Barry's Holiday
Created | Updated May 31, 2010
Holiday Break
Barry drove the car out the driveway of their semi-detached house in Clonmel at 8:15 in the morning as planned. He checked through everything in his head when the plane had climbed safely through the turbulence. He knew how France worked. He knew how to get the hire car, how the swimming pool worked, and how to get a baguette and croissants in the morning. The money problems were sorted with the introduction of the Euro – for Barry, joining the Common Market was worth it for that alone. The Ryanair flight landed in Biarritz right on time at 4 pm.
But, when they got to their caravan, Debbie wasn't happy.
"Look at these wardrobes," she said. "You can't even open the doors. And I can't get around to my side of the bed. Barry, can you turn on the television and see what channels there are on the satellite TV?" she shouted from the bedroom.
"I didn't notice any dish on the roof. Did they say that there would be satellite?"
"Yes, that's the one thing the travel agent promised. Barry, that's why I picked this campsite. What are we going to do without television? We need television. The children need it. What are you going to do in the night time?"
Later that night, Barry lay in bed awake. When the noise was reduced to just the intermittent hum of the small fridge motor in the kitchen beside them, his mind honed in on his job back at Cody's Fine Foods in Clonmel. He had the same thoughts of the bakery floor as he had so vividly on the first night of every holiday he went on for the last 15 years. As soon as he got back, there would be a big push on to get the shipment out by the end of the month.
He tried to think of his racing pigeons. Just trying to remember the names of his favourite pigeons always helped him to drop off to sleep. There was a time when the woman who owned the big back in front of his face knew the names of his best ones. But after the kids were born, she fought with him every time he did something for the pigeons rather than doing a job in the house. Recently, when they moved house, the pigeons didn't make the cut – so he got rid of them.
Debbie's dream was to live in Meadow Vale – the housing estate where her successfully married sister had been living for the past ten years. Every auction they went to, the prices was higher. Barry got more and more overtime, but it didn't make any difference. Meadow Vale went further and further out of their reach.
On the first Friday night of the holiday, Debbie suggested that they should try out the Flamenco show that was playing at the bar at the campsite. With the music of the Gypsy Kings filling the warm night air, Barry fantasised at the young dancers' tanned breasts peeking out above their red dresses. One of them lifted up her dress to show a perfectly tanned leg. A fat guy to Barry's right managed to distract Barry's gaze from the delicate sharp brown knees wobbling frantically to the music.
"Howya doin?" the man said.
"Hello there," Barry replied enthusiastically. He was very pleased with some male contact.
"Where are you from?"
"Clonmel. And you?"
"Limerick. So, what do you think of Tipperary's chances in the hurling this year?"
"Sure, if they got their half back line sorted out with their injuries, they might have some chance," Barry had his stock answer to this question.
"Jaysus do you know we haven't had a decent meal since we got here?"
"Really? Why not?"
"We tried the Buffalo Grill across the road there the first night, but steaks weren't cooked at all. They don't know how to cook here, I'll tell ya."
"Better keep that in mind when I go in there."
"Will ya have another?" the man said as he got up to go to the bar.
"OK, I will sure, a pint of lager please,"
When the man came back with two pints and a gin and tonic for Debbie, his mind was still on food.
"What I did tonight was, I bought a few turkey breasts in the shop – they were delicious. They didn't shrivel up like chicken – you know the way chicken turns all yellow on the barbecue."
"Really, I never saw turkey in the supermarket." Debbie felt she could join into this conversation.
"I didn't, either, until I found out that turkey is called dindon here in France."
The next morning, the back of Barry's mouth felt like the underside of a badger's tail, and the flamenco music invaded the front of his forehead. His feet worked their way sleepily through the boys' toys as he headed towards the toilet. He banged his little toe on the corner of a toy truck. The pain was excruciating.
"This caravan is too small. Who's in the toilet now?"
"Clodagh," Debbie said from the bedroom.
"What's she doing in there now?
"Barry we don't really need to go into all that now."
Clodagh was just behind a flimsy chipboard door with a plastic handle. Debbie beckoned him over to where they were out of earshot of the toilet door.
"What are going on about?" he whispered to her.
"You know how she feels about her constipation. You don't need to broadcast it."
" Why doesn't she ever leave the caravan?"
"She hasn't met any girls her age. It's easier for Shane and Conor. There's plenty their age here."
"Kids, kids, kids. Everything we do here is for the kids."
"Well, you're not doing much about giving us something else," Debbie said as she patted the mattress.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You know very well what it means Barry? At home, you said you'd wait until the holidays came and we'd have more time. Now we're here and it's still the same."
"Yes. We're here living in a caravan with paper-thin walls. Our children are one foot away, separated by a piece of cardboard. What do you want me to do?"
"Do you want me to leave the caravan for a while?" Clodagh asked from the doorway.
Barry turned bright red. Clodagh smiled for the first time that week and turned on her heel, satisfied at having embarrassed her father. Barry grabbed the keys with a menacing jingle.
"I'm going for a drive," he said as he moved towards the door and checked his pockets for mobile, money and car keys. He banged the door, shaking the flimsy structure to its metal marrow.
He had no idea where he was going, but as he drove across the bridge over the autoroute, it seemed to offer the best prospect of a getaway. The speed of the cars below was magnetic. On the onramp, he had a choice of Paris or Spain. There was a stream of Belgian registered estate cars with blue tarpaulin packs on top going south, and mostly trucks going north. 40 minutes later he was 50 miles away from the campsite – it was nearly as far as that from Clonmel to Cork. He felt like a recently domesticated animal that suddenly had the yoke taken off him. The orange petrol light reminded Barry that he needed to get off the road. A rest area presented itself so he edged into the tastefully landscaped rest area decorated with picnic tables and toilets.
Barry parked his neat hire car incongruously between the Moroccans' long estate cars. Their back windows were blacked out with blankets and they wore the dark blue tarpaulin packs on the top of their estate cars as proudly as they wore the headscarves that the Paris government banned. The inside of the car looked like a Bedouin tent.
"You English?" the man in the driver's seat of the car bedside said as he smiled broadly at Barry.
"No, Irish."
"You speak Irish?"
"No, from Irlande."
"Holland – Johann Cruyff."
"No, Irland – Roy Keane."
"Ah Yes, yes, Roy Keane. Manchester United."
"Come, Come, Come, Sit here, sit here."
"I'm Ahmed. What's your name?"
"Barry."
"Ah Berry, pleased to meet you."
"No, it's Barry."
"Yes, Berry, pleased to meet you, pleased to meet you."
"Will you have a drink?"
Barry explained about the row he was having with his wife, and how his family were driving him crazy. Ahmed didn't seem to understand the issues he was having, but he listened attentively and nodded.
"Would you like a lift?
"Maybe. Where are you going?
"Casablanca."
"I don't know if I want to go that far. I just want to go down the road a bit."
"Well, come as far as you want. Here, sit, sit, sit."
The grown-up children had to crush into the back.
"No, no, no, let me sit in the back," Barry protested politely.
"You will not sit in the back," Ahmed said with a discussion-ending tone. But Ahmed's wife wasn't happy. She emitted a stream of Arabic under her breath which only spurred Ahmed on as he dismissed her with a wave of his hand. When they got on the road, the freedom of the speeding car seeped into Barry's veins and wiped out all memories of the campsite, caravan, sore toe, swimming pool, restaurant and kids' club. Spain was getting drier and hotter outside. Ahmed turned up the A/C to the sound of more giving out from the back seat. Ahmed put his eyes to heaven and smiled at Barry in search of male solidarity. He leaned forward to see out and his bony knuckles stuck up over the top of the steering wheel.
"Berry, look around you. We are travelling south along the same path that the Arabs took on their way back home to Morocco."
Over the next 12 hours, Ahmed hung on to the steering wheel as the car pulled them at 140 kilometres per hour past the motorway exits for Navarra, Rioja, Leon, Burgos.
"This was all Arab land until 10th and 11th centuries," Ahmed pointed out the window and shouting above the flamenco music on the radio.
Barry's phone vibrated.
WHERE R U
Toledo, Cordoba, Sevilla.
"These cities were all built by the Arabs, Berry"
PLS COME HOME
"Look at Granada. From this hill here, Boabdil looked back for the last time as he saw the Christian Kings of Castille setting fire to his beautiful Alhambra. For 700 years his people had lived on this land.
By the end of the second day, Ahmed was making very good time, and just before Gibraltar they picked up an English language station. The news was full of the July 7th, 2004 London bombing of the day before.
"BARRY, THE KIDS MISS U OUR FLIGHT LEAVES IN 2 DAYS," came another text from Debbie.
As they approached Algeceris, Morocco came into view across the straits of Gibraltar. Suddenly, Barry felt very sober and more in love with Debbie than he had ever been.
Two days later at the airport in Biarritz, when the Ryanair flight to Ireland was boarding, Debbie was checking in with the three kids. This was a cut-off point for her. If he would just come back now, she could forgive him, but not if he let her arrive home on her own and have to face the shame.
Then she noticed a very tired Barry coming through the crowd. They hugged for a long time. The children looked down, embarrassed at this show of affection. On the plane, they said nothing as they dug their faces into Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
None of them dared upset Daddy until he got his cup of tea back in Clonmel.
