43
I arrived in Portrush, Northern Ireland with my brain and my inner ears scrambled. Driving on the left side of the road while seated on the right side of a tiny Ford all for the first time was disorienting enough, but whoever decided that all the pedals and controls, save the gear shift, would be where a North American would expect to find them should be slathered in treacle and staked to an anthill. I was exhausted.
I checked into the Clarmont bed and breakfast on Landsdowne Crescent. How could a Boston boy go wrong on Landsdowne Crescent?
The Clarmont is effortlessly eclectic with the shiniest hardwood floors I have ever encountered. My room, low ceilinged with long windows, looked to the sea. The solid wood furniture was rustic with metal accents, Mexican perhaps. Through the window the sky and the sea were the same gradient of gray as the gliding gulls. The sun, tumbling to the southwest, though muted was still useful at in the late evening.
Portrush was a summer town nearing the end of her season. Arcades, bingo halls, relaxed half-full restaurants, wine bars and pubs, and rows of fresh-faced townhouses slightly rounded to the street border a spectacular beach. Even against the salt air, if a place could smell green, this was it. Although in Northern Ireland, Portrush is south of part of the Republic of Ireland.
I walked the strand in search of fish and chips and a beer, though the walk alone would have been invigorating. The Ramore, at what appeared to be the intersection of Ramore Avenue and Ramore Street, filled the bill quite nicely if not redundantly.
Tomorrow I would find Tom Moore and probably his sister, too. Past that, who knew?
There was no answer on Bo Boban’s cell.
44
“Do ye know what craik is Mr. O’Keefe?” James Sullivan, who called himself, the denizen of Ramore Avenue, asked as he slid a fresh pint of Kilkenny across the table and returned to his seat.
“You can’t mean crack…as in the drug?” The word he used was pronounced as if it were.
“No, no.” He spelled it for me. “Have ye heard of it before?”
“I have not. What might it be?” I asked.
I have always been a verbal chameleon. Wherever I go, with whomever I speak, in short order I emulate their rhythms, their cadence, and their patterns. I always have; I can’t help it. After a short trip to North Carolina when I was in college I came back to Massachusetts telling people, “I’mo, I’mo, I,mo bah me a rahfle.”
“Craik is conversation just as we are having, Mr. O’Keefe. Pub conversation… whether in a pub or not.”
“I like craik Mr. Sullivan.”
“Have you been in Great Britain before, Mr. O’Keefe?”
“I have not. And you know Mr. Sullivan, until just now it had not occurred to me that is where I am. “
Mr. Sullivan confirmed my choice of accommodations as a good one. He told me stories of summers current, near and distant here on the shore. He inquired “after” my family. He shared his life-long wish to see New York and was quite excited to know I had been there. He refused to allow me to buy him a drink; I was the guest.
I left the Ramore about 10 walking to the Clarmont. Eight, maybe ten more steps and I would have been in the building.