Driving West In February
I picked up the hire car at Shannon because Shannon was cheaper than Knock by forty euro, and I had not been in the country five minutes before I had begun to do the sums in punts in my head, which was a thing I had not done since I was a girl. The woman at the desk had the slow, unhurried competence of country women who have seen every class of fool come off a plane, and she took my licence and looked at the address I had written down and said, "You're going west, so."
"I am."
"You've a drive ahead of you."
"I know."
"The N67 is closed at Kinvara, so you'll want the inland road."
She drew me a small and unnecessary map on the back of the rental agreement, because she could see I was not from the mainland anymore but I had been, and a map was the polite thing, a way of saying *you would have known this once*. I thanked her and I took the keys and I walked out under the low grey light of a February morning that looked like the evening of a different day.
The car was a Skoda, which was a car I had never driven, and it took me a minute to find the wipers. I sat in it in the car park with the engine running and the heater blowing cold air at my knees and I felt the particular emptiness of having arrived somewhere without yet being anywhere. The radio came on and it was RTÉ Radio One and a man was talking about slurry regulations, and I turned it off and then I turned it back