Poguemahone
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About this ebook
A swirling, psychedelic, bleakly funny fugue by the Booker-shortlisted author of The Butcher Boy and Breakfast on Pluto.
Una Fogarty, suffering from dementia in a seaside nursing home, would be all alone without her brother Dan, whose epic free-verse monologue tells their family story. Exile from Ireland and immigrant life in England. Their mother’s trials as a call girl. Young Una’s search for love in a seemingly haunted hippie squat, and the two-timing Scottish stoner poet she’ll never get over. Now she sits outside in the sun as her memories unspool from Dan’s mouth and his own role in the tale grows ever stranger— and more sinister.
A swirling, psychedelic, bleakly funny fugue, Patrick McCabe’s epic reinvention of the verse novel combines Modernist fragmentation and Beat spontaneity with Irish folklore, then douses it in whiskey and sets it on fire. Drinking song and punk libretto, ancient as myth and wholly original, Poguemahone is the devastating telling of one family’s history—and the forces, seen and unseen, that make their fate.
Patrick McCabe
Patrick McCabe was born in Clones, County Monaghan, Ireland in 1955. He is the author of the children's story The Adventures of Shay Mouse, and the novels Music on Clinton Street, Carn, The Butcher Boy (winner of the Irish Times/Aer Lingus Literature Prize and shortlisted for the 1992 Booker Prize), The Dead School , Breakfast on Pluto (shortlisted for the 1998 Booker Prize), Mondo Desperando, Emerald Germs of Ireland and Call Me The Breeze. He lives in Monaghan.
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Poguemahone - Patrick McCabe
Oh yes, that’s what they’ll tell you
that the women are worse than the
men by far
&
whether or not that’s true
I am sorry I have to say
that I do not know
but I’ll tell you this
yes, this one thing I’ll tell you
that it certainly is
when it comes to
our Una –
for this
longtime past
she has been
literally putting me
astray in the head,
with no matter where you go
it’s Dan
Dan
Dan
yes, Dan this
Dan that
& Dan the other
every hour of the blooming. . .
ah, she’s not the worst of them
all the same
not by a long shot
with some of the spakes
she comes out with
making you howl
with the laughter.
Get out of my way!
she crows
& away off with her then
swinging around the corner,
don’t talk to me about
The New Caledonia and
funky inner cosmonauts
she calls back, hesitating,
dismissing me with an impatient
wave: now don’t be annoying me
for I’m off on my travels
to get myself a cup of tea.
Yes, a sweet wee tasty cuppa
so let me be hearing no more
about it!
Oi – get over here, you!
she says the other day
yes, get you the frig on over,
do you hear?
Is it true that only just this morning
you were up in London?
yes it is, I says
what of it anyway
as she turns &
lets out this
outlandish yelp
making a swipe at a
crock of flowers,
causing a near riot in the lobby
as staff, from all angles,
come running
out of breath
are you trying to ruin
our reputation
one of them says,
with a bit of a nervous
laugh.
But for all our disagreements
I didn’t ever think that we’d
end up where we did,
that is to say
beyond in Limehouse
Basin
tossing canvas bags
over the parapet of a bridge
shivering there together
in the cold East London dawn,
with the pair of us
awestruck
petrified beneath the red sky
spanning Jerusalem,
watching leopards with
the wings of eagles
gliding into land
over a body of water
already on fire.
I mean, you wouldn’t, would
you?
But somehow that’s how
it always tends to be
with our Una
that’s how it always
seems to end up.
Anyhow, I was telling you
– after the two of us had
had yet another set-to,
in the exact same place,
the front hall where she’d chucked
the flowers,
I decided, once and for all,
that enough was enough
and so away I went, the very
second I got the chance,
off out the
automatic doors –
with nothing, only
a toothbrush &
a couple of shirts
flung inside a case,
down to the station
where I boarded the train
& headed on up to
London,
off once more in the direction of
good old ‘Killiburn’,
as Paddy Conway
the landlord of
The Bedford Arms
used to call it
in the old days.
& a right old trip
I had of it,
I have to say,
not having been anywhere
near the place
for God knows how long –
close on forty years, I’d say.
But all the same,
I’m glad that I did it
yes, went out of my way
to make the effort
because now that I’m back
all, at last, seems peaceful once more.
With a lovely sense of calm
miraculously having been
restored
(at least until this morning
when I heard her at it again).
I’ll give you
Creedence Clearwater Revival!
she bawls at Todd the American.
Yes, what would you know
about music or anything else, she says.
Because me, I bloody well knew
Ian Hunter, yes and all the
rest of Mott the Hoople!
Not giving the poor fellow
so much as a chance to
open his mouth.
Causing a right kerfuffle and no mistake.
Which was not,
to be honest,
all that surprising
because she always gets like
that
whenever Hollywood
Awards Season once again
comes around
announcing to anyone
who can be bothered their
backside to listen
that she thinks Jane Fonda
will scoop the gold for Klute
& that Saoirse Ronan
– the ‘poor child’ – she doesn’t
have so much as
a prayer
whether for Mary Queen of Scots,
Little Women
or any of her other
stupid films
which you have to laugh at
I mean, how could you not.
When you think of poor old Hanoi Jane
– Fonda, that is,
and her not having so much as
made a movie in years
never mind
running around
winning
Oscars
for
them.
With the next thing you know the Yankee, Todd, is ambling over –
dabbing away at the scratches she’s inflicted, giving out about Richard
Nixon and the whole bloody motherfucking no-good bunch!
Don’t talk to me about Tricky Dicky, he says, because I’m one hundred
per cent up to speed with just exactly what is going on there.
&, without so much as another word, he’s away off down the corridor
again, complaining and disputing as he swings and rotates his plump
chunky fists in the air.
But apart from all that, it’s a grand old spot,
with very few complaints, all told, these days.
Not now that Una’s back in business
with her amateur dramatic
shenanigans,
making sure she’s keeping the rest of us on our toes.
The Cliftonville Capers, she calls her most recent
foray,
swearing it’s going to be the best show ever.
Although she hasn’t, not for certain, entirely made up
her mind
Regarding the precise format
she intends it to take.
I’m actually at my wit’s end,
she admits, shredding a tissue as she
shifts from one end of the window seat
to the other.
Sometimes in the night, you can hear her getting up
& moving around
slippering along the tiles of the corridor
or just sometimes sitting there alone in the library,
sobbing fitfully.
All the young dudes, she says to herself,
all the old decrepit wretches, more like,
carrying the news here, there &
everywhere,
all
over
the
accursed, blasted place.
Only the other day she put a fish in the laundry.
Hanoi Jane, to be honest,
she isn’t all that bad,
but as far as movies and films go
I’ve always preferred the
old black-and-whites.
There’s always matinees,
any amount,
just as soon as you’ve
enjoyed your tasty yum-yums,
courtesy Cliftonville à la carte.
The maitre d’
is a dead ringer
for Margaret Rutherford – that
you maybe remember
from a lifetime of playing
all these bossy spinsters on bicycles
with her spaniel jowls
& bulky frame
not to mention her formidable
no-nonsense manner,
like she’s headmistress
of a girls’ public school.
Ah, good old Margaret,
she’s always somewhere
nosing around
to see what it is she might
be able to see.
They say that the women
are worse than the men
riteful, titeful titty folday.
I was just in the middle of humming
a couple of verses away to myself
when out of the blue arrives Una who
declares, smacking her fist: ‘This time, Dan,
I definitely have it!’
& stands there, poised,
waiting for me to answer
arms folded, beside the potted plant
but before I can manage to
so much as open my mouth
she exclaims:
‘The show I’ve decided
I’m going to put on
the name of it is:
Green For Danger!’
& starts picking at the
threads of her jumper
all breathless
elaborating as to how
whole streets in her mind
seem to have
disappeared –
yes, taken
away in seconds
completely
& utterly
obliterated
she says,
without so much as a
by-your-leave
with you just standing
there, minding your own business
when – whee! – you hear
this rocket
it’s a V-1
& then you hear nothing
until down it comes
& another wall
or gable-end tumbles
gone, as so many memories
before
reduced to rubble forever.
I’m glad she’s made the decision
all the same
although I wouldn’t thank you
for the likes of Trevor Howard
who was actually in the film
she was talking about
Green For Danger
with all his big talk about being
this fearless and courageous
night-time commando
going on all these missions
when all the time
he’s sitting at home
reading the Daily Express
& chomping hmmph hmmph
on his briar
for fuck’s sake
I mean, I ask you.
Una’s latest recruit
for her Cliftonville Capers
All-Star Repertory Troupe
is Butley Henderson
who must be over eighty
if he’s a day
& is under the impression
that he’s God’s gift to music.
Although I have to admit he’s a
dab hand on the cornet:
Miles Davis
Kind of Blue –
you name it.
Although you wouldn’t think it
to look at him
with those great big specs
and a big roundy bonce like
it’s been carved out of lard.
Still not over what my sister
got it into her head
to do to him only just
the other day
convinced it was him
who’d started this business
of calling her names
& whispering to everyone
that she’s the spit of Ho Chi Minh
with all the weight she’s
been losing since coming in here
toasted good & brown from sitting
in her wheelchair out among the roses.
Yes, here he comes, it’s Ho Chi Minh!
she swears she overheard him saying
except that I know
it was Todd Creedence & his buddies who
christened her that
but o boys, I swear,
I really did have to laugh
because Una, God love her
she really can be hilarious
whenever she gets something
into her head
grabbing the brass instrument as poor
old Butley, he just snoozes away
in a rattan chair on the verandah
with his paws on his paunch
as – PARP! – right into his ear
doesn’t she blast it
scaring the bejasus out of
the poor old divil
‘O, mother mercy!’ he squeals
like someone you’d hear
in the village
back in Ireland long ago.
‘Yes, Currabawn!’ she squeals
as she lifts it up
and blows it again
into his poor old other
ear this time
& then goes off with her two sides
splitting,
tossing the instrument away with disdain
as she shouts to all and sundry
Damn and blast yiz English no-good
Sassenachs
Una Fogarty she’ll fart in your face!
Before slumping across the sofa
in the foyer
& starting up this falsetto whistle
an impromptu rendition of an
old showband tune
one we used to dance to in the
Killiburn National long ago
about some poor old idiot who left
his village in Co. Galway
& went off to America
with his brown-paper parcel
underneath his arm
& before he knew it
had found himself conscripted
& shoved in the back of a Chinook,
heading straight for Saigon
and the battleground of South East Asia.
‘The Blazing Star of Athenry’
it was called,
as off he went to get himself
riddled.
&, as God is my judge,
never in my life have I seen my sister
laughing
not like that
with her two legs splayed as
the tears rolled down her face
thinking about the poor old conscript
getting himself dumped away out
there in Vietnam.
Poor wee Athenry! she squeals,
before slinging a cushion and
hitting another elderly resident
in the face.
‘Boo hoo!’ the woman bawls, wagging
her finger at the unrepentant Una,
who by now is turning cartwheels,
spry as any young thing
having lost four stone,
a veritable human twig
in fact
& just about as far as you might
possibly imagine
from what was once the humungous
‘Fudge’ Fogarty
in good old Killiburn, North London,
long ago.
Now a nut-brown stick
at the tender age of 70 yrs.
O, man alive,
but some of the crack
you can have in here!
Because that loodramawn Trump,
he was back on the television
again this morning.
‘Motherfucker!’ shouts Todd Creedence
shaking his fist at the screen
because he, really and truly,
absolutely loathes the
orange-headed goon
& was about to go over
and knock the power off
when, fortunately,
David Attenborough appeared
introducing a segment about this plucky
little iguana
outwitting all these snakes
in the desert
‘Motherfucking gooks!’ bawls Todd
as the wee lizard scuttles
and away with him then to the
relative safety of the higher ground.
But what’s this I was saying
yes, I was telling you
wasn’t I, about
The Bedford Arms
the pub up in Killiburn where
we all used to drink.
All the old gang
in the good times,
Elephants Quigley and Mike Ned
& Tom McGlone from the townland
of Moondice –
well, damn it anyhow
haven’t I gone and
forgotten the whole bloody thing again.
But look, don’t worry,
for it’ll come back
by & by,
like
a gopher
poking its snout
above a crater.
Le cúnamh Dé, as
Auntie Nano used to say.
Yes, with the help of God
what you’re thinking of
it’ll come back –
but not always,
with it arriving
sometimes
almost as if to taunt you
standing poised
there in front of you
before taking off
& haring away off down the
boreen
before you can even so much
as catch a grip of
it
when, out of nowhere,
you hear that familiar whistle
going whee
& then whee again
as you lift your head
with your mouth
hanging open
& realise that it’s already
too late,
for now that the whistling’s ceased
here it is
yes, it’s coming
coming
coming
coming
out of the sky
the noiseless destroyer
V
V
V
& there you are
like an ommadawn
standing in rags
trembling right there
in the middle
of the road.
With the only problem being
that there isn’t any road –
no, not any longer
nothing, only bomb-gap
with what had once
been a street of buildings
now completely vanished
& already tangled weeds
growing in and out
of the decimated roofs.
But, anyway,
where was I
yes, the pub up in London
The Bedford Arms
wasn’t I telling you
where, to my surprise,
on my recent journey
up Killiburn way
instead of Paddy Conway
who did I discover,
standing there behind
the counter
only this brand-new Nigerian barman
who you wouldn’t have
expected in a million years
to know the slightest little bit
about
clurichauns or
leprechauns
or anything to do
with the old tales and stories
of Currabawn,
or, for that matter, Ireland –
but, as I was soon to discover,
in fact, there was very little
that he didn’t know
about the subject
everything, indeed,
to do with them
making these precise little sketches
on a beermat with the sharpened point
of a pencil
as the pair of us
sat there
chatting away
this is what he looks
like, he said,
what would be
our equivalent in Nigeria.
There are those who would insist
Mr Exu is the devil, he told me,
but that is not true, because mostly
he is a person like us. You will
see, for example, that he does not have
horns.
Indeed, his principal symbol, his
one essential and necessary attribute
being the erect phallus
which is, of course, the sign of life
& constant vitality
that makes Exu the embodiment of
energy, of axe.
With him sliding the
drawing across the counter
as he gave me a smile
& I had to laugh
when I saw this
particular detail that he’d
pencilled in
namely a great big monstrosity of
an extended, anglewise prick
which looked so funny
set against the tall grinning
figure’s flaring swallowtail
coat.
‘Yes, Mr Exu!’ he laughed,
that’s what they call
him in the little village I come from
in Africa
in the place where I was born,
that devious mythical trickster,
poet of melancholy,
weird user of words
watching them tumble wild in his head
as they take his fancy,
one minute there smiling
without so much as a care
in the world
& then the next thing you know
the world framed in the living
pearl of his eye
where you see yourself standing
looking back out at yourself
for he brings them free as any
bird of the air
every single story as ever there was
slipping with ease across
the frontiers of language
whether blackbird
or robin
perhaps even creatures that cannot be named
or seen
he is the one
who comes for us when it’s time,
whether it be the thirties
or the forties
or the seventies
the one that in your culture
you tell me is called
the gruagach.
No, you genuinely
wouldn’t have expected
a twenty-four-year-old African barman
to know the first thing about
any of that
all that ancient old folklore stuff
the very same
as Auntie Nano used to love
to tell us all about
when we were small
the fairy Shee and
the magic of the hawthorn
yes, ghosts and all the rest of
that type of thing.
But that is exactly what he drew
the one and only Mr Exu.
& who,
with that smashing great ponytail
& high-polished white loafers,
really did cut the most handsome
& dashing figure all told,
especially with that neat little
trança
a twirly wee braid curling elegantly
backward
more commonly found, or so my
Nigerian friend informed me,
in the carved Yoruba images of Exu.
But anyhow, back to London
and the old times and the way
that, in modern days, things
would appear to have gone.
It’s difficult to credit the extent to which
‘Auld Killiburn’, as they used to call it,
how it has transformed over the years.
With very few of the old-stagers in evidence now
&
the few that are in a sorry-looking state
exhibiting no end of strokes & limps
& the Lord knows what.
But I’m still very glad I took the trouble
to make the trip.
Here in Cliftonville Chateau
I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know
there’s a rescue dog called Murphy
an Afghan with these two big panda eyes
& everyone is stone-mad cracked
about him,
with that huge pink lolling tongue
as he watches the telly
alongside Todd, who dotes on him.
Go, iguana! is all you can hear.
Auntie Nano used to have a madra too.
A dog, I mean.
With the very same black-rimmed eyes and
huge stilt-legs.
And who bit the arse off a fellow
in her club one night,
Mike Ned Hurley, as I recall.
Not that poor old Mike,
God rest him,
not that he merits much sympathy
in hindsight
for it was his own bloody fault
never sober a day in his life
&, even yet, I can see him,
standing at the top of the stairs
at the entrance to Nano’s club
& under his arm
a manhole cover
warning everyone about
what it was he was going to do
yes, once and for all,
show everyone
just what it was that ‘Mike Ned’ thought
yes, thought of so-called
‘great’ fucking Britain of 1974
ha ha, he whooped, look at it now
not quite so quick to tell us all what to do
the laughing stock of the world
so you are
with your oil crisis
& your three-day week
power shortages
& even the Queen of England
having to brush her teeth in the dark
well don’t worry Ma’am
for I’ll very quick fix that
for you, says Mike
aye, & for everyone else that needs
it down there.
Anyone dumb enough
to get in the way of a man from Mayo
are you listening, you scutbags
are youse attending to the words
of Mike Ned Hurley?
I’m a rambling man, a gambling man
All ten of youse I’ll batter
And if you must the rozzers call
To me it will not matter.
Yes, he would give it to them,
he vowed repeatedly
every single Oxbridge layabout
and no-good limey Sassenach
who made it their habit to
frequent the world-famous
premises of the one and only
Nano Fogarty.
Grr! he snarled again
elevating the weighty steel
discus good and high above his head
Watch out, you lot, they
heard him snarl,
for here it comes
to do some damage
to every last one of you
yes, every single
bully boy
psychopath
he shouted
every man-jack, swank
&
crank
each drunken reporter
communist
waster
or
big-mouth lout
Mike Ned is the man
he is the one to sort you
out
once and for all
yes
once and for fughing all
let there be no mistake about that,
Nano Fogarty, he snarls,
as
up goes the circular cast-iron
weapon of destruction
as he releases a final unmerciful howl
&
bump
bump
bump
down it goes
the heavy cast-iron plate
clunking
& clanging
for all it’s worth
before landing with a wallop
right in the middle of a
plate of steaming brown stew
belonging to a hod-carrier
I knew from the town of Attymass,
coincidentally in County Mayo too.
So that’s the sort of thing
you’d have to learn to expect
if you wanted to frequent Auntie Nano’s
famous club
in the heart of London City
directly underneath
the Piccadilly Line
No other comes close! blinked the neon sign
above the door.
With pretty much every specimen of
social outcast
poet, Trotskyist, neo-Trotskyist
to be found holding court
along with no end of union
leaders, anarchists, hippies, yippies,
glue-sniffers
&
a significant complement of out-of-work actors
& directors
not to mention
policemen
sacked and otherwise
security guards
neo-fascists
crypto-pinkos
rear admirals
queer admirals
neo-loyalist tub-thumpers
and every other kind of crony imaginable
sooner or later ending up in
Nano’s famous club
underneath the station
in the heart of
Piccadilly.
With pretty much anything likely to happen
when you got there
such as Brendan Behan threatening Harold
Pinter with a ‘cough-softening blue fucking
Jaysus of a walloping’ one night
&
then ending up with the pair of them singing
together onstage.
In its time, it was one of the most
sought-after late-night West End establishments
a subterranean wonderland located slap bang
in the heart of Piccadilly
from the outside more like a public toilet
than a than a demi-monde cavern
where every manner of temptation was
purportedly available.
But then in those days the spell of the
drinking club was still extremely powerful
& not just late or in the early hours either
but, even more so perhaps,
around midday & into the early afternoon
with the lights still turned down
&
everyone sipping their expensive
poison, gossiping away like there was no tomorrow,
it possessed the allure of profoundly embargoed
fruit.
So small wonder Brendan Behan would
drop by whenever he was in town,
on one occasion taking a piss
on top of the tropical fish
& Nano
swearing blind
that he’d never get back in.
No, I’m afraid
I’m afraid
not this time
not on this occasion,
a chairde,
my friends,
not a chance.
HE IS BARRED!
Then the next thing you’d go in
& the two of them would be
horsing glasses of the rawest
whiskey down their throats
knocking back lashings
of porter and hard uisquebaugh
like they reckoned there
was no tomorrow
& performing every ballad
&
poem
under the sun
including, as it happened,
one of my own particular favourites,
‘The Killiburn Brae’.
Which goes: they say that the
women are worse than the men
riteful-titeful-titty-folday!
& is all about
this woman
driving the devil completely demented
so much so
that he brings her back
on his shoulders all the way
from hell,
as Nano went, whoop!
and hoisted her heavy tweed
skirt way above her knees –
you ought
to have seen the faces
of the visitors,
those curious tourists
you would get in there,
on safari assessing the oddballs –
as the bowld Nano Fogarty
what did she do,
kicked off her slippers
as Brendan Behan gave a roar
before taking the proprietress
by the hand &,
gazing sympathetically
into her eyes,
began rotating her small hand
hypnotically, like a spinner turning
her wheel,
now near, now distant
then kicking his heels & full-throating
with brio:
Yes, there was an auld man down by Killiburn Brae
Riteful, titeful, titty folday
There was an auld man down by Killiburn Brae
Had a curse of a wife with him most of his days
With me foldoarol dol, titty fol ol
Foldol dol dolda dolder olday
The divil he says I have come for your wife
Riteful titeful titty folday
The divil he says I have come for your wife
For I hear she’s the curse and the bane of your life
With me foldoarol dol, titty fol ol
Foldol dol dolda dolder olday
O, man alive,
as they used to always say,
you never heard better
than the auld balladry that night
as Nano, God bless her
doesn’t she take a flying lep
and land right in front of
this astonished American.
They say that the women
are worse than the men,
you could hear her screech then,
even louder than Behan,
as the American
what does he go and do then
he vanishes underneath her voluminous
homespun tweeds
yes, swallowed by the tent
of her homespun, billowing sciorta
& disappears, God
help him
somewhere in
there among the folds of
Nano’s petticoats
as she sings away
&, up on the rostrum,
Behan The Laughing Boy sings
his heart out,
even worse than before.
Yee-hoo, he cheers,
give the woman
in
the
bed
more
porter!
Ah, now, but they were grand times surely
in good old London and Killiburn
long ago,
may God forgive me should I play you false.
It was ‘as good as a play’
you would often
hear them comment
in Nano’s Famous Club
& which I must concede
it most definitely was that
the night Joe Meek from Holloway
came wandering in
the dark and troubled
but extremely gifted record producer
with the long jaw and gleaming, lathered quiff
in his single-breasted charcoal suit and black tie
& who eventually, later on,
succeeded in shooting
first his landlady
& then himself
& who, on this particular night
had been discoursing at length
on the subject of the ‘little people’,
or ‘the grogueys’ as he called them
confiding to anyone
he could find who was
prepared to listen that
he knew, and always had
that, just by looking at Nano,
gazing into those eyes of emerald green
that she was
‘one of them’
yes, their own flesh and blood,
that groguey breed and kin.
You can believe Joe Meek,
he repeated, emphatically
before starting off again into lost
airmen and their ghosts
and the howls you could sometimes hear
after midnight in the cemetery
in the graveyard opposite his flat
on the Holloway Road
where he recorded the nocturnal
pleas of the souls of
seriously unquiet vampires
along with the plaintive appeals of
many lonely ‘grogueys’ adrift in the dawn
what, it hardly needs stating,
with chat the like of that
it came as absolutely no surprise at all
to any of the customers
when they opened the paper
and saw his chalk-pale face looking back at them
Joe Meek, as it turns out, not so meek
& who had turned the pistol on himself
as his landlady lay there dying at his feet.
But, like all the eccentrics
for whom our Nano’s had
provided a kind of home from home,
everyone agreed he’d be sorely missed
‘God bless you, Joe, me auld
segocia – may you rest in everlasting
peace!’
someone shouted as they
raised a glass
‘It’ll be all quiet in North London
now!’
‘To Seosamh O’Ceansa!’ everyone cheered,
‘God speed to you, Joe, for there’s not a one
in Nano’s as’d ever utter a cruel word against ya!’
With one man making the sign of the Cross
as a signal mark of respect for ‘Mr Meek’
& his unique
understanding of all
those other strange &
unearthly other worlds
far beyond this one that we know,
or think we do.
As peace once again
being seen to reign
in Nano’s,
or so it seemed –
because you were never
quite sure
no, never what you might call
one hundred per cent certain
with that unpredictable
giddygoat atmosphere
where you knew that anything
practically anything at all
it could happen at any moment
with the atmosphere
enhanced
by the dim electric’s shine
on the potted plants
and Nano’s own specially appointed
colour scheme of lurid ‘Irish’ green and gold.
Which had the effect of making you feel
right from the minute you sat down
that you were not unlike the unfortunate
fish that Behan had pissed on
swimming aimlessly
among the artificial reeds,
mindless in warm water.
There were also supposed to be spies
in & out
from time to time
although I couldn’t
vouch for that claim’s
authenticity either.
Kim Philby, they said
was one of them
one night, along with
Noël Coward.
Yes, suave as you like, apparently,
in the warm red glow of the
alcove, chatting away to Nano herself
& smoking through an elegant holder.
Ian Fleming will be dropping by
later on,
I remember her whispering behind her hand
that night.
Although, in fact, he didn’t –
at any rate, not while I was there.
But then, like all of us Fogarty
Auntie Nano
didn’t she have a reputation
for being something of an exaggerator,
you might say.
Yes, a dewy-eyed gilder of the lily,
perhaps.
A bit like myself, as my sister Una is
always saying whenever she wants to get
a dig in.
Yes, more self-indulgent raiméis
coming out of my brother’s mouth
a lot of old balderdash
courtesy of our man Dan.
Not that I care what she says
for, as I’m sure you’ll agree,
there’s no one more contrary
when it comes to it than our Una,
God love her.
So, whenever I see she intends
to be like that
I just walk away & go on with
my story
whether it happens to be
about life that we lived
on the building sites
long ago or the fun and games
we had in Nano’s.
Like the night, for example,
she introduced me to ‘the delightful
Peter Sarstedt’.
Where
do
you
go
to
my
lovely
was the song that he’d had some
success with at the time
I think it may actually
have reached number one.
O Peter! Nano moaned,
with those emerald-green
peepers twinkling
Peter my sweetheart,
my
very
own
lovely
boy
Peter
my asthoreen
grá
my own dashing
fear
óg
lán
de
draíocht
– why, goodness,
that dear boy,
he is absolutely dripping
with charm!
Peter Sarstedt was born in Delhi, India, in the year 1941,
where his parents were civil servants – part of the old
established Raj, the British administration.
Both parents were classical musicians.
He went to the boarding school in Kurseong in the Darjeeling
district of West Bengal.
I think it was his bushy black staple-shaped moustache that
Nano felt most attracted to – I mean, I have to admit, it was
really impressive.
Is maith an wonderboy, soitheach an-álainn e!
Yes, he really is quite a dish, she used to always say,
in his stylish black knitted polo.
Little did she ever dream that he’d end up featuring in
mine & Una’s story,
with those same plaintive triplets of a French
waltz rendered on an accordion,
swelling at the feet of a bleeding, crucified
Christ
beneath a copper sunset on a hill above Jerusalem.
As a leopard with the spread wings of an eagle came
gliding in to land
on the surface of a river
already on fire
but never mind about any of that for the moment
because we can talk all we like about that later on.
Anyway, didn’t I happen to be sitting at the bar this evening,
with Nano just having popped out for a moment, when I
look up and see who’s falling in the door – only curly-haired
Brendan Behan, the notorious rebel hellraising writer, with
his shirt unbuttoned and the eyes rolling in his head, tripping
over his unlaced, mud-spattered shoes.
With it not being
long before he threatened to
lay out the whole ‘fughing’ band
of us, getting a hold of the jazzman Johnny
Dankworth
who happened to be laying out
cables on the rostrum
& swinging him back & forth
by the collar & announcing that
although he didn’t come to London so
much anymore
because those ‘shagging fughers’, the rozzers,
were after him,
that before he left, he was going
to give every ‘shagging tom-tit bastard in
London’ a hiding
they weren’t very likely to forget in a hurry
before stumbling & falling on top
of the cymbals as Mr Dankworth,
one of the city’s best-known celebrities,
shook his head in exasperation
before giving a wry grin and carrying on
rehearsing with his group
picking up where they’d left off
with Behan – miraculously, in key! – snoring
his heart out like a baby
somewhere away there at the