Bondings Niall Williams and Christine Breen copyright Victoria Mary Clarke 2005

Sometimes it’s hard to believe in love, true love of the lasting kind.    It’s easy to see why we buy into the idea of romantic love, as children, when the fairytales have happy-ever-after endings.  But as we grow up, we are exposed to the harsh reality of marriages ending, sometimes with a husband trading in his wife for a younger model, sometimes with her running off with his friend, sometimes with people who once loved everything about each other not being able to think of a single thing they like about each other. Even Brad and Jen, the world’s most perfect couple, hit the relationship rocks. 
I’m never all that surprised to hear of such things.  What does surprise me is when I encounter a real life happy marriage, of the lasting kind.  One like that of Christine Breen and Niall Williams, who , have travelled up from their idyllic cottage in Clare, to promote Christine’s new book ‘So Many Miles to Paradise.’  This is a highly unusual pair, because both are writers and not only can they live and work under one roof without killing each other, but they have succeeded in writing four books together, about their life. Occasionally you come across artists or musicians who manage to live and also work together, but never have I come across two people so harmoniously matched that they can write books together.
Niall met Christine in the canteen at UCD, where they were both studying literature.  But Niall was the kind of loner who usually buried his head in a book, while he ate his lunch.  Not at all the kind of chap to approach girls, even if, like Christine, they were stunningly beautiful.  It required the intervention of a mutual friend, for the couple to get together.
‘Chris was having the all-American lunch of a yoghurt and an apple,’  Niall says.  ‘While I was having the all-Irish lunch of chips and sausages.’
‘Had you seen me before?’  Chris asks.
‘No, but I was impressed,’ he laughs.  ‘But if it wasn’t for that guy, we wouldn’t have met.  I would have been afraid.  I was an Irish twenty one year old!’
Obviously this means that there is hope for the shy people who don’t have the nerve to approach the opposite sex, I say.
‘I have spent a lot of my time writing about Fate and Chance and whether things are planned or co-incidental,’ Niall says.  ‘Many things in my life have had a kind of design and meeting Chris was part of that.  Also it turned out that she was staying in a house directly across the street from my family home!’
In the traditional manner, Niall offered to walk Chris home and carried her books.
‘It was raining,’ Niall adds.  ‘It was always raining.  And Chris had a bicycle, but she always walked it.’
For their first date, he took her to the theatre, and after wards for a hot chocolate at the Gresham.  He thinks he kissed her, but not in the Gresham, she’s not so sure.
‘I don’t think you kissed me that first night.’
‘I did kiss you and I brought you home.  And then you made an alarming visit to my house when I wasn’t there!  She stopped by and brought carrot cake.  Carrot cake had never been heard of in my family.  This signalled an exotic and different intent.  I can still remember seeing that carrot cake in the fridge where it sat, uneaten.’
The couple quickly established a friendship.
 ‘There were long conversations about books and long walks around suburban Dublin.  Neither of us had any money.’  Niall says.
‘You liked the way I looked at things,’ Christine remembers.  ‘ You said I was an artist.  That was the nicest line anyone had ever said to me.’
The couple both got jobs in New York, where they married.  But they weren’t entirely satisfied.
‘Our lives weren’t in our control,’ Niall says.  ‘We were on the commuter train and we decided to step off.’
 Rather than settle for yuppie-dom, they made the surprising decision to relocate to a remote cottage in Clare that had once belonged to Chris’s grandfather.  It was a decision which could have been disastrous, because it meant being totally isolated and suffering the trials of Irish rural life, including the constant rain, a potato blight and being totally broke, all of this while trying to be creative and write masterpieces.  I point out that it could have ended in tears.
‘It was so romantic,’ Chris says.  ‘It was like playing house.  We had to learn to plant potatoes and look after cows.  It was an adventure.’
‘It was a tremendous risk,’ Niall admits.  ‘It was a culture shock.  But we bought a big journal and each person filled in a page, every day.  And that became our first book.  And that did very well, allowing us to carry on living there.’
The couple were asked to write a second book, and a third and a fourth.  So they were able to do up the cottage and buy a car.  Niall’s writing career then took off, with his first novel ‘Four Letters of Love’.  The hardest part of their life was discovering that they couldn’t have children.  But they very quickly adopted two, Deirdre and Joseph, who are now teenagers.  Everything seemed idyllic.  But the family were adventurous, so in 2002, the four of them took off on a journey that took nine months and took in New York, Seattle, the Pacific coast, LA and then Costa Rica, Peru, Bolivia and Chile, before heading to New Zealand, Australia, Bali, Singapore, and back through Germany, Czechslovakia, and France.  The journey forms the basis of Christine’s book, which is a delightful read.  What makes the book fascinating and utterly readable is partly Christine’s honesty.  These are not back packers and they aren’t remotely travel hardened.  They take the train up the Inca trail to Machu Picchu, while others hike and they stay in a posh hotel instead of a hostel.  They rent villas on the internet before leaving home, instead of taking a chance on camping and the like.  They travel in comfort and occasionally in luxury.  There are enough books for the intrepid, this is one for the timid.  What is also fascinating about the book is that Christine is honest about the stuff that most of us edit out of our fabulous holidays. The loneliness, the homesickness, the discomfort.  The altitude sickness, the smelly hotels and the annoying market traders.  And the disappointment of arriving at a place like Lima and wanting to stay in your hotel because it’s just not as pretty as you imagined it would be.  If there is a message in this book, it is that getting away from it all wont actually make you any happier than you would have been, had you stayed at home, because you take your attitude with you.
  Even still, coming home was difficult for Christine.
‘The other three are Irish,’ she says.  ‘But I’m from New York, so coming back to Ireland isn’t really coming home in the same way.’
In a few years time, the children will both have left school.
‘Then we’ll be ready for another adventure!” Chris says.
‘I would love for us to do a travel book together,’ Niall agrees.  ‘So we’ll see what happens.’
Despite spending all their time together, there is nothing that Niall and Chris don’t like about each other.
 ‘No,’ Niall says.
‘Niall’s a wonderful person,’ Chris says.  ‘He’s faultless!’
But there was a time when Chris was attracted to a different kind of man.
‘Niall was kind of scrawny, and he had long greasy hair,’  she says.  ‘My parents were surprised because my brothers were all models and Niall doesn’t look anything like the guys I had previously dated.  But I had to take my blinkers off. And I’m glad I did.  I think it was my calling to be with him and for us to be parents to Deirdre and Joseph.’
‘So Many Miles to Paradise’ is published by Town House

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