Breakfast on Pluto (3 page)

‘Ah, God bless us, it’s yourself!’ remarked randy old Father Bernard on a grand soft day in February as he opened the door to reveal the young girl who bore a
startling resemblance to a very well-known film star standing on the front step of his residence. ‘It is indeed,’ replied the young girl. Who, on account of her coming to work for the
local parish priest whose dicky she knew would be only, given the slightest encouragement, too eager to start stirring and getting up to mischief, had gone out of her way to take precautions and
camouflage herself – with the result that she looked just like any old ordinary priest’s housekeeper you might see shuffling along the road with her shopping basket or ferrying a plate
of rashers and eggs across the floor to her employer. And most definitely
not
a perfume-sprayed vision called Mitzi Gaynor with a head of gorgeous bubble-cut curls that would make any
man’s privates go –
sprong!
– never mind that of a poor deprived clergyman!

In spite of her inexperience, the clergyman’s new employee found herself to be quite relaxed about the position she was about to take up, her situation rendered much less intimidating than
it might have been because of the fact that in those times, almost as if there was a church-employed quartermaster somewhere to whom one could apply for the standard uniform, one had no difficulty
whatsoever in acquiring a washed-out,
¹
pale blue housecoat with a ringpull zip, a pair of tan stockings the colour of tea kept in the cup for twenty years
or thereabouts and an old hairnet which when you squashed your hair under it made it look like irregular handfuls of rabbit’s droppings. All of which served the purpose for which it was
intended – of saying to the mickies of all those whose duty it was to bend the knee and wear black serge: ‘No mickies today! Off with you and say your prayers for no tiddler stands for
girls like these!’ Callous as it might now sound, inserting one’s wee man into these rasher-frying ladies – well, it simply wasn’t on! You couldn’t do it, dearies!
‘Go in!’ you’d cry to Peter but I ask you – could you do it?

Let us consider for a moment that melancholy sound which, at crucial moments in the world of animated cartoons is often to be heard: after so much labour and literally lakes of perspiration, all
the efforts of Tom the woebegone pussycat have all but come to naught – no,
have
in fact, and there he is, his entire body corrugated from head to toe, bludgeoned, his tattered soul in
disarray – only – despite the fact that he thinks nothing further of an adverse nature can possibly befall him – to find that a large anvil has appeared above him, making its way
towards him at great speed, all the better his poor bewildered head to flatten. What is that sound upon which we now attend, appropriate to this dicky downward-going moment so familiar to
housekeeper-retaining clerics all across the land? Why, three groaning notes upon a cello played –
waugh! waugh! waugh!
– as flump goes Mr Prawn the dicky-doodle man!

Or so perhaps was hoped! But what if this is not the case and inside those black pants a riot is about to start? No! It simply cannot be! Mickey is devious, mickey is naughty, but drab old
housecoats, shuffly slippers and stockings of cold tea must surely ensure he minds his manners and stays where he belongs.

Which is exactly what our hero thinks. And goes on thinking it right through his breakfast, the contents of which he is consuming with great gusto, pausing intermittently to magnanimously
observe: ‘God, but them’s great sausages altogether!’ and ‘I’d do jail for another slice of that fried bread!’, thinking to himself all the while just how lucky
he is to have found a replacement as good as this for Mrs McGlynn who had become indisposed at such short notice. ‘Ah, Mrs McGlynn,’ said Father Ben, ‘God love her! Slipped and
fell outside Pat McCrudden’s gate!’ as he advances upon a crispy rasher with his fork, smiling away contentedly to himself.

His new housekeeper is thrilled by all this of course! As indeed, why wouldn’t she be? After all – this extra money will be buying not only Perry Como’s latest record but also
perhaps – if Mrs McGlynn (‘God forgive me!’ she whispers softly.) stays out sick for long enough – the complete, long-playing soundtrack of
South Pacific
! You could
hardly believe that in an ordinary, unspectacular presbytery in a small village in Ireland that no one had ever heard of, that the sun could rise and singing angels practically fill the air when
someone thinks of such a little thing, but in that moment, that is almost what did happen: on her first morning in his kitchen, Father Bernard McIvor’s new housekeeper flapping her arms and
in her mind skipping along the sand with a straw hat on her head and Rosanno Brazzi calling after her: ‘Wait for me! Wait for me, you silly girl!’

What might have happened if she had not leaned, for no reason other than to fork some more rashers onto Father Bernard’s plate – thereby permitting her housecoat and skirt to ride up
just a little, not a lot, but just enough – must remain forever in the realm of conjecture. Was she herself aware of the fast-moving developments occasioned by this oversight on her part
– the metal suspender of a white girdle gleaming in the gritty sunlight – why, of course she was! Which was why she remarked: ‘Oops! My skirt and housecoat are riding up! Better
abort this task at once or we could have an explosive clergyman filling the air with pent-up sexual energy thanks to God knows how many years’ abstinence!’

O yes – but of course she said that! I mean – what else would you expect? Because, like Father Bernard, thwacking penises and salty sweatbeads running down your face were never off
her mind! Well, excuse me, Father, but don’t make me laugh – please don’t make me fucking laugh – you know? For that sort of thing she doesn’t think, actually. That
sort of thing she doesn’t say. She doesn’t say because she doesn’t care. She doesn’t fucking care, you see!

Rosanno say: ‘Darling?’ and kiss her full on the lips? Of course! Frank Sinatra in a nightclub tilt his hat and croon to her alone? Yes! And yes a million times! But trembling,
veined stalks so invasive, angry? I really do not think so, Father! I really do not fucking think so!

But to Father Stalk – as he shall thenceforth be known – such considerations were immensely academic, of course. As Mr Mickey in his fury now reminded him. Tick tick goes time bomb
in the parlour. ‘Oo!’ he cries – old Mick Micks – ‘would you look at that! Not often you see a foot of thigh so creamy in this place we call the presbytery, is it,
Father? It certainly is not! By golly! Is this a surprise or what!’

As indeed it was and could not be denied. But nothing – absolutely nothing – when compared to the one experienced by the merrily-humming help in the housecoat when, through the air,
out of the corner of her eye, she perceived what she took to be a flying man: (
Newsflash! Priest grows wings in latest miracle!
) and was about to giggle: ‘Gosh, Father! How did you do
that!’, when she found herself enveloped by her own skirts in the manner of a parachutist who has just effected one of the most unsuccessful jumps in the history of aviation. At first, she
really was one hundred per cent certain that it was a joke (albeit, it has to be admitted, one a little more daring and outre than one might expect from the store of Father Ben, who, as a rule,
contented himself with stories along the lines of ‘Peanuts at Confession’ – in which the confessor asks the penitent boy: ‘And did you throw peanuts in the river
too?’, only to receive the side-splittingly hilarious reply: ‘No, Father, I
am
Peanuts!’ (It was one of his favourite stories and he rarely missed an opportunity to tell it
when he and his colleagues were relaxing at conferences and so forth.) But – she thought it a joke nonetheless! Which made her go: ‘Oh, now, Father!’ and ‘Eek!’ and
‘Oops! That hurt!’ until all of a sudden she cried: ‘Ow! I’m being split in two!’, and there was so much squirty stuff all down her she thought that maybe Father Ben
was playing more games – squidgies with the Fairy Liquid washing-up bottle that she’d often seen the kiddies doing. It was only when he fell back across the room with a Hallowe’en
mask on him that she really became confused, thinking to herself: ‘But it’s not Hallowe’en!’ How long it was before she realized that it was in fact her employer’s
actual face she was looking at – and not a whey-coloured Egyptian mummy-type papier mâché affair – it is impossible to say but she eventually did, realizing too that the
Fairy Liquid – it wasn’t Fairy Liquid at all! And that thing – that glaring red thing with its malevolent eye – what was that?

You see, in those days, girls didn’t really have any experience of boys and their electric little tootling flutes! To be perfectly honest, I don’t think they even knew they had them.
To them, what was between a boy’s legs was the little snail-type fellow your brothers had. Not an insatiable, unreasonable trunk of a thing that reminded you of some illogical version of the
song that you heard regularly on the radio, except now going:

instead of the correct words. And who would obviously stop at nothing now until he had you destroyed with sticky stabs and practically broken you in two into the bargain! All
she could think of as she lay there on the table with the small moist map forming on the fabric of her housecoat was: ‘Rosanno wouldn’t do it!’ and ‘Neither would Vic
Damone!’ (Whom she also loved.)

All of which made her break down in tears – and is it any surprise! Why, it was as if into the spoon of a ballista she’d been placed and unto the outer reaches of space
propelled!

Are you aware, dearest Papa, that did from nothing spring me – but mysteriously has forgotten! – that a song telling of all this once was sung, echoing out across the birdcalling day
as beneath the skies once more we did entwine, a girl called Charlie Kane and me? ‘Go anywhere,’ we sang, Daddy, ‘go anywhere without leaving your chair/and let your thoughts run
free/ Living within all the dreams you can spin/ There is so much to see/ We’ll visit the stars and journey to Mars/ Finding our breakfast on Pluto!’

It’s a beautiful song, isn’t it, Father? You could be a dandelion seed floating out across with the world when you hear a song like that.

Do you think that was what she was as she laughed all the way out there on her own, Daddy? A dandelion seed in a happy childhood song?

No – you’re right, daddy – she wasn’t.

And all because of you! All because of naughty Papa who should never have left
his
chair to do his naughty wandering! Isn’t that so, Daddy? Don’t you think that’s true,
when you think about it –
Father
-of-the Year?

I know it’s not nice – or healthy, either, maybe! – wanting so badly to see Daddy’s face when he opened those elaborate letters of mine (Yes! There were
others! Quite a prolific author I turned out to be, Peeps!) but I just couldn’t help it. Whether or not he had words with Hairy I don’t know but after having furnished his postbox with
a series of blistering specials (‘Sex Mad Sky Pilot!’ ‘Fornicator’, ‘The Adventures Of Father Benny Rape!’, etc.) I decided it was time once and for all to
vacate Rat Trap Mansions.

Well – can you believe it! No sooner have I said, ‘I’m going,’ than Caroline and Whiskers are on top of me, pulling at my jacket and going: ‘You can’t! You
can’t!’, doing their damnedest to get me to reconsider, after spending years threatening to turf me out themselves! ‘Please, Paddy!’ was all you could hear out of Caroline,
‘What will you do – where will you go?’ and Hairy shouting: ‘Let him go! Let him go to hell! What do we care! We’re better off without him!’, and then changing
her mind and offering to be nicer to me – and even give me money! (Which of course I had been entitled to all along, considering the amount the government and, as it transpired, on the quiet,
old Father Stalk, had been giving her.) And was probably the only reason she wanted me to stay at all!

In the end, anyway, none of it made any difference in the wide world as off I went with my little bag, my coat thrown across my shoulders, strolling along the midge-ridden country roads on the
way to Scotsfield, the next nearest town, with my thumb stuck out, although not caring a damn whether or not a car stopped now or in ten days’ time! I was free! ‘Birds of the air
– as free as you!’ I chirped and burst into a song by Gilbert O’Sullivan. Why? Don’t ask me! Just as –
screech!
– I couldn’t believe it, a Merc
pulls up beside me and who is there as the door swings open but the one and only, ladies and gentlemen – His Eminence Mr Dummy Teat! My darling Married Politician Man!

What I didn’t know, of course, was that no sooner than I’d left the house, Whiskers had gone off down to the police station to get the guards out after me, who, if they had found me
and saw what I was at now, making eyes at good old Dummy in the front seat of his car, would have had more than plenty to say about it! Not that I cared what they had, for now my journey had begun
and I could tell by Dummy as he hungrily chewed his bottom lip that he, for one, about that would have no complaints to lodge!

The great thing about old Dummy was that with him you just didn’t know what to expect. All you could say with any degree of certainty was that at any hour of the day or night, that old
tootling stick he had in his trousers would always be ready for action. ‘Oh, man, dear, he’s at it again!’ he’d say, and you’d have to, as he said – ‘Put
him out of his misery!’ Yes, I will make no bones about it, post Leaving Certificate in the bomb-exploding year of 1971, I was more than content to be the regular travelling partner of my new
benefactor in the warm and toasty cosiness of his perfumed Merc. So clean in there! Which, I have to admit, was the first thing I really liked about Dums. Sweat? Stale pee? I really do not think
so! The very embodiment of hygiene and good manners! O but of course I understand that there were many who would impugn his good name – importing arms for the IRA and any amount of old
nonsense! – but, whether the truth or not, the fact is I don’t care and didn’t, for never once did I have to nag or nark. Never once in all my time with him as lover husband, call
him what you will, did I ever smell old yukky sweat or see some grime between two toes. Why, after Rat Trap Mansions, Stench Capital of the world, I must have died and gone to heaven, I thought
each day that I woke up! And all thanks to my darling Dums, this loving man of a thousand potions. Just how many brands of aftershave
did
he use? It must have run into two figures.