But, as for the rest, I find it impossible to read. Too fucking painful, if you want to know the truth. In the end this became the final title:
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF DOUGHBOY McBLOB
A NOVEL
by
Joseph M. Tallon
‘You know, I’ve been thinking!’ said Mrs McBlob to herself. ‘I’ve been worrying myself about nothing, maybe! Perhaps when I get home the neighbours won’t be saying: “That old Mrs McBlob! She’ll be coming home soon with a heap of junk wrapped up in her arms! A pile of old rubbish put in her by her husband, that no good, round-shaped human that goes by the name of Jamesy Tallon. A shawlful of blobby old rubbish that will end up just like its father, no good for anything only playing cards and drinking and riding anything that comes about the town. The same as he did to Mona that tossed herself in the reservoir.’”
She paused and placed her index finger on her chin, striking an attitude of quizzical contemplation.
‘How am I to know for certain that those are the words they’ll use?’ she asked herself. “They might not say those things at all. They might say absolutely nothing at all along the lines of that big fat lump” or “stupid big hunk of lard letting on to be a baby”! For all I know they might say the nicest things before looking into the cradle to smile. And say: “He’s a lovely wee baby, this ba you’ve brought home. After all you’ve been through, you’ve done Scotsfield proud in the end! Why we can’t wait now just to see him grow up and roam about in his lovely wee shirt and tie.”
‘Yes,’ she heard other neighbours say, ‘in a gorgeous starched white shirt and a lovely little neatly knotted red tie. Who’s to say that he won’t be like that? And why wouldn’t he be when there’s nobody to make him go bad! In other words, now that that other useless fucker’s long gone, on a slow boat to China with his fat arse slung behind him!’
‘Yes!’ she heard a familiar voice agree — it belonged to one of the neighbours but she couldn’t quite place it — ‘Daddy Doughboy gone to sea, never again to come back and see me — not that we care, the ne’er-do-well auld cunt!’
When all those thoughts that had begun to gather gradually in her mind had consolidated themselves as she sat there in her pink lambs-wool bedjacket, Mrs Dough was as a woman transformed.
Even all the nurses would soon be remarking on it. ‘Do you know,’ they would say over tea during lunchbreak, ‘I can’t get over this fantastic new attitude that Mrs Dough has begun to manifest. When she came in here first she’d a face on her that would sharpen a hatchet! Looking at you this way, looking at you that way, thinking: Youse all hate me and call me Mrs Stink! Don’t think I don’t know that that’s what youse’ve been saying! All because I have a little bit of pudge around my hips and my thighs and because I’ve lately succumbed to the nerves and have been scoffing far too much porridge!’
‘And us not saying a word!’ the nurses would protest, with expressions of the purest distilled innocence. Before adding: ‘Sure it doesn’t matter now, for all of that is past. Now you wouldn’t know her if you happened to skip past her bedside. Why, she’s a woman aglow, that Mrs McDough! And the way she looks at her baby! Do you think you’ll catch her grimacing now, grinding her teeth and muttering darkly: “He hasn’t a chance! All he’ll ever do from the day we leave the hospital is get fatter and fatter and stink the place out! Baba McStink the stinky baba-pie! That’s all he’ll ever be known as!’”
You most certainly would not, and all of the nursing staff knew it. As indeed how could they not when they stand there at the foot of her bed, sighing almost dreamily as they attend to her exclamations. Mrs Dough-Dough in excelsis!
‘I love him!’ she cries as the baby googles there like mad. ’I have nobody to blame for my silly old nerves, only myself this past while, going and imagining all those silly stupid things! Why, my neighbours all along were the best in the world! It was Daddy Blob Jamesy who was to blame for it all! He’s the one that did it! It was him going away made me think all them things and then start shaking with the cold in my own wee private kitchen, even on the hottest of summer days!
‘Just like he did with Mona! He did the very same to her! Sure isn’t that why they called her “The Jelly”? After she took to shaking so bad that they started to forget what she’d ever been called and now said when she’d appear: “Here comes The Jelly! Yes! It’s the human Chivers Jelly! Get into Austie’s, Miss Galligan, and purchase yourself a gin! No — ten! Ten gin and tonics for Jellygirl here! And then let us see how a lady can shake!’”
‘Now I can see that I was wrong,’ she continues, ‘I will take pains to rectify matters. The first thing I do when I arrive home to Scotsfield will be to go and visit Mona. I’ll bring baba down as well, wrapped up in a nice warm shawl, and also I’ll bring a pressie! “Here, Mona,” I’ll say, “we should never have fought, but hence we never shall again.” And it’s all because of little ba here, whose magic makes a dark place bright. Isn’t that right, young ba? Isn’t that true, goo? And then we’ll get out the wicker basket and trot off to the reservoir. But not to kill ourselves though! There to enjoy the beautiful Picnic of Dreams. The most beautiful little munch munch that ever was held, with toasties and bun-buns and lots of soft-boiled eggs! Isn’t it true, wee goo? That’s what we’re going to do! You and me and Mona and all our friends! Come on now, goo! You know that it’s true!’
And, some days later, very true indeed it was as her little babalicious slept in her arms, before waking up to see his neighbours, all trooping in one by one to pay homage to this new arrival. Mammy Dough had just been out at the clothes line when Mrs O’Hanlon from number six spotted her. ‘Ah, hello there’, said Mrs O’Hanlon. ‘And what’s this I hear is inside? A little bird has been telling me that there’s a new addition in yonder kitchen!’
If there had been quite a few sunny days in the autumn of 1960, there were none that matched this one, the sun that provided the light in which it swum shining right there out of Mrs Dough’s eyes.
‘Yes,’ she beamed, ‘he’s right inside and awaiting your generous appraisal!’
‘Excellent!’ chirped Mrs O’Hanlon, as they were joined by friends and colleagues.
‘Do you know what it is?’ said one of them, twinkling. ‘It must be like winning the Irish Hospital Sweepstakes!’
‘Oh now indeed!’ said Mammy McDough as she wiped her hands and, proud as a kiddie on a glorious Christmas morning, proceeded to lead them all inside.
The first thing they noticed was the beautiful cradle. It had been purchased by Sally Stink, her considerably younger sister (but, ironically, if such a prospect be humanly conceivable, almost twice as fat and at least a half time again as stinky as her sibling), and had been very expensive. But well worth it now, thought Doughboy’s mammy privately, now that the nerves were over and everything around her transformed. In fact, she allowed, nothing less would have actually done her now. It was the very least she expected at this point, an expertly carved and handsomely decorated little cradle!
After all, she thought, it won’t be very long before he’s running around in his white shirt and red tie, making me proud every minute of the day! So I have to make sure that he gets a good start! I have to ensure my boy’s encouraged and thinks well of himself from the very first day! So he can be such a proud example!
A hum of happiness seemed to fill the kitchen. One of the men said: ‘Will you get out of the road there, ma’am, and let us in to see wee baba babbikins! Do you think us men are not interested in young fellows the like of this? Well, let me inform you, missus, that we are! And it won’t be long before Junior’s above there on that football field scoring goals and points! Along with me and the chaps! Am I right there, boys, do you think, when I say that?’
A man called Owen Dunne seemed happiest of all. He lived in number two. His expectant smile gave the impression of stretching right across the kitchen as his lips retracted to their former state of repose before gradually, almost sensuously, pursing to f
orm a smallish circle out of which bright polished notes the size of little diamonds now trilled as if in an effort to form an extemporized tune, along the lines, perhaps, of ‘Here Comes the Baba!’, although, of course, it was actually them — the neighbours, that is — they were making the shape of a conga now! — who were coming in to see him!
The Sun Goes Out
Mrs O’Hanlon was first to vomit.*
It shot out of her like a lasso and hit the wall directly beneath the wedding photograph which depicted Mr and Mrs McDough standing outside the church just minutes after they had been married. It made a loud smack. After that it was Mrs Greene’s turn. She came tumbling across the floor with her bony hand clamped tightly over her mouth.
‘I suppose the funny part,’ Owen Dunne was often to say later, ‘was us thinking that what we’d see would be grand!’
And when she heard that, Mrs O’Hanlon would ruefully shake her head and say that, yes, they had been fools.
‘Because then,’ she’d continue, ‘when you see what he really looks like, it makes it harder then to accept. But Jesus, Mary and Joseph, did you ever in all your life? I mean, deep down, I was a little bit prepared … I mean, I had my suspicions …!’
‘But a roly-poly pile of … not to mention the great big stink!’
‘Oh man, dear but the father would be proud! He’d be proud of what we seen there dumped in that cradle! A steaming pile of soggy old pastry going around masquerading as a baby!’
‘When you think of it, then, wasn’t Galligan quare and lucky to do what she did?’
‘Which? Drowning herself in the reservoir, you mean? Or aborting the little child?’
‘Well, both I suppose you’d say, really. But I meant, really, killing the infant.’
Owen Dunne nodded.
‘Aye. I dare say you’re right there, missus,’ he said. ‘If that’s all Mrs Blob could manage, can you imagine what they’d have pulled out of Chivers? Can you imagine what she’d have produced?’
‘A great big enormous heap composed entirely of wobbling jelly!’ retorted Mrs O’Hanlon. ‘That’d leave old Dough in the halfpenny place’!
‘A giant big ba sitting there on a plate which you could only call The Jellybaby King!’
Mrs O’Hanlon sighed with resignation.
‘I suppose what this means now is that the nerves will be back,’ she said, ‘which in a way is probably all for the better. You wouldn’t want her to start raising her hopes and then ending up all disappointed!’
‘That’s right!’ Owen Dunne agreed. ‘That way she’d deal with it better, knowing there’s no use worrying about young Blob or Stink or whatever she calls him!’
‘Knowing that no matter how hard she tries or whatever it is she might do to try and improve him, that in the end he will always be that — a great big humming mass of mush on a plate!’
‘Or jelly or whatever!’
‘Exactly!’
They were right, of course, and no one knew it better than Mrs Blob herself, who, although only a few days had elapsed, could not believe she had ever permitted those original ‘hospital’ thoughts to occur. Falling over a few saucepans and plates (she had taken too many tablets) she could not stop herself from giggling as she exclaimed, shakily: ‘Imagine me thinking like that! Well, honest to God I’m a fool! Imagining the world had become all bright and gleaming and that Stinky in there was somehow special! I’ll soon give him special — with this wooden spoon!’
Which was exactly what she did — and the yowls of Doughboy, with his pitiful little shrieks!
‘Stop that!’ demanded his mammy. ‘Stop your yowling or you’ll get another one and more! For you’ll not turn out like him! You needn’t think you’ll make us ashamed! Do you hear me? You hear what I’m saying, Stinkbag?’
Then, when she was exhausted pounding the bedclothes of the cradle, Mrs McDough just fell down and wept. A large tear cracked on the lino and some of its saltwater dribbled on to her lips. Which she didn’t mind all that much because all she had to do to get rid of it was flick it with her fingers. Not once or twice but three times, in fact, and finding that she liked it so much deciding to continue, locating a steady rhythm and then continuing to play a little tune.
One that moved along nicely as some words formed themselves in her mind. Words that included: ‘Has the sun gone out? Will it stay that way? Has the sun gone out? Will it stay that way?’, a riddle to which she herself provided the answer by doubling over and crawling across the lino in the general direction of the scullery as Blob of Stink (now urine-saturated from head to toe!) kept on howling and wailing as his mother repeated: ‘Yes it has! Oh, blub blub, yes, oh yes, it has!’
The sun has fucking gone out all right.
Through the Park, Bonesy!
Hilarious indeed. Your mother on the floor with her mouth covered in spit, crawling around in a nightmare. Rib-tickling ‘puckishness’ that will ‘have you in stitches’ as the Sunday Telegraph attested.
One of the reasons, no doubt, why Bonehead has accorded these chapters pride of place in his collection, marking them thus: ‘!!’, and allotting them their own special plastic pocket, with each section numbered as well as labelled!
‘Don’t take it all so serious, Bone!’ I told him one day, trying to communicate how I’d been feeling of late. ‘After all, you were the one who said art didn’t matter, that day you came to visit me in the caravan! You were the one who insisted it was all worthless!’
‘Ah, but that was different, Joesup!’ he says. ‘Look at the way things has changed-ed since then! That was before your book was a success! You’ve showed them now just what can be done! You keep on like this and you’ll change the frigging world! Because you speak for us! You speak for the Joey Tallons and Boneheadses! It’s not like it was way back in them days! We’ve a stake in the world now, and we’re going to see it changed-ed! No, you are, Joesup! And I’m going to help you! Pat Joe Stokes will help you, by Christ!’
I first became aware of this dynamic new attitude a day or two after the Doughboy launch. ‘I know we disgraced-ed ourselves, Joesup,’ he said, ‘but now’s the time to make a fresh start! Now that you’re an author and famous book-writer, you will have to start acting responsible! Remember, they’ll be expecting another novel from you, and you will have to take yourself in hand if you’re going to get down to writing it! What you’re going to need is, Joesup, some organization!’
I had to laugh when I heard that. ‘Aye, Bonehead,’ I says, acerbically — I was still fizzing with a hangover — ‘but not just organization! Total organization!’
‘You’re abso-ma-lutely right!’ he says, not having a clue what I was on about and haring around the place like a butler demented.
It wasn’t long after that that the ‘accent’ appeared, with him answering the phone and taking down messages: ‘Yes, sir! I shall see that Mr Tallon receives it,’ fulsomely assuring them he’d attend to things ‘promptly’!
All I can say about that is, I wish I were him. To possess even a fraction of this steadfast orientation he’s somehow channelled into.
‘I can’t believe it, Joesup!’ he announced to me one night. ‘If only the fuckerses in Mountjoy could see us now! Do you think they’d be able to believe it, Joesup? Well, that’s tough! They should have writ their own fucking books! Oh but, Joey, wasn’t I the awful eejit, saying writing was a cod? And I definitely admit that I said it! I acknowledged-ed it. Is that the right word, Joesup?’
That’s another habit ‘recently acquired’ — slipping in words he’d never have used before in a fit!
‘Who’d have believed it, a pair of cowboys like us!’ he laughs as he wrings his hands, then goes off again, chuckling, his echo following him all down the hall. ‘Fantastic! Fucking absomalutely fantastic!’
He’s going to be crazy about me taking the car without telling him, I know that. But don’t fret, Bone, I’ve been into the bank and sorted everything out, so you’ve no need to worry, there’ll be no
problems there. Why, with all these royalties coming in (Doughboy’s exhausted its third printing and there’s talk of them doing a fourth) you should have more than enough left over to buy yourself a new motor and employ a chauffeur!
I’ll never forget the first time we clapped eyes on it: an ice-cream pink 1976 Pontiac Ventura, with radial-tuned suspension and a Landau top.
‘Well, fuck me, Joey!’ he says. ‘Look at that! One hundred and thirty fucking horsepower! Oh, Joesup, we’ve got to have it!’
‘That’s right!’ I remember laughing. ‘Who knows where that beauty’d take you!’
‘Aye,’ he replies, ‘California or some of these places, maybe!’ completely oblivious, of course, to my reaction when he said it as he climbed in behind the wheel of the Ventura. I flopped down in the passenger seat beside him and grudgingly harrumphed: ‘Through the park then, Bonesy!’ and I swear to fuck he near pissed himself laughing as he turned the key in the ignition!
The Decision
What you never ever think about when you’re considering the inevitable — too consumed by dread to allow it, I suppose — are the advantages which may derive from the simple taking of the decision, but which don’t really assert themselves properly until it is an actual fait accompli. Most notable amongst them, perhaps, the almost instantaneous sedation of the hyperactive vocative, those obstinately persistent self-interrogations now — with the fiercest of efficiency —contained. The ‘why’ of this, the ‘where’ of that. The nebulous seventies’ blatherings of Mr Hesse and his would-be insightful ‘ancient’ friends.
Another great thing is the sheer clarity of thinking that somehow seems to blossom once an unfaltering resolution has been firmly established, precipitating a concomitant equanimity that in turn generates a precision and exactness of purpose that empowers you to impose on disjointed ideas a shape and logic which before would have been pretty much unthinkable. The fact that drugs and alcohol have been absent for some considerable time (i.e. two entire days!) is not, it is to be assumed, without significance.