THIS LIFE: BY NUALA O’CONNOR

A WHITE SEAT IBIZA, second, third, maybe fourth-hand, who knows? My first car. It’s an absolute banger from day one but, as with all fresh purchases, I’m in love. Who cares if the rear passenger doors won’t open and never will? Kids are good climbers, they can clamber over the front seats. Who cares if the heating vents blow cold? We live in a temperate country.

Does it really matter that the engine is louder than a herd of Massey Fergusons? And surely the local kids’ mockery of my Ibiza, and my bunny-hopping driving skills, can’t last forever?

Truly, I can forgive all quirks until the day that the driver-side door begins to develop a will of its own. The problem is, I’m newly married and broke. At 30 years old, I’m also new to driving.

I grew up in Dublin and took two buses to school. Like most families at the time, my parents were on-again, offagain car owners, they weren’t the natural part of life that they are now. Every few years my father would buy a car or van – there were nine of us in total to squeeze into a vehicle – but there never seemed a need for us kids to learn to drive. We had two operational legs apiece and a good bus service.

But, at 30, having spent years walking my son to his crèche, then school, soaked under Galway downpours, it was time to learn to drive. My new husband – another non-driver – and I took the plunge together and we bought our little white Seat Ibiza to start the entire project. My sister said, ‘Only bad drivers own white cars’ and, well, for a while, she wasn’t wrong.

I told the driving instructor on day one that I had literally never been behind a steering wheel. He chose not to believe me and then screamed when the car would veer sideways or I panicked because I failed to co-ordinate wheel, indicators, wipers and the whole shebang. There so many things to press, to remember, to control!

I was a danger to the residents of Rahoon but my instructor simply didn’t believe that I could have reached 30 and not driven even a little. The lessons turned into a stress festival and the Ibiza sat in our driveway more than it took to the road, so the instructor and I parted ways. The next one was more patient though he did ask warily, at our first lesson, ‘Where did you get the car?’

No one wants to own a banger as their first car. I’d spent much of my childhood hanging around my bachelor uncle’s house and he was, if not quite a petrol-head, a self-taught whizz with engines. He only liked to work with the best of vehicles, preferably vintage, preferably European.

When he brought my sister and I on Sunday spins, we cruised through Dublin in a stately bottle-green Daimler, or a sporty MGB GT, that he had lovingly restored. These cars had leather and walnut interiors, they smelled good, they felt good to sit in, and I always swore that my first car would be a baby blue, soft top MGB GT, just like one that Uncle John owned. But then, of course, babies and practicality, and funds eaten by a wedding and a mortgage and, enter our Seat Ibiza.

Being a car with a certain vintage, the Seat has no power steering and the car feels heavy to manoeuvre. My instructor says this is a good thing, that I’ll be able to drive anything. My confidence blooms. But soon the Ibiza’s range of quirks expands. The doors won’t lock any more. That’s OK – the car is precious to us but, with its age and boxy looks, it’s not exactly covetable, no one’s going to steal it.

Then the passenger-side door jams. The only way to get in is through the unlockable driver’s door, unless you fancy going through the boot. We can handle this – everyone enters by the driver’s door with a series of odd, over-the-handbrake wiggles and grunts. But the driver’s door wants in on the drama so it begins – ghostlike, wantonly – to open as we drive. There I am, proceeding up Bishop O’Donnell Road, and the car door is slowly, determinedly gaping wide. What to do? A trip to the mechanic is out of the question, the honeymoon loan needs repaying and the mortgage chews up our wages.

My solution? I tie a pair of tights to the inside handle of the driver door and I fasten the tights to the seatbelt. What can go wrong? I drive down Seamus Quirke Road, door secure, myself smug. As I sail around the Browne Roundabout I feel a sudden tug, an elongation from my middle – the tights are stretching, the door is gaping, wide, wider, the tights continue to extend, long now as a ballerina’s legs. I keep my eyes to the road, I grab frantically at the door handle and cling on to it for the rest of the journey.

It is time, I now know, to say a fond adiós to our beloved Ibiza.