Breakfast on Pluto

by Patrick McCabe

  Which of course attracted no end of attention to her, as if she was taking pleasure in the poor man’s misfortune, still doing it when they were dragging her out and calling her ‘a facking cow!’ and ‘Irish bitch!’ and God knows what else because they were, understandably, furious!

  Even more so when in the hospital they discovered her little secret, Puss of course not doing an absolute thing to explain the situation, not even bothering to raise a blackened (well, actually, it wasn’t – that bit is fanciful – as Terence duly spotted!) finger and say: ‘No! You don’t quite get it! You see, what I am is an ordinary transvestite prostitute, not the slightest bit interested in politics at all!’ Far too worried about her lovely ice-cream pink mohair sweater and gorgeous black pleated mini-skirt to be even bothered in fact. Which was a very serious mistake indeed, as it turned out, for after two or three conversations with her, nothing would convince them that the baby-faced male bomber they now had firmly in their grasp was anything other than a wicked little fucker who would stop at nothing in his determination to mutilate and maim, even going so far as to disguise himself as a tart, a piece of information which they had no hesitation in giving to the papers who by now of course were screaming to high heaven for a conviction.

  To this day I regret that I didn’t keep the Daily Mirror and the Sun, for I didn’t look at all bad in either! Even scorched and sky-high giddy! (The policemen had to tell me to shut up when they were taking the photo!)

  They let me hold on to a copy and all that second night I couldn’t resist taking it out and looking at it, spluttering into my hands every time I’d see the bold black type: ‘Sweet Smile of a Killer!’, which was hilarious, it really was, particularly with the glazy look I had in my eyes and my clothes ripped to shreds. Especially as I say, my Christian Diors! Which they had arrows pointing to so you could see my hairy legs (I’m afraid I hadn’t bothered to shave them that night!) ‘O there’s no doubt about it!’ I’d say, whenever they brought me in my meals. ‘It really is hilarious!’

  But, as I said to Terence, not quite so hilarious when Detective Inspector Routledge and his good pal PC Wallis started shoving me around the shop! All I can say is, if you weren’t whistling Dixie backwards on the far side of Pluto by the time they were finished with you, dearies, then you were made of strong stuff and no mistake – which, sorry to say, Miss Pussy wasn’t!

  Why, she even stopped being a cigarette paper, I think, and became nothing so much as little dusty fragments blowing every which way right out there across the vast unending firmament!

  Which probably explained why for no reason she would laugh in what were all the wrong places – because she simply didn’t know! After all, it must be accepted that it is quite difficult to pinpoint places back on earth when you are somewhere in the region of 2.5 billion miles from it. Which Puss, and more than once, in fact, did actually state. ‘I’m sorry!’ she said with her giggly laugh that was really driving them quite wild now, ‘I can’t see you all down there, I’m afraid! Where are you?’

  ‘Don’t try any of your fucking blarney on us, Paddy!’ PC Wallis would say then, with his face right into hers – and his eyes quite mad! ‘We know you planted that bomb!’

  To which Puss, chuckle-heaving did reply: ‘But of course I did, my darling! Of course I did – and have planted hundreds!’

  As Wallis to his full height now rose up, puffed out with pride to say: ‘I told you so!’

  Whereupon Puss from the chair she fell and foetus-crouched and squealed!

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  ‘It’s Bombing Night and I Haven’t Got a Thing to Wear’

  It is a quiet Thursday evening in the London suburb of Hammersmith and the IRA active service unit was getting ready for another night on the town. All week they had been busy and been so successful were now considering returning to the branch of Fortnum and Mason which they had reduced to rubble only days before. But, after much discussion, this was decided against and instead everyone plumped for a salubrious West End restaurant where stockbrokers and members of parliament were known to dine. As soon as the decision had been made, everyone set to work, applying themselves to the tasks which by now were second nature. First there was gelignite to be unwrapped – with special care of course – after all, we didn’t want anyone to be getting nitroglycerine sickness (or ‘NG Head’ as the lads called it), the hands to be clipped off pocket watches and the one hundred and one different things that you had to do when you were on active service. Paddy Pussy, of course, being the undisputed leader of the unit, was well-occupied too, slipping into one of his many luxurious evening gowns – this particular one bias-cut, in pink satin crêpe – and posing literally for hours in front of the mirror, trying to establish once and for all just how good he looked on this momentous occasion, the first time he had actually bombed a restaurant in the city of London. Up until now, it had mostly been assorted public buildings, and tube stations of course.

  ‘Oh, figs!’ she exclaimed, casting her fifteenth and final gown to the floor. ‘Let someone else do it tonight! I can’t find a thing to wear!’

  ‘No! No, please!’ the other members of the unit pleaded with their adored leader. ‘We beg you to do it, Puss! After all, you are the most feared terrorist in London!’

  ‘Oh, don’t I know it, sweetie!’ cried Pussy, as she flapped her hands. ‘Don’t I just know it, all you flattering, sweety honey pies!’

  An Out-of-Body Experience Perhaps?

  Terence said to me: ‘Did you have an out-of-body experience when you were incarcerated in that cell, Patrick, do you think, for it certainly seems as if you weren’t there much!’

  It was just his sense of humour coming out when he said that but I know what he meant! As I’m sure poor old Wallis and Routledge did when they’d look through the Judas Hole and there I’d be, tittering and laughing to myself, all these thoughts along with me out in space, as I considered everything that had happened up to now and how I was going to make everyone sorry. ‘For what?’ says Routledge. ‘Oh, don’t worry!’ I says, and spluttered laughing all over again! ‘Fuck!’ says Routledge, kicking the table. ‘Fucking fucking fuck!’

  Chapter Forty

  A Lot of People Losing It!

  Detective Inspector Peter Routledge of Scotland Yard CID was at his wit’s end, pacing the floor of the dayroom relentlessly as he cracked his knuckles and smoked endless cigarettes. For four days now he had been holding his suspect – the maximum of course was seven days – and it had already got to the stage where he could get nothing out of him but complete and utter nonsensical gibberish. Why would he just not talk? Why could he not just admit he had dressed up as a woman in an ingenious scheme to disguise himself – for they would stop at nothing, these mad, fanatical bombers – and his plan had gone horribly wrong! What was the matter with these people – that this ‘cause’ of theirs could inspire them to go out and commit these crimes against humanity – leaving young women without legs, human beings scarred for ever both physically and psychologically. Who could blame him for ‘losing it’ as his colleague had termed it, when he had seen and heard the laughter of that lunatic bastard in the cell when confronted with the photographs of those he had disfigured and destroyed – all because of politics!

  ‘Politics!’ snapped the inspector. ‘I’ll facking give ’im politics!’, and was about to return to the cell to knock some more sense into his suspect, actually having to be physically restrained by Wallis who cried:

  ‘For God’s sake, Peter! Get a grip of yourself, man! If you lose it again—!’

  ‘I’m not losing it! I’m not going to sit there watching that little cant making fun of us – I’ll facking kill ’im!’

  What was at the back of the inspector’s mind, of course, gnawing away at him like a cancer, was the nagging suspicion that he might have apprehended the wrong person. What if the callow, fair-skinned youth (David Cassidy – we love you!) was, in fact, as he insisted, nothing more than a drifting transvestite pros
titute from the backwoods of Ireland, in search of nothing more than a good time and a reasonable living on the streets of London? A cold sweat broke out on his skin as he shuddered, considering for the tiniest fraction of a second the possibility that had been advanced by his colleague, that the youth, far from being someone possessing the personality of steel which enabled him to disregard everything they said with what appeared to be cheerful disdain, was quite the opposite, as indeed might be the nature of his laughter. Which really ought to have suggested to him, in some form or another, the thought: ‘I don’t think I’m the only one losing it around here, constable! To tell you the truth, I think there are a lot of people!’

  But didn’t, I’m afraid! The silly man just kept on shouting more and more!

  Chapter Forty-One

  Hello, Mrs Braden!

  And who was it within my darkened cellbox upon whom mine eyes did gladly fall as there I sat sky-high a-twiddle, ringed around by stars and planets? Why, the one and only Eily Bergin of course, clear as day behind that shining light that now surrounded her, making her way to a certain house at the back end of Tyreelin to utter at last those famous words: ‘Hello, Mrs Braden! I’m pleased to meet you! I want my son. May I have him, please?’

  And what would old Hairy have to say to that? Disgruntledly plucking me from the snotnosed posse and, turning her arse to the wind, declare: ‘Here – take him! For all the good he’s ever been round here!’

  Well, what fun we would have then, the one I’d dreamt about those thousand nights and one in the choking den called Rat Trap Mansions. ‘Mammy!’ I would say to her as down the street in sunshine we two made our way. ‘Do you think I’m the way I am because Daddy’s work it makes him wear those dresses?’

  Which would make her laugh and say: ‘Of course not, silly! You simply wear them because that’s just how you are!’ And what would I say then? ‘How’s that for a mammy!’ and rasp at all the snot-nosed urchins who now did line the road seething with unbridled jealousy. Mumbling to their tattered mothers: ‘His mum’s a lady!’

  Absolutely true, of course! Why, for all the world she’d look like Sophia Loren! Chewing the stem of her Polaroids!

  And boy what fun there truly now would be! Together out across the stars, all the time in the universe ours, making up for all we’d lost. And going where we’d want to!

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Vengeance Shall Be Mine, Says Puss!

  To a desert island even, right there in the cell, one that now belonged to us and forever would be ours! Unseen by Wallis, Routledge, of course! Who nothing spied but a raggedy-edged old Pussy rolling around the floor – when she wasn’t picking plaster from the wall and emitting moans of exultation truly inexplicable! On one occasion even calling: ‘Mammy!’

  ‘Fuck this!’ muttered Detective Inspector Routledge to himself as he shoved the receiver into its cradle. ‘I need a holiday, away from all this fucking insanity!’

  Which makes one wonder what he’d have thought if he’d seen where Pussy and Mumsy had landed now! Prostrate beneath a bending palm, on an infinite stretch of powder sand. ‘O Mammy!’ said Puss as he hugged her arm and she ran her fingers through his hair. Far away in the distance, a tiny porpoise rose and came down curving in the blue. Close by, the lush vegetation made a hushing sound that was all its own. Colour-splashed across the trees, the parakeets began an unholy racket.

  ‘They’re worse than the Tyreelin women,’ Eily said, and Pussy laughed. Then she looked at him and said: ‘I love you, Pussy.’

  She looked adorable in her mango-and-banana-motif swimsuit. ‘An awful lot better than me,’ thought Puss as he considered his own plain, unpattemed affair, the only exciting feature of which was its delicate spaghetti straps.

  ‘Pussy,’ she said then, ‘wasn’t he really an awful person to do what he did?’

  ‘Who – Father Bernard?’ he said, and she nodded.

  ‘Yes. He was, Mammy,’ he replied and felt his cheeks go hot – as hot as the sun that was rising over Bali Ha’ai.

  ‘But it’s a long time ago,’ she said as she looked into his eyes. ‘And we’ve got to forget. Somehow we’ve got to forget and forgive.’

  It was the kindness in those eyes that made him weep then, Pussy. And the knowledge that no matter how he tried, he never would be able.

  ‘I can’t, Mammy!’ he cried, and got into quite a state. ‘I can’t, you see! I’ve tried and tried!’

  *

  When Routledge and Wallis came rushing into the cell, they hadn’t the faintest idea of course that there was some kind of debate going on on a desert island! All they saw was a teenage bombing suspect bouncing himself off the walls and about to do some serious damage, not to mention repeatedly screaming: ‘I’ll kill him! I’ll kill him! I’ll burn his church and him along with it! They’ll pay, you’ll see! All of them!’ before slipping to the floor and whimpering for a while. If he’d thus remained, they would have been happy, for sedatives meant they lost a day, perhaps two or more, but which the doctor said were absolutely necessary – as my condition was quite advanced.

  Routledge thought that perhaps it was guilt (all the people I’d killed!) and as the town of Tyreelin and my dearest daddy emerged through the fog that enfolded me now, in my bearhugged sleep I called out to him: ‘No, Routledge! Anger – anger, don’t you see! But listen! For vengeance yet shall be mine!’ and watched it all now as it passed before me.

  The way all along it ought to have been – put at last to rights by Patrick Pussy, the wrong-to-right avenger!

  All the way in her mind from England coming home, a town to take apart! And once and for all to take it away, as though it had never been, the smell and stench that down the generations had a tainted valley filled!

  Chapter Forty-Three

  The Lurex Avenger

  And what fun it would surely be! A lace curtain twitching at a cottage window as a hunted eye comes peeping out and Mrs Whiskers draws back and points to something on the mountain, a silhouette that points its finger and to the breaking light of early dawn does now in husky tones declare: ‘To the town of her birth she now returns, to visit every hill and dale, there her mark to leave, not one eye its sight which does retain to say: “I did not see her!” for such will not be possible whilst amongst you now she walks, she who thenceforth shall be called – the Lurex Avenger! She who shall be named Stench-Banisher, Perfume-Bringer, Flower-Scatterer, Ender of the Darkness, she who shall wrench this place and people from the shadows into light!’

  Chapter Forty-Four

  The Stench That No One Knows Is There

  The Nolan family of No. 39, The Square, Tyreelin, are at the table having tea and not watching telly at all. ‘It’s silly,’ they say, ‘this Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em.’ As young Noel says: ‘All Frank Spencer does is stupid things. It’s the same every week. Who wants to watch that?’ ‘Yes,’ agrees Samantha. ‘It’s babyish.’ Then all set to enjoying their tea. Mum is pouring some tea when she lifts the pot and says: ‘What’s that?’

  ‘What’s what?’ says Dad as his nostrils sniff and twitch and he begins to understand.

  ‘Ugh!’ says Mum. ‘But where is it coming from?’

  It’s Chanel No. 19, of course, which I, the Avenger, do absolutely adore! But they do not know from whence it emanates! If Mum didn’t know better, she’d say to the kids: ‘Have you been meddling around in my bedroom upstairs? Stealing my Chanel No. 19?’ But she didn’t, of course – mainly because she didn’t possess any. Wouldn’t be caught dead wearing it, in fact! ‘O God no!’ she often said. ‘In fact I rarely wear perfume of any kind!’

  Which is a lot more than can be said for Spirit-Pussy, Puss Avenger, as she floats by in the night with great big trails of whiff stringing out behind her like so many silk-blown scarves. It only takes an instant before one’s shadow on the blinds is gone and Mummy is saying: ‘Hmm. It appears to be gone now. Perhaps we all imagined it!’

  ‘Yes – perhaps we did,’ says Dad, althou
gh he really doesn’t think so at all – he just wants to settle the kids again. As off I go past VG foodstore, petrol pumps and Mulvey’s Bar on my travels, having overdone it a little perhaps, but, after all, it is quite a stench that hovers over the village – so long a part of it that no one even knows it’s there!