There's Always Tomorrow

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 531, 26 August 1949, Page 14

There's Always Tomorrow

I Written for "The Listener" |

by

J. R.

MINOGUE

HIS is Killaloe," said the bus driver as we turned a sudden corner and found ourselves in a tiny village which straggled along both sides of a river. "And it’s here that you'll have to be waiting." "How long?" I wanted to know. He shrugged his shoulders, "Two hours. Three hours," he said, making it clear that he considered the question of little importance. We crossed the river which flowed sluggishly out of the great lough we had been following. "That’s the Shannon," said the driver. "It runs through the midst of Killaloe so that there’s a half of it in Tipperary and a half .of it in Clare." The bus sstopped and I got out, watched incuriously by two men who had propped themselves against the corner shop. I went inside to ask when the bus was expected. The bus? Would that be the bus from Limerick, now? Sure, and it was the hardest thing in the world to tell. Sometimes late, sometimes early it was, but this night, surely, it would be there at a half six. I listened to the soft voices, knowing that if it would please me better they would be equally ready to swear to its arrival at a half seven. I thanked them and went out. The bus driver had been right, for there was no count of time at all in Killaloe. A bus would come eventually, and that was all that mattered. ‘ It was a summer afternoon and everything about the village seemed to be asleep, The sun warmed a tranquil air that smelt of turning hay and clover, dawdled impartially upon the vivid slopes of Clare and Tipperary, swayed on the indolent surface of the-Shannon; even the small houses were toppled together in slumber. There were two churches, one on either side of the river. I visited them both, and after that there was nothing left to do. I looked at the bridge speculatively. It was a bridge on which a man, were he so inclined, could spend the day pondering upon the lives of saints; or he could be think-

ing of nothing, and divil a man to tell the difference, There ‘were already two men occupied in this way. One, about halfway along, was fishing but without conviction; the other, on the Clare end of the bridge, was simply leaning. His clothes were in rags and he had on, besides, a pair of burst shoes and a battered cap; his eyes were an incredible cornflour blue, there was an impish grin on his face and he was staring into the water, I waited for a little while, but nothing happened. He just went on leaning in such a positive way that I began to feel there must be something in it. I established myself over the way from

the fisherman, leant on the side of the bridge and sank myself into uncertain meditation. The afternoon drifted on and, gradually, the former trivialities of existence began to assume an immense though unquestioned significance. A grocer’s van passed and so did a woman wheeling a pram with two dirty children clinging to her skirt; we watched them until they disappeared from view with an acceptance devoid of speculation. Once two young men drove up in a donkey cart with another donkey trotting along behind, They hobbled them both and turned them into a near-by field, then disappeared inside the shop. And all the time an itinerant fiddler wandered up and down, playing outside each house, with the thin wailing of his violin weaving itself into the still air. After a while I left the bridge and moved back into Tipperary. Some enterprising person had once extended the railway as far as Killaloe on this side, but. looking now at the rusted, unused tracks one had the impression that Killaloe had made no objection, had just smiled and waited for time to do the rest. I sat on an old stone wall and watched two small girls seeing how far they could run along the lines without falling off and then, when all but their shrill, disputing voices had gone, I watched the slow, eddying ripples of the Shannon. By this time people were beginning to come home. A heavy featured woman in a gig drove in and out again, two men sitting sideways on their carthorses lumbered past laughing, three children raced past on ponies, followed by a boy beating along a donkey which was almost obliterated by a vast pile of firewood. About six o’clock I crossed over to Clare again and joined the cluster of loungers at the shop door, who were waiting for the bus. My friend the fisherman was there, and the little, blueeyed man as well, still with his impish (continued on next paége)

(continued from previous page) erin. The fiddler, struck with a sudden purpose, hurried down the road and began playing outside a house which was set aside from the rest. "Ah," said the fisherman to no one in particular, "That’s Cavalleria Rusticana, and finely Michael plays it for the priest." There was a murmur of assent. As if the music had been a signal the priest suddenly opened his door and came out. He nodded briefly to the musician and began to pace rapidly up and down the street as if there was no one in it, with his eyes glued to his book. As he passed the older women bobbed and the men dragged off their caps: the younger ones watched him without: speaking except for one small boy who tugged his mother’s sleeve and asked in a very audible voice, "Mummy, is that the man who sometimes stops you from dying?" "Yes, ssh," whispered his embarrassed mother. He persisted. "Mummy, why sotnetimes?" "Be quiet, I tell you." The priest disappeared as suddenly as he had come and the fiddler, faithful to each audience, struck up a lively jig. Eventually the bus came and we drove off, leaving the little group of idlers to watch us out of sight with the sun-pink smoke wisping out of the chimneys of Killaloe. I asked the conductor if I could catch the next bus to Mountshannon. "Sure, and you might," he said. "Or you mightn’t." But of course we didn’t. There was apparently never any attempt to make the connection, "We've not missed by more than a half minute," he said, as I got out some miles from my destination. The thought in itself was.not particularly comforting, but I, remembering the lesson of Killaloe, and for that matter of all Ireland, shrugged my shoulders and stood watching the bus disappear from view.