A Singular Country

by J. P. Donleavy

  “I am, sir, from Uppsala. Where I study about moss and lichen at the university.”

  Well the grin on your Mister Ireland’s countenance stopped your Swede in her tracks, for it went from behind one ear to behind the other. And she wondered what she could have said to produce such radiant joy on this gentleman’s face. And you won’t believe this. But Mister Ireland had, tucked away right there in his library located in the corner of this room, some of the greatest scholarly tomes ever written about mosses and lichen. And not only that. There wasn’t much to be known that he didn’t know already about your Bryophyta and the similar but unrelated lichen. And without saying a word he beckoned her over to his library shelves where were, as he pointed out, the six leather-bound volumes of the most brilliant authoritative texts ever written about mosses and lichens. And she too smiled from behind one ear to behind the other and then broke into an astonished delighted laughter. And let me tell you at that moment the minutes now didn’t have any trouble flying by, nor was there any guilt in your man not setting out to hike through the storm to The Seaside Hotel. And as the two of them warmly stood there smiling into each other’s eyes your young lady disclosed that she’d specialised in the study of the horn tooth moss. And now your man who knew everything about your species Ceratoden Purureus, gave up worrying about how brief this encounter might be and even dared think of the possible endless hours of discussion to come. And for the first delicate time the name St. Bridget flashed like a lightning bolt across his mind. But just as it did, he dismissed it realizing that this was no time to be deluding himself thinking about the fertility miracles wrought by the Celtic deity.

  But in your man now getting slightly apoplectic he did not forget to be the best of hosts and straight away suggested that Katrina, as she was called, go immediately and help herself to a nice hot bath and warm herself up. While he whipped around a bit to put together a spot of supper they could have.

  “O no. I could not. You have been far too kind already. I should now try to go find again my hotel.”

  “Sure after you’ve eaten the storm may have let up and I’ll lead you by the shortcut over the hill.”

  “I have already taken four glasses of your champagne.”

  “Actually you’ve had five and are welcome to more.”

  “Ooo la la. I did not know I had five. But you should not now have to cook for two. I must not please put you to so much trouble.”

  “This is Ireland where you wouldn’t be worrying about a foolish thing like that. I’d be offended for you not to join me. And sure, since when was meeting a fellow botanist trouble? Besides it is my birthday.”

  “O how underbar, that is how we say wonderful in Swedish.”

  “Well underbar, that’s settled now. And now I am not too keen that you should be let go again out in this storm. And in that door there is another bedroom. And yours for the night. And let me assure you there is no need for there to be any compromising or any embarrassing proximity to be caused to anyone invited to stay.”

  “I stay for your birthday. Thank you so much. Now I go bath.”

  And despite her protestations over invading his privacy and taking up his time it was a whole hour later when she again presented herself bathed and fragrant in a sweater and skirt and ready to have another glass of champagne from the second storm chilled bottle brought in from the front door step. For Katrina taught your man how to skol. And never did your man Mister Ireland pick up new Swedish words faster or ever see anyone so hungry or enjoy her food more. And gone in a thrice, washed away with the champagne, was every last bit of the smoked salmon and lobster. And the steak an inch and a half thick. Which she said she would have very rare and which she chewed down with gusto, admitting that she had only eaten an apple and an orange since the evening before.

  “I am having such a lovely underbar time.”

  But now with the steamy baked spuds and a good heap of buttery steamed spinach and gulps of her burgundy wasn’t she now able to smilingly tell him between mouthfuls of her life up to date. The boyfriend who only eight months ago blew himself up with a stick of dynamite because she wouldn’t marry him. And another whom she also wouldn’t marry, now in a mental institution.

  “I am a simple girl. I do not know what I do to men which I do not mean to do. It is why I come away and alone to Ireland.”

  “Ah now, with no shortage of simple men, you’ve come to the right place.”

  “Yes I think so. I like to travel. Maybe I miss the skiing. Maybe too I miss the bastu and how one dives then in the cold sea. To collect moss specimens next year I go to visit the rain forests of Brazil.”

  “Now that’s a great idea.”

  As they spoke and drank and spoke some more the storm still raged; the rain peppering the window panes and the wind slamming gusts at the cottage walls and tugging at, and a couple of times nearly lifting off, the thatch of the roof. But during this idyllic impromptu dinner party, they had become like old friends. And up and down he danced delighted attendance upon her, putting a hot water bottle shoved down between the sheets and placing a tome on the tropical lichens by her bedside. And now for the moment, and sure for the night that was in it, why not take the comfort nearest at hand and make herself entirely at home. Have a sup of brandy. And then a good sleep and after breakfast in the morning of pucks of rashers, sausages, eggs and tea, he would in the brand new day walk her to the hotel. Or for the matter of that, anywhere else she cared to go in this local kingdom come. And on the way show her some rare mosses and lichens to boot.

  Enough said of any attempted enticement by your man, half sloshed. Katrina was only too delighted to accept the hospitality of a bed for the night. And after singing happy birthday in Swedish to him for the third time, and bowing and smiling to him, she moved her backpack into the spare bedroom. And here he was, your man Mister Ireland, well wined and dined retiring purring with near contentment to his bed. Recalling how, as she got up to retire to her chamber, she came over on tip toe to peck him on each cheek and then one on the forehead. Now you would imagine with the storm still raging and such delectable company less than a few yards away, your Mister Ireland couldn’t get himself to sleep in a hurry. And he lay listening to the lashing gale and the explosive thundering of the sea as it trapped air up the long caves extending inland from the bottom of the sea cliffs. Until he fell fast asleep. Deep in a dream of a heavenly angel winged lady in white diaphanous lacy veils hovering in the air over his bed. And didn’t he suddenly wake up. And by god wasn’t there coming a knocking at his bedroom door. And didn’t the door open. And wasn’t she herself Katrina standing there in a lacy nightgown.

  “Please forgive me for disturbing you. I am sorry but I was frightened to sleep alone. Would you mind if I go in the bed with you?”

  Now your man Mister Ireland, hospitable to the last and ready to do any kindness, swept open the covering of the bed, and Katrina like a dream descended in beside him between the sheets. As wasn’t he, long before he went to sleep, hoping beyond hope that at the midnight high tide Katrina would be terrified by the ground shaking under the cottage with explosions of the seas in the caves that went in under the shore, and in thinking that the end of the world had come or at the very least an earthquake, would rush into his room in panic. Now every Irishman considering the highly religious nature of the country, has always been eternally grateful for any little taste of a piece of arse he can get. And might do a lot irreligious to get it. But your man Mister Ireland still had his principles of making no overtures to a woman without enthused reciprocation. And he lay still as total death itself beside her. But now, not that many minutes later, didn’t Katrina’s hand reach for that of Mister Ireland’s. And take his fingers slowly and surely up, up, up, to place them upon her warm, silkily soft breast. By god never mind the gales. Or the under the shore detonations. For soon the seas out in the ocean this night were nothing like the bedclothes that started to go up and down. With Mister Ireland having one of the most glorious
nights of his entire life. And if he was less than a saint, he was at least betimes in the area of botany, a bit of a scholar. And appropriately enough it is by these two vocations that this isle became known as the Land of Saints and Scholars. And as he in the dawn’s early light saw Katrina’s startlingly stunning arse wagging its curvaceously white sparkling way to bring him his breakfast in bed, he was no longer the disbelieving pagan infidel of the day before. Thanks be to God The Big Himself Of The Brogue Above and to St. Bridget for favours received.

  But now

  Don’t all of you

  At once go

  Start praying to this

  Celtic deity

  And littering her well

  With wishes and requests.

  PORTENDING THIS VAST AREA OF LONELINESS WHICH KEEPS THE WEST AWAKE, AMERICA IS NEVER LOST UPON THE CONSCIOUSNESS AS THE NEXT PARISH BEYOND THIS BAY AND ACROSS THIS OCEAN.

  VII

  Now so that you wouldn’t be wondering what’s old and what’s new and what’s next in Ireland, it would be appropriate to confuse the issue further by pronouncing the single overriding fact of the matter of this country is that time is of a strange continuous kind. That envelopes you as you stand at the bar of any half way decent pub, and where you’re not unlucky to be left dreaming. And in so far as your yesterday is concerned it was more or less much like it is today and you can be certain by the end of today that it will be no different tomorrow and therefore you’d soon be left thinking for a considerable prolonged period that your life had stopped in its tracks with nothing you ever did or were in the past mattering or worth a damn. And the future will bring about no change. Except ordering up the next round of drinks to toast the memory of someone you kindly recall. Who did what you’re doing, only faster.

  But of course if you believe any of the above it only means you didn’t read the previous chapter. And if you have read it, I know exactly what you’re thinking. It’s that Ireland could do with more of your Katrinas wandering in out of storms. And you’d be right. For let me tell you, plenty of your farming Irishmen in the nation are lurking lonely within their cottages waiting and looking for a non Man Fighting variety of wife. And this is what’s new. Here and there they’ve been appearing with this infiltration slowly happening over the last few years, and the foreign influx changing Ireland out of all recognition. With ladies almost resembling the like of Katrina found wandering all over the place from the remote byways to up and down the main street of many a town. Arriving as they do with their backpacks and shepherd’s crooks and representing every sort of ethnic variety from your French to your Dutch and from your Finnish to your Icelandic. Here to marvel at, to be exasperated with and to enjoy the uncommon exhilarating nature of this land.

  So you can forget now for a second your previous old hat descriptions you’ve been getting of this country. Even back as far as them ancient scholarly monks scratching their heads isolated praying in their stone huts and diving into freezing cold lakes at dawn of a morning. And disregard the time when the locals were having their dickens of a good time and fun at the expense of himself come over from somewhere else with his grand airs and who waltzed around the ballroom up in the big house, the structure of which, aided and abetted by themselves the natives, was falling into chronic disrepair. But better you might say than your locals applying a torch and conflagrating the whole lot, and putting paid to the fine manners, fine wines and fine paintings within, and turning the place into an inferno glowing in a beautiful warm sight by night on the landscape. And briefly rejoice now that, except for here and there, all that kind or ruinous caper is gone. It is instead the natives getting hot on fire puffing themselves like old steam engines to death on cigarettes and busy inviting the foreigner to come fill these pure skies with lethal fumes. And this is what’s next in Ireland. Remembering of course that destruction and self destruction have always been an inclination of the people, on the principle that it is better to be immediately eating and living alive today than it is to be worrying today that you’ll be dead and buried on a tomorrow a bit later.

  Ah but let us stop any further complaint right here. You wouldn’t think it could happen but a new era has dawned. Your marauding speculator who evolves from a class long known as your gombeen man and who with his cache of cash, has long survived upon this isle by being the little shopkeeper, selling your groceries, sweets and minerals, cheese and biscuits and who held all about him in his debt and who in other guises bought and sold and disfigured land and landscape, is in full retreat. For by god hasn’t he suddenly found that there’s a bit of money to be made out of culture and beauty. And also hasn’t there been a louder and louder outcry which came about on another principle: that a farmer himself doesn’t mind very, very slowly dying but by god don’t in the meantime kill his cattle with lethal fumes before they are ready to go to market. And so now battle lines have been drawn. From one end of the country to the other. Bastions of defence stand, Georgian mansions still to be seen elevated on the horizon with smoke coming out of their chimneys instead of their windows from fires started by the natives. And so here you are in Ireland as evening approaches. You are looking for accommodation of the sort to which Katrina was heading before she knocked on the door of Mister Ireland. And got accommodation free of charge in his bed. Well you might be asked to pay something but at least you’ll be introduced to the astonishingly pleasant phenomenon of the Country House Hotel. Which now affirms victory for the preservation of elegance and stands as a signal symbol of the revolution for the better which has hit this land. Great houses, instead of being in ruins with their ghosts hovering over the dust, where one can scrape one’s shoes on the mud scraper and enter from the winter’s damp cold or a summer’s wet chill to discover inside grandeur and enchantment. And find the glowing warmth of a turf fire and a woman sitting in her evening crinolines knitting and crocheting, ancestral eyes peering down from their portraits approvingly. The drawing room will still have its silk-clothed walls, crystal chandeliers, mirrors, and it gilts gleaming. Sit there over your champagne and rejoice that instead of finding this mansion with debris strewn floors over which cattle roam and rub their necks and shoulders on the great doric columns still holding up pediments, you can instead cross your legs reflectively and imagine, were these scratching beasts there, and you weren’t, that in revenge this great edifice would drop an occasional carved stone cornice down upon the bullock heads in a nice piece of random justice.

  Now then. These present Country House Hotels and former private mansions and castles are to be marvelled at where they still occupy the landscape. Standing there only a little tarnished from their former glory, with not a single sign of the inmates having to flee out to the front lawn in their silk pyjamas as fire gutted their homes. Instead any blazing combustion is confined to the kitchens where there is merrily baking the hotel’s own bread. And only an apple’s throw away out within the great high walls of the gardens a plethora of vegetables grow leaping fresh and green from the ground. And in the bedrooms, delightful colours delight the eye. Flowers on your bedside table. Steamingly hot water pouring out of taps for your bath, as you recline in the billowing perfumed latherings of soap. And as you dry your back with a big towel you look out the window at the solemnity of these graceful parklands stretching away in the distance. Let me tell you it doesn’t half make you purr with the pleasure of still being alive. And a little later as you knock off another bottle of champagne while ordering your meal, you sigh in a final contentment. The Maitre d’ is down this very moment in the cellars selecting bottles of wine to be fetched up to your restaurant table to match up with what you’ve chosen from the menu. And by god some of these vintages which your man has these years stored away will give you plenty of your euphoric paroxysms as you thrill to their bouquet, character, taste and aftertaste and as they set afloat wondrous other anticipations. And mind you, do hold back your mild hysteria over the bill and remember that such exquisite wine doesn’t come cheap. But next morning awake
after a night of soft pillows and comfortable dry mattresses for sleep, you’ll be full enough of satisfaction to stare life right back in the face. And challenge any new nonsense afoot.

  And amazingly the very existence of these Country House Hotels has come to reverse the falling down nature of the nation. Somehow the good news of their existence has spread to your ordinary, normally quiet man in the street. Who has finally come to realize that he’s got rights in his own country. And can get up on his hind legs to shout that he is himself a living part of a new Ireland dawned. Where the trees, the beauty of architecture, the cleanliness of the air and water and the freedom to open up and read your previously held to be blasphemously dirty book is his to enjoy, never mind the naked view of human bodies. But of course long repressed as he’s been, the Irishman has gone overboard as seems to regrettably be the recent case with the insane mad rush to view the most prurient of the most pornographic freshly imported videos that any poor Irish television set has ever scalded its screen with. And sure the shops selling such filthy stuff have erupted everywhere. But in spite of this, and I don’t care what or how strong the rumour is, your Irish young lads and lasses are not yet being filmed wearing nothing but shamrock wreaths and writhing lewdly to the rhythm of a ceili band in an Irish effort to manufacture such a product. Not since last Wednesday anyway.

  But still there does now pose one of the great human mysteries concerning the devout spiritual nature and the pure mind of the Irish people that such illegal permissiveness should be greeted with such open arms, ears and eyes. Meaning that this island race were, beneath all the moral posturing, always of a liberal nature. And this present letting people see and read a little of what they fancy, has lead to another recent astonishment in the matter. The formerly banned writers who were railed against by the various legions of decency and moral seemliness, have been resurrected along with their books up out of their graves. And the previous image of their once filthy mindedness wiped clean and now polished into gleaming acceptance. And them scribblers as were ridiculed and accused of impurity in the use of the printed word and had as a result their work spitefully destroyed, are now emblazoned in name all over the kip from one end of the country to the other. And begob haven’t all their dirty words been forgiven. They are now the lure for the tourist to patronise a restaurant or nightclub and even if not one page of their books is ever opened, turned or read, they can as they eat and drink see up there on the walls an authentic picture of the author himself. Perhaps on his horse or wearing his top hat or even as he was in his grubbier unknown days maybe digging up spuds and often without a smile on his face. And no doubt he wears this latter grim expression because rarely is a penny remitted to his estate – or, if by some miracle he’s still alive having survived the rejection and ridicule, paid to himself. Nor are there any royalties forked over on the drinks sold in a pub named after him. Where folk flock to imbibe and reminisce in his memory. You can even begob, looking at a map of the route, go walking hither and thither all over the town in the footsteps of one of his characters. Without of course getting up to any of the lewdness as well.