Not happy, I started from Ballybunion with those 15 miles across country before me. It seemed strange that so progressive a township, with its golf course and its greyhound race track, should be approached by ways so devious and vile. I came out into the open country and found a tarred road dead straight for nine miles to Listowel. It's a pity I missed this coming out, and how I missed it coming out I don't know.
At Castleisland I went wrong for the first time. It was bound to happen sooner or later, and it certainly did happen this time. "Turn to the left by all that hay, and straight on for Cork," said the aged villager. "Straight on for Cork" represented as the outcome of "turning to the left by all that hay" proved to be a wretched exaggeration. I crashed and bumped over a wide and awful mountain road for hours and hours and hours. Then the sky turned jet black, and it began to snow so heavily that the windscreen wiper jammed. The snow blew in between the hood and the top of the side curtains and, in a mild kind of convulsion, I began to cough and sneeze and groan and moan and curse the aged and (now discovered to be) malicious villager.
Some consolation was derived from passing a stout man in a bowler hat and a Ford: for civilisation is never very far away from stout men in bowlers and Fords; but it was far enough to mean another half hour's driving over that terrible road. Suddenly then the loose stones were replaced by smooth concrete, and quickly I came to what I imagine must have been Boher. Here I contracted an alliance with a man wearing the smallest spectacles in the world. The lenses were the size of halfpennies.
I asked him which was the way to Cork. "Straight on," he said, "and if you're going to Kanturk I'll come with you." He put a kind of folding canvas stool, and a white boot box tied with string into the back of the car, and stepped in beside me. With Kanturk he had me guessing; but I assumed it was on my way. At the direction of the man with the smallest spectacles in the world we turned off the steam-rolled road into a laneway.
I discovered that my companion believed I had business in Kanturk. However, why he thought I had business in Kanturk, I do not know. I had not as yet mentioned Kanturk and actually I had never heard of Kanturk. Business and Kanturk to my mind was a contradiction in terms, but to Kanturk we were going to go. He was a little mad.
Around Ballybunion I had had some experience of bad roads and I had just come over a particularly miserable bit; but nothing I had as yet found could touch the goat track we were travelling now. On a strip less shattering than usual I quickened to 15 miles an hour.
" 'Tis a fast car," said the man with the smallest spectacles in the world, and you couldn't tell if he was laughing. In the middle of an especially desolate rabbit run he left me. "Three English miles on and you'll trot into Kanturk," he said in farewell. "English miles," he repeated as he climbed over a hedge and disappeared. I was well rid of him.
Kanturk, three English miles on, turned out to be a large and prosperous town, and I found my way through its busy streets with difficulty; but from Kanturk to Cork is one of the finest motor roads in Ireland. Every corner that might be considered in the least dangerous is marked with white lines and whitewashed tar barrels, and the surface is almost flawless. The fire-engine flew, 55 to 60 is safe and comfortable - but then the door on my side began to swing open every time I went round a left-hand bend.
I found out that my golf bag was acting as a battering ram, and for 15 minutes I struggled with it one arm behind my back. At the corners I gave up the fight temporarily, held on to the door with my left hand, and steered with the right. This procedure was consistently terrifying, but it is curiously difficult to make a stop when you're driving fast. I entered the outskirts of Cork considerably shaken, and in this condition was no way fitted to withstand the onslaught of the city.
Coming pretty well off the bogs the huge buses, the gigantic shops with their glittering loads of rich goods, the fashionable crowds, the theatres, the cinemas overawed me. I felt as if I had been living on tea and potatoes in a mud hut since birth - and looked it. I modified my agricultural appearance as much as possible, and then, speechlessly excited, prepared to go to a moving picture palace. This was seeing life. It was Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in Top Hat; and seriously I had forgotten that such sophisticated amusement existed. I watched and listened spellbound. The climax to this sybaritic evening was dinner in a kind of leather armchair by a huge fire, listening to dance music broadcast from London. All the hours I had spent on wild, lonely roads were gone and forgotten.
In the morning I was brought the breakfast menu and the newspaper in bed. More of that sort of thing and my ordinary life in Dublin would have seemed crude and raw.
At Little Island Golf Club spring had returned and the professional, Higgins, and I began our round in the best of spirits. He had a four at the first, and I scraped a five. At the next I holed a chip for a three, and he sank his putt from the very edge of the green to halve. At the third he holed his chip for a two, and mine staggered round the edge, just failing to drop.
We walked to the fourth tee with our mouths slightly open, and a faraway look in our eyes. From the fourth to about the ninth, however, Little Island does not allow itself to be ill-treated. The course winds in and out through a vast quarry, with horrifying granite escarpments all around you. At about the sixth I hit rather a low drive slightly to the left. It struck a wall of rock, and came back about a hundred yards. Total profit 15 yards. Some of the carries appear impossible, and might be impossible in any kind of wind.
Higgins, however, was going on undisturbed with a series of entirely effortless twos, threes and fours. With a kind of toy limbershaft driver he was pitching his drives outside mine, which all had scuttled about 10 yards or so. He must have averaged about 300 yards off the tee that morning. I have never seen such golf.
After the ninth the course turns into open meadows and there is a good deal of room for those who are trying to out-drive Higgins. There is, however, a lot of long hitting to be done, and the bunkering is skilful. Little Island, indeed, is a very attractive golf course, and the greens would make your mouth water - if anybody's mouth could water at the sight of greens. Here it is really possible to stroke the putts, unlike the explosion shot you have to play on most inland courses.
We came to the 18th, and Higgins wanted a four to complete the entire course in 64 shots - 64 shots! I ploughed along behind him level fours, hopelessly out of it. It was something of an occasion this; for the unofficial course record stands at 65. We were both well up the middle with our drives and both took too long over the next ones. Higgins finished up short on the left, and I was in the bunker guarding the green on the right. With his limbershaft putter Higgins lipped the hole from 20 yards, and tapped the ball in with the back of his stick for the new record. I didn't bother much about my own after that, and I hope that the course record at Little Island remains for ever at 64 - as it inevitably must.
