A Singular Country Page 5

  Now you’d think that your local populace, who live in the parish surrounding the big house and who summer evenings convene at the nearby crossroads to make gossip and conduct a bit of courtship, would be dancing and clapping their hands with triumphal joy now that one of their own had taken over and supplanted the ascendant invader. Well you’d be woefully, blatantly and unmistakably wrong. Sure, like when your man’s car was parked outside the pub with the binoculars and mink rugs gone missing, they’d be now only trying to borrow a tool or two that would never be seen again. And don’t accuse them of polite stealing. Sure didn’t they bring it back a week ago and if it’s gone again now it would be through no fault of theirs. So here you have your staffed household who have overnight, by a turn of phrase, become butlers, cooks, maids and gardeners. And experts, all of them at drinking tea while polishing the chairs with their backs and arses for comfort, or if dispatched to dig up a spud or two in the garden, are leaning upon their forks in either rain or sunshine. Sure why should they aid and abet people no better than themselves to be putting on airs up in the big house, sitting mightily as you please on swansdown cushions, mixing their tea with silver spoons and with candlelight no less from the candelabra casting shadows over their steaming plates. And by god the butler himself, who wouldn’t know a George III ormolu mounted yew wood and marquetry commode from the back of his foot, or a burgundy from a Chateau d’Yquem, is here now pretending elaborate ceremony in pouring out your choice of red or white wine to wash down the boiled bacon, potatoes and cabbage.

  However, your returned Irishman with the plethora of quids now up in the mansion didn’t make his money out of nothing. He’d have already raged flying around the house trying to get at the pipes with a wrench to seal them off. But then would find instead it made much more sense to chase the plumber out and down the front drive and as far away as possible. However, there is also a thing too, lately come to Ireland, called electricity and someone called an electrician who would have in a similar fashion to your self taught plumbers been installing your wires instead of your pipes. And which has not only produced your rusty rainfall and widespread flooding but has also now added the distinct hazard of possible death by electrocution. Your Big man finding that when he presses to switch on a light in the water closet a light instead goes on in the kitchen below and he’s left peeing over his foot in the darkness. And to turn on a light in his bedroom he’s found he has to distantly go out in the stable yard. And to turn out the stable yard light he has to return to his bedroom. But talking about electric light and its recent introduction into the mansion, your Big man would at least have the shrewd suspicion and enough presence of mind at night not only to have the shutters closed but the curtains drawn so as not to give the more inquisitive of the local population creeping up under the cover of darkness the opportunity to snicker and laugh peeking in the night time windows at some of their own in black tie. And especially with the ladies sporting voluminously flowing gowns with their necklines daringly deeply plunging while pushing their silver forks between their dentures. And by god you’d wake up soon to something you didn’t think was rampant here in Ireland and that be the sudden turbulent rising up and plunging down of social class.

  But back in your mansion kitchen your man the self taught butler originally from County Monaghan, and who in fact did at least work long enough to get fired from his last three jobs in England for being falling down drunk in charge of three respective wine cellars. And now semi-retired and, as it happens, back again out in the bogs, is busy enough once more with the bottles. Opening them left, right and centre and tasting the contents. But he’d only be wanting to make sure the wine hadn’t turned into vinegar and that the vintage whiskey wasn’t past its peak. And he’d have to hurry as there were plenty of bottles to sample yet. So it would not be long now till your man the butler was having difficulty finding his way from pantry to dining room, having crashed back down the cellar stairs and taken a sizeable knock on the head. And as a result, and now also needing to desperately relieve himself after all the liquid intake, was now opening the wrong doors to the wrong hallways. Finally, as his ill luck would have it and thinking he’d found the water closet door and having already in anticipation opened his fly and taken out his member, he was standing confronting the dinner guests inside the dining room chamber and distinctly without a pot in sight to piss in, and unable to control himself any longer, your butler’s urine is landing in every hysterical direction around him. With female screams now coming from the pantry, and the ladies jumping up from their dining chairs and your man the butler non plussed as to the protocol to be assumed in the situation.

  Now the butler wasn’t all that great a sober sight to look at in the first place before all this present pother drunkenly happened. But at least he had enough good manners, seeing as to where he was relieving himself, to turn as soon as he could to rush back out the door. But also as Celtic luck would have it at this precise moment, high faluting guests, remnants of castle occupying Anglo Irish aristocracy, who have been invited, are late just arriving in their evening finery, and trying to find their way to their hosts, instead find themselves plunged into darkness as someone or something has just shorted the lights of the mansion. Now these eccentric folk who, although members of the lofty aristocracy, would still be on your best terms with your high and mighty powers and politicians in the government. So your Big man would be beside himself to please them and continue to enjoy planning permissions and other big favours that might come his way. And of course right now they have been stumbling lost on their way to the dining room. Where in the very best embarrassing manner these politically sensitive folk are suddenly run straight into in the bleakest of hall darknesses by the butler trying to return his appendage to the privacy of his buttoned up trousers. Well let me tell you, between the cries of women in distress from the dining room, and the butler frontally charging at them in the hallway which naturally puts your Anglos into a panic, it’s no wonder it richly results in a knock down drag out battle with no one knowing whose hair is being removed by the roots or who is punching them. The most terrible part of which is that here in the house of the Big man, as he comes out to investigate by candlelight, his butler is, while in an exposed state, busy belting the bejesus out of his guests of honour, who are already making a beeline as best they can tripping over the furniture towards the front door, and down the steps and into their Daimler car to roar away. And they are the lucky and prudent ones. But perhaps in this traditionally sentimental land they are not the most spirited or most understanding. For your Big man now in the blaze of the candelabra brought out from the dining room, helps your chap the butler up off the floor, brushes him down, waits patiently while the exposed private is returned to the privacy of your house steward’s trousers. Then your Big man sits him on a chair and gives him a sup of brandy to revive his optimism. And one thing you would know by the conversation that follows would be that you could be no place else but in the Singular Country of Ireland.

  “Ah sir, thanks be to god for the bit of brandy. And now I’m awfully sorry for that little bit of mistaken identity both with the water closet and your just arriving guests I thought were some brazen interlopers out from town. I hope that the inconvenient and unintentional relieving of myself and the inhospitality shown your two persons just departed will leave no lasting ill effects or feelings.”

  “Ah Paddy now me oul fella, drink up your brandy now. There’d be more folk available like them where they come from. And isn’t piss good for carpets and sure if it soaks through them will be killing the dry rot rampant in the dining room floor. And don’t be worrying as to them who have gone without staying to have the courtesy to enquire as to the clear mistake as must have been made. Let it be good riddance to them.”

  And here now

  Straighten out your throat

  And

  Have another sup

  Of brandy.

  IN THE MILD AIR AND SINGULAR SILENCE OF THIS KERRY LAND
THE MYSTIQUE OF THE WEST IS HERE GREATEST AWAKE WHICH DOTH BETIMES MAKE THE SOUL SHIVER.

  V

  Ah but in Ireland, a land where shoplifters declared unfair police scrutiny in their first national strike, it is not always your man the butler, a bottle to his lips, and with piss drenched trouser cuffs who deliberately or accidentally stirs up the major mayhem. Or with wandering fingers interferes up the dresses of the female scullery help and then, summoned to duty, totters to crash face first into the giant tureen of soup he was on the way to ferry into the array of prominent guests waiting famished to dine as midnight approached. It would far more often be the entire lot of your Big man’s household staff who would, by first going bolshi, refuse to attend to duties in any guise whatsoever. Requiring your returned nouveau riche Irishman to go with raised fists shouting to play pop backstage in the kitchens and pantry and search aloft in the floors and reassembling the staff he would by candlelight blandishment see to it that the dinner party is underway once more and attendance being danced upon his very important political guests.

  And it is appropriate here to have a word about this last mentioned above category of person. For much is at stake to make a decent impression on the powers that be in Irish politics. And present at your Big man’s table in the mansion might be your mightiest men in the nation. And they are on the whole basically a modest lot and not given to pretensions. Indeed so down to earth are some of them you might be forgiven for being utterly taken aback. Of rural, farming or publican background, they are for the most part bluff, gregarious, happy-to-see-you folk and always glad to present themselves at a decent hooley. Nor would they ever be averse to spending a few minutes of their valuable time with some old lady up an overgrown boreen, taking tea in the humblest of hovels. For eyes are watching them on every side. And by god do they know it. And for this reason do most recently arrive in the more conspicuous helicopter that you’d see coming noisily over the hills at you, or for those afeared of flying, would arrive in your gleaming chauffeured state financed automobile. But in front of their constituents they’d be themselves wracked with humility. And never mind your black tie dinners at the Big man’s mansion and being greeted at the door by a butler. All in all they’d be fairly decently reasonable and wise men. With a few of your brilliant and even wiser women among them. And both wanting to get the political pulse of the people. They’d also be having to keep their wits about them and be abstemious in imbibing the bottle. And would never be looking as if the shine of their shoes was taken off by having just pee’d all over their boots. They’d too be highly discreet people who would take the trouble to go out in the middle of a meadow to whisper a secret in someone’s ear. Nor would you, outside of a parliamentary forum, ever hear them shouting or kicking up an unparliamentary fuss. And it would be no mystery why some of the greatest politicians since Caesar himself, are Irishmen. And included among them, women. Some of whom you might even call Cleopatra.

  But powers too that be in the land and wielding influence and omnipresent always and everywhere up and down the main street of every town would be your shop keeper and publican. These manipulators and king makers preside if not behind their counters, then in the back of their shops where they keep tabs on everybody coming and going. And never mind that there are now more than a few supermarkets all over the place. There would still be these smaller emporiums intact, of shoe shops, butchers, drapers, and newsagents, whose proprietors, pillars of decorum and discretion, would with their deposited funds accumulated over the years in the bank and contributors to conspicuous charities, be able to send mightily influential whispers about the village, town or city. But in talking a little bit further about behind the scenes wire pulling there would also be your widespread professional class, the members of which would be the intimate knowers of secrets. Accountants, solicitors, medical and veterinary doctors, and then your dentists, surgeons, and high ranking police, army, or being that this is an island in the sea, maybe even naval officer. All of whom could by a wink or a nod drop the hint to whom it concerned that the time was ripe to put the boot into your man or otherwise blacken his prospects.

  So the wise tendency here in this land is to make your enemies carefully and if possible, to do the impossible, and not make an enemy at all. But if you do incur enmity, mark your man well for he’ll be somewhere eternally conspiring. So it is always cogent to make sure you yourself never give up putting paid to the son of a bitch where or whenever he dares rear his sneaky ugly head. Plus watch out for his wife if he’s got one who’d be busy spreading the spoken if not chemical poison. And never mind the long list of any of the foregoing wielders of influence. For the power any of them exert is still nothing like that found in the family tribe of brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles and which only fades a bite when you come to your second and third cousins and even here you’d best keep a weather eye out for your clannish loyalty. Which, like a pebble in a pond, sends alerting waves across the parish and province to every relative’s ear. And never mind what you’ve heard about the Mafia. For by god as sure as the grass is green in Ireland and the sky only occasionally blue, you would as foreigner or stranger committing a misdeed, be inviting nearly the entire nation to be taking an enemy’s side against you with this and that fucker’s sworn oath to get you before either of you went to your grave. And as a man you wouldn’t want to steal someone’s wife unless he wanted to get rid of her. Or as a woman open up your legs for someone’s husband. But ah you’d ask, how has the place kept even half way civilised and the whole country not gone one hundred per cent totally haywire before this, and still retains a modicum of the kind of sophistication now demanded by your American tourist. And the answer is easy. And once was very obvious. For the fact was that for many of your years past, above and beyond and dominant in influence over all, were your eternally patient and vigilant clergy. The bishops, parsons, priests, the nuns and religious in general. And not always of the Roman Catholic variety. It is they who from their churches, monasteries and convents have waged a long continual war against obscenity, indecency and fornication. And who have, exhorting from their pulpits, attempted to maintain ethical standards among the population in the face of prevalent fraud, theft and deceit. For in a land long dominated by the invader the habit of lying has become firmly established. And as a traveller on the road asking a direction you’d be forewarned not to believe everything you hear as to getting to your destination. But by god at the same time you’d come across an honesty right for two these days in a nation now going madly modern out of its mind, exposed as it is to the round the clock new social and sexual freedoms broadcast from abroad down out of the skies. Where once only God with his brogue was speaking up there.

  Now in the latter case of your concupiscence, here’s a type of little story of not that long ago of what you might now expect to confront you in the land of saints and scholars and which erupts as such occasionally does among your mixed semi professional classes pretending to profess a certain amount of broadminded permissiveness. You’d have, coming as you do, and with some frequency, from England and the U.S.A., damsels easy of virtue and wily in the ways of flattering men to the point of forcing them to sit down immediately to hide the embarrassment of their erections. Now this nature of lady would have her skin tight wardrobe and diaphanous garments to fit any occasion, and maybe in extreme cases even her own sports car so as to be seen wearing her haute couture snug arsed clinging short skirt as she got in and out of her racy vehicle. And in so doing be inciting the appetites of every red blooded Irishman within whose long repressed sight she came. And by god would some of the less religious of them be apoplectically panting and totally indifferent to the bedouin atmosphere of every man’s breeches looking like a tent. Nor would she be very much concerned taking notice of the glowering Irish women who would watch her lead the men away. Of course, let it be said, not perhaps for decency’s sake, but for the geometric difficulties that might be in it, your newcomer seductress would only be taking on one man
at a time. Now we must not confuse this incident about to be told with the more common and accepted occasion when in Ireland saucy shenanigans occur during the likely time of the fox hunt when the blood’s up and the hooves are pounding over the turf. It is well known that, with the huntsman’s horn sounding, and the hounds giving tongue and the blood lust occasioned by the fox desperately attempting to escape with its life, that this is exactly the time when your interloping foreign lady, her breeches tight over the arse and thighs straining locked over the ribs of her mount leads a likely gent off to the side, well away from the line of the fox. And there dismounted in a sheltered glade, bottoms al fresco do be bouncing. Now this kind of congress is fully understood to happen when members of the opposite sex of the hunt, roused out of their normally private inhibitions, will have at each other in a singularly sexual way with pairs of them flagrantly in copses all over the countryside pounding on top of each other goodo. No, this is not what we are referring to here at all. And in the present situation about to be related, it’s all suburban types and cars and not a horse in sight.