After the censor had effected his cuts, she tinkled, there was only about fifty-eight minutes remaining. ‘It was X-Cert, of course, and premiered at the Cannon Moulin in Windmill Street.’
Would you please play Alma Cogan for Lucy, wrote a listener, Lucy who’s in the Mater Hospital in Dublin, I would be so grateful. Could I have Bridie Gallagher for my dear mother Mrs Cooney, who’s been in the Bon Secours this past fortnight, came another request. After that it was The Bachelors for Imelda in Mullingar. And then The Seekers for Booboo and Mopsy who were greatly missed by their grannie and granda. And poor Mary Ellen in Marino who had polio.
Might I, at this juncture, suggest that another possible name for the author of this somewhat unfortunate testimony of regret might well be Feeney Reilly of the Overactive Retina for it has always been my blessing or curse to be in possession of what can only be described as a fiercely cinematic imagination – and now the scene she had set presented itself to me in all its breathtaking clarity, in crisp pink and crimson Eastmancolor tints, as vivid as if the businessman and Miss Lattimer were actually standing naked and preoccupied with a multicoloured beach ball right there in the centre of our kitchen. Except that it was Bunny who was standing beside the mantelpiece, sans beach ball, but ever so slowly popping the buttons of her dove-white stiff and sharp nurse’s uniform. I could just make out the lace edging of her brassiere. ‘X-Cert,’ she was whispering, ‘are you comfortable, dearie?’
Solely on impulse, I found myself reaching out and touching her ever so gently – hesitantly, not even beginning to approach the slopes of her bosom, and certainly not directly on the breast – before looking up to see her glaring hideously at me, with her body rigid, flattened, with her back against the kitchen wall. And, to make matters worse, I began to realise she was actually crying out. ‘Just what on earth do you think you’re doing?’ she screeched fiercely, trembling violently from head to toe. ‘Just what do you think you’re doing?’ she demanded again.
I shrank from the ghastly scene in dread – just as she herself proceeded to do. Shaking all over with her lips stony, ashen. Her continuing cries of protest could be heard clearly all along the length of the terrace. My expression was reflected in the window directly opposite where I stood – it was pallid, sickly, greenish. Here’s hoping to see you home again soon, Grainne, piped the homespun voice of the radio announcer as another gay tune wafted out from behind the brown chevron-wave grille cloth of the varnished Pye cabinet. ‘He touched me!’ my aunt was shrieking. ‘Huh-huh-he touched me!’
Her sandal appraising me with a hungry open jaw.
*
(The succeeding pages were not contained within the diary itself but were discovered elsewhere – in my London lodgings, in fact – by the authorities, and have ever since formed part of my official record. For my part, however, they remain what they always were – disparate uncrafted musings never intended for the public eye. Which, conceivably – that is to say, if even some lacklustre attempt to impose a shape on them had ever been made – might ultimately have been presented as a little memoir of sorts, or a short story perhaps entitled ‘Love Letters in the Sand’, in memory of the Pat Boone hit that gave rise to them so long ago. And which attained their, perhaps inevitable conclusion, almost forty years later, after a lifetime spent in England.)
Love Letters in the Sand; or An Old Naïve, Remembering by the Sea.
‘Almost as soon as he had covered over the small ribbon-bound cache (its colours were blue and white) in a little sprinkling of the finest dry golden grains, the elderly gentleman in the panama hat experienced the most enormous sense of relief – indeed it seemed almost as though a tumour had been cut out, deftly removed from his body – smiling away as the mellow strains of the Pat Boone melody he remembered from long ago lingered soothingly in his head. Ah yes, ‘Love Letters in the Sand’, he sighed, tapping the lapels of his neat grey overcoat as he stood erect, setting off across the strand, past Dreamland Ballroom and the Oval Lawns. Smiling to himself as he thought of his days as an ingénue film-maker who had latterly become a devotee of the Lindsay Anderson school of early sixties Free Cinema – the centrepiece of which was his somewhat superior featurette/documentary on Margate and this very ballroom. Which, of course, like a lot of sights in this once grand seaside town, had fallen somewhat into decay. But Feeney Reilly didn’t give that much thought – knowing only too well the quite extraordinary alchemic powers of art, particularly film. For him, he reflected, there was, and continued to be, even now as he himself approached his sixties, something spiritual about the dimming wall-lights of a movie theatre, an ecstasy almost, which he had experienced at its most profound, perhaps, in the 1970s when on release from his confinement in prohibitive Ireland where even simple contraceptives were illicit and the concept of abortion entirely alien. And where even a harmless little celluloid bagatelle such as Naked as Nature Intended, which he had happened to see in the Cameo in 1971, a laughable little romp featuring beach balls, bums and strategically placed towels, had not only been awarded an X-certificate but roundly denounced in both the local and national press. He laughed wryly to himself as he recalled the darkened theatre and the bowler-hatted man who was departing his office for a ‘spot of relaxation’ . . . ‘On the coast, Miss Lattimer, with some friends and genial company. You don’t care, I suppose, to join me?’ His mousy secretary blushed violently and lowered her head, disappearing into a folder of files.
How standards change, he mused, shaking his head yet again, arranging his easel on the edge of the clifftop overlooking the bay. Ultimately, as it happened, film had proved an unsuccessful prospect for Mr Feeney Reilly, to such a degree that he had ended up making no money to speak of, even in that purportedly lucrative category of ‘Continental pictures’, where the blending of ‘art’ with ‘the erotic’ was scarcely unusual and in which he had laboured for quite some time before drawing on some savings he had wisely salted away and eventually opting for the pursuit of a much more realistic and certainly realisable aim: working in watercolours.
On one occasion, having discovered it quite by chance in a bric-a-brac shop, he had purchased a monster cut-out of the model Pamela Green, the original star of Peeping Tom, with which he was besotted, as much for its mise en scène as for its startling – for its time – theme and its groundbreaking cinematography. There were others, too, which he treasured and viewed repeatedly, never seeming to tire of their idiosyncratic impishness, even muted defiance. Such as Mary Millington’s Come Play with Me. But his favourite would always remain Nudes of the World, produced by Arnold L. Miller and put on general release in the year 1962, after which there followed many copycats, notably, perhaps, I, Nudist, also 16 mm, replete with a comparable quota of volleyball nets, beach windbreakers and strategically placed towels, not to mention late-night camp meets at which the popular songs ‘Hand Me Down My Walking Cane’ and ‘Won’t You Come Home, Bill Bailey’ were regular favourites, piped from a crescent of candy-striped deckchairs tenanted by city-dwellers bathed in a delirious glow.
Deckchairs of exactly the same design and pattern that he intended to include in his Margate picture, which he had just this very moment begun. Briskly drawing his brush across the canvas, experiencing an extraordinary sensation of delight and elevation that had been commonplace from the moment, effectively, that he had learnt to paint, conjuring up the simplest of images such as the frontage of municipal buildings, green grass and, as now, an expanse of golden sand and the nearby glittering sea. Although he would never have claimed to lead the field in the medium in any commendable way, rather intending – if he had such a thing as a philosophy of art – to recapture the freshness and principle of naive art at its best. His friend Kerry Mannion, an associate of many years standing and, among many other things, a ticket clerk at Waterloo Station, would have endorsed this view. Proclaiming him at one point similar to the notorious Alfred Wallis, variously described throughout his career as ‘a ham’ and ‘limited’ and indeed on one occ
asion as ‘the world’s worst painter’.
‘Did you know he was plagued with voices and was given to breaking off in mid-sentence to insist that his dead wife pipe down?’ he recalled him saying.
Poor old Mannion – he too was gone now, taken by cancer after going in for routine tests. He touched up the outline of the figure’s scarcely formed head; a fleck of blue. And sighed. How much he owed Mannion, who had arranged a position for him after leaving the seminary, where Feeney Reilly had studied in the end for a mere three years. Before finding himself, unshackled, with all of the possibilities of London before him. It was Mannion who had introduced him to Fairleigh and Urquhart, both of them, according to his friend, and so it proved, ‘remarkable talents, each in their own way’.
Urquhart had met Polanski, he told him, and as for Fairleigh, there wasn’t one in the French House pub who didn’t know him.
He daubed the figure’s forehead with a spot of ice-cream pink, similar to the shade of Eastmancolor which he loved. ‘Soft enough to be innocent, sweet enough to inspire,’ he murmured.
Then paused and smiled, thinking nothing of the vehicle drawing up alongside the concrete shelter, or the discreet blue-serged elbow that appeared out the window. He merely exhaled and smiled once again, contented with the way his work was proceeding.
A Postcard from Margate, he intended calling it, proposing it as something of a gay-coloured tribute, although it was, in effect, an interior. His shoulders sagged again, and he paused as he recalled – it was Mannion who first mentioned it, a scene from the sixties movie Catch Us If You Can, in which Margate had been described as ‘smelling of dead holidays’.
They had seen it in the Coronet, as he recalled, or was it the ABC in Soho? He couldn’t quite remember, and in any case experienced no great compulsion to pursue it, considering it was, as it happened, in that establishment there had been a complaint to the management about him. By an ill-intentioned, perhaps mentally unstable, individual in his sixties, and motivated solely by bitterness. His protestations had proved futile. ‘Interfered’ was the word, the constant refrain that assaulted his ears as he found himself manhandled and, ultimately, quite humiliated, as he was consigned to the lashing rains of Piccadilly.
But those were ancient, of little consequence, times. For now he was in Margate, home of the Salvation Army Band, of pipe-smoking dads and dilettantes on cliffs. He was just about to add the tiniest dab of white onto his canvas – a mere suggestion – on the elevation of an empurpled wave when he felt a somewhat reluctant hand touch him on the arm.
‘We were wondering, sir, if we might have a word?’
Both men stood for a moment, implacably, before one of them turned a ghastly shade of grey. Clamping his hand to his mouth as he . . .
His constable colleague stood between him and the painting.
*
There was a fire extinguisher in startling scarlet red secured to the wall at an awkward forty-degree angle. Feeney Reilly had been watching it for some time through the six-by-four panel of glass in the door. Before his eyes lit up when he heard it again, the familiar sound like the squeaking wheels of the wheelchair that the constable had produced in the day room on that occasion, after they had driven him from the beach – it was covered in plastic, with a plaid rug underneath.
‘I was wondering,’ said the officer, ‘do you recognise this?’
*
As always, the nurse was accompanied by a stocky mental staff orderly – a fine fellow indeed. A countryman of Feeney Reilly’s, as it happened – from a village only miles from the place where he’d been born.
‘So how are we today, Mr Reilly, any requests?’
Only half-interested, the orderly yawned and looked out across the concreted enclosure, where the metal sign marked ‘Friern Barnet’ was glazed with little drops of rain.
Feeney Reilly stroked his chin and considered his choice for a long time – initially he selected a muffin along with coffee before changing his mind. He was secreting upon his person the small glossy photograph which he had been perusing for some time, and then his face slowly began to turn pale, a development which went entirely unnoticed by his custodian. Who remained quite oblivious to the depth of the shock and surprise which, not to put too fine a point on it, was now enveloping Feeney Reilly who, admittedly, had some apprehension of what was now happening to him.
He was reminded of a story which he had read long ago – where exactly he could not recall, probably in a doctor’s waiting room somewhere – recording a lady’s quite extraordinary experience when, kneeling in a church and praying devoutly, she had been alerted by the gentle, scarcely audible sound of strings, the source of which proved to be an image high above her on a stained-glass window. Where a small angelic figure was plying a majestic wooden harp with such commitment that, somehow, a single note became detached from the instrument – literally being released into the still air of evening, before wafting, with an almost impossible lyrical grace, and settling softly, with an extraordinary delicacy, directly on the pew in front of the enraptured penitent.
In exactly the same manner as the lips of the photographic image had just done and which were, of course, those of Myrtle Macklin, and with whom he had been enjoying, it might be said, a passing moment of ‘private theatre’, throughout the course of which – under dim lights – he had cast her as the mousey ‘Miss Lattimer’ and himself as her bowler-hatted bespectacled boss whose mysterious journeys to the south coast had revealed something more, quite a lot more, than she had anticipated, arching like a translucent meniscus directly in front of his eyes, before coming to rest, not as the singular note of the harp had done, in a quiet corner there to remain as some harbinger of harmony, but affixed (curiously, as always, and quite incongruously in these new circumstances, with no adornment of any kind, as was to be expected with Myrtle) to a life-size cardboard cut-out of Pamela Green, but somewhat absurdly if convincingly bearing the soft plumpish features of Bunny Meers, statuesquely attired in a lace-up basque and lengthy ribboned suspenders. And from which, impairingly, now emerged the following words: ‘Milking machines? No, we don’t sell those anymore. But I really must recruit your enthusiasm, dearie. You see, I’ve lost my stocking and without it I simply don’t know what to do. You know, I feel such a ninny, having permitted such saucy comportment, and in the sanctuary of my own private rooms. And how my neck hurts now as a result, O how it stings! Why you were almost as naughty, I declare it, as that incorrigible bounder, that wicked rascal Lord Charles – tee hee!’
Even when his expression deepened and turned quite pale, the orderly gave no hint of recognition of any sort, with Feeney Reilly’s attention being gripped by the sudden and unexpected sight of a crook-handled and red-striped stick of rock, which – his blood ran cold as he recalled the implacability of the prosecuting lawyer, who pointed to the painting standing on its easel – rested sideways in the centre of the trolley. Bringing back, as it did, the opportunistic description in one of the more sordid dailies. In which the Scholl’s sandal had been described as ‘priapic’. Not to even consider their comments on the various ‘randomly scattered’ pieces of clothing, including the stocking, which was more of the ‘support’ variety than the ‘Kayser Bondor’.
It was a distressing recollection and explained why he found himself changing his mind, on no less than three occasions, as the orderly proceeded, yet again, to somewhat wearily caress his five o’clock shadow.
The flushed glow of the fire extinguisher angled behind him was quite overwhelming.
‘I think, after all, I’ll just have a pie,’ he sighed, eventually, nodding his head, before suddenly lurching forward as a swollen blotch of emerald sputum appeared lividly between his lips and he found himself groaning helplessly as he quivered, ‘Like the ones they always sold during intervals at the Windmill.’
The Recital
Eimear Ryan
It was one of those sleek, silvery wine bars: anonymous as an airport, the oversized glasse
s filled a third of the way.
‘He’s in NAMA,’ Tim would murmur in my ear as we tended bar. ‘That lad there was before a tribunal.’ Tim knew everyone’s scandal, had it boiled down to the absolutes. ‘Grace,’ he’d say, ‘the tax evader wants another gin and tonic.’
Sometimes I wished he’d keep his voice down. I couldn’t help but like the clientele. It wasn’t just that they tipped well. They had presence – a tragic, shop-soiled charisma. They told great stories. They’d been powerful men, once.
I’d dropped my CV into the bar because of the piano that sat squat and dusty in the corner. I’d hoped they might hire me to play. When Tim offered bar work instead, I didn’t hesitate. I needed a reason to get out of the house, away from my sister’s reproachful looks.
Not that Jen ever let up. Often when I got in from work she would materialise in the darkened living room, warning me not to wake Ruán.
‘Could you not get a different sort of job? One with more civilised hours? You know, something in an office.’
I thought of the early morning rush, of girls in pencil skirts and chunky white runners stalking grimly to work, their heels in their handbags. ‘No thanks.’
The piano, I soon learned, was little more than an expensive prop. I was forever running over to it with a cloth to wipe the sticky wine-glass rings away. The bar was fine as a stopgap, a ‘just’ job – And what are you doing at the moment, Grace? Oh, I’m just working in a bar for now. There was an unofficial free-wine perk, of which I made judicious use. And in slow moments, I watched the customers. There was a GAA commentator who had a different accent to the one he used on TV. There was a judge who sat at the bar in full judge rig-out, her wig sitting neatly on her head like a vestigial brain.
One regular, Liam, bounded in at the same hour each night, always in a suit, always slightly dishevelled. He was forever getting into arguments about ‘funding’.