We were the only midweek customers in Giltraps pub in the village of Kinnitty. It was late afternoon or, at a push, early evening, not that you could tell either way from the monsoon skies scudding grey and yellow over the landscape.
Earlier, we’d walked in the Slieve Bloom Mountains, although not very far. There was nothing ambitious about our trek; it was really more of a meander. We weren’t shod in hiking boots, nor were we sporting breathable, durable, water-resistant trousers. We weren’t carrying compasses or canteens or those hiking poles that I envy but have never got around to purchasing.
Nevertheless, we’d seen a hawk, which may have been a kestrel, hovering and diving, and there were things with long ears gadding about, which were either skinny rabbits or small hares. We had even startled and been startled by a young deer roaming in the wet green glades. Elegantly tiptoeing along the wooded pathway, wearing shades of tan and amber, the creature looked like a wide-eyed, leggy beauty on a Parisian catwalk.
All around us, ferns unfurled and grasses swayed and tree bark darkened as the rain grew heavier and the ground beneath our feet became increasingly soft and mulchy and warm and damp.
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Midsummer, and there wasn’t another human being in sight. Were it not for the helpful trail signs posted at intervals along the route, depicting a determined little yellow figure ploughing along, pack on back, it felt as if that moment could have belonged to any time, past or present.
In the lovely tranquil pub, I drank a fishbowl of bluey gin and looked at a framed newspaper photograph from 2011. The snap depicted Barack and Michelle Obama drinking pints of Guinness in Moneygall, just down the road on the Offaly/Tipperary border, the tiny town being the ancestral home of the 44th president of the United States.
I remember her sitting in an armchair in a brush-nylon nightdress, a cardigan over her thin shoulders, her mouth crookedly painted in carmine
It must have been something to witness, secret servicemen traipsing around wet fields and scoping out cowsheds while residents painted the village with the free weather-resistant emulsion donated to them by a paint company. In other pictures of the occasion, flags and bunting are evident, scant protection for the locals waiting in the rain for the famous great-great-great-grandson of a shoemaker to arrive.
And of course there was rain. There is always rain on the big day — signature, immutable rain.
The Obamas visited this part of the country in late May, landing their helicopter in a wet sports field. Apparently, the weather was doing its usual schizophrenic dance, the clouds briefly parting and a fleeting, searing heat making a momentary guest appearance in the deluge.
Later, looking back over online reports of the first couple’s visit, it felt as if that spring day a decade ago was truly a bygone era, a time when political hostilities could still be adjourned for pints of porter.
I, too, have history near this place, albeit of a common-or-garden variety and without ever, or a least not yet, necessitating a landing by a helicopter on a mucky pitch. I had a Protestant grandfather from Westmeath and a Catholic grandmother from Kerry, who settled for a while in Limerick, where my father was born and educated.
She possessed, in my memory of her, a pair of watery, rheumy eyes and a dissatisfaction that could be sensed bubbling, lava-like, beneath her wary features
In the pub in Kinnitty, my companion, who was drinking what he assured me was a beautiful pint, asked me about my paternal grandparents. I realised that I knew little or nothing about them, and that what has survived the scorching of generational memory is purely anecdotal. And those memories, too, must be partisan, tainted surely by a palpable atmosphere of irritated indifference between my father and his mother.
She was a small, tight-lipped woman who outlived her husband by decades. Never far from a baby bottle of Power’s, she possessed, in my memory of her, a pair of watery, rheumy eyes and a dissatisfaction that could be sensed bubbling, lava-like, beneath her wary features.
I remember her sitting in an armchair in a brush-nylon nightdress, a cardigan over her thin shoulders, her mouth crookedly painted in carmine. Sometimes my own reflection reignites this recollected image and I turn away from the mirror, fast.
Memory can’t really be trusted and I assume that it’s as deceptive to look at a yellowing newspaper page framed on the wall of a pub, and fantasise about less grievous times, as it is to vilify a shaky old lady clutching her shoulder of whiskey and sucking on her untipped snout.
As we left the bar, the wet street stretched towards evening and, beyond, a pinkish horizon promised sun.