Breakfast on Pluto (9 page)

An attitude certainly not held by good old Bertie and that pinky perky baldy lad of his – he just couldn’t get enough of Paddies and Pussies! Had gone stark raving
bonkers over me ever since I talked him into letting me sing a song or two down the Wheatsheaf every Sunday morning. My training with Charlie back in the good old days of the Juke Box Jury Shows
was certainly beginning to pay off now! Did I mention earlier that I am the proud possessor of quite an excellent singing voice? Well – let me take this opportunity to announce it now! Not
that it should come as any surprise when one considers that dear old Pop was renowned the length and breadth of the country for his beautiful tenor renditions at weddings and similar public
gatherings of such classics as ‘Goodbye’ from
The White Horse Inn
, ‘Blaze Away’, and, surprisingly perhaps, ‘Paddy McGinty’s Goat’. Not, mind you,
that I had any intentions of carrying on the family tradition! At least not in quite the same manner as dear old Dad, as the Wheatsheaf clientele discovered that first Sunday morning when Bertie
adjusted his cravat (yellow too – with little black spots!), hit a few chords on the Hammond and declared: ‘Ladies and gentlemen! This morning I have a very special guest! All the way
from the Emerald Isle – it’s Miss Dusty Springfield!’

As out I wiggled – truly over the top, I swear! – and launched into the most fabulous version ever of ‘The Windmills of Your Mind’, completely losing myself in it when I
got to the bit about the world being just an apple whirling silently in space. I don’t think I was in the hotel at all for three whole minutes, Dusty waltzing through the vast and shining
firmament with a microphone in her hand. After that, for mischief, I belted out: ‘Son Of A Preacher Man’ and have to say I brought the house down! I thought Bertie was going to explode
with sheer unadulterated pride! Every time I looked over (I don’t know how many curtain calls I took!) there he was clapping away like a little boy who wants to tell everyone: ‘I know
her! She’s my friend!’

Well, did I get on like a house on fire in that old Wheatsheaf! It simply became the highlight of my week, and for days before it I’d get myself into a right old tizzy trying to decide
both what to wear and what I was going to sing. (Wardrobe – including beehive Dusty wig – funded by Berts, of course!) Sometimes I could get into such a state about it, I’d
literally take the head off Berts – ‘Why can’t you help me! Why!’ – but when I’d calmed down we always made it up – those sad dog eyes of his always won me
over anyway. Mostly I did the Supremes, Dusty and, of course, Lulu. I used to go crazy doing her number ‘Shout!’ – standing up on the tables and everything. And being a right old
tart raising my sequinned mini to drive them mad!

After each gig then, we’d drink ourselves silly, me and Berts, and then when we got home, it would be out with the baldy lad and poor old Daffodil Man losing his marbles again. ‘Oh,
how I love you!’ he’d groan, and what could I do but laugh when I’d look at him standing there with his stalk saluting and the canary-coloured trousers like an accordion around
his ankles! ‘Uh! Uh!
Uh!
’ was all you could hear then as you held a big dead flower in your arms.

Yes, good old Berts and me – just two people who wanted to be with one another, to live together, as the New Seekers would have it, ‘in perfect harmony’,
unlike Louise our darling landlady whose scorching glares of late we’d had to endure, and who now missed no opportunity whatsoever to bark: ‘Shut that door behind you!’, flicking
tea towels for all she was worth as she demanded to know: ‘Who left those cups there – they’re filthy!’, in between lapsing into semi-trances as she remembered once again
her poor son Shaunie run over by a bus in 1961. ‘She never got over it, you know,’ Berts told me. ‘Police arrived at the door one day – and that was it, really.’

I felt sorry for Louise. I knew how she felt. With her it was her son, with me a mother – it was the same thing all in all. Which maybe explains why I fell for her and she for me! And did
it drive old Bertie mad!

How it happened was just as simple as it was unexpected, I have to say. Sitting there on the sofa minding my own business one day, sipping a lemonade and watching
The Wombles
, of all
things, when next thing you know I hear this sniffling noise and she’s beside me with a Kleenex and going into the whole story about her husband leaving and how she had loved him, her darling
Ginger, anything she would have done for him, she said, why did he leave me, why? she asked me, then before I could answer, putting her arm around my neck and kissing me so hard I thought I’d
choke. But I wasn’t complaining, mind! Even when I fell on the floor and banged my head and she kept gasping: ‘Darling! Oh, my fucking darling! Ginger!’

Which is hilarious really, because to tell you the truth, I’m sure she was only putting that on and had wanted to call me Shaunie all along!

Probably if I hadn’t been used to dressing up as a matter of course, I wouldn’t have agreed to her scheme (which started when we were pie-eyed one night) with the shorts and the
Shaunie suit and everything. Believe it or not, I was even a little bit embarrassed the first time we did it, and I’d had at least four gins too! But after a while I got more than accustomed
to the little grey jacket and the short trousers and really began to get excited when she asked me to call her ‘Mammy’ which, apparently, because of his dad being Irish, was exactly the
way Shaunie pronounced it. ‘O my silly boy, my Shaunie Shaunies!’ she’d say, and I’d say: ‘Mammy!’ After a while I started to really like it, just sitting there
on her knee and being engulfed by all this powdery warm flesh. I never wanted to get up in fact.

Until, one day, quite unexpectedly, who happens along only Berts! There is no point in pretending I was anything other than embarrassed out of my life when he snapped: ‘What the bloody
hell is going on here!’ in this shaky voice, because I hadn’t said anything to him about what was going on – as well as being in the middle of sucking on her nipple and going:
‘Mammy!’

Well, as you can imagine, all hell broke loose after that! Lucky for Louise, Bertie had never been much of a fighter, flapping away like a demented seagull in between protests of:
‘It’s not fair!’ and ‘He’s my girlfriend, you fucking old cow! Mine!’

We were all in a right old state after that incident, I’m afraid. All I can remember is poor old Bertie coming up the stairs, whimpering: ‘He’s not a schoolboy! He’s my
girl and you have no right to be doing this to him!’

It was a hard decision for me to have to make but I’m afraid that Louise as part of the bargain had been doing my hair so beautifully – with pins and clips and slides, not to mention
providing me with creams and lotions for your skin that you would absolutely die for, that in the end I had no choice but to say to him: ‘Sorry, Bertie. I really am so sorry.’

He was heartbroken and left that very night. I never saw him again. Then it was straight into Louise’s arms to hug her and hug her and hug her.

The only thing about it being that somewhere at the back of my mind, I kept thinking: ‘You shouldn’t be doing this, as well you know. She’s not your mammy. If she wants you to
be her son, that’s fine. But she’s not your mammy. Your mammy was special. Even if she did dump you on Whiskers Braden’s step and leave you for ever. Even if she did do that, no
one,
no one
!, could ever take her place. So why are you sitting on a strange woman’s knee, Patrick Braden?’

I’d try my best not to let it come and would furiously suck on the nipple, but somehow it always did, a little curling whisper: ‘Why?’

Some days when she’d gone shopping, I’d go out and walk the streets alone, just to get as far away as I could from the house. It must have been around that time it
started, for any time I saw a woman in a housecoat or a headscarf, standing at a bus stop or whatever, I wouldn’t be able to help myself and the next thing you’d know, some complete
stranger would be standing back going: ‘What are you on about? My name’s not Bergin! Nor Eily neither! Get lost before I call the police!’

I made more mistakes like that – but there’s no point in me pretending! I just couldn’t help myself!

Moping about in my silly old housecoat – actually I don’t think he’d be all that surprised, to be honest with you! ‘I think the truth is, Patrick,’ I can hear him
saying, ‘is that maybe you always secretly wanted to
become
her. Eily. After all – she could hardly walk away then!’

You have to hand it to Terence, even if he did leave! He was the only one in the hospital who knew anything. Some of the idiots they brought about the place! Fenshaw! I mean for God’s
sake! ‘Oh, it’s perfectly clear that your provincial small-town Irish background has left you ill-equipped to deal with the challenges of a major cosmopolitan city!’ Oh, well,
excuse me, Dr Essence Of Insight, how extraordinarily perceptive!

Was it any wonder I fed him a load of lies about feeling oppressed and being a key figure all along in the IRA English bombing campaign! Which he swallowed, of course – hook, line and
sinker! – the great old idiot!

Catch my real doctor falling for that. I loved Terence so much. I even used to dream about him. I felt so secure with him around. I suppose I ought to have known that one day they’d come
along and say: ‘Oh, Doctor Harkin? He’s leaving. Doctor Fenshaw will be taking over from now on!’

I’m afraid the truth is you’re putting yourself in for plenty of disappointment if you expect people to hang around for very long in this life!

After they told me he was gone for good, I kept hoping that against all the odds he’d return. When I had the argument with Fenshaw, they brought a Dr Murti who said he wanted to be my
friend but most of the time I didn’t know he was there. Instead of talking, I’d just sit there and do what Terence had told me to – write it out so I could somehow make sense of
it all. I wonder what he’d have made of the hundreds of pieces I wrote about him, fibbing old Gregory Peck!

I don’t know how many times I’ve read this bit, it makes me feel so warm and cosy!

It was Christmas and I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw Terence. What was best of all was that his stupid old doctor’s coat was gone and he was wearing this
lovely furlined sheepskin jacket and a big red woolly scarf. He looked so Christmassy! ‘Patrick!’ he said and gave me a smile. ‘Bet you didn’t think I’d come back, did
you?’ ‘Oh, Terence!’ I cried, and ran to him. I just couldn’t keep my hands off him. He told me then how much he missed me. ‘I’d never have gone if it could have
been avoided,’ he said. ‘You do understand that, don’t you?’ I stroked his cheek and said: ‘You know I do! Mr Bushy-Eyes!’ Then we kissed and I made us some
lovely hot cocoa which we had with plum pudding. How long did he stay with me? One whole week, actually! You don’t believe me? Well, I’m sorry about that! Because I don’t care,
you see! Believe what you like! The fact is he stayed for one whole week and we loved one another like any man and woman should. I lay there in his arms and Perry Como sang: ‘Have Yourself a
Merry Little Christmas’. It was so funny because I had a strip of silver tinsel around my neck like a necklace and Terence kept calling me ‘His Christmas Angel’. We both agreed
that Christmas-time was our favourite time of the year. ‘For as long as I live, I want to spend it with you,’ I said and he said: ‘My darling.’ I don’t know whether it
was the mulled wine or that silly song ‘On The Trail Of The Lonesome Pine’ by Laurel and Hardy that he put on or a combination of both but by the end of the evening I was in fits, I
really was, and every time they’d go: ‘On the Trail Of The Lonesome Pine!’ I would erupt again. ‘Patrick!’ Terence would say. ‘What on earth is wrong with
you?’ and I’d choke: ‘O Terence! Terence! Terence!’

It wasn’t the mulled wine at all, of course, as silly me realized later – it was the music, reminding me as it did of all those wonderful, happy Christmasses we’d had down the
years at home in Rat Trap Mansions (‘God I love them,’ Mammy Whiskers would say – O but of course she would! – Good old Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy! This is another fine
mess youse have got me into! God but aren’t they great, my happy, special, loving and adoring family!’)

And then you’d think: ‘What a wonderful place it truly is, this world in which we wander!’ As you casually pick up the newspaper and, surprise, surprise, once
more it is a balmy night in little Belfast town. Which is why the soldiers are aht and abaht, having themselves a good old piss-up like! All red-cheeked and rosy as out of the barracks they go and
down the street they ramble, not giving a toss about the ‘facking war!’, as one of them says while he lights a fag. ‘It’s the politicians wot facks it ap! Let ’em go
and fack ’emselves!’ Which is what they fully intend to do this Friday night, shirts wide-open to the waist, as into the disco bar they troop. Three pints of Harp and the ultra-violet
strobes lighting up them sweet and fancy girls – especially two sitting over in the corner. Who are giving the soldiers the gamey eye – and does it take them long to spot it? No, sir!
And before you know it, are over in a flash, pulling up chairs and rubbing hands and asking them how they’re feeling girls!

‘Och we’re awright, lek! And how are youse?’

‘Feelin’ pretty good nah, I don’t mind tellin’ you! Right, lads?’

To which the response it sure is: ‘Yes!’

The girls they truly look fantastic – done up to the nines in their turtlenecks and wet-look minis, the make-up laid on with a trowel. And the smell of perfume? Phew! And watch them dance
now on that floor, despite the high cork wedgies!