Colonfay

by O'Grady, Myles;

He said—Archie. He wanted me court-martialled. I had to do it.”

  The summing-up for Dermot had to be about delusion. Misplaced loyalty to the British. Growing up dependent upon them for crumbs thrown from the rich man’s table. Allowed to mix with them, through the servants’ entrance now, even if it wasn’t always obvious, and liable to have the door slammed in your face. Then to be finished as a man by the war in France, in the British army, to which he as an Irishman owed no allegiance and for which war his country had no blame and no responsibility. To be cast adrift, an alien to his own people because of his misguided belief in the decency of the occupier. His awe of the gentry. His loyalty to the Lord and the siblings.

  He paid for that. So did Dermot.

  Dermot, hating everything about Ireland, resolved never to return. His father got one thing right. That place was a sort of Purgatory where poor Irishmen suffered before escaping to England or America. Or France? Well, in this contest for nightmares, so far: France 2, Ireland 2.

  Mouse checked the airline schedules and saw there was a flight out of Morelia to Mexico City early the next day, and a connection to Frankfurt and on to Copenhagen. Good old Mouse. She kept her cool, her sang-froid. No bitching. Fuck the consequences.

  He turned in. Tossed about restlessly. Guilty as hell this time about quitting in the middle of the job. Leaving her to hold the baby. Again. Mouse. His one ally, his wailing wall.

  Apart from being his first cousin Mouse Grover was, perhaps, his only true friend. The tower of strength in times of stress. She was his senior by two years, a little creaky in the joints but still active. She was efficient, spoke the lingo and could arrange things. She was a qualified psychologist and could handle obstreperous models. She was a cushion between him and the crew. Dermot was there as an artistic director. They were shooting test pictures.

  He was a poet by choice, but he said it came easier when he wasn’t hungry. So he was for hire as a creative consultant, an expert in new product development. He was expected to turn shit into gold for commercial exploitation. He was at the end of that line too. Commercial suicide loomed high. He had done something which was truly deplorable.

  He had agreed to work on the development of a new cigarette brand. The worst of it was the client thought he was a genius. Praise that was like a knife cut. Eternal shame. A million dollars development fee to create a new brand ‘for young blue-collar workers of low self-esteem’ With a dishonest gimmick. And the knowledge that it would appeal to kids. Still, it would fail. He knew that. If they made a cigarette that would cure cancer they’d get the promise wrong.

  Now, in Mexico, at the end of his tether. The whole project had been a washout and it was his fault entirely. It was a location job on which everything had gone wrong, including the locations. Big Manolo refused to release the equipment at Customs in Puerto Vallarta until Mouse fixed it with the proper backsheesh. Three days wasted and already over budget by sixty thousand dollars. The models, with one exception, were a bunch of old scrubbers that they picked up in Los Angeles; the photographer, an old friend, was a cut above his station. He could read and write and was not terribly interested in taking pictures. His cameras broke with no possibility of repairing them. Aeroplanes had to be chartered to cart them around and although the insurance called for twin-engined machines they had to scrape over the Sierra Madre in a single-engined Cessna with six up and a load of equipment, climbing over the mountain like a pregnant prawn, as Dermot said.

  When things go wrong on a location job the problems multiply until every solution leads to an even greater catastrophe. You are trapped in the vortex as the pictures become totally irrelevant and the costs spiral out of control. Even the weather, which was his excuse for going halfway round the world for shots you could have got in the next county, turned sour.

  All he wanted was to be back in his wooden yawl, with no inane conversation and the creaking of the timbers and the slap of the water against the hull and a few ecstatic moans of Nana from the transom berth. By the end of the last supper he was walking around with a look of misery and anger on his face.

  Mouse kept him in line, more or less. She was a stern taskmaster. Now that the crisis was upon him and Laure had left him he would bail out and let the chips fall where they may. To mix the metaphor properly he had every intention of picking up his marbles and leaving the commercial game.

  Somehow the night passed. He took himself in hand and thought of Nana’s beauty spot and went over the Pole to Skagen.

  His last view of Morelia the next morning was the hideous zoo. The taxi went close to the wire mesh fence. Behind the fence stood the disconsolate wolves. One, standing apart, looked at him with hopeless eyes. He felt inexpressably sad. He wanted to stop the car and release him. The wolf represented all that was noble and free. His loathing for their keepers encompassed the whole population of Mexico.

  8. The Mouse that Roars

  Mouse. Her father, Colonel Grover, DSO, retired from the King’s Own Shropshire Light Infantry, farming near Church Stretton, bought the McManus family house near Piltown, County Kilkenny, Ireland, leaving Dermot with the freehold of the farm which he let to Mouse for a peppercorn rent.

  Mouse, now slight and stooped, hacking cough from chain-smoking cigarillos. The sort of huntin,’ shootin’ and fishin’ woman you’d find manning a one-pump petrol station in the middle of Tierra del Fuego or in Ladakh. (She had, of course, driven a Jeep from Panama down to the tip of Tierra del Fuego. Hadn’t everyone?) Loved by everyone in County Kilkenny, despite her known sexual orientation.

  Your man Mouse has a good seat in the saddle, they said.

  At the beginning of the war, she joined the ATS—the womens’ army. They soon commissioned her and put her into the ‘dirty tricks department,’ inventing infernal devices like lethal catapults, variants on the famous ‘cheese-cutter’ and ingenious booby-trap devices. At the war office she met a Wren, and got her compass swung and discovered the considerable deviation.

  After the war she went to the Tavistock Institute and got a grounding in psychology. She joined Unilever and soon found that she wasn’t put on earth to delve into housewife motivations concerning low suds in washing powders and sexual perceptions in the squeezing of washing-up liquid containers. ‘Reversion to the breast’ syndrome for icecream finished her. She left and through war-time connections joined the library service of the British Council. That’s where Dermot found her, in Athens.

  Mouse, the lacrosse-playing convent schoolgirl, Captain of Games, unconventional, eccentric, champion of Dermot since they were children together. She was in and out of his life with long gaps between meetings.

  In 1955 Mouse was chafing at the bit in the UKIS. A poncey outfit led by a pompous ass. Dermot lost touch with her except for the annual Christmas card. He invited her to the wedding in Paris in 1957 and she came. She kept up a sporadic correspondence with Laure. They liked each other. She was godmother to Penelope, their daughter. He met her again at an opera in Batignano, near Grosseto, in Italy. Her ex-Wren friend, Gwendoline, another eccentric, had a house at Campagnatico, the next hill village. Dermot had allowed himself to be inveigled into an evening of too-experimental opera in an old convent. It was enlivened by the soprano falling out of an olive tree. He heard Mouse roar. It was the high point of the evening. He used to keep a boat in the old harbor in Porto Ercole before they built a boat park full of plastic called a marina and he’d drive up and stay with Mouse and they’d talk books and pictures and eat good pasta. He took the yawl back to Scandinavia where they still raise the ensigns at the sunup gun and lower them at sundown, instead of leaving tattered old rags of convenience hanging over the arse-ends all year.

  When Dermot left the international agency and set up as a consultant in Lausanne, he needed someone to keep the business on the rails. Someone trustworthy. ‘Keep the secrets in the family,’ the old Italian safeguard against the tax inspectors. Mouse was happy to take control. Untaxed Swiss francs went a long way in Ireland. She wen
t back to the house three or four times a year. Kept inviting Dermot and Laure but they never accepted. Dermot said he was afraid to face the ghosts. Laure thought Ireland too sad. Mouse became Dermot’s Administrator, Accountant, Location Scout, Stylist, Foredeck Crew, and Nanny. She was indispensable.

  And Mouse Grover adores donkeys. She likes looking at them better than at people. Limpid eyes, resigned, and no foibles. She finds them more sympathetic than the mercantile morons she’s forced to deal with on Dermot’s behalf. Or the so-called intellectuals. The asses know, she says, that nothing ever happens. She collects strays in her meadow down by the river Suir in the County Kilkenny in Ireland. They’re in clover. Mouse is the best man on Dermot’s team. Pillar of strength. His cousin, the only one in the family he’s close to. Since childhood. His manager. His apologist. Shrink. She’s an original. Is beyond disappointment because she has no great expectations. Fatalist. Smokes cigars, is at home in fatigues and wellingtons. Slouch hat. Copper hair, ploughed-field face. High cheekbones and the stance of a thoroughbred. Slightly lopsided from falls from horses and nights in wet cockpits during Fastnet Races. Twinkle in eye belies will of steel. No studied eccentricity. No pose. Sedate, tranquil, like her donkeys, but Semtex on a short fuse at times. Like Dermot, all his life. Remembering some of his more memorable rebellions.

  Like The Confession Book. The Jesuit, Father Aloysius, SJ. Dermot’s cousin. His father’s age but his first cousin. The Science Master at Stonyhurst. To which seat of learning Dermot was scheduled to go. A miserable, mean-minded character, cadaverous, with a smell of carbolic and sanctity and a dew-drop at the end of his poky nose. Hairs in the nose and the ears. A permanent five o’clock shadow. A Zurbaran Inquisitor. He was a brilliant young scientist at Cambridge but got a vocation and became a Jesuit at thirty-five. Came to stay twice a year. Dermot made to serve at Mass for him. Go on, keep the peace, son, says his father. Hits the bell a good wallop at the right times. Knocks it off the step. A glare. Slips a marble under the priest’s foot as he comes down the steps with the wafers. He falls flat on his face just inside the marble wall and the chalice is thrown into the congregation, wafers all over the place. Drains the dregs of the altar wine as he hangs up his surplice. Made to say the Stations of the Cross. His father not a practicing Catholic except when Aloysius or Dermot’s aunts are about. His mother a Protestant. Converted to get married according to the rites of the Roman church. Laughed at it. The parish priest, the whiskey Father Tobin, coming round to demand, demand mind you, why she doesn’t go to Mass every Sunday. His father ejecting him with a boot up the arse. Not helpful to Dermot in the village. With the village schoolmaster, Tiger Twist, ex-IRA, taking it out on Dermot for his father’s British military service and his mother’s Protestantism. The Confession Book, kept in the lavatory. Referred to as ‘The Chapel’ and next to the pantry door. This a long, narrow room, tongue-and-groove panelled and painted cream. Brown linoleum. High up, a skylight, opened by a system of pulley with the rope cleated on the wall next to the well-polished mahogany seat. The huge floral ceramic bowl (Thomas Crapper, London, Patented) flushed by pulling down a brass rod on the wall which led up to the galvanised tank high up near the sloping ceiling. Smell of urine-rusted pipes. The old print of the Charge of the Light Brigade and his father’s army cap on a hook next to it. Oilskins. Wellingtons. A wash basin and a jug of water. A table with The Confession Book, ruled for date, name and address, or regiment, ambition. Asinine remarks like, ‘La vie, c’est pas de la tarte but Mary McManus’s tarte aux pommes is heaven! Signed Cieran Boyle, Major.’ The Confession Book, into which Dermot wrote when Father Aloysius, SJ, was at breakfast after Mass, under Ambition, ‘To join the IRA and blow up Stonyhurst. To stick a rusty corkscrew up Father Aloysius’s backside and give it a good twist.’ When this brought a cold eye, fixing the flushing mechanism so it wouldn’t work and then shouting to his mother—Some dirty scut hasn’t flushed the lavatory. The joy of seeing the miserable priest sneaking out the back door. Dermot will pay for it later at Stonyhurst. Later, seeing his cousin Brendan coming out of the Chapel all flushed and going in and finding the Jesuit still in there adjusting his clothing. At dinner that night innocently asking his father, “What’s masturbation?” and the priest going scarlet and his mother stifling her laughter. His father, sternly, “Nothing you should know about. Where did you get that?”

  “Well, in the philosophy book it talks about Diogenes masturbating in the marketplace and saying it was a pity hunger couldn’t be assuaged so easily. I thought it might be what Father Aloysius was doing in the Chapel today.”

  “Dermot, leave the table immediately!”

  “Why, what have I done wrong this time?”

  “Go!”

  Like now. In Morelia, Mexico. After Dermot up and left her to pick up the pieces. An obstreperous commercial infant this advertising shoot.

  Mouse is in her room in the hotel, choosing clothes and props for the next day’s photograph. The model is Cara. Stoned exhibitionist. Sheds her clothes with zest, dances around in just transparent panties. Strokes herself.

  Cara is typical of the breed, especially those who are nearly over the hill. For legal reasons the models must be over thirty. Cara is twenty-eight but that’s close enough. Showing signs of wear and tear and the fear that comes from knowing that your one saleable commodity is wearing thin and can’t be retreaded and you have nothing to replace it. Slept her way to the bottom. Like most of the blonde stereotypes, the Mark 1 Swedish-clone model from Minnesota out of the tatty model agencies in Los Angeles, her elevator doesn’t go all the way to the top. Or, as Dermot says, her lights are on but she’s not working. Hence the crutch of hash and happiness pills. Right now she’s overdosed on Ritalin on top of marijuana. Flying. Loopy.

  Mouse says, idly, “Cara in Irish means friend. Not lover, macushla.”

  Cara giggles, “What’s the word for lover?”

  “Doesn’t exist. No lovers in Ireland. Great hate, little room. Yeats, alannah. Your man Willie. Reinvented Ireland and the faeries.”

  “Fairies? You mean fags?”

  “Hush! Shame on you. No fags in Holy Ireland. Except the priests.”

  Cara’s confused. She stands in front of Mouse who is sitting. Mouse hands her a white tent-like dress.

  “Here, climb into this.”

  “Must I, Mouse? I’ll look huge.”

  “For the picture. White in a dark tunnel. Lighting up, the flare, the orgasm.”

  “Oh! Wow! Great! Wow!”

  “Yes, well, basta. Curb your enthusiasm, Carissima. Nice name, Cara.”

  “It’s OK. Italian. Wop father and la mamma. From Udine.”

  Mouse helps her on with the dress. Smooths it over her shoulders, lingers on the hips. Cups the buttocks. Murmurs appreciatively.

  Suddenly, as though she’s losing her grip, rips the garment up and off, crumbles it violently and throws it on the chair.

  She says, “I’ve had enough of this fucking exercise! Let’s have a drink. Drown our sorrows. Any bloody rig will do for these idiot shots.”

  Mouse is as intolerant as Dermot at times. Lots of grey matter between the ears. Ex-tennis champion. Good on the foredeck, taming the flogging canvas in a gale of wind, Dermot says, or riding hell for leather in a point-to-point. You don’t fool with her. She’s seen it all and finds it all predictable. Rolls with the punches of life and keeps a horseshoe in her verbal boxing glove.

  She says, “That fucking Dermot! The irrefragable bastard! Leaves me holding the baby every time. And it’s always an abortion. Rubs the crew up the wrong way and I’m supposed to stroke the egos till they purr like kittens. I hope he’s satisfied now. The project’s a washout. Bad cess to him!”

  Cara pouts, “Why is he so difficult?”

  Mouse, who knows her audience is as thick as two planks and who realises that Cara’s infantile questions would drive a saint to sin let alone Dermot, is given to expositions delivered in a machine-gun staccato voice, problems and th
eir solutions described with a bit of philosophy thrown in, mostly for her own edification, or just liking the sound of her own voice, declaims sarcastically as she pins up the folds of the gown at the back.

  “Difficult? Dermot? You must be joking. He’s a lamb. Eat out of your hand. He’d give you the shirt off his back. Of course he gets these tantrums. Not more than once or six times a day. It’s the job, baby. Makes him sick. He knows he shouldn’t be doing it but he needs the loot. An old yacht to feed, a well-heeled wife to keep up with. Well, past tense. His conscience doth make him irritable. A daycent bogtrotter with the mud still on his boots versus sorayfeened French drawing room. He’s a reformed lush on a dry drunk. Oral type. Suck it and see. Needs a dummy. He doesn’t know it but he’s a spoilt priest. Asking for absolution. Agnostic but I’m sure he’s doing the Stations of the Cross while he’s on the job. Original sin plus. He’s always swimming against the tide. Can’t think, functions on an intuitive plane but won’t accept it.

  Keeps trying the impossible. Stretching himself, he claims. He should take the brakes off and let her rip. Can’t relax. An Irish poet trying to be an intellectual, trying to keep up with the Duponts or de Coucys as the case may be. Trying to force a cultural quart into a leaky pint pot. To complement his overeducated and overcultured spouse. Who doesn’t know it’s more important to be good in bed than to know Hegel. This job is a real cock-up. He has to deal with dummkopf clients in Germany, models with the brains between the legs instead of the ears—oh, no, not you baby!—smartass English photographers who always know better, better being easier. Dirty French labs that spill their red wine on the negs. Swiss art directors whose cockeyed layouts look as if they were produced on the side of an Alp to the sound of cow-bells. Besides, he has me to deal with. And his French wife. Who just abandoned him. A multicultural collective of problems. So he blows his stack. And hates himself afterwards. Guilt? Oh, baby! Not to blame him.”