Schmidt Happens

by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly

  ‘He’s not answerdon,’ he straight away goes.

  I’m there, ‘Let it ring.’

  Eventually, Ronan answers.

  Kennet goes, ‘S … S … S … S … Stordee, Ro?’

  I’m there, ‘Tell him you’re ringing to apologize for the way you acted.’

  He goes, ‘Ine, er, rigging to apodogize for the way I acted. You hoort Shadden and I’ll n … n … n … nebber forgib you for that.’

  I’m like, ‘Stop adding your own line in. Tell him you acted like a prick. Tell him or I’m sending this to Dordeen right now.’

  He goes, ‘Look, I acted like a p … p … p … p … p … p …’

  I’m like, ‘Yeah, this week, Kennet.’

  ‘… p … p … p … p … p … prick.’

  ‘Tell him he’s a great father.’

  ‘You’re a gr … gr … gr … gr … great fadder.’

  ‘Say, “Unlike me.”’

  ‘Uddenlike m … m … m … me.’

  ‘Tell him you’re a terrible father.’

  ‘Ine a t … t … t … t … t … teddible fadder.’

  ‘And a stuttering fock.’

  ‘And a st … st … st … st … stutterdon fook.’

  ‘Now tell him he can see his daughter any time he wants.’

  ‘You can see yisser thaughter addy toyum you waddant.’

  ‘Now tell him you’re a stuttering fock again.’

  ‘Ine a st … st … st … st … stutterdon fook.’

  ‘Now hang up.’

  He hangs up.

  And I’m like, ‘Good work, Kennet! Good work! Now, I’m going to leave you two love birds to get back to doing whatever sick shit you were doing to each other!’ then I turn away with the intention of just making my way back to the cor.

  But then I notice all the plane-spotters staring up at Ryanair Flight Whatever-the-Fock coming in to land and I think to myself, Why not give those poor fockers a real thrill?

  So I hold the megaphone up to my mouth and I go, ‘ATTENTION! THERE IS A NAKED MAN AND WOMAN OVER HERE AND THEY’RE HAVING SEX IN A CAR! REPEAT! THERE IS A NAKED MAN AND WOMAN AND THEY’RE HAVING SEX IN A CAR!’

  And suddenly they’re all looking over in our direction – one or two of them through their binoculars. Kennet and Mordeen dive back into the cor.

  Kennet goes, ‘Ine godda get you b … b … b … b … back for this, Rosser!’

  Then he pulls the door shut.

  Delma tells us all to shush. She’s there, ‘They’ve just pulled into the driveway!’

  There’s, like, eighty or ninety of us crammed into the kitchen. Most of them the old dear knows from her various campaigns to stop things coming to Foxrock – Travellers, the Luas, German supermorkets.

  Delma asks me to switch off the lights, which I do. A few seconds later, the front door opens, then it slams shut and I hear voices in the hallway.

  The old dear’s going, ‘I really can’t abide poor people! Can’t you do something about them, Charles?’

  ‘Unfortunately,’ the old man goes, ‘a lot of them are my voters, Fionnuala! Come down to the kitchen for a moment, will you, Dorling!’

  She’s like, ‘Why?’

  ‘Just come with me! There’s something I want you to see!’

  Then a few seconds after that, the kitchen door opens and the light is switched on. All of the old dear’s mates shout, ‘SURPRISE!’ and the old dear just stands there with her mouth open so wide you could paddle a focking canoe into it if you were brave enough.

  She turns to the old man and she says the most hilarious thing. She goes, ‘Is this about my drinking?’

  Seriously? She sees all of her friends in her kitchen and automatically assumes it’s an intervention.

  She’s there, ‘If this is going to be a lecture, I can tell you now that you’re wasting your time.’

  I haven’t laughed so much at my old dear since the time in O’Brien’s on Newtownpork Avenue when she walked up to a cordboard cut-out of Tom Doorley and asked if it could recommend a really good First Growth Bordeaux.

  The old man goes, ‘It’s a porty, Fionnuala! Look at the balloons and the bunting there!’

  She sees the banner stretched across the kitchen with ‘Happy 60th Birthday, Fionnuala!’ on it and she seems suddenly happy. Or at least she manages to arrange her features in such a way that it could pass for a smile, although a dog would probably consider it an attack grimace.

  Delma throws on the music – Bublé, obviously – then everyone storts knocking back the gin and the Veuve Clicquot and telling the old dear that she doesn’t look anything like sixty. Which is true. She looks her actual age. Which is seventy.

  I spend the next hour trying to get her on her own, but instead I’ve got the old man in my ear, going, ‘Scotland – eh, Ross?’

  Yeah, no, Ireland lost to Scotland today.

  I’m like, ‘What?’

  He goes, ‘You know, I still can’t believe, with all your knowledge, that Joe Schmidt isn’t banging your door down! It’s not like he’s so well off for assistant coaches! I don’t blame you for looking a bit down in the proverbial dumps! It’s either that or you’ve suddenly realized that it’s only eight weeks until Theresa May is due to trigger Article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon! Don’t be nervous, Kicker! Leaving the European Union will be the best decision Britain has ever made – just as it will be for Ireland when the time comes!’

  I’m just like, ‘Yeah, shut the fock up,’ because I notice the old dear on the far side of the kitchen. She’s hugging Delma, who’s obviously hammered herself because she’s crying her eyes out and telling her that she loves her and she’s so happy for her.

  The old dear’s going, ‘Thank you, Delma. Charles and I wanted you to be the first to know.’

  I walk over to her and I’m like, ‘Let me guess – you’ve finally found a surgeon who can remove your forked tail?’

  She just goes, ‘Hello, Ross! Aren’t you going to wish me a happy sixtieth?’

  I’m there, ‘If this was ten years ago, I might. Delma, would you maybe fock off and let me speak to my supposed mother alone?’

  Delma’s like, ‘How rude!’ but she thankfully does fock off?

  ‘I saw the magazine,’ I go.

  She’s like, ‘Which magazine are you talking about?’

  ‘You know the one I’m talking about. The one with you on the cover in the dress and the boots. It did nothing for me, just to let you know.’

  She has the actual gall to laugh. She goes, ‘What a strange thing to say! Why would it do anything for you?’

  ‘I’m saying it didn’t, thankfully.’

  ‘I’m your mother!’

  ‘You wouldn’t have known that reading the orticle. Yeah, no, I loved your line about how you regretted that you never had children. And don’t deny it. It was on the same page as the picture of you lying on the bed in the red Heidi Higgins dress, the white faux-fur stole and the pink ballerina-style court shoes.’

  ‘Yes, I loved that dress!’

  ‘Again – I can’t see any man getting turned on by it. I suppose you’re going to deny saying what you said? You’re going to claim it was, like, a misprint?’

  ‘It wasn’t a misprint, Dorling.’

  She actually smiles when she says it? Her mouth is disgusting – like someone sat on a punnet of raspberries.

  I’m there, ‘Really? I was hoping you were going to say you were maybe misquoted.’

  She’s like, ‘I wasn’t misquoted either.’

  ‘So that was your revenge, was it? The thing you were banging on about in Dundrum that day?’

  Again, she smiles. I’ll never eat raspberries again in my life.

  She goes, ‘Oh, that’s only the beginning of it, Dorling.’

  I’m like, ‘Meaning?’

  But she doesn’t answer me. Instead, she storts tapping the side of her champagne flute with a pastry fork to let everyone know that she’s about to make a speech.

  �
��This should be good,’ I go, meaning the opposite. It’ll be shit.

  She’s there, ‘I just wanted to say thank you all for this wonderful, wonderful birthday surprise!’ loving being the centre of attention, of course. ‘Thank you to Charles, the love of my life, for arranging it. I was born in 1957 …’

  I shout, ‘Was that the number of the room in the hospital?’ and I end up being shushed by everyone – Delma the loudest of all.

  The old dear goes, ‘And during my sixty years on this planet, it’s fair to say that I have lived through quite a bit.’

  ‘The Famine!’ I go. ‘The dinosaurs!’

  ‘There have been good times and bad times. And by my side, through it all, have been you – my dearest, dearest friends. And that’s why I’m delighted that you are all here tonight, not just to share my birthday with me but to hear my wonderful news. Charles and I have an announcement to make.’

  She’s going to say they’re getting married again. She’ll have to focking wait. It’ll be years before his divorce from Helen comes through. But she doesn’t say that at all. That’s not her big announcement. It’s something else. It’s something that, when I hear it, makes me feel like I’ve just fallen from a great height. She looks me dead in the eye when she says it as well.

  She goes, ‘Charles and I … have decided to have a baby!’

  3.

  Unboxing This Year’s Most Essential Lifestyle Accessory!

  The old man’s secretary tells me that he’s busy and he doesn’t wish to be disturbed. This is in, like, the Dáil, by the way? So I’m obviously wondering what the fock he could be doing that’s so important?

  I just morch straight past her and into his office. The secretary – who’s not great – comes pegging it in behind me, going, ‘I’m sorry, Charles! He just burst in!’

  ‘Who is it?’ I hear him go.

  Yeah, no, his voice is coming from the other side of a door to the right. It could possibly be a jacks?

  She goes, ‘He claims to be your son.’

  ‘Ah,’ the old man goes, ‘that’ll be the famous Ross!’

  ‘I didn’t know whether to let him in or not. It’s just, I didn’t know you had a son.’

  I’m like, ‘For fock’s sake!’

  He goes, ‘It’s quite alright, Francine! His story checks out! I’ll be out in a moment, Ross! I’m just finishing up here!’

  ‘I haven’t come for a pleasant chat,’ I go. ‘I want to talk to you. About what the old dear said the other night. In her speech. The drunken sow.’

  This Francine one focks off and leaves me talking to the dude through the door.

  ‘Refresh my memory,’ he has the actual balls to go. ‘What was it she said again?’

  ‘Er, she said you two dopes were having another baby?’

  ‘Oh, yes – well, I was as surprised as you were, Kicker!’

  ‘So she was just shit-faced?’

  ‘No, what I mean is that we were planning to keep the entire thing entre nous – pardon the French – until we had a pregnancy to confirm!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know what possessed her to tell everyone! She was probably – as you said – very excited!’

  ‘Sorry, did I miss something in Biology when I was at school?’

  I missed everything in Biology when I was at school. I was on the S, I shouldn’t need to keep reminding people.

  He goes, ‘What are you talking about, Kicker?’

  I’m there, ‘I’m saying she’s too old to have a baby. As in, she’s been through the focking menopause and she’s out the other side.’

  ‘Well, a few years ago, Kicker, when your mother began to feel the slow advance of age, it seems she decided to have some of her eggs frozen!’

  ‘You’re shitting me. Please tell me you’re shitting me.’

  ‘Totally unbeknownst to me, of course! You see, I think it was always Fionnuala’s intention to give you a little brother or sister one day!’

  ‘And she’s waited until now – when I’m thirty-focking-seven?’

  ‘She’s had a very busy life, Ross! Her writing career! Her humanitarian work!’

  ‘I can’t believe you’re actually entertaining this?’

  ‘Look, I’m not going to claim I was ecstatic about the idea! I mean, I didn’t even know she’d gone to this – inverted commas – clinic! It happened back in 1988, it seems! She told me she was going to Switzerland to have something done to the lines around her eyes! Well, it turns out she went to this pioneering fertility expert in the Ukraine, who claimed he could freeze her eggs and guarantee their viability for up to forty years!’

  ‘This is like a focking nightmare.’

  ‘She rang the clinic just after Christmas to find out how they were – inverted commas – doing! And, well, the answer turned out to be very well indeed!’

  ‘You know why she’s doing this, don’t you? It’s to get me back for the whole me-possibly-letting-her-choke-to-death thing. That’s how petty the woman is. I could even use the word vindictive.’

  ‘I’m sure it’s nothing of the sort, Kicker! No, your mother has just reached that point of her life where she’s looking back on all of her achievements –’

  ‘She’s achieved fock-all. I want that noted.’

  ‘– and she’s wondering, What’s next? Just like I am! We both have our bucket lists, Ross! One more achievement to chalk down before we shuffle off this mortal coil! Quote-unquote! Mine, as you know, is to become the Taoiseach and lead Ireland out of its disastrous relationship with the European Union! Your mother’s is to have another baby! And who am I to deny her that?’

  ‘I think you’ve lost it. I think the two of you have totally lost it. So when is this supposedly happening?’

  ‘Well, the next step is to test my, em, seed!’

  ‘Jesus Christ, I think I’m going to vom on your focking corpet.’

  ‘I have to send a sample away! Make sure all my little swimmers are healthy and robust!’

  ‘Seriously, I can actually feel it in the back of my throat.’

  ‘Then we’re going to try to find a host – a surrogate, I believe it’s called, in the parlance – to carry the chap, or girl, to term!’

  ‘And what’s going to happen to the kid when you two fall off the perch? Have you thought about that?’

  ‘Hopefully that won’t be happening any time soon, Kicker! I still have unfinished business with your friend and mine – Monsieur Michel Barnier!’

  He suddenly opens the door of the jacks. And that’s when I notice – in the name of all that is focking sacred – he’s holding what looks like a little medication bottle. And inside the bottle is his … Okay, you don’t even need me to finish that sentence.

  I’m talking about jizz. I’m talking about his focking jizz.

  I’m like, ‘What the –? When did you –? Is that what –?’ but I’m too shocked to even talk.

  He goes, ‘You look rather pale, Ross! I think that defeat to Scotland has hit you horder than you’re prepared to admit!’

  ‘Thank you all,’ Honor goes, ‘for the ah-mazing responses we’ve had to our last video on Love Honor and Obey, which was Transitioning Your Wardrobe from Autumn/Winter to Spring/Summer! It has 7,700 views and counting, so thank you so, so much for that! And welcome to all my new subscribers this week! We’re up to 20,000 now and that’s, like, so exciting! Today, I want to show you a pair of boots, which are pretty much my life at the moment – as in, like, literally? – and I’m also going to be doing a Zara haul and a LuisaViaRoma unboxing, which I’m – oh my God! – so, so excited about! But first I want to show you my Outfit of the Day! Move back, Dad, so you get the whole thing in. It’s a red-and-white-candy-striped jumpsuit by Stella McCortney. What do you think of it, Dad?’

  I’m there, ‘I don’t know. I’d have to see it with the red nose and clown make-up to properly judge.’

  Honor laughs, hits me a playful slap, then goes, ‘Oh! My! God! See? This is what I h
ave to put up with – all the time! He really is hilarious, as well as an amazing father, who, as some of you know, taught me to stand up to bullies and orseholes! Now, this jumpsuit is super, super fun! And, quite literally, there is nothing not to love about it! It also comes in other colours, including black and white, and also coffee and cream, which I – oh my God – also love?’

  I’m just like, ‘Get them, then.’

  Honor goes, ‘What?’ and her face lights up – and it’s lovely because I manage to capture the moment on camera.

  I’m there, ‘If you like it in those other colours, then you should have it in those other colours,’ and I make a big show of handing her my credit cord.

  ‘Oh! My God!’ she goes. ‘Okay, you can all see what a cool person my dad is!’

  I’m like, ‘Not a problem, Honor.’

  She’s there, ‘That’s, like, six grand –’

  Fock! Did she say six grand?

  ‘– and he gives it to me,’ she goes, ‘no questions asked! Thanks, Dad!’

  I’m like, ‘Er, not a problem, Honor.’

  That’s when Sorcha – again – storts calling me from our bedroom. She’s like, ‘ROSS? ROOOSSS???’

  Honor goes, ‘What the fock is that woman’s problem now?’

  I stop filming.

  I’m there, ‘Yeah, no, it sounds quite urgent – as in, she seems pretty upset about something?’

  ‘She is upset,’ she goes. ‘Because I’m doing something that she’s always dreamed of doing? And I’m doing it with you and not her. That’s why she keeps trying to drag you away every time we’re filming – haven’t you noticed?’

  ‘It could be that. Or – shit! – maybe Sister Dave rang her and told her about the whole you-not-making-your-Confirmation thing?’

  ‘Dad, trust me, she’s just a focking manipulative bitch!’

  Suddenly, Sorcha bursts into the room. She’s holding the baby in her orms and he is screaming.

  ‘Ross,’ Sorcha goes, clearly upset, ‘there’s something wrong with Hillary!’

  Honor just rolls her eyes.

  I’m there, ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘He’s vomiting constantly!’ she goes. ‘His stomach’s empty but he’s still, like, dry-retching?’