Breakfast on Pluto

by Patrick McCabe

  What I am sorry about is that I shook her behind the creamery that day and I know now that I did, I must have because that was why she started crying. I am deeply sorry that that had to happen. Not because it spoiled everything and started the whole commotion around the village but because after that, I got excited too and didn’t know what I was saying. I was in such a state by the end of it that I am sure my voice was so shrill she didn’t know what I was saying, so the whole purpose of it was defeated.

  ‘Tommy McNamee’s only taking advantage of you!’ I kept crying. ‘He’ll only use you and then leave you! Can’t you see that? Why can’t you, Martina! Why?’

  I was so depressed after that I can’t tell you, so bad that even Charlie could see I was worse than her, putting her arm around me and saying it would be all right but I knew it wouldn’t be all right, if it was, why were half the young girls of the village going around pushing buggies, with babies they never bothered to wash, never even lifted them out to cuddle once in a while, why because they didn’t want them!

  ‘And never did, Charlie, never wanted them in the first place!’ I said and started sniffling then, seeing it all as plain as day, the nun making her sign the papers, Martina hardly more than a child herself and the baby, with a tag on its ankle, being taken away and given to complete strangers, taken away from its village and its home (Home? Ha!) and never be seen again.

  It was so predictable that by the time I had the tissue Charlie gave me frittered away to shreds, there was nothing else I could do but hold her wrist so as it would sort of hold me down and say to her: ‘O Charlie! Charlie! Charlie Kane! The states I get myself into!’

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  ‘I’m In Love!’

  Which from the highest rooftops you could loudly cry for every word of it was true, except that where I’d been with tears and giddy walkings through the nights was as nothing to what was about to happen now! Every woman, young girl’s longing – that each morning she’ll awake to rolling tummy, blinking stars! Each time thinking: ‘Oh, but this is silly! It can’t be me! It really can’t be me!’ Only to find, with a swooning so delicious, that not only can it, may it, but is! And is! And is!

  And why I cried: ‘At last it’s happened! I’m in love! I’ve found my Home-Loving Man!’

  Oh, I know Terence says that I was floating far away and this was the time I should have left Tyreelin village again but he has no idea – he really cannot know what it was like that day it happened, the very first day I felt it in me, shimmering inside like sunlight! Most extraordinary of all is that so many times I’d seen him – strolling about in his denim jacket, loitering about the betting shop, flicking a match to the wind.

  But not until that night in Mulvey’s, when I felt it in my stomach, turning, tumbling, rolling around, had I ever dreamed it was meant to be. What encouraged me most was that I knew he noticed me – even though I was wearing only a simple brown suede skirt, black ribbed tights and a pink, lambswool cardigan with some flowers on the front. I had asked Charlie to come down with me but she was so far gone I couldn’t get a word out of her so I just said: ‘Oh, Charlie! Bother you then!’ and went off about my business.

  I was so excited after it happened that when I got home, I woke Charlie up and couldn’t stop my heart thumping as I cried: ‘It’s happened, Charlie! At last, it’s happened! It’s happened! I’m home! Home!’ as I climbed in beside her and hugged her and hugged her and hugged her and sang: ‘Up on the moon/ We’ll all be there soon/ Watching the earth down below/ We’ll visit the stars/ And journey to Mars/ Finding our breakfast on Pluto!’ and then crying ‘Charlie! I’m so happy!’

  As I lay there with the moon on the window and my fingers entwined with Charlie’s, I couldn’t stop thinking about him as he got up off his stool to go to the gent’s, his keys rattling on his belt as he scratched his big dark sideburns and tossed back his head to laugh at some joke that his drinking pal had just told him. ‘My Huggy Bear,’ I lay there repeating (that was his nickname – from Starsky and Hutch – because he was so big and tall!) to myself the whole night long.

  By the time morning came, I had my nails bitten down to the quick and no sooner was I out of bed than I was over at the wardrobe bundling out slips and dresses, already in a right state in case I’d have the wrong thing on if I met him!

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  If I Wasn’t There

  I had a row about all this with Terence because he kept saying that I should have realized there would be trouble, that people weren’t going to forget the Martina episode so quickly, which was true I suppose, but you see, when you’re in love you don’t think about these things and that’s what Terence will never understand! Because he’s never been in love! Hasn’t a clue what it’s like to wake up feeling like the lightest feather about to be blown and buffeted away by the most beautiful breeze imaginable! And upon which you will be borne for as long as the love you share with the person you have ever been closest to in your life is destined to last. Which, in my case, wasn’t very long, I’m afraid! Three days in fact! Three whole blooming days! I’m nearly sure I saw Terence smiling as I released that little detail to him! God, how embarrassed I am to admit it!

  What had happened, you see, was that after the first night I saw Brendan Cleeve (that was his real name) noticing me – I mean, I didn’t imagine it – I definitely saw him looking at my legs – well, I’m afraid nothing else happened. And, goodness knows, it wasn’t for the want of trying on my part – for I was in there every night after six o’clock. More than prepared to endure the semi-intoxicated, wearily predictable asides of the regulars (‘Look! There she is! Nice to see you to see you nice! Ooh! Shut that door!’) in the hope that he might turn up.

  Which he usually did – but not to say anything to me! As a matter of fact, if I’m honest about it, the only conclusion you could draw from his behaviour was that he was going out of his way to humiliate me. How many times I smoothed back my hair and smiled in his direction I don’t know. All I know is he looked through me as if I wasn’t there.

  I suppose I have to admit that, as Terence says, after all I had been through in England and all the silly things I’d done and been thinking about, I really must have been in more of a state than I thought I was (Can you imagine climbing up the highest ladder in the world and having the ladder taken away?) or I wouldn’t have done what I did, started sobbing on that third night I mean, not the other thing.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  The Other Thing

  The other thing – (burning the church? No! I was so happy I’d gone and completely forgotten all about that!) – was unforgivable and if I ever see Tina Kelleher again, I will apologize to her with all my heart, for it was a horrible thing to do, horrible, and only a bitch would do it and I have to admit that as I sat there in Mulvey’s, bleary-eyed with gin thinking: ‘He’s ignoring me again’, that that’s what I’d become, a bitch and there is no other honest way of describing it. It’s just that somehow I’d managed to work it all out so perfectly in my mind, with him and me together at last in the house I’d always dreamed of, our Chez Nous picture on the wall (‘this is our little home’) with its lovely twining flowers and everything spotless for him when he’d come home from work, putting his arm around you with a sort of definite-ness that said: ‘You belong here! Here and nowhere else!’ instead of brown glass marble eyes that bored right through you and said: ‘Who are you?’ No! Said: ‘Who or what are you?’

  Which I knew some of them were saying, was sure of it, ever since the Sheridan incident, for there were places – even the supermarket, believe it or not – where conversation would stop dead whenever you walked in. I’m afraid it just shows you how far away I was when only the night before it happened I’d been feeling all warm and cosy sitting there as I thought: ‘Well, at least that’s one thing Brendan Huggy Bear will never think.’

  And then it happened – those marble eyes they went right through me as if I was in the way of a photo or sign
he was trying to read on the wall. I know it doesn’t excuse what I did and if I hadn’t been so nervous after it and so upset, I don’t think, no, I’m sure I never would have done it. I would have drunk up and gone out into the fresh air to clear my head and that’s what I will say to Tina Kelleher if I ever see her again, by accident on the street or wherever.

  I knew she had been talking to him and I didn’t really mind that – I mean, a person’s allowed to talk to someone, for God’s sake! – and whether or not it was actually her moving her stool in alongside his that did it or touching his arm before their lips met, I couldn’t actually say. I have tried to remember exactly for Terence but all that really comes back is a sort of blurry picture of me looking down (from miles above!) on this girl – who is me! of course – leaving her seat by the wall and slowly moving across the bar floor, smiling with a funny look in her eye. It seems to take an age as everyone just goes on doing what they’re doing, watching telly, ordering drinks, arguing political points – and nobody really realizing what’s going on until someone shouts: ‘Jesus Christ! Tina! Your hair’s on fire!’ and after that, everyone shouting as they tried to dampen it with towels, and Brendan looking at me in a way, as I said to Terence, I shall never forget as long as there’s breath in my body.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  We Leave Tyreelin For Ever

  It was after that my dresses and things were stolen from the washing line. (I don’t blame Brendan – I think it might have been Smigs and Martina Sheridan’s brother – I saw them hanging around the bungalow earlier that day.) They were dumped in the garden a few days later, ripped up and destroyed with all sorts of obscenities scrawled on them in lipstick. But I didn’t mind that. I was so far gone, after I realized what I’d done to Tina, that somehow it didn’t really register with me at all. It was only when I found Squire that I broke down once and for all, for what they’d done to him was horrible. I knew for sure it was Smigs and Sheridan this time for the next day when I was coming down the street, they wolf-whistled and shouted: ‘Woof! Woof!’ after me.

  I had to concoct a story about him (Squire) running away and even went out looking for him with Charlie for I knew it would break her heart. I think she must have sobbed so much that night as there we lay in one another’s arms, she sobbed enough for a thousand deaths. If you were to pinpoint the moment of Charlie’s gradual recovery, I think it would have to be then – as if by now she’d suffered it all and there was no other way she could go.

  On the morning of the day we left, we went to visit Irwin’s grave – directly across from Pat McGrane and Eamon Faircroft’s – and after talking for a while about the nights in Cavan and how they’d been going to have Rob Strong and the Plattermen playing at their wedding, she described what it was like seeing his face in the morgue and what it had done to her. And that was the last time I ever heard her cry, that day in the graveyard in 1975 before we left Tyreelin for ever.

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  He’s Ours!

  Which is a long time ago now, of course, although as I’m sure you’ve gathered, things haven’t changed very much Chez Pussy, I’m afraid, still here moaning and groaning away about all these people leaving her – but with Terence, I honestly just could not believe it! I mean, I actually said to the nurse: ‘I’ve written some stuff I think Doctor Terence will find interesting, nurse,’ and what does she say – without batting an eyelid, I swear it’s true – ‘Oh, that doctor won’t be coming in any more!’ For a while – a minute or so – I just remember standing there, waiting for her to grin and go: ‘Ha ha – fooled you, Mr Braden! Here’s the doctor coming now!’

  But when I looked again she was gone and there was nothing, only the empty corridors and some cries drifting in from a cricket match being played somewhere at the back of the building. As you can imagine, I bawled my eyes out and was in such a state when I went home (they take me as an outpatient now) I was on the verge of burning everything I’d written for him and everything to do with him.

  Now that time has passed, however, I’m glad I didn’t, because I still do love him in a strange and special way. Just as I do anyone who takes me in his arms and says: ‘Pussy? You do know something, don’t you? You know that you and I are going to make our home in this world together, don’t you?’ Which I most certainly do – except that it never happens!

  It happened to Charlie, though, and, if you saw her now, I think she actually looks younger than she did then! Her skin is as fresh as a daisy and even though she has three kids she’s still as mad as ever. Not in that way, though – the bad way, I mean! No, ever since she met Doug – he was an art student in the Slade college the same time as her, she’s become her old self again and nothing gives me greater pleasure than to hear the bell going and the sound of all their voices outside.

  *

  I never did find Mammy, though, despite the fact that after leaving Tyreelin I had the place scoured looking for her. My escort work I gave up yonks ago, one night just breaking down in the arms of some poor unfortunate man, going: ‘Let go of me! You don’t love me! None of you love me!’ and the next day presenting the Kilburn War On Want shop with the entire contents of my delicious wardrobe! Except for my housecoat and headscarf, of course, which provide so much amusement around this home for tufty-nosed labourers. I was coming in from the shops the other day and ran into a few of them on the stairs. ‘Ah, there you are, Mrs Riley!’ one of them shouts as another whispered: ‘Wired to the fucking moon!’

  It was all I could do not to answer: ‘Sorry to disappoint you, boys! Wrong planet, I’m afraid!’ but then I thought – what’s the point, and just turned the key and came inside. Because the truth is that they really don’t bother me much, only when they’re drunk or bored and looking for something to do. Once or twice they even asked me to their parties! And definitely got me going again, there’s no point in denying it, as I sat there thinking of me swanning down the stairs, flapping my skirts and bursting into their flat, reeking of Chanel, and giving them a Dusty or Lulu performance their innocent little Sligo/Leitrim souls would not be likely to forget in a long time!

  But in the end I declined, for that’s all over now, let’s face it, and all I really want is to be left alone here, flicking through my magazines, looking yet again for Mitzi and that old bubble-cut of hers, maybe one day taking the time to write it down for Terence, what my fondest wish would be (he asked me to – even though he’ll never see it now) – to wake up in the hospital with my family all around me, exhausted after my ordeal maybe, but with a bloom like roses in my cheeks, as I stroke his soft and tender head, my little baby, watching them as they beam with pride, in their eye perhaps a tear or two – who cares! – hardly able to speak as they wipe it away and say: ‘He’s ours.’

  Endnote

  1. Not entirely unlike my own!

  Acknowledgements

  ‘We can work it out’. Words and music by J. Lennon and P. McCartney. © Copyright 1965. Northern Songs. Used by permission of Music Sales Ltd. All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured.

  ‘Breakfast on Pluto’. Words and music by Don Partridge and Alan Young. © Copyright 1969. Onward Music Ltd. 11 Uxbridge St, London W8 7TQ. Reproduced with kind permission.

  ‘Windmills of Your Mind’. Words and Music by L. Legrand and Alan & Marilyn Bergman. © Copyright 1968. EMI Catalogue Partnership/EMI Unart Catalog Inc. USA/Warner Bros. Reproduced by kind permission.

  ‘Dancin’ on a Saturday Night’. Words and Music by Barry Blue & Lynsey de Paul. © Copyright 1973. ATV Music. Used by permission of Music Sales Ltd. All rights reserved. International Copyright secured.

  ‘Shout!’ Words and Music by the Isley Bros. © Copyright 1959 Longitude Music Co. Used by permission of Windswept Pacific Music Ltd.

  ‘I Want To Paint’ by Adrian Henri, taken from The Mersey Sound. © Copyright 1967 Adrian Henri. Reproduced by kind permission.

  ‘Welcome Home’ by Peters and Lee. © Copyright 1969 Rive Droit Music Ltd. Reproduc
ed by kind permission.

  ‘Yours is No Disgrace’. Words and music by Yes. © Copyright 1971 Rondor Music (London) Ltd, Topographic Music Ltd. Rondor Music (London) Ltd, SW6 4TW. Reproduced by permission of International Music Publications Ltd.

  Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders but if any has been inadvertently overlooked, the author and publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity.

  Breakfast on Pluto

  Distressing and hilarious, satirical and bathetic, over the top and understated, Breakfast on Pluto conveys in the manner of Roy Lichtenstein matter that wouldn’t be out of place in the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch.

  George O’Brien, The Irish Times

  The tragi-comic timbre of Beckett laced with Alex the Droog.

  Paul Sayer, Literary Review

  McCabe manages to say more about Northern Ireland’s recent history then many historians have been able to.

  Antonia Logue, The Guardian

  McCabe, through Pussy/Patrick, is sharp as a recording angel on conspiracy and collusion.

  Hayden Murphy, Glasgow Herald

  Breakfast on Pluto is hilarious, outrageous, but disturbing too.

  Books Ireland

  Set against a kaleidoscope of colour and music, Patrick McCabe delivers a Molotov cocktail of gender-bending, random violence and mental mayhem . . . Irreverence pounds through McCabe’s veins. And with Pussy Braden, he has a perfect vehicle for this satire . . .