*
Inside the milking parlour, life continues as normal. ‘Come here, you!’
Bobby Montague, purple with rage, grabs Paddy Kelly’s coat collar and pushes his face right down into a large, empty milk churn.
‘In there, look! Bits stuck everywhere. How many times do I have to tell you? First, wash it in cold water to separate the fat from the protein. Then, only then, you wash it in hot. Not the other way round, you useless Irish cunt!’
*
I’m on Night Train, our best racehorse, and we’re cantering round the long meadow, three horses all in a line. Well, we’re supposed to be cantering as the horses are only just in from the grass and still fat but I’m exploding inside and I’m making him really move his arse and I’m slapping him down the shoulder.
‘Geww on! Geww on!’ I yell at him, lying crouched over his withers. I squeeze as hard as I can with my knees and he starts to gallop, really fly, and he’s starting to blow now and Danny, the head stable lad, is yelling from behind.
‘Hey Justin, steady, steady!’ But I don’t give a shite and I keep going.
A little later there we all are, standing in the clear brown river with the water rushing past over the horses’ knees. It’s really good for their shins, this swirly water, and it’s great to see all the minnows gather round the horses’ legs, nibbling away at God-knows-what. I’ve undone the saddle girth a couple of holes to let Night Train breathe and the sweat dry and I have my legs out of my stirrups and let them hang right down and I take a Player’s fag with the lads as the annoying midges and flies circle us.
Night Train starts to paw the water – pat, pat, splash – and I know he wants to have a roll so I give him a kick so he knows I won’t have it. No thanks. I’m not wearing my trunks. Next thing I know he’s forgotten the kick and is twisting his head round practically munching my jodhpur boots, looking back at me, pleading for sugar. So I delve into my pocket and pull out a couple of lumps. He’s happy now and slobbers them right off my outstretched palm.
*
Bobby Montague stands at the front door of The Hall, looking out for someone. He still wears his milking clothes: a cream-coloured Norwegian jumper, dark-green corduroy trousers but no gumboots, just long red shooting socks. Bobby checks his watch and talks to himself, ‘A quarter to eight, exactly … little bollocks.’
Now he’s yelling, ‘Justin? Oi, Justin!’ There is no answer and Bobby, wishing he didn’t hate the boy so much, strides back inside, slamming the door.
*
I’m on my way back from the stables and I’m still riding but this time it’s my bike and I’m riding the winner of the Epsom Derby and I’m late for breakfast and I still don’t give a shite. I’d make a great racing commentator. ‘Yes, it really must be Larkspur now. Arcor and Le Cantilien haven’t a hope in catching him … Larkspur wins the Derby for Ireland!’ I lepp off the bike and it clatters against the wall and I run in quick as anything to kiss Her Majesty good morning.
I’m standing in Mum’s bedroom and I know I’m going to be late for breakfast as the clock already says six past eight and I’ll be in big trouble as usual. She’s on the telephone. Everyone says how friendly we all are in Ireland but I’m not so sure. I think we’re all just bloody nosy.
I spin my whip like Scobie Breasley, the great Australian jockey, and I stare at Her Majesty’s untouched grapefruit with the stupid cherry stuck on top, sitting centre stage on that ridiculous wicker breakfast tray, and I stare at her nodding head and I listen. She hasn’t seen me, and she’s still yakking away. ‘Well, he was a wild colonial when we married even though he’d been to Oxford. Almost uncontrollable and much, much more interesting than those stuck-up, self-important old Etonians. He really was.’ She takes her small, secret she thinks, hip-flask and pours the vodka into the orange juice and she doesn’t know I’m watching. ‘I don’t know what’s changed him. But frankly, Joan, I’m getting a little tired of it. I feel like doing something really outrageous, just for a reaction. Ha, ha!’
‘Ha, ha!’ says I, surprising her. She’s shocked to see me and looks worried.
‘You shouldn’t eavesdrop.’
‘Good morning, Mother.’
‘Mummy, call me Mummy. By the way, have you seen my cigarette case? The gold one. Your father’s lovely wedding present.’
‘Nope.’ I kiss her quick as it feels so weird and I leave. Why do I have to kiss her? It’s really odd. Mum has never, ever, kissed us. We always have to kiss her first.
*
Annie Cassidy is on her way out through the main gates of The Hall, which are right at the end of the long avenue, about half a mile from the main house. Annie is off to fetch her mother’s messages from Crauls, the local shop. She is content, very content. She had a wonderful night, dreaming of how she kissed President Kennedy, and how he loved it. She won’t tell Justin. She knows how jealous he gets.
Annie swings the shopping bag, which clinks with empty bottles and sings that summer’s number-one hit: ‘It’s my party, and I’ll cry if I want to, cry if I want to. You would cry too, if it happened to you. Do, do, do … hello?’ Annie stops dead in her tracks and stares with delight. A green MGB sports car pulls up with its hood down. The driver is a man of about forty. He is handsome in a rakish sort of way. That is not what grabs Annie’s attention, and nor is it the gorgeous car. Annie stares at the man, shocked, because the driver looks remarkably like someone she knows.
‘Hello?’ says the Rake.
Annie is, for once in her life, speechless. ‘I say? Are you deaf?’
Annie just stares at him. She knew he would speak like this, like all the posh people that came to The Hall for parties and suchlike. His voice is indeed very posh, but she can tell it has an Irish lilt. The Rake tries again. ‘Excuse me … young lady?’
Annie smiles and her whole face lights up.
The Rake looks at Annie in a different way now. This is not just some local girl. This is a beautiful young woman.
‘Ding dong!’ the Rake says to himself, softly, about Annie’s loveliness. And then, pulling himself together, he speaks to Annie.
‘Do you live here?’
‘When I’m not on the Riviera.’
‘A wit too … Do you know Lady Helen?’
‘I might,’ says Annie, teasing. She’s seen him look at her in that particular way, and she doesn’t mind, not one iota. In fact, she loves the effect she has on men.
‘You might? Hmm. I’ll pay you but … it’s our secret.’ The Rake holds out a small package and a one pound note.
‘Holy Mother of God!’ says Annie at the sight of the note.
‘Can you get this to Her Ladyship, without, I repeat, without anyone seeing?’
‘Is the Pope a Catholic?’ Annie tries to snatch the money. The Rake holds firm.
‘My dad works here. I see Lady Helen every day.’ Annie’s begging now. She really wants the pound. ‘Cross me bra and hope to die.’
‘Our secret?’
‘I swear!’
‘Good girl.’ The Rake lets go of the package, pushes his foot down hard on the accelerator and roars off with an impressive screech of tyres.
In the Montagues’ bedroom at The Hall, Lady Helen peers out of the window towards the end of the avenue, which she can just see through the beech trees. She wonders who is being silly and showing off in some sports car.
Still standing right outside the main gates, Annie Cassidy stares happily down at the package and the pound note held firmly in her right hand. Annie opens the package.
She’s in shock.
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’ She is looking at a solid 24-carat gold, Art-deco, cigarette case. Engraved on the outside are three initials: H.D.M. She flicks it open. Inside, a yellow band holds five Sobranie Black Russian Cocktail cigarettes in place. There is an engraving; To Helen, love Bobby, April 10th 1944.
*
I walk into breakfast and I’m not going to be rattled as there’s a small chance the old man may
not have realized what time it is. I’ll just be calm and it’ll be fine. ‘Morning, Dad.’
It doesn’t work. Here we go.
‘It’d be a damn sight better morning if you got here on time! Breakfast’s at eight. You see your mother at 7.45 and come straight after. It’s ten bloody past!’
Ah feck off.
‘It’s not my fault. I had to help the lads with the hay and …’
‘Don’t apologize to me. Apologize to Bridget! We can’t keep the staff waiting just for you.’
Stay cool now. Keep a sense of humour. ‘Bridget? My sincere apologies.’
‘That’s all right, pet.’ I keep my mouth shut for once as I know anything I say will wind him up but I’m still pissed off all the same, especially because of last night. So I go to the sideboard to check the breakfast and I can’t believe it, there’s no baked eggs, just fried. Feck! What the fuck is going on? Where are the baked bloody eggs?
Lucy puts me straight. ‘Dur! Monday, poached with ham. Tuesday, boiled. Wednesday, kedgeree. Thursday, fried. Friday, baked. Get it?
‘Get what?’
‘It’s Thursday, man. Come back tomorrow. Dig?’
‘Oh yeah, I dig, man.’
‘Cool.’ I help myself to the fried eggs and then I take a couple of rashers of bacon. I check the old man’s not looking and I wrap the rashers in a damask napkin and dry them. I hate the grease and I’m sure it makes me fat and spotty although Bridget says I look like a stick and if I turned sideways I’d disappear.
I’m trying to eat but it’s hard. All I can hear is that fucker slurping and slobbering as he shovels porridge with lashings of cream into his big fat gob. His stupid dog, Cromwell, makes exactly the same sound sitting beside him.
Cromwell is a Rottweiler, or a butcher’s dog as some people call them. Mum says the Nazis used them to guard the concentration camps. The old man loves Cromwell and Cromwell loves the old man, probably because the dog is always begging and the old man’s always feeding him off his plate. Emma says only peasants do that, but the old man doesn’t care, as Cromwell is the love of his life. Emma also says that Cromwell is a ‘frightfully unwise name for a dog’ because Oliver Cromwell was hated by the Irish for all the massacres he committed.
Anyway, there I am trying not to listen to all the slurping and slobbering, when I think it’s time to have fun with my sisters. I whisper, ‘Guess who else’s been stuffing her face?’
The sisters look up, doubtful. Emma from her Catholic Herald and Lucy from On the Road, her trendy book, man.
‘Oh yeah,’ says Lucy, all sceptical. ‘I don’t believe you, man. No way.’
‘Honest, man, she was. She had loads of orange juice with her vodka, and listen to this: she ate the whole cherry off the grapefruit. I’m not kidding.’ Emma and Lucy laugh really loud and the old man looks up. He hates being left out of anything, especially a joke.
‘What’s so bloody funny?’
‘She’s lost her cigarette case,’ I say, as quick as anything.
‘Who’s ‘she’? … The cat’s mother? Anyway, there’s no point in asking you. You couldn’t find your arsehole in a snowstorm.’
God, you think you’re so bloody hilarious, you tosser. We all laugh just a little to humour him. Although we all, even Lucy, think he’s vulgar.
Now the old man’s all relaxed as he thinks he’s made a terrific joke and he’s wondering aloud to the world if he should get the vet to look at some stupid cow, number 33, that has sore teats and Emma all snotty says, ‘Do you mind if we don’t talk about cows’ udders whilst I’m trying to eat my breakfast?’ Bad move.
‘Jesus Christ, if it wasn’t for the cows, how else do you think this …’ he lifts a milk jug ‘… would get on your effing cereal every morning?’ I know it’s a bad idea but I can’t help it.
‘From the milkman?’
Oh God, my big mouth. The old man’s about to explode. I mean, stupid fucker, he thinks he’s a farmer and he thinks that everyone thinks that he lives off the land and that he’s not actually married to a rich woman and that he’s the only person that ever got up to milk cows at five in the morning.
But instead of exploding, the old man gets really subtle and sticks the oar in. ‘Have you told her?’
‘Told who?’
‘You know very well who. Your friend, Miss Annie Cassidy. About staying away from my house.’
‘Tell her yourself, you big fecking bully!’
I storm out, slamming the door. Bridget calls our house ‘The House of Slamming Doors’.
*
Bridget’s mum, Mrs Collins, used to be in service herself and once told me that her last job was as housekeeper with a family who also slammed doors although they never had any children. This wild man, Black Bob Fetherstonhaugh, married a rich American lady who had bought a stud farm near Ballinasloe. Black Bob had lost all his inheritance playing cards and he only put up with his difficult wife because she held the purse strings. The Yank herself realized all along that Black Bob had only married her for the money and decided she was going to make the most of it. So she continued to give Black Bob a really hard time and bend his ear about everything.
One day while Mrs Collins was still there, Black Bob had decided he’d had enough and that the Yank he married for the money was ‘no longer worth the hassle’. When he finally left his wife and her stud farm forever, he signed the visitors’ book for the fifteen years they had spent together. He wrote, ‘Thanks for the hospitality. Bob.’
When I was very young and before I started riding racehorses I had a pony, the one that shat in the fridge. I loved Darkie but he was a terrible pain in the arse and would buck me off at the first chance he got and then he would stand there staring at me, all innocent. I rode Darkie to my first hunt, what they call a ‘lawn meet’. The grown-ups were eating chicken vol-au-vents and knocking back bullshots served up by the maids. A bullshot was warm beef consommé soup with vodka added. It smelt great. They never got off their horses, the hunt followers. They just took the glass, knocked back the bullshot, and handed the empty vessel straight to the staff, usually expecting a second or even third sup. It was incredible that most of them managed to stay in the saddle all day after drinking so much.
I was only three years old but I wasn’t scared as I was on a leading rein led by Danny on a much bigger animal. I do remember being embarrassed because Darkie wasn’t clipped. He looked like one of The Beatles, just with longer hair. It was lucky we were on a lead, otherwise I think there was no way he could see through the fringe that covered his eyes and we’d probably have ended upside down in a ditch with him singing, ‘Love, Love me do.’ I was ten when Darkie died. I’ll never forget coming back from Dublin in the car and I could see way in the distance a tractor heading up the haggard with the front loader raised up high. On top was the limp body of poor old Darkie. I wanted to see where he was buried and say goodbye, but they wouldn’t let me. The old man said it would be too upsetting. Years later Lucy told me he wasn’t buried at all, that they fed him to the foxhounds at the hunt kennels.
The hunt kennels themselves were miles away but we used to go there when the old man had a few seasons as master of the hunt. The hunt was called the Kilcullen Harriers. Harriers are supposed to chase hares but our hunt didn’t. It chased foxes. We could never change the name to the Kilcullen Foxhunt because then the hunt would be in real trouble. And this is the reason. All the area we hunted belonged to the Kildare Foxhunt. If the Kilcullen Harriers changed their name, they would be admitting that they were hunting foxes over an area where they weren’t allowed to hunt anything but hares. So they just kept on hunting hares but chasing and killing foxes. By mistake, of course.
All the black and tan foxhounds were wild and stank like you would not believe, although they were friendly enough if you went up to them. Except for one hound. This hound was called Joker and it was a name that didn’t suit him. Not at all. Joker was a really nasty bit of work. So whenever the hunt staff threw in a de
ad horse or an old cow for the hounds to gobble, they always put a special bit aside for Joker before the other hounds. Otherwise he would savage any hound that got near him. As Joker got older, his temper did not improve. If anything, it got worse.
One day there had been a hunt meet in Wexford and as usual at the end of a long hard wet day the forty hounds, steam rising, were loaded into their own transport, an old horsebox, to ferry them back to the kennels at Kilcullen. When the hounds’ box arrived, the hunt staff let down the ramp to let the hounds rush out and into their kennel for feeding. Imagine their surprise when they discovered that there were only thirty-nine hounds. So they checked the numbers again and again until the huntsman, knowing his hounds well, suddenly guessed what had happened. When they checked the box more thoroughly, they discovered bits and pieces, but not much else, of poor Joker’s remains. On the way back from the meet, Joker had probably taken a lump out of another hound in a fit of pique and the others had decided that they’d had enough and his time had come.
Every year in April we had loads of guests for the Punchestown Festival, mostly relations from England. The festival itself is a fantastic five-day affair held in April and it is the only racecourse in Ireland where the horses have to jump stone walls and banks. Everyone from The Hall is invited to partake. There would always be two picnics: one for us and one for the staff. We would all go in the Jag and the Triumph and park up right next to the two or three staff vans. So the two picnics would happen right next to each other, parked right by the rails about one hundred yards past the winning post. A great spot.
A couple of years ago this one poor horse crashed straight into a fence in front of where we parked. It just ran straight into the fence at full pelt as though it wasn’t there. It was a horrible accident but luckily the horse was killed stone-dead, so didn’t suffer too much. And the inexperienced jockey was only slightly concussed.
The House of Slamming Doors Page 3