Leila: Further in the Life and Destinies of Darcy Dancer Gentleman
‘O my dear boy, I cannot bear to continue to somehow bedevil your life.’
‘Rashers at this very particular moment, believe me you are, for a change, certainly not.’
‘Darcy, I don’t quite know how to put it.’
‘Put what.’
‘Put what seems just to be one more of my very good intentions, which I fear has gone absolutely awry.’
‘What on earth are you talking about Rashers.’
‘Darcy I placed your bet.’
‘And thank you very much. And what pray is troubling you, your Lordship, aside from your very unfortunate loss, of course.’
‘Darcy, to make up for my little committed indiscretions in our friendship, I was so eager for you to win. Deeply and sincerely.’
‘Ah were you. How nice.’
‘Darcy, so deeply and sincerely. And you must forgive me. I placed your bet on Ulidia Princess.’
‘You what.’
‘Yes. On Ulidia Princess to win. I am. I am most heartily sorry. I’m a dead loss. No help to myself. Nor to my dearest of friends.’
The enclosure emptied. Race cards, betting tickets strewn on the stand steps and the enclosure grass. Bookmakers their signs down, their little black boards packed away. Departing with their bags stuffed with bank notes. My feet rooted still to the porch upon which one stood. And Rashers one step beneath me, taking from his side coat a massive roll of notes. Peeling them off.
‘Darcy, here. I’m making your bet good.’
‘No you’re not. Absolutely not. To dare insult me in this way. On top of what you’ve already done. Please.’
‘Then you please for god’s sake strike me. Please. Take a swing at least. Don’t leave me standing here like this. I will of course try to duck.’
Westwards, clouds edged with pink out over the thickets of tree branches. Back towards Dublin. The skies brooding their strange cold blue grey and black. The breeze chill on the back of my neck. My clenched hands plunged cold in my pockets. Rashers’s eyes glancing up.
‘But dear boy, you’re not, as I can see, going to strike me, are you.’
‘No. I am not.’
‘Well can I then offer you solace. You see. I am leaving Ireland. At any moment.’
His checked cap removed, Rashers who invites one’s fist. A gust of wind blowing an auburn tinted lock of hair across his brow. A big freckle at the corner of his right eye one never noticed before. Groundsmen now arriving. To clean up the debris. And apropos of nothing at all, one’s own eyes looked down. For some reason at Rashers’s shoes. At their wrinkled cracks, polished a thousand times. An ancient leather of a military boot. And one was somehow certain they had once belonged to his father. A hero of wars. An army general, celebrated, decorated, fêted and respected. In command of thousands and thousands of men. And this one man here. His errant son. Fortune hunter, con man, chancer, thief. Author of my demise. Who devil may care, forever seems to frequent my life. And now suddenly in one’s anger. Hopelessness comes. As I remember once. Dressing in my room at Andromeda Park. Ready to order the men to harness up the horses to the rakes. As the rain hit the windows. In a pouring drenching squall. My heart sinking with the hay cut. Cured under the day’s previous lucky skies, and ready for cocking out across the acres and acres of meadows. I drew the curtains across the tinted pink glass panes. And beat and beat the walls with my fists. But as a certain horse may have character for hunting.
So must it be
That one has
A soul
For despair
21
On that miserable eve in the smoky noisy fug of the packed bar, one did take a subdued funereal champagne. Amid the bubbling voices. The greetings. The plans for parties, hunt balls and other race meetings. Rashers buying a magnum. Pouring the grapy ash white delicious fluid, refilling and refilling my glass. And again attempting to shove fifty pound notes in my pocket. And as I would push his hand away, I would catch a glimpse of the treasury script’s etched purple woman and her harp. Like Leila. And me. Like the back of the note. A sad green bearded face. And a three pronged spear sticking up from oak leaves. A bowl of wheat sheaves and fruit. All of Ireland’s plenty. For the rich few who lord luckily over all the impoverished many. Of whom Foxy Slattery, grinningly coming in, is no longer one of them. One did try desperately to hide the disaster on one’s face. And pretend that he was yet again saver of one’s life.
‘Boss what did I tell you.’
‘Thank you Foxy. Thank you. You’re the maker of my fortune. Please join us in a glass of champagne.’
‘And boss maybe I can sell you a car now on the riches.’
‘Perhaps Foxy. Perhaps.’
One simply did not have the heart to disappoint him. To tell him one’s best asinine friend bare faced took one’s last bloody money and lost it on a losing nag. But I could see the cheer on Foxy’s face vanish in a second. Beyond his shoulder, Baptista Consuelo, her mink coat sweeping open revealing a tight plunging neckline. And just at the moment I was about to effect his introduction to her, she promptly turned her wide backside on him.
‘Ah boss, I may not be good enough for some people, but we did it again now didn’t we. Never get a repeat of odds like that till Rumoured Ghost’s ready for the knacker’s yard.’
Motoring back the country lanes to town and finally across the Liffey, one was, astonishingly at the moment sporting an erection. And had the uncontrollably strange urge. To fuck Baptista Consuelo straight up her big stuck up arse. With one’s present prick that could just bloody well do the job. For her sake, sand in the lubricant. Plunging it in her dog style till she went barking across the floor on her naked hands and knees with a suitably dumb and entertained look on her overly pretty face. Rashers humming. The Lark In The Clear Air. And one had to admit, in one’s champagne swirling mind, to being soothed by the sound. But to know that one was feeling again somehow, the same shattering shock that one always feels poor and skint. Making one avoid taking any notice, as one steps out of the warm confines of the Shelbourne, of the resentful passing faces of discontent. As one’s own face goes displeased in this dear desecrated dirty Dublin. But at least presently insulated by the soft upholstery and shiny elegant fittings of this Daimler. John, Rashers’s endlessly patient chauffeur, changing gear to pull us up the cobblestone narrow hill. Past these gates of Steevens’ Hospital. Rashers again nervously pushing towards my hand another sheaf, this time of big white English fivers instead of Irish fifties, as if the brand of denomination or currency made a difference.
‘But then I proffer you this by way of interest dear boy. On the loan of your family heirlooms.’
‘Rashers I’m sorry. But I’ve already made it eminently clear I cannot accept money from you in this fashion. It’s just a bit of bloody bad luck that’s all. The same I’ve already had on innumerable previous races. And you could, just as easily, have been quite right. Ulidia Princess might have won by a whisker instead.’
‘Dear boy but I was wrong. Not to abide by your instruction. Life itself is lost by such whiskers. Are you trying to break my heart. You are. Of course you can take a few measly old crumpled fivers. And of course you must. Never could I have been bankrolled into my modest present prosperity without the assistance of your august family’s silverware. You will never have faith in me again will you. Well at least tell me you had some previous faith in me.’
‘Yes. I had. For a few minutes after we first met. And you thought I was a promising con man. And I nearly believed it.’
‘Well dear boy. You were. The way you took a fiver from the Mental Marquis. But see in there. Those gates we presently pass by. As a medical student, I took post mortem notes down in the basement over dead cold Dubliners’ cadavers. Sorrowful work. When it’s children. But I would have, I think, in the end, lacked dedication. To spend the rest of one’s life listening to rumbling rotted lungs or up to one’s elbows in guts. But did you ever wonder why I ceased my studies and took my detour in life out of the pro
fessional classes.’
‘No. Actually I haven’t.’
‘Well I suppose, why should you. But I’ll tell you why. I did have many girlfriends I’ll admit. But there was a fellow student, a very tweedy slender pretty lady with most wonderful legs, of whom I became much enamoured. For her shy and strange ways. Never would she join me for tea or coffee at Johnston, Mooney’s and O’Brien‘s out the back gate. And try as I did she would take but little notice of my attentions. I knew there was something much wrong with her hair. She constantly wore cloche hats. And one afternoon. Which one cannot ever forget. At a pathology lecture. She sat without her hat on the tier directly in front and below me. And I took my fountain pen just to tease. And reached down and devilishly poked in her hair. The clip got caught in the strands. And as she turned, pulling away to look back up, a wig came off her bald head. Darcy.’
‘For heaven’s sake Rashers.’
‘Darcy. Yes. There are tears in my eyes. Because she ran from lecture hall. Tripping and squeezing past her fellow students’ knees. There were no jeers but there was cruel involuntary laughter chasing her. And from the hall window. She jumped. And was found lying dead on the steps. The brains shattered out of her skull.’
Our car heading in the direction of the Coombe back streets. Passing the shadowy great elevations of Guinness’s brewery walls. The smell of hops. Up Robert Street. Into Marrowbone Lane. The prolonging silence. I turned to look at Rashers. Sitting but a hand’s touch away. Tears dropping down his cheeks. His chest heaved once.
‘Not my happiest day Darcy I can tell you. I never returned to college. And I am grateful to you. For at least not severely dressing me down all this ride back to town as you have, even sportingly, every reason to do. Would you in the very near future contemplate catching the mailboat with me. Sometimes the sound of steerage passengers drunkenly vomiting does require the company of pleasant distraction. One doesn’t want to pitch and roll across the Irish Sea completely alone even in the safe confines of one’s state room.’
‘But surely my god Rashers, you’re not really leaving Dublin are you.’
‘Yes. I shall be. Not hard to do. Uncomfortable yes, but following a good breakfast in the one and only palatial hotel in Liverpool, one slips on a train from Lime Street. To whisk hopefully at speed through those midland industrial slag heaps. Deposit oneself at journey’s end in one of the better London hotels. And I shall thence to Paris. And thence, dear boy, entrain from the Gare d’Austerlitz to Monte Carlo.’
‘But Rashers this is madness. It’s not because of that silly old bet.’
‘No. It’s not. It is my dear boy, because one must occasionally shake from one’s heels this unfortunate broken city’s tatters and grime. And its even more broken and tattered citizens. Minions who grimly drag feet back and forth, to and from their malingering toil. Whose hearts daily beg Saint Jude or somebody for the impossible. To hide somewhere to escape their thankless lives. But don’t think me on the side of socialism, dear boy. I’m all for exploiting people. But I have, you know, been turning over in my mind your remarks. I am a fortune hunter. No. Say nothing dear boy. It’s true. But believe me too when I say I do not seek from my beloved her goods. Even as I admit I am a con man. You know, before the advent of your silverware I actually had presented myself to the Association for the Relief of Distressed Protestants in Molesworth Street, and did as a left footer, without shame or nervous quiver, prise three quid out of them.’
‘You’re not a con man Rashers.’
‘I am. And so kind of you to say that I am not. Nor do I presume, despite my reasonable good birth and acceptable demeanour, to regard myself as a gentleman.’
‘You are Rashers. A gentleman. You are at least that. Most of the time.’
‘No I am a cad. Albeit of a sporting nature. But you see Darcy, the real fact of the matter is, and I know you will laugh as I tell you. That I did so much want to be an Admiral. That broad band of gold braid upon my cuff. Gold upon the peak of my cap. My flotilla of ships. And my father’s army pushed by the enemy to the edge of the sea. But ah perhaps I wouldn’t, as I dream that I would, weigh anchor to sail my fleet away and to leave the pompous bugger and his army trapped there on the shore. Just a thought, dear boy. But a more important thought. The greatest of casinos calls. My portmanteau is fairly filled with fivers. To manoeuvre there. There is a hotel on a hill where one takes one’s calm, comfortable and pleasant refuge. One’s window shall look out and down over the yacht filled harbour. And conveniently one merely strolls across a verdured street or two to mount the wide imposing steps of the casino. You see Darcy the moment for my coup has arrived. Which shall be wrought into reality under those enormously high glorious ceilings. And I shall not return unless it is to pull my own true weight with my beloved.’
‘Yes I can understand Rashers. Hers would be considerable. To pull.’
Rashers sulked until we arrived in front of the Shelbourne and he whispered a message to John. Handing him a fiver. But he hardly spoke another word to me. Just polite nods and grunts. I was merely, after one’s own dismal disappointment, trying to be somehow amusing. As one does at such times. My heart now utterly sinking at the thought of Rashers’ departure. And not entirely because it meant not ever seeing one’s silverware again. Which one was certain, somehow, he had in fact sold. But he did, for all his endless faults and presumptions upon my good will, at least encourage one to bolster against the dismal chilling winds whirling round one’s soul. And as we alighted to the pavement John the chauffeur had to push a way clear for us to pass. Rashers assuming his best aristocratic poise as a gang of newsboys clustered around him, their hoarse voices calling out.
‘Give us a penny mister Rashers. Give us a penny.’
‘I beg your pardon boys, but please, it’s Lord Ronald Ronald to you.’
Clanging bell. And a crowded tram roaring by. Through its steamed up windows, shadows of heads and newspapers within. The barefoot newsboys, clutching their papers under arm. Rheumy eyed, scabbed and scratched. Their faces streaked with phlegm. Torn garments hardly covering their chests. Hands and feet blue with cold. As grimy fingers touched upon one’s sleeve.
‘Come on mister, give us a penny.’
The smoky mists swirling over the wet glistening granite. Rashers scattering a handful of coins into the gutter. Newsboys rushing after them. Kicking, punching and pushing each other. Amid the furtive faced pedestrians hurrying home. And a voice shouting to Rashers as he entered in under the glass canopy.
‘Rashers, give us a song, will you, Rashers.’
In the lobby’s warm smells, of coffee, whisky and perfume. Folk in from the country still in hunting clothes, throwing their weight about, proudly mud spattered, recently scratched. Rashers collecting his key, attended by two page boy acolytes, one carrying his binoculars the other his newspapers. And I watched him move on quickly between the pillars, entering the lift. And as I looked up, his feet and trouser legs disappearing from sight, a strange sad shudder went through me. That I had grievously offended him. But just around the corner, who should one nearly bump into, her large arse conspicuously present, and her loud voice haughtily demanding.
‘I must have at least three hot water bottles in my bed. And my hot toddy was cold last night. And please haven’t you got anyone available who knows how to lay out clothes. I don’t want to be late for the theatre again tonight.’
Baptista Consuelo sweeping her fur up to drape it over her shoulders. Hardly wasting a second to breeze past me with her most withering look. The soft silken lustre of her breasts in the light. Heading for the lift where she waited for it to descend again. Making, as she turned around, a rather too large an effort to ignore me.
Next morning on my breakfast table a note, compliments of the Manager to communicate with him. Wouldn’t one know it was time to be evicted for non payment of my bill. And following my bath and a long look out at the mountains, I thought why not go out into the elements before Rashers appeared and p
urloined me off to the races. Or the glooms descend as I think of Leila, not knowing where she is and in whose arms she may lie clutched. Go instead to mend some social fences. And in a moment of sunshine one strode through the busy morning pedestrians down Grafton Street. A time of day when a hint of prosperity seemed afoot. Through these shop doors. But Miss von B, she was so bloody icy. Making me speechless trying to expiate my unpardonable rudeness. In fact it’s exactly how I put it.
‘Please I do beg you forgive me for my unpardonable rudeness. I am quite speechless attempting an apology. But I was waylaid by the Count on my way back from visiting Mr Arland whose plight in an appalling room the worst end of Mount Street is desperate.’
She did not exactly snub me but entertained the first opportunity of a customer taking her attention. Leaving me standing there far too close to the edge of the ladies’ lingerie department. With one fat female acting as if one were focusing binoculars on her while she was being measured up for her monster sized whale bone corsets. I ventured for a quick reconnoitre of the delft department and returned after I thought Miss von B might have got her little revenge out of her system. I even attempted to impress her.
‘Lois the accomplished and very fashionable artist is to do my full portrait. Mounted.’
‘Vas mounted.’
‘On my horse of course.’
‘Ha ha vas a good joke. That you should keep quiet about. She has been mounted. By all zee pricks in Dublin. And I suppose of course she is taking up residence in Andromeda Park to do it.’
‘What an awfully vulgar thing of you to asperse. She happens to be a very fine artist whose work is much sought after by Americans. And I think you are just jealous.’
One was of course planning to invite Miss von B for coffee at the Oriental Café up the street. And to find out where she lived. And if she had a bowl we could both eat out of, and a bed we could both get into. But instead, worried out of my mind that indeed if Lois was mounted by everyone in Dublin, as indeed I really knew she must be, one was bound to have a grave social disease. I went back up the Green. Imagining my shrivelled testicles dropping off down my trouser leg and being squashed on the wooden street blocks by a motor vehicle. With no one to pass the time of day with, one realized one needed swift distraction. And I did present myself into one’s grocer. Stepping over the well worn granite step. Pushing on the brass handle. Open these mahogany and glass gleaming doors. To be greeted by the white coated, smiling manager.