The Road to McCarthy by Pete McCarthy

Author:Pete McCarthy [McCarthy, Pete]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-062-02079-6
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2004-03-21T16:00:00+00:00

Patsy Cline is singing “Crazy” on the radio as I cross the harbor bridge and head northeast towards Louisville and the ferry to Maria Island, where Smith O’Brien was confined. “Ah, mate,” says the DJ, with what may be a genuine tear in his eye, “I wish she was still alive.”

The journey, though less eerie than the drive to Strahan, is once again devastatingly beautiful: pasture, woodland, hills and rivers dotted with wood-frame houses and stone churches. Break-me-neck Hill is my favorite place name so far. It’s certainly better than the Legs ‘N’ Breasts Chicken Shop, a cringeingly blokish nudge-nudge choice of name that makes you fear the Tits ‘N’ Ass Pie Shop can’t be far behind.

There’s nearly an hour to wait for the ferry as I leave the car in a near-deserted car park that probably holds upwards of a hundred vehicles in high season. Two birds straight out of a children’s coloring book, with bright red heads, yellow midriffs and green tail feathers, are sitting in a tree outside the café/bar/ticket office. As I walk past admiring them, their profiles go red yellow green, like two sets of traffic lights.

I get my ticket and settle at a table looking out across the white-topped water to the mountains of the island. This morning’s paper says that a new survey shows that many butter-substitute olive oil and vegetable spreads are far more harmful than butter, and some should come with a health warning attached. Another report says that too much vitamin C messes up your genes and gives you cancer. I feel strangely comforted, as I did when I heard that the guy who invented jogging had died while he was out jogging.

I share the small boat with a dozen overexcited schoolboys and their hairy-kneed teacher, a khaki-clad outward-bounder of indeterminate sex. The skipper operates the steering wheel with his feet while reading the paper. It’s an enjoyable crossing, choppy enough to make you wonder how rough the four-month crossing from Cobh might have been. O’Brien was right about the view. Looking back to the mountains across the deep blue water, it would be easy to believe you were in the west of Ireland. As we come ashore at a jetty by a white sandy bay there’s a sudden flurry of rain. A perfect rainbow, a dense ground-to-ground canopy connecting the beach to the forested mountainside, envelops the island.

As the schoolboys head off along the track I go into the former commissariat stores, now an unmanned information center near the jetty. The island isn’t yet part of the tourist mainstream, and only has 13,000 visitors each year. There’s a visitors’ book, which I open at random at what I presume must be the record of a school visit like today’s. “Totally awesome,” wrote one kid, though opinion was divided on the merits of the place. “Neat.” “Cool.” “Okay.” “Boring island.” “Too many walks.” “Sorta okay and sorta sucks.” “Never seen so much kangaroo shit in my life. Fantastic.”

When O’Brien, Meagher

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