When the horse’s unfortunate trainer passed us, the old man offered his commiserations. The weird thing was, the trainer didn’t seem too upset and even offered the dead horse as meat for the Kilcullen hounds, which was generous enough especially as he didn’t hunt with us. The old man, having just become master of the hunt, accepted gratefully. The horse’s body was transported that very afternoon to the kennels and was thrown to the hungry hounds who gobbled it up as fast as possible.
Within a few hours all the hounds were violently sick. Eventually most recovered but three died, including this huge black and tan hound that the old man had got from Dumfriesshire in Scotland. The hound’s name was Mandrake and he was magnificent. Mandrake was a good few inches taller than the other black and tans and would lead the pack, sometimes running twenty or thirty feet in front. His cry, which was much louder and more piercing than the others, could send a shiver down your spine.
Sadly, it was obvious what had happened. For some reason the trainer had wanted his horse dead, insurance or betting or something. He had decided to drug the horse so that it would have an accident. No one could do anything about what had happened as by the time anyone had realized, all evidence had long gone.
Four
It is my rule never to lose my temper, unless it would be detrimental to keep it.
Sean O’Casey
Thursday, 27 June 1963
I rush into the warm safety of the kitchen, slamming the door behind me. Emma and Lucy and me, we all come here when there’s been trouble and we all stand by the Aga and have a good laugh with Bridget, and even Maureen Cassidy when she drops in for a cup of tea. And we try and forget them: the ructions. I look up at the wall and there they are, the two of them, side by side, just like in every house and shop in Ireland: JF bloody K and His Holiness, Pope John XXIII. Bridget says the fella who took these snaps must have made a fortune.
Paddy Kelly is sitting at the kitchen table wearing his dirty old tweed cap, supping his tea. Well, slurping, more like. Now I know why Paddy and the old man work so well together. They could slurp away all day at each other and neither of them would give a tinker’s cuss about the disgusting sound.
Bridget is singing away to Paddy, all seductive and teasing as she brings him his bread and butter.
‘Are you lonesome tonight? Do you miss me tonight? Are you sorry we drifted apart?’
Paddy’s grinning and blushing like a right eejit and looking really embarrassed.
‘Does your memory stray to a bright sunny day when I kissed you and called you sweetheart?’
I make a lunge for the bread bin and pull out the sliced pan. I grab a slice, smack it on the table to let Bridget know I’m upset, spread lashings of butter and then a delicious layer of sugar all over. I fold the bread and shove it in my gob, all crunchy and buttery and soft. Heaven! Now I feel better. ‘Big fecking bollocks!’ says I to the world, mumbling through the bread.
‘Not Elvis, I hope,’ says Bridget, quick as anything.
‘Ah now don’t worry the boss, me little gossoon,’ says Cook, who hates any kind of ructions. Cook is so old and fat that all she can do is sit in the corner peeling potatoes. The only thing she can make is baked bloody eggs. Bridget swears Cook spends every holliers in the loony bin across the mountains at Newtownmountkennedy.
‘Ahhhh, don’t worry the boss,’ says I, still annoyed.
‘You are a bold boy, so you are,’ says Cook, all indignant.
‘Paddy!’
Oh fuck. The old man’s standing at the door, red in the face, yelling. He’s aiming at Paddy now, not me. Poor Paddy gets such a fright he drops the mug and spills the tea all over the floor. Bridget is not happy.
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, boss! I’m only just after mopping it,’ she says, furious.
This isn’t the first time Bridget’s had a go at the old man.
The old man has this thing about crows and he’s always opening the dining room window when he sees too many out on his lawn. ‘Bugger off! Go on, get outta here! Get off my lawn!’ he yells at the crows and they scatter, but to his fury they always come back to sit on his lovely mown grass.
One day, the old man’s having his usual after-lunch siesta on a lovely lazy summer’s day in their bedroom on the first floor. He can’t sleep as he hears the bloody crows squawking away outside on his bloody lawn. ‘Right,’ he thinks. ‘I’ll get those noisy fuckers.’ He gets off the bed and goes across the room on his hands and knees so that the crows, down below on the lawn, have no chance of seeing him. He sneaks like John bloody Wayne into his dressing room, takes his 12-bore Purdey shotgun, and comes back into the bedroom, still on hands and knees. He loads the gun as quickly as possible, pushes forward the safety catch, raises himself higher and aims through the window at the pesky crows. ‘Bang!’ He lets rip with the first barrel, but gets a surprise. He’s managed to shoot out all the glass on the window. The window was closed and he hadn’t noticed.
At this terrible racket Bridget comes running out of the house and seeing what’s happened lets rip herself, yelling up at the old man:
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, boss! What the hell did you do that for? I’m only just after cleaning them windows.’
‘Jesus Christ, Bridget. You might’ve bloody well told me!’
The old man is still furious and he’s still standing there in the doorway of the kitchen, hands on hips, and now he’s giving Paddy some serious jip.
‘I thought you were supposed to be in the cowshed washing those heifers’ tails, not lazing around in here, stuffing your face with my bread and tea.’
‘Oh yeah. Oh yeah.’ Paddy’s muttering and rushing out the door as fast as Ronnie Delany, Ireland’s only Olympic gold medallist, ever. When you’re a kid growing up in Ireland and you’re seen running around the place like you do after drinking a bottle of Lucozade, the grown-ups love to shout, ‘Oh God look at him. Just like Ronnie Delany.’
‘Why don’t you leave him alone?’ says I to the old man. I’m still in fighting form.
‘And you, you little bollocks. Stop hanging around in here, interfering with the work.’
‘I’m not interfering!’
He’s lowered his voice now and that means real trouble. ‘Don’t you backchat me.’
Bridget, aware of the danger, grabs me and shoves me out the door to safety.
‘Oh God, Donal’s forgotten the shopping list for Smith’s. Come on, Justin. Hurry!’
We leave the old man fuming, hands still on hips but a little happier with the chaos he’s managed to cause. We’re moving down the back passage now to go and find Donal, and Bridget’s trying to make me feel better. ‘He’s not that bad, really, your dad. He shouts and roars but then he forgets it in no time.’
‘I don’t.’
‘I know pet, I know. It must be hard.’
I’m not thinking about the old man any more. I’m thinking about tea. How can anyone ever drink it? It smells like sick and the Irish think you don’t need a doctor if you have tea.
‘Oh Jaisus, I’ve broken me leg’ … ‘Ah, have a cup of tea.’
‘Me mother died’ … ‘Ah poor you. Have a cup of tea.’
Bridget Collins, as I’ve already said, is brave as anything, especially with the old man. Bridget’s been here since she was thirteen. Her dad owns a little farm in County Carlow and sometimes she invites me over at the weekend to spend a night with her parents when she gets a couple of days off, a very rare occasion. Once I walked into the staff room and caught her kissing Danny Keogh from the stables. Now I know what he was after. But then Bridget would never show her breasts to anyone, not till she’s married. Not like the girl who was here a few years ago, Deirdre Mooney. Bridget once told me all the gossip about her.
Deirdre Mooney used to work in the laundry room, ironing and washing the sheets and all that. Deirdre had two problems – the bottle and the men, particularly the stable lads. As soon as she had a drink inside her, she would take one of the lads up to the hay shed and give them a goo
d time. To give Deirdre her due, according to Bridget, she had a really wicked sense of humour even when it came to taking the mickey about herself.
Once in the middle of Bridget’s first summer in 1955, when she had just started and I was four, Deirdre was helping Bridget to clean the windows of the loft at the top of our house where the indoor staff all slept. At one point a tractor and trailer go past way below, heading down the avenue, carrying a huge load of hay for the stables.
‘Oh no. They’re taking away me bed!’ shouts Deirdre, all fake-sad and laughing at the same time. Poor old Bridget, who was young and innocent, didn’t get the joke until a couple of years later after Deirdre was long gone, and Bridget was told the gossip by Danny Keogh about how Deirdre used to service all the lads in the hay.
Apparently Deirdre had another trick and it involved the old fire escape that led from my parents’ bedroom down into the back yard. When the parentals were away and Deirdre had the job of cleaning the drawing room, she would take the opportunity to sample the drinks tray. In no time at all she would be scuttered drunk. Much the worse for wear, she would sneak up to my parents’ room and onto the fire escape, where she would look out for the arrival of the farm hands who were coming in for their elevenses. Deirdre would wait until a whole gang of them were crossing the yard and would then rush out onto the top platform of the fire escape, turn around to face the house, bend over, hoist up her skirt and show the lads her arse. They loved it.
The old man finally had enough of Deirdre’s shenanigans and she was asked to leave. Luckily her husband, Tony Mooney, had a good job with Kildare County Council so they didn’t starve. In fact, at one point a few years later, Tony was made ‘senior manager in charge of roads’ and he started earning loads of money. So Deirdre, who was very house-proud, insisted that they build an inside bathroom, which not many people had in those days. This handsome young builder arrived, did a great job on the bathroom, and then an even better one on Deirdre, and she ran off with him. Poor old Tony was left with a large bill and a nice new bathroom, which was the envy of the neighbourhood.
Most people, according to Bridget, reckoned that Tony got the best deal in the end.
Five
Money does not make you happy, but it quiets the nerves.
Sean O’Casey
Thursday, 27 June 1963
Donal Sheridan, our chauffeur, stands by the car, which is immaculate as usual. The beautiful Mark II Jaguar is black, smart and gleaming with wax. It’s lovely and it smells great inside, all red and leathery, but it’s a little embarrassing as well. The old man’s loud enough but so is the car. Whenever you drive anywhere, everyone stares. Nobody in Ireland has a car like this, only the president and the Guinness family.
Most of Mother’s friends are posh but most of them, apart from the Guinnesses and a couple of other families, are poor. They live in big houses but there are holes in the roofs and they spend most of their time in one room because it’s so cold they can’t afford heating. If they have any spare money, they’ll spend it on their horses. Even our house was freezing in the winter, so I always had a couple of hot-water bottles to take to bed. It was so cold sometimes that I would pass clean out on the tack-room floor after we had finished exercising the racehorses. The old man says it’s because I am just ‘a little weed’ and that when I get a little older I should do what Black Bob used to do, ‘sleep with the parlour-maids to keep warm’.
This one lady, who owned a hunt in the west, Baroness Molly Pakenham, couldn’t afford to keep the hunt any more. So she disbanded it, sold the horses, but kept the foxhounds. Molly loved her hounds, all black and tans, and she let them live in her big cold Georgian house. Foxhounds are not like normal pets, they’re wild, and they didn’t really appreciate how lucky they were to live in such a posh house. So they just ate everything, including the sofas, and shat everywhere.
Anyway back to Donal our chauffeur, who is from Kerry, and does everything in slow motion. Donal is checking the shopping list for Smith’s of the Green, the best delicatessen in Dublin. Bridget and I watch, trying hard to keep straight faces. Donal reads the list out loud, all slow in his Kerry drawl, very serious as always: ‘Quails’ eggs, beef bouillon, potted shrimps. Potted shrimps?’ Donal is confused and looks to Bridget for help.
Bridget explains. ‘Shrimps stuck in butter, Donal. That’s all. And …’ Bridget gives me a wink on the sly and I know she’s up to something, ‘… ten Carrolls please, pet?’, handing him some coppers to buy her a packet of fags.
Bridget and I are trying hard not to laugh as we know exactly what Donal will give Bridget: a lecture. ‘Now Bridget. I told you before, a packet of cigarettes is a brick for your house.’
‘Yeah. Yeah. Thanks a million.’ With a disapproving shake of his head Donal takes the money, gets in, and drives off. Well, moves off, incredibly slowly.
As the Jag disappears round the corner out of the courtyard and onto the avenue, Bridget and I do our act together. We both do great Kerry accents. ‘A paaaacket of thigarettes is a brik fer yerr howss.’ We dissolve into laughter about how funny we are, and I think to myself how it’s amazing that the old man, who is such a stickler for time, has a driver who is so slow.
One day last year Donal arrives back from posting the racing entries in Merrion Square in Dublin and he doesn’t look well, like he’d seen a ghost. He says not a word to anyone and just walks straight in to see the boss man. The study door is closed, very firmly, and we’re all hanging around outside to find out what terrible thing has occurred. After a couple of minutes there’s a roar of laughter from the old man. Donal comes out of the study with a sheepish look on his face. It was the joke of the year: Donal Sheridan, the slowest driver in the whole of Ireland, had been caught speeding and had been given a ticket by the guards. He never lived it down. For Donal, it was the most humiliating incident of his whole life.
Donal was not only slow and serious but he was very religious and hated swearing of any sort. Even more than Emma, and that’s saying something.
A few years ago the old man used to drink, but not like Mum, who is a slow and steady type of drinker. If he picked up a drink he would be gone for weeks. The weird thing was, he was much nicer with a drink inside him. It was only when he stopped that he would become peevish. Anyway, one time when he was in the middle of one his binges, he decided to go on the batter to Dublin. He swore blind to Mum that it was all innocent, that he had no intention of drinking and that he had some important business to carry out and a meeting with the bank manager.
Mum instructs Donal to drive the old man and tells him ‘on pain of death, do not let Mr Montague out of your sight’. Donal took his duties very seriously, like everything else. So off they went to Dublin, Donal driving. A little while later when they were motoring round St Stephen’s Green past the Russell Hotel, the old man tells Donal to stop, ‘just for a minute’, so he could pick up a parcel. Donal says he doesn’t want to but the old man persuades him that he wouldn’t be a second and that Donal should just ‘keep the engine running’.
Ten minutes later, Donal, now a little concerned, goes into the hotel to discover that the old man has long gone. He has bolted through the kitchens. Donal was distraught as he didn’t know how he would explain it to Mum.
Back at The Hall with Bridget watching from the sidelines, Donal was standing in front of Mum, cap in hand, mortified. Mum, furious, demanded to know why Donal had not done what he was told. Donal, bursting with indignation and fear of losing his job, couldn’t contain himself. ‘It’s like this, m’lady. That Mr Montague, God forgive me, but he’s only a treacherous old fucker!’ Jesus, I wish I’d been there to see it. Mum for once did show some emotion. According to Bridget she nearly had a heart attack from laughing.
The Russell Hotel is a great place where we’d always go on a Friday, the shopping day. The old man would drive us all to town in the Jag while Donal would be off doing the actual shopping in the van. Before lunch, we’d spend a lot of time in the ho
tel bar, discussing which picture to go to in the afternoon. Mum would be knocking back the wine while we drank Pussyfoots. Pussyfoots were delicious. They were made of lime and lemon and grenadine and whisked up with the white of an egg. After the film decision was made, generally by the old man and always a cowboy film, we’d go to lunch.
On the way into the dining room there was a fish tank full of trout. If you wanted fish, you could choose your own trout and they would take it out, kill it, and cook it. That’s what they told us. I’m bloody sure they never took a trout out of the tank. They had them all in the fridge. All the ones swimming around happily in the tank must have had a good old laugh at us for thinking they were going to be eaten. I’m sure I recognized the same ones time after time, and I’m certain I saw one give a sly old smile. I was a bit odd in my eating habits when I was smaller. I would start with tomato soup, then oeufs Benedictine (poached eggs, Hollandaise sauce, ham and a bun), and then tomato soup again for pudding. No one seemed to mind, especially the old man, who was always happy at the Russell. It was the only time he really relaxed, apart from on his boat.
The old man bought this lovely old yacht, the Diana, from some people in Scotland. She was all teak with beautiful lines; her hull was painted white and she had three masts with rusty red sails and was built in 1928 in the Firth of Forth. She weighed sixty-five tons, had a bathroom with a real bath, and even a couple of double beds. And right at the front in the galley there was an Aga stove with the pipe coming up through the teak deck. She was beautiful, really beautiful.
When we pulled into any harbour in Spain, France or even Portugal, everyone would come and look, even though there were much bigger yachts around, just because the Diana was so special. I didn’t really like going on the yacht as the old man was always in such a bloody hurry, like: ‘We must get to Brest by 18.00 hours. No later!’ So I never had time to fish or do anything like that. Although one time we broke down in the middle of the Bay of Biscay – I was delighted, hauling mackerel over the side like there was no tomorrow.
The House of Slamming Doors Page 4
