Migrations(17)

I don’t know the answer to that. I had thought my life was just here, with me.



* * *



The Bowens live in a pink cottage outside Kilfenora. They own the town pub, Linnanes, and they are all in the Kilfenora Céilí Band, which has traveled the world. I’ve watched videos of them online, and I found two of their CDs in an underground music shop in Galway, much to my delight. These I have been listening to on repeat for a month. Now that I’m here I can hardly speak for nerves. It takes all my courage to knock on the front door, but it isn’t answered and when I peek around the side I’m fairly sure no one’s home.

So I hop the fence, a woman possessed. I want to understand where my mam comes from. I want to know if she ever lived here, or even just visited. These would be her cousins, I think, maybe second or third cousins. A great-aunt, maybe? Or perhaps I have it wrong and they are even further relations than that, perhaps the branches skewed apart generations ago, but I know that in some small way they are family, and that is enough for me.

There is washing on the line and the back door is open a crack. Something barks seconds before it crashes into me and I find myself accosted by a black-and-white sheepdog, all tongue and eyes and paws of excitement. I wrestle the dog off me with a grunt and a laugh and that’s when—

“Who’s that?”

I look up to see an old woman in the back doorway. She has a violet woolen pullover on, and short white hair and glasses and slippers.

“I … Hi, I’m really sorry, I…”

“What’s that?”

I go closer, which is tricky with the dog leaning against my legs as though she’s missed me all her life. “I’m looking for Margaret Bowen.”

“That’ll be me.”

“My name’s Franny Stone,” I say. “Sorry to just come in.”

“Stone? You’ll be a relation, then?” And just like that she smiles and then laughs with delight and ushers me in. And she keeps laughing all the while she makes me a cup of tea, and while I tell her how I got here, by hitching and walking, and she laughs all the more when she starts calling round to her family and telling them they have to come over tonight. And I know that she’s not laughing at me, she’s laughing for happiness, for life, and I know just as well that she laughs like this all the time, every day, every minute. She is an absolute joy of a human being and I almost start crying right here in her kitchen as she jokes about needing a hot toddy instead of a boring old cuppa tea.

“Who is it then, love, which bit of the family do you come from?”

I panic, suddenly, and say, “I’m from the Australian branch.”

“Australia?” This seems to confuse her. “Goodness, you’ve come a long way then. What is it brought you here then?”

I don’t tell her that I’m Irish, too. It feels fraudulent. As though she is the real Irish and I am only a pretender. I say instead that our family left Ireland five generations ago and settled in Australia, which they did on my father’s side, I’m told. I say that I’ve always wanted to come back here and find the other side of the family, those descended from the ones who stayed, instead of the ones who left. This is truer to my nature, surely, and maybe this is why it feels right to share. That I am of the leavers, the searchers, the wanderers. The ilk of those taken by the tides, instead of the steadfast, the true. But that a part of me has always wanted to belong here.

She tells me of the other relations who’ve made the journey over from Australia, more cousins, seemingly an endless string of them, all fascinated by what they see as their heritage, and she says, with a laugh, that she’s never rightly understood the fascination, why they come here in droves to see this small windy stretch of land, where life is as plain as it comes. I don’t know how to answer her, except to agree that it is somewhat inexplicable, but has, I think, to do with music and stories and poetry and roots and family and belonging and curiosity. She takes this for truth and then goes right ahead and makes me a hot toddy regardless of the time. Her husband, Michael, is sitting in an armchair nearby and when Margaret introduces us I see that he can’t speak, nor can he move well, but he smiles as widely as she does, with the brightest eyes I have ever seen, and she tends to him with the tenderness of a lifetime’s worth of love.

The family arrives soon. Her three sons and four daughters, and several of their partners and children, too. It’s clear none of them have any idea who I am, but they all shake my hand or kiss my cheek, and they chat and laugh happily, all of us pressed in around the small kitchen table, everyone making room for Michael to be wheeled into pride of place, and we eat chocolate biscuits and drink from enormous bottles of Coca-Cola and then without preamble they draw free their instruments and begin to play.

I sit in stunned silence as the music unfolds around me. Three fiddles, furiously sawed or plucked, a set of pipes, hand drums, a flute, two guitars, and several of them singing. It swells to fill the kitchen, every inch of it and more, it is a bursting of life, of soulfulness, of fun. I’m watching half the bloody world-famous Kilfenora Céilí Band performing in a kitchen. Margaret bops up and down in her seat, her eyes shining with enjoyment. Without warning she takes my hand. I whisper, “Does this happen every night?”

And she says, “No, dear, this is for you.” And I do start crying then.