Manhattan to West Cork by Alice Carey

Author:Alice Carey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Collins Press

First Class and Third Class are singing together. Mammie too, singing along heartily.

As the tender approaches the dock we see people madly waving at us. Everyone looks so dour – tweeds, caps, jackets, dark, dark, dark. Mammie and I look like two trimmed Christmas trees.

The man starts in again with come-all-ye’s. And all the Irish start to cry again. I feel a part of it all, yet a stranger to it all. My head is spinning. I don’t know who I am.

I’m Alice M’rie. I’m Little Alice. I’m Alice Carey. Who do I want to be here?

Mammie spots her brother David and she starts waving madly.

‘Dave! Dave! We’re here! We’re here!’

My Mammie’s completely Irish now. And me? I’m … Irish American. No, I’m not. I’m not at all like the Irish Americans around me wearing green to prove that they are. Everyone set to kiss the Blarney Stone. I’m an Irish New Yorker. That’s who I am.

Alice M’rie, leave your airs on the tender. For the next six weeks you’ll be Irish, just like your Mammie. That’s what you want to be – the real article. Right?

* * *

Standing on the dock in a straight line are the Slatterys. Father Bob in clerical black, his long, shiny, patent leather hair severely parted in the middle, like Charlie Chaplin’s. Next to him, his older brother, grizzled old Dave in his battered tweed cap. A little apart, hands clasped behind his back, my cousin D.D., heir to the farm, in his rugby blazer with gold crest. The lot smoking Sweet Aftons through nicotine-stained fingers.

Father Bob whisks us through Customs, in that cool and breezy way priests have, and indeed the Red Sea parts. The inspectors knowing they’ll be nearer to God for the favour.

Two black Morris Minors await our trunks, a Victrola, records and scads of presents. We’re laden down with summer shirts for Dave, striped ties for D.D. and his brother, Robert; and ‘full figure’ blouses for Dave’s wife, Mary Falvey. Mammie gets in the car with Dave and D.D. I’m left with Father Bob.

‘Well then, Alice M’rie … how ’bout a fag?’ Father Bob lights up an Afton and lets it fall to the side of his mouth.

‘Ah, no Father Bob. Ladies don’t smoke.’

We carry on. Banter, you know. What I’m good at. Being pen pals, we don’t have much to fill in. I don’t tell him that in Miss D.’s office fag is a loaded word. I do tell him I’m in love with James Mason.

Dave and the lads announce they’re ‘dyin’ of thirst’, so we stop in Cork city for a drink and a bite at the Metropole.

‘Ah, Father,’ coos the barmaid. ‘Ye’re back for the summer again. May it be a fine one, please God.’ Stationing herself nearer to me she goes on. ‘And is this the girl? Isn’t she nice and big!’

I settle into my Orange Squash, knowing this too will pass. Women like her talk that way. They never shut up.

‘Is she going to be a nun?’

Be polite, Alice.

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