“I’m sure,” said Rupert O’Brien smoothly. “I’m sure he is.”
“And just because we don’t mix in the sort of circles you mix in,” she went on, “that doesn’t mean to say that we don’t amount to anything. We’re still your company for the evening. We didn’t ask to be, but we are. My husband is a good man. He may not have read everything or met everybody, but he’s a good man. And in my book, that’s what counts.”
A complete silence had fallen over the table. Spoons, which had been dipped into soup, were stopped, poised halfway to trembling lips; nobody moved.
“So if you’ll excuse us, Mr. and Mrs. O’Brien,” said Betty. “We shall find somewhere quieter to have our dinner.”
She rose to her feet and moved deliberately over to one of the unlaid tables at the other side of the room, taking her placemat and side-plate with her. Fatty, immobilised for a few moments, did nothing, but then, with an apologetic nod to the others, he too got up and went over to the other table.
“I’m sorry, my dear,” whispered Betty. “I couldn’t stand it any more. I just couldn’t.”
“That’s all right,” said Fatty, reaching over to place his hand on hers, his voice uneven. “I’m so proud of you. And anyway, I would sooner sit here and look at you any time, than listen to all his highfalutin’ talk through dinner.”
Betty smiled at him. She noticed that there were tears on his cheeks. She reached into her pocket and extracted a small, Irish linen handkerchief that Mr. Delaney, the outfitter, had given her.
“Here,” she said. “Use this.”
They sat in silence at their separate table. After a few minutes, the waitress returned to clear away the soup plates and bring in the main course. This she placed unceremoniously on the table, leaving the guests to help themselves.
“All the more for us,” said Rupert O’Brien, passing the serving spoon to Niamh. “Short rations for some, I’m afraid.”
Fatty leant over the table to whisper to Betty. “Did you hear that, Betty? Did you hear what he said?”
Betty nodded, and they both watched miserably as the main course disappeared at the other table. There was no sign of the waitress and they both realised that there was nothing that they could do without losing face to a quite unacceptable extent.
“We shall simply withdraw,” said Fatty, after a while. “I’m no longer hungry.”
“And neither am I,” said Betty.
But her voice lacked conviction.
Upstairs in their room, they retired to their beds, separated by a bedside table on which back issues of Horse and Hound and two glasses of water had thoughtfully been placed by Mrs. O’Connor. They were both tired, and the light was put out almost immediately.
“Our first night in Ireland,” said Betty, in the darkness.
“Yes,” said Fatty. “I hope that tomorrow’s a bit better.”
“It will be, Fatty,” said Betty. “It will be.”
Fatty was silent. Then: “Betty, I felt so … so inadequate beside that O’Brien person. He made me feel so small.”
“You’re not small,” said Betty.
“No,” said Fatty. “I know.”
He paused. “Come and lie beside me, Betty. Come and lie on my bed and hold my hand until I go to sleep, like you used to do when we were younger.”
“Of course, my dear,” said Betty, slipping out of her bed and lowering herself onto the space prepared by Fatty, who had rolled over to one side of the bed.
“Dear Fatty–”
She did not complete her sentence. The bed collapsed.
7
MRS. O’CONNOR WAS PERFECTLY UNDERSTANDING about the broken legs of the bed.
“These things happen,” she said early the following morning, when Fatty sought her out in the kitchen to confess to the damage. “I remember, a few years ago, we had a couple of guests who …”
She paused, and Fatty waited expectantly.
“Who …” he prompted.
Mrs. O’Connor said nothing. She had been wiping a surface when he entered the kitchen and now she resumed her task. He was watching her idly when, in a moment of shock, he realised that he recognised the pattern of the cloth. He was sure it was his shirt – or part of his shirt.
“My clothes,” he muttered. “What happened to them?”
Mrs. O’Connor shook her head and deliberately changed the subject. “Does Mrs. O’Leary enjoy a cooked breakfast?” she asked.
“She does,” replied Fatty emphatically.
“Kippers?” asked Mrs. O’Connor.
“Oh yes,” said Fatty. “I read about your kippers and kedgeree.”
“There will be plenty of both,” said Mrs. O’Connor. “Whenever you’re ready, come down and have breakfast.”
Fatty returned to the room to convey to Betty the news about breakfast. They were both ravenously hungry after their failed dinner the previous evening, and were looking forward to a substantial meal, at their own table. With any luck Rupert and Niamh O’Brien would not surface until much later; they did not seem the types to be up and about early. He imagined Rupert O’Brien in a silk dressing-gown, reading out his own column in the Irish Times to Niamh, who would also be clad in a silk dressing-gown and reclining in bed. The legs of their bed would be intact, too.
He frowned as he remembered the piece of cloth with which Mrs. O’Connor had been wiping the kitchen table. Was it just a co-incidence that it should have the same pattern as his shirt, or had she … He stopped himself. It was an absurd idea: Why would Mrs. O’Connor steal his shirt and then cut it up to make cleaning cloths? No, however odd Ireland was, it was not that odd.
Since it would take Betty half an hour or so to get ready for breakfast, Fatty decided to run himself a bath. The bathroom, which seemed to have been untouched since Victorian days, was dominated by an immense iron bathtub, standing on clawed feet, and crowned at the deep end with glistening steel taps. At the top of each tap, set generously in ceramic, an ornate HOT and COLD enlightened one as to which tap was which. It was a museum piece of a bathtub, and Fatty was looking forward to sinking into a pool of steaming hot water, drawn, he imagined, from the sweet waters of the lough.
With a sigh of pleasure, Fatty sank into the tub, allowing the resultant waves to slop over the edge and onto the stone-flagged floor. The water was just as he had expected it: an embrace as soft as the Irish air from which it had originally fallen as rain. He closed his eyes and tried a few lines of song. Fatty, who had a passable singing voice, enjoyed Neapolitan bel canto, which he had taught himself from a collection of old records discovered in a cupboard he had bought. Now he sang his favourite, Comme facette mammeta? When your mother made you, how did she do it? To make your flesh, she took a hundred roses and milk, Concetta. For your mouth she used strawberries, honey, sugar, and cinnamon, and for your hair, a whole chest of gold.
The words of longing and admiration rose up to the ceiling of the bathroom. Inside the room, Betty smiled with pleasure; Fatty had explained to her that this song was, in his mind, about her; that she was his Concetta. She liked to hear Fatty singing, particularly after some moment of setback or trial. His singing on this particular morning was a sign that his spirits were undented by the difficulties of the previous day. And here they were, in the lush heart of Ireland, with the sun streaming in through their half-open window and a gentle, balmy breeze nudging the curtains.
Fatty luxuriated in the bath until the water began to cool. Now it was time for breakfast and he began to ease himself up. But he did not get far. He tried again, but his effort seemed only to wedge him further in. He was stuck in the bath.
He called out to Betty, who rose from the bed and padded into the bathroom.
“I seem to be stuck, Betty,” moaned Fatty. “I can’t move.”
Betty rushed to his side and took hold of one of his arms.
“I’ll give you a little tug, Fatty,” she said. “That’ll dislodge you. Don’t worry.”
She pulled at his arm, h
er hands slipping along Fatty’s wet flesh. It seemed to make no difference.
“I’ll pull out the plug,” she said. “If the water drains out, it might make things easier.”
It did not. Indeed, the absence of the water seemed to lodge Fatty’s hips even more firmly into the trap. Nor did soap, liberally applied to the side of the bath, seem to make any difference.
“It’s hopeless, Betty,” Fatty moaned. “Nothing seems to help. I’m just stuck.”
Betty stood back and wiped her brow.
“I shall get you a towel,” she said. “That will preserve your modesty while I call Mrs. O’Connor.”
Betty draped a towel across Fatty’s midriff, donned her dressing-gown, and left the room. Once downstairs, she unsuccessfully sought their hostess in the kitchen, but found her at last in the dining room, leaning against a sideboard and engaged in conversation with the pianist from the previous evening. To her displeasure, she noticed that Rupert and Niamh O’Brien were already seated at a table in the window, tucking into large helpings of kedgeree. Rupert O’Brien looked up briefly from his plate, noticed Betty’s dressing-gown, and gave a disapproving frown.
Mrs. O’Connor could tell from Betty’s expression that something was wrong.
“Not another bed problem,” she said, with concern.
Hearing this, Rupert O’Brien raised an eyebrow.
“No,” whispered Betty. “It’s my husband. He’s stuck in the bath.”
Rupert O’Brien dug his fork into his kedgeree with renewed vigour. Niamh looked out of the window, her hand at her mouth.
“Oh dear,” said Mrs. O’Connor. “What a terrible thing. I shall come up immediately.”
They left the dining room and were soon confronting the unfortunate Fatty, still firmly lodged in the bath, a damp white towel across his middle.
“Good morning, Mr. O’Leary,” said Mrs. O’Connor cheerfully. “This is a sad to-do, so it is.”
“Good morning, Mrs. O’Connor,” Fatty replied. “I’m sorry about this. I can’t move.”
“We’ll both give a wee tug,” suggested Mrs. O’Connor, moving to the head of the bath. “I’ll pull on his feet here, Mrs. O’Leary, and you can pull on his arms. The two of us might shift him, so we might.”
The two women seized an extremity of Fatty and began to pull vigorously. But even their combined strength made no impression on the immobile Fatty, and after one or two further efforts, with much huffing and puffing, they abandoned their effort.
Mrs. O’Connor thought for a few moments. “I’ll call Delaney,” she said after a while.
“Delaney?” asked Fatty.
“Yes,” said Mrs. O’Connor. “Delaney, the plumber. This is a job for a professional, I’m afraid. Delaney’s just down the road. He’ll be here in no time.”
Delaney, with all the discretion of one who is professionally party to the most intimate problems of others, appeared to be not in the least surprised by Fatty’s plight. He surveyed the problem from all angles, knocking on the side of the bath with his bare knuckles to determine where the obstruction lay. He, too, tried to dislodge Fatty by pulling at his arms, until Fatty gave a yelp of pain from the plumber’s rough tug.
“I’m sorry, Mr. O’Leary,” he said. “But I’m going to have to remove the bath. I’ve got a device down in my workshop that will enable me to prise the bath open a bit and set you free. But I can’t bring it in here, you see.”
Fatty gazed at the plumber’s ruddy face, with its chapped skin and eruption of subcutaneous warts around the nose. He opened his mouth to protest, and then closed it. What was the point? There seemed to be no other way of getting him free, and he could not spend much longer stuck in this cold, inhospitable couch.
“But don’t you go worrying about it,” said the plumber. “I’ve freed people from baths before. You’ve got no idea how often it happens.”
Reaching into the bag that he had carried in with him, he extracted several tools, with which he proceeded to remove the taps. That done, he unscrewed the ornamental clawed feet from their stone setting, and finally detached the drainpipe from the bottom of the tub.
“That’s coming along very nicely,” he said as he stood up to inspect his labours. “Now I’ll just go down and get a few hands to help and we’ll be on our way.”
Fatty lay gloomily in his prison while the plumber summoned help. Ten minutes later Mr. Delaney returned with the chef, a powerfully built figure with rolled-up sleeves, and a man who had been tending cattle in a field at the edge of the lough.
“Right, boys,” said the plumber cheerily. “We’ll just give this old bath a lift and carry it down the stairs to my van. One, two, three!”
Fatty felt himself being lifted into the air as his three straining porters began their slow journey down the stairs and out into the courtyard.
“We’ll have you out of there in no time at all,” said Delaney reassuringly, as they manoeuvred the bath out of the back door.
“Yes,” said the cattleman, peering over the edge of the bath at Fatty. “It’s an awful shame for a visitor like yourself to have this happen to him. An awful shame.”
Fatty tried to smile, but it was difficult. He wondered whether he should try a trick that he had used as a young boy, whereby he closed his eyes and simply pretended that he was not there. If he did this now, he might be able to transport himself mentally back to his home in Fayetteville and imagine himself sitting on the deck with Betty. Or perhaps he could think of himself bowling with Tubby O’Rourke and Porky Flanagan, or even take himself back to boyhood and see himself fishing with his father in the lake near their summer house. Such pleasant images, these were, but not strong enough to protect him from the intrusion of reality, for now he heard the cattleman give a shout and the bath began to be lowered slowly to the ground.
“Those wretched cows have broken through the gate again,” the cattleman grumbled. “Could you come and give me a quick hand now to chase them back in before they get onto Mrs. O’Connor’s lawns and there’s a real hullabaloo.”
Fatty opened his eyes and stared up at a sky framed by the smooth white sides of the bathtub. Suddenly the plumber’s face and torso loomed over the edge.
“Sorry about this, Mr. O’Leary,” he said. “We’ll have to leave you here for a minute or two while we go and deal with those cows. You just wait now.”
“What else can I do but wait?” said Fatty petulantly. “I can hardly go anywhere.”
“Well, now, that’s probably true,” said the plumber. “But don’t you worry. We’ll be back in no time.”
Fatty closed his eyes and tried again to imagine that this simply was not happening. Ever since he had set out for Ireland, he had been subjected to a series of misfortunes and humiliations, one after the other. There had been that awful flight, with all its indignities; there had been the embarrassment of having to wear a duvet cover into town; and then, last night, there had been the disaster with the bed. But all of these events, acutely embarrassing as they might have been, were nothing when compared with the sheer indignity of being dumped, covered only by a small towel, in the middle of the courtyard. Fortunately there was nobody about, although at any moment somebody might appear. What if that dreadful O’Brien person decided to take a stroll and walked out into the courtyard to find a large white bathtub, apparently abandoned, and Fatty stuck inside it at the mercy of any passer-by? Fatty stared up at the sky and uttered a small prayer to Saint Martha, the patron saint of cooks, and with a secondary patronage of the overweight, but, halfway through, switched, quite wisely, to an appeal to Saint Eustace, patron saint of difficult situations. Dear Saint Eustace, who wrought such wonders, please raise your faithful servant, CORNELIUS PATRICK O’LEARY, from his plight, and return him to his room in the hotel. Amen. In the distance he heard vigorous shouts and calls coming from the men as they chased the cows; no immediate help would be forthcoming from that quarter, it seemed.
Fatty took a deep breath. Perhaps I should be entir
ely philosophical about this, he thought. Things can hurt us only if we allow them to hurt us; if we think of them as trials over which we can easily triumph, then their sting is drawn; so he had been taught, all those years ago at Notre Dame, when they had studied the Stoics. And matters could be worse. One only had to think of the sufferings of the saints to know that. They were subjected to the most terrible tortures and pains, and they bore them as if they were the lightest of glancing blows. He would do the same. To be stuck in a bath was nothing to the arrows that pierced Saint Sebastian, for example, or the kindled conflagration that consumed Saint Joan.
As he lay in silence, feeling the cold grasp of the bathtub, he heard the door into the courtyard open and the sound of footsteps.
“What on earth is that?” said a voice. With a sinking heart, Fatty recognised that the voice belonged to Rupert O’Brien.
The footsteps grew louder and there, peering over him, was the face of the famous critic, wide-eyed with surprise. Behind him, but taking only a quick glance before withdrawing from view, was the face of Niamh.
“Mr. O’Leary! You poor fellow!”
Fatty grimaced. “I’m stuck,” he said. “The plumber was taking me to his workshop and he had to go off and chase some cows. I can’t move till they come back.”
“But you poor fellow, what a shame,” said Rupert O’Brien, stretching out to touch the side of the bath in sympathy. “They should not have deserted you like that. I shall stay here and talk to you. Niamh, you go back inside. It’s embarrassing enough for Mr. O’Leary to be out here with virtually no clothes without ladies being present.”
“I’m quite all right,” said Fatty hurriedly. “Don’t worry about me.”
“But of course I shall worry,” said Rupert O’Brien, perching himself on the edge of the bathtub. “I suppose you were too large for the bath. Is that what happened? Were you just too large?”
Fatty mumbled something that Rupert O’Brien did not hear. “I remember,” went on Rupert O’Brien, “when I was at school – Campbell College, you know it? – we had a fellow who got stuck in an armchair. He was a large fellow, a bit like yourself but maybe not quite so large, and he sat in this armchair and he simply could not get out of it. His father was Irish Ambassador in Paris at the time, I distinctly remember. He was considered a possible president at one stage, but he was rather too fond of the ladies and you know what the bishops are like in this country. Frightful bunch of killjoys. But anyway, there was his son, stuck in an armchair and no amount of pulling seemed to be able to do the trick. I thought one of the springs might have got hooked into him, you know, and this would have made it difficult to dislodge him. Then I had a good idea, which was to turn the armchair upside down and let gravity do the trick. So we did, and out he eventually popped, barely damaged by the whole experience, even if he did have a large rent in the seat of his pants, which gave us a good laugh. You know what boys are like. Cruel bunch. Ha!”