Getting out of Dublin

Should take no more than two, two-and-a-half hours to reach Cobh, says Bernard, handing me the keys to some late-model number with the steering wheel on the wrong side of the car. Not me, I tell him. I’m not driving. Give the keys to Mr. Lynch. This is his idea. I’m just along as navigator.

Have you a map? I ask the concierge. Where you off to? Cobh, I say. Disappears into a back office and comes back holding a wooden board with a coated map of Ireland on it. Have you no map you can give us? No, sorry, he says. Then he points out the thin red lines heading for Cork.

This will never do. What point in taking highways to Cork? What will we see on that route? Just gas stations and Supermacs selling cod burgers (that said, need to try one of those). No hurry, now. Only half past ten and no one expecting us in Cobh until three. Sure it’s worth a drive along the coast. Take the green roads, then. The wee roads through towns like Baltinglass and Bunclody.

Car even has a GPS device. No idea how to use it. Nor Mr. Lynch. Bernard fiddles with the thing, programs it to get us out of Dublin and as far as Waterford. Off we go.

Turn left here, says the wench stuck to the shield as we leave the Conrad, and so Mr. Lynch does as instructed, which upsets the woman. Recalculating route, says she a bit snippily. While we tango through four lanes of traffic. Turn right now, says she. Shiite, says Mr. Lynch, making a left. She said right, I tell him. I’m left-handed, says Mr. Lynch. As if that has anything to do with it.

Recalculating route, says the wench in a pinched voice. She’s a bit bitchy this morning, isn’t she, says Mr. Lynch. Turn right now, says she, as Mr. Lynch continues straight ahead. Grabs the little black box and yanks it off the windshield, throws it in the back seat. Now we’re done for. All I’ve got for directions is the little tourist map of Dublin which doesn’t even take us past the Grand Canal. Just look for signs, says Mr. Lynch. What signs? Any signs. There’s one, I say. Belfast, Sligo, Rosslare. Wrong direction, says Mr. Lynch. Well, I say, at least we know not to go that way. That’s a start.

Round abouts, honking cars, near collisions, spinning around once, twice, searching for something that says Cork or even Limerick. I’m getting seasick. Take this first exit, I say. Now. Mr. Lynch yanks the silver bug across two inside lanes and like a roulette ball we are released down a chute taking us where? Don’t know. But not towards Belfast, Sligo, or Rosslare.

We’ll die well before Cobh, I say. Mr. Lynch, without taking his eyes off the road, snorts. If you don’t like my drivin’, you can go ask me arse, he says.

I laugh. He laughs. We’re almost out of Dublin. Only god knows where we’re headed and sure he doesn’t care. And we don’t either.