J.P. Donleavy: An Author and His Image

  Overwhelmed as I was by a romantic love, any physical passion seemed a desperate transgression. In any event her brothers, both lady killers as they were called, said they would kill me were I ever to seduce their sister. And I had some proof of this, as it was in their company that I first got to know Carol when we held boxing matches in their large attic. And where Alan not only landed his south paw punches on my jaw but also stretched and dried his muskrat pelts he trapped each winter to sell to the Hudson Bay Company. The attic, too, was where he sharpened the long blades of his racing ice skates and also Carol’s, and it was in the valley of the wilderness woods where Carol and I first held hands as we skated by moonlight on Scotchman’s Pond and roasted marshmallows in a blazing fire on its shore.

  My having a younger brother, T.J., and elder sister, Rita, and despite our background being first generation Irish and Carol’s and Alan’s and Donald’s going back some generations in America, Carol became as if she were a member of one’s own family. Our differences came from their owning bicycles forbidden me and they in turn every Saturday morning were routinely made to clean their bedrooms. Although living in a much larger house, I regarded as glamorous their spacious and fairly grand apartment in which was the most elaborate stall shower with a great glass door. Admiring it greatly I was after our boxing matches invited to douche. The family now knowing me well, it would not have been thought untoward for Carol to have scrubbed my back.

  Our romance developed with the traditional Saturday evening visits to the local cinema known as the ‘Itch’ to see such film epics as They Died with Their Boots On. Our first kisses in a side back row, as across the screen thundered horses to suitable orchestral strains as the white man mostly beat hell out of the Indians Alan so much admired. Pineapple sodas were taken in the local candy store and more kisses and holding hands walking home along the parkway. Our separations only came in summer time when each year Carol with her brothers returned tanned and smiles gleaming from their long holidays on Fire Island, a long narrow strip of beach fronting the Atlantic ocean.

  Feeling somehow we were already betrothed and part of each other’s family, and thinking that I was launching her out into the sophisticated world, Carol was the girl I first invited to a Fordham Preparatory School tea dance. Chaperoned by observant Jesuits there was fox trotting and waltzing but no jitter bugging. Carol was alarmingly an immense hit, all vying to dance with her. As I was known as the knockout specialist in the Prep’s intramural boxing contests, I felt sure that no one of my class mates would dream of making an advance and daring to do anything as bold as making an assignation. But then I was unprepared for the explosive impact of Carol’s smiling graciousness and her intoxicatingly musky fragrance. And I found myself confronted by the class genius, who with damn nerve, if not in some trepidation, was informing me that he was asking Carol out.

  Assuring myself that she would be unimpressed by his super genius rated IQ, and instead of glowering that I would break his bumptious little intellectual ass, I instead affected a patronizing magnanimousness pretending amusement at the idea. But when Carol accepted I was shattered. Then promptly came a much worse threatening bombshell. And more painful in the matter of jealousy. The French Consul’s son who sat directly in front of me in class and to whom my only conversation was whispered insults concerning French morals, which invariably provoked a snarl and his response ‘Léchez mon cul,’ had a lot more nerve. This French bugger informing me loftily that he was not only having a date but was taking this beauty away from her unsophisticated environs of Woodlawn to a Washington, DC, black tie reception and introducing Carol to the international scene.

  Despite her avowals of continued love a certain growing tenuousness developed between Carol and I. For that was not all. Closer to home, other contemporary friends in Woodlawn awakened brightly to Carol’s charms. Two of whom, old friends, were not only charming themselves but extraordinarily handsome to the degree of attaining the attention of national magazines. And these two gentlemen, John Duffy, later to become the distinguished composer, and Gerald McKernan, a rich industrialist, both fell for Carol, who indeed was now sought by all. And even too busy to come to the nadir of Fordham Prep social activities, the annual school boat ride up the Hudson River, returning by night, dining and dancing as the skyline of New York twinkled in the distance. No one who ever took this boat ride ever forgot it. And to which instead of Carol I invited her brother Alan.

  But then in this discreet family’s background life something was changing. Carol’s parents were separating and getting divorced. No such modern thing it seemed could be contemplated happening in my own family. Their dapper blond wavy haired father who, as Alan told me, had an eye for the ladies, always made me think of a celebrated vaudeville actor, and I was surprised he would part company with these children’s vivacious and always to me charming mother. But they had already now, from this small town enclave where they grew up, moved away further down into the lower reaches of the Bronx.

  The Second World War on, I went into the Navy and as another young lady intervened I saw less and less of Carol. But then just at the end of the war we nearly reunited, when tragedy struck an almost unbelievable blow. Alan, a fighter pilot, surviving a mid air collision and combat had on the eve of his intending return home to New York been killed in an automobile accident while out celebrating his discharge. And as I entered this funeral home down in the Bronx and went to kneel at the side of the coffin of my closest friend, both Donald and Carol came to each kneel either side of me. But I never saw her again. Donald went on to become one of America’s most distinguished obstetricians. Then years later I heard from John Duffy that he’d met Carol’s future husband in the subway, a gentleman from Woodlawn who was trembling with excitement in announcing that he was to marry her.

  But all of twenty years later Carol did come back into my life one night in my sleep in Fulham, London, down what was then much a dingy working class street, I dreamt that I had returned to America and, my wife having died aboard the ship, I searched for and again found Carol. I asked her out to have dinner at a posh restaurant, where we arrived and were refused service and ignored by the waiters because of my peach coloured shoes. It was a dream so vivid that in the morning I wrote it down. It became ‘Peach Shoes’, the final scene in the play Fairy Tales of New York. And Carol brought back to life in the role played by the wondrous Susan Hampshire, who of equal beauty and charm said she saw the jewels of tears every night glistening in the audience’s eyes. Just as they do in mine recalling my first love.

  Which flourished

  In all its smiles

  Of promise

  1995

  Pasha of Heartbreak House

  Having lived now a quarter of a century in a big country house, I am told that I have an unquenchable obsession about the aristocratic upper classes and praise the Royal Family too much. I have even been accused of tweediness and then in this very highly regarded newspaper the Telegraph, it was made known in an obituary of a recently deceased Irish author who, while he lived, was quoted as regarding me as a poseur. But worse, a proper English gent watching me on TV lead out the Westmeath Hunt from this present mansion screamed out in the presence of two of my good friends, ‘That man is a raving snob.’

  Now then. Much truth may seem to ring forth from all this, as these days the image is the reality. However, as an American not badly born and bred, this reputation really stems from attempting to be mannerly and nice to everybody. And as I came to Europe to be educated and later to live, the only people with time to waste in my company and at the same time willing to be pleasant to me have been persons who have had private incomes from inherited wealth which has often brought, through no fault of theirs, a title with it and condemned them to living in large castles and massive country houses located within their splendidly spacious domains. Thus my landed gentry associations and my own adaptation to this way of life have led to the writing of novels such as The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B, The
Destinies of Darcy Dancer, Gentleman and The Onion Eaters which fairly echo and revel in this motif. And even an odd passage in The Ginger Man has an impoverished Sebastian Dangerfield swearing revenge by imagining that one day he will be back on his great estate where he belongs and will have his game keepers drive away his erstwhile wife, who having taunted and deserted him in poverty now wants to return to him with her babe in arms.

  Now all that said, let me please say this. There is no question whatever attached to the fact that I have, through no grievous fault of social climbing, but strictly acquired for professional privacy, ended up myself rattling around in a big old house. The desperate difference being that I am now doing it alone. And more than occasionally teetering over an abyss of solitude such as dries up the soul, which in its weightless frailty nearly vanishes. As an antidote I have a closet full of plus twos and threes and a whole library of walking sticks and sometimes do affect the posture of the country gent, marching out over the parklands. The walking sticks, I hasten to add, carved by my own hand out of the hedgerows. Because I can more often be seen crossing the fields with pick axe, crange and slash hook. But publicized images last. And it is now far too late to allay such aspersions of snobbery and status seeking, if aspersions they be, by jumping on a motor cycle in black leather jacket and boots. Or burning my cravats and taking to the turtle neck sweater, jean jacket and pointy toed suede shoes.

  But there are other matters far more real and far more troublesome than the social aspersions wrought by living in the big house, and sporting about in its dilapidated stately splendour as it sits for its two hundred and fiftieth year enclosed on its modest hill by its three foot thick elevations and surrounded by its parklands. For there, within, is the squire and pasha, often bereft, lonely, and having again and again been left in the lurch by one beautiful woman after another. The major problem now being, how do you, in your utter solitude, sustain your reasonable contentment. Yet it is amazing that it is but a few months ago that I first woke up to the awareness that I did so live, and wondered what the hell I was still doing here. That at the departure of the last beauty, I could have myself long also decamped. And maybe sampled the much cheaper and more comfortable confines of Claridge’s or Reid’s Hotel in Madeira. But then how does one easily tear oneself away from what one now knows best.

  And, too, you never fully give up the dream. They don’t exactly grow on trees or jump out at you from the love lorn columns, but what about another wonderful companion. A big agricultural girl perhaps, as is usually sought by land owners in these parts. Not beautiful or lissome, but nearly as nice as some of the damsels who have left. And there’s the rub. I may strain my brain. But do not search and seek. Because it all could be so in vain. What you usually find available is someone else who has at the time no better place else to go. However, as Henry Root would say, nothing wrong with that. But if they come, it’s just for a while. For you know in truth that what you are running is a ladies’ finishing school. Nor again is there anything wrong with that. Except that you charge no fees. And supply in abundance organic vegetables, pure air and sweet water. And by God if it doesn’t make your temporary chatelaine learning the ropes look, with her glowingly healthy skin and exuding euphoria, astonishingly good to other men.

  As foxhunting season arrives, she hints that she has grown fond of you and still you dream that she will stay. But now equipped for the chase, the cuckolders come. The big house, with its so many rooms and corridors and miles of walks across its parklands, makes you vulnerable to conspiracy. Chaps have asked your would be chatelaine for another piece of soap. Wham. Bam. Thank you, Ma’am. She’s been seduced. They now swagger down to dinner dressed in their smart cavalry twill and suede shoes, to even have the effrontery to ooh and ahh over your minor objets d’art. The seeds of departure of your enamoured are sown. But gentleman always, the pasha, politely as he can, tolerates all. For who knows, something new might keep her.

  Ah but let us not cast aspersions. Ladies while they last have all been wonderful. And one does not entirely give up the hope of finding a new mistress, especially one wise and a lady of principle. Tolerance and affection, the major ingredients between us. A lady who as she sweeps in her elegant garments along the corridors and pauses perhaps on the grand staircase landing to place a flower’s prominence more aptly. She takes heed of one’s wardrobe and also occasionally buys one socks. She chooses menus and the placements for dinner and adores to listen to your piano playing. In short, her ladyship is the pearl to be found present in the grand architectural oyster over which she reigns. And never once does she fill a bucket full of ice cold water to throw upon you in bed.

  Now this is not to say as pasha that you’re not with a stop watch and slide rule working out how much everything astronomically costs. Restocking Guinness barrels and wine cellars. Turning off radiators that keep vast boilers down in the cellars endlessly roaring. But you know that enjoying her free wheeling and especially spending role, it keeps her ladyship staying. Even as she sees you with magnifying glass at the ready to locate the fingerprints on the doorknob to her chambers, to verify the activities of the last randy guest who ad nauseam throughout dinner extolled her virtues. You pretend of course that you scrutinize for evidence of a pilferer who, as the recently rented footman did, may have penetrated the portals in order to case the joint. But aside from her impatience at these pernicketies, she forgives, and inspires all.

  But you always know that finally, in your mature ladyship’s mind, practical things have got to come first. She can’t help wondering, when, as she ferries up breakfast consisting of the pasha’s favourite pancakes, bacon and maple syrup, that he might be found dead having snuffed it in bed. As indeed one morning I was supposedly found as I lay perfectly still, staring at the ceiling. The tray dropped and herself was gone. Therefore it is a grave mistake to ever have yourself seen limping, or heard coughing and creaking about up and down the halls. Or even in order to entertain her ladyship, pretending a limp and geriatric shuffle for a laugh. Better to leave available and open for inspection your running book recording your recently run six minute mile. Of course that latter speed might make her think you’ll soon drop dead from over exertion.

  And in the way you least expect, it happens, the elegant lady is gone. And the bimbo, a waif like slim blonde beauty, who is going to leave you in a thrice anyway, glides in. Enthusiasm is her forte. She is immediately ready to jump upon and be taken away on anyone’s gravy train. Openly she kisses visiting gentlemen and gets their addresses and calling cards. You indulge her because she’s a laugh a minute, long blonde tresses flowing as she races the halls on her roller blades. You allow her contact on your mobile phone to her new swain. He of course has gone ape happy over this curvaceous miracle who wears skin tight emerald satin jeans, faxing her massive emoluments to the bank account you opened for her. And leaving you wishing for some numerical mistake that deposits same in your own account. And that day comes again, all too soon. You’ve just loaded her bags in her Ferrari. A kiss on the cheek. And roaring down the drive she goes. And gone.

  Once again the dream vanished. Of warmth, proximity, companionship and even hanky panky. Of words, soft and soothing to anoint you while toasting your slippered tootsies in front of the library fire. Of kisses upon the brow and her fingers wiffling through what’s happily left remaining of your hair. She likes you enough to suggest a colour change, from its gone white to a youthful black. She’s just bought the most up to date kit from the chemists. But none of that is to be had. The big house echoes with your cold footfalls. Sounds made that you must make yourself. You move for cheer from your down at heel chambers to a more luxurious room in the north wing. You are just a statistic, as you would be tabulated in an actuarial table. Young beautiful women leave old charming men. And all you have ever tried to do is make womenfolk content. And they will either kill or leave you for that.

  Now, as abject loneliness for sure descends, stern discipline is called for. You march the hal
ls in a military manner. In the music room you play ‘Waltzing Matilda’ on the piano. Night fallen, you always build a fire. You sit to a set table. But as you scavenge food from anywhere in the kitchen, don’t be afraid of feeling sorry for yourself. But don’t feel too sorry for those who have left you. No one is about now to slip arsenic in your stew. Or jump on your back to crumple the life out of you. You have nothing now but yourself to get away from or avoid. Time to become a bloody cunning old codger. Choosing careful any beneficiary in making your will.

  But having a military or naval background is a massively great asset in helping keep at bay the silence of loneliness as it deafeningly gathers about you. Leather heels resounding upon the pine in walking the long halls remind as you strike your foot falls that you are alive and disciplined. And are not about to prostrate yourself on the chaise longue racked in self pitying sobs. Instead you stride in a military manner squaring turns at the corner of hallways, clapping your hands and shouting cadence and commands to the platoon you imagine is keeping you company. Left flank march, right flank march, to the rear march. Of course to avoid committal proceedings undertaken by your nearest and dearest make sure no one is bloody well around while you’re pulling off this antic.

  Ah but even when life is lashed by loss and regret, wait yet awhile longer and listen. To a voice that there was once. Of a lady here who said. Let’s be a little family, away from the rest of the world. Entwined together in our own little lives and woes. And be in this mansion where are hidden wonders that make children’s voices echo joy while playing their secrets. Till they’re grown up and gone away. And we chase them. Calling goodbye after their names. Come back again. Where that countryside sings over your grasses matted by wind and rain falls in sunshine. Where now the sadness lurks so deep. It doth make you still. But where, too, was once spoken. A love to one you loved, and who loved you.