As the miles and the hours pass, I realize that we are not going to ask each other’s names, or tell them. He says, So you’re going to smoke city. It is the first time I sense even a remote hostility toward England. I say, Yes, we have several missions there. A pause. I ask whether he takes a ferry from Achill Island. He says, There is a bridge. I ask whether the truck is his. He says, I wish it were. He says he has been a member of his union forty years, and that he will never consent to drive only eight hours on the nights he drives. How many hours does he like to drive, usually? I ask. He says, As many as I can. I think of the talk, at the Waltons’, about the Irish working man. Point, set, and match. I know I will not be able to offer him money when I leave his truck (he has said he will not drive me into Dublin, but leave me at a bus stop, on the outskirts, much closer to the airport, where I can catch a bus direct; more about this, in due course, but I believe him, naturally); and I’ve wondered how I’m going to thank him. Thinking now along the lines of my profession, I know I’m going to say: I hope we meet again and that I can do him a favor someday; but also, especially, God bless you. He asks why I don’t take a little time off, this morning, and have a look at Dublin. I say, But I would miss my flight, and miss seeing my brother. A long silence. He asks something about my friends beyond Castlebar, and my answer makes no sense even to me. As we approach Dublin, and the sun is just rising at the outskirts, he talks about the time it would take to drive me to the airport, direct, in all that traffic. And there does start to be a lot of traffic. At last, he drops me at a bus shelter. He hands me down my bags. I say thank you. I add, God bless you. He drives off.
There are three young people standing in that bus shelter. I ask, Do all the buses from here go to the airport? And with that obdurateness, satisfaction, even mockery, they say, These buses don’t go to the airport. You’ll have to go into Dublin for a bus to get there; it’s the other way. And they exchange looks. I am a little stunned by this. I say, Shall I catch a bus from here to Dublin, then? And they say, That’s what you’ll have to do. One of the girls adds, If they’re not full. She starts to flag down a bus, which is just coming. It doesn’t stop, and she says, with great satisfaction, That one’s full. We wait. I see, by some miracle, a black car that appears to be a taxi, coming from the direction the lorry driver and I have come from. I say, I guess I’d better try and get a cab then, and wave to him. By another miracle, he pulls over and he has no passenger. I ask how much it will be to the airport. He says six or seven pounds. It barely crosses my mind to wonder whether the truck driver can have been mistaken, about the direction of the airport, about the itinerary of the buses; to wonder also why he did not take me, at least, into Dublin. But he is, by then, still so much my friend that I just have to assume it was a mistake of some sort, and perhaps it was. I don’t believe it was. But, whatever his errand or intention may have been, he stopped for me. He didn’t have to. It prolonged his work day. Work night. He stopped for me. And whatever he may have thought my errand was, well, how else can I put it? I feel warmly toward him still. The fact, however, is that had it not been for that providential, empty cab, I would almost certainly, no, certainly, have missed my plane.
The cab driver says, What time’s your flight? I say, Ten, but I ought to be there by nine-fifteen. I still have to get my ticket and check in. He says, Well, in this traffic, I’d better take you through the park. Where’ve you been staying, then? I say, Just outside of Dublin. A pause. Several minutes pass. I say, Is this way much longer. He says, No, actually it’s shorter. This is clearly untrue, else why would he have said we’ll go through the park, on account of traffic, in the first place. Also, we seem to have run into more traffic than he had expected. He becomes impatient. I say, The park is lovely. He says nothing. I think I ought to ask some sort of question. If I’ve been staying just outside of Dublin, of course, I don’t know what kind of question I would ask. (I suddenly remember a moment with the lorry driver: as we neared Dublin, and the sun was just rising at the outskirts, and it was clear that the time and distance were much longer than I had expected, I realized that I wouldn’t be able to deliver my car at any airport, having left it behind, of course, at Ballyhaunis. Also, that my argument that I planned to pick up that car tomorrow was pretty weak. How, then, explain that, having left a damaged car, in an obscure town, by night, I leave Ireland now, intending, all the same, to return the car to its rental agency by Friday afternoon. A problem, certainly. But I had my new, my religious identity, and suddenly it dawned on me: what I was going to do was to fly out of Ireland under another name. In order not to get caught at this, I would not use my credit card; I would use cash. And I would have to inquire, too, whether one has to show one’s passport, in leaving or in entering Ireland. As I recalled, one did not have to show it. I could pretend I was asking on behalf of someone else. My boss, perhaps, or my brother. If passports were required, I would of course have to risk my own name. Otherwise, I would just pay in cash, under whatever name, and leave. Traveling under a false name might be a crime of some sort. I should make the name as like my own as possible to account for the mistake. Alder, I thought. But then that does happen so often. I was afraid they might make the same mistake and be on the lookout for just such an Alder. So I thought, Hadley, since no one would look under H. And then, in my new hilarity, I thought, Why not Haddock. But that seemed going too far. So I settled, now, on Hadley.) At the airport, the meter registers nine pounds, and of course he had said six or seven. I have a sense now of his feeling somewhat contrite, or perhaps only abashed. But I am not thinking of it. I pay him ten pounds fifty. He stops, turns around, and says, It’s too much. I say, What do you mean? He says, The fare’s only nine pounds. I say, I know, I just wanted you to have something. And he says, God bless you.
Well, the answer to my question, whether one needs to show one’s passport, was no. Then, I asked the agent at the ticket counter whether I could pay in mixed currencies. She said, No, only one. I wanted to make it short. So I thought, What the hell, and gave her my credit card. She saw the discrepancy in names, and said, Oh, I’ve got it wrong. I said, No, the name on my credit card’s my maiden name, It’s a name I sometimes use. And there, of course, was the argument, Do you take me for such a fool as to use my card, and to say I’ve got two names. Then, she said, my computer doesn’t check out the card. I said, What does that mean, do you call them, or what. She said, Do you want me to call them? I said yes. Then it was all right, and she said, Sorry for the delay. I said, I was worried for a minute there. She said, No, sometimes the computer does that; what’s really embarrassing though is when I call them, and they say it’s stolen or in arrears, and they ask me not to give it back. The ticket bought, I went upstairs. Then, the news that the British Airways flight would be late, first ten minutes, then twenty. Hungry now for breakfast, I hesitated at the bar, in the departure lounge. As I counted pence, looking for change to buy some biscuits, a man who stood drinking at the bar turned to me and said, Are you a writer? My heart sank. I said, Does it show. He said, I can tell. This time, something akin, in retrospect, to the argument from What kind of fool occurred to me on their behalf. If they, they were following me, if that man was an agent, would they be such fools, would he be such a fool, as to alert me, to warn me, by addressing to me a question that could only fill me with suspicion and alarm. Well, yes they might, for several reasons: spontaneously, or as a check on my spontaneous reaction to being identified; a ploy to get me to do something, or refrain from doing it. I lurked outside the bar, in the departure lounge a bit, studying that drinking man, wondering whether he was really drinking at this early hour, or just posing as an Irish alcoholic. Security, in these times, would surely require agents at all Irish airports, watching for bombs, guns, fugitives, aliases, God knows what. Perhaps they could not be bothered with mere tortfeasors like myself. Not wanting to lurk, however, I walked to a row of chairs, just outside the barred corridor to the chute beyond which there ought to be a plane. There was no plane. Another announcement, saying the flight would be ten minutes later than previously announced. I began to wonder whether I would not do better, after all, on Aer Lingus, whose scheduled departure was now a mere fifteen minutes after the announced time for British Airways. I asked, at the last-minute check-in counter, whether the Aer Lingus flight, which I could plainly see outside, might leave on time and first. The ticket agent, or whatever he was, said, It won’t. So I sat down. I decided to go to the ladies’ room, but there was a row of chairs in front of it, with a board over them, and a sign saying Out of Order. I walked by the men’s room. I saw a door marked with a sign depicting a little man in a wheelchair. I went in. There, with the door half open, was a woman, sitting on the toilet and holding the hand of a small child. I waited outside the door, till they came out. Since the toilet had not been flushed, I thought it was out of order. But, when I pulled the handle, it flushed readily. I went back, resumed my chair in the departure lounge, nearer the chute, and unfolded one of my newspapers.