“I’ll try and work it in,” Corrigan promised.
“Brendan would never forgive you if he found out you were back and didn’t go over there to say hello to him.”
“How are you finding it over there yourself?” Corrigan asked.
“I like it.”
“Isn’t it a bit quiet after Dublin?”
“Ah, I’ve had me fill of this smelly city. Anyhow, there’s good craic in Galway, which isn’t too far. The scenery is grand, the women are fine . . . and the pints are as good as you’ll find anywhere. That’s the main thing.”
“Now there speaks an Irishman,” Corrigan pronounced.
“What’s it like there?” Evelyn asked curiously.
“Ah, sure, there’s nowhere to touch it,” Dermot told her.
“Where is it?”
“Over on the west of Ireland,” Corrigan said. “The Atlantic coast.”
“The winds come in off the sea and over the cliffs as fresh as the day the world was created,” Dermot went on, turning and extending an arm toward the window, as if it were all outside. “The mountains are wild and unspoiled, and the lakes as clear as pools of spring water.”
“My God, he’s getting lyrical,” Kathleen muttered.
“Think of Yosemite—without California. And the people there, the friendliest you’ll find anywhere in the world.”
“Let’s do go and see it,” Evelyn said to Corrigan.
“We’ll fit it in somehow,” Corrigan promised Dermot.
“But it’s so out-of-the-way,” Mick said over his shoulder from the driver’s seat. “What do you do when you want to go anywhere?”
“Why would I want to go anywhere?” Dermot asked him.
“You have to, sometimes. After all, you’re here now, aren’t you?”
“Well, I got here, didn’t I? So it’s obviously possible.”
“I’ll still take Dublin, meself,” Mick declared. “Look at the bay out there, and Howth on the other side. You can’t beat that.”
“It’s an open sewer,” Dermot sneered. “Sure, you wouldn’t have to be Jesus Christ to walk across to Howth. You couldn’t sink through the pollution.”
“Who has to walk, anyhow? We’ve got the DART.”
“You need it. Walking would be quicker than this traffic.”
“Do they argue all the time?” Evelyn asked Kathleen.
“Not all the time. When they do start really arguing, you’ll know it.”
* * *
In Dun Laoghaire, they followed the harborfront past stately Victorian terraces and arrived at the Royal Marine Hotel, where Corrigan and Evelyn would be staying. Immense in scale and magnificent in rendering, it was a fine example of the palatial resort hotels that had sprung up all over Europe around the middle of the nineteenth century—although since saddled with a modern extension in a clash of styles that reverberated all the way along the seafront.
They entered through an arched entrance lobby with marble columns and staircase, and went through to an enormous lounge, its walls adorned with huge, gilt-framed mirrors and paintings of sailing ships, and one side taken up by picture windows looking out over lawns with the harbor and its granite piers beyond. The place was packed with what looked like a dozen parties merging together and going on at once. People stood five deep around the paneled, L-shaped bar at the far end, and mixed groups, including children, filled the tables and milled about in the spaces between, while rosy-faced waitresses in maroon uniforms battled through it all carrying trays laden with bottles, glasses, and pints of black, creamy-headed stout. The hubbub of voices was overpowering. Through it the strains of a piano and accordion were coming from somewhere at the far end, and a circle off to one side were swaying and singing. Kathleen slipped an arm firmly through Evelyn’s. “You’d better hang on to me in this,” she said. “Ah yes, there’s our crowd now, over that way. Let’s see if we can fight our way through. . . . There’s your ma, Joe—in the blue. Do you see her?”
“I do. She’s looking well. Is Dad here too?”
“He should be around somewhere. Probably over at the bar.”
And then it was all hugs, handshakes, and more backslapping. Corrigan’s mother, Helen, turned out to be a fine-looking woman, with rich black hair showing a few gray wisps, and high-boned, distinctly Irish features. She was groomed and dressed meticulously in a dark-blue two-piece, and carried herself well, with elegance. Her reception of Evelyn was not unwarm—curious and expressing a natural interest with dark, alert eyes that missed nothing; but at the same time she was clearly maintaining a measured reserve until she got to know this new addition to the family better. But the news that Evelyn, like Joseph, was a Ph.D impressed her. “Don’t let him forget it,” she advised Evelyn when they got a moment to talk between themselves. “He needs someone who’s a match for him. These young flibbertigibbets that you see everywhere let the men turn them into replacements for their mothers, and it’s the end of them.”