Annie hands him a half-crown, smiling away all innocent. ‘Two tickets for Aston Quay. Thanks a million, sir.’
I much prefer going to Dublin on the bus. What I mean is, I hate going with the parents. Don’t get me wrong, they’re both really great drivers, but they go too fast and I always end up sitting on a copy of The Irish Times to try to stop being sick. It never works. Mum learnt her driving as a Wren in the war. As a result, because her father was an earl, she had two titles, not just one like all the other girls. She was Leading Wren Lady Helen Browne. Leading Wren was apparently the naval term for a corporal. Anyhow, when Mum is tanked up she’s always telling us sob stories about how hard she had it in the war and how she lived in digs in Islington and how she had to drive every day all the way to Twickenham to pick up this admiral, her boss, and take him to the ministry. And how horrible he was to her. When I asked my Uncle Freddie, Mum’s brother, who is now the Earl of Charlton, he gave me a totally different story to the one Mum had always bandied about.
‘What utter nonsense! Your mother always did exaggerate. Your grandfather felt so sorry for Helen living in her frightful digs that he moved her out after just a week and gave her a double bedroom next to his suite at the Dorchester in Park Lane. On top of that, she persuaded the hotel manager to install the first ever air-conditioning unit. And the old admiral was so in love with Helen that he kept giving her days off and buying her wonderful lunches and theatre tickets.’
One thing about Mum is that when she drinks she never really gets out of control like the old man. She just starts slurring her words. Mum isn’t the greatest mother in the world but I love her in a strange sort of a way and I wouldn’t like anything to happen to her.
Not long ago one of the locals, a really nice fella called Johnny Rice, was killed in a car accident by a drunk driver. Johnny had taken the pledge as a youngster and had never had a drop of booze in his life. That made it all the worse, the fact that he was killed by someone who was absolutely plastered. Lucy, for some reason, knew the family better than any of us and was invited to the lying-in where the body was on display the night before the funeral. Mum overheard Lucy telling Emma that she was going and decided to come along as well.
So off they went, the three of them, Emma, Lucy and a more-than-tiddly Mum, to pay their respects to the family of poor Johnny. Apparently the coffin was open as Johnny didn’t have any facial scars, and it was placed in the middle of the church. As they filed past the coffin, Mum stumbled and grabbed a hold of the side to stop herself falling. According to Lucy and Emma, the coffin almost rocked off its stand. Luckily the girls were on hand to steady it and stop it tumbling over. Emma said afterwards that it was bad enough being killed by a drunk but to be thrown out of your coffin by one afterwards would have been just too much for any poor soul to bear.
When Grandpa Charlton died, Granny kept on the suite at the Dorchester as her London flat. She was only there about once a month but I guess she didn’t like to sleep in anybody else’s bed. I never saw the rooms themselves but apparently Granny had all her own furniture and paintings up there so that she would feel at home when she went to town. When Granny’s illness got really bad, Uncle Freddie designed a special hydraulic arm and a passenger lift. The lift itself was at Charlton, hidden behind a tapestry, and it went right up into her bedroom. The special hydraulic arm, appearing out of the door of her Rolls-Royce, would grab the wheelchair and hoik it into the car. From that time on, Granny could get into her wheelchair in her bedroom and never have to get out of it again until she was in her suite at the Dorchester.
Uncle Freddie also had rooms at the Dorchester when he was young. (Lucy told me this as she always knew all the gossip. And if she didn’t, she’d just make some up.) Anyway, she made me swear not to tell anyone as it was a family scandal. Freddie, in his younger days, had inherited the family problem and used to knock back the gin. When he was on a bender he would hole up in his room at the hotel and drink himself stupid.
The Dorchester put up with his ways because the family were such good clients but one time Freddie was so drunk, he came out into the corridor waving his cane and attacked some big American film star, shouting, ‘Get out of my house, damn you!’ Well, that was the end of that. The Dorchester asked him, politely, to vacate his rooms and he gave in like a lamb because he didn’t want a scandal.
Ten
If you can’t get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.
George Bernard Shaw
Sunday, 30 June 1963
Summer dust flying, the black Jaguar growls sweetly as it careers down the avenue at high speed. Bobby may be driving fast, but he’s in good humour. He’s ‘sorted’ the new priest without any real trouble, and Helen is going to Church again. The Mark II slides to a halt, gravel flying, and the girls pile out.
Bridget stands waiting. Bobby jumps out. ‘Hello there, Bridget. Lunch ready? I’m starved.’
‘Yes sir. It is. And Lady Helen asked me to tell you not to wait for her.’
Bobby feels deflated. ‘Oh right. There’s no rush.’
‘Since when?’ Emma is suspicious. ‘Where is she, exactly, Bridget?’
‘Mrs Mullins asked if she, Her Ladyship I mean, would go straight to Kildare Hospital after Mass, as she couldn’t have visitors after two. Her Ladyship said she would go after Church and probably wouldn’t be back until tea.’ Lucy and Emma exchange knowing looks. Long gone are the days when Helen bothered to go and visit the sick in hospital.
‘Probably?’
‘That’s what she said, Her Ladyship. Probably.’
‘We’ll wait half an hour. She’ll be here. She loves Sunday roast.’
At that precise moment, Lady Helen’s black Triumph Spitfire, top down, whizzes along a country lane. The Triumph shoots past a sign. ‘Dublin City Centre. 15 Miles’. Beside it, pointing in the opposite direction, is another sign. ‘Kildare Town. 23 Miles’. Helen’s brown hair flies wildly in the breeze. She has a smile on her face but she’s not relaxed. She is excited, terribly excited, at the thought of what’s going to happen to her when she reaches St Stephen’s Green.
Emma, Lucy and Bobby are sitting on the front lawn on the old brown wicker chairs, reading the Sunday papers. Bobby is distracted. He is trying to focus on a half-naked photo of Christine Keeler, the prostitute at the centre of the Profumo scandal, which had just about brought down the Conservative government across the water in England. But his mind is elsewhere as he keeps checking his watch and listening for Helen’s car.
‘What about Annie?’ asks Emma.
‘I’ve made up my mind.’
‘She’s not a thief!’
‘Oh, come on,’ says Bobby. ‘Pull the other one. You really think I believed that cock-and-bull about her coming to meet you?’
‘Justin’s crazy about her,’ says Lucy, trying not to raise her voice.
‘No, he’s not. He loves her,’ says Emma, in her usual blunt manner.
‘Balderdash! Love? What the hell does a thirteen-year-old know about love!’ Bobby is getting more wound up.
Emma, with a determined look on her face, takes out the package and opens it.
‘Oh shite,’ says Lucy.
Emma hands the gold cigarette case to Bobby.
‘Where the hell did you find that? Your mother will be thrilled.’
‘Annie found it.’
‘Little fecker!’
‘Ask me where she got it,’ continues Emma.
‘What does that matter? She stole it, didn’t she?’
I wish she had, says Lucy to herself.
Emma drops the bombshell. ‘An English gentleman in a sports car …’
‘Bridget!’ yells Bobby, interrupting something he definitely does not want to hear. Bridget appears almost immediately. ‘Where’s our lunch?’
‘Whenever you’re ready, sir.’
‘I am ready. Otherwise I wouldn’t be asking, would I?’
Bridget goes to fetch the lunch, wonderin
g if she will ever get off for the afternoon and her trip to Dublin.
‘Come on then Cromwell, you old fool,’ says Bobby as he marches towards the house. He is determined to keep up a good front. The Rottweiler follows and the girls join him, walking either side. ‘It’s taken Cook bloody years to get the Yorkshire pudding right.’
‘Dad, are you okay?’ asks Lucy.
‘Never better.’
‘Don’t you get it?’ Emma forces the issue.
Lucy tries to stop her. ‘Cool it, man.’
‘She’s at it again.’
Bobby stops. ‘That’s enough!’
Emma digs the knife in and twists. ‘What about Justin? Isn’t it about time he knew? Everyone else does.’
Bobby, looking really hurt and with his head down, lumbers through the door.
Eleven
When I die, Dublin will be written in my heart.
Sean O’Casey
Sunday, 30 June 1963
We’re in Dublin, Annie and myself, and we’re near St Stephen’s Green right in the centre of the city. Annie grabs me and looks up and yelps: ‘Oh, would ya look? Maureen Potter!’ It’s The Gaiety Theatre and the sign says, ‘Ulysses by James Joyce. Starring Maureen Potter and Milo O’Shea.’
God, I love Maureen Potter. She’s the best actress in the whole of Ireland and the kids just worship her. We go every Christmas to see her in the panto. In one thing I saw, Maureen played this Dublin lady who has a son called Christy. (Mind you, every taxi driver in Dublin is called Christy.) In the story she takes her twelve-year-old Christy to the Phoenix Park, to see a balloon race. But Christy’s a real eejit and gets into a basket while his mother’s not looking and the rope breaks and there’s the balloon disappearing into the sky with Maureen, standing in the middle of the stage, calling up at him in her strongest Dublin accent: ‘Christy? Christy? Will ya come down outta that baloowen, will ya?’
‘I’ve seen her loads of times,’ says I, showing off.
‘You are so lucky,’ says Annie to me, all envious.
‘I saw her last week too, on the tellies, Maureen with Jimmy O’Dea. God, it was brilliant. She had us in stitches.’
‘Lucky you,’ says Annie, still looking up at the theatre sign. ‘Ulysses? Wasn’t he a strong man? Like in a circus?’
‘As if I’d know.’ I wish she wouldn’t ask me questions like that. Just because I have a posh voice and go to school in England it doesn’t mean I know everything.
‘I’ve never been to a play or a panto,’ says Annie, all sorry for herself.
‘More importantly, Miss Cassidy, you’ve never been to tea at the Shelbourne. So move it, baby!’ That cheered her up.
We’re hurrying now and just coming onto the Green past the market stalls and I love the noise and the market ladies shouting. As we reach the stalls there’s one lady I know really well, Aggie, and she’s wider than she’s tall. If I had to guess I would say she eats more than just the fruit she sells. She’s practically bursting out of her white apron. Aggie’s doing her usual pitch to the crowd. ‘Pears, apples or chocolate! Oranges, luvvely oranges!’ Suddenly Aggie’s seen me and now she’s yelling, ‘Ah, Justin. Hew are ya, luv?’
Annie is really surprised. ‘She knows you?’
I take some change out of my pocket and whisper aside: ‘That’s Aggie. She doesn’t listen, Aggie. Watch!’ I lead Annie up to the stall and I start perusing the fruit display all serious as though I’m terribly interested. Aggie wants to chat, of course.
‘Ah luv. How are ye ma and ye da?’
‘Fine thanks, Aggie,’ says I. And then a little quieter. ‘Both dead.’ I wink at Annie.
‘Ah that’s grand,’ says Aggie, totally missing the point. ‘Now, what’ll ya have?’ Annie’s trying really hard not to laugh.
‘Just the two pears please,’ says I, all straight-faced.
‘Of course, luv. And an extra one only for you, pet.’ Aggie squeezes my cheek as usual, which I hate, but put up with as she’ll be offended if I say anything.
I give her a shilling. ‘Keep the change, please. Thanks Aggie, bye.’
‘Bye luv. God bless.’
‘Told you,’ says I to Annie, all smug, as we walk off.
‘Both dead? You’re a loony.’ Annie and I are laughing away as we continue onto the Green towards the Shelbourne and we can hear Aggie still roaring away behind us: ‘Pears, apples or chocolate! Oranges, luvvely oranges!’
‘A shilling? You gave her a whole shilling? Are you mad or what?’ Annie is amazed.
‘The old man pays much more, at least double.’
‘Why?’
‘Guilt,’ says I.
‘Guilt?’
‘That’s what Lucy says.’
‘About what?’
‘Being rich, I suppose.’
‘Oh.’
We’re walking along the Green towards the Shelbourne and I’m salivating at the thought of their lovely cakes and cream when Annie suddenly stops and points across the road.
‘Isn’t that your mother’s car?’
I stop myself and look across and there it is – a black Triumph Spitfire just like Mum’s. I can’t see the number plate as it’s sideways, but there’s no point.
‘It couldn’t be.’
‘How come?’
‘She went to Kildare, to visit a friend in the hospital.’
‘Oh,’ says Annie and off we run into the Shelbourne Hotel and I’m glad I’ve loads of dosh because it’s really, really expensive, tea at the Shelbourne. I’m still wondering about the black Triumph. I’ve never seen another one before in Ireland. I must remember to tell Mum.
*
On the first floor of the Shelbourne Hotel, Lady Helen Montague, Hermes scarf almost covering her face, looks around. The coast is clear. Helen knocks on the tall mahogany doors of the George Moore Suite. Her heart beats fast. She’s so excited she could scream.
*
I lead Annie into the beautiful lobby and I know she’ll be impressed but I remain all cool.
‘Janey!’ says Annie, flabbergasted and staring around her.
‘Come on. This way. Oh yeah, see over there? That door? In there, that’s where Michael Collins drafted the Irish Constitution in 1922.’ But then something surprises me, as I peep in.
‘God almighty,’ says I softly to myself. I stop in my tracks like I’ve been shot, and I’m staring and I can’t help it. There’s a man and a woman grabbing one another like they haven’t seen each other in years. And it makes me feel all strange, watching this. All funny peculiar.
*
In the George Moore Suite, the Rake stares at Helen. He has a hard look on his face, and he stands, arms folded, between the two French windows that lead to the balcony overlooking the Green.
Helen is breathless. ‘Roger? What?’
She knows exactly what, because it’s what she always wants.
Roger, leaping forward, grabs Helen by her beautiful hair, throws her on the bed, and pushes her face down into a pillow. ‘You dirty bitch! I know you’re wet! I know you are, you tart!’
Helen moans, as Roger pulls up her skirt and rips down her silk underwear. His other hand pins her to the bed. Helen gasps. ‘I’m going to fuck you till you scream, you slut!’
*
Annie follows me into the Lord Mayor’s Lounge and I wait at the entrance for the head waiter to greet us. ‘Just like home,’ says Annie, staring up at the enormous crystal chandelier hanging from the centre of the ceiling.
The head waiter appears with his hair all Brylcreemed down and shiny and black, and he’s slick as well, just like the hair. ‘Good afternoon, sir. Two for tea?’
‘Thank you.’
‘Excuse me, Mister,’ says Annie, all polite.
‘Yes, miss?’
‘What do ya call a Kerryman who hangs upside down off the ceiling?’
‘Young lady?’
‘What do ya call a Kerryman who hangs upside down off the ceiling? Sean D’Olear!’ Annie po
ints up at the enormous lights.
‘Get it?’
He gets it, but I think he’s heard it before as he’s not laughing.
‘Yes, two please,’ says I, politely and firmly.
The head waiter bows and theatrically waves an arm.
‘Thank you, sir. This way. And madam?’ Now he’s taking the mickey out of Annie. ‘Such an honour to have that great actress Miss Maureen Potter in our humble lounge.’ Good for him.
‘Have you ever seen her, Maureen Potter?’
‘Seen her? Young lady, if I had a shilling for every time Miss Potter ordered scones, strawberry jam and clotted cream, I’d be a very moneyed man. She’s in most days before her performance. Now, will here do?’ He indicates a yellow silky sofa facing a brown and very polished coffee table.
‘Thanks a million,’ says Annie. ‘My mum’s called Maureen.’
‘How very interesting. Between you and me. Once …’ he leans forward and whispers like in a conspiracy, ‘… Miss Potter came for tea with Tyrone Power! And they sat at this very table, on this very sofa. There you are now,’ he says, very pleased with himself.
‘Tyrone Power? He is totally gorgeous.’
‘No, he isn’t! He’s old!’ says I.
‘Gotcha!’ teases Annie.
Feck. Why do I get so jealous?
We’re sitting on the sofa facing the main door, feeling important, and the head waiter has turned out to be a real laugh. ‘I’ll let you know the moment Miss Potter arrives. I’ll have a word and see if I can introduce you. Now, your wish is my command. What would you like for tea?’
‘What’s good enough for Miss Potter, is good enough for us,’ says I.
‘Oh yes please, sir,’ says Annie, breathlessly.
‘Scones, jam and clotted cream, it is then. Might I also recommend hot drinking chocolate?’
‘Oh yes, please,’ says Annie again. ‘Thanks a million.’ Now he’s off to get our order and I’m watching him go with admiration. ‘God, isn’t he great?’
The House of Slamming Doors Page 9
