Food was served in the bar, which though modernized had not lost its old-world feel. Maguire steered Evelyn and Dermot to one side where there stood a table for hot food and another for salads, recommending the mussels and the lamb. Meanwhile, Corrigan went to the bar to take care of the drinks. He and Evelyn had checked in the evening before, and he already knew Rooney, the bartender. Several of the locals were in, taking a midday refreshment.
“Oh, the American’s back, I see,” Rooney said, taunting Corrigan good-humoredly. “Coca-Cola, is it? Or do I have to start mixin’ some o’ them fancy cocktails for ye?”
“Three pints, and enough of your lip, Rooney. And a glass of lager-and-lime for the lady, if you please.”
“Are ye’s back to see some decent scenery? Sure, don’t the mountains way up above look green and fresh in the sunshine this mornin’, after the rain?”
Corrigan looked pained. “What mountains are you talking about, Rooney? You don’t call those humps out there mountains, do you? I’ll tell you, we were in the Sierra Nevada in California just before the holidays, and there’s real mountains for you. They’ve got one cliff called El Capitan, in the Yosemite Valley, that goes practically a mile straight up.”
“Is that a fact?” Rooney said, putting a glass under one of the pumps. “And what would be the use of things as big as that to anyone at all? Our Irish mountains have got a top and a bottom to them, and that’s all that matters. Why waste so much on all that useless middle? If you stand a little bit nearer they look the same anyway. But you don’t have to spend half your life getting up, and then back down again.” Rooney looked at the regulars in appeal. “Isn’t that right, now?”
“It’s fine by me,” one of them agreed. “I’d never be seen dead on the top of either one of them anyway.”
“You see, I was right. It’s after turning into a Yank, you are. Everything has to be biggest, and that’s all that matters. Never a thought for the quality of things.”
“And when were you last there, Rooney?” Corrigan challenged.
“Oh, you’d be surprised if I told you, wouldn’t you?”
“Go on, then. Surprise me.”
Rooney set a foaming pint down on the countertop for the head to settle, and began pouring another. “Oh, I know all about the high life and such, as you might call it,” he said airily. “I’m what you might call something of a self-unmade man.”
“Oh? A self-unmade man, is it?” one of the locals said.
“And what might that be?” another asked.
“I started out, long ago in me dim and distant youth, as the president of a big corporation, making half a million dollars a year,” Rooney said. “But would you believe, I needed every blessed penny of it. There was the yacht to take care of, the private jet plane, and the mortgage on the mansion. All them social clubs and country clubs and golfing clubs, with their dues. . . . And you wouldn’t want to hear about the kind of wife I had to put up with, and her tastes.”
“Would ye listen to the man?”
“Okay. And? . . .” Corrigan said, smiling.
Rooney went on, “But I worked hard and assiduously, and by the time I was twenty-five I’d come down to regional manager. Got rid of the house for something smaller, the car for something slower, the wife for someone saner, and I found I could manage on two hundred thousand a year. So I paid off the debts, kept at it, and I was down to a branch manager by thirty, ordinary salesman by thirty-four, and I quit the salaried professions altogether before I was forty.”
“Now there’s a success story for you,” one of the regulars murmured approvingly.
“It’s different. I’ll give you that,” his companion agreed.
Rooney nodded. “By then I didn’t need a salary anymore. Today, I don’t owe anybody anything, and this job pays me all I need. It’s only four shifts a week, and I get plenty of time to read the books I always wanted to, sit in the sun when it suits me, and go fishing with the kids.” He thought for a moment, then shrugged. “To tell you the truth, I probably don’t need the money that much at all, for we’ve a small farm that could get us by. But I keep it for the people that you meet.”