a Lufthansa gate agent to ask that they inform our gate we were there. No good; the gates were up another level. I turned back and accosted the man.

‘Why did you do that? You have no right! We have connections to make too!’

‘But I have a phone call!’

It didn’t make sense, but neither did arguing. I was conscious of people looking. Making a scene could mean we’d be delayed even more. Himself was gathering his coat and belt from the tray, as we half ran to the escalator, carry-on bags bumping behind.

The gate area was nearly empty, quiet. We rushed forward. ‘Auf Dublin?’ said one gate agent. They were expecting connecting passengers. Through the gate and down steps and into another waiting bus, we went dragging the bags along, finally settling.

Across the aisle in the crowded bus a tall man with gold-red hair laughed at us. ‘Relax! No stress!’

I tried to calm my panting. I must have been red in the face. I nodded, ‘Yes. Of course.’

He kept laughing and talking to us, cutting across the clamour. He patted his stomach, saying something more about stress I didn’t get. Did he mean that it made your stomach fat, as some claim? It turned out he was laughing because Himself was only then able to buckle his belt. ‘I’ve been travelling for 30 hours,’ he said. ‘Relax. It will be okay.’

And he was, of course, right. The Austrian Air turbo-prop craft landed in Salzburg just as the light was turning the buildings gold. We came down the tiny narrow steps, and I looked up to see against the colourless late sky white-covered mountains in every direction. The airport was quiet, calm even, and, in spite of the pressures that remained, something like peace descended.

As it turned out, the luggage did not follow us. Last night they had no record of it at all; this morning they tell us one of the two is on its way to the hotel. We’ve bought a couple of toothbrushes, toothpaste, a razor and shaving cream, and Himself is off to the office to settle in.

It will work out, somehow.