Mondo Desperado (24 page)

‘Mammy!’ cried Noreen as the two women embraced. Continuing, indeed, until they eventually fell over and landed by the side of the road, just narrowly missing a pile of old fruit
abandoned by a wheelie bin that would surely have destroyed their clothes.

‘Look at us!’ exclaimed Mrs Tiernan. ‘What’s anyone going to think of us, Noreen!’

‘Oh now Mammy!’ giggled her daughter as Pobs began to clap while Augusta cried excitedly: ‘Three cheers for the Tiernans! For no one deserves it more! Hip hip
hooray!’

*

On the day that Pobs and Noreen were wed, everyone attended and it turned out to be one of the nicest weddings the town had seen in many a long day. Fr Cyril (the new priest)
made a great speech. ‘Not too long,’ as everyone agreed, ‘and not too short.’ There was great fun too when the streamer-draped car drove through the streets of Barntrosna
with cans tied on and shaving foam jokes written all over the bonnet and the boot. ‘
Here is the weather forecast – warm and close now – a little son later – ha
ha!
’ read one of them – and did Pobs’s face go red when he saw that!

But that didn’t matter any more. For, as far as Pobs was concerned, it could go as red as it liked. It could flush away to beat the band, for now he once more possessed the woman he loved.
The woman who, for so long, had been lost to him. As he, indeed, had been lost to her.

And now as the Morris Minor, in its fluttering array of pink and blue, left the main street of the village Noreen Tiernan wondered how she could ever have done what she did. How could she have
left the man she had loved, his heart broken in who knew how many places? Left him there to pine for her in dreary, dismal solitude. All of a sudden, she felt dreadful. ‘You’re a
hallion, Noreen Tiernan!’ she chided herself silently behind the lace curtain of her veil. ‘A hallion and a haverel to go and do the like of that! How could you do it?’

But to those questions she had no answers. The only answer came in the form of an ethereal image that drifted almost imperceptibly past the frontiers of her consciousness. That of a
leather-clad, nose-ringed she-devil who –
even yet!
– persisted – from a penumbral abyss within her – with her seductive exhortations! Exhortations to ‘Leave
him! Leave the stupid fool! Noreen! Come back to Stef!’

‘No!’ shrieked Noreen suddenly, startling Pobs as he spun the wheel and cried: ‘Jesus Mary and Joseph, Noreen, don’t do that! You nearly gave me a heart attack
there!’

‘I’m sorry,’ she apologized softly and touched him gently on the freckled forearm. A moistness began to sparkle in his eyes as Noreen moved closer to him and rested her head on
his shoulder.

‘No!’ came the silent whisper to her mind. ‘I will not go back! To you or any of your sick, filthy habits! For that’s what you are – sick, Diggsy – sick!
Sick! You hear me?’

A detective or psychologist specializing in the field of human behaviour with particular regard to deviance might have noted that she referred to her former companion as ‘Diggsy’ in
this instance and not as ‘Stephanie Diggs’ or ‘Bitch!’ or ‘Tramp!’ or any of the other pejorative appellations she might have been expected to employ. And why
might this be? Because – and here is the awful truth! – despite her bitter protestations to the contrary, some clandestine part of Noreen Tiernan still longed for the life which she now
so openly disavowed!

An unquenchable yearning which would only become apparent when, late at night, in the throes of their lovemaking, the face of her husband would slowly, beguilingly transmogrify until it became
that of –
Stephanie Diggs!!!!!
, and once again to her ears would come the words which thrilled her so she could barely breathe!

‘Like that, do you, chicken? Like it, huh? Don’t worry, my little Irish colleen! For there’s plenty more where that came from! Take this! And this! Ha ha ha!’

*

Of course, it was never to be known in the town of Barntrosna that Noreen had been involved in torrid lesbian affairs, extortion rackets or razor gangs.

No, about the former activities of Noreen Tiernan there now was drawn a veil of deepest secrecy, and whenever questions were asked, innocently – regarding Noreen’s seemingly abrupt
abandonment of her burgeoning career – Noreen’s mother would always reply: ‘Ah sure, that London! It’s far too big, I’m telling you! Isn’t she as well off out of
it!’

Thus the fabric of small-town life remained satisfactorily ravelled, and the good people of Barntrosna permitted to continue with their quiet, untroubled lives. And, years later, when Noreen had
little children of her own, all running about playing marbles and football and chasing, no one would ever be able to say: ‘There’s Noreen’s children! Just let us pray they never
find the big stack of sado-masochistic lesby magazines under the bed, that’s all I can say!’

No – those words would never be able to pass their lips, for of magazines or anything else they would know nothing. All they would know of Noreen McCue was that every day at three
o’clock she did her shopping, bought her
Woman’s Own
in Tony’s newsagents, along with some sweets for the ‘little terrors!’, and then made her way home to cook
Pobs’s dinner. Dressed not in leather or chains, but in a lovely little floral pinafore and a sober pair of furry boots, exactly like her mother’s. As far as lesbian affairs or razor
gangs or extortion rackets were concerned, they might just as well never have existed. They were the stuff of cheap throwaway pulp novels, belonging in the dusty back rooms of sordid would-be
libraries in forgotten back streets, and just about as far from the McCue cottage as it was humanly possible to get.

It was sad, of course, when Mrs Tiernan died some weeks after the wedding, but, as Noreen remarked to Pobs: ‘At least she died happy, Pobs.’ Which indeed she did. Initially, of
course, it had been a great shock to her to discover the truth about Noreen but gradually she began to understand. ‘As long as you and Pobs do the decent thing and get married, that’s
all I care about,’ she had said, ‘and as far as Barntrosna is concerned, if we breathe not a word, nobody will be any the wiser!’

And so Mrs Tiernan went to her grave. As did Augustus Halpin, who very late one night fell down the well upon which he had been standing whilst in full Scarlett O’Hara flow, serenading
sheep with a variety of plaintive southern ejaculations. ‘How many times did poor old Mr Halpin stand up on that wall and not fall down it?’ Parps Henderson remarked in the Bridge on
the day that they buried him. ‘It’s a tragedy! A bloody tragedy! There’s no other word for it!’

And there were very few gathered in the afternoon gloom of the Bridge Bar who could disagree with that. Just continuing to sit there shaking their heads and staring at the dazzling array of
bottled drinks available behind the counter. ‘All the same,’ ventured Timmy Cronin after a long pause, ‘he was never the same since he went to London. I remarked a great change in
him ever since he came back from that place. And I don’t just mean the bonnets and dresses and that. I mean generally.’

‘Aye,’ agreed the Sketch O’Halloran, ‘London made him go quare.’

Which, had they but known it, proved equally true of their former pastor, the man for so long they had known as Fr Luke – now, of course, replaced by Fr Cyril – who was never again
seen in the town. Never seen because he was too busy saying to heroin and cocaine addicts, ‘You’ve got to trust me!’ and giving them bits of furniture and five-pound notes in
between falling to his knees and thanking God for giving him ‘a second chance’!

Not that it mattered – his being seen or not – for had he walked down the main street they would not have recognized him anyway, attired as he was now in a Peter Wyngarde-style cream
safari jacket, scallop-collared peach satin shirt and loose polka-dot cravat.

Of which there was no question in any case – his returning – for he knew there was no point. ‘They just wouldn’t understand me!’ he said to Sick Fellow (not his
real name), one of his favourite addicts, as he handed him the twenty-pound note he had promised to give him for methadone some days before.

Eustace De Vere-Bingham too had apparently vanished and all that anyone knew of him they gleaned from the muffled grunts and occasional cackles that emanated from the grim overgrown fastness
that was De Vere-Bingham Hall, mingling with the shrieks of semi-clad women being pursued through forests and desolate urban landscapes as cheap electronic music and the multicoloured lights from
the cathode-ray tube swirled relentlessly out into the night. To this day, it is not clear whether or not his cherry-red bubble car will ever be seen again about the streets of Barntrosna or the
cries of ‘There goes the effing Protestant!’ echo as in days of yore.

What is clear, however, is that all those who made that fateful journey from the little town of Barntrosna to the city that never sleeps were never, in one way or another, quite the same again.
Perhaps the quiet metamorphosis of the psyche which each separate individual had undergone in the course of those anxious, traumatic days is best represented by the high-pitched, nocturnal
utterances heard by Pobs McCue as he ran his large bucket-sized hands furiously up and down his wife’s back, quite reasonably expecting delirious affirmations of her innermost feelings for
him, and instead finding coming to his ears, the words: ‘Oh Diggsy! Oh Jesus! Diggsy darling! Give it to me, Steffy baby! Fark me bendy, you mental cah!’ a little tear finding its way
into his eye as he turned from the woman he loved so much and cried out: ‘Oh God! Oh God! Oh God please no!’ furiously pounding the pillow until he became exhausted, collapsing
hopelessly at last in a Brobdignagian mass of what can only be described as pulverizingly freckled despair.

Phildy Hackball has lived in Castleblayney, Newtownforbes, Threemile-house and Newbliss. In 1972, he left Longford and lived in Nobber, County Louth. During 1978–79, he
settled in Barntrosna, where he first began to write seriously. His work has been published in anthologies in Cavan, Monaghan and Mullingar, and in 1980, his first short story (‘Cavan Freaks
of 1966’ – not included here) was published by Buck-Cat, a radical press based in Carrickmacross.
Mondo Desperado
is his first book. His major interests are ‘the
pictures’, ‘having a few jars’ and ‘relaxing with friends’.

Mr Hackball currently lives in Barntrosna, where he is working on a novel (‘with plenty of shooting – and a shark!’), and divides his time between the Bridge Bar
and his home in Main Street.

P
ATRICK
M
C
C
ABE
was born in Clones, County Monaghan, Ireland, in 1955. He has published a children’s
story,
The Adventures of Shay Mouse
(1985), and five other adult novels:
Music on Clinton Street
(1986),
Carn
(1989),
The Butcher Boy
(1992), which was the winner of the
Irish Times
/Aer Lingus Literature Prize, was shortlisted for the 1992 Booker Prize and was a highly acclaimed film directed by Neil Jordan,
The Dead School
(1995) and
Breakfast on
Pluto
, which was shortlisted for the 1998 Booker Prize. He lives in Sligo with his wife and two daughters.

O
THER BOOKS BY
P
ATRICK
M
C
C
ABE

FICTION

Music on Clinton Street

Carn

The Butcher Boy

The Dead School

Breakfast on Pluto

PLAYS

Frank Pig Says Hello
(based on
The Butcher Boy
)

CHILDREN
’
S STORIES

The Adventures of Shay Mouse

* ‘There have been quite a few “mondo” films, I understand – including
Mondo Bizarro
,
Mondo Pazza
,
Mondo Mod
, etc. To this
august lexicon we can now add
Mondo Bollocks!
, surely a much more appropriate title for this “collection”!’

Bernard Henry,
Ardee Observer

* ‘As one of the original “Cavan Freaks of 1966”, I can say that Phildy has got it absolutely right – roving packs of big-hairdo teddygirls, distorto
surf-guitar rumbles, the lot! It took me right back to the days outside the Lido Grill, with the chicks in their white vinyl skirts, red-leather Beatle boots and Jackie O spex! Fabbo, Phildy! Like,
the most – ha ha!’

Davey ‘The Breeze’ McCoy

* ‘Thai Pop! Cantorock! Dope mules! Leopardskin-wearing Amazons! Human transplants gone horribly wrong! Not to be found here, I’m afraid! This book is about as
“mondo” as
The Sound of Music
! Hackball is a complete fraud!’

The Essential Guide To Forgotten Cinema

* ‘Smut! But then – I’m old fashioned, aren’t I? Just because I don’t squeal with delight every time a maniac prostitute in a latex swimsuit
decides to section some poor unfortunate derelict with a chainsaw!’

Vincent Macklin (Revd.)

* ‘What is the value of depicting human beings going about their business with freshly hacked buffalo parts on their heads? Exploitative in the extreme.’

Noel Carr,
Society

* ‘Would have preferred more
Taxi
Driver
-type stories. Or Tony Montana! “Do you want to fuck with me? Fuck you! I’ll get rid of you fucking
cockroaches!” Fantastic!

But nonetheless, it’s a very good book and I, for one, will definitely be buying
MONDO DESPERADO 2
.’

Donie Halligan, Newbliss