MY friend Eva is Dutch. She has a perfect complexion and eyes that gleam in the right company, and it's hard to believe she is long over 80. Rigged and trim in her tweed skirt and angora cardigan, her" abundant silver hair pinned in a bun, her high collared blouse ornamented with an imposing brooch, she has the presence of a stately galleon in full sail.
A debutante in Amsterdam society before the second World War, she possesses an in bred discernment, a refinement of taste that is daunting. "The first time we met, her quick appraisal of my shoes and fingernails left me feeling my life had been looted bare. And when I introduced Eva to the girl I intended to marry, Eva's first words to her were. "You have a lovely face, but you should do something with hair."
Eva arrives in Ireland each, year about the time the mayfly hatch, to be cosseted in Cromlech Lodge overlooking Lough Arrow. But she doesn't come for the fishing. Her passion is for our tiny stained glass fields as they shine after a passing shower, a rainbow arched and suddenly in focus above the hawthorn hedge rows decked for the season in their bridal white blossom. Then a drive in her Honda Civic to the forest park at Rockingham, "to bathe in the bluebells" pooled under the canopies of beech.
A spiritual tourist. Her next jaunt is to the Burren, for the vibrant pitch and clarity of the light, its moon rugged tranquillity, its soul expanding emptiness. Her spirit is lofted by those limestone spirals, even if age forces her to stand by the roadside.
On my outings with Eva I don't keep her wrapped up in cotton wool, but I don't take her hill walking either. This limits the number of places we can visit, but on our last outing we went to see the megalithic stones at Carrowmore and the waterfall at Glencar, then around by Parke's Castle and Lough Gill. On our way back I decided to show her the village of Keadue, Co Roscommon.
Now, it was reported several years ago that the worst thing you could say about any village in Ireland is that it looked like Keadue with its she been bars, cattle sheds between the houses and cow dung on the main street. The residents took such offence they worked their way up through the points and category system of the Tidy Towns Competition until they won the overall title in 1993. An achievement of which the people of Keadue are justly proud.
When we arrived the place was litter free and flower be decked, and as relentlessly" tidy as the day it won the award.
"Well?" I said to Eva.
"It's awful," she said. "Hideous."
"Why? How? What do you mean?"
"We have this in Holland," she said. "This prettiness." She winced at the word. And I, was told to drive on quickly.
I was shocked. And I could imagine what the people of Keadue would say. But she set me thinking about my real feelings, as opposed to the reflected pride I felt when Keadue won the award. Perhaps, for a farming centred community, the place was just, a little too smothered in window boxes and bedding plants. Two fountains? And an O'Carolan memorial park through which visitors strolled without taking their hands out of the pockets of their shorts. Potentilla bordered paths lit by stunted carriage lamps climbing a hill to nowhere. A fake sweat house.
Until Eva said it, the effect Keadue had on me was like a mystery virus, a case of Non Specific unEase. But now that, I was alert to the symptoms of remembered a similar unease walking about Temple Bar in Dublin, and again when I noticed the changes in Galway, especially about the old Quay Street district. A feeling brought about by changes that embellished but did not enhance time won character smothered by modern ornament, with a shallow pretence of original function. It takes time to get things right, but these cosmetic daubings over a weathered beauty, the insidious phoniness of it all, would equally appal my friend Eva.
On the outskirts of Keadue I stopped with Eva at a cast iron pump newly done in a jacket of green paint, mounted on a restored stone plinth and bordered with wallflowers. The sign said "Nanny's Well". But our suspicions were aroused. I tested the handle and felt only the hollow rattle of a disconnected mechanism. No water poured.