The Holy City (15 page)

Although, obviously, of course, for entirely different reasons.

No, I'm a nouveau Eggman in this clean new century, this world of white wax — and which is exactly the way I desire it. In order that I might continue to remain anonymous, to abide in a world of weightless, floating orbs — pathologically incurious as to the welfare of one's fellows. As we pass the wine across the table once more — unmoved, detached, attired in our shapeless, brightly coloured loungewear, our smooth round faces free of any blemish, with no end to the spoils now placed at our disposal. For all the world indeed, like rows of eggs neatly stacked in trays. Just as I used to
arrange them when bringing them to the Five Star, one by one in their cardboard trays. For the most part dutiful and mute, perfectly formed little objects: until sometimes, for no reason, you'd get it into your head that, somehow, something was inexpressibly wrong — seeing them then as something quite different. Terrified mouths, frozen silence, crying out from the limbo's maw.

‘They Are the Eggmen!' Mike always starts to strum as soon as he sees me arriving into Mood Indigo. Then, after that, ‘No Milk Today' by Herman's Hermits, that hopelessly buoyant almost ludicrously happy melody which seems to encapsulate the very essence of the sixties. That cheeky, optimistic bubblegum whimsy which seems the definitive mood of that time.

Although, sometimes, to be honest — whenever I'm feeling under the weather — I could get along just as well without Mike and his happy tunes. However, I'd never dream of saying that to him. He doesn't need to know things like that. Or the reason I sometimes shiver whenever he plays ‘No Milk Today' is that it happened to be playing on Evelyn's transistor that day when I made my way to meet Marcus, at their little greenhouse, the Holy of Holies. Which is where I'd hoped to find him — in order to clear up our little misunderstanding, put it behind us once and for all.

I had been hiding behind some bushes watching Evelyn. She was busying herself now, having been praying for
some time. When I decided at last to make an appearance, she didn't seem at all taken aback — just carried on arranging some flowers. My throat was dry and hoarse as I said:

— I'm sorry, Evelyn: I thought I might find him here — Marcus Otoyo, I mean.

— No, she replied, I'm afraid he won't be coming out here any more. He said if I want I can throw his things away.

— Throw them away?

— His posters and that. His pictures. All his various bits and pieces.

She seemed sad when she was saying it.

There was a framed oleograph of Blessed Martin de Porres mounted directly above her head, with his two hands joined as he lifted his curly ebony head up to heaven. Just for a moment, it raised my spirits. When I thought of just how extraordinary his performance had been in the play,
The Soul's Ascent.
But then I looked at Evelyn and, dismayed, instantly appreciated the situation: in fact, her downcast eyes told their own story. I knew now if I waited I would only be wasting my time.

He wasn't coming. He wouldn't
be
coming.

Which I ought to have known. The sharp exchange which had taken place between us only an hour or two before ought to have taught me that much.

— He's too grown-up now, she told me ruefully, before looking away. He says it's just for kids, all this. It's over. Whether it's sad or not, it's over. It's done.

*   *   *

After she left, an all-pervasive gloominess began to descend on me and my limbs assumed the most terrible weight. Tucking Robert Louis Stevenson's golden treasury under my arm, as I took a final look at the greenhouse before departing myself.

All the way back into town I found myself utterly distraught and all I could think of were lines from mythology, commingling with those from the golden treasury: No, we cannot abide in the city of fallen hope. There will be no peace in that place where hope and love have been seen to die. It is a city unholy, and deserves to be destroyed, its gates torn down, its temples razed.

It was a difficult and emotional time, and who in their right mind would want to revisit it? One is undoubtedly infinitely better off, in these, the white-world days. Where one is sustained by systematic, clean-washed
numbness.
A platinum anaesthesia.

Not only reassuring — but also, as I have found recently, so
convenient.
I mean — consider that urchin to whom, only recently, I administered the beating — richly deserved, might I say. Once upon a time it would have been considered impossible, indeed hopelessly so, certainly in a small country like Ireland, for such an incident to occur with no significant investigation taking place, indeed with no seeming consequences at all ensuing. Which, as I say happily for me, proved to be the case. Why, the brat probably hadn't even bothered to report the incident. Fearful, no doubt, that he might end up like that other little fool I once read about
in the paper, another little Sambo who had been brought back to an apartment — only to find himself eaten by his host, the cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer. Returned there, can you believe it, by the very same policemen to whom he had appealed for assistance.

Yes, like everywhere else, from New York to LA, London to Dubai, it seems rootless strays just come and go now with the weather, as do refugees of all shapes and hues, littering the Plaza like so much human junk. And I cannot help but think that Henry Thornton would have approved: of its essential indifference to emotion but also its judicious self-control and order — empirical, non-spiritual, with all unessential emotion systematically siphoned.

— Incurious, he'd have smiled, yes, an impartiality to which I give my blessing. For it seems to me that in the current times the
ancien
code has been rehabilitated. The mystery of Protestantism. The need for order never dies, and so they must deliver themselves into the infinitely more capable hands of their superiors. Who, by birth and instinct, are obviously sovereign, autonomous and self-contained.

The best thing I could have done, I suppose, in the circumstances, would have been to finish with Dolores — and to do it resolutely: honestly and cleanly. But I couldn't, for the life of me, seem to find the opportunity. In spite of our disagreement, she continued calling out to the Nook. I suppose the reason for my hesitancy being the fact that I liked her so much — maybe in my own way even loved Dolly Mixtures. One thing for sure, I will never forget what her
parting words were to me, that so sad day when we met for the final time.

When I ran into her by accident in one of the aisles of the Five Star.

— You're devious, do you know that? she said to me coldly. I realise now that I haven't known the first thing about you.

That was what she had said —
to me
! When the truth was, in fact — as far as I was concerned — that it was the other way round.

Like all excursions to Budin's Holiday Camps in those more unassuming times, that day in 1969 bore all the prospects of being something close to a visit to some kind of replica heaven. Which was always, of course, how it had seemed in the brochures: as a kind of miniature paradise, full of bold and brash, startling wonders. A pocket universe glimpsed through a knothole.
Our true intent is all for your delight,
read the greeting arched regally above the camp entrance, flickering in pink and blue soft neon. You wanted to cry out, and proclaim the uniqueness of its marvels to all. But you couldn't — you just gasped. And continued feasting your eyes upon the giant white cockerels strutting by the side of the boating lake and the glass-walled lounge that was lit in bright orange, as zebra-striped fish looped sleepily behind glass panels. With the monorail swooping and diving and the massive plants in acid greens adorning its shiny-squared mezzanines and terraces, what met our eyes might well have been a vision of the future.

But the highlight of that visit, I'm afraid, proved to be none of these particular phantasmagoric delights, or the long hours spent on the dodgems and fairground rides. But that dreadful night when I found myself falling out into the night, after I'd quit the Beachcomber Bar, where Dolly had been working her way through her repertoire, enthralling the audience as per usual. It was an appalling business, the Beachcomber Affair, not, as I liked to joke to myself about it later, like some amusingly light-hearted episode from the television series
The Man from Uncle
but an occurrence which succeeded in debilitating me to a truly distressing degree and for which, even yet, I find it difficult to find the words. No, the Beachcomber Affair was anything but amusing, or light-hearted either. In that the affair which took place that night in Butlin's of Mosney — it was just about as real as it could get.

The Beachcomber Bar, with its clam-shell stage and papier mâché models of Easter Island stone faces, its palm fronds and fish nets, rattan ceiling, Polynesian carvings and wicker chairs, was packed to the door with enthusiastic dancers — practically every night of the week.

The Vince Broy Band were performing on this occasion — hilariously, from the audience's point of view, attired in grass skirts and garlands of flowers. Playing, as their programme had promised, ‘all the summer's fantabulous hits'.

Ever since my ‘Catholic' emotional outburst, I had become insecure — quite edgy now, in Dolly's company. And, as I sat there nursing my coloured ‘Rainbow Bird'
cocktail, staring, preoccupied, at the cornucopia of thick coloured glass bottles suspended from the ceiling, I could not prevent myself from perspiring heavily. And rerunning all of her stories in my mind. All of the ‘little encounters' she'd told me about, regarding Marcus. The
News of the World. Hospitals' Requests. Dear Frankie.
Marcus Minor, I'd think, and, simultaneously: The holy place: love's ancient city.

I was at my wits' end, frankly. Thinking of him laughing as he reached out to touch her hand, saying:

— Ariadne, my precious. I, Marcus Otoyo, upon this orphan earth, am and shall remain your sole appointed envoy.

Quite cleverly, even cruelly, it began to appear to me now, as I sat there trying to prevent the drink from quivering in my hand, dressed up as nothing of any greater importance than whimsy:

— Dear Frankie, my boyfriend is a very puritanical man. He will not permit me to wear tights or jewellery.

Each tale delivered as if it were of no import: frivolous, disposable gossip — nothing more, nothing less. But the more I turned them all over in my mind — she had only just started up ‘Mr Wonderful' now — the more I became convinced of exactly what it meant.

Why, Dolly, I inwardly pleaded, why Marcus?

Why indeed. As I looked down to see that two of my fingers were, in fact, bleeding and that the stem of the glass had broken off in my hand.

*   *   *

To this day I cannot determine for sure exactly what length of time had elapsed after I had removed myself from the bar that night, quite intoxicated, I regret to say. I waited for quite some time but now there were only a few minutes remaining before a shocking and truly traumatic sight was to meet my eyes. An encounter which, quite irrevocably, was on the verge of changing everything in my life. But which, in a way, I had been half expecting.

I heard the murmur of voices first: muffled, furtive — not that that was any surprise. But then, quite startlingly — a sudden peal of girlish laughter. As I approached chalet number II, the rickety clapboard cabin where Marcus was supposed to have been residing alone. That was the arrangement. The one condition that of course — laughably, in retrospect — had been ‘laid down' by his mother.

After hearing a ripple of the laughter again, I mustered what pitiful reserves of courage remained to me, galvanising myself to peer through the grubby panes of the chalet window, a tautness gathering in my chest that grew close to unbearable. But not even my worst imaginings could have prepared me for what was about to transpire.

Marcus Otoyo was standing in semi-darkness now, bathed in the light of the moon, splendidly attired in a neatly pressed suit. As Dolores ran her fingers along his thin tie, he might have been an absurdly youthful and quite urbane city gentleman. The black suit was neatly cut with narrow, sharp lapels.

Peggy Lee was playing very softly in the background as Dolores McCausland continued staring into his eyes, pressing her lips to his ear as she whispered:

— Tell me, Mr Wonderful. Do you love me?

Then she began, quite methodically, tenderly and patiently, to remove each item of his clothing — it was abundantly clear that this was not the first time that had happened — placing tiny pecks, soft kisses on his chest.

I thrust my knuckles against my clenched teeth and cried out:

— Vile betrayer! Treacherous Judas! Love's holy city, it falls now into sand!

That's all I can remember for the remainder of that night. Apart from the door of my chalet opening — some two hours later — and Dolly, with a fur coat draped over her frosted-pink Dreamland nightdress, whispering:

— Are you awake, Mr Wonderful? I hope you were expecting me to pay you a visit, were you?

I subsequently began studiously avoiding Wattles Lane. His mother would often stop me in the Five Star or on the street to enquire as to whether there was a problem of some kind. I said why of course not, of course there isn't a problem. As she said but our eggs and you've not delivered any buttermilk, not for at least three weeks now past. No, I said, I'm up to my eyes. The supermarkets can't get enough these days, what with the way business is going in the town.

But I could tell the excuse wasn't very convincing.

— You look pale, she said. If you like I can send Marcus out to get it. Out to the farm, I mean.

My response was foolish, falsetto, practically:

— No! Do you hear me!

I routinely wept now — uncontrollably, to be honest, entirely unmanned by wounded pride and baffled desire.