Fatty O'Leary's Dinner Party (8 page)

“I'm quite all right,” said Fatty hurriedly. “Don't worry about me.”

“But of course I shall worry,” said Rupert O'Brien,
perching himself on the edge of the bathtub. “I suppose you were too large for the bath. Is that what happened? Were you just too large?”

Fatty mumbled something that Rupert O'Brien did not hear. “I remember,” went on Rupert O'Brien, “when I was at school – Campbell College, you know it? – we had a fellow who got stuck in an armchair. He was a large fellow, a bit like yourself but maybe not quite so large, and he sat in this armchair and he simply could not get out of it. His father was Irish Ambassador in Paris at the time, I distinctly remember. He was considered a possible president at one stage, but he was rather too fond of the ladies and you know what the bishops are like in this country. Frightful bunch of killjoys. But anyway, there was his son, stuck in an armchair and no amount of pulling seemed to be able to do the trick. I thought one of the springs might have got hooked into him, you know, and this would have made it difficult to dislodge him. Then I had a good idea, which was to turn the armchair upside down and let gravity do the trick. So we did, and out he eventually popped, barely damaged by the whole experience, even if he did have a large rent in the seat of his pants, which gave us a good laugh. You know what boys are like. Cruel bunch. Ha!”

Fatty clenched his teeth in desperation. He was as captive an audience as those unfortunate Romans who were obliged to hear Nero play his fiddle and who could only escape the auditorium by pretending to die.

“Funny that,” mused Rupert O'Brien. “We couldn't tug him out, but gravity, exercising its force in the opposite direction …” He paused, and Fatty opened his eyes to see a thoughtful expression on the face of his unwelcome companion.

“My goodness, we could do the same for you,” said Rupert O'Brien. “If I just roll this tub over, you'll be upside down and then you'll probably come out through the operation of gravity. Why didn't I think of it before?”

Fatty shook his head. “No,” he protested. “They'll be back soon. Just leave me.”

“Wouldn't hear of leaving you,” said Rupert O'Brien. “Now, don't you worry. I'll just give this a bit of a push and you'll be over. Let me see, just here.”

Fatty felt the bathtub rocking and then, with a sudden lurch, it toppled over onto its side. There was a ringing clang, like a deadened bell, and then the movement started again and he felt the bathtub roll once more.

“There!” shouted Rupert O'Brien. “That's it.”

Fatty was now upside down, his view of the sky being
replaced with a dark view of the cobbled surface of the courtyard.

Rupert O'Brien tapped loudly on the bathtub. “Are you all right in there, Mr. O'Leary,” he shouted. “Are you beginning to slip out?”

“I am still caught,” said Fatty miserably. “Turn it over again. I don't like being upside down. Just mind your own business.”

“Now, now, Mr. O'Leary,” said Rupert O'Brien. “I can understand that you're upset, but this really is the only way. I'll stay and talk to you while gravity gets to work. What would you like to chat about? I'd like to be able to talk about that place you come from – what was it called? – but I don't know a thing about it. I've never been there. I've been to New York, of course. I've been there a lot, in fact. Do you know that I used to write the occasional piece for
The New Yorker
? Do you read
The New Yorker
, Mr. O'Leary? Can you buy it down in Mississippi? There are some who say that it's gone off and that the standards of grammar are not what they used to be. There may be some truth in that. What do you think? Do you think that
The New Yorker
has gone off at all?”

“Go away–” Fatty started to shout, but was cut short by a sudden pain in his right hip, and then, to the
accompaniment of a great sucking sound, like that made by a mud pool venting, he felt himself tumbling from the bath and onto the hard cobbles. He uttered a yell of pain and this brought an anxious enquiry from Rupert O'Brien.

“Has it worked? Are you out?”

Fatty, crouching beneath the bath, doubled up most uncomfortably, struggled to retrieve the towel, which had fallen from his waist when the bath had been turned over.

“I'm out now,” he shouted. “Please turn the bath over again.”

Fatty heard Rupert O'Brien breathing heavily as he exerted himself to roll the bathtub over onto its side, but eventually he succeeded, exposing Fatty, like an insect discovered under a rock, blinking and confused.

“You see,” said Rupert O'Brien. “The late Mr. Newton has been vindicated once again.”

Fatty arose painfully to his feet, muttered his thanks, and holding the inadequate towel round his waist, picked his way, barefoot over the rough cobbles, back into the building.

“What a scream!” said Rupert O'Brien to Niamh, when she reappeared in the courtyard. “Have you ever seen anything so perfectly comic? French farce, my dear. Utter French farce, and all laid on for us absolutely free!
It's
Les Fourberies de Scapin
and
Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme
all rolled into one! Priceless!”

A
FTER WATCHING HER HUSBAND BEING
carried out of the room in the bath, uncertain as to whether she should accompany him (as a widow might accompany a cortège) but deciding not to do so, Betty returned to her bed. She felt profoundly discouraged by the morning's events and wondered whether the idea of coming to Ireland had been a mistake. Her visions of quiet days spent enjoying the delights of the Irish countryside and the Irish table seemed to have been a hopelessly romantic misconception. The reality of Ireland was proving quite different; gravity, so cruel and unforgiving at home in Arkansas, seemed every bit as unremitting here, where it had subjected her husband to tribulations as onerous as any that had beset him on the other, correct side of the Atlantic. What was the point, she wondered, of travelling such distances only to find that the world revealed an identically unkind face? Perhaps it would have been better to remain in America, where at least the odds seemed less stacked against generously built people.

She decided that when Fatty returned she would ask him whether he wanted to persist with the holiday. It would involve no loss of face, she would tell him, to change their
reservations and fly home that very evening. Nobody at home need know that they had returned prematurely, as they could quietly slip off for a few days somewhere and nobody would be any the wiser.

By the time that the freshly released Fatty returned to the bedroom, Betty had dozed off, her head full of reassuring thoughts of home. She opened her eyes with a start to find Fatty, clad in his towel, searching the room for his clothes.

“I'm back,” he declared simply.

She rose from her bed and embraced him.

“It must have been so uncomfortable,” said Betty, pushing a stray lock of hair off Fatty's brow. “I've been thinking that perhaps we should go home … Ireland seems to be so …” She searched for the expression. What precisely was wrong with Ireland? The food? Well, she was in no position to pass judgement on that, as they had not had the opportunity to sample any Irish dishes yet. Since they had arrived at Shannon, they had, in fact, had no more than a little soup and a few pieces of bread at dinner. She had certainly
seen
some food that morning, when she had observed Rupert O'Brien eating kedgeree with such obvious enjoyment, but that alone gave her no grounds to pronounce on the national cuisine.

Was it general discomfort then? Again, this was a charge for which she had no evidence: Mountpenny House seemed comfortable enough, even if the bathroom now lacked a bath. (They could hardly complain about that.) No. The main objection to Ireland was its
Irishness
, or rather its
wrong sort of Irishness
. Everybody at home knew what it was to be Irish, and behaved accordingly, with St. Patrick's Day parades and sentimental dinners. But did the Irish themselves know how to be Irish? She was less confident of that.

“Do you want to go home?” she blurted out. “Home to Fayetteville, I mean.”

Fatty looked at her uncomprehendingly.

“But of course we'll go home,” he said. “We're booked to go home at the end of next week.”

“But are you enjoying yourself?” she persisted.

“Am I enjoying myself in Ireland?” he asked. “Of course I am! Who couldn't enjoy himself in Ireland?”

Betty struggled to conceal her surprise. “But all these things that have been happening,” she said. “Don't you feel …” She did not finish.

“They've been nothing,” said Fatty. “A few minor irritations. You know that I'm not that easily discouraged, Betty. You should know that by now.”

Betty swallowed. She would have to put a brave face on it and carry on, since that was so clearly what Fatty wished to do. And it would be possible – just – to be positive: they would have a good breakfast, and that would surely raise the spirits. Then perhaps they would take a walk, or perhaps drive in the car to one of the nearby villages. The run of bad luck – for that is what it seemed to be – would have to come to an end sometime, as it could hardly go on forever and it was difficult to see what further humiliations Ireland could be planning for Fatty.

They dressed, Fatty donning the trousers which had been let out for him by Mr. Delaney and one of the adapted shirts, while Betty wore the green linen trouser suit she had bought for the trip. Then they made their way down to the dining room, the door of which had been wedged closed and had to be pushed open by Fatty.

“I'm absolutely starving,” said Fatty as they entered the room. “I haven't really eaten properly for over twenty-four hours!”

The thought of the impending meal made it possible to contemplate with equanimity the chance of finding Rupert O'Brien in the dining room. But Fatty need not have worried. Not only was Rupert O'Brien not there, but
there was nobody else either. In fact, the dining room was completely deserted and the tables cleared.

Fatty stood at the doorway and looked at his watch.

“It's only ten,” he said, his voice weak and dispirited. “Do you think that they've stopped serving already?”

Betty, who had spotted a bell, strode over to ring it. Shortly thereafter the young girl from the village, who had served the diners the previous evening, appeared from the kitchen, a dishcloth draped over her arm. She looked surprised.

“Well,” she said. “Who rang the bell then? What's the emergency?”

“We were hoping for breakfast,” said Fatty. “Some kedgeree perhaps?”

The waitress shook her head. “Mr. O'Brien finished the kedgeree,” she said. “And anyway, it's far too late for breakfast. The kitchen's closed.”

Fatty exchanged an anguished glance with Betty. “But we had no dinner,” he complained. “And now you're telling us that we're to get no breakfast.”

The girl looked sympathetic. “That's an awful shame,” she said. “But I can't re-open the kitchen once chef has closed it. He gets into an awful temper if he sees me cooking when I'm meant to be cleaning everything up. I
really can't help you there.”

Fatty looked miserably at the waitress.

“What time will lunch be served?” he asked.

“We don't serve lunch today,” she said. “But I do have some sandwiches made up. They were going to be for Mr. and Mrs. O'Brien, but they haven't come to collect them yet although I told them they should fetch them by nine. I can give them to you and tell the O'Briens they were too late. I don't much take to that Jacko, if the truth be told.”

Fatty was delighted, and readily accepted the offer in spite of Betty's evident reluctance to deprive the O'Briens of their lunch.

“Is it quite right, Fatty?” she asked hesitantly. “If the sandwiches were originally meant for Mr. and Mrs. O'Brien, then would the Lord want us to eat them?”

Fatty brushed aside her objection. “Is it right?” he exploded. “Is it right that we should get a tiny bit of the food that that fellow is trying to reserve all for himself? Of course it's right. Look at how much he's eaten since he arrived. All that dinner – when we had none, none at all – and then all the kedgeree this morning. And did he leave us so much as a scrap? He did not!”

The waitress, who had slipped off into the kitchen, now returned with a large packet of sandwiches, which
she thrust into Fatty's hands.

“Don't let them be seeing it now,” she whispered. “Three chicken sandwiches and three smoked salmon.”

“Just the ticket!” said Fatty.

They thanked their benefactress and retired to the drawing room to eat the sandwiches.

“She's a good girl, that girl in the kitchen,” Fatty said as he bit into the first of the smoked-salmon sandwiches. “She's got that O'Brien fellow's number all right.”

There was a noise behind them, and Fatty swung round to see Rupert and Niamh O'Brien standing in the doorway.

“Did I hear my name being mentioned?” said the critic.

Fatty glanced away. His mouth was full of smoked-salmon sandwich anyway and he would have found it difficult to speak. Betty came to the rescue. “My husband was wondering where you were,” she said.

“Well, here we are,” said Rupert O'Brien, coming into the room. He stopped, his gaze moving to the packet of sandwiches.

“Sandwiches,” said Niamh. “You see them, Rupert?”

Rupert nodded and turned to face Fatty. “Where did you get those sandwiches, Mr. O'Leary?”

Fatty tried to look indignant. “They're mine,” he said.
“We asked–”

Rupert O'Brien did not let him finish. “You see, I asked for a pack of sandwiches to be made up for us. I asked yesterday evening. And when we went to the kitchen, they said there were no sandwiches.”