Drinks served, they raised their glasses.
“Here’s to Moby Dick, Mr. Huston!”
“Gentlemen, I’ve a train to catch for Galway. When that script is typed up, will you send it to me as fast as you can?”
A few hours later I came back to pick up the empty glasses and bottles. There was no sign of Gregory Peck.
* * *
Montgomery Clift came into the tea lounge. A year or so earlier I had seen him in Red River, a cowboy film with John Wayne. And I’d recently seen him in From Here to Eternity. I walked up to him and introduced myself.
“Hello, sir, I’m Gabriel Walsh.”
He looked at me as if wondering whether he knew me. “Oh,” he said with something of a pained look on his face. He then sat down. “Can I get something to drink?”
“Course you can, sir,” I responded. “What would you like, sir?”
“Bring me a brandy first, would you? Then I want . . . well, what? Get me a pot of tea and something to eat with it. Bring me an order of toast.”
I rushed back to the kitchen and placed the order. After a few minutes I was rushing back with his brandy and the tea and toast. I placed his order in front of him.
“Did you play the trumpet in From Here to Eternity?” I asked.
He looked at me and smiled. “Somewhat. I learned to play a little so that it would look like I knew what I was doing.”
I turned away from the table. By now the waiter was back from his cigarette break.
“What are you talkin’ to that customer for?”
“I only asked him a question.”
“Did he order?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Tea and toast. And a brandy.”
“Nothin’ else?”
“No.”
The waiter turned towards the kitchen.
“I got it for him.”
“You served him?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You were out smokin’.”
“Why didn’t you wait?”
“He couldn’t wait. What did I do wrong?”
“Next time wait till I get back. I hope you didn’t mess up.”
“I didn’t.”
“Did you put a clean plate on the table and change the ashtray?”
I quickly picked up a clean plate and ashtray and darted back to the table.
“Sorry sir, just to make everythin’ a bit more tidy.”
Mr. Clift didn’t say anything.
I walked back to the waiter, leaned against the wall and looked back over at the film actor. I was happy I asked him the question.
“That’s the actor fella, isn’t it?” the waiter said to me.
“He’s Montgomery Clift. I saw him in the film From Here to Eternity. He said he only kinda played the trumpet in the film.”
“You asked him that?”
“I did. Can I ask him if he wants more hot water?”
“You’re the talky type, aren’t ya, Walsh?”
“Me?”
“No. Yes, you! Who’d’ya think I’m talkin’ to? Me arse?”
“Shhhh. He might hear you.” I was embarrassed.
“Fuck him. He’s a film star. So bleedin’ what?”
“He’s famous.”
“Walsh, before you piss in your trousers go over and ask him if he wants anythin’ else.”
I jumped at the chance to go back. The film star was looking in his notebook. I think he was looking at a map or something. I stood waiting for him to take his head out of the notebook. After a moment he sensed me standing in front of him.
“Yes?” he asked calmly and quietly.
“Would you like more hot water, sir?”
“Could you get me a glass of orange juice?”
“Yes, sir.” I walked away.
“What does he want?” the waiter asked.
“He wants a glass of orange juice. Can I get it for him?”
“Go ahead.”
I ran to the kitchen and back with a glass of fresh orange juice for Mr. Clift. I rushed into the lounge and placed it in front of him.
“Thank you.”
“A pleasure, sir.”
I walked back to the wall. By now the other waiter on tea-lounge duty was back from his smoke break.
“Did I miss anythin’?” he asked the other waiter.
The other waiter pointed his finger at me. “Yeah. Walsh pissed in his trousers.”
“I did not.”
“You did so.”
“I didn’t.”
“What did you piss in your trousers for?”
“I didn’t.”
“Go down to the dressing room and change.”
“I didn’t piss in my trousers. He’s only jokin’.”
The two waiters laughed.
Mr. Clift turned, made a gesture with his hand.
“He wants his bill. Give him the bill, Walsh.”
I walked over to the table and stood at attention.
“Your bill, sir.”
“Thanks.”
I gave him the bill. He signed his name and left. I forgot to ask him for his autograph.
The morning staff at the Shelbourne Hotel might have regretted that they hadn’t had an extra pint or two the night before they came to work. The chitchat in the dressing-room wasn’t about the smell of sausages coming from the kitchen or how long it took to cycle to work with a flat front tire. On this September morning it centred on the fact that a certain woman had checked into the hotel the night before. Word about her arrival had spread faster than butter on a hot slice of fresh toast. While they dusted off their bow ties and climbed into their serving suits, waiters and porters alike were having a field day with what they knew and didn’t know about Margaret Burke Sheridan.
Miss Sheridan’s presence in the hotel was enough to cause some staff members to call in sick and claim they had an early attack of the winter flu.
“The other night they were talkin’ about her on the wireless,” a waiter, polishing his black shoes, mumbled. “I wouldn’t touch anythin’ belongin’ to her if you promised to canonise me.” The talk and reaction to Maggie’s arrival, even though expressed individually, was chorus-like and uninterruptible. Without apology or notice, one comment was layered upon another.
A waiter, apparently mimicking her voice, sang: “I dreamt I’d a pair of marble balls with something or other beside me!”
Another, not to be outdone, warbled: “Eileen, I’m sure there is somebody knittin’! If you come over here I will piss on your kitten!”
Clearly some waiters didn’t want to be known only as talkers but as singers as well.
One of the older waiters, adjusting his bow tie with trembling fingers, started up, “She was in the dining room a few years ago and returned every dish she ordered. The potatoes went from boiled to mash to steamed and in the end she ended up eatin’ none of it. She had little else to do if you ask me. Before she left here the last time, she caught me lookin’ in her photo book. It was on top of her big trunk outside her door. That day when I thought she was takin’ a walk around Stephen’s Green she appeared in front of me and demanded to know if I was lookin’ into her private life. Divine Jesus, I nearly lost what was left of me mind when she saw me. I didn’t know what she was talkin’ about. I only picked up the book and saw them photos of her when she was young.”
A soon-to-be-retired old porter volunteered: “About three years ago I served dinner in her room and I was exposed to that screechy record machine she has with her all the time. Me eardrums were burstin’ and poundin’ with the noise comin’ from it! All the loud stuff was in Italian as well to make it worse. I think she put it on to torment me.”
Those who didn’t speak favourably of Margaret Sheridan wished she had stayed away, not only from the hotel, but from Dublin as well. Nevertheless the news of Margaret Sheridan’s arrival replaced the regular complaints of how hard and difficult it was to live and sur
vive in the Dublin of the 1950’s.
A hall porter turned from his locker and looked as if he was about to leave the dressing room but instead sat down on the bench and presented himself as if he was about to give a lecture to the mice who inhabited the place when he was away on duty.
“Do you know anythin’ about Madame Sheridan?” he asked anybody who was listening.
Turning from the dressing room mirror an elderly waiter mumbled, “She’s a Japanese, a singer.”
“A Japanese singer?”
“Yis.”
“Madame wasn’t and isn’t a Japanese singer.”
“She’s not?”
“No.”
“What is she?”
“An opera singer! She sang the part of a Japanese!” the porter yelled and continued. “You wouldn’t know much about opera, would ya?”
“What the fuck is that?” the newcomer from Donegal asked.
“You don’t know what it is, do you?”
“No.”
“How could you? You’re from Donegal where the only exposure to culture is the west wind that blows up your arsehole.”
“As long as you know!” the newcomer responded with a tinge of sarcasm in his voice.
“Yes! Down here in civilised Dublin some people have a bit of an education.”
From the other side of the locker room somebody farted. The hall porter stood up and looked as if he was about to punch anyone who disagreed with him. Nobody challenged him and he presumably felt he had got his day off to a good start. With a broad grin on his face that underlined an expression of superiority he gripped his coat lapels and continued to blabber on.
“An’ she’s from Mayo. Just a country girl from Castlebar. Mayo!”
A voice from across the room bellowed out: “I wish to God somebody would send her back down there!”
“Castlebar is up! Not down, you eejit!” the porter called back.
A fellow wearing a kitchen apron and white hat approached. “I saw a picture of her in the Herald with President de Valera the last time she was here. She was never married and if you ask me that’s always been her problem.” He tied the apron strings around his waist. “Didn’t somebody say she was half-mad about an Italian Count who shot himself dead one night when she was singin’ some kind of religious song in Italy? The poor fella didn’t know who he loved the most – Mayo Maggie or whatever they call wives over there in Italy.”
“I’ve heard the stories,” said the porter. “She fell in love with a married man and lost half her brain over him when he wouldn’t leave his wife.”
“I’ve heard John McCormack a few times on the wireless. He was a singer as well. The Pope made him a Count. Miss Sheridan was made into something like that in Italian.”
“Something like what?”
“She was made into something like the Pope made John McCormack into! Count John McCormack, a Prince of the Church!”
“John McCormack was a great singer.”
“How’d ya know all that?”
“Me?”
“You, ya gobshite!”
“I read newspapers. I’ve read newspapers more times than you’ve wiped your arse.”
For the hotel staff, talking about guests was something of a hobby. But when it came to talking about Margaret Burke Sheridan it was close to being an obsession. It probably had to do with the fact that she was in many ways just like them. She was Irish and it was easier and maybe more comforting for them to criticise one of their own. When it came to discussing her they were all experts.
“The fella who invented the wireless is said to be the one who paid for all her singin’ education. He heard her one day singin’ in some rich person’s house in London. I think it was Churchill’s mother or cousin or somebody close to that family.”
“I thought you said she was sent to Italy?”
“She was sent to Italy by an Italian fella who was married to a woman from Galway.”
“Wasn’t it the man who invented the wireless that sent her?”
“Yes! He was Italian! Or at least he had an Italian name. Marconi.”
“Marconi? Who’s that?”
“The man who invented the wireless! The thing you listen to with them big ears of yours every day.”
“Didn’t you hear the other story?”
“What‘s your arse talkin’ about now?” the hall porter said as he moved closer to the door.
“It’s not me arse that’s talkin’. I’m repeatin’ something me father told me.”
“What did he tell ya?”
“When she went to the House of Commons and yelled something in Irish. Didn’t you hear that story?”
“Yes, I fuckin’ heard it!”
“What did she yell?”
“She yelled ‘What about Roger Casement?’”
At that the hall porter called out as he left, “Go to work, you pack of bollocks!”
* * *
“That man sitting over near the winda’ there sent boxes of arms and ammunition to Israel from Ireland.”
“Who?”
“Him.”
“The old fella with the hat?”
“Right you are.”
“Mr. Briscoe?”
“You know his name?”
“Of course I do. Everybody knows his name. His picture’s been in the paper enough times for God’s sake. Wasn’t it about the floatin’ coffins or somethin’?”
“Who told ya that?”
“I had an apparition from the Virgin Mary.”
“Don’t get blasphemous.”
“I’m too religious to be whatever it is you said.”
“Blasphemous. It’s a word you hear when you enter a public toilet.”
“Just because you went to the University of Toilet Paper.”
“I’m a historian.”
“You’re definitely somethin’.”
“I should be more than a waiter sufferin’ from varicose veins.”
“Give me the skinny on your man there.”
“Mr. Briscoe?”
“I know who he is now.”
“Your arse, you do.”
“I do.”
“Who is he?”
“He’s the Lord Mayor of Jerusalem.”
“Wrong.”
“He the Lord Mayor of . . . here? Isn’t he?”
“I’m not goin’ to tell you.”
“Well, I’m askin’ ya.”
“You want me to tell you?”
“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t.”
“You want t’know about the floatin’ coffins and all that stuff?”
“Go ahead. Resist tellin’ me.”
“When he lived in Cork he put rifles in coffins and sent them to Israel.”
“You’re jokin’? How did he do that?”
“He opened the top of the box like any eejit would do, you half a gobshite!”
“Lower your voice.”
“I’m only whisperin’.”
“He sent the boxes from Cork?”
“He sent coffins from Cork.”
“With nobody dead in them?”
“That’s not what I was attemptin’ to get at, you dried-up ring of Clonakilty puddin’!”
“What are ya gettin’ at then?”
“I don’t want to continue educatin’ you.”
“You said he was puttin’ somethin in boxes and sendin’ them out a Ireland, didn’t ya?”
“Ya heard me?”
“I did. You said he put arms and legs in boxes and sent them to –”
“I said he put arms and ammunition into bleedin’ coffins and sent them out a this country to Israel. Y’didn’t know that, did ya?”
“I think I heard it someplace.”
“I didn’t say a bleedin’ thing about legs. Jaysus sakes! You and your arms and legs! Why don’t you clean out them ears of yours? I didn’t say a thing about legs, you pot of stale piss!”
“You’re dyin’ to show you know how to read. So go on.”
&n
bsp; “He put the guns into coffins and shipped them to Israel. That little fella over there sippin’ his tea is a very important man. Robert Briscoe. Lord Mayor of this kip! He’s a hero here and he’s a hero in Israel.”
“He put guns in coffins. Jaysus!”
“The Brits thought the coffins had dead bodies in them and let the coffins in. It goes to show ya how the Brits have more respect for the dead than the livin’. Briscoe knew that about the Brits and he sent everythin’ to Israel pretendin’ it was dead.”
Harry Guiney, the know-all waiter, then turned to me as if he wanted to teach me a lesson in Irish and Jewish History as well.
“Is that man there Jewish, d’ya think?” he asked me.
“I don’t know what he is,” I said.
Mickey Quinn couldn’t resist taking up the challenge. “Of course he’s Jewish. He lives up on the South Circular Road.”
“You have to be Jewish to live up on the South Circular Road?” said Guiney. “I’ll tell you somethin’ else.”
“What?”
“They’re not all Jews up there.”
“Did I say they were?” said Quinn. “I didn’t say that, did I?”
“You said somethin’ like that.”
“You didn’t listen.”
“Did ya know that all the Jews in Dublin live up on the South Circular Road?” Guiney asked.
“Doesn’t everybody know that?”
“You didn’t know it until I mentioned it.”
“Me father mentioned it once to me.”
“Your father, me arse. He didn’t know where he lived himself!”
“Where do you live?”
“Cabra!”
“You like it there?”
“I’d like to move to tell you the truth. You know the song: ‘Abracadabra, I don’t want to live in Cabra – oh no, no, no!’”
“Can I ask you somethin’?”
“Go ahead.”
“Do you live near the Jews up there in Cabra?”
“Do I live near any Jews in Cabra?”
“Are you askin’ me a question?”
“No! I’m askin’ me dead mother the question! What the hell are you askin’ me if I live near any Jews for? I don’t know if I do or not. I don’t know.”
“I know you don’t know.”
“Do you?”
“You’re askin’ me the same question I asked you.”
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