The child of Irish immigrants, New Yorker ALICE CAREY always felt drawn to Ireland. So she bought a pile in Cork …
It’s lashing rain. I’m on my own and I’ve got to get into Bantry for the Saturday papers – all of them. Since I don’t drive, I hitch.
All togged out in my old, but still sturdy, Barbour, I close the cow gate and slog down the long, twisty, muddy boreen. Market basket in hand, I take my place by the side of the road. Then I hold out a huge sign announcing BANTRY, hoping a curious stranger will stop to wonder what sort of creature would hitch in the rain. This is part of my rural life in Ireland.
When I told my New York friends that, in a grand gesture of middle-age madness, my husband and I had thrown caution to the wind and bought a ruined, yet once elegant, Georgian farmhouse in West Cork, I heard excited ooh’s and ahh’s bouncing off The Spire.
Yet, trying to explain why we did what we did to a neighbour dashing to work, coffee in one hand, New York Times in the other, was frustrating. My Ireland wasn’t their Ireland. Buying a decrepit bang of an Irish house is not the same thing as buying a decrepit Hamptons bang. Pondering the word “ruin”, I could see my pals imagining their dream: a house resembling White O’Morn cottage in The Quiet Man, or Downton Abbey, ensconced in an emerald green field in the countryside.
Americans think Ireland is magic. Not leprechaun magic, but magic in the ordinary things that Americans covet and Irish people take for granted – like silence. I blame William B with his “peace comes dropping slow”.
“Silence, ohhhhh … silence!” utters my pal in hushed tones, eyes suddenly darting to the street as a Police Bomb Unit whizzes by. “You are so lucky.” And I am. Right here, right now, in a large room in the “Big House” that my husband and I fancifully call the “solar”, I am enveloped by silence, birdsong, the whirr of the washing machine and the triumphant grrrr of the cat, as she pops through the cat flap with a mouse in her mouth.
The contrast between rural Ireland and Manhattan is dramatic. Geoffrey and I live in a carriage house in Greenwich Village, so near to the Hudson River I can hear boat horns, train whistles in New Jersey and voices in the courtyard. These noises are a comfort to me. They take me away from my self and my writing. When I hear horns, I picture pleasure boats circling Manhattan full of excited tourists. When I hear whistles I picture commuters on their way down to Washington DC dozing in the quiet car. When I recognise a voice in the courtyard I know who is passing through. Diversion over, I return to my work with fresh eyes.
Rural silence can be unnerving, especially in winter when nearby cows and sheep have been moved indoors for shelter. Without their animal presence, it sinks in that I am really alone up here on this ridge. I need voices so I reply on radio – Tubridy or Kenny to perk me up and turn my thoughts around, then the Angelus and onto Lyric, hoping for a little Wagner.
Along with the power of silence, I was surprised at the land that came with the house. You’d think the girl who took to heart Scarlett O’Hara’s father’s advice: “Land, is the only thing in the world worth workin’ for, worth fightin’ for, worth dyin’ for, because it’s the only thing that lasts”, would have had an inkling about what it would mean to own some.
Instinctually, I always wanted land though I never reckoned how much. Maybe it was my being Irish. So when our peers were buying cardboard condos and co-ops, Geoffrey and I bought our first property out on Fire Island – a tiny, wooden Arts & Crafts catalogue house, floated over to the island by barge in the 1950s, and plunked on the sand. It was there that I planted my first garden on land that was mine, a tiny slice compared to the four acres that came with the Irish house. I had no idea how big an acre was. To me it seemed huge. All I knew was that my four were overgrown with huge trees, brambles, holly, furze, dog roses and weeds, and it was wild and magical.
Around this time I came under the thrall of a book, The Wild Garden by William Robinson. Thoroughly believing its credo – to work with the natural landscape, not against it – I
began clearing hundreds of broken branches and dead trees from the land, cutting back hundreds of huge brambles and dead fern fronds, so fresh, new species could grow and thrive. It took months then. It takes months now. I do this every year, because I follow nature’s cycle, not the human one.
A natural garden is hard if not impossible to explain to urban visitors. When New York friends arrive, all fired up to see the garden I’ve been hooting about, they’re stunned to the point of silence. To their eyes, it looks like nothing’s been done. Nothing! “That’s the point,” I say as we walk around the land. “It’s supposed to look like nothing’s been done to it.” Wine in hand, we stroll through fields Geoffrey and I have given names to: Irish Oaks, Carousel, Bluebell, Agincourt, listening to pals go on about what they’ve planted in the Hamptons: white geraniums, caladiums, variegated ivy and white petunias. We stand in ruins of a tumbled one-room, fern-filled Famine hut with an extremely high nave that I’ve named St Mary’s Without, as uncomprehending glaze clouds my friend’s eyes. As I explain that St Mary’s loves ferns and May bluebells, the pal suggests planting hostas. “Yes,” I say. “I’ve tried them, but they were all eaten by slugs.” “Really,” says my visitor, hoping for more wine. I don’t blame him. Hoping for a small wheeze of a compliment, I point out my four-metre high “rose wall” planted 20 years ago with 40 white “Rambling Rectors”. But since rose season is over, there’s nothing to admire but a green wall. They mention how they’ve just purchased a flotilla of David Austin roses – “Gentle Hermione”, “Jude the Obscure,” “Just Joey” and “Darcy Bussell” – because they like the names. With nothing left to say about roses, we go back to the house for more wine.
Living in Ireland is not for the faint-hearted. When Geoffrey and I are back in Manhattan, I joke that I must start toughening up for my return. Which brings me back to why I love hitching. Hitching every day to Bantry brings me into contact with people I’d never get a chance to meet – people passing through, lonely people, kind people, sad people, smart people looking for a few minutes of companionship. I’ve never met one that I didn’t have a terrific 20-minute conversation with.
I do believe that living in Ireland has made a new woman out of me. It’s another chance to grow up, make mistakes, make friends, own land and move forward. For that I
am grateful.
From Manhattan to West Cork: Alice’s Adventures in Ireland by Alice Carey (€14.99, The Collins Press) is out now.
This article appeared in a previous issue, for more features like this, don’t miss our July/August issue, out Thursday July 7.
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