Leila
Page 44
Rashers signed as a witness. Under both real and assumed names. Bowing, clicking his heels and chuckling as he nearly skipped out of the library. And later one actually waltzed after him along the hall. As if borne by the sweetest of balmy breezes. Light footed to a minuet. Reciting a prayer. Of utter thanksgiving singing from one’s lips. I actually embraced old Sexton. Dear man. Who could use his finger like a crowbar and his hand to comfort a tiny wren. And he let drop more than one tear or two out of his eye.
‘Ah and don’t think sir, I was unaware of your little Leila. And that I didn’t know you were sweet on her. As we all were in our own ways. Too good for him. But who are we to go charging to slay him who has stolen away our women. But she’ll make a great aristocrat for Ireland. And when the time comes she’ll be the most beautiful duchess in England. And leave her ghost here to haunt us, she will too.’
Darcy Dancer heading for the dining room. The damp cold chill. The loud click one’s heels make. Past this painting Leila admired, with her so soft black green eyes. A small figure flits across, way down at the end of the hall. A boy’s head peeks back out and now disappears. Having a look at me. Must be our cellar stowaway. To be soon trained up to be our new assistant butler. To trip over trays down the stairs as our top butler does. If our top butler doesn’t strangle himself or depart. Take with me this precious piece of paper deep in my barrister’s pocket. Before someone kindles it into fire. Cable Lois. Bring palette, paints and canvas. Paint my portrait to hang and haunt this house. And there beyond this door he enthrones, my confidential surprise, tinged red hair bent over a vast breakfast. All the mahoganies and silver sauceboats shimmering in the red blazing firelight. Crooks departing in the pantry door. The scent of Irish whisky. And that hand. Gripped around a glass of that distillate.
‘Dear Darcy may we avenge our slights. Kick up dust again in the face of our begrudgers.’
‘My god Rashers. I really did believe you popped into the Mediterranean.’
‘Well yes I did, in a manner of speaking. Pop. To the top of my shoelaces perhaps. And let us sincerely hope such rumour persists in making itself sufficiently felt for one’s creditors to believe before I make my triumphant reappearance in Dublin with the wherewithal to meet my unpleasantly accumulated commitments. Ah, but what a wonderful occasion today is for you my dear boy. You see. Ancient lineage and lands do, if one but ferrets about, produce their welcome surprises. But as for me, I really did fling myself off the cliffs of Monaco. Executed what I thought was quite a decent dive. But in the dark I did not realize I was already on the beach and the water I chose was only ankle deep. I was however really ready to drown like a man. At dawn I was stranded at the cliff bottom. Listening to myself release a series of those terrible farts one suffers on the Continent. And lo and behold a pair of insistent fishermen whose French I simply could not make head nor tail of, and who I simply could not convince to throw me back in, returned me with them into the harbour and safe to shore. As you can see my usually impeccable garments are in a poor state. My dear Darcy, you won’t mind if I stay a wee bit. I simply can’t face the catacombs again. Or trying to earn my keep from the idle likes of Sheena the whore. Catch my breath so to speak.’
‘But not I hope, to pawn my silver.’
‘Nae dear boy nae. I am forever chastened. I want you to know you can rely on me as your prudhomme. In this your moment of riches. I shall be at your elbow beck and call. You see, the fact of the matter is, like you, I too had a beautiful mother. Who did get up to pranks while my father was away at his wars. Who knows, who I really am. I may indeed be the true Earl of Ronald Ronald, and not an impostor. In this world taught to bow to privilege, my betrothed wants us to assume such a title. I mean it could be merely a matter of a few well placed fivers, and a little tampering flourish of the pen in the various source books of nobility. My dear lady is to give me her answer soon as to our wedding day, accompanied by her accountants’ final approval to the financing of my string of betting shops. Riches galore shall not I assure you change me as they clearly have not changed you. And I pray that I shall make my betrothed happy. Of course I want for you to be my best man. And I wonder dear boy, could you possibly see your way clear to tiding me over through what is merely a tiny patch of enforced prudentiality.’
Befallen
This present
Self respecting
Man of honour
27
One left Rashers contentedly reading his chuckling way through the volumes of Punch in the library. Crooks, before departing for the funeral, administering a bottle of champagne found hidden in a turf basket, while the new boy butler bowed and pulled his forelock, miraculously succeeding in lighting Rashers’ cigar.
In a pair of boots and sou’wester, Sexton drove me in the victoria to Pete’s and Willie’s cottages. Great grey clouds rolling in from the west. One coffin following the other, borne on the men’s shoulders on the long trek. The rain beginning to fall. The wind rising. The grieving household collected under the ancient tall yew tree in the cemetery. The last inches of the deep grave still being dug. The wet now slashing down in sheets across our faces. The vine and holly leaves rustling on the walls of the church ruin. Over the ancient names and dates, the gravestones dripping dark grey. Luke and Thomas under their battered brown hats, throwing shovels aside and jumping up out of the hole.
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph anoint us in our hour of need.’
The need being boats instead of burial boxes. For as you might know, the digging men would hit a spring. Water pouring up as hard now from the bottom of the grave as it was pouring down from out of the sky above. Both coffins as they were lowered, bobbing up. Floating one on top of the other. Feet pushing and pressing them back down. Like trying to put a cork in a dyke. Shovels hurrying into the clay, heaving it on. Sexton advising me by my elbow, as we lowered a boulder and pushed a lumpful of sodden soil thumping on the elm box.
‘Ah Master Darcy, not only did old Pete and Willie die dancing, they be drowned as well.’
The muddy grave at last heaped high with sods. The funeral over. Gate squeaking shut. Watch the mourners disperse. They go, their dark backs, black on the green meadow. Fading away in the lashing gale and rain. As I go a bachelor to circle back out through the woods. Along by the lake. To smell the pine. The moist rot under the ancient old oaks. The haunted bridge. No lady in her veils there now. My mother’s jewels. Saved from my father’s squandering. Lets me stay here. To live. And maybe even die. Near the mosses and ferns. To listen again to Sexton. In his potting shed.
‘Ah Master Darcy, let me tell you, the winter long weight of the dark clouds would break a man. To keep you there in the big house behind your shutters. Incarcerated so that you wouldn’t know the sun had come out. And if you did, you’d be blinded by it and scurry back into the darkness.’
Now I turn off this path. From where the overgrown rhododendrons make so much dark under their leaves. Climb over the fallen beech. Carved into the bark. It says. Kill Kildare. Step upon the turf mould, and push through the briars. Towards this boathouse. I alone. Just another inmate of another great house. Whose roof beams may crack over the front hall. While the pasha and lord of the manor cowers within. Trembling in the delirium traumas. No doctor, parson or loving hand to come near me. Left to my own devices. A whisky bottle on the table for breakfast. To help fade into the oblivion. Drowning both sorrows and fortune. And I come here. The old row boat sunk deeper in the water. A rat scurries. Climb these stairs. Up to this room. Push open the door. The dusty floor. Blown with leaves. Rain spattering the window. The cobwebs and her wicker chair. Where she sat. In all her sins. Hear her voice. Your child torn out of your arms. Such sorrow never grows cold nor old. Only makes great long years for every tear to dry.
Darcy Dancer walking to the window. Wiping away the dust on the glass pane. Swans flying in to land on the lake. Floating down white from the skies through the billowing sheets of rain. That will leak from the dining room ceiling toni
ght. Into my soup. Call Crooks to place a suitable piece of Meissen to catch the drops. Put a sauceboat upside down on Rashers’ head to keep his hair dry. And that sound. Is cheering. Chirps of song. Defiant birds sheltering in under the boathouse eaves. Their anthems sung that spring will come. Bring sap alive in the whitethorn and briar. A horn. Blows. The hunt. Cheer on hounds, pounding after sly boots fox. They must be beyond up over the big meadow hill. The likes of Baptista and the Colonel. While I’m here with you. Dearest friend. Tread with me please, over the loamy dark ground. Upon which my cheek, which never touched yours, will rot in death. Nothing trivial did you ever say. And from anything your voice could ever speak, I would never run. Not out of this room. Not away. I would but wait. And will. For you to find me here near this thick bough of this fallen ancient beech. Alone in a lonely heart. Hush. The dark. On the shores of the lake. A star speaks. Go glad at death, sad at life. Through any years. While the sky is smoky grey with rain. And green and yellow with rainbows. And purple.
Like the ribbon
You wore
In your hair
About the Author
J. P. Donleavy was born in New York City in 1926 and educated there and at Trinity College, Dublin. His works include the novels The Ginger Man, A Singular Man, The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B, The Onion Eaters, A Fairy Tale of New York, The Destinies of Darcy Dancer, Gentleman and Schultz; a book of short pieces, Meet My Maker the Mad Molecule; a novella, The Saddest Summer of Samuel S; six plays, The Ginger Man, Fairy Tales of New York, A Singular Man, The Saddest Summer of Samuel S (these have been published in Penguins under the title The Plays of J. P. Donleavy), The Venereal in the Vernacular and The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B; and The Unexpurgated Code: A Complete Manual of Survival and Manners, with drawings by the author. All of these are published in Penguins. He is the author of De Alfonce Tennis: The Superlative Game of Eccentric Champions, Its History, Accoutrements, Rules, Conduct and Regimen; J. P. Donleavy’s Ireland: In All Her Sins and In Some of Her Graces and Are You Listening Rabbi Löw.
Copyright
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the publisher.
First published 1983 by
Allen Lane
This digital edition published 2013 by
The Lilliput Press
Copyright © J.P. Donleavy
ISBN print edition 0–14–005010–8
ISBN eBook 978 1 84351 586 9
The Lilliput Press receives financial assistance from
An Chomhairle Ealaion / The Arts Council of Ireland
J. P. Donleavy
THE DESTINIES OF DARCY DANCER, GENTLEMAN
His future is disastrous, his present indecent, his past divine. He is Darcy Dancer, scion of the gentry, youthful squire of Andromeda Park and rider of horses and housekeepers to hounds and to bed. His adventures as a vagabond across country and in bohemian Dublin in search of the lost glories of his youth are ferociously comic, hilariously sad.
And what else did you expect from the great Donleavy? This is one of his finest novels, brim-full of zest and life.
‘Truly and uniquely life-affirming … an almost magically potent blend of the vulgar and the elegant, the grotesque and the lyrical, the archaic and the lewdly up-to-date’ – Listener
‘Tender, sexy and tough by turn, it is always easy, conversational, constantly ruffled by surprises … [it] is one of his most ambitious Odysseys and his most enjoyable yet’ – Vogue
SCHULTZ
Schultz, Sigmund Franz, impresario producer of flops in London’s West End.
A walking or sometimes chauffeur-driven and often boot-propelled disaster area. Which disasters are often indulgently plotted by his aristocratic partners His Amazing Grace Basil Nectarine and the languid Binky. But more frequently caused by Schultz’s desperate need to seduce as many beautiful women as is humanly possible and then more.
Meanwhile fighting furiously in the battle for bachelordom and in unquenchable quest for the soothing balm of box-office riches embellished by a beautiful woman who will sock him in the spiritual solar plexus …
‘Brilliant verve and pace’ – Observer
‘Hilarious … Donleavy at his bawdy best’ – Daily Express
THE ONION EATERS
On a grey cold day in a damp gloomy city Clayton Claw Cleaver Clementine of The Three Glands descended directly in the male line with this medical rarity intact sets off westwards to take up residence in the vast haunted edifice of Charnel Castle … Madness triumphs over love, beasts over man, chaos over reason and for the moment life over death.
A FAIRY TALE OF NEW YORK
‘Cornelius Christian is J. P. Donleavy’s new hero, person, protagonist, figure-head, creature. He struts and weaves and shrugs and punches his way through the pages of A Fairy Tale of New York. I think he is Mr Donleavy’s best piece of man-making since Sebastian Dangerfield in the good old ginger days. The book is fast, funny and addictive’ – Robert Nye in the Guardian
THE SADDEST SUMMER OF SAMUEL S
In this short novel J. P. Donleavy writes of the tiny battle waged for survival of the spirit in bedrooms and hearts the world over. Samuel S, hero of lonely principles, holds out in his bereft lighthouse in Vienna. Abigail, an American college girl on the prowl in Europe, drawn by the beacon of this strange outpost, seeks in her own emancipation the seduction of Samuel S, the last of the world’s solemn failures.
MEET MY MAKER THE MAD MOLECULE
‘In this book of short pieces Donleavy has given us the lyric poems to go with his epics. They are almost all elegies – sad songs of decayed hope, bitter little jitter-buggings of an exasperated soul, with barracuda bites of lacerating humour to bring blood-red into the grey of fate …’ – Newsweek
A SINGULAR MAN
His giant mausoleum abuilding, George Smith, the mysterious man of money, lives in a world rampant with mischief, of chiselers and cheats. Having side-stepped slowly away down the little alleys of success he tiptoes through a luxurious, lonely life between a dictatorial Negress housekeeper and two secretaries, one of whom, Sally Tomson, the gay wild and willing beauty, he falls in love with.
THE BEASTLY BEATITUDES OF BALTHAZAR B
Balthazar B is the world’s last shy elegant young man. Born to riches in Paris and raised in lonely splendour, his life spreads to prep school in England. There he is befriended by the world’s most beatific sinner, the noble little Beefy. And in holidays spent in Paris Balthazar B falls upon love and sorrow with his beautiful governess Miss Hortense, to lose her and live out lonely London years, waking finally to the green sunshine of Ireland and Trinity College. Here, reunited with Beefy, he is swept away to the high and low life of Dublin until their university careers are brought to an inglorious end. They return to London, there to take their tricky steps into marriage, Beefy in search of riches, Balthazar in search of love.
THE GINGER MAN
‘In the person of The Ginger Man, Sebastian Dangerfield, Donleavy created one of the most outrageous scoundrels in contemporary fiction, a whoring, boozing young wastrel who sponges off his friends and beats his wife and girl friends. Donleavy then turns the moral universe on its head by making the reader love Dangerfield for his killer instinct, flamboyant charm, wit, flashing generosity – and above all for his wild, fierce, two-handed grab for every precious second of life’ – Time Magazine
THE UNEXPURGATED CODE
A Complete Manual of Survival and Manners
No stone is left unturned in this ruthless guide to social etiquette, no left turn unstoned: even the most shameful and embarrassing occasions can be used to your advantage. Whether you’re puzzled by the meaning of life or merely lacking the basic human decencies, rest assured that you can reach the top, Socially Registered or not. For Donleavy shows you how!
The Plays
THE GINGER MAN
FAIRY TALES OF NEW YORK
A SINGULAR
MAN
THE SADDEST SUMMER OF SAMUEL S