J.P. Donleavy

by J. P. Donleavy

  But maybe imagine. As I’m always doing. That this umpire is a dignified retired Air Marshal of the Royal Air Force, descended from a damn good family. And was once a Battle of Britain fighter pilot, who having shot down eleven Messerschmitts and who normally calmly controlled, and forever imperturbable, now slowly untangles himself from his judging equipment and wires. Descending from his high chair to stage centre of this velvet greenery. His microphone still held firmly in his hand. The knob of which is now raised. And laid suddenly resoundingly down upon the head of this offending player. Whose naughty finger had first gestured in such an unheavenly direction. And whose noggin now has just been bopped with a bang heard around the world.

  With a breeze cooling the moist hair on the back of my head, I go up the concrete stairs and shove along a hard green bench. A smiling eminently diplomatic elegantly tailored and spoken gentleman, the Press Officer, has given me at my timorous request a green edged ticket to the Centre Court Press Box. Indecipherable squiggles in a reporter’s notebook next to mine. The line referees in their olive green blazers and light pea green trousers file in. A lady player nods her serious nod to the ball boy. New born temperately cooled white fuzzy spheres are bounced in her direction. She slowly gathers her poise to serve. To another tanned intent specimen, whose muscles flex crouching and uncrouching the other side of the net. I watch tennis. As if nothing has happened in one’s absence over all these intervening years. And how round now these buttocks how vast now some of these thighs.

  It’s time to meet Laura. Feeling some terror that she might have been bored to tears. Or ended up sitting accidentally on a tack. But no. She smiles. In her queenly radiance approaching out of the swarm of people as I wait across from the order of play and the so many unfamiliar names on the yellow signs. Having scrutinized my wallet, this present revengeful cheapskate is taking her for champagne. Amid the preordained privileges designed to end pushing and shoving for ever. But knowing already somehow she won’t be impressed. And with not a word about tennis, she promptly slams me in the spiritual solar plexus with her thought for today. ‘Ah, J.P., it’s very painful being a man but it’s not all that amount of laughs being a woman. Better on all counts to be a horse.’

  But even here. In all the elegance. And amid the snobberies that have kept it thus. The ordinary world makes itself known. We pass a group of gentlemen fiddling with rods over a blocked sewer, all good naturedly smiling with the ironic indignity of it all. Laura sheepishly and shyly acknowledging a gushing greeting from another socially registered face. Whom she not unkindly accuses of looking for an invitation to Monaco where her yacht is presently purring. Then comes howling and squealing. A brand new player heart throb plunges sidestepping through the crowd chased by an hysterical group of schoolgirls clutching and tearing at his clothes. He eludes them through the pedestrian stream but smiles back over his shoulder a bright smile as pleased as sunshine. This is indeed the golden sport. Gleamingly excruciatingly alive. To make the universe seem nowhere else but here.

  Popping back the strawberries, sipping our champagne. Nearby, a regrettably pompous Englishman informing a visiting Swedish referee, ‘We have here in England our own very nice little language to umpire matches with.’ And one is so sorely tempted to tell him in his smugness that animal loving Britain each year is executing two hundred thousand dogs and three hundred thousand cats. The wine corks pop. A lone pretty American girl in a black straw hat who out of her eyes is staring at something else in her life. Balanced on the back legs of their chairs, a group of shirt sleeved rich barrow boys cavort at their table covered with ice buckets full of empty bottles. One knows by their self contented laughter that not one of them has seen a single tennis ball float by. And it’s time to remind Laura how nice, without a dull husband cramping her style, the luxury of life must be. ‘Ah but, J.P., men may be a necessary nuisance but pursuing pleasure is a rough road to travel as the least deviation from such path becomes such pain.’

  And I await. A sadness, as it always does, to strike me. As the sun and feet are turning pedestrian grass to dust. And drawn by the magic magnet of a famed player’s name. I go to investigate a strange bunker deep down within the bowels of Wimbledon. Where members of the All England Club will surely safely huddle in any nuclear holocaust. A subterranean sanctum which one imagines might be like one under the Old Bailey. Where a player convicted of winning arrives conducted along a secret tunnel. Jailers on guard to keep back the jury of journalists until he climbs up into the dock. Under the bright lights and cameras. The cross examining questions come. And answers respond. ‘Yeah my lobbing was a little off today.’ Listeners listening with the same awe and portent accorded heads of state when pronouncing the fate of nations. Till his protective keeper beckons and the prisoner is taken away. Without a soul asking such player has he read any good, or maybe even obscene, books lately.

  The sun descends. Shadows lengthen an afternoon to evening. Their notebooks filled, whither goeth these gazetteers. They goeth where it says ‘Press Only’. Where wine by the bottle is cheap. Where gambling is strictly banned. They confer in their tennis shorthand. Telling each other what happened at matches where they were not, because they were at the other one. Two Irishmen lash each other with invective. Because one said boo to the other. And the other said boo back. Typewriters drown them in their din. The words of fifty languages go flying to presses around the world. Reporters pause scratching their heads. Tomorrow’s fresh paragraphs are already being born.

  And so, each day variously, nearly the whole of Wimbledon has flown by. The outside courts slowly lonely abandoned. The action peaking in the midst of the packed terraces held by these great tall ivied walls. Ticket prices on the touts’ stock exchange soaring through all previous ceilings. Suddenly alas, without my humbled conscience warning me, I no longer on my low press priority can get to centre court. Or can summon nerve to accost my courteous Press Officer who is anyway somewhere else busily engaged. In newly laundered seersucker, and as all Englishmen at least pretend to do, how does one in this irritating ignominy stay as cool as a cucumber. In the smell of beefburgers at the back gate, I join the bus loads of these centre court rejects who have not slept overnight in a queue.

  A telephone call and Laura rescues me. A taxi, taking me in dignified perfection to an elegant house in St John’s Wood. Under a mulberry tree China tea is silver served with slices of lemon and Fortnum’s Sacher cake. In stately splendour behind white drawn shades on a smooth leather sofa, mine eyes witness these last gladiators smashing acute angled winners in their struggle to triumph in singular glory. A camera zooms in close up on a celebrity spectator. And Laura speaks. ‘J.P., please tell me. What is it that is so objectionable about an actor being acclaimed on the crest of his most recent wave.’ And of course I don’t have a vestige of a clue. But imagine it must have something to do with his overly large smile.

  To watch the player princes and princesses play, the exclusiveness of these finals’ days becomes positively ominous. As the financially aristocratic squeeze out the disadvantaged commoner. Silks and perfumes abound along the centre court’s corridors. Royal seats kept waiting to be filled with regal bottoms. Me retreated above the tip top towering plane trees of this London square. Safe from the shoves of ladies thronging through a swelteringly hot Knightsbridge, fingering and tugging at bargains. Blinds drawn over the swallows zooming by my window. Once more waiting for the tennis to start. Over a late late breakfast, viewing a previous day’s vintage newspaper headlines. ‘Palace Denies Prince Was Caned at Meal’, ‘Five Figure Sum Awaits Old Etonian Tramp’, ‘A1 Capone’s Jockey Beats Off Colonel’s Baronetcy Claim’. And in the personal column, under a daily reassuring quote from the Bible, five grateful souls thank St Jude for favours received.

  And again one watches. A slender arm looking as if it might break, her hand opening like flower petals as she lifts her racquet to serve. Such tableaux upon which memory dwells and awes. While an ace is exquisitely inflicted, a cool fr
esh orange juice is delivered to my own hand. Making one naggingly wonder how high mounts the hotel bill. Suitably mountainous I’m sure. Dare I be, instead of once downtrodden penurious, now the most costly reporter in the history of Wimbledon. Who is not even there. But here. In front of the multicoloured dancing cathode rays. Listening to the literature of tennis. Takes the ball so early. Cross court reply. Forehand approach made on the run. He dines on a feast of winners at the net. And I lie upon this king sized bed, sheets coloured pink, feet stretched in slippers as a blocked return forehand pass makes a winner down the line. And suddenly, the sweat pouring down at match point. With the ball in a loose volley bouncing where it shouldn’t. And this Wimbledon. With hardly a rude disturbance sensation. Is all over. In a blaze of flash bulbs and clapping.

  Now the lurking sadness really comes to dwell. As one waits for evening. And the sweltering afternoon to cool. To go stroll in Hyde Park. Hangdog horses wearily heading home from the bridle paths. All of fashionable London now vanished to the country. The city left to burglars and commoners like me. Laura, worst of all. Gone to Monaco. Not to bedazzle or play with the other idle rich. But to entertain a group of orphans she takes on holiday. Leaving me, as she usually did, with a final thought. ‘Oh dear, J.P., in the brief struggle we call our lives, money has superseded manners in the worst possible way. And I suppose, should it make one weep, one must thank God for waterproof mascara.’

  But the end. The utter end. Is not over yet. There is more. In Rotten Row I pause to rest on a bench. Near the fragrance of roses boomingly blooming. Holding a marvellously reassuring conversation with myself. Answering each question asked without any of my usual evasion. Suddenly a figure looms above my head. A Welsh voice accosts me. An arm points to a statue. ‘Its curvatures are as beautiful as the words of Dylan Thomas.’ And this vagrant gentleman beseats himself. As if a liveried servant of Claridge’s had just brought our glasses of champagne.

  His name is Jones. He was born a bastard in Swansea. And was down the coal mines at fourteen. Leaving him with a crippled finger and a long scar on a thin white leg. He served in the Second World War as a desert rat. He now keeps a green sliver of a bar of soap in one pocket and a comb in another. He speaks with the wisdom of those without hope. Still possessed of his rage, he shakes a fist at the world but then suddenly crumbles into tears. As I hear his words, so many snobberies away from the glamour of Wimbledon. ‘I don’t know who you are, but I’ll tell you one thing, you’re a charming man.’ I reach into my pocket for a one pound coin. And a smile breaks across his weathered face. ‘And I’ll tell you another thing. I bloody well knew you’d finally give me some money.’

  Under the ancient soaring plane trees over the long empty avenues. Darkness descending on the park. And I search for the new moon across the sky. Finding a deck chair to sit in under a great shady tree. Upon the last of all these pleasantly passing London days. In my cleanest coolest seersucker suit. Wondering when tennis players are not playing tennis, upon what do their minds dwell. A breeze blows cool, tinged with a faint smell of scorched grass. Suddenly collar high upon the centre of one’s back I feel something splatteringly land. From a great leafy height, a pigeon has copiously deposited upon me. Whither goeth those racquets and riches at Wimbledon. Ah they goeth. Not as I slink away in my latest ignominy. But with the night sweet scent of lime blossoms in the air.

  1984

  Dublin Horse Show

  With its litter strewn streets and the city still tumbling down in neglect and decay and women’s rights crushing men all over the place and many a man looking for any means of escape, you’d be wondering, is there anything dignified, unmarred and irreproachable left in Ireland. Well come here till I tell you. There is. And it’s the Horse Show. Where the only disharmony might be a mare kicking a passing stallion.

  Now during the whole of this glamorous August week with the city en fête, splendour is all to the eye of the beholder, and the buildings are standing up straight and looking their best in their faintly shabby glory. All through the year you’ll listen to Dubliners wielding their superlatives, that there’s one thing that you mustn’t do and that is to miss the Horse Show. Don’t we then have pouring in international celebrities by the boat and plane load from everywhere, and the very latest fashion in fashionable people. Sure you could pave a carpet to Timbuktu out of the smoked salmon and sail on the champagne all the way to Hong Kong.

  Now exaggeration in all spheres is the name of the game in Ireland. And didn’t I find myself suddenly seeing Hollywood stars or their ghosts in sunglasses there sitting in the shadows of the Shelbourne Hotel’s Horseshoe Bar. And I must confess I immediately myself went spreading the news that there were your actual personages of a major calibre, if not prancing wild all over the place, then at least discreetly incognito flanked by their usual body guards. But alas although I tried, not once did I work up enough nerve to approach and ask, hey are you really somebody.

  But despite the rumours of glamour and notables and that it should not be missed, amazingly I did, systematically year after Dublin year, miss the Horse Show. Suddenly finding that again it was the middle of August and it was well and truly over. And the nearest that I was ever to get to the judges posturing about in their hacking jackets, beige breeches, black boots and bowlers, and other official chaps in their morning suits, was one evening when a gentleman still in his riding kit came striding in the front of the stately red brick edifice of the Shelbourne Hotel. I was not to know that just that day he had won the Puissance with a horse leap that would make you gasp and the lobby audience, to a man and to a woman, broke into cheers and clapping. And still not knowing what all the fuss was about I did what most Dubliners do in the circumstance and stood up tall and shouted out my least timid Bravo.

  Now in Dublin plenty of the bashful brave lurk in the pubs waiting for someone just as meekly courageous to come and talk to them. And as a long time professional recluse and more than an occasional public poseur, I often and secretly crave company. Which when it happens, an awfully unselfconsciously democratic upbringing as an American allows easily for. So gathering my wits about me I get myself up in the necessary kit which at least suggests some resemblance to the Irish variety of a country gentleman. Eschewing perhaps calf tight jodhpurs and too horsy a cut to my tweed. And minus the few de rigueur blades of grass to decorate behind the ears or odd stems of clover poking up through one’s cap. Then appropriately booked into the Shelbourne Hotel, surely nearly the last of the stately once horsy places still standing, I head out from these midland acres to cross the great Bog of Allen to Dublin. And hoping to see at least one live celebrity.

  Of course they would have you believe that Dublin is booked out. Even the worst of scruffy desperate dens crammed. And with every stable, closet and sheltered space packed with humans sleeping upright in their confines. And by God for once they’re telling the truth. For isn’t the kindly Garda Siochana providing the fatally stranded with a jail cell to sleep in. And now let me tell you, never did you see such a wide spectrum of people sauntering across the social scene. The streets aflood and aflow with visitors and speaking languages you never heard of as they stream past. But ruddy hell, still not yet a celebrity in sight.

  Ah but parked in the Royal Irish Automobile Club, I’m now ensconced high up in a junior suite of the Shelbourne Hotel. With two great old windows that look west across the skyline of Dublin. And although spoiled with antennae there still remain Dublin’s steeple sharp church spires. And here I am looking out the window at Dublin and I still haven’t got to the Horse Show. But racked in my usual low key humility, and to cheer myself up, I’m going. Down into the lobby. Passing through persons none of whom sport those faces bewildered by life which at least do one the honour of readily admitting that we are all mostly drowning our sorrow and fighting back our despair. And more than ever now, to bolster the significance of the day one needs to see someone famous. But for the time being a horse will have to do.

  Now let m
e tell you. There are over one hundred of equine classes showing. And there used to be a time in the hardier days once when the horses pranced through the thickest of crowds and you’d see some great fun as hoofs occasionally went flying with the throngs of pedestrians going down like skittles. And sure without a bother on them they’d arise again brushing the hoof marks off, and remarking on the good omen it was to be kicked by a mare or stallion. For such an injury is a big social plus. But these days things do be different. With the whole nation running at the bending a whisker to their solicitors for what is widely known as the adequate satisfaction and compensation. So safety is everywhere in this sixty acres of pleasing show ground where hoofs pound the green sward and over which the celebrities can throw their weight about.

  But here, too, in the very midst of early suburban Dublin, the farriers are demonstrating belting their red hot iron horseshoes to shape. Dog obedience and agility competitions are being held which would dumbfound you by their canine dutiful compliance, with pooches walking blindfold in a straight line to even blowing their own noses on command. Ah but let us get back to the horses. And bowler hats. And the chaps with the jodhpurs and the stern lean judgemental faces. Plus the swarm of girl grooms upon whom it is often maliciously assumed that the country squire jumps. Nae. All the caressing goes upon the horse, whose skin hourly is polished brightly. For this more than anything is a horse fair. And prices skyrocket the higher one jumps or the better a nag is judged in the myriad competitions. Out from the far beyond of the nettles and docks, the farm browned wind blown faces of the owners come. Mixing amid the Texas cowboys, priests in Wellington boots and tanned Italians in their Gucci natty outfits. With all nostrils assailed by the strong healthy smell of horse manure. And there is no doubt that certain people as they parade and posture about in skin white breeches and boots do think a hell of a lot of themselves. But this, folks, is the Royal Dublin Society. And there is no harm or law against feeling as good as you look.