Beautiful People: My Family and Other Glamorous Varmints (12 page)

Poo-pooing these warnings, D.C. discharged himself and staggered home. Heading directly to the toolshed, he set about removing the massive cast with a hacksaw. It was
thirsty work. Free of the cast, he hobbled back to the Wood-man’s Arms. Propping himself up at the bar, he regaled his cohorts with his adventure. The Guinness flowed. Everybody, Betty included, marveled at his unmedicated bravery.

Within his community, D.C., the handsome widower, was considered to be not only gutsy but eligible. Various local ladies had their eyes on him. Coiffed and perfumed, they would drop by to flirt and partake of tea. His favorite way to discourage this kind of behavior was to lie on the floor with the lights out. My sister and I enjoyed this charade. We had read Anne Frank’s newly published
Diary of a Young Girl.
We knew what to do.

If the widows caught us all in the front yard, D.C. would switch to Plan B. This entailed making tea and feeding the unwanted visitors ancient slices of bread from his chicken feed bin. My sister and I took great delight in watching this ritual.

“Davey, is this bread no’ a wee bit moldy?” his coquettish lady friends would ask as they stared anxiously at the small, furry, gray-green blotches.

“Notatall! Sure, it’s fresh the daaay!” he would reply, daring them, with his handsome dark brown eyes, not to partake.

These moments of hilarity were few and far between. Most of the time D.C. was a grunty and remote vacation host.

This is probably a good moment to reflect on the tour de force that was Betty Doonan née Gordon. Most of her year was spent toiling, mothering, cutting up blind Aunt Phyllis’s food, and contending with Narg and Ken, our schizophrenic live-in relatives. The only respite from this routine was our annual vacation, out of the frying pan and into Northern Ireland. While
we frolicked in the icy, oily waters of Belfast Lough, Betty cooked and scrubbed and attempted to alleviate the squalor of her eccentric and demanding parent. Well-coiffed, maquillaged, and uncomplaining, she confronted these familial challenges head-on.

My mum had long since reconciled herself to the fact that relatives were nothing but trouble. For Betty they were synonymous with dreadful goings-on, drudgery, and emotional turmoil. If she ever heard that a friend or colleague was expecting a visit from an in-law, there was always a sharp intake of breath followed by a sympathetic glance and the offering of a consoling cigarette. I inherited this trait. To this day when people announce the imminent arrival of grandparents or cousins, it’s hard for me to restrain myself from saying, “Oh, God, I’m really sorry. Let me know if there is anything I can do, and know that I’m there for you during this dark and horrible period.”

The role played by nicotine should not be underestimated. Betty’s coping skills were bolstered and sustained by a heavy and not unreasonable reliance on cigarettes. Betty’s complex life was never going to afford her long stretches of thigh-slapping fun. She took her releases and recreations in small, wry increments. These lasted about as long as it takes to smoke a cigarette. Woodbines were her preferred brand. Like Betty herself, Woodbines were short, strong, and tough. Once she was back on Irish soil, her Woodbine consumption quadrupled.

*  *  *

More often than not we arrived for our annual vacation to find D.C. going to or coming from a wake. Funerals loomed large on
D.C.’s calendar. He took them seriously. They were the only time he bothered to wear his false teeth. These occasions became increasingly frequent as he got older. “Guess who’s dead?” he would say upon returning home from a day at the pub, indicating that those dusty dentures were due for an outing.

After the initial guarded but warm hellos—there were no California hugs or Euro air kisses back then—old resentments would eventually float to the surface. D.C. had never quite forgiven Betty for leaving Northern Ireland and, worse still, marrying an Englishman.

Betty had barely stubbed out the first ciggie before D.C. began to assert himself. His favorite method of control involved blood and death. Strolling casually into the backyard, he would murder about three or four chickens in quick succession. The fowl in question ran around freely. He would wring their necks and shove them into an oil drum with the same nonchalance that other people straighten their ties or touch up their lipstick. He would then disappear to the pub. Betty was left to pluck, gut, truss, and cook them in the ancient, tiny, malfunctioning oven which raged in D.C.’s closetsize kitchen.

When he returned from the pub, he would kill another one.

“He’s murdering them faster than I can gut them!” lamented Betty with her hand up a chicken’s bum, à la glove puppet.

D.C.’s chickens were the focus of much of his daily life. He ate their eggs raw every morning, tossing the shells with chilling accuracy over his shoulder and directly into the fire. He
also reared pheasants and ducks and grew his own veggies. The only thing he seemed to buy from a store was bread. Everything else was grown or raised in his guano-filled urban backyard. He built wire enclosures for his birds with his bare hands and dragged home heavy feed bags in the pouring rain. Even in his seventies he remained tough and invincible. Normal men seemed unbelievably nelly when compared to D.C.

D.C. was the antinelly. He was the opposite of me. I found him unbelievably intimidating and kept my distance. We had nothing to talk about. His lack of teeth and his heavily accented, grunty speech kept communication to a minimum. I could never have shared with him my burgeoning love of fashion and decorative accessories. His Guinness-addled world-view did not encompass the Beautiful People. We existed in separate dimensions of time and space and beauty.

When I reached the age of ten I noticed a marked change. D.C. started to look at me differently. He began to size me up as if he was planning something. I felt uneasy. Maybe he was going to throttle me or take me to market.

One day he brought me and my sister, Shelagh, to visit a friend of his who kept ponies. We spent an afternoon cantering and trotting around his paddock, observed by D.C. and his cohort. They admired our form and complimented us on our skill. When I fell off, D.C. gathered me up and plonked me back in the saddle. Here at last were the glimmerings of the kind of rapport which all my friends seemed to have with their grandparents. My sister was definitely a better rider than I, but for some strange reason, D.C. was focusing his attention on me.

All was revealed when we got home.

“The wee lad would make a fine jockey, so he would!” announced D.C. to Betty, who as usual, had her hand up a chicken’s bum.

He was right about one thing. I was definitely wee.
3
And I wasn’t getting any taller. But those weren’t doting grandfatherly glints of commiseration in his eyes. They were dollar signs. Suddenly I felt the cold draft of exploitation blowing up my wee jodhpur leg.

(
Wee
remains an important word to this day. On a recent trip, I dragged a reluctant Terry, now a widower, to the Belfast branch of Marks & Spencer to replenish his socks and undies. It was a bitterly cold but sunny day. I was wearing a belted trench coat, a fur hat, and dark glasses. I was channeling Betty in both the bossiness of my behavior and the drama of my attire.

As I waited on line at the checkout, a large, red-faced Irish lady tried to push in front of me. “Let the wee lady go first!” said the checkout gal, indicating me. Terry said nothing. I did, however, notice a wry smile curling the corners of his lips.)

Having established that I was a “wee boy” with money-earning potential, D.C. lost no time in educating Betty about the most effective ways to stunt my growth.

“A little nip of gin in his milk will do the trick,” he said, causing everyone to guffaw with laughter as if he was joking, which of course he wasn’t.

With a twanging of springs, D.C. plonked himself down on his battered two-seater leather couch. Placing a massive paw on each armrest, he began to drum out a tattoo with his fingers. He stared into the middle distance. I could tell he was having a wildly premature fantasy about me. I was toying with the same fantasy.

I’m racing in the Grand National. I’m wearing a fetching ensemble of yellow and red satin. D.C. is cheering me on.

It’s a dramatic race. At the very last moment I surge into the lead and win by a hair.

I’m borne aloft by D.C.

It’s time to accept my trophy.

D.C. inserts his dentures in preparation to meet the queen. (The queen is already wearing hers.) Now he’s lifting me onto a box so that Her Majesty can present me with a large silver cup. I hand the trophy back to D.C. for safekeeping.

D.C. starts to snore. The fantasy comes to an abrupt halt.

*  *  *

I managed to dodge my grandfather’s various schemes, equestrian and otherwise. When I reached five feet, three inches, he gave up on the jockey scenario. His goals for me became more modest. He wanted to live long enough to see me reach the age when he could drag me to the pub and teach me to drink.

Maybe it was fortunate for us both that he did not live long enough to accompany me to a pub and watch me ordering a crème de menthe or a pink lady.

When he finally popped his clogs, we decamped to Northern Ireland to sort through his things. While Terry wheeled barrow loads of empty bottles back to the liquor store, Betty
sifted through a shoe box of papers and assessed the financial situation. An early proponent of the concept of “spending down,” D.C. had skillfully managed to die with a zero bank balance. In my mother’s family, most people had the decency to die with enough money in the bank to pay for their own interment. Gramps was more laissez-faire.

After a couple of Woodbines and an epiphany of lateral thinking, Betty painted her lips, picked up her handbag, threw on her leather trench, and caught the bus into town. Shielding her complex coiffure from the gusting Belfast Lough winds with the aid of her purse, she strode up the high street to the Woodman’s Arms, the pub into which her father had hemorrhaged his pension. Ensconcing herself in the “snug”—the anteroom designated for females while the men drank in the main saloon—she ordered a gin and tonic. When the proprietor came to pay his respects, Betty calmly went in for the kill. She pulled the undertaker’s bill out of her purse and hit him up for the money to bury her father. And she got it.

I hope she never paid it back, but knowing her, I’m sure she did.

I
have an auntie Marigold and an uncle Vivian.

She is a redhead. He is not a woman.

During the early part of the last century, it was not uncommon for male children to be named Vivian. Boys were also named Evelyn and Jocelyn, Lyndsey, or even Beverly. I can offer no explanation. It’s a weird Brit thing.

But Uncle Vivian is not weird. Despite the fact that he came from a family of certified lunatics, my dad’s brother is quite abnormally normal. He even belongs to a golf club. Vivian
is a traditionalist. Having spent a grueling childhood contending with Narg, his poor deranged mother—hauling her out of the gas oven was among his regular chores—Vivian worked hard to achieve a life of prosperity and stability.

Uncle Vivian and Auntie Marigold were always big on Christmas. Their philosophy was as follows: every child in the family, no matter how vile or bratty, was eligible for a holiday gift right up until the magical moment when he or she got married. Marriage signified the passing of the Xmas baton, when the responsibilities of gift giving mystically transferred themselves to the firm young shoulders of the newlyweds. Marriage confirmed one’s status as an adult and disqualified one, in a totally positive kind of way, from a place on Marigold’s gift list.

This system worked well, until my sister and I came along. Let me rephrase that. This system worked well until my lesbian sister and I came along.

Between us, Shelagh Doonan and I managed not only to deconstruct this system but also to place a lingering strain on the yuletide budgets of our well-meaning aunt and uncle. We threw a spanner in the works. We buggered up the system. We refused to play ball. Neither of us got married until we reached middle age, and then it was to people of our own gender.