A Singular Country Page 9

  Ah but there is in the nature of the Irish a deep fear of offending the poet and the dreamer man who can by his uttered or written word heap eternal scorn upon you and doesn’t avoid doing the same upon any of your relations. And perhaps for that reason there haven’t been more of your Irish kicking their authors in the teeth. Indeed there are plenty who secretly read and revere these rebels. And one recalls once walking along the main street of a provincial town and seeing high upon the front of a building a cement frieze which proclaimed for all citizens to see that it was The Literary Institute. And in the rainy chill of the evening you’d wrack your brain wondering to imagine who it was in years past who with a scruffy sheaf of paper under an arm might ever have been hanging around such a place with a serious novel, or a tragicomic stage play wrapped in a newspaper or a poem about rural life scribbled on a cigarette packet stuck in a pocket. And hoping that one day the contents of these pages might be revealed to the world. Or at least a copy secretly circulating and read by the local chemist, butcher, publican or newsagent. Without them later getting cudgels to give him a belt across the noggin or polishing their boot tips to give him a kick up the backside so as to be sending him out of town fast and take with him his dirty, disgusting insult to religion that would be masquerading as a drama, novel, poetry or play.

  Now one of the things to know about this nation is that not everyone in the place writes. But don’t expect very often to come across the few that don’t. So there’s no shortage let me tell you of pencils and pens scribbling and typewriter keys thumping the page. Nor by god is there any lack of descriptions these days that you wouldn’t want your old maiden aunt to be reading by torch light under the bedclothes. And is it any wonder. In a land where solitary masturbation only half helps endure the rage against the repression and frustration, and where curtains twitch at every window, and where the small minded snigger and scoff and wag to spread gossip from ear to ear and door to door. Or where the scourging tongue can be upon you lashing to drive you out. And if that weren’t enough then the grey skies and seeping damp rain, if they didn’t drive you to drink certainly would inspire you to at least say something to defy such climatic elements. And why not be lewd about it as only words can be. For there is only one thing more distracting upon this earth than a graphic portrayal of a hearty fuck. And that is a soul inspired fuck itself. And that is another thing that has changed in the land of the shamrock, that you may as well be hung for doing it as be hung for describing it.

  And now here we come full tilt to your Man Fighter Mark III. To confront her brains, beauty and wit. And by god all you small farmers and modest income tourists beware. Don’t be getting ideas. She’s not your cup of tea. And changing with her hair style, she’s got big plans going way far into the future. With big colour photographs to reckon with her outspoken newspaper and magazine opinions, in which she supplies answers to the questions she’s asked about her novels, poems, paintings and plays. Which give graphic descriptions of the foibles of your man who supported her through her first scribbling efforts, and even, by god, who often put his own paintbrush and pen to paper to help. And was she grateful? Not a bit of it. She instead branded him a monkish monster egotist. Now why, you’d ask, didn’t he in the time honoured manner give her a good belt in the gob to put manners on her and then refuse to pay the dental bills to replace the teeth that had gone flying? Well now that’s a good question. Probably best answered by the fact of your man being a gentleman and not wanting to go to prison where such an attribute would not be appreciated. Instead didn’t he finally get her out of his hair by introducing her around to all your influential people, with her holding a shamrock and batting her eyes at them and opening her legs when the time for that was ripe. Sure and all the while your Mark III lady made it sound as if she had invented love. Posed there as she is once again demure in the newspaper, her countenance freeze framed suggesting her availability for seduction. Terrible, terrible, terrible, you might say. Well I’d say again, right back to you, not a bit of it. Why not. Isn’t your Mark III a true Man Fighter, not mincing her words on the printed page and not afraid to call your man’s horn a prick that would not only whip a donkey out of a sandpit but also lever a camel over a sand dune. And let me tell you, don’t they know it’s the women on top. And don’t they know the mouse, the man, is underneath. Which brings us to the most successful, if not the most obvious, Man Fighter of them all, your Mark IV. Now this little lady by dint of her persistent nagging has silenced your man the husband into utter abject obedience and has him now sitting there on a bench in the pub as she points at him, with his hands folded in his lap and looking as if he’d passed beyond into another world. Which of course he has.

  “Look at him, look at him. Didn’t I bate him and bate him? It took years but there he is, not a peep out of him. And doing what he’s told.”

  Ah but although your Man Fighter Mark III hasn’t managed to quell her husband quite as well as your Mark IV variety, nevertheless as she moves at her ease about the artistic and literary world and is plamásing the men left right and centre, her flattery is getting her everywhere. Flicking up the tie of your man and telling him that not only is it long and hanging well but that she’d bet she could swing from it if it ever suddenly got rigid. And a true femme fatale you’re saying. To be seen peering out from between the aspidistra leaves and in front of her captivated men heard waxing lyrical in her usual saccharine manner about frog spawn or the special sensual flesh colours she’s mixed to paint her male nudes. And why not. Wouldn’t the publisher and gallery owner be splashing the risqué remarks and her exotic stories of loose morals all over the public place. And then be up on his hind legs taking the bids for the book to be made into a film or the paintings to be exhibited in Paris. And then by god the saucy antics and romantic words in all their seductive octaves would then be coming at you in full colour off your worldwide screens and giving Ireland a name it would soon deserve. But never mind, if that’s what it took to have the really big money coming in, sure it would be no worse than publicising your woman’s brassière size and that would only be a number and the rest left to your imagination. And so not that much later your lady Man Fighter Mark III has got floodlit lawns around the house and Irish wolfhounds to bite the arse out of the curious trying to stare in her windows to witness herself flagrante in delicto with more than a man’s tie that recently took her fancy. Of course the guard dogs would have the previous scent of the previous husband fucker who once drunkenly jeered at her at the typewriter and easel and who might sentimentally show up to do the same again. But then he’d be wasting his time. For hasn’t her press agent issued a statement for immediate release that she’s just departed solo to Italy and Spain. But he makes no mention that it is to have if off back and front with Latins. And in spite of an occasional venereal affliction and her passport and credit cards stolen, and the waiter with room service having an uninvited go at her, she otherwise had a grand old duce of a time. And don’t worry, returning to the ould sod with a timely photograph in the newspaper and interviewed as to her recent opinions on the human female condition, she’d also let you know you’ll read more about her venereal adventures in the sizzlingly explicit pages of her next novel, or see it all writ nude in her next exhibition of paintings. And by god there need be no further hints dropped that little of it will be in your vernacular of vague shapes or innuendo.

  Now from all of this previous you’d be getting a real slant on what this country is recently all about. On all media fronts outdoing the world in your lewd liberalism and your irreverent scatology. Able to do so since the few left of your upper cruster Anglos, who have intact their identities and previous symbols of domination, now go low profile about their business, leaving latitude in the example they set for a distinct and woeful lowering of standards. And there has been going around an oft heard national refrain “Since Our Own Have Taken Over”. Which hasn’t in fact totally happened all over as it were, and where it hasn’t happened, it must be
admitted that the people there are glad. But it has happened in more than your majority of this island. However that is not to say the country is to be taken as gone totally amorally wild with loose living women and the female journalists belting their typewriters publicising the fact. But sometimes this expression would give you the impression that the people were under the domination of themselves, your ordinary hoi polloi and busy voting a bunch of your gobshite wanking connivers down from the country into authority. Nothing could be further from the facts. For there has come upon the scene the astonishing phenomenon of the Protestant Catholic. Now no one is saying that the folk going under this description are rapidly solving every problem and are the sole upholders of decency on this small island but by god save for their presence you’d soon have more than your yobboes and louts swarming out of control all over the place. Now make no mistake here. Your Protestant Catholic is still your old practising papist Romanist, complete with fingers counting up and down their rosary beads, scapulars around their necks and clanking coins into church offering slots all over the country. In fact you wouldn’t find any more devout a sample of your ultramontane. Ah but wait for it. You wouldn’t be encountering any evasive shiftiness should a question of veracity arise. These would be to a man persons of exemplary character and unquestioned honesty who would have established widely known, long term, eminently respectable reputations. And who have now happily emerged conspicuous in their numbers upon the Irish scene. And they have many of them not only infiltrated in the law making and are powerful in the professions but have also contributed brilliantly to the running of such establishments as the Irish Country House Hotel and many more of your other thriving new businesses big and small across the land. And let me tell you they’ve given a big thumbs up for Ireland and may there be more power to them.

  Now I know what you’re hopefully thinking. You’re thinking that for the sake of peace and quiet over the whole of the island, there would be in the converse such a thing as your Catholic Protestant. Ah may the Lord if he is alert above forgive you for so thinking. For you’d be wrong. Wrong. Wrong. And the answer would be. Never. Never. And not on your Nellie. And in other languages it would be Nyet and Nein. And if you’d still want the answer repeated in your incomprehensible Finnish and Hungarian, it is Ei and Nem respectively. Ah, you’d ask in your boyish and girlish innocence, why is that? Well for a start it would be long remembered history. And then on top of such unforgettable events and heaped high, had you a microscope powerful enough, you would see it plain as day written verbatim in your genetic code. But never mind history, or the double helixes demonstrating your hereditary blueprints. Or the fact that there is no such thing as the converse of this rapidly merging identity. Let’s just be thankful that it’s your Protestant Catholic who is the answer to all the social political and religious ills that do be besetting this land. And each day that goes by, thank the lord above, sees this exemplary sort of person proliferating against the vast tide of your vulgar hoi polloi. And setting new ethical and moral standards if not everywhere then at least here and there. And if at first you don’t encounter them, whatever you do don’t stop looking.

  Now I know you’ll be asking awkward questions as to how would you know one of this particular esteem if you saw one. Well for a start motor discreetly up to your nearest golf club. Enter. Even though this is your élitist sport of your upper cruster, you’ll find your Irish golf club friendly enough. But as a non member do not announce your purpose of seeing for yourself a genuine Protestant Catholic. Because eyebrows raised they’ll pretend immediately not to know what on earth you’re talking about.

  “I say there, could you possibly help me, I am looking to find a living specimen of what I believe is referred to as a Protestant Catholic.”

  “Ah sure no problem. And I suppose you’d be on your guard for a bogus example. Just wait there a second till your man is finished in the locker room changing out of his knickerbockers back into his clothes. Ah there goes one of them now, the genuine article, on his way into the bar.”

  Well I was wrong about that one. Clearly an exceptionally astute club manager. But back to the task at hand. Do not instantly expect for your man to stand out like the proverbial sore thumb, however, his tailoring as he passes you and heads to the club bar will invariably give him away. In a word, the cut of his jib will be well nigh impeccable. And those of you with good tailors will know whereof I speak. Now you may not have the opportunity to pass the time of day by returning something he has dropped but if you did be assured you would be rewarded by a ready smile and hearty handshake. He will meanwhile have exactly two gin and tonics while sitting by the lounge window looking out upon the green of the eighteenth hole. Now although your golf club will have more of your Protestant Catholics assembled at the one time than nearly anywhere do be alert, as the club manager suggested, for an impostor. So it is wise to know at least a mite more about the Protestant Catholic. They are sticklers in arising promptly of a morning and to lay down to bed of an evening long before midnight. They are deeply fond of household pets and especially their dogs whom they call by marvellously clever names and who would have a diet and schedule equal in nourishment and routine to their own. Their lawns are manicured upon which they slowly stroll. And they can be seen standing or sitting the contented hours away in their gardens anticipating the blossoming of their flowers. They go for bracing walks along Ireland’s coastline, eschewing your more blatant American casual apparel which has recently hit this nation a fatal sartorial slap in the face. As you would imagine they would themselves wear your traditional tweeds and never be without a proper walking stick hand cut from the hedgerow. Now don’t you all go rushing to see if you can see the man himself ingesting great lungfuls of the sea air. He’d be there all right but not in your obvious hoards. For a start he would choose a time of day early of a morning or evening to be as solitary as possible in pursuing his constitutional and would not demur or take shelter from rain or storm lashed gale. You guessed it. He’s an outdoors man plain and simple.

  Now another salient factor to remember concerning this elegant hybrid example of your present Irishman is he would ince like your most scalded cat from your nouveau riche pretensions of your present nauseating vulgar persons also to be regrettably found in the golf club and waltzing along the seashore and who boast of a lifestyle in which they order their champagne brought by the milkman. And advertise to anyone within earshot the well known brands of their cars, which they refer to by loudly mentioned nickname. Which leaves no doubt as to the kind and expense of vehicle to which they refer. Now although your genuine Protestant Catholic abhors these blatantly arriviste types, one must not get the notion that they are, as a new brand of Irish people, your staid old fusspot cranks faithfully saying novenas of a Friday evening and shoving their respectability in your face. Of for the matter of that, stuffing their gobs with compost-grown foods even though as a matter of fact they recently do. But then they don’t flaunt an air of ‘I am healthier than thou’. Nae, these folk are as ready as your next Irish person to have a mildly risqué joke or see the funny side of a not too desperate situation. But they do not tolerate your chancer, con man or cad or your reprobate member of the lower orders who makes a habit of lying, thieving, or munching and nibbling if not feasting off the public purse. Their style is to be possessed of a genteel considerateness and a fervent social conscience based on fair play for the underdog. In a word these evolved Irish Protestant Catholics are unique to today’s Ireland. And with mothers and fathers begetting sons and daughters of such dutiful species they’ll soon be more than a few. And if you don’t want to ruin your eyesight or exhaust your patience searching for them or if you have no inclination to hang around a golf club

  Just believe

  That unbelievably

  They’re there and

  Up the Republic.

  ON THIS LONELY STRAND YOU’D KNOW FOR A CERTAINTY BY THEIR STANCE THEY WERE INTELLECTUALS NOT LOOKING FOR MOLLUSCS BUT FOR ANY RAND
OM TRUTH THAT MIGHT COME TO THEIR ATTENTION.

  VIII

  And since they’re here, this new brand of Protestant Catholic have found their way into substituting for that status once conferred on your squire up in the big house by the word ‘gentleman’. These modern days in Ireland, however, you’d nearly ask what in the name of god is that. Well it would be your man who still has in him the sense of honour. And bejesus what is honour an Irishman would say. And here now straight into your ear with poetic indentation is the current capitalised definition.