A Week in Winter(69)

When the river cruise was over, the Irish Americans had gone off on a five-day golfing tour. They invited him to come with them but Anders said no. Bad as he was at manoeuvring a boat on the Shannon, he didn’t want to upset real golfers by going out on the course with them.

Instead he found a coach tour of the West of Ireland.

John Paul, the cheerful, red-faced bus driver, claimed that he knew all the best music pubs on the coast, and every night they found another great session. John Paul knew all the musicians by name and told the coach party their history and repertoire before they got to the venue each evening.

‘Ask Micky Moore to sing “Mo Ghile Mear” for you, it’ll make the hairs rise on the back of your neck,’ he would say. Or else he knew when some old piper was going to come in from retirement and do a turn. Anders was interested in it all.

It turned out that John Paul played the pipes himself. Not bagpipes. No, indeed, bagpipes were Scottish. Real pipes were the uilleann pipes. You didn’t have to blow into them like the Scots did; instead there was a kind of a bellows under your arm which you pressed with your elbow. Uilleann was actually the Irish word for elbow.

The music was haunting, and Anders was mesmerised by it all.

John Paul said that if ever he got some money together he would open his own place and welcome all kinds of musicians there.

‘Here, in the West?’ Anders wondered.

‘Maybe, but then I don’t want to take the bread and butter away from the people who are already here. They are my friends,’ he said.

John Paul and Anders talked about God and fate and evil and imagination. He asked John Paul how old he was. The man looked at him, surprised.

‘You speak such good English, I forget you’re not from round here. I was born in 1980, nine months after Pope John Paul visited Ireland. Nearly every lad who was born that year was called John Paul.’

‘And will you go on driving the bus all your life?’ Anders wondered.

‘No, I’ll have to go home to the old man sometime. The others have all gone far and wide, done well for themselves. I’m only John Paul the eejit, and my da is not really able to manage the place on his own. One of these days I’ll have to face it and go back to Stoneybridge and take over.’

‘That’s hard.’ Anders was sympathetic.

‘Ah, go on out of that! Haven’t I bricks and mortar and beasts in the field and a little farm waiting for me? Half of Ireland would give their eye teeth for that. It’s just not what I want. I’m no good at going out looking for sheep that have got stuck on their back with their legs in the air and turning them the right way up. I hate having to deal with milk quotas, and what Europe wants you to plant or to ignore. It’s lifeblood for some people; it’s drudgery for me, but it’s a living. A good living, even.’

‘But your own place with the musicians?’

‘I’ll wait until I’m reincarnated, Anders. I’ll do it next time round.’ His big, round, weather-beaten face was totally resigned to it.

On the last night of the coach tour, the passengers all clubbed together to take John Paul out for a meal. And as a thank you, he played them some airs on the uilleann pipes. He got a group photograph taken and everyone wrote their names and email addresses on the back.

Anders had a cup of coffee with John Paul on the last morning.

‘I’ll miss your company,’ Anders said. ‘Nobody to discuss the world and its ways like you.’

‘You’re making a mock of me! Isn’t Sweden full of thinkers and musicians like ourselves?’

Anders felt absurdly flattered to be thought of as a musician and a thinker.

‘It probably is. I just don’t meet them, that’s all.’

‘Well they’re out there,’ John Paul was very definite. ‘I’ve met great Swedes travelling here. They can play the spoons, they can all sing “Bunch Of Thyme”. And wasn’t Joe Hill himself from Sweden?’

‘Maybe you’re right. I’ll let you know when I find them.’

‘You keep in touch, Anders. You’re one of the good guys,’ John Paul said.

Anders wondered if he really was one of the good guys when he went back to work at Almkvist’s. He learned within an hour of his return that his cousin Mats, who had had the problem with alcohol, had apparently revisited that part of his life in spectacular fashion. Moreover, one of Almkvist’s most prestigious clients had absconded with a very young woman and a great deal of assets weeks before a major audit.

His father looked more grey-faced and concerned than ever. Only a few hours after he was back, Anders felt the benefits of his holiday in Ireland slipping away from him. He played some of the music he had brought home with him. The lonely laments played on the uilleann pipes, the rousing choruses where everyone had joined in, reminded him of the carefree days and the easy company, but he knew it was only temporary. It was like a child wanting a birthday party to last for ever.

His father showed no interest in any stories of his trip, no matter how he tried to tell them.

‘Why don’t you let me show you some of the photographs I took?’ he suggested. ‘Would you like to listen to some of the music with me? We were listening to some marvellous traditional Irish music . . .’

‘Yes, yes, very interesting but it was just a holiday, Anders. You’re like Fru Karlsson who wants to tell you what she dreamed about last night. It’s not relevant to anything.’