Man or Mango?

by Lucy Ellmann

  DISASTER MOVIE OUTLINE

  VARIOUS CHARACTERS WITH CREDIT DIFFICULTIES, MARITAL PROBLEMS AND LOVESICKNESS, DESCEND ON IRISH HOTEL.

  POSSIBILITY THEY WILL ALL BE BOMBED (OR ELSE BUY A LOT OF TRINKETS). THEY ALL NEED A SHAKE-UP!

  OMINOUS SOUND OF SHELLS MASSING ON BEACH. WAVES HUFF AND PUFF. FREQUENT SHOTS IN SLO-MO OF LOW-FLYING WATER BIRDS.

  CHARACTERS INCLUDE:

  The 3 Old Biddies

  The Smug Doctor

  The Smug Doctor’s Wife

  The Smug Doctor’s Smug Sons and Smug Daughter

  Owen (abject father of Ellen)

  Ellen (abject daughter of Owen)

  Ed (token madman)

  Hermit-woman

  Rogue Poet

  The Phantom Forms of the Children Rogue Poet Should Have Had

  Eloïse

  Connemara is Europe’s most western point. I look out to sea in search of Massachusetts. We’re lit by the same sun! But then I think of my beautiful handmade paper bag full of George’s letters, to which no new ones have been added for years.

  Lettershinna

  Lettershanna

  Lettermore

  Lettercallow

  Letterbeg

  The wind and water of Connemara are telling me to move on, the ghosts of my parents quietly waiting, the Beatles tune in my head (let it be), the tides that push and pull me, the moon within me, the menstrual cramp that leads me back to the car (more Nurofen).

  I am being watched. The kindly face of a donkey studies me. His feet are tied together, his legs worn bare by the rope, but he stumbles across the steep rocky yard to be spoken to.

  The donkey’s owner comes out of a nearby house. I mumble a question about the tied-up hooves. The man says the donkey is a rascal and would gallop out of his field if he wasn’t tied. I nod and drive away, crushed by shyness, shame and guilt about the tender-faced donkey.

  I go back to Clifden and call the RSPCA in Galway. They can get the donkey to a donkey sanctuary in Cork if I arrange for a yet to inspect him. Reluctantly, I call the local yet. He won’t do anything because he knows the owner too well, but suggests I try to buy the donkey for £10 (the going rate for abused donkeys?).

  I return to the cliff top, half-hoping the donkey will be gone or miraculously healed. But there he is, still hobbling. I knock on the door of the house. When the owner eventually answers, I offer to buy the donkey. Without a moment’s pause, the man says I can have him for £100!

  I baulk at letting this donkey-abuser profit from his cruelty. I baulk at bargaining him down. I baulk at spending £100! Oh, I just baulk and leave. Leave the poor donkey to his time-honoured fate.

  For all I know it is one big racket, a dark sideline of the tourist trade. The yet makes a quick phone call to the owner, telling him a sucker is on her way to buy his donkey. The RSPCA’s probably in on it too: as soon as one poor old donkey is shipped to Cork, another is put in its place to await a passing motorist’s compassion.

  Into the hotel bar to get a double whisky (weird, wind-blown, tear-stained woman seeking solace). Yet again I am confronted by the doctor who killed my parents, the man for whom I bow behind my menu, shuffle down corridors, hide in corners. I take the whisky up to my room, shunning the welcoming turf fires of all the world.

  Connemara’s radiating peninsulas and its islets broadcast in the ocean must have answered to the misanthropy of the sixth century, when every hermit wanted a desert to himself.

  I was lying on my bed with the faint sounds of the wind and sea coming through the window and the hotel plumbing loudly whining through the walls, when the phone rang. I thought it might be the vet again about the donkey.

  ‘Hello?’ I said.

  ‘Hello!’ came a sprightly male voice (English). ‘Remember me?’

  ‘Uh, no …’

  ‘We met today, in the hotel!’

  The only person I’d nodded to that day was a man with a little girl.

  ‘Don’t you recognize my voice?’

  (Had we even said ‘hello’? — I couldn’t remember.)

  ‘Well, I’m not sure …’

  ‘What are you wearing?’

  ‘Uh … I’m sorry but … I’ve to go now.’

  ‘You’re not angry, are you?’

  ‘Um, no, no, I just …’

  ‘Can I call you again some time? I like talking to you.’

  ‘Um, I have to go.’

  ‘I’ll call you later then.’

  And he hung up. A pervert. In the hotel. That nice man with the nice little daughter?! But what did it matter? What did any of it matter, I thought, as I climbed drink-sodden into my brown bath.

  The Doctor’s Wife

  Again I find him in the bar, my husband, smiling, smiling. And I leave him to it, leave the children too to fend for themselves. I retreat to our room to play my complicated version of patience. With each card I slap him, my husband. May God destroy his house. I hear him talking still. May he die so I can rest.

  He is Eden, the war criminal. A dog is better than him, the bastard, the donkey! May we have victory over him. Men! Their necks need to be broken. A woman should beat her husband daily. On his head, on his mouth so he can’t speak!

  God grant me victory over my husband. May I see him begging in the street. He never gives us anything. He used to give me money and butter, mangoes, peaches, watermelon. Now he doesn’t give us anything.

  Bees that lie on their backs will often grasp and cling to a corner of the card if it be presented to them. The edge of the card may then be struck sharply against the rim of the jar, with the result that the bee falls into the killing-jar.

  The doctor’s wife, mother-to-be, twirls round and round the swimming pool, weeping slightly. She has just caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror, looking balloon-like. She recognizes that she will never again have her husband’s love, nor that of any other man. She knows this clearly. No one could ever want to touch such a monstrosity.

  She weeps as she swims, as she eats, as she sleeps. (Her children try not to notice.)

  George

  He toils not, neither does he sting.

  Pretty cute place, Ireland. Nobody on the roads except sheep and unmarried sons, for whom life is a lot of wet walking. I like the little haystacks weighted down by white squares of cloth, with a stone at each corner. How to get them into my poem?

  I should be WRITING it. Instead I’m touring literary sites! Don’t know what’s gotten into me. Even sites BARELY literary. Anything to get me out of the hotel and away from my DESK, well, table, a table with a drawer full of hotel stationery and local info: lists of LITERARY SITES TO VISIT.

  Today I arranged a trip to an island, to see Beckett’s great-uncle’s granddaughter’s house. Yeah, well, whoever, she sounded kind of nice on the phone when we were arranging the visit. In fact, I’d decided it was quite possible we’d get MARRIED. It wasn’t love, I just want to live on an island.

  She said she’d meet me on the shore and row me over. I observed a lot of brown water lapping against pebbles as I waited for her — pretty CALM considering I was about to meet my future BRIDE. Finally caught sight of a little blue rowboat about halfway across the lake. But where was my love? Eating potato chips and watching TV, I guess. It was her HUSBAND in the boat, along with a pregnant dog.

  When I did eventually meet the great writer’s great-uncle’s great granddaughter, she was even greater than I’d dared hope. I liked her. FAR TOO MUCH. The two of them showed me around the place, which had been built by Beckett’s uncle to protect the family from the ‘sorrowful civil war’ as they movingly put it.

  Yep, I still wanted to live there. But without the husband. I wanted to warm my would-be wife in bed in that big impractical summer house on winter nights, spoon position. I wanted to row across that little lake to get us groceries from the Rossadilly store. I wanted to be there when the dog had her puppies!

  But then sanity returned (somewhat). I suddenly began to wonder what the hell I th
ought I was doing there, bothering Beckett’s kinfolk with my neurotic musings, yearning degenerately to hump Beckett’s uncle’s granddaughter while at the same time trying to think up intelligent Beckett questions. I was at a considerable disadvantage there, since the only biographical detail I could remember about Beckett was that James Joyce’s daughter was in love with him. Couples and their couplings PLAGUE me.

  Longed to go but felt I had to make the hubby’s two ROWBOAT trips worthwhile. Tried to entertain ’em! Thought they must need COMPANY, stuck out there on that little ISLAND all the time (why else had they opened it as a literary site?). But when they failed to offer me a drink, ran out of stuff to say about the Beckett clan and started jabbering about the bats in the attic, I knew it was time to go. Bats! I wanted PUPPIES.

  Connemara, wilderness of gabbro,

  Mica, mantle, schists and strata.

  Pinched green marble malleable moonscape.

  Lapping auburn water, licking

  Undersides of rowboats, pickling

  Ancient forests, peatbogs, poets.

  Tourists come to buy their baubles,

  Babbling bubbles of unmeant warmth.

  Land of IRE, ire and enmity,

  Open as an open wound.

  Eloïse

  January, 1881, I perceived a poor ant lying on her back and quite unable to move. The legs were in cramped attitudes, and the two antennae rolled up in spirals. She was, of course, altogether unable to feed herself. After this I kept my eve on her. Several times I tried uncovering the part of the nest where she was. The other ants soon carried her to the shaded part. On 4th March the ants were all out of the nest, probably for fresh air, and had collected together in a corner of the box; they had not, however, forgotten her, but had carried her with them … On 5th March she was still alive, but on the 15th, notwithstanding all their care, she was dead!

  At the present time I have two other ants perfectly crippled in a similar manner, and quite unable to move, which have lived in two different nests … the one for five the other for four months.

  How can I account for my peculiar behaviour? I was lonely, isolated, a hunk of hankering humanity away from its normal routine. I was longing, in a general sort of way, for a man. This was no mere inconsequential longing. This was the kind that wakes you at dawn, scavenges for scraps all day, that broods like a bored child in the back seat and makes all of life a shuddering dissatisfaction. It was a great gathering wave that seemed to rise up out of the ground and carry everything before it, the grass, the trees, the rooftops, in a plaintive cry of FUCK ME!

  But perhaps it was only the sound of birds wheeling across the wilderness of Connemara.

  The most advanced virgin queens are soon allowed to gnaw their way out of their cells.

  George

  This hotel is weird. So sleepy …They all need a good SHAKE-UP. I guess that’s what the fucking Murder Weekend’s for. Can’t wait: English tourists wallowing in death. (I plan to be OUT.)

  It should really, should undoubtedly, be the perfect place for me to work on my goddam poem. Nothing to disturb me except the sound of ancient plumbing, and the voice of the ghastly DOCTOR (it can be heard for miles). I have dutifully spent the day sequestered in my room. I figure if I get BORED enough, I might just write something.

  See me take her, turn her, learn her,

  Searching for that pretty little

  Doorway …

  In the end I get SO bored I go down to the beach and there, twiddling her feet in the gray pebbles like a sulky child (which she is), is VENETIA, my patroness. And she’s got NO HAIR. Jeez, she’s followed me.

  Largest pet litters:

  puppies —

  23

  kittens —

  19

  gerbils —

  14

  guinea pigs —

  12

  hamsters —

  26

  rabbits —

  24

  mice —

  34

  Venetia

  She stands before the window, the long white curtain billowing towards her legs. She bare. Even her head, which she’s shaved.

  She stands in a Connemara cottage feeling the breeze on her body. She wants to be all flesh. Hairless, thoughtless, nothing but flesh. Nothing. A trip to another land where she can be baseless, base. Where she can air her hairless flesh.

  Through the billowing curtain she feels a brief moment of intense sunshine, and hears the dim rattle of dead leaves.

  Flesh, all flesh. She walks around the cottage naked, maximizing the surface area of flesh, then returns to the bed where George is. He sleeps. Venetia has added his snores to the things that she loves on the bare face of the earth.

  Eloïse

  Birds that breed most early in these parts:

  Raven,

  Song-thrush,

  Blackbird,

  Rook,

  Woodlark,

  Ring-dove,

  ‘What colour are your knickers?’

  ‘Black.’

  ‘What else are you wearing?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m trying to picture you.’

  ‘Well, a skirt.’

  He was still a little too interested in my clothing. But I liked his voice. And I was touched by the occasional glimpse I got of him wandering round the hotel with his daughter. Surrendering stoically to the hotel telephone, I talked to him for hours! I had hopes of rehabilitating him.

  Upper parts black.

  Upper parts black and white.

  Upper parts grey.

  Upper parts brown.

  Upper parts green or greenish.

  Upper parts blue.

  Upper parts white.

  Upper parts pink or pinkish.

  Upper parts golden-yellow.

  Upper parts red.

  The telephone rings again. And again.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘… What are you wearing?’

  This is getting ridiculous. I implement Plan B.

  ‘What would you like me to be wearing?’ I say.

  ‘Can I come and see you?’

  ‘Only if you make me come.’

  ‘Uh! Well, I’d like to do that …’ says he.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Ex, what?’

  ‘How would you do it?’

  ‘Well, um … Shove my willy up you?’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Um, well, suck your, um … nipples?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘And uh, feel your bum.’

  ‘ … and then what?’

  A gentle discussion. One of many, late at night, after two or three whiskies, sharing fantasies and reminiscences.

  My pervert. When everyone in the world seems perverse, a pervert seems no worse.

  Underparts wholly black.

  Underparts not wholly black.

  Owen

  Owen stamps about in the stable yard. The ride is late getting back. Ellen, he imagines, is lying on the beach with a broken neck, encircled by useless onlookers, while the horses plod about in the background munching salty shrubs. In another five minutes, they’ll think of sending for help. Another fifteen minutes after that, someone will appear at the hotel with the awful news and he’ll have to act surprised. Whatever he does, though, people will think he’s callous, casual — what sensible parent would let his daughter, who’s only a beginner, go off on a horse with an untrained instructor? They canter across the beach, she told him after her first ride! In fact, she didn’t even know if it was cantering or galloping, only that she’d almost fallen, and wanted to do it again.

  Another worried parent has appeared, the pregnant woman. Owen smiles companionably at her, but actually hopes it’s her child that has broken its neck. He looks up at the brow of the hill behind the stables, trying to identify the most likely spot for the ponies to appear, if they do return. At that moment a scream is heard, and Owen turns to see Ellen on an out-of-control pony speeding bumpily across a different
field, closely followed by a horse carrying a whooping boy who seems to be trying to overtake. This is spurring Ellen’s pony on. Ellen is frightened and crying. Owen, nervous of horses and unsure of what to do, none the less moves forward, hoping he can catch hold of the bridle somehow as the pony clatters by. But as soon as the pony reaches the end of the field it slows down of its own accord and walks coolly into the stable yard, shaking its huge scary head. The pregnant woman is now yelling at her beastly boy for terrifying everybody. She has a strange accent and a hurt look in her eye. Owen warms to her. Poor woman. The kid is obnoxious! Now he’s complaining that he wanted to ride Ellen’s pony and his wouldn’t trot.

  Owen and Ellen hobble back to the hotel distraught. She says she couldn’t stop her pony from copying the boy’s, and the boy was determined to canter all the time. She had to hold on to the saddle for dear life. So, it is almost as Owen had feared.

  In the afternoon, Owen and Ellen go by boat to Inishbofin Island for the Inishbofin Arts Festival (they’ve already had a good look round the Connemara Vegetable Show). The boat’s tight schedule leaves them only an hour on Inishbofin: time enough to eat soup and watch one man in a tent prepare to put on a one-man play.

  Then it’s back to Cleggan on the helplessly heaving boat full of passengers licking ice creams, standing inside, out of the rain. Ellen stands outside at the helm, looking for dolphins. There are no dolphins, and the boat is bouncing alarmingly over the waves. Owen feels he must stand outside with Ellen, though he hates seeing the extreme proximity of the sea (being taller, he gets a much better view of this than she does).

  By the time they reach land, the sun is out again, the sudden squall over, and the water by the dock, Owen notes with grudging admiration, is turquoise. But it’s still too close.

  They photograph horses, donkeys, sheep, cows and cute haystacks all the way back to the hotel.

  The 3 Old Biddies

  As an adult you become your own guardian. You berate yourself for past mistakes and promise to do better. You devote yourself to your future self’s wants. You do its chores for it, tidy up so that your future self can find things later, avoid committing crimes which will land your future self in prison, pay bills so your future self will be adequately provided with heat and lighting, food and shelter. You try not to smoke so your future self won’t get cancer, and try to avoid hangovers. You curb all your enthusiasms so your future self won’t find it’s got too many hobbies and meetings and appointments to cope with. You even turn on the electric blanket an hour before bed so that your future self will be cosy. So much effort on behalf of someone who does not yet, may never, and definitely eventually won’t, exist!