Afterthought
By ALAN BRIEN
A HOLIDAY seems to me an almost perfect, scale-model, working-toy image of life, a potted, concentrated, in- stant metaphor which telescopes and mirrors all the experiences and im- pressions spread over the human span. You begin your thirty days unable to believe that you will ever be obliged to use those return tickets. You squander great chunks of sunny afternoons dpzing on your bed, confident that the golden glow spread like butter over the land- scape will last for ever. You arc a newcomer, an apprentice, who must pick his way warily among the customs and ceremonies of this strange and fascinating hotel-world. Your eyes, ears and nose work overtime sorting out the Unusual messages in the air, and they are all so fresh and vivid that you feel they will never fade and brown like old photographs. Curiosity feeds Along your veins and oils your muscles like alcohol. You are an explorer and an anthropologist who proudly notes each day's pro- gress towards mapping out the geography of the corridors, sorting out the faces of the Waitresses and tabbing each with a name, analysing the relationships of the other guests Who seem to have been inhabiting the same chairs since the year began. You imagine yourself Much more efficiently equipped than them for appreciating both the failings and the advantages of the hotel.
They have lost the ability to respond to each new challenge, you feel. They eat, drink, fish, Play golf, drive off each morning and climb the
1 stairs to bed each night like apathetic automatons, simply passing the time until their departure hke octogenarians waiting for the undertaker. They may once have had criticisms of the food, suggestions to make to the manager about the temperature of the bath water, enthusiasms about their favourite cove or the view from the moun- tain-top. But if so, they have long ago become inured to the acceptance of the states quo. They have been swallowed up by the hotel machine, embalmed in habit and pickled in routine, then regurgitated as fossil customers, like the ones you see pictured in the brochure, eternally trans- fixed in the act of choosing a postcard or rowing on the lake. They arc part of the Establishment. You are the leader of the rebel movement—so far without an organised body of followers— which will be dedicated to making the hotel a home fit for heroes to holiday in
By now, a week has slid by. Some of the more ancient guests have passed on. It was a kindness to put them out of their misery and you could swear they were glad to go. You mutter a quick epitaph over their empty table, stake a claim to their corner seat in the bar, and already you have forgotten the look of their face. Despite the grey soggy sky which wraps your horizon like an old pudding cloth, the wind which skims a thousand miles of Atlantic froth to pelt its icy lace across your picnic, the sand which drops from your hair and pumices your skin like granite dandruff, you feel in the prime of holi- day life. Perhaps you were a little optimistic in your early days to think that you could change the climate of Connemara overnight, and teach the management that the profit motive is not the only standard for hotels. But if you cannot
'One feels such n
alter this world, at least you can enjoy living in it.
Your second week brings you very near to triumph over the weather. There are days when you miraculously adopt the outlook of your children and the clock stops for ever between lunch and tea. You shrink in size and your face is very close to the sand, so you notice.. after the wave has retreated. that you are walking on a glassy reflection of the sky which stretches to the edge of the globe. You see rock pools as enormous lagoons, alive with weird monsters scuttling the floor, where anemones sprout like giant palms and you would not be surprised to find Ulysses floating his raft around a promon- tory six inches long. Nature stages one or two of its special acts---a fifteen-foot shark leaps And belly-flops only a swimming-bath width off shore. The terns whistle like jets above the waves and drop as if brought down by anti-aircraft guns, head-first into the shallow water, only to zoom out again carrying a mouthful of fish. The sun returns, as you always prophesied, hot on your back like a lover's hand as you dig miles of canals and dams for your fleets of shipping. The rocks arrange themselves like polished pagan statuary along the arms of the bay, the sand is as clean and fresh as if it had been just created, and the turf which lines the beach like green plush sofas is as springy as a mattress.
You discover the people, too. Locals, first of all, such as the fishermen, blood-orange faces like Red Indians, arms and legs like steel hawsers, reefing out their Phoenician sails dark-brown against a fried-egg sunset to scoop you out past the islands, calling each other 'darling' as they sing their orders.
Then Irish visitors having fun in the bar at night, unselfconsciously, the way no English on their home ground would dream of behaving in a middle-class hotel. Especially the three priests, two young brothers and a middle-aged chaperon, who play duets for dancing on the piano, sing vaguely saucy folk songs, give comic recitations and humorous impressions of an old woman at a wake and a bachelor sewing on a button. Even the English guests, on acquaintance, prove by the third week to be much more observant and knowledgeable than you imagined in your initial arrogance.
As more of them leave, the two-weekers having only a tragically short holiday by the measure- ments of us thirty-day people, you move up the ladder. Soon you are the oldest inhabitants. smiling indulgently at the attempts of the new arrivals to change the age-old way the hotel has always been run. You give them the benefit of your advice, painfully learned over weeks, about what courses to skip, which bathrooms to use, the best road to the most worthwhile beaches. They are polite but independent. Ah, well, as guests, they are young. They will learn better in time. By now, you arc almost part of the management. Your views are sought on the run- ning of the place, but it no longer seems all that important. We have had our fair share of holiday. Now, where did we put those tickets? There is an after-holiday, or so I have come to believe. It is a little sad to realise that our thirty days are but the twinkling of an eye to the chambermaid. She has seen generations of us as the mountains have seen generations of her. The next wave of guests don't seem to under- stand the great traditions--they carry transistors, wear pastel jackets without lapels, criticise the wine list, loaf around in armchairs while the sun is shining. A few are even foreigners, Dutch and even German. Probably won't even notice that we have passed on in our turn. Such is Holiday, my friends—is such also Life?