Breakfast on Pluto (6 page)

‘What you’re doing, you’ll never know!’ she said. ‘The memories this place holds!’

‘Oh, fuck off, Mrs Braden!’ bawled one of them and chased him with a plank.

‘In trouble again?’ laughed Pat McGrane (old classmate) as he pulled up in his Anglia, on his way across the border to see his girlfriend.

‘’Fraid so, Pat!’ simpered a tattered Puss as off went Pat tooting his horn.

Fortunately, for all the time that remained to her, good neighbours came to the rescue and now she sat with Charlie’s folks in front of the television watching David Bowie and the Spiders
From Mars cavorting in their unitards.

‘Ah, for the love of Christ!’ Mr Kane said. ‘Did you ever see the like of it? For Jasus’ sake – I ask you!’

Mrs Kane went out to put on the kettle and called from the kitchen: ‘Oh, you needn’t be asking me. It’s that pair there you’d want to ask.’

He shook the paper and vanished behind it, Bowie pouting on his knees.

‘The cut of the cunt – arsing about my television with a head on him like Barney Gillis’s cockerel!’

Whereupon we took our leave upstairs where Charlie’s
Salon
was now in progress, Alice Cooper blasting through the open window. ‘Lift your head, why don’t you,’ she
said. ‘I can’t get at your neck!’, foundation dab-dab-dabbing with her cotton ball.

‘You look fantastic!’ she said when she was finished. ‘I could eat you!’

And then: ‘I’m going to miss you, Pat Puss, you know! So much.’

‘I love you, Charlie. I’ll write every day, I promise.’

‘Kiss me! Even if I’m Irvin’s and always will be for ever, I still want you to kiss me!’

Yummy breasts of all time as little tongue goes travelling down to belly-town! And other secret places!

Such squelch and sweat the world has never seen! God! – Why couldest not invent a sweeter way to melt and merge? Dickies which might squirt Chanel, or weenies which secrete rosewater? O
who can ever tell your plan! But Charlie – with her it was so close to exultation, one almost didn’t want to go!

Hold the front page!
Pussy changes mind! Refuses to emigrate after all! Decides to settle down with long-time friend from childhood!

But it was not to be and when the time came I felt like Ingrid Bergman. ‘We may never meet again, Charlie, you know that?’ I wept. ‘Oh, shut up, Braden!’ she snapped and,
moist-eyed, hugged me yet again. ‘Please don’t say it for I love you so!’

‘Good luck then, Head-the-Ball,’ said Irwin.

I was sorry to leave old Irwin too, standing there with his wild red hair and freckle-splashed face. Under his arm a pile of papers:
Republican News.

‘I can’t get around him, Patrick!’ Charlie said. ‘He’s off his fucking head!’

As purring bus went
vroom!
and
whoosh! –
away we go!

‘I boxed for Kilkenny – I boxed for Ireland!’ said the man with the scalded prawn face. ‘And I’d be boxing yet only for my accident!’

How sad that it transpired they had put him in prison – for offences unnamed. The lights of Liverpool yet far away as
The Munster
ferry made its way through the churning waters.
What is that I discern just below the eye of Boxing Man Extraordinary? Why I do believe it’s a nervous tic!

‘You’re a funny class of a buck!’ he says. ‘Dressed like that . . . would you not be afraid . . .?’

I was sporting a scarf of purple chiffon, decadently flying in the breeze.

‘Why, darling?’ I said and moved ever so slightly closer.

Now who would have expected a pugilist and a saucy Pussy to be in the lifeboats so entwined?

‘Elephants they call me,’ he said as he indulged in his post-coital smoke. ‘If anyone lays a paw on you – just tell them Elephants isn’t far away. I’ll bate
them! I bate more men! I’d batter them!’

‘O Elephants!’ I sighed.

Then what does he do – start to cry!

‘I hated prison!’ he says. ‘It did all sorts of things to me.’

As after a good sobbing session, off we went down to the bar where ‘A Nation Once Again’ was in full swing. I felt sorry for Elephants with a nose like that, beaconing over the rim
of his pint. His eyes begged: ‘Could you love me?’ Well, I could – but I had a lot of things on hand and it really would have to wait. I shouldn’t have stolen money out of
his pocket as he snoozed there on the booze-splashed table. But he had promised me a tenner and there wasn’t much sign of it coming!

When I went up on deck, the air was sharp and clean and the dawn was beginning to come up. I leaned over the railing and sucked in the salt breeze. Strung all along the coastline, they set my
heart atingle, winking: ‘Hello there, Puss!’ at me, each one glistening through the fog, the lovely lights of Liverpool.

I’m well aware of course that a lot of people might say – certainly Terence said it often enough – that while I seem to have had no problem sympathizing with
Charlie’s tragedy (she had a breakdown not long after Irwin was murdered – but we’ll go into all that later) there appears to be no similar generosity of spirit evident when it
comes to my treatment of Father Bernard. Who – Terence kept coming back to this – must have been tormented, not only by my persistently vindictive missives but by the sight of me
strutting about the town in the ostentatious manner I did. ‘I mean – we are talking about a small, enclosed village here,’ Terence said. Now suddenly he’s an expert on Irish
rural life – after me telling him everything he knew! Before that, he wouldn’t have known where to look in the atlas – for Ireland, never mind Tyreelin!

But he’s right, of course. I mean – I suppose I did turkey-hen around the place a little, crushed velvet purple loon pants one minute, baby pink satin jacket and
stackheeled glitter boots the next! ‘After all,’ he said, ‘one could hardly expect the poor priest to invite you up to the presbytery and say: “Sit down there son and have a
cup of tea like a good fellow. Myself and yourself have a lot to catch up on! By the way – I love the powder blue, puff-sleeved shirt – or is it a blouse? Ha ha!”’

All of which is fair and reasonable enough, I suppose. But I wasn’t bothered about any big speeches or get-togethers like that. All I wanted him to do was say: ‘Hello there,
Patrick,’ once in a while. Even nod, for heaven’s sake! But he couldn’t even do that much! As a matter of fact, any time he saw that I was sitting on the summer seat, he put his
head down and made a detour around by the back of the chickenshed. Did I mention that ever since I’d been dumped on the front step of Rat Trap Mansions I suspected Whiskers had been getting
extra cash for my upkeep, over and above what the government gave her? (‘Mickey money,’ they called that locally.) Well – she was! For definite! From good old Father Bernard,
believe it or not! And, to be fair, when all’s said and done, at least they can’t take that away from him! Only Caroline let it slip one time she came to visit me in Charlie’s, I
might never have found out. I was furious and stormed off down to the house straight away!

‘How dare you!’ I said to Whiskers. ‘Cheating me out of my rightful inheritance! I could have you in court! You realize that! Don’t you!’ Then what does she do only
start to blubber. Caroline too, of course! Then next thing I look out the window and who’s there staring and noseying in – O’Hare! I flung the window open and shouted: ‘What
are you looking at? Think I’m going to steal your bloomers again, do you? Well, you needn’t worry! I don’t need your old drawers! You can stick them up your backside, that’s
what you can do!’ I was in a right fury, I can tell you! I was especially sorry because Caroline’s boyfriend Frank arrived right in the middle of it and was mortified.

I mean – I was chucking things around and everything! I have to say that I really felt especially sorry for Caroline – because when I was living with Dummy, she used to bring me food
and money. (As if I needed it – I was loaded! But I couldn’t tell her that!)

‘What’s to become of us, Paddy?’ she said sometimes and seemed so genuine. I even embraced her once, when she was leaving – I swear to God!

And now, here she was with her new boyfriend – he was a lovely fellow, Frank from the bank I called him – having to listen to me! ‘You could have fucking told me!’ I
said. ‘You could have given me something! But no! All you ever gave me, all you ever handed down was the smell of piss and clothes nobody ever bothered to wash! Thanks a bunch! Thanks a whole
pile, fucking Whiskers!’ I hadn’t meant to call her that. On the way over, I had said to myself: ‘Don’t call her that now. Whatever you do, don’t call her that, it
isn’t fair.’ And now, here I was, doing it. ‘Fucking Whiskers!’ I said again. Once or twice, Frank tried to calm me down but I’m afraid I wasn’t taking any of
that from him, I mean, at the end of the day it was our family. ‘Fuck off, Frank!’ I said. ‘You don’t know what it was like! What it was like being reared by a thief! How
would you possibly know!’

Bad and all as it was, practically destroying the kitchen (which really looked quite nice now that Frank and Caroline spent a lot of time in it, keeping it clean and what have you), it really
made me feel an awful lot better and by the time I had calmed down I was able to say to Whiskers: ‘I’m sorry. But it really did upset me when I heard it.’ Unfortunately, nothing I
could say or do could placate her and she was still blubbering when I left. But Frank and Caroline left me to the door and would you believe – actually offered me twenty pounds! Which I said
I couldn’t take. I did? In a pig’s ear, sweety-pie!

‘Thanks, Frank,’ I said and held Caroline in my arms. It was lovely giving her just a little peck on the cheek. ‘I wish we could have done that a bit more often,’ I said
and she began to cry. There was no doubt about it but she was a really good-looking girl now – quite beautiful in fact. ‘You’re a lucky man, Frank,’ I said and gave him a
big grin. Then off I went. I really was quite lightheaded after my little outburst.

But am still not quite sure how I ended up in the church! I’d just about had it, I suppose! Fortunately there weren’t too many worshippers in the vicinity. I could
imagine what they’d have had to say. ‘What’s he doing here? He never darkens the door!’ Which is a darned blooming cheek when you think about it, for if I, Tyreelin’s
only genuine son-of-a-preacher-man, haven’t the right to be about the place then who, just who, I would like to know, has? I was as giddy as a goat as I swept through the doors and I am
ashamed to have to admit there was a distinct whiff of BO emanating from the regions of my armpits. ‘Oh, dear,’ I said to myself – don’t ask me why! Guess Who was on the
cross as usual. Looking down to say: ‘Ah, Paddy.’ ‘Ah, Paddy, what?’ I said and shook my head. What was He
on
about? As long as I could remember, there He had been
with His crown of thorns, just hanging there, ah this, ah that, ah what. That was the question I had been meaning to ask Him. ‘Ah what? Ah
what
??’ So I asked Him. ‘What are
you
aahing
about?’ I said.

Like I say I was lightheaded and in no humour for waiting but fortunately just then the door of the confession box opened and in I went. ‘The Holy Family’s Flight into Egypt’,
said the pamphlet. I rolled it up in a ball and threw it away. Just then he drew the shutter back. ‘Hello, Daddy,’ I said as I knelt down in the dark and you can imagine the shock I got
when it wasn’t him. All I could see was this baby fellow hardly older than myself looking at me through the grille. ‘What are you doing here?’ I said. ‘I work here,’
he says, as I began to realize just what an idiot I’d made of myself!

By then I didn’t care though because, to tell you the truth, after the row with Whiskers I was exhausted. ‘Bye bye, Father,’ I said as the confessional door clicked shut behind
me. ‘Ah’s’ eyes following me, wondering, I suppose, what He’d been drinking the day He went and made a twilight zone of a disaster like me.

Well, how many times did I manage to get myself lost in that old London town – don’t ask me! After leaving Euston station, I must have walked the square mile half a
dozen times – each time ending up back at Gower Street. Bright-red Pussy! Thinking all of London town’s ten million people are saying: ‘Look! It’s
her
! She’s
lost again!’

It was a miracle I found my way to Piccadilly Circus at all, there at last to begin my trade. (I had read about it in
Weekend
magazine – ‘Nocturnal Vice! The Boys Who Ply
Their Trade by Night! Sins of the City That Never Sleeps!’) Sounds just like me! I thought!

Although I would have given it a lot more consideration if I’d known of the likes of Silky String – only my fifth or sixth customer, for heaven’s sake! (‘Ah’
getting His own back on me maybe!)

‘Cold, isn’t it?’ I said and put my hand on his leg. ‘You remind me of someone,’ he says then, with this great big charming smile that would make
you think: ‘I’ve met a right old Cary Grant here and no mistake,’ and the pair of us racking our brains to find out who this remind-person is. And who does it turn out to be
– the one and only David Cassidy! ‘That’s what I should call you,’ he says. ‘My little David. My little David Cassidy.’ I didn’t ask him what his name was,
because unless it was going to go further and he was going to do a sugar daddy and set me up in a flat as his kitten, I didn’t really see the point. Which I would dearly have loved him to do,
let me add, for it would have suited me down to the ground. An English version of Eamon Faircroft was just what I needed right in those early England days of ’73 and let there be no denying
it. Exactly the very thoughts going through my mind as we zoomed off through the night-time streets of London – T
HE
B
ODY
R
EVUE
’72! N
ON
-S
TOP
A
VANT
G
ARDE
N
AKED
S
PECTACULAR
! G
ODSPELL
! P
YJAMA
T
OPS
! 5th G
REAT
Y
EAR
! S
WINGING
S
TEWARDESSES
! T
ECHNIQUES OF
L
OVE
! – ‘I wonder what he works at now, this latest pick-up
chappie of mine?’ One thing I was glad of – he was certainly a lot better turned out than some of my previous customers! Absolutely appalling having to deal with some of them it was!
‘And you talk about the dirty Irish!’ I said to one of them. His fingernails! You wouldn’t believe them! ‘Dirt! I farking love it!’ he says. ‘Fuck me in the
dirtiest place imaginable – squeal like a pig, I will!’ Not with me he wouldn’t!