Anglo-Irish Murders

by Ruth Dudley Edwards

The three MOPEs looked at her in horror. ‘We dissociate ourselves from that comment,’ said Laochraí. ‘We are inclusive of all gender and sexual orientations.’

  ‘The Pope isn’t,’ muttered Kelly-Mae.

  ‘The Pope’s a reactionary,’ said Father O’Flynn.

  ‘I agree with the Pope,’ said Steeples.

  ‘So do I,’ said Wyn. ‘Homosexuality is an abomination before God and man.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said MacPhrait hastily, ‘Orangemen show they’re sectarian by talking about the errors of the Church of Rome.’

  ‘See now, why shouldn’t they?’ enquired Wyn. ‘The Church of Rome is full of errors. That’s why we had the Reformation…’

  ‘Too right,’ interrupted Hamish Wallace.

  This caused uproar, with cries of ‘bigots, bigots’ from the MOPE corner.

  ‘Shut up, all of you,’ said the baroness. ‘Yes, Chandra?’

  ‘I’m sorry to say that if our Protestant colleagues are bigots, so am I. I think Hinduism superior to any other religion. And as for Muslims…’ He gesticulated gracefully.

  ‘And Laochraí,’ put in Okinawa, ‘would you tolerate my country’s main leligion?’

  There was a puzzled silence.

  ‘Shinto,’ he said. ‘Emperor-worship.’

  Amiss had difficulty keeping his face straight. The baroness didn’t try. ‘Well?’ she asked Laochraí with a big grin.

  As the MOPEs looked at each other, Billy Pratt interjected, ‘I have no time for the Orange Order myself. I am very annoyed that this film is supposed to represent my culture. The Orange Order has been a tool of exploiters who wanted to suppress the socialist instincts of the working class.’

  The relief of the MOPEs was palpable. ‘Absolutely,’ said O’Flynn. ‘Orangeism is one of those outmoded ideologies of the petit-bourgeoisie that we must rid ourselves of.’

  ‘How about starting with nationalism?’ enquired Kapur. ‘Is the world not struggling to develop beyond this particular outmoded ideology that has brought with it only hatred and war?’

  The baroness cut into the ensuing hullabaloo. ‘It’s four o’clock now so we haven’t got time to slug this one out. Has anyone anything sensible to add about Gardiner’s film?’

  Kelly-Mae, who had been looking very confused, broke in. ‘The difference is,’ she shouted, ‘that we have a culture and you Protestants don’t. Some traditions are not worthy of respect.’

  The baroness stood up. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘we’ll have tea now. I don’t think we could better that as a conclusion to a session on tolerating each others’ differences.’

  ***

  Dr Romaine Fusco of Geneva was good to look at but produced no controversy. The baroness’ perfunctory request for questions met a few brief and positive responses and then a dead silence to which she responded by terminating the proceedings abruptly.

  ‘Can we have a ten-minute break?’ asked Amiss. ‘We have some housekeeping to do.’

  Dr Fusco having shown little disposition to linger, Amiss walked her to the front door, uttered a few platitudinous expressions of gratitude, borrowed an umbrella from Pat, delivered her to her waiting taxi and ran back to the seminar room.

  Gibson and the baroness were walking up and down outside. ‘That was a crashing bore,’ she said to Amiss. ‘She was good-looking and more comprehensible that that ponderous idiot McGuinness, but blimey, was she tedious.’

  ‘Can’t disagree with you there.’

  ‘I mean, for God’s sake, the notion that the Swiss solution to having within its borders Italians, Germans and French could have anything to do with a mad place like Northern Ireland is completely…’ She searched for the right word. ‘…Mad. If you scoured the entire world you’d be hard put to find people more different than the Swiss and the Irish. Look at them. The Swiss are peaceful, law-abiding and obsessed with being neat and tidy. And they’re dull bastards as well. Say what you like about the Irish—they can be boring, they’re self-obsessed and wrongly think they’re endlessly fascinating, but they’re rarely dull. Except when they get self-important like the McGuinness buffoon.’

  She shook her head vigorously. ‘What is it about academics?’

  ‘They’re trying to earn a crust like anyone else,’ said Gibson wearily. ‘She’s just another typical member of the travelling circus of commentators on Northern Ireland.’

  ‘That little shit got very enthusiastic about what she said anyway.’

  ‘Billy Pratt?’ asked Gibson. ‘Well, he would, wouldn’t he? So did Laochraí and Liam.’

  The baroness snorted. ‘Of course. That daft bint obligingly presented them with a theory of cantonisation that helps them justify what their pals are doing in practice.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  She brooded. ‘I hate DUPEs as much as MOPEs now. Who do you hate most among this mob, Robert?’

  ‘Kelly-Mae, probably. But that creepy Jesuit is pretty grim too.’

  ‘Good grief. Is he a Jesuit? Does Gardiner know? Don’t Orangemen think Jesuits are Satan?’

  ‘Of course they know,’ said Gibson. ‘They all know each other. But Gardiner will also know Call-me-Cormac was brought along to wind the Prods up and he’s had more sense than to rise to the bait.’

  ‘So far. The weekend is young. Now let’s go back inside and deal with these practicalities with dispatch.’

  ***

  ‘As for tomorrow morning…’ said Amiss, when he had finished talking timetable alterations.

  ‘I wanted to ask about that,’ said Steeples. ‘What are the arrangements for worship?’

  Amiss looked at him hesitantly. ‘Father O’Flynn and the local Church of Ireland vicar are conducting an ecumenical service here at nine.’

  ‘Well that’s no good to me.’

  ‘There you are,’ said Kelly-Mae. ‘You won’t go because Cormac is a priest.’

  ‘I’ve no problem with priests doing whatever priests do, but I’ll go to no ecumenical service. People should practise their own religion and not be looking the lowest common denominator. I’ve a friend down the road and he says there’s a Presbyterian service in the local village at twelve and a mass in the chapel in Knock at the same time for those Roman Catholics who take the same view of ecumenism as I do.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Wyn Gruffudd in a low voice. ‘That’s why I’ll be leaving early tomorrow and not coming back until Monday morning.’

  ‘Elaborate, please,’ said the baroness.

  ‘I’m driving north to join a Baptist community for worship. As a strict Sabbatarian, I could not attend any secular events on a Sunday in any case, so I am no loss to you.’

  ‘I don’t want to be contentious,’ interjected the baroness, barely concealing her wrath, ‘but could you explain how a Sabbatarian comes to attend a weekend conference?’

  ‘No one else would go,’ said Wyn simply.

  ‘Anyone else want a service other than the ecumencial one?’ enquired Amiss.

  ‘Yes,’ said Gibson. ‘I’m with Gardiner on this as it happens.’

  ‘You’re an anti-ecumenical Presbyterian?’ asked the baroness in surprise.

  ‘No. An anti-ecumenical Roman Catholic.’

  ‘Well, bugger me, he’s one of yours,’ she announced benignly to O’Flynn. ‘All right, then. We’ll swap the ecumencial service with our midday session and then everyone will be happy.’

  ‘We’ll order a taxi for about fifteen minutes beforehand to take Simon and Gardiner to their respective churches,’ said Amiss.

  Steeples shook his head.

  ‘I won’t need lifting. It’s an Orange anniversary service, so I’ll be joining the brethren on parade at the bottom of the drive around half past eleven.’

  As one man, the other participants looked at him in astonishment.

  ‘Deliberate provocation,’ said Kelly-Mae. Steeples looked up and down the table. ‘This is supposed to be about culture. Well, this is my culture. And I’m expressing it. As far as I’m concerned the rest o
f you can have a rosary procession or embalm Druids or do whatever you want to do. But that’s what I’m doing the morrow, so it is.’

  ‘It seems perfectly reasonable to me,’ said the baroness. She looked towards the MOPEs. ‘Does anyone want to make anything of it?’

  Kelly-Mae looked hopefully at Laochraí, who stayed quiet.

  ‘Good,’ said the baroness. ‘That’s that settled. Sometimes I think we might be making progress.’

  ***

  ‘I hadn’t spotted you for a pape, Simon,’ observed the baroness as they left the room.

  ‘You’re right in that I’m not a cradle Catholic. Came to it late.’

  ‘What brought on the conversion?’

  ‘Capriciousness? Boredom? Curiosity? A desire to give my mother a really good grievance?’

  ‘What did you convert from?’

  ‘I was born a Jew.’

  ‘Wow. That’s impressive. You’ve swapped a religion in which guilt is fed to you in your mother’s milk for one which encourages you to put your conscience on the rack at every opportunity. Obviously you didn’t convert to a namby-pamby Catholicism that has you holding hands with vicars.’

  ‘Of course not, I’m unrepentantly a fan of the pre-Vatican II church.’

  ‘Wonderful.’ She put her head on one side and thought hard. ‘Yes, you seem uniquely equipped to flagellate yourself with the sins of omission, commission…’ She paused and chortled loudly, ‘…not to speak of emission.’

  ‘What’s the joke?’ asked Amiss, as he caught up with them.

  ‘Never you mind,’ said Gibson.

  ***

  Most of the evening went off without trouble. The British junior minister sent to host the reception produced a speech of such blandness that even Kelly-Mae—dressed for the occasion in an enormous green-white-and-orange frock—could not object. In retrospect, Amiss was to blame Lord Galway’s speech for the later trouble, for it went on so long that even more alcohol was consumed than on the previous night.

  According to Gibson, the Irish had come up with Galway because they were trying to show that their inclusiveness extended to the old Anglo-Irish gentry. Having had a great deal of trouble finding someone who fitted the bill and who was prepared to travel such a long distance, they settled in the end, none too happily, for an octogenarian whose main claim to fame was that he was nice and had a large collection of Irish paintings.

  Galway’s brief had been to spend fifteen minutes or so thanking everyone who had to be thanked wittily and elegantly, to talk a little about art and to produce some liberal sentiments about mutual understanding and moving forward together in the new millennium. Instead, to everyone’s bewilderment and, ultimately, horror, he embarked on a long account of childhood visits to Mayo, deeply tedious descriptions of hunts he had attended, the wonders of the local gamekeeper of his youth and mind-numbing tales of fly-fishing. He talked and he talked and he talked and when Pascal O’Shea opened a book on how long he would go on, even the optimists predicted an hour and demanded more wine.

  Mindful of the baroness’ summary dealing with Gerry McGuinness the previous evening, some of the gathering looked at her hopefully, but she just sat there drinking wine and staring into the middle distance. After about fifty minutes, Galway finished an incomprehensible anecdote about a point-to-point and thanked his audience for indulging an old man. ‘You were surprisingly patient,’ said Amiss to the baroness on the way out.

  ‘What was I to do? Slug him?’

  ‘It was one option.’

  ‘Not him. He’s a nice old buffer.’

  She looked around her truculently. ‘I’ve been thinking. And I’ve got very vexed. I can stand a lot. If we have to be exposed to the worst national stereotypes of everyone except—as it turns out—Indians and Japs, so be it. If necessary, I’ll also put up with arrogant Frogs, humourless Krauts, suicidal Swedes and lachrymose Russians. But I have my limits. Even though I am English, there are limits to my tolerance.’

  ‘And what is exceeding your limits?’

  ‘The stereotypical bloody English we’ve been lumbered with. Or to be precise, the stereotypical New bloody English.’

  ‘But why shouldn’t we have stereotypical representatives too? Isn’t that fair?’

  ‘Fair is only one bit of our stereotype. Why can’t we have something robust? The roast-beef aspect of our national character? Why are you four such wimps?’

  ‘Wimps are what the New English are supposed to be, surely? We’re all Blair babes now. All in touch with the feminine side of our character. Except you, of course, who frequently gives the impression of being solely in touch with the masculine.’

  ‘Someone has to in this emasculated world. Get them over here. I want to talk to them.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Our backsliding countrymen. Our pack of old women. Our Quislings. Taylor, Simon and Ellis.’

  ‘Rollo,’ said Amiss automatically.

  ‘Rollo, Rollo, Rollo. Christ, you couldn’t get a more effete name than that.’

  ‘It’s a thoroughly traditional name in the Pooley family. His ancestor Sir Rollo no doubt tilted a pretty lance during the Crusades.’

  ‘Judging by his performance today, his descendent would probably respond to a Saracen onslaught by suggesting the issue be referred to arbitration.’

  ***

  Taylor was the only one of the three to put up any defence against the baroness’ assault, for Amiss, Gibson and Pooley stoutly maintained that they were not participants, were required by their jobs to stay neutral and therefore had no case to answer. Having been denounced for being a placeman mouthing New Labour platitudes and a hopeless wimp with no pride in his country, Taylor replied smoothly that the new millennium called for new thinking and that while patriotism was acceptable, nay progressive, for those who had lived under colonialism, for the English it was regressive and must give way to a sense of being European. Her companions were profoundly grateful when an outbreak of singing elsewhere in the bar distracted the baroness from her ensuing apoplectic diatribe.

  Pascal O’Shea, who turned out to be a strong tenor, provided a rousing version of ‘Phil the Fluter’s Ball’—a comic song whose speed and linguistic demands would have taxed even someone sober. Urged to reciprocate, Taylor—who explained he had once studied in Wyoming—burst into ‘Home on the Range.’

  When the clapping stopped, Laochraí stood up. ‘That was inappropriate.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Taylor. ‘I’m not with you.’

  ‘It’s the same tune as a notorious sectarian song.’

  ‘Not one that I’ve ever heard of,’ said the hapless Taylor. ‘I intended no offence.’

  ‘That’ll be “No Pope of Rome,”’ said Steeples, who had been lowering Bushmills whiskey in company with Hamish Wallace and who was increasingly cheerful. ‘Ach, Laochraí, it’s only a wee joke. Why do you take everything so serious?’

  ‘Quite right,’ said the baroness, ‘knock that off, Lucrezia. You can have a fight about it tomorrow. Tonight everyone sings whatever they like. Who’s next?’

  Willie Hughes, who was sitting with Billy Pratt and the MOPEs, and who up to now had not been heard to utter a word in public, suddenly put down his pint and burst into ‘My Old Man’s a Dustman,’ in which several others joined enthusiastically. He grinned bashfully after the applause and said, ‘He was a dustman, you see, my old man was.’

  Emboldened, Wyn Gruffudd, who had been drinking orange juice and exchanging information with Kelly-Mae about their respective cats, came in with a dreary and very long folksong in Welsh. Plucking ineffectually at his guitar-strings, Father O’Flynn delivered himself of an interminable lament from a South American peasant driven off the land by exploitative rubber-planters and then accompanied Laochraí equally dismally as she sang ‘The Four Green Fields,’ an old woman’s demand that her sons reunite Ireland by whatever means necessary.

  In the ensuing depressed silence, the baroness turned to Gibson. ‘One thing that
baffles me about MOPE is where they think the money would come from for a United Ireland once we’ve taken our billions away.’

  Gibson smiled wearily. ‘You’ve never heard MOPE on the subject of reparations?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Reparations for all the wrongs we’ve done to the population of Ireland since the twelfth century. Their policy towards the British has been accurately summed up as “Fuck off, but leave your wallet on the mantelpiece.” Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to bed.’

  As he left, the baroness turned towards Steeples. ‘Come on Gardiner. Give us an Ulster song.’

  ‘Apart from the national anthem and hymns I only know one song,’ he said.

  ‘Save the hymns for tomorrow,’ said the baroness cheerfully. ‘Get on with the other one.’

  Steeples promptly launched himself into the Orange anthem—‘The Sash My Father Wore’—to expressions of thunderous disapproval from MOPE. The baroness and several others joined in the chorus with gusto.

  ‘Well done, Gardiner,’ she cried. ‘An Orange a day keeps the papists away, what? Now have we any other volunteers? Simon? Chandra? Robert? What a collection of wimps you are. What about you, Oki?’

  ‘I would do it and gradly,’ said Okinawa, ‘had you karaoke. I need an accompaniment.’ Seeing O’Flynn gesturing with his guitar, he added hastily. ‘Only kalaoke. Please sing now, Jack.’

  She drained her whiskey. ‘If you insist. I’ll give you my party piece. Flanders and Swann’s “Song of Patriotic Prejudice.”’

  Amiss’ face contorted. He looked at Pooley and said, ‘Ooops.’

  ‘Don’t know it,’ said Pooley.

  Amiss shut his eyes as she burst into the opening stanza about the English being terrific and the rest of the inhabitants of the British Isles not being worth tuppence.

  Wyn coped with the verse about the inadequacies of the Welsh, though she was seen to flinch at the lines about them being underground dwellers who resembled monkeys and sang much too loudly, often and flat. Wallace laughed at the lines about the Scotsman being tight-fisted, boney and covered with hair. Then came the last verse, which dwelt on the contemptible Irish, who slept in their boots, lied through their teeth, blew up policemen and blamed everything on Cromwell and William the Third.