The Holy City (10 page)

I was chewing my nail in the White Room one day — thinking about Dolores, actually, as it happened — when, completely out of nowhere, this mad thumping starts — nearly putting the heart crossways in me, to tell the truth.

I flung myself backwards.

— Go to hell, do you hear?

Receiving no reply, then screeching in falsetto:

— I'm serious, friend!

Before I remembered that I had been informed the day before that I was actually scheduled to vacate my spookily blanched accommodations. To be released under certain conditions. I would be allowed out now — but only daily, and not for more than an hour each time.

I had become so accustomed to my new home, I soon realised, as we strode along the corridor towards the recreation area, that I was afraid that I might actually be rendered unhappy by ever having bothered to vacate it at all. When who should I see, only Mike Corcoran standing grinning there, waiting for me in the doorway. Puffing away with a roll-up between his fingers.

— Put that fucking thing out! says the orderly. Don't you know you're not supposed to be smoking in here!

But kind of affectionately for it's always been hard to dislike old Mike Corcoran.

I had forgotten, in fact, just how fond I actually was of the man myself until the two of us happened to be sitting there watching the telly when he starts laughing. He's outrageous really, to be honest about it. I mean, all you can see is the Twin Towers falling in slow motion and all these poor unfortunate people leaping, literally plummeting there to their deaths, as Mike leans over and says:

— Boys, but I love Twizzlers. Maybe you'd like a Twizzler, Pops?

For a minute I don't have a clue what he's talking about — but then I see it in his hand, a little brown stem that he informs me is ‘beef jerky'.

— Ah Twizzlers, he says, just the job.

So there we are the two of us munching away as his jaws rotate and he says:

— Mighty Twizzlers, I love them so much! with the poor New York victims still hurtling tragically to their deaths.

But he's still laughing, so much so that eventually it gets the better of me and I have to say stop it, Mike, it's inappropriate and he says:

— Auld cunts! Black bastards! Look at them all there smashed up like jelly!

And then what happens the two of us start arguing. Until the orderly appears, getting ready to fold the arms. Until he
realises it's not all that serious. Well, serious, maybe — but not enough for us to come to blows.

All the same I had to acknowledge — even if I chose not to admit it — that there was a certain amount of sense in what Mike Corcoran had to say. After all, he insisted, if it can't be changed — if there's nothing at all you can do to alter the situation, what's the use in going around moping about it?

— You might as well laugh at the poor old jellymen, he says, and he stretches his legs, raising his eyebrow and saying:

— Twizzler, perhaps?

Big Brother
was on for a while after that. But no surprises — it was the same old tiresome drivel trotted out:
Four-twenty-five in the Big Brother household.
Then some divorcee starts on about her ‘feelings' and how the rest of the ‘inmates' are abusing her and ‘having a go'. Before bursting into tears as the rest of the tenants trail across the floor to swamp her in ‘huggy love' — an unctuous and patently insincere embrace. The Balloon People have arrived, I thought, with all features erased as if by a massive celestial thumb. I looked at the screen — and all I could see were their host-heads staring back.

— The Orbs, I said, numinous, remote. For them engagement with the real world is no longer necessary. They live in TV in a world of white wax.

— The Eggmen, laughed Mike, they are the Eggmen, C.J., that's what they are. The fucking walnuts is what they are.

The humour had gone off me for telly, though. I was kind of looking forward to retiring, to tell the truth.

And all the way back to the White Room I could not keep from thinking that, simply by choosing a few simple words, Mike had created a whole new philosophy. With the result that, when I got back inside, the more I considered the substance of what he'd been saying, the more it began to seem like something of real worth. Definitely to be investigated further. Maybe I'd write a few notes about it, I thought. ‘The New Philosophy, the Twizzlers Who Do Not Care'. I was in the middle of thinking up the first few opening sentences when — suddenly! — I found myself staring alarmingly at a corner of the room. Bracing myself for the first sound of activity in behind the ventilation grid.

Why, there wasn't even so much as a whisper, not a sound.

It was then that I started reflecting on the whole ‘Tom Thumb' business with Mukti. And how stupid it all began to seem. I mean, a diminutive Indian doctor. What had I been thinking?

I was embarrassed beyond words, to tell you the truth.

But then I thought about Mike's new philosophy and it cheered me up no end. It was really the best laugh I'd had in quite a while. As Fat Curly the warm-up comedian in the Good Times always says:

— Och come on, me auld muckers! Surely youse have to laugh!

Except that, after a while, it didn't seem all that easy to do it, no matter how many amusing things you thought of, Twizzlers or anything. It was as if your smile seemed strained, as if you were trying too hard or something. It
seemed kind of forced, so tight that it hurt. So tight that it — I don't know. So tight that it … it's hard to say … it's difficult, you know? It's … duh-duh-difficult, that's all, just duh-difficult … duh-duh-duh-diff…

It wasn't long after the European Cup that a new record shop opened in the town — right next door to the Good Times bar.

And it was around then too that the first rumours began to surface about an impending visit to the town by the sensational chart-topper Clodagh Rodgers, whose number-one hit ‘Come Back and Shake Me' was requested as often in the record shop now as anything by the Beatles. But all of this was as nothing to the opening of Colette's, the brand-new hair salon in the centre of the square, opposite the Green Shield shop. Already it was reported to be so popular that there were no appointments available until July. A noticeboard outside read:
The most modern sahn in Europe.

And it was into this already fabled emporium that Miss Dolly Mixtures, Dolores McCausland, one day confidently strolled, sporting her scarf in what she called the Babushka style, gaily knotted beneath her chin. Removing her Foster Grant sunglasses and breathing on to the lenses as she cooed — much to the chagrin of the nylon-caped incumbents, upon whom a small but palpably identifiable cloud of resentment now settled.

As they watched Dolly fold herself delicately into an easy chair, leafing through a copy of
Fashion Weekly,
into whose pages she gracefully vanished, as if she perceived herself somehow, quite effortlessly, to have taken possession of the town. Protestant entitlement, was how Henry Thornton might have described it. It's not as if I despise them, really, I recall him writing in one of his essays, for me they're more of an inconvenience, really, a mild irritation. Like naughty children, I suppose — or recalcitrant pets.

No one could say for definite where exactly the Clodagh Rodgers rumour had originated. Its authorship, however, was eventually attributed to none other than the recordshop owner himself, a well-known entrepreneur not long returned from England. Who had in fact left Cullymore in '58, never to be seen again apart from the occasional holiday in summer when he would arrive in off the boat, in his dark suit and thin tie looking like Ronnie Hilton, they said — a popular singer and bandleader of the fifties. He was a rich man now and had worked with all sorts of ‘pop' bands in the UK, it was widely reported.

It has to be admitted that when Clodagh Rodgers didn't appear there was a great sense of being ‘let down' in the town. But it didn't take long for that feeling to dissipate. For, as the name of the best pub in the area suggested, the late-sixties were indeed ‘good times' and in any case Dave Glover and his band with the singer Muriel Day proved to be a more than adequate replacement.

In fact, among those present in the Mayflower Ballroom that night, were some who claimed to have seen Clodagh Rodgers perform in England and that she ‘couldn't hold a candle' to Muriel Day.

— Who cares about Clodagh Rodgers anyway, someone said, she's probably a Protestant.

The fact that Muriel was one as well didn't seem to occur to or unduly bother anyone. She certainly looked it, with her beehive hair. No Catholic woman would have dared to sport such a coiffure at that time. For, if she did, she would be responsible, as Canon Burgess never tired of reminding his female congregation, ‘for bringing a blush to the cheek of the Virgin Mary'.

It was around this time too that ‘Fashion Show '69' was convened in the hotel and an emergency urban council meeting called to establish just exactly what it was that had ‘gone on'. Quite a few members of the council hadn't been in favour of having the meeting at all for to tell the truth they were confused by the whole affair and privately confided that they couldn't ‘for the life of them' understand how something like a fashion show could possibly come under the remit of the urban council.

But then this wasn't any old ordinary ‘fashion show'.

It had been organised by Dolly Mixtures McCausland and the woman with whom she was staying at number 12 Wattles Lane. By the ‘black fellow's' mother, as one of the members had indiscreetly phrased it.

— You know the young fellow, don't you? The lad they say has all the brains. Of course you do. The black lad.

It is no exaggeration to say that the fashion show caused a virtual sensation. For days before it had been the talk of the place.

Dolly Mixtures by now had acquired quite a reputation and not just in the Good Times public house. Everyone in Cullymore seemed now to know her. And her songs. Even the children sang about Miss O'Leary's cake, especially when they saw Dolly coming mincing through the puddles, delicately lifting her stiff lace petticoats, which were far more expensive-looking than anything seen before in Cullymore. Or, at least, that was how it appeared. Even though it might not have been true at all. For that was the thing about Protestants, somehow. Even if a Catholic had the same money as them — somehow the Protestant would always seem richer. As if Protestant money was worth more than Catholic. It was a kind of magic they appeared to possess. And Dolly Mixtures had it. It was as though a superior kind of light shone around her. Allowing her to do pretty much as she pleased. With no thought given to either consequence or restitution.

—
Mr Wonderful,
she would sing, twirling scarves and dancing around them, through the wet rubbish and broken eggshells of Wattles Lane.

— Mr Wonderful, that's you!

The children — though honoured — found themselves blushing and gasping in astonishment, as Dolly drew her
baby-pink lambswool cardigan around her narrow shoulders and gave them a wave, puckering, before disappearing indoors.

Grown women took to following her down the main street, sneaking suddenly down back roads and entries for fear they might be spotted. It was as if they couldn't help themselves, as if they were being consumed by a virus of envy far more powerful and voracious than that to which they were accustomed. And it appeared to infect everyone, almost without exception. In this, the sixties, what exactly was happening to the town of Cullymore?

The Green Shield Stamp Centre had got properly into its stride by late August '68, and by the time the summer of'69 had come around, an even more extensive variety of household appliances and fancy goods was being enthusiastically redeemed by the excited collectors and book-holders. Even the most modest of houses now were filling up with chintz armchairs and portable televisions, hairdryers, vacuum cleaners, garden furniture, toasters and expensive calf luggage that before you'd have only seen in advertisements. It was as if America and England had come to the town. First Blue Band Margarine,
Get Smart
and the Beatles, but more exciting even than any of them, the songbird Ruby Murray, in the form of Dolly Mixtures, who had the effect of making grown men turn into children. Turn into children and gibber like near-idiots.

As regards the ‘Fashion Show '69' emergency meeting, there was one public representative in particular who had
seemed over-zealous to the majority of councillors. And there was a reason for this. One day he had been in the supermarket buying cigarettes when he looked up to find himself standing beside a tall and curvaceous, slightly plump blonde woman who had her hair backcombed and lacquered, and who had dark upturned eyelashes and painted lips that seemed on the verge of taking off on their own.

Ever so daintily detaching themselves from her face. At least, that was what was going through the councillor's mind. As he stood there, trying to locate change in the folds of his trouser pockets, finding himself infuriated and affronted. What, he asked himself, is this all about? He hadn't come into the supermarket to be confronted by unnecessarily provocative sights such as this, he told himself.

But that was nothing to what was coming. Only seconds later, as a matter of fact, when, quite unexpectedly, he found himself staring in open-mouthed astonishment as, curling her lip, she gazed directly at him, giving her figure-hugging black dress the most provocative little
tug.

Before patting her hips and for no reason exclaiming:

— Oops!

The councillor rolled out into the deafening clamour of the Cullymore afternoon. With confluent trickles of perspiration shining on his forehead. He stood in the edgy sanctuary of a dark alleyway, repeatedly clenching and unclenching his fists. It was this same official who had made the impassioned speech. Who had posed the definitive question to his colleagues:
What on earth was going on in Cullymore?