A Bed in the Sticks

by Lee Dunne

  Larry had got the big drop when he proposed to this chick: she was more interested in her career than she was in getting hitched, and she had always managed a carefully ordered sex life, so didn’t plan changing her life. She was a decade or two ahead of her time, and I admired her, since I had grown up surrounded by women that were slaves to the marriage image, and the be respectable at all costs role, at all times, for the sake of your families good name and that kind of thing.

  My letter to Larry was so think it cost me half a crown for postage. I told him the lot, everything that had happened since we said goodbye in Dublin. It poured out of me, right down to the fact that I was playing Robert Emmett in the play that night. Larry’ reply was a wild, happy letter. He was managing an office but every minute of his leisure time sounded like one long giggle. He filled two pages about Robert Emmett, who to his mind was the- most loved Irishman of all time.

  ‘Bobby Boy’ was only twenty when he tried to lead Ireland to freedom. He had been promised arms and men by Napoleon, but things blew up in his face and he had to jump the gun. He wasn’t organised and the uprising never got up; off its knees. No matter who you are, you can’t fight cannon with knives and forks, and that was about all Emmett’s men were short of doing. All the talk, all the idealistic bullshit, was there in plenty but, no proper planning made it a dot on the card that the whole thing would end up in a sad, pointless muddle.

  September 20, 1803. Another Black Day in the dark history of Ireland, included Death by hanging for the boy from Trinity College. Robert Emmett, son of the physician to theLord Lieutenant, and sweetheart to Sarah Curran. She wept for her lover but it didn’t take her long to find a shoulder to cry on. Who could blame her? Men that have been butchered make cold lovers. Nobody blamed her,

  but her speedy recovery did seem to rub it in that Robert Emmet was a born loser.

  ‘Don’t fight for things you believe in,

  You can’t win a battle with hope

  Dear Irishman learn to be English,

  Or swing from the end of a rope.’

  Larry didn’t say where he had read the four lines but they stuck deep in my mind, and from then on I got much more into, and out of, my interpretation of Robert Emmett. And, I rewrote the play making no allowance for audience preference and making sure that there was no ad libbing in search of a quick laugh,

  There was another [phrase in Larry’s letter that I remembered so well. It came at the end of a vivid description if a sex scene that he had taken part in. It was set in Christmas Day on the beach, with birds and booze and a way-out party. I could see his dark face, blue where he shaved, breaking into a smile as he described entering an all too willing babe, with the caption ‘Christmas Pud on the Beach!’

  In relation to the play that first night, Maria Maguire took umbrage at being told that her tendency to ad lib had to stop. She was quite clearly appalled to hear this coming from an upstart like me, but Jimmy backed me up and between us we gave her the message that, if she wanted to stay with the show, she had to do things our way, or take the highway. She looked daggers at me for a moment and I thought she was about to give notice that she was going to leave. I was looking at her, without respect in my eyes, and she got the message, her attitude changing instantly and that was the end of that. Yes, she could probably have landed a job with another show but, for all her airs and graces, she wasn’t guaranteed work in a cottage industry that was facing trouble ahead in the shape of Television. And I have to say I was glad she remained with us, she was, after all, part of a dying breed and I admired her overall, even though she was a desperate snob.

  I wrote a play that summer and Jimmy agreed to allow me direct it. I was thrilled out of my mind, half of me already in Hollywood - pity not the dreamer - with beautiful female stars climbing out of their clothes to get at me and my talent. But, dear God, did I ever come down to earth with a crash when I saw ‘Like a Golden Dream on the stage, directed by me.-

  It was diabolically bad. There is no other way to describe it. The plot was such corn that it should have been breakfast cereal - like, the blind hero - he lost his sight while rescuing a small girl from a blazing building in New York -this was an old chestnut that I nicked from any of fourteen old cowboy pictures, substituting tenement for ranch-house. Our hero returns to Ireland, believing that our heroine, his girl, has married someone else. He sits alone by the fireside, dreaming a bit. We get his Voice Over as he imagines the girl standing outside the window. We see her and realise that she really is standing there. She sings Our Song. He reacts. He’s got some imagination but this is too much. He stands up and moves in the direction of the window. He stumbles against a table, falls, banging his head. She rushes in. and she croons sweet words of love. He comes around. Guess what? In moments, he can see. They kiss - she never gave up hope...each day a prayer, a candle lit in the village chapel. You follow this with, what else? Another long kiss and vows of together forever, kiss again as the Curtains close.

  Afterwards, Pauline poured me a drink in her trailer with the immortal words: ‘It was awful, Tony.’

  ‘God, don’t I know it. I must be blind myself.’

  She chuckled and sipped brandy. ‘Don’t worry. Put it down to experience.’

  ‘Jimmy wants to use it regularly, can you believe it?’

  ‘Well, that mob tonight did love it. Have another drink.’

  ‘No thanks. I’m going for a walk.’

  ‘A month from now and you won’t even blush when it goes on.’

  ‘Because I’m a Showman, is that what you mean?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. If that was what I mean, that’s what I would have said.’

  ‘Well, what did you mean?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know. Oh, go for your walk... I don’t ...I don’t know what I’m saying. Too much hooch!.

  ‘I love you, Jones,’ I said with feeling, using the nickname that always made her smile.

  She smiled, defensively. ‘You and your flannel tongue, honest!’

  ‘It’s not flannel, and you know it.’

  ‘Go on! Got take your walk!’

  ‘Let me stay. Let me sleep with you.’ I was begging, but I somehow stopped myself from saying please.

  Something left her face: ‘I can’t, Tony, I can’t’

  ‘Oh, forget it!’ I went out, slamming the door, and I was so tense and so blind, that I went around the trailer, falling over the tow-bar so hard that I thought I’d broken my shin bone. Need I tell you that all my swear words got a workout, and that it was minutes later before I could risk standing up, after which I took a careful walk to my digs.

  The Cribbons family were all in bed, but Jennie was sitting by the fire in the parlour. She’d been reading quite a bit lately, ever since we’d started a new double act - a fun sketch for the two of us. This had led to me loaning her books, and she beginning to read on a regular basis, letting me know how she got along with a mixed bag of fiction. Up to this time in her life - my guess put her at thirty or close to it - she had not been a reader, and I felt good that I had been the one to introduce her to the god sent habit of turning the page.

  ‘You just missed Tom,’ she said, putting the book aside. ‘We had some laughs...Mrs. Cribbons was on about her son again.

  I found myself grinning, despite the ache in my bloody shin. Our landlady for the fortnight, was always worried about her boy, terrified that he’d be eaten or something ‘by all them blacks over there.’

  Her son was in Birmingham and I just went on assuring her that he would be right as rain over there, until the day when she showed Tom Hunter and me a picture of the dear sweet lad.

  He stood about six feet five inches, and a bigger, wilder looking Irishman I had not seen up to that time in my life.

  ‘Oh, you’ve not got much to worry about, Ma’am.’

  I somehow ignore
d the snorting and grunting of Tom, who was c hoking on his food.

  ‘He looks a very sensible chap.’ I said, despite the need to shriek with a laugh large enough to do me damage if it exploded inside me.

  ‘Oh, I’m so relieved to hear you say it, Mister O’Neill. He can be a bit awkward at times.’

  I nodded, under some strain from holding down the need to explode loudly enough to break the windows, at the same time, actually feeling a bit sore from repressing the need to simply erupt, but somehow, not falling apart until she had left the room.

  ‘Oh, he’s only a lad,’ Tom mimicked the land lady, ‘Ah son, how do you like your beef?’

  ‘On the hoof, Ma, please!’

  She left you some cocoa,; Jenny said. ‘Will I get it for you?’

  ‘Thanks. It might help me sleep. What’re you reading? Ah, Mister Norris Changes Trains.’

  ‘Oh, Isherwood’s marvellous...You don’t mind me, helping myself to the books?’

  ‘Of course not, take whatever you want.’

  She smiled: ‘I’m a bit slow. I never was much of a reader.’

  ‘Well, you’re reading now, which is great. Gary helped me develop the habit, loaned me books, delighted I was into the printed word...so, I’ll do the same for you as long as you are interested.’

  She smiled and I found myself holding out my hand to her. She put her hand in mine and the moment we touched for the first time, I realised that we had wasted an awful lot of time.

  ‘Jenn,’ I managed to say, my throat tight in a grip that was exciting.

  Her eyes were on mine and for the first time that I could remember, he eyes didn’t look sad, and I said, ‘Will you take me to bed?’

  Her fingers crushed mine. ‘Oh, Tony, if you only knew how I have dreamed of us together.’

  She stood up and we held hands on the way upstairs and I knew she didn’t want to let me go for even one second. The soft tips of her fingers seemed to burn my skin and I could hardly breathe by the time I slipped into bed against her cream soft body.

  Up to that moment, Jennie had been a substitute for Pauline, but when I kissed her, I knew that I wasn’t using her the way I’d used May. She was like a sanctuary to me, and my lips and my body were to her more than just instruments to relieve the physical need to have sex.

  She was passionate, with the fierce appetite of a woman who had been hungry for a long time, but her words were love, and she reached me in every pore of my body, while my heart felt warm and safe.

  Through those first hours of taking each other, my feeling for her changed, in the sense that it got stronger and better and cleaner. She was my friend and my mother and my mistress... she was everybody I had ever cared for in my life as she came towards me with every breath, and in each moment she was her mouth seemed like a blessed orifice, a fountain spraying love up and out to the four winds.

  We seemed to move as one, rolling and tumbling in and out of each other, until we fell down together, down and down, tumbling, spinning, slithering down and down, deeply into the quiet, love to me...’

  Her fingers touched my lips gently. ‘You owe me nothing, Tony, ‘but I want you to know that I belong to you for as long as you need me...I don’t want anybody else.’

  I kissed her and she moved under me, and I took her again, fiercely, loving her and really wanting to disappear, to just melt into the warmth of her, going in deeper and deeper, away from everything and everybody, back to the safety of the time before my journey began.

  For the next eighteen months, Jenny and I slept in the same bed and she kept her promise never to make any demands on me. This was her own wish even as she looked after me every day, even down to the details, darning socks, whatever, my only problem being that I didn’t love her the way she deserved to be loved.

  I tried to stop loving Pauline, even making lists in my mind that would help me in that direction, but I found no way to gain any sort of release from the prison cell of my feeling for the piano player with the droll wit. No matter how I tried, I had no success at all, in fact, I lost hands down, simply unable to shake one drop of Pauline off my raincoat.

  It was like she was glued to the parts of me that were for keeps and though Jennie knew, she never said a word to try and influence me in the opposite direction. In a way, this made me feel more guilt than before. Jennie, being totally feminine, left it to the male to make decisions, and because she was biased by her feeling for me, she thought of me as a man, If only she had known, if only she had been able to see clearly, she would have realised that my preoccupation with her breasts, beautiful though they were, was something deeper, something more sadly significant, than the prelude to sexual intercourse.

  14

  Two more years rolled by, the ups and downs of my life as a strolling player now so natural to me, that I might have been out there in the sticks of the thirty two counties of Ireland for a couple of decades.

  I was thinking like this, even as Pauline was holding my hand, while I shuddered a tad as the intrusive way my mother’s anger - this in my mind - spilled all over my effort to find a bit more muscle for my sense of well-being.

  There had been no sign of any hint of reconciliation, this coming as no surprise since this lady was not for turning, and bloody well I knew it.

  Pauline squeezed my hand and I looked at her lovely face, she looking younger than her thirty years - only eight older than me, and not a bother as far as I was concerned.

  So, my marriage, if she ever heard of it - like, I would not be giving Ma details - would be the final nail in the coffin of our rocky relationship, and the fact that I did the dreadful deed in a Registry Office, added up to forget about Ma and me.

  The lady had always been big on reactions to things she didn’t approve of. So, I would not be married, I would be living in sin, just like Tyrone Power and Linda Christian had been , he, her favourite film star of all time being shown the door of her mind, so I had no chance of ever returning to the fold, and I was resigned to this.

  ---------

  I kissed my wife, Pauline and she responded to my lips but I was pushed aside by Jimmy and the rest of our company as they took turns at kissing the bride, with your truly getting the handshakes.

  As the guys queued up to kiss the bride, Pat O’Shea kissed my face and wished me luck; her mother, Maria, had not come to the wedding - it wasn’t happening in a Catholic church - her absence not actually breaking anybody’s heart. Then Jenny was kissing me on the mouth before saying ‘Good luck, my darling,I want only happiness for you.’

  I held her for long moments, this woman who had been so good to me through our love affair, while I said ‘Thanks for everything, Jenny.’

  She smiled, but there was no hiding the sadness in her eyes as she whispered: ‘We keep doing our Doubles?’

  ‘I want to, I said, while she held back her tears, nodding her head as she told me softly: ‘I want what you want.’

  --------

  Pauline and I walked to her wagon. We had two hours before our show and I was as nervous as she was.

  ‘By the way,’ I said, as she took off her hat. ‘How old did you say you were?’

  She smiled: ‘I didn’t say, and I’m not going to, but I know you’re twenty one, and I think I’m about three years older than you.’

  I kissed her gently on the lips: ‘That’s close enough.’

  She touched her glass to mine. ‘I think I always loved you.’

  I was grinning, so warm inside: ‘You and your flannel!’

  I drank the whiskey, feeling I could just burst out of my skin with happiness. Truth was, I could hardly believe it. At last, Pauline was mine and I had the rest of my life to show her just how much a man could love a woman.

  We’d had another row just two weeks before, but, instead of slamming out of the trailer and back to
Jennie’s arms, I had taken a deep breath. ‘I’m asking you for the last time, Pauline.’

  She had turned to me, suddenly smiling and then handing me another drink. ‘You must be nuts, really.’

  ‘Answer me.’

  ‘I love you,’ she said quietly, not backing it up but giving it space to be heard.

  ‘Marry me, then.’

  ‘What about Jennie?

  ‘Jennie’s my friend, she’ll understand.

  Pauline stood before me now, slim and beautiful, in a light powder-blue costume. Her feet were wide apart as though she was drawing power from the floor, and her lips were moist, despite my kisses.

  ‘Shall I undress?’ She trembled and I nodded: ‘I adore you,’ I said. Let me look at you.’

  In moments she stood naked before me and she watched as I took my clothes off.

  I was breathless as I stood close to her, but it hurt to see how little she reacted to my body.

  In her bed, she held me, whispering her words of love, telling me over and over how she loved me, that she wanted me, that she would never love anybody else. But, she seemed cold under my body and I told myself she was nervous, that it would be alright, that it would be, it would be, if only I would be gentle and patient, which God knew I was prepared to be.

  She was a virgin, so she was entitled to be more nervous than I was, so I was very gentle in my stroking, willing to be worshipping her with my fingers and my lips, gently up and down and around, feather-light, all the time silently praying that it really was going to be alright, for us.

  When my finger penetrated her, Pauline went stiff, her arms falling from around my neck. Stiff as a poker, her eyes closed corpse tight, a pail smear of pain across her mouth. Not like physical pain, terror, more like, while the sweat on my body had gone cold.