It was 20 years ago today – A Day in the Life

Forget Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, or on second thoughts don’t, because it’s a pretty good album, and includes the tracks A Day in the Life and She’s Leaving Home which relate to what I’m about to say, but let’s at least put it aside for a moment.

It was 20 years ago today that I left Ireland. It wasn’t the first time that I had physically vacated the island - I had already been to ‘the continent’ (which in Ireland means mainland Europe) half a dozen times. I had even been to Africa on three different occasions.

But this time was different. This time I wasn’t going back. I was following in the time honoured footsteps of my forefathers and joined the denizens of the immigrant horde leaving Ireland to work in London. But no cattle ship to Holyhead for me – I took an Aer Lingus 737 bound for Heathrow.

I didn’t know at that stage that I would never live in Ireland again – how could I have? But if, by some gift of precognizance or clairvoyance, you had told me so, I would have easily believed you -partially because I had no qualms about leaving Ireland per se (except for one, which forms the second part of this bi-decadal memoir) and partially because I was a naïve and gullible 21 year old who would have probably believed anything you said.

In the intervening years I’ve travelled the world and South America and Antarctica are the only continents where I haven’t set foot. Yet. Not that the icy wastes of Antarctica hold much appeal to me, despite their stark natural beauty. But South America…

Twenty years ago today Ireland was in the midst of an economic recession and the running joke was – what do you say to someone with a university degree? Answer: A Big Mac™ and fries please. No one really laughed. It wasn’t all that funny. Twenty years later you can dust the same joke off and tell it again. In the intervening years the Celtic Tiger grew from cubhood to roar proudly, then yawn complacently and finally whine ineffectually.

I missed it all. Meaning simply that I wasn’t there, not that my heart was pining for my motherland. It wasn’t. Rarely did I miss the old sod, thoughts of which evoked for me school bullies, the smell of wet wool, long wet winters and equally long wet summers. Almost anyone I had ever known had joined the Diaspora and having no e-mail or mobile phones to keep in touch we soon lost track of each other.

At one stage the entire male side of my family lived outside of Ireland – my brother, my cousins, (except one who worked in a bank) my uncles, my grandfather. Twenty years on, some of them have returned and ‘made good’ during the years of affluence. Some of them, like myself, will probably never go back, except for occasional nostalgic visits. Some of them are dead.

On the 5^th of June 1989 an unknown man, wearing a neat white shirt and black trousers stood alone in front of a column of armoured tanks on Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

On the 5^th of June 1989 I was a fresh faced graduate with a Hotel Management Diploma in my cardboard suitcase and probably, well no, let’s be honest here, definitely, more than a little wet behind the ears. Jason Donovan was number one in the charts (amazing what you can find out on Google) and the music packed in my case (definitely not Jason Donovan I assure you) was all on cassettes.

On the 5^th of June 1989 Maggie Thatcher was still running the show in England and after a spate of bombings the Irish were none too welcome. There was no Celtic Chic back then. I was destined to be just another ‘facking paddy’.

It wasn’t really like leaving home. Home had already got up and left me three years previously when my parents announced out of the blue that they were emigrating themselves. With hindsight I can understand the financial imperatives that lead to their decision, but at 18 it felt like abandonment.

In fairness I had an adequate monthly allowance and the Department of Foreign Affairs (such a sensually evocative name) paid for annual return flights so I could holiday with the rest of my family in the tiny mountain kingdom of Lesotho in southern Africa. For the rest of the year in Ireland I had all the freedom an 18 year old could hope for. But I had never been a rebellious teenager and at 18 I didn’t even have my parents to rebel against.

By the 5^th of June 1989 I had managed to graduate, make one or two good friends and break a couple of hearts – though that didn’t become clear to me until literally minutes before I left the country.

Part 2

Veronica San Martin Pedera was the sexiest woman I knew. I mean, I’m sure there were movie stars in my mind or whatever, but I knew Veronica personally. Veronica was from Argentina (there’s South America again), Veronica was 27, Veronica spoke Spanish and fluent French and Italian and Veronica was beautiful. She had been a friend, well really more of an acquaintance, of the woman to whom I had lost my virginity a year earlier. Well not exactly lost - lost sounds accidental, careless - it was nothing of the sort - and I certainly never went looking to find it again.

I hadn’t seen Veronica for a couple of months when I bumped into her by chance one cold and windy day near the top of Grafton Street in Dublin. It wasn’t long since I had broken up with the other woman. The Stephens Green shopping centre was still a noisy building site with cranes hauling girders through the cloudy sky. The tip of her nose was red and her dark eyes were shining with the cold as she explained that she needed to improve her English. My French was already pretty good and I wanted to learn Spanish. I would have loved to have studied languages, and I have collected a few over the years since, but back then I thought that a qualification in languages would inevitably lead to a McJob at best and I wanted to get out of Ireland. By studying Hotel Management I figured I could work in hotels anywhere in the world and learn languages in situ, which is partially how things panned out. On that noisy, windy street corner we made a deal. We would exchange lessons, one hour for one hour. We agreed a time to meet in her little apartment just off Morehampton Road.

I arrived with the usual student satchel filled with paper and pens and a fresh note pad and a few books I thought might be useful and, I admit a mind full of lustful thoughts. I was 19 she was 27. She wasn’t a shy teenager, she was a real woman. We had a cup of tea and then spread the books and notepads on the kitchen table. She sat very close to me. My heart was pounding. Ten minutes later I was on my knees and she was half sprawled across the kitchen table with the notepads and the books, her skirt hitched up around her waist and her knickers hooked dangling for a moment on her ankle. I had never heard a woman make so much noise while in the throes of rapture - bear in mind my experience was very limited at that stage. I feared she would pull the hair from my head out by the roots.

Spanish Lessons became a euphemism for our weekly trysts. She was an adventurous woman and I learned things I had never suspected, though in terms of Spanish I only learned a few important key words. In the 20 years since, I have rarely met a woman who enjoyed herself and her own sexuality with such freedom and abandon. I can still feel the touch of her hair on my abdomen.

Though our relationship was firmly rooted in lust soon I found I was falling in love with her. As well as being beautiful she was also a lovely intelligent humorous and articulate person. Hopelessly enamoured I realized that I couldn’t let my true feelings show or I would jeopardize the delicate balance of our affair. She didn’t want commitment she said. She wanted the freedom to see other men and gave me the freedom to see other women.

The open mindedness of our arrangement was liberating. There were plenty of opportunities and I took them and enjoyed myself with little or no thoughts of the consequences. I played safe though. I was part of the first AIDS generation that took the full impact of the awareness campaigns that bombarded my teenage years - plus I wasn’t interested in parenthood. I was a student surrounded by plenty of young women. Winters in Dublin are long and cold and dark and dreary and there were plenty of lonely girls up from the country looking to break free of the strictures of their narrow rural lives. I helped broaden their – ahem - horizons with my newly learned skills. None of these relationships lasted in any meaningful way, principally because I wasn’t prepared to commit emotionally since, unbeknownst to her, I had given my heart to Veronica. My weeks rotated around our meetings and I must confess that I wandered along Morehampton Road more often than was strictly necessary, hoping to provoke a chance encounter. As far as I can remember, our affair lasted a little more than a year and a half - right up until the day I left the country.

20 years ago today Veronica was there at the airport. She didn’t have much of a choice - she worked at the desk, making flight announcements in half a dozen languages. My recently returned parents had just seen me off and I was beyond the perfunctory passport and security checks. Veronica had access to the passenger areas. I had never seen her wear her bright red uniform. It suited her black hair and dark eyes. If I had known, I would have suggested she wear it for Spanish lessons. There was a ladder in her stockings on the inside of her knee.

We sat in the corner of the departure lounge and she gave me an envelope, telling me to read it on the plane, and a small gift-wrapped parcel – socks, because she didn’t know what to get me and had wanted to give me a farewell gift. She asked me to think of her when I wore them. I thanked her and said I didn’t need socks to think of her – that I would think of her anyway. I would think of her every day. I meant it. I think she saw that, and maybe started to understand the true nature of my feelings towards her at last. Perhaps that’s why she said that she would tell me what was in the letter.

She held my hands as tears welled up in her eyes and streamed down her face. She told me she loved me, that she had fallen in love with me on that cold windy day on the top of Grafton Street. She told me that she had been in love with me while she knew that I was with other women. Women – they were girls. She was the only real woman I knew. She had been jealous, but was happy that I would accord her at least one afternoon a week. I wanted to tell her that none of the other girls meant anything to me, that she was the one I thought of every day, that our Spanish lessons were so impassioned because it was the moment I waited for all week, that those precious hours with her was the centre around which the rest of my life revolved.

I looked out at the runway trying to hold back my tears. I thought of the boarding pass in my pocket, about my parents making their way to the car park or possibly standing by a window to watch my flight take off. I thought of the job I had waiting for me in London, the contracts I had signed. I threw my arms around her and buried my face in her silky black hair and whispered the words I had never told her. I love you. She whimpered and told me not to say that. I looked in her eyes and said it again and then said it’s true and I saw in her devastated expression that she believed me.

I could have turned back. I could have torn up my boarding pass and decided to stay in Ireland. Go, she whispered when the flight was called.

We kissed one last time, a desperate hungry kiss as if trying to take in as much of each other as we could in the short time that remained. The tears flowed down both our cheeks and she silently mouthed the word - Go. I bit my trembling lip as I showed my boarding pass at the gate and when I looked back I saw her red uniform and her black hair hurrying away.

On the flight the air hostess recognized me from college. She told me that there was plenty of room up in first class and served me bitter champagne all the way to Heathrow while I read and re-read Veronica's letter.

20 years ago today I didn’t feel like I was leaving Ireland. I was leaving Veronica. Leaving the woman I had secretly loved. 20 years ago today.

post scriptum

At first I saw Veronica off and on for a bit over the years since I left. Then we just lost touch. There was no e-mail or mobile phones back then - when someone moved house you could loose track of them completely. The last I heard, she was battling with cancer 10 years ago. I only found that out a couple of months ago. I've tried to Google her. She may as well not exist. Maybe she doesn't. May she rest in peace if that's the case - she was one helluva' woman. I'm missing her something powerful this morning and still twenty years on there are tears in my eyes. I could have torn up the boarding pass and stayed in Ireland - but as you know, I didn't.