St. Patrick's Day: another day in Dublin

The Notre Dame Review Book Prize

2013 Love beneath the Napalm, James D. Redwood

2015 Times Beach, John Shoptaw

2016 St. Patrick’s Day: another day in Dublin, Thomas McGonigle

ST. PATRICK’S DAY

another day in Dublin

THOMAS McGONIGLE

University of Notre Dame Press

Notre Dame, Indiana

Copyright © 2016 by Thomas McGonigle

Published by the University of Notre Dame Press

Notre Dame, Indiana 46556

All Rights Reserved

E-ISBN 978-0268-08703-6

This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at ebooks@nd.edu

Armastusega Anna’le

It is not easy to think of myself as a man who is thought of as dead. I might as easily think of myself as dead. And perhaps some writers do before they begin to write. They think of themselves as dead. Or they think of themselves as thought of as dead.

—Gerald Murnane

4 November 1977 9.30 am. The capsules have been taken with some whiskey . . . It’s a bright sunny morning. Full of life. Such a morning as many people have died on . . . I cannot believe I have committed suicide since nothing has happened. No big bang or cut wrists. 65 was long enough for me. It wasn’t a complete failure I did some [At this point the words lapse into illegibility and stop].

—Keith Vaughan, Journals, 1939–1977

L’artiste qui joue son être est de nulle part.

—Samuel Beckett, on Jack B. Yeats

To lavish love on objects unworthy of it is infinitely better than living a cold, ordered life in a study, in an office, or even a garden tending flowers . . . it has not been the sinners, the degraded, the drunkards, the gamblers, the crooks, the harlots who have made me shudder, but the dead, the respectable dead; cut off like a branch from the tree.

—Francis Stuart, Things to Live For

Contents

1. ST. PATRICK’S DAY

2. In Grogan’s

3. Out on the Street to the Memorial

4. To Rathmines and Rathgar

5. Starting Out Again

6. Taken Apart

7. McDaids

8. En Route

9. Again, Grogan’s

10. TO THE PARTY

11. The Corn Exchange

ST. PATRICK’S DAY

Come, hear something, read some things, I was saying.

That spring I was staying at the Russell Hotel in the cheapest or, as I have been taught to say, the most reasonable available room. I have sat before the fire in the lobby, cold glass of Carlsberg in hand, realizing: traveling out the patrimony, a gift in my case, from all the years of my father’s fear of doing anything which would endanger his retirement.

After forty-nine years of work at the American Can Company he survived two years of doing, as he put it: nothing.

Died, he did, alone in a parking lot with strangers looking on at his performance.

Upstairs, built into the cabinet next to the bed was a radio which received only Radio Eireann—stories always seemed to begin: In 193 . . . In 189 . . . They, He, She, and . . . the words flowed into never remembering a fact except the pause before the announcer saying a birthday greeting to someone’s Granny of County . . . who wanted to hear Apples and Oranges as performed by the Metropole Dance Band and then the female announcer would say three or four words in Irish, allowing me to remember this announcer, Ruth Buchanan, who had taught English to foreign students in the same school where I would work in Baggot Street when I had lived in this city with the Bulgarian, this Ruth who could also still be seen in cinema adverts plucking a little shampoo bottle growing in the center of flowers then blooming down there in Stephen’s Green; this Ruth who was now saying three or four words in Irish every hour, reminding people there are two languages in this country—and for me, one of those languages drowned in the ocean across which my grandfather at the age of twelve was shipped from Donegal to New York where that Bulgarian lived BUT let’s not go into all of that just yet.

A fence of rocks piled one on top of the other, cement forced between, about an asphalt paved front yard. Will you come in? The house set back from the drive. Will you come in?

Down there in the street, troops of high school bullies have been formed up to strut and twirl and shake their behinds for all they’re worth: St. Patrick’s Day in Dublin, imported from New York and points west—them showing them how it’s done; bands and marching units in between flatbed trucks on which shivering girls stand throwing sample packets of dried peas and frozen fish fingers. Looking down from my window I couldn’t tell whether this was the end or the beginning of the parade. His watch on my wrist had stopped.

In the corner a red plush straight-backed chair on which I had been stacking the books bought in an effort to catch up for the years since in Dublin. I put the books on the floor next to my suitcases. I thought to sit, watch them down there. The window sill is too high for my feet or the chair too low and either way I couldn’t see with ease what was happening in the street.

I couldn’t remember whether the pubs would be open so I called down for a couple of Carlsbergs to be sent up: three bottles and a glass.

Waiting in thirst I again twisted the problem, what was I doing in Dublin, when as before coming in from the airport there was the same identical sinking feeling of why in whatever it is, had I come back, again, because I always had that feeling, back here again, never remembered of course until after the rush to find the bus for Busárus, find the change, find a seat, get all the luggage into the bus because I wouldn’t trust them to put it into the luggage compartment.

A SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

To ensure a comfortable journey through this day an ITINERARY is provided:

Starting (obviously) in the Russell Hotel

Walking to Grogan’s by way of Stephen’s Green and Neary’s Pub

In Grogan’s

Out on the Street to the Memorial by the Grand Canal and Baggot

Street Bridge

To Rathmines and Rathgar

Starting Out Again

Taken Apart

McDaids

En Route

Again, Grogan’s

To the Party

The Corn Exchange

Back here again riding in the bus across land being packaged up into housing estates and petrol stations, looking out at the old woman washing down her step into the pub and the same people still sitting in all the same places, maybe a little worse for wear, but who isn’t in this day and age (von Webern music) but knowing too, at least, they did have a place and after all I had spent years here which had been more alive than all the years spent in other places or was that another lie among others which had brought me back here to Dublin, as before?

A knock at the door. The kid was here with the beer on a silver tray. He was twelve, fourteen, or fifteen years old, how should I know? I signed the check and gave him 20p tip. He thanked me and backed out of the room. I skipped the glass. The beer wasn’t really cold. Back then, I would never complain about something like this, because Americans were always complaining about warm beer, cold rooms, and people who didn’t bathe. The Americans came dressed in white socks and London Fog raincoats. I lost my white socks and kept the J. C. Penney raincoat which was soiled down the right front side with dried red paint after brushing against wet posters in the anarchist office in Glasgow where I had visited: Americans never wore soiled clothing being afraid of getting run over by a truck . . .

Alone in this room, standing at the window, drapes pulled back, looking down at the rainy street now deserted.

Over there, at an angle across from the hotel: backroom of a chip shop where after the fashion I danced to Beatles records in 1964 with a shop girl who wouldn’t tell me her name because you’re just here looking for a good time of it and you ain’t never gonna come back here again, I know, so what do you want to go and know my name for, just for a dance, anyway, is that okay, you know, if not I’ll go back to my friends who’ll never talk to me ever again if I talk too long with you, just here for the joke of it, you are . . . A certain deep breath, look to the ceiling, hope people don’t notice but—in all of this: living at the Russell and thinking of going off to a chip shop.

I wouldn’t have anyone in this room unless they . . . not to dare beyond the beginning of thought—the fingers are long and tremble—never dare to say, though hearing all too clearly, as before: chopped your balls off, right, even if you say you never get mixed up in a sort of conversation of nounless feeling.

Beyond The Pale . . . a place never gone to because pints don’t grow on trees and a man could die of thirst in the middle of all that damp green scenery. Never wanted any part of the army who went tramping about Ireland looking for cemeteries in which their relatives had been dumped. Childhood was ancestry enough together with the years previously spent in Dublin, history of sufficient complexity I didn’t have to go seeking more muck to pile up in a closet with the dirty underwear.

The girl who took me across into sex reminded me rain heavy leaves when storm ended sun out slight wind gusting rain falls again on sidewalk standing close to the trunk of the tree avoiding the momentary wet smelling sweet mold coming as she did from Kinsale her father pensioned out from the British Army retired complaining, she, Barbara silhouetted by the light of the exposed tubes in the gramophone, said nothing, I said nothing grateful the silence her fingers

Laughter in the hall. A thud against the door. I am not in. During the day no pissing in the sink. The bathroom was across the hall. Never really sure which word to use: toilet, bathroom, men’s room, the shit house. Vance Packard was to blame for it because of The Status Seekers. Words give away class. In the whatever, a bathtub the size of an Irish coffin, wide at the top, narrow at the bottom, and next to it a chrome heated towel rack.

Another day when the hint of snow on the ground, now just a reminder of exactly how long the winter holds on to Dublin, I had gotten off the bus in Rathmines and was walking up the road toward the Stella Cinema when seen stopped in the traffic a hearse carrying a polished tan coffin. Six o’clock on a dark late afternoon, early night, a time rushing from/to, turned away from the hearse and, if I could have . . . to make the impact stronger: thrown into a pub and ordered a whiskey. Had a second and a bottle of Harp; finished, back on the street and just another night to get through. The sides of the coffin squeezing his shoulders—the large hands of the uncle just back from Korea grabbing my arms: he’s getting to be a big boy all right, yes, he is that.

Will you come in?

Be done with it. This is all so dumb. The past is fucking with the past in the grave and can only drag you down. Sounds in the kitchen.

Would you like a cuppa tea?

She is out of her shoes. She must be cold.

Yes, no milk.

The dishes rattle.

Has the fire come on good?

Yes. It’s warm.

Over the fireplace is a picture of a girl standing on a flat slab of stone wearing a wide floppy hat. To the right in the corner, a bookcase of tattered school texts, magazines from Denmark—Barbara’s brother was engaged to a girl from Denmark—and England, books by Hemingway, orange Penguins, and Françoise Sagan; across the room a sofa with a broken-down armrest, across it a shiny black raincoat with blue denim collar.

Just like my father, or your Uncle Jimmy, my mother would say and I’ve forgotten what it was I had done to get her to say it. Those activities of men which women are always putting up with.

You okay in there?

Sure.

Can you hurry up, I’ve got to go.

That’s what I’m doing.

Footsteps go away, come back.

Please.

The person is small and wide. He doesn’t say thanks. Not expecting or doing so myself, back in the room greeted now by sun. That’s all I need.

Barbara brings in the tea tray: two cups, a kettle with repaired handle, a sugar bowl, two tea spoons, a small cup of milk.

Sip at the tea. She sorts through the records. Dusts one off with the sweater she is wearing.

I’m tired of just hanging around

I’m going to get married and settle down

And this sporting life is going to be

the death of me.

He whines so, I say.

He doesn’t. He’s a good friend of my brother.

That’s what you like about him?

No.

She changes the record. The Rolling Stones. Under the Boardwalk.

The third bottle of beer is warm and glowing blonde in the sun. Next to the typewriter is To Leave Before Dawn by Julian Green. I had started to write a letter to Green on the blank back page of the book, sitting last night in a corner seat in the Bailey, gone there to get away from the crowd in Grogan’s. Maybe I should write it out quickly, go over to Paris and hand it to him.

Now, with back to the Green, yes, I know the pun, looking at the scrawled writing: I told you, I’d only write when I had something important to say. Importance has ambushed me in Dublin. You are an old man and I am a young man.

We talked only one hour—the distortions and eccentricities of hurried conversation. I write to you only because maybe you can detect in my ignorance a certain innocence in hope, a desire to be happy. I write to you, now to ask . . .

I met Green in Paris in January . . . we talked for one hour. How had he come to write The Dark Journey, a book I could only read a chapter at a sitting. Malcolm Lowry took it with him on his last journey to Mexico. I do not have to read my books, Green said. Had he met Joyce in Paris? I was twenty-seven. My first book had just been published. It was before the war, the last war, a friend invited me to a party. James Joyce was there. He was what in French is called Le Grand Seigneur. He had perfect manners and seemed from a different century. He told me his children had fallen upon my book. Sadly I have not read it, he said. My days for reading are over.

On Grafton Street, that Spring, I turned and walked away

In the mountains of northern Bulgaria, I told Green, I met my wife’s grandmother, she is a large ball of black wool out of which dance two blue eyes about a single tooth. Her son said she is only eighty-six. Julian Green said she must be happy. She had seen much. It was good to have seen much, happiness is a mystery like God.

Green is a convert to Catholicism so I told him I had been an altar boy when I was young. How I envy you, Green said, I did not have the chance, I converted too late.

He asks me to write out my name so he will not misspell it as he inscribed The Other One. I had been reading it in Virginia, I tell him, knowing part of his family came from Virginia, reading it when I received the call that my father had died in Saugerties, in a parking lot. We are never prepared, Green says, never prepared but we try to be and we try to be, forgive me for repeating that I was at the university in Virginia after the war, mathematics defeated me so I came back to France, one never knows.

I took her hand and felt the veins against the bone. Felt the dry chill.

Barbara says nothing. She takes my cup and carries it to the kitchen. I heard the sounds of it being washed. Met her in the hall. The kitchen light was off. A black figure against the gray. Her lips high. She bent and met me on the tips of my toes, kissed. Walked back to the room. Sat on the floor. Her head lay in the crook of my arm. Traced the outline of her face.

So, I have left the room, my room, and walking down the flights of stairs as the ceiling gets higher and the plasterwork more elaborate while the staircase gets wider, carpet thicker and the brass rods holding it in place, brightly polished.

It looks to be clearing, the girl said, taking the key at the front desk.

It does.

A pity about the parade, she said.

Did anything happen?

Thank God, no, wasn’t it awful.

Yes. But you were saying.

The weather. All that planning and all those people coming all that way.

That’s the way it goes.

I suppose, but at least no one was killed, like a bit ago.

Embraced her with all the passion of the word embrace. Hands on her breasts. Against the boy chest—I think—for the length of her body; against the pelvis, along the legs under the denim skirt. She wouldn’t open her eyes. She grasped at me. The sticky warm flesh and then her face like a painting in a . . .

Walked toward Newman House but before getting there crossed the street and entered the Green. Antonioni had painted the trees of a park in London to get the exact shade of brown and green he wanted for Blow-Up.

In the kitchen of Newman House, a dozen large fish had been lying on the floor waiting to be hacked up for Friday lunch. The cooks and the helpers moved about the room dressed in soiled white uniforms. Blue-jacketed waiters rushed in and out. The Green was filling up with people walking up a thirst. The head of Mangan on its pillar. Crossed over the bridge Ruth used in her search for that flower containing the bottle of shampoo. Back and forth in front of the pond walked the duck counters.

A swan was out in the middle of the pond with an arrow in its neck. Kids must have done it. It was just a ratty-looking swan in the middle of the pond with an arrow through its neck. Cupid had missed a couple fucking in the bushes. Leaving the Green by way of the South African gate.

a drafty corridor.

In time I lead her out to the hall; am led to the other room. I push off my shoes. I watch as she rolls down her stockings. Let me help you. Undress her in the time she undresses me.

On the bed: chest to chest. Under the blanket, goose-bumped. Her long fingers guide me away from her belly button.

Guide me.

Assertion ends in passage. Eyes shut closed. Joined lips. Pull away drooling on her leg. Her fingers across my back. I am shaking. She guides me again. Retracted. Shaking. My hands cold. My hand over the stiff curls of hair, there. My hands feel waxy. Rub her breasts.

Jelly on the bone

Walked up Grafton Street . . . or down . . . or up. No matter, going in the direction of Trinity but made a quick turn at the first lane, into Neary’s by the back door.

Holding on in life is a matter of habit, sitting the wall to back, a bottle of cider at the table in front, the boy having poured before the chance to tell him, I’d pour it myself. They always dumped the cider into the bottle (a couple of cubes of ice, please) destroying the carbonation—but said to release the flavor though cider was drunk in the morning for the bubbles.

A satisfying burp and the day was off to a good start.

So! The lads were polishing the large brass lamps at either end of the bar. Neary’s is a theatrical pub. Behan’s parents were in there years before drinking up the money that came to them as gift from . . .

Susan had liked Neary’s and when the downstairs got crowded we would go upstairs and order Bloody Marys.

This is cheaper than going to New York, Dickie would say.

The only way I’ll ever go, Susan would reply.

Pessimistic as usual.

No, for a change I’m being reasonable which is worse, I know.

Dickie was in love with Susan and Susan was never in love with men who were in love with her. I went to the Trinity Ball with Susan and Dickie went with a woman who was in the Royal Shakespeare Company. He was in love with her and she was not in love with Dickie so when she went back to England, Dickie was in love with Susan. I was never in love with Susan, not even for a moment because that would ruin, as I thought, a more interesting, what I called, a relationship, to be consciously ironic.

Reading the salmon-colored pages of the Financial Times was a way of being elsewhere. Susan and Dickie were said to be back in England. No goodbyes. Since it was a holiday, a second bottle of cider.

At the Trinity Ball, Ian Whitcomb sang Nervous in a tent erected next to the library reading room, years before, he had gone to Trinity and sang in the beat clubs down by the river. A French writer is said to have written with different colored pencils to mark the shifts of time, but the cost of such reproduction, and even knowing it.

Bring on the violins for the poor but honest, said the bartender back in Wisconsin when he found out I had heard Ian Whitcomb—the bartender with the green hair for St. Patrick’s Day—and breaking out the Jamison instead of the peppermint schnapps but here I am in the routine of a cider in Neary’s and soon enough over to Grogan’s for a bottle of Carlsberg followed by a pint of stout.

A cold one for Mr. T., Tommy said, and as he will say, sitting that first week in Dublin . . . all of that comes later, though all of that, THAT year in Dublin . . .

An Englishman is ordering a whiskey, Scotch please. He has a large white moustache, yellowed at the corners. His eyes are blue and watery. He looks in my direction and I disappear. I look back at him. He does not turn away. He takes a sip of his whiskey, puts the glass back on top of the table in the exact spot where it had been placed. He picks up the Daily Mail. He takes another sip of whiskey. He does not look in my direction again.

She lived in Rathgar.

We left and walked along the rain night sharpening streets. Her hand was cold. The fingers long and bony under the skin; her blue-green eyes were set in the narrow face between two curls of dark hair.

Along through the side streets to Rathmines Road. Modern faces gashed into Georgian forms. The chips were too hot. Teeth stinging hot mush inside. We shared a bottle of Coke. Walked as if toward the mountains

And the photographs in the Irish Times of Anglo-Irish couples marrying to carry on the fair skin, frail bodies, and ignorant as shit, man, Joe (for Stalin) was telling me in McDaids. They are that. As stupid as your political leaders in America who get described as simple but honest and straightforward. They always know who to put the knife in. I’m not having any of your American romanticism about a class of shit-smelling lumps who only know the difference between one end of the horse and the other because they got stuck on one before they were born.

Joe could be right. But he was sitting in McDaids or in Grogan’s; had been to America and come back. There must have been something wrong with him. Or me? This morning in Neary’s. Parents dead. Wife in New York. Sister in New York. Money in my pocket. Not a care in the world.

I have to be getting