Erika is wearing a Norma Kamali ruched halter that I can practically see down every time she bends down to give Honor a charred vegetable. I notice Josh nudging Kyle and nodding in her direction and even Bob Soto’s copping an eyeful, although he’s being a bit cleverer about it, being the head of international risk assessment at PwC and everything.
I ask her would she not put, like, a cordigan on and I realize how immediately weird that possibly sounds coming from, like, her brother. I get a look from her, so I end up having to go, ‘I’m thinking it might get suddenly cold.’
Except, of course, that it’s, like, a hundred and ten degrees today.
‘Or you might burn,’ I go. ‘Either/or.’
Sorcha comes out of the gaff, carrying a tray of lean turkey mince burgers, looking, it has to be said, more than a little bit down. I notice she’s wearing the exact same storfish necklace as Lauren Conrad. I could rip the piss, but I don’t. Instead, I ask her what’s wrong, doing the whole caring husband bit.
‘It’s Cillian,’ she goes. ‘He’s cooped up in that study. He won’t come out.’
I’m there, ‘I’m not surprised. I can’t believe you invited those two dicks.’
She’s like, ‘Josh and Kyle have been so good, Ross. You know, if it wasn’t for them, I might have even started to believe some of the things that Cillian’s been saying…’
There’s suddenly silence.
She reaches for me and hugs me with the orm that isn’t carrying the turkey mince burgers. I hold her for a few seconds, then she suddenly pulls away and sort of, like, studies my face, her eyes full of fear. ‘Ross,’ she goes, ‘he says that TV shows like the one we’re making have changed the world’s consumption patterns and persuaded people that they can have whatever they want now and pay for it later.’
I give her my best concerned look. I’m there, ‘That’s crazy talk.’
‘He also says the banks are lending out more money than they have in their care to people who can’t afford to pay it back. He says that when the extent of it becomes apparent, it’s going to send panic spreading like a bacillus through the world financial markets and that everyone – even our kind – are going to pay the price.’
‘He doesn’t deserve you,’ I go. ‘He really doesn’t,’ then I pull her close to me again and hold her even tighter this time.
‘Beautiful!’ Johnny shouts. ‘Ross, I want you to stare into the distance, all glassy-eyed. I got Colin Hay singing an acoustic version of Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters” to fade out the scene,’ so I do what he tells me and, like, thirty seconds later, he shouts, ‘Cut!’
He says we’re going to film my old dear’s arrival next. He gets everyone to sit around the patio area on, like, sun loungers.
I pick Honor up – ‘mucho gusto en conocerte’, she’s giving it – and I wander over to the barbecue.
Johnny goes, ‘You’ve all seen The Hills. We’re going to film you sitting around making everyday conversation, then at some point – we’re not going to tell you when exactly because it’s got to look spontaneous – Fionnuala is going to walk in. And I want you to ask her all about her new record.’
He shouts, ‘Action,’ and Sorcha turns immediately to Analyn and says that Quaker chic is going to be huge this year – we’re talking puritanical hair, scraped back obviously, and lacy knee-length tea dresses with a peplum…
The old dear eventually arrives, with Trevion, and you’d swear it was Whitney focking Houston the way they’re, like, fawning all over her – if that’s the actual word.
Elodine tells her that her dress is stunning and the old dear says that it’s BCBG, then Sorcha says she – oh! my God! – loved the updo she had in the studio. ‘We saw the footage of your first day of recording,’ she goes. ‘Oh, my God, so Amy Winehouse.’
Which is exactly what the old dear wants to hear, of course.
The rest of them are all over her, asking her how the record is coming along. I drop a lean turkey mince burger onto the barbecue and there’s, like, a sudden sizzle.
A few of them look around and there’s, like, an immediate tension in the air. You can hear people thinking, uh-oh, it looks like it’s going to be game on here.
Trevion fetches her a glass of champagne. She can’t go ten seconds without a drink, the lush.
She takes, like, a sip from it. I can’t help but notice his orm around her waist and how free and easy she is with it. I’m suddenly thinking, whoa, has something happened here? And if so, when the fock?
I play it cool, though.
‘You know, that always makes me laugh,’ I go and you can see everyone pretty much freeze. I’m holding Honor in one orm, while flipping the burgers with the other. ‘You know when they say they found a load of recordings by this focker or that focker in some other focker’s attic? Then you listen to them when they come out and you realize there’s a reason why they were in the focking attic in the first place.’
Everyone’s suddenly quiet, obviously not wanting to come out and laugh in her actual face. They might all think she’s a stor – I know what she actually is?
Sorcha knows the routine well enough to come in and try to rescue her. She changes the subject, telling Analyn that Erika bought the new deerskin Prada yesterday and it’s – oh my God – total orm-candy.
I suppose that’s why my eyes actually drift to Erika. She’s rubbing suncream on her upper orms and chest, while I’m – and I know this is going to sound bad? – watching her top tens wobble up and down like two puppies drowning in a sack.
I hear someone suddenly laugh and it turns out to be Josh. ‘Are you checking out your sister?’ he goes, in front of pretty much everyone, the dick.
Of course I have to go, ‘Checking her out? Er, no?’
‘He was,’ he goes, turning around to everyone, and bear in mind, roysh, that the cameras are still rolling. ‘He was staring at her chest!’
There’s, like, total silence and they’re all just staring at me. There’s maybe one or two who sort of, like, screw up their faces and say how totally gross that is.
Even Erika’s looking at me with, like, total disgust on her face, even when I go, ‘I swear, I wasn’t.’
Kyle gets in on the act then. ‘Look at him!’ he goes. ‘He’s salivating!’
I can feel wet on my chin.
‘Er, I happen to be cooking turkey burgers?’ I go. Then I’m like, ‘Erika, I swear!’ but she tells me to shut up.
One or two others, including Mike and Steve, who I thought I got on pretty well with, literally turn their seats around so they’ve got, like, their backs to me.
Sorcha walks over to me, shaking her head sadly, takes Honor out of my orms and walks slowly back to the gaff.
I notice, roysh, the slightest hint of a smile on the old dear’s face. ‘Oh, you’re loving this,’ I go, ‘aren’t you?’ but she doesn’t even answer.
And that, as they say in showbusiness, would have been a wrap – if it wasn’t for the sudden sound, sixty seconds later, of Sorcha’s screams coming from the gaff.
Now, a lot has been written over the years – and not all of it by me – about my turn of pace over the first ten yords. Let me just say that everyone makes a run for the house – the screams would have to be described as, like, blood-curdling? – but I get there first, followed by the cameraman, who keeps filming, then Johnny, who keeps smiling, and then Trevion, who’s surprisingly fast on his feet for a man of his age.
I follow the screams through the house, through the kitchen, into the hall and towards the study, thinking if he’s hurt her, I can guarantee he’ll never use a calculator again.
I reach the study. The door is closed, roysh, but I push it and I have to say that I’m not actually ready for the sight that greets me?
I actually stop – my jaw pretty much on the floor.
The rest of them, arriving behind me, are the same. ‘Sweet Jesus!’ Trevion even goes.
Bob Soto puts his hand over his mouth and has to actually
turn away.
There, lying on the floor in the middle of the room, is a focking mountain of money. One point six million dollars to be exact – the proceeds from the sale of a gaff in Terenure that Cillian’s granny left him – in neat bundles of tens.
Johnny’s turning around to the cameraman, going, ‘Tell me you’re getting this! Tell me you’re getting it!’ which the dude is, of course – it’s focking dynamite.
Once the initial shock has worn off, it’s either Josh or Kyle who goes, ‘Cillian – what the fuck?’ speaking for us all.
He’s there, ‘We can’t trust the banks anymore,’ like it’s the most natural thing in the world to say?
I look at Sorcha and I ask her if she’s okay. She just nods. Honor – I should add – is sitting on top of this mountain of money, going, ‘Me llamo Honor. Me llamo Honor.’
‘You know,’ Cillian goes, ‘when I was younger, being invited in to see the bank manager was like being told by the hospital that they’d found a shadow on your X-ray. You were terrified – he was, at best, a figure of cold probity. Grey. My dad was one.’
‘No surprise there,’ I go, which he ignores.
‘Then the banks were suddenly permitted to lend out more money than they had on deposit and all that changed. The TV ads…’
He laughs.
‘Bank managers were suddenly smiling men in shirt-sleeves who were happy to see you. You could tell them lies – “I need money for train-tracks. It’s all cash – cha-ching!” – and they’d still give it to you. Jesus, there’s an ad back home where an actor gets a loan…’
‘What exactly is your point?’ I go, worried that this bit is going to make pretty boring TV.
He says that it’s thanks to their cavalier attitude towards risk-taking and a fall in the quality of risk assessment that lending institutions are running far too high loans-to-deposits ratios. He says they’ve loaded up on investments backed by subprime mortgages and we don’t yet know the extent to which they’re exposed.
‘Very little,’ Josh goes.
Cillian says he begs to differ. I look down and notice he’s not even wearing his John Lobbs anymore. He says the housing market here is already deflating and people are defaulting on their mortgages in huge numbers. Then he goes, ‘Those subprime CDOs are loaded with toxic waste…’
He lost me back with the actor who got the loan. But I notice Steve turn to Elodine at the mention of CDOs, with a look of sudden fear on his face. This is what caused the borney at the Jolie-Pitt do. Kyle cops it as well. ‘Steve, don’t listen to him,’ he suddenly goes to them. ‘I told you before, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.’
Cillian says that when the morkets realize it, all hell is going to break loose, roysh, because no one will be able to tell which CDOs are good and which are, like, bad? He says it’s like when you discover a single cow with CJD – you’ve got to take every bit of beef off the shelves.
I haven’t a bog what he’s talking about, although the big fear is that he sounds like he does. But then Josh weighs in. He asks Cillian does he even know what he’s saying. He’s there, ‘You think a few people in a trailer park in Warren, Michigan, defaulting on their home repayments is going to set in train a series of events that will bring the entire world economy to its knees?’
He laughs. Then everyone laughs, I suppose suddenly relaxing when they hear it put like that.
‘Someone just deck him,’ I make sure to go.
This is, like, a major thing for me. I want to put that out there, just so Hugo knows that it’s not a case of me not being able to get it? In Ireland, I tell him, I’d be considered the ultimate players’ player.
He seems pretty shocked by that. He goes, ‘This is something you’re, like, proud of?’
I’m there, ‘Who wouldn’t be? It’d be a well-known fact back home that I can have any girl I want, and that’s not me being big-headed.’
But he’s like, ‘That is you being big-headed. Sex is ego. What I hope to teach you is that your use of it to satisfy
your sense of yourself is blocking your connection to your inner life.’
It has to be said, roysh, even though he talks a lot of shit, Harvey’s actually done well for himself here. Hugo’s a good-looking goy, if that’s your thing – blond, stocky, smiley face. If you had to say he looked like anyone, you’d say Owen Wilson.
He’s sitting cross-legged on the mat of this gym he uses and he sort of, like, indicates for me to do the same, which I do.
Most of the people who come to him for instruction, he says, are sexually active, often overactive. But more and more people are choosing abstinence to deepen the spiritual side of their relationships, to redirect their sexual energy into friendship or even to devote their attention to their studies.
‘Harvey was telling me you gave up sex for, like, two years,’ I go.
He just, like, shrugs. ‘For me,’ he goes, ‘sex became a perfunctory thing, a routine duty – superficial and meaningless.’
‘Same,’ I go. ‘But I wouldn’t consider that, like, a bad thing?’
Aport from my marriage breaking up, obviously, though I don’t mention that.
He’s there, ‘That’s because you haven’t tried celibacy. Periods of denial can enhance our awareness of the erotic impulse and heighten our enjoyment of the act.’
‘Me,’ I go, ‘I just want to stop fancying my sister. I mean, do you do that kind of thing?’
He laughs. ‘I think we can manage that,’ he goes, then he tells me to close my eyes and turn my palms upwards.
He’s there, ‘The yogi believe that too much sex diminishes our union with life’s nourishing harmonies. Our need for sex can be rendered vestigial through sensual and supersensual fulfilment. Okay, let’s start off with some breathing exercises to get you relaxed. I want you to take a deep breath, hold it for six seconds, then release it.’
We used to do shit like this at school before big games. I do a good few of them and I think he’s even surprised at how quickly I pick it up, even though it is only, like, breathing.
‘Tantric yoga is a system of rituals, exercises and philosophical teachings that have evolved over the course of our two-and-a-half-thousand-year search for a more profound feeling and awareness. Ross, you are going to become an expert in the arts of feeling and concentration.’
‘Coola boola.’
‘Yogi can focus their minds on a particular feeling or problem for hours on end, picking away its layers until they achieve a true understanding of it. What we’re going to do, while you’re coming here, is use exercises based on yoga, kundalini and chakra meditation to help you understand the nature of your genital urges. And to recognize how, like all addictions, they’re blocking your way to achieving true spiritual fulfilment.’
I’m there, ‘Er, I think there’s been an actual mix-up. It’s not all women I want to stop wanting – just my sister?’
‘Ross,’ he goes, ‘this is true enlightenment. It’s not à la carte. Now, close your eyes,’ which I do. ‘And trust me…’
This isn’t me blowing my own trumpet here, but I turn out to be the star of the pilot of Ross, His Mother, His Wife and Her Lover. MTV put on, like, a private screening for us in the little movie theatre in the gaff – this is, like, the morning of the day it went out on TV? – and all I can think is, ‘Okay, they’ve already had a little taster – but wait’ll the American public get a proper look at me, as in the real me?’
I’ll give you a quick run-through of what’s in store for them. It kicks off with Sorcha and Erika sitting having lunch. The caption says it’s Cobras & Matadors on Hollywood Boulevard and obviously they are going for the whole Lauren and Heidi vibe, which I suppose is a proven winner. Plates of tapas on the table in front of them, basically untouched, and Sorcha banging on about Courtney Cox and how she believes you shouldn’t, like, overload your hair with product, that sometimes a blast of cold water in the shower will make it shine better than anything.
Then they
get down to the nitty-gritty – in other words, me. Sorcha asks Erika if she’s, like, nervous about seeing me again and Erika says she is, but she’s also, like, excited? Sorcha tells her that I haven’t actually changed, then she fills her in on my antics at the fundraiser – I suppose giving the viewer a little flavour of what they’re in for. Sorcha mentions that Emmy has – oh my God – the worst bingo wings ever, despite doing, like, two hours of power pilates a day, then she smiles and tells Erika that she’s so excited that they’re, like, related now, at least until the divorce comes through. Then they go their separate ways – or pretend to – with Sorcha going, ‘I love you’ and Erika going, ‘I love you’ back.
The next scene – hilarious – is the old dear standing on Venice Beach, roysh, watching them put up this humungous poster for Midas – her in her focking raw, painted gold. And again she’s doing the whole stor thing, asking various flunkies if they think the picture does justice to her clavicles.
You can imagine me, roysh, sitting there, watching this. I shout, ‘That poster’ll keep people out of the water better than any shork!’ and I end up getting shushed by Erika beside me and Trevion in front, even though you can see that pretty much everyone’s gagging to laugh.
Then it’s, like, showtime – me in Fred Segal, trying on T-shirts – but not in, like, the changing room. I’m doing it in the middle of the actual store and you can see the two shop-girls, who I’ve got minding Honor for me, checking me out in a serious way. This is obviously before the operation?
As an introduction to me and my whole thing, it really works, roysh, because the viewers already know the danger signs of getting mixed up with me from Sorcha’s conversation with Erika, but now with the way these two are checking me out, the public is getting to see exactly why so many birds are prepared to ignore those warnings.
Rhino What You Did Last Summer Page 24
