The Older Gentleman’s Guide to Ireland

Connie Fitzgibbon had lived in Ballyhea his whole life, and he had never felt the need to leave. Connie was one of those souls predisposed to loneliness, and he lived a solitary existence. When his mother passed away he inherited the old farmhouse, and with no urge to follow in the footsteps of his tyrannical father, promptly sold off the cattle and took a job driving for the parish church, which kept him in company, and in microwave dinners.

Connie liked the weddings best, and not because of the romance. He enjoyed putting the ribbon on the white Austin, and having other drivers sound their horns as he drove along the potholed country roads from the bride's house to the chapel at the end of town. In fact, in some difficult corner at the back of Connie’s mind he knew that this was the only time he was ever truly happy, and not merely comfortable. He never wanted or expected more, but when Bríd O’Mahony clambered into his back seat in a crunchy taffeta bridesmaid dress one early spring morning, he fell in love with her - and that was that. She was not an especially lovely woman, and the bridesmaid dress did her no favours, but when Connie laid eyes on her he felt, instead of butterflies, a wave of relief that floored him for weeks. And by some small miracle Bríd O’Mahony loved him too. Connie drove her to church himself the day they got married. She rode shotgun, with a stocking tied around her meringue skirt so he could get at the gearbox. The wedding cake was a fruitloaf, and they were as happy as two ordinary people in love could be.

They had an easy life together – Bríd was a clever woman, and while Connie stoically persisted in driving, Bríd bought back a few cattle, and a few chickens, and two fat pigs, and turned the back field into a makeshift petting zoo, where the second class students from the local schools came on tours every spring to feed the lambs and hold the ducklings. She kept the takings from her enterprise in a coffee tin on the dresser, and logged her profits in a little black notebook by the stove, feet on a padded stool, and dressing gown tied tight enough around her waist to choke a man. Connie continued reeling from an amount of happiness he had never fought for or anticipated, and he never quite figured out how to tell her Bríd he loved her. But he warmed up her side of the bed every evening, rolling over onto the cold side when he heard her heavy tread come up the stairs. And he figured she knew.

While Connie never felt the need to leave Ballyhea, Bríd wanted to expand their horizons. Their hair had turned grey by the time she convinced him to let her take the coffee tin down off the dresser and book them an all-inclusive trip to Tenerife. But on the layover Bríd stepped off the plane too soon in Heathrow, and hit the tarmac. She broke her spine, and died in an English hospital. Connie came home with an urn full of ashes and a life insurance settlement of 20 grand, a pitiful replacement for the only person in the world who cared if he lived forever or died tomorrow. He threw the coffee tin on the fire, but the theatrics of the action unsettled him, and he fished it out again. He sold the petting zoo, chicks and all, to a neighbour, and sat staring blankly at Bríd’s chair for a year. At night he would reach out for her in his sleep, and wake up in shock and tears as he remembered she was gone. He would sit up for hours, terrified to go back to sleep, and eventually he took to sleeping upright on the sofa in front of the dull roar of the television. As the condolences of the parish trickled away, Connie was left totally alone in the world.

Years passed, and sometimes Connie wished he had he never met Bríd at all. He realised that he had forgotten how to be lonely. One day, on an impulse, he pulled the old ribbon out from the barn, and strung up the Austin again like it was someone’s wedding day. Compelled to take it out, and unwilling to question the only thing he had felt moved to do in years, Connie drove down Main Street. When the first driver beeped, a laugh exploded from Connie’s lips, and fat tears streamed down his wrinkled face. It had been 20 years, but the feeling was the exact same.

Back home, he sat quietly in the garage, and thought hard.

He knew that he would quickly be caught out for driving a wedding procession without a bride every week in Ballyhea. Once had been risky enough, and already he imagined he caught judgemental sidelong glances in the aisles of Supervalu’s ready meal emporium. So every Sunday he took the old Austin further and further afield – first to Donerail, then to Cashel. In a month of Sundays Connie had driven all over Ireland. After waking up one morning on the side of the road with a crick in his neck, he began to book into hotels. He stashed the ribbon in his boot overnight, and no one asked him any questions. Using the end of the 20 grand, he ate alone in cafes and restaurants, and decided to stop at a few sights while he was at it. He drove imaginary weddings past the Cliffs of Moher, the Giant’s Causeway, the Burren, the wild parks of Killarney, and the infamous Blarney stone. After an especially successful trip to Donegal by way of Glenveagh National Park, Connie settled in at home by the fire, and decided he really ought to keep note of his locations, to keep from doubling up on any towns.

It was a bitter night in January, and Connie sat his tea down beside him to stoke the coals. As the embers popped and set off fireworks against his time-stained face, his eyes fell upon a little black notebook on the mantle. Digging out a grubby pencil, he set upon it to scrawl out ‘Glenveagh’, but froze in his tracks as the book revealed pages of meticulous looping handwriting. Bríd. It was as if the book had reached out and slapped him. Slowly he came to, and his rough dry hands pawed across the pages. He stroked the words with his clumsy, calloused fingers. And as he read, he saw that there were not only neat lines of figures and numbers, profits and overheads, but there were pages and pages of daydreams – of adventure, of exotic sunsets and smoky markets and aquamarine oceans, and mangoes, as large as your head, and fat juicy prawns pulled right from the sea. It was as if she were in the room with him, smelling like lavender and sudocreme. His eyes fluttered up to her chair. And all throughout her dreaming there was Connie – Connie sunburnt and smiling in a sombrero, Connie reminding her to reapply her mosquito spray, Connie asking a waiter, in polite and broken Spanish over the fresh caught prawns, if they happened to have any bacon and cabbage? She had a lifetime of adventures planned for them. Connie realised that without his noticing, and without her trying, she had rubbed off on him.

And so it came to pass that Connie Fitzgibbon published “The Older Gentleman’s Guide to Ireland.” On the same day that he dressed in his best suit and tie to visit the travel agent for the second time in his life, his publisher sent the first copy of his book in the post. Thumbing past his embossed name, he checked the acknowledgement, and then placed the book on the mantlepiece next to Bríd’s small black notebook, his own words ringing in his ears:

“For my dearest Bríd, who wanted us to see it all.”