Then they had lots of wine to drink and they met a man and a woman who said:
—Will you say awfter again for us, please.
So they did. They said:
—After we leave here, we’re going back to the hotel.
They thought this was a great laugh altogether and said:
—Have some more wine.
—Aaahfter! they kept saying, but they couldn’t say it as good as Pats and Mammy and Nabla.
Then it was a taxi and home to bed for everyone. Mammy was wearing a nightdress she had bought in Janet Reger’s. She said,
—I must look a sight, but Pats said,
—You do not, Mammy, you look radiant.
—Oh Pats, she said, and Pats said:
—Mammy, do you know what I’m going to do with the money, I’m going to bring you on a world cruise. She said,
—And Nabla as well? But Pats said:
—No, Mammy, just you.
Little did he know at that time just how true those fateful words were to prove, for hardly had they gone two miles in Shoots’ hackney car after he had picked them up at Dublin airport (‘There youse are!’ he had cried with a wide sweep of his cap) when a flock of sheep appeared out of nowhere and swept straight across the road.
—Look out! cried Shoots as he spun the wheel. There was a sickening thud and when he came round Pats saw that Nabla was dead.
—Mammy! he cried out.
—Pats! Is that you? she replied.
—Yes, Mammy, it is! he wept, relieved.
The sad part about that accident was that Shoots was killed too.
*
After that, the grief was too much for them to bear. Everywhere they went about the house, they were confronted with memories of Nabla: her forget-me-not pinafore, the holy pictures and her pink squashy house slippers. Despite repeated cancellations, her copy of Woman’s Way continued to arrive like some persecution from beyond the grave. In the end it all became too much for both of them so they sold up everything they owned and moved away from the town.
*
They found Dublin City very much to their liking – except perhaps for the smelly O’Hare family, who became their first neighbours when they lived in temporary rented accommodation on the Miami Towers Estate. There were fourteen of them and four pit-bull terriers – Norman Bates, Pancho, Elvis and Dirty Den. Mr O’Hare worked in the local crisp factory but had been made redundant and turned to selling wellington boots from a stall by the side of the dual carriageway. As he said himself:
—Booted out and sellin’ boots!
Noeleen was the young girl of the family, and a very pretty young lady she was too, if a trifle curt in manner, as Pats discovered one day on his way home from Waterstone’s with a copy of the London Review of Books. He stopped for a moment to chat to her about school and the approaching exams, only to be taken aback when she said:
—Never mind about school – do you want a jump or not?
He demurred and hastened on his way.
Then there was Nialler, who stole cars and raced them up and down the dual carriageway. He had quite a selection in his front garden. Rarely a day passed but he greeted Pats in the traditional manner of the estate:
—Howya, Bukes! I’ll buke your bleedin’ bollix in!
It was just as well none of them could read, Pats would often reflect. He shuddered to think what their reaction might have been if they’d found out just what he’d been up to all those nights with his ear to the wall while they were having their colourful, expletive-speckled family debates; especially when Noeleen got in the family way and it turned out to be Nialler’s! There certainly was a lot of consternation in the abode of the O’Hares that evening! It took Mr O’Hare almost two hours to bear the truth out of the miscreant with the Krooklok.
—Didja?
—Wha?
—You know wha!
—Did I wha’, Da?
—Don’t fukkin’ didja wha’ me!
It got so bad that Mrs O’Hare could bear it no longer and began to fling the remnants of the evening meal – half-eaten batter burgers and sodden chips – at the man she had married in St Anne’s Church, Raheny, twenty-two years before.
—Leave him alone, Da! she snapped, as another salvo whistled past his ear. He wiped the ketchup off his chin with an expansive sweep of his forearm and snarled back at her.
—Don’t hurt the girl, Jim, for the love and honour of St Joseph!
Mr O’Hare landed a punch in the middle of his daughter’s forehead and faced his wife defiantly.
—DON’T FUKKIN’ TELL ME WHAT TO DO! JA HEAR ME, RIGH’?
But happily it was all resolved in the end, with the contrite Nialler being dispatched to the Italia Bar for a dozen stout and some drugs for himself and Noeleen. And, as the singing and dancing started – ‘Here we go! Here we go! Here we go!’ and ‘Olé! Olé! Olé!’ the head of the household was heard to gaily whoop atop the gas cooker – the unfortunate pregnancy was all but forgotten. As Mrs O’Hare put it, after a nip or two of sherry:
—I don’t care if the little fucker has four eyes – he’s still an O’Hare, righ’, Nialler?
And Nialler said:
—Righ’, Ma! as Elvis, Norman Bates, Pancho and Dirty Den sang background vocals to Mr O’Hare’s impromptu Pavarotti.
*
Unfortunately, Mammy and Pats never did get to see the baby as they were notified shortly afterwards that the building work had all been completed and they were free to move into their new sixteen-bedroomed property overlooking the sea in the salubrious suburb of Dalkey in south Dublin. But the story of the wonderful O’Hare family was far from over . . .
For yes – you’ve guessed!
The notification came as before, in a plain white vellum envelope, and it simply stated that Pats’ novel Back of a Lorry – about the trials and tribulations of an ordinary Dublin family – had scooped the Buglass-McKenzie Prize once more. Had things been otherwise, he would have raced back upstairs and cried:
—Mammy! I did it! I won again!
But sadly, not long after they moved into their new home, his mammy began to suffer from pre-senile dementia, and nothing would sway her from the conviction that not only was Pats not her son but that he was, in fact, His Eminence Pope John Paul, the head of the one true Church.
But that is all in the past. It matters little to Pats Donaghy now that the critics champion A Kalashnikov for Shamus Doyle and Back of a Lorry as masterpieces of our time. He is only too aware that it is not a writer’s job to pass comment on his own work. His obligation is to simply carry on and do what it is he was put on this earth to do.
Literary prizegivings are of little consequence to him.
And if perchance his new novel does catch the critical imagination and he finds himself once more gazing upon the variegated splendour of that most wondrous of cities, he will most certainly accept them graciously. But until then there are many exotic and beguiling lands to visit, the world opening like a dazzling oyster before himself and Mammy as they board the vessel which is to take them far from their native shores, to the white, powdered sands of the South Sea Islands, where beneath waving palms on a wickerwork table he shall forge ahead with his latest opus, The Barntrosna Files, in which a shy young man is confronted by a series of events which eventually make him face the truth about himself. A work which may well indeed see him take his place once more, nut brown and monkey-suited, upon that august podium, to make his speech. A night which shall be his crowning glory, for he will have kept his promise to Mammy so many years ago, and all those little tiddles will not have been in vain. But that is all to come, and there is much mango fruit and coconut milk to be consumed between now and then. His typewriter keys clack as baby monkeys shriek and chatter happily as Mammy’s laughter floats on the balmy breeze as she sips mint juleps and arranges audiences with him for favoured villagers. Pats strikes each key singly, meticulously:
It was morning in Barntrosna. Or should I say e
vening. There was rain forecast. ‘I see there’s rain forecast,’ said Mickey Niblett’s mother as she wound the skein of blue wool around her stiff, almost waxen hands that were pointed outwards as if she were pretending she had just caught a large fish, such as a trout. Just then there was a knock at the door. Mickey got up from his chair and smiled as he raised his hand and said: ‘No, Mammy – I’ll get it.’ He had a little difficulty with the front door latch because it was a trifle stiff. But there was no need to worry because Daddy had promised to attend to it when he got home from the fair. At last the door swung open and, to his horror, Mickey found himself shot three times through the head with a .357 Magnum, which is the most powerful handgun in the world. Had he not been wearing his lead-insulated protective helmet, he almost certainly would have died. ‘Phew! That was a close one, Mammy, wasn’t it?’ he said, wiping his perspiring brow. ‘Come here to me, Mickey Niblett, and never mind them would-be assailants or whoever it is they are! Do you hear me? Come away on over here now and give me a kiss, lovey,’ she cried, ‘for you’re the best wee writer in the whole of Barntrosna town!’
The Boils of Thomas Gully
Tom Gully is a farmer from Cloonee, which is a small town-land approximately one mile from the village of Barntrosna. Tom is a very nice man but he is not really what you would call the very attractive film-star type. Which he wishes he were but he knows that it is impossible and has long since resigned himself to the situation. As he says himself: ‘Sure, if I have a few pounds in my pocket and have the couple of pints at night, what’s the use in complaining?’ He is a creature of habit, Tom. Being a farmer, every morning he drives his tractor into the village to leave his milk churns to be collected. Then he goes to the post office to lodge a few shillings into his account and after that it’s into Shamey Henley’s for one or two glasses of stout. That’s all, mind, for there are always plenty of chores to be done in the afternoon – groceries, fertilizer to be purchased, boots to be left into the shoemakers and so on. Then it’s off down the high road for Cloonee once again, with you motoring along in your stuttering old tractor. But at least with a nice warm glow about your person that you didn’t have when you came in. And which you’d need, if your name was Tom Gully, at any rate, because when Tom arrives home and goes inside to his rickety old farmhouse, the very same sentence always falls from his lips: ‘What kind of an eejit am I that I can’t get myself a woman? Everybody else has one!’ Which was not entirely true but there would be no point in disputing it with Tom. It would only end with him slumping into the armchair with his head in his hands, self-consciously tweaking at the boil which had emerged on his forehead at the age of thirty-two, sighing that no matter what you said he hadn’t a woman and that was all that mattered. And not much sign of getting one either. O, there had been times all right when it looked as if his prayers were about to be answered – particularly when the young Cooney one from Longfield Cross had agreed to allow him drive her home – even kiss her indeed! But in the end it had all come to nothing and she had married a McGarry from Kilkeerin and was never seen again. There had been another girl too, a Teresa McMenamin who had the most beautiful hair that Tom Gully had ever seen. Hair so soft and clean and fine that it made him want to almost die, such was the feeling of coarseness and crudity it provoked within him as regards the nature of his own rotund and somewhat unkempt physical aspect. A feeling which he went on to experience on many, many occasions, before Teresa finally announced that she was moving to the city of Dublin to further her nursing career and would be ceasing to return home for weekends. All this made Tom sad. He wondered, was it his boil? Or was it just him? Would I be capable of getting myself a girlfriend if I hadn’t got the boil, maybe? he would often wonder.
Sometimes when that thought occurred to him, he would just sit in the dark and sob like a big girl. All he could see were the shapes of the kitchen utensils on the table and the random items of furniture throughout the room – so shadowy and indistinct that they often made him wonder, would he be like that too, soon? A silhouette sitting on a chair, no longer of this world? And never in all his time on this earth having known the pleasure of a woman? He felt that he was a disgrace and that it was shameful for him to call himself a man, to even think of doing so. Sometimes when he considered this, Tom Gully would cry. Then his dog Napper would come up to him and whimper and he would try to elucidate his troubles for the animal but, try as he might, he could never seem to find the proper words. Which upset him even more. Because he loved Napper. ‘O, Napper,’ he wept one day as he hugged the sad-eyed collie’s tatty fur, ‘I love you so much you’ll never know because I am so useless that the words are all tangled up inside me like briars and I can’t get at them.’
Once or twice, Tom felt like putting an end to the whole thing. ‘It’s a waste of time, that’s what it is,’ he said to himself and paused for a moment to consider the tin of Paraquat weedkiller he knew to be located in the outhouse. But, fortunately, he proceeded no further with this idea, and consequently the following afternoon was to be found sitting, once more, on the high stool in Shamey’s, sipping his stout and wondering, in a chin-scratching moment of philosophy, what for the love of God had gotten into Shamey, the way he had destroyed his good pub. An observation which he didn’t really in his heart and soul believe – had simply said it, in fact, because all the other farmers did. Because, after all, it had to be admitted that the disco (exotically named RA! RA’S!) brought plenty of women from outside and, with whom – if you played your cards right – well, who knew? The old bar was still the same, of course, with all the faded football photos and boxing stars lined up on the walls as they had been for years – but the back lounge? O, for God’s sake, stop! thought Tom to himself, smiling broadly. No wonder he had to be drunk to go into it! They even had films on the walls now (black singers in sunglasses and shiny suits, if you don’t mind!) and lights that made you think you had dust all over your jacket! It was just when Tom was thinking this that out of the corner of his eye he saw something that made him remark – silently of course – to himself: ‘Jeepers! I think there must be something in this stout. Perhaps I’d better lay off it for a while!’
You have to remember, you see, that as yet it was only one thirty in the afternoon! And, although RA! RA’S! was due to open its doors that night, even the wildest women who came into Barntrosna, from Mullingar and various other places, to drink themselves senseless, didn’t usually appear until at least seven thirty! Yet now, here was one of the most stunning, heavily made-up and perfume-drenched women Tom Gully had ever seen in his whole life! Sitting directly across from him and tapping on the glass with long crimson fingernails!
*
When he was younger, Tom’s mother used to say to him: ‘When you’re big, love, and you find yourself in what you consider a difficult situation – particularly with girls – what I want you to do is say three Hail Marys for holy purity.’ Somewhere deep within him, Tom felt sure that that was probably good advice. But somewhere also, quite close to the surface, it seemed, there was a voice that insistently repeated: ‘Pay no heed to that old nonsense! Listen to me! Listen to me, Tom Gully! Don’t be a fool! It’s time to live, my boy! Time to live – and no better time to start!’
If anyone had been curious as to why, for no apparent reason, a great big grin appeared all of a sudden on the face of the heavy-set farmer at that precise moment, they would have found the answer in that very thought. And also in the image that, quite unexpectedly, followed on the heels of it. That of Tom Gully in a pair of dark glasses exactly like those favoured by the dancers in the films they projected on the walls at RA! RA’S! Resulting in his considering leaning over to the young woman to whisper in her ear: ‘I was wondering, ma’am? Would you like a bottle of something?’ Which Tom, because he knew himself and his own habits so well, was aware that there wasn’t a hope in a million of him actually saying unless he applied himself with steely diligence to the task of consuming as many bottles of stout accompanied by
as many brandy chasers as might be humanly possible. A task towards which he was now spurred on by the undulating curves of perfume that came sailing past directly beneath his nostrils, not to mention the whisper-crash of silk as two legs were once again crossed and a husky voice to the barman cooed: ‘Excuse me, darling! May I have another Bacardi, please?’
When he heard this, it was all Tom Gully could do not to splutter the contents of his glass all down the front of his jacket. For in his mind he kept hearing that sentence repeat itself. Deep within him, there was a lighthouse and those were the words it beamed across the water. Over and over across the water. Tom suddenly felt dizzy. Nails! Crimson! And those pants! With spangles all over them, glittering away like glass in the sun. O, but that hair! Oo, that hair! (It was a pageboy cut but Tom didn’t know that. And didn’t care, either!) All he wanted to do with her hair was kiss it. Kiss it and run his fingers through it and say: ‘O ma’am, I love your hair! I love it to bits, I’m telling you!’
Then – a shiver went running through him. He had forgotten his boil! He almost cried out: ‘What if she doesn’t like my boil?’ Instantly he found himself on the verge of weeping and ordered two more brandy chasers. Within seconds, he felt good again. Good? He felt absolutely fantastic! The question he was now asking himself was: ‘What boil?’ Tom couldn’t see any boil. If someone was talking about boils, it must be boils on someone else’s poor unfortunate head they were talking about. Just who was the happiest, most contented man in the village of Barntrosna right at that very moment? The answer to that question is: Tom Gully. There could be absolutely no doubt about it. Certainly, he was a big, heavy-set man with a boil on his forehead and a somewhat casual attitude, perhaps, to personal hygiene, but as far as inner peace and feelings of self-worth were concerned, Tom Gully was now a paradigm. Which was why he had no difficulty whatsoever in sliding from one seat to the next to find himself – in Ray-Ban sunglasses no less! (as it now, thanks to the rapidity of his consumption, appeared to him!) – sitting directly opposite a beautiful young lady chipped out of china! Who didn’t seem to mind in the least, it has to be said. Affording him, in fact, just the tiniest of approving smiles! Which Tom Gully just could not believe, quite frankly! For he had not – not in a million years – expected it all to be so easy! For a split second he wondered – could it be a trick? And then almost wept when it became clear that it was not. ‘Why yes – I think I would rather like another Bacardi,’ she softly replied. Tom Gully felt as if he had just been elected President of Ireland. He could not stop himself hoping that the door would open and someone he knew – anyone – would arrive in and see him sitting there. This did not happen but it didn’t matter – Tom Gully was still happy. Happy? It is a word which doesn’t even come close to describing the state of inner excitement which Tom Gully was experiencing at that moment! He could not for the life of him believe the effect her voice was having on him. The sound of it was a magic melody in his ears. And she seemed so interested in everything! In what was going on around the village, when they had done up Shamey’s place, expectations for the coming tourist season, and so on. All of a sudden, Tom found himself transformed into the village spokesman. Which he was more than happy to be. Interesting facts regarding the local area poured from his lips in a torrent. When he went to the toilet, he was terrified on his return that she would be gone. His head was reeling as he searched for her through the haze. ‘She’s gone! Vanished!’ he cried, and then he saw her, tapping ash into the tray. ‘Mandy!’ he cried in a weak falsetto, for that, she had informed him, was her name.