Man or Mango?

by Lucy Ellmann

  Had never seen; from dread Leviathan

  To insect millions peopling every wave …

  The Evil Doctor

  There is about 4000 persons in this parish, and all Catholics, and as poor as I shall describe, having among them no more than –

  One cart,

  No wheel car,

  No coach, or any other vehicle.

  One plough,

  Sixteen harrows,

  Eight saddles,

  Two pillions,

  Eleven bridles,

  Twenty shovels,

  Thirty-two rakes,

  Seven table-forks,

  Ninety-three chairs,

  Two hundred and forty-three stools,

  Ten iron grapes,

  No swine, hogs, or pigs,

  Twenty-seven geese,

  Three turkeys,

  Two feather beds,

  Eight chaff beds,

  Two stables,

  Six cow houses,

  One national school,

  No other school,

  One priest,

  No other resident gentleman,

  No bonnet,

  No clock,

  Three watches,

  Eight brass candlesticks,

  No looking-glasses above 3d. in price,

  No boots, no spurs,

  No fruit trees,

  No turnips,

  No carrots,

  No clover,

  Or any other garden vegetables, but potatoes and cabbage, and not more than ten square feet of glass in windows in the whole, with the exception of the chapel, the school house, the priest’s house, Mr Dombrain’s house, and the constabulary barrack.

  Facts from Gwcedore: with Useful Hints to Donegal Tourists,

  Dublin, 1845

  He was of Anglo-Irish British-colonialist stock, with leanings to be different. His mediocrity (a dangerous trait in a doctor) didn’t trouble him; his main cause for concern was his wife’s face. He stared peevishly at it across the sticky table in the ferry’s stinking cafeteria.

  She’d had an angelic quality when they first met. He’d seen the light! — in her sparkling black hair, and her eyes when she looked up at him. It had satisfied any remnant he had of a religious urge. He’d seen in her a spiritual realm, she had a radiance (he hadn’t realized it was simply because she was in love and still young).

  Sometimes he thought he could see the same radiance in his children, though the boys never spoke and the girl was prematurely agog about sex. Watching the three of them now, chomping through their fish fingers, he thought he detected an afterglow.

  He told himself repeatedly, especially when copulating with her, that his wife had once been beautiful. He also reminded himself that she was Egyptian, which made her an exotic specimen of some sort. But it was small comfort. He had begun to think of her as ‘ugly’, and he couldn’t get the word out of his head. It was embarrassing to have an ugly wife he saw the way people winced at the mismatch, such a negligible woman with such a handsome man. He was an Adonis, he couldn’t help it (plenty of women had told him so in the privacy of the surgery or, preferably, in their own homes). In the meritocracy of physical attributes his wife was beneath him. She was aware of it herself. Wan, worn, her hair now more white than black (while yellow curls were still abundant on his head), and various blemishes becoming ever more pronounced. He would never knowingly have married someone with such bumps!

  To compensate she made herself indispensable about the house: she took the kids to their respective schools every morning, went home and made the beds or whatever women do, ran errands for him the rest of the day, typed things up for him at night. She also made a little money from teaching Arabic, and now, astonishingly, was pregnant again.

  The ferry lurched unpleasantly. Why did I marry? A heavy month lay ahead for him, the annual challenge of avoiding his family. His theory was that Ireland accommodated all their needs: his, to stand on a golf green or in the bar discoursing on his Irish heritage; and hers, to supervise the children in seaside activities, as his mother had and other mothers before that. Never mind that the beach was covered at this time of year with dead jellyfish and it rained every day. It was soft rain, as he kept telling her.

  The 3 Old Biddies

  Logistics of manoeuvring 3 old biddies on to a bus. Suitcase in the way. Child cycling past. One biddy down. Another inserts herself bravely between prostrate biddy and bus, anchoring her feet against the kerb. Any minute now, they’ll each break a hip and spend the whole holiday getting new ones.

  But in the end they board the bus, old loves in their new shoes.

  Endless conversation topics: food, health, grandchildren, sex, death, TV, politics, weather. Any remaining gap to be filled with gynaecology.

  Off to Ireland, dimpled and giggling. And always somewhat bored. Stoical. Existences lacking in purpose. But, with any luck, the trip will pass in a blur of false mirth, three naughty girls on a spree.

  Ed

  Ed couldn’t believe his luck, chosen at the last minute to represent his county at the Connemara Vegetable Show! He had endured a few suspenseful days until it became clear that his only rival was already booked to go to the International Pumpkin Association’s World Championship Finals in Santiago the same week. The local branch of the Giant Vegetable Growers’ Confederation of Great Britain therefore decided that Ed could go to Connemara.

  The hotel room would be free. All he had to do was lock up his valuables (he’d recently acquired someone’s cello), heave the old pumpkin into the back of the van, and proceed to Ireland. (He’d once worked as a long-distance lorry driver so was well able to cope with any foreigners and foreign nonsense that crossed his path. That didn’t worry him at all.)

  His excitement was intense. He could barely contain himself, and anyway didn’t have to: he stopped every hour to pee on his pumpkin (an old pumpkin-preservation trick), and to make certain that it was still regally positioned amongst its cushions. He had every confidence in its surviving the journey (his pumpkins usually lasted months) and in its doing well at the show. He was looking forward to beating the Paddies on the giant pumpkin front. He’d surely win a trophy and maybe even a bottle of Paddy’s Irish whiskey! As he drove he pampered and peed upon his pumpkin, and practised his Irish jokes: ‘How many Paddies does it take to change a lightbulb?’ ‘Lightbulb!? Since when did they have electricity?’

  But the pumpkin didn’t laugh. The pumpkin had only one thing on its mind: to spread its seed far and wide.

  Welcome to the

  Rossadilly Hotel

  OFFERING:

  Dinner, bed and breakfast

  Bar, restaurant, room service

  Nightly entertainment

  Guided perambulations

  Golf, tennis, swimming, riding, boating, angling,

  scuba-diving, trips to the islands, croquet

  Wine tasting

  Friday-night quiz

  Murder mystery weekends

  Lectures

  Slide presentations

  Bridge

  Annual Connemara Vegetable Show

  Group discounts

  George

  … Thus the whole circle of travellers may be

  reduced to the following heads:

  Idle Travellers,

  Inquisitive Travellers,

  Lying Travellers,

  Proud Travellers,

  Vain Travellers,

  Splenetic Travellers,

  Then follow

  The Travellers of Necessity,

  The delinquent and felonious Traveller,

  The unfortunate and innocent Traveller,

  The simple Traveller,

  And last of all (if you please) The Sentimental

  Traveller (meaning thereby myself) …

  Never mind clip-on curtains, Agas, sun-dried tomatoes, cranberries, Prozac, old chipped enamel colanders, butlers’ sinks, kelims, anything Tuscan or terracotta (or preferably both), Dalmatians, HRT, square pillows, mobile phones, bouqu
ets of spaghetti or gnarled twigs … The latest English middle class fad is IRELAND. Venetia told me. She wants to send me there! Turns out she doesn’t need to FUCK me after all (hooray), just wants to be my PATRONESS, à la Lady Gregory. She’s heard about some dopey Murder Weekend at an Irish hotel, thinks it might inspire me. To what, I ask. MURDER?

  Good ol’ Venetia. Seems my supreme patience with her — first as appalled but outwardly supportive teacher, then as self-hating LAPDOG — has paid off! Of course I’ve accepted the offer, but I ain’t going all that way for a weekend. My hope is to retreat TOTALLY from the WORLD, surround myself with the bleached bones of the few Irish poets who didn’t manage to die in exile, and finish my poem. Find PEACE IN A CULTURED LAND (maybe even look up some Hanafans). In other words: take old V.’s money and run.

  Nothin’ to keep me HERE after all. Finally had news about my best student: not AWOL. Dead. Got hit by a car the very night I yelled at her in the street. Right afterwards, for all I know! All my fault. I have to LIVE with this. The car threw her into the air. ‘Never felt a thing,’ they say.

  I think she felt a lot of things (some of them for me). I think we were probably made for each other! And now it’s too late. Too late.

  She’s left me her notebook, my guilt and my imaginings.

  Eloïse

  The cloud of bees drifts and wheels in a seemingly aimless manner, and then it is seen to concentrate at a definite point, commonly on the branch of a tree. A few bees settle, others join them, and then we see the flying life flow together into one bunch of clinging bees the size of a pear, no, a cokernut …

  Why do people travel? To see themselves in a new light, or an old one? Or is it just another form of unconnectedness? Hermits can travel. I must see Connemara again before I follow my father into his D.I.Y. death.

  But am I to die now? The plane is shifting in the sky as if it too can’t believe that planes work. I do not want to be here! I don’t want to be on this plane (the curious phenomenon of vertigo, a mile high).

  When we’re finally disgorged, I feel like I’ve been inside a great fish’s belly for three days. Trembling, I join the immobile crowd transfixed by the luggage carousel. People stare at the bags as if by force of will they’ll turn into the right ones. You begin to get to know these bags after a few revolutions, take a tender interest in how they’ll twirl round the corners.

  Someone’s forever trying to swindle you when you’re travelling. Hiring a car always sounds easier than it is: as soon as I get to the firm’s booth in the airport, they bombard me with questions until I’m too confused to realize I’m paying a second time for petrol I’d already bought by credit card in England … But the long empty drive to Connemara calms me.

  The queen may be one of the first to join the cluster,

  but she is equally likely to be one of the last.

  I never noticed in childhood that the roads of Connemara are bordered by fuchsia hedges growing wild. Creamy-coloured cows lounge proudly on the cliff tops, and all round me green grass meets blue water. When the scarlet bushes part, a white and grey hotel appears.

  By the time I reach the hotel, I’m in an ecstasy of remembering. The white signpost that directs you to the tennis courts and swimming pool. The lake … One cloudy day my father took us out on the lake in a rowboat and one of us fell in. It must have been me — I remember being wet. Now two colourful boats bob at the little jetty and the lake is a blur of wind-ruffled water.

  The old forgotten smell of turf fires draws me into the hotel. Wood panelling and plaid settees. The view from my room is the same as it always was. Perhaps it’s the same room? I slump into an armchair like an old lady unused to pleasure. Through the window that shudders slightly in the sea breeze come the smells of Rossadilly.

  Everything is so vivid to a child. They’re receptive because they’re ignorant: they have no idea what a great swindle is in store for them. This is why their smiles move us so. (But it’s the smiles of adults that should move us. How can they smile?)

  It is a terrible thing to return to childhood as what I now am, shy, desperate, my life commandeered by hopeless adult struggles: lipstick worries, avoiding eye contact in the dining room, dreading the necessary encounters with the receptionist, and nursing a wrenched old-lady shoulder (the result of heaving too many bags round airports).

  I tramp to the stables behind the hotel, hoping to find the same dog and her puppies that were there when I was six. Never go back. Even the donkeys are gone from the field behind, replaced by horses and properly scheduled riding lessons. In the old days, you could ride a donkey if you could catch it (not so easy).

  I set off for Clifden for Nurofen for my neck. On the way, a sign for ‘HAND KNITS’ catches my eye. I turn my head with difficulty to look at the house. There are two cars for sale in the front garden and a jumper crucified in every window: someone’s whole life has been turned into a souvenir shop.

  The same could be said of Clifden (all flannel nightshirts, postcards and mittens) but it does have Nurofen — on special offer! I take two immediately and head back along the agonizingly bumpy road to Rossadilly.

  Inside the hotel there are children everywhere. A plump couple having coffee and scones on a soft-hued couch. Turf fires and quiet talk. Could I be happy here? Briefly happy?

  After collecting my key, still in pain, I walk stiffly to the stairs where I turn and find — how convenient — the doctor who killed my parents. Beside him, a pregnant woman. Is it wise to breed from murderers? His ugly smile vanishes when he recognizes me — he knows he’s a killer. But he need not fear me. My mother taught me to be abjectly polite, but I was born a coward. I nod and skirt round them.

  … a List of the Summer Birds of Passage which I have discovered in this neighbourhood, ranged somewhat in the order in which they appear.

  Wry-neck,

  Smallest willow-wren,

  Swallow,

  Martin,

  Sand-martin,

  Black-cap,

  Nightingale,

  Cuckoo,

  Middle willow-wren,

  White-throat,

  Red-start,

  Stone curlew,

  Turtle-dove,

  Grasshopper-lark,

  Swift,

  Less reed-sparrow,

  Land-rail,

  Largest willow-wren,

  Goat-sucker, or fern-owl,

  Fly-catcher,

  George

  I have heard the pigeons of the Seven Woods Make their faint thunder, and the garden bees Hum in the lime-tree flowers; and put away The unavailing outcries and the old bitterness That empty the heart.

  Following, intermittently reverent, in the Great Man’s footsteps, I wander the maze of paths at Coole. Duly inspect the tree trunk where every Irish literary bigwig seems to have carved his or her initials (Shaw’s are the most lavish and savage, great scars gouged in the poor tree to satisfy his ego).

  Something dutiful, not wholly VOLUNTARY, in my walking. Partly because I was ORDERED to see all seven woods by the young woman in the Information Centre, whose makeup seemed to be half-on, half-off: I was scared it might come with me (Exit, followed by face powder). Maybe she thought I was a more ardent Yeats fan than I am. I actually HATE visiting such shrines, don’t know what I’m DOING here. But at least it’s not as bad as Gilbert White’s house in Selborne, where a life-size model of GILBERT stands frozen in the middle of his bedroom, just about to write a letter to some pal about a bird.

  Site of Coole House

  The Hothouse Garden

  Back Lawn

  Coole River

  Bats

  Turlough and Horse Pump

  Ha-Ha

  The Deer Pen

  The Stone Seat

  Dry Stone Walls

  The Stable Yard

  The Lime Kiln

  Lichens

  So fucking picturesque (that Yeats was no fool) I’m sort of relieved to find something ugly: a low drab building in a clearing. Boy is it
ugly. No doors or windows that I can see. Appearing so suddenly among the trees, it looks like a mini-Buchenwald! (Why do I associate all forests with CONCENTRATION CAMPS? Fucking Germans.) Turns out to be the toilets. Men in one side, women in the other. (‘Women to the right, men to the left!’ the soldiers yell in Schindler’s List). People are DEHUMANIZED by an overconcentration on gender (dehumanized by Hollywood movies too).

  I sit on a toilet seat encrusted with ancient shit and think of all the shit the Jews had to die in, the shit IRA prisoners smeared across their walls, the shit strewn through history like the pink the British spread across the map of the world (the pink they should have blushed to spread). All the cruelty, the pain, the sorrow. Where does it END UP, this shit? Does it ever go? Does it just wash away?

  I guess it does. IN THE END. I wipe my end, try the flusher — doesn’t work — and leave.

  With weird ease I drive on to Yeats’s mythic TOWER just a few miles down the road. Pretty darn cute. I climb up the spiral staircase to his bedroom and stare at the bed he and his wife shared: I am constantly ENCROACHED on by COUPLES and their COUPLINGS. Empty, the heart.

  Deafened by a blast of pre-recorded Yeats info that comes out of the walls whenever an unsuspecting tourist presses one of those tempting buttons, I stumble and fall heavily on my knees, practically on my face: PROSTRATE before the Great Poet! Almost kiss the ground he walked on.

  I the poet William Yeats

  With old millboards and sea-green slates

  And smithy work from the Gort forge

  Restored this tower for my wife George.

  Can’t help feeling for that woman (and not just because her name was George), as I painfully negotiate the vertiginous staircase. Can’t have been easy being Yeats’s wife. Not on those STAIRS anyway. I spiral downwards, thinking of them in their cozy bed.

  Saw Yeats’s GHOST once. He must have one! BE one? Whatever. He was sitting on a Boston park bench looking straight at me: handsome, kindly, pleasant. He smiled on me beneficently! Seemed vaguely familiar, but I was in a hurry … Ah well, every poet has to spurn a poet’s ghost at some point.

  Biographical snippets continue to honk at me through his three-foot-thick walls as I limp down the lane, undone by crassness, old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird.

  Back at the hotel, I try to work. Find a curious passage in my late student’s notebook, an outline for a screenplay or something. Kind of gives me the creeps, don’t know why: