Breakfast on Pluto

by Patrick McCabe

No – you’re right, daddy – she wasn’t.

  And all because of you! All because of naughty Papa who should never have left his chair to do his naughty wandering! Isn’t that so, Daddy? Don’t you think that’s true, when you think about it – Father-of-the Year?

  Chapter Nine

  Ladies and Gentlemen — Mr Dummy Teat!

  I know it’s not nice – or healthy, either, maybe! – wanting so badly to see Daddy’s face when he opened those elaborate letters of mine (Yes! There were others! Quite a prolific author I turned out to be, Peeps!) but I just couldn’t help it. Whether or not he had words with Hairy I don’t know but after having furnished his postbox with a series of blistering specials (‘Sex Mad Sky Pilot!’ ‘Fornicator’, ‘The Adventures Of Father Benny Rape!’, etc.) I decided it was time once and for all to vacate Rat Trap Mansions.

  Well – can you believe it! No sooner have I said, ‘I’m going,’ than Caroline and Whiskers are on top of me, pulling at my jacket and going: ‘You can’t! You can’t!’, doing their damnedest to get me to reconsider, after spending years threatening to turf me out themselves! ‘Please, Paddy!’ was all you could hear out of Caroline, ‘What will you do – where will you go?’ and Hairy shouting: ‘Let him go! Let him go to hell! What do we care! We’re better off without him!’, and then changing her mind and offering to be nicer to me – and even give me money! (Which of course I had been entitled to all along, considering the amount the government and, as it transpired, on the quiet, old Father Stalk, had been giving her.) And was probably the only reason she wanted me to stay at all!

  In the end, anyway, none of it made any difference in the wide world as off I went with my little bag, my coat thrown across my shoulders, strolling along the midge-ridden country roads on the way to Scotsfield, the next nearest town, with my thumb stuck out, although not caring a damn whether or not a car stopped now or in ten days’ time! I was free! ‘Birds of the air – as free as you!’ I chirped and burst into a song by Gilbert O’Sullivan. Why? Don’t ask me! Just as – screech! – I couldn’t believe it, a Merc pulls up beside me and who is there as the door swings open but the one and only, ladies and gentlemen – His Eminence Mr Dummy Teat! My darling Married Politician Man!

  What I didn’t know, of course, was that no sooner than I’d left the house, Whiskers had gone off down to the police station to get the guards out after me, who, if they had found me and saw what I was at now, making eyes at good old Dummy in the front seat of his car, would have had more than plenty to say about it! Not that I cared what they had, for now my journey had begun and I could tell by Dummy as he hungrily chewed his bottom lip that he, for one, about that would have no complaints to lodge!

  The great thing about old Dummy was that with him you just didn’t know what to expect. All you could say with any degree of certainty was that at any hour of the day or night, that old tootling stick he had in his trousers would always be ready for action. ‘Oh, man, dear, he’s at it again!’ he’d say, and you’d have to, as he said – ‘Put him out of his misery!’ Yes, I will make no bones about it, post Leaving Certificate in the bomb-exploding year of 1971, I was more than content to be the regular travelling partner of my new benefactor in the warm and toasty cosiness of his perfumed Merc. So clean in there! Which, I have to admit, was the first thing I really liked about Dums. Sweat? Stale pee? I really do not think so! The very embodiment of hygiene and good manners! O but of course I understand that there were many who would impugn his good name – importing arms for the IRA and any amount of old nonsense! – but, whether the truth or not, the fact is I don’t care and didn’t, for never once did I have to nag or nark. Never once in all my time with him as lover husband, call him what you will, did I ever smell old yukky sweat or see some grime between two toes. Why, after Rat Trap Mansions, Stench Capital of the world, I must have died and gone to heaven, I thought each day that I woke up! And all thanks to my darling Dums, this loving man of a thousand potions. Just how many brands of aftershave did he use? It must have run into two figures.

  ‘How do I smell?’ he’d say to me and I’d reply: Just fine!’, lots of the time not paying the slightest attention at all, of course, besotted with some shoes he’d bought me (or should I say – I bought with his money – for he really didn’t have a clue about girl’s things!) or spraying on some Chanel No. 5. (You see, he didn’t care! ‘Have what you want!’ he kept on saying. ‘Shag the fucking cost!’) O he was a dreamboat, that old Dummy Teat!

  But that tootling stick with which he poked – it definitely was a problem. ‘You really will have to leave me alone, you know. I simply am exhausted!’ I’d try my best to tell him. Always, sadly, to no avail. ‘Give me another little chuck-chuck!’ he’d say then, or ‘How about a little tune for Dummy?’ Then – off I’d go, down on my knees and crooning away – but not for fun-time jollies only! O no! Sometimes, my Dums, so serious he could be. ‘You sweet and darling beauty! How much can I give you to make you mine for ever?’

  Well, obviously I couldn’t be his girl into perpetuity but I was quite prepared, if he continued to lavish me with compliments and with cash, certainly to remain with him for as long as – well, who knew! – and would indeed most likely that have done, if he hadn’t gone and died. I often think of him, blown up like that, his poor little mickey in slo-mo coming back to earth, like a flower pink and bruised, an emblem sent by all the dead men who’d crossed over. There are those who say it was the IRA and others the UDA and then some who say it was the two of them together. I didn’t know, and didn’t fucking care. All I knew was that dear old Dums was gone! Poor old Dummy! Why did you have to immerse yourself in the sinister world of double dealing? Why, you and me, to this day we could have been together!

  Obviously, I knew he was on edge about something. At nights I’d take his tootling stick and say: ‘Please tell me, honey. Tell me all your secret troubles.’ But he never would. He’d just shed a tear and sigh, then touch me, saying: ‘No! Then they’d only come for you!’

  It was something to do with guns and the money it cost to buy them. Every time I think of them shovelling him up with spades it’s like wire chucked tight in my chest. I loved the cottage he’d put me in. It had belonged to his mother. ‘I miss her so, my mother,’ he’d say. ‘Never a day goes by but I think of her, that lovely woman.’

  That was why I started calling him Dummy. Of course it wasn’t his real name! Who ever heard of a politician called that! ‘Well, ladies and gentlemen! That’s quite enough from me here this evening! Now, with your permission, I’d like to hand you over to the man of the moment – Mr Dummy Teat!’

  Very likely indeed. No, his real name was much more ordinary than that and I’d tell it to you only I have better things to do than get myself blown up again, thank you very much – anyway, it isn’t really of any consequence. What I can tell you is how Dummy came about. Because it was me who put it on him, that silliest name of all!

  ‘Oh, Mammy!’ he’d say when he got in one of his moods and I came up with this idea of inserting my thumb into his mouth. It was quite a spontaneous gesture on my part – but, oh boy, did he love it! ‘Oh, Mammy! Mammy!’ he’d cry, sucking away on it like nobody’s business! I can’t tell you the states he used to get into when I’d flutter my lashes and say – actually, not even say, but mime it – the word ‘Dummy’.

  He just could not get enough of it! Once he got so excited that afterwards he handed me three hundred pounds and said: ‘Here – go on! Buy yourself whatever you like, you teasy little brasser you!’

  Chapter Ten

  A Dublin Interlude

  Now one moment, Dummy, I’m sorry but I really will have to stop you there, for you know very well how much I do not like to be called a brasser – ‘Peachy’, ‘Yum Yum’, even ‘Little Horny’ – yes! But ‘brasser’ – it simply shall not be tolerated! What am I then, darling? A Dublin fishwife in tattered nylons, holding up a doorway with a fag-end on her lip?

  Dearest Dums – I really do not t
hink so! But I shall relieve you of three hundred crisp ones as off to the city now I swoosh, with Charlie Kane-Patchouli by my side (‘How can you bear to put it on you, Sweetness!’) in her battered bearskin coat and suede purple inset flares she’d bought in the Dandelion.

  In which Dublin market place, all our Saturdays we allowed them waft away. A cloth Indian belt and nature shoes – I simply gave up in despair. (‘What are you doing, Charlie? Are you out of your mind! Don’t waste your money on such ugly, horrible things!’) As meanwhile, courtesy of the Dummy Teat Financial Institute, my arms I filled with Max Factor, Johnson’s Baby Oil, Blinkers eyeshadow, Oil of Ulay, Silvikrin Alpine Herb shampoo, Eau de toilette, body moisturizers, body washes, cleansing milks, St Laurent Eye and Lip make-up, Noxene Skin Cream and Cover Girl Professional Mascara. Not to mention clothes! Knitted tops in white, purple, lavender, blazing orange, satin-stripe velveteen pants, turtle-necked leotards, flouncing skirts, ribbed stretch-nylon tights. ‘Haven’t you got enough, for fuck’s sake?’ said Charlie, but I thought I had only started! Is it any wonder that she never fell for me?

  ‘Please kiss it,’ I begged her, oh, so many times. ‘My one-eyed, one-horned, purple people-poking Peter,’ but she just laughed and said: ‘No! Why should I! When all you want is the impossible – a vagina all of your own!’ And to that – what could I possibly say when it was true.

  *

  In St Stephen’s Green in Dublin, there is a shop called Trash. Well, not now there isn’t, perhaps! But in January 1972 there was! ‘O Trash! We love you!’ we both chirruped in time! And why ought not we both to love, adore it, when a belted sweater in yummy plum to match your crushed velvet hot pants could be purchased for a snip? Except that, snip or no, we could have purchased them anyhow! ‘O I love you, Dummy Teat!’ I cried and Charlie cautioned: ‘Ssh now!’ She said I was the talk of the place. ‘You don’t mean they know about Dummy?’ I said. ‘Of course they know!’ my sweetness replied. ‘The whole country does – both north and south!’ To that what could I say but: ‘Gosh! Oh, no!’ – but intention of leaving him, this girl had none! ‘We really must buy you a wig of your own!’ she said – and did I look a dream in that Schiaparelli (‘Pretty, wash-and-dryable and impervious to heat’ – but cost an absolute fortune!) No matter, as dear Dummy said, why those bouncy, high-gloss curls when coloured with an ash-brown Tried and True haircolouring – they were worth all the money in the Allied Irish Bank! ‘Do you love me, Dummy?’ I simpered and would those peepers answer: ‘Yes!’ ‘Pretend you’re Audrey again!’ he said – (We’d gone to see a special double bill in Castleblayney – Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Roman Holiday!), and then I’d go, ‘Oh Gregory!’ with the coyest flap of a white-gloved hand. ‘Phew!’ he’d say then when we’d finished. ‘I’ll tell you one thing – it would be a while before my wife would pretend she was her!’ Meaning Audrey, of course!

  In Grafton Street, the following week, who did we run into only Irwin. Who we’d been seeing less and less of – now that I was living in Scotsfield and he was so busy going to meetings and selling his republican papers. ‘So – where are you off to, Kerr?’ we said. ‘I’m on an anti-internment march,’ he said. ‘What? This is it?’ I said. ‘Well – quite a crowd!’ – which I shouldn’t have said because things like that could drive him crazy! ‘Less than a fucking hundred people!’ he hissed – as if we were personally responsible. ‘The south doesn’t give a fuck!’ ‘O leave it,’ said Charlie. ‘Come on with us and drown your sorrows!’

  And which he did! Immersing himself in the giantest Coke float in Captain America’s of that very same old Grafton Street. I like it, looking back on that day we met Irwin, talking more rubbish as usual. ‘The only fucking band worth their salt right now are King Crimson, Charlie!’ he said, blowing Cokey bubbles. ‘All this glam-rock – it’s a load of shit!’ With which I certainly did not concur – but not so much for the music’s sake as the clothes! ‘You mean you don’t like Ziggy?’ Charlie said and curled her lip. ‘You’re out of your fucking mind!’

  I lost interest after a while and started going dreamy. There was a nice song playing on the jukebox. It was ‘Rocket Man’ by Elton John. More than a little ironic when you considered the life Irwin was leading now, for you could see by the way he talked that he was in quite deep politically. Half the time I didn’t know what he was blathering about to Charlie. I’d hear: ‘This time we’re going to finish it!’ or ‘Stiff the whole fucking lot of them! You got me?’, and I felt like saying: ‘O for heaven’s sake, Irwin! Cop yourself on! Let’s live a little first and leave the rockets to the guys who enjoy it!’

  And – secretly – thought: ‘In other words, those who shall never know the pleasure to be gleaned from prettying one’s hair or making-up one’s eyes!’

  At which I was definitely now becoming adept, disporting myself in glam-rock satin jackets and unspectacular denim (ugh!) jeans but still attracting attention. Effortlessly gathering compliments: ‘Look at him! He’s wearing womens’ clothes!’, ‘Jasus! Look at that!’, and other assorted idiocies! ‘You’re getting fucking worse!’ said Irwin when I twirled and asked him, ‘Well – you like the pink or blue?’ meaning yet another satin jacket!

  After Captain America’s I got my hair done and Irwin said I was the spit of David Cassidy. I have to say that I was flattered! Then it was off down the street with cans of Harp, Irwin in that silly shirt with the great big fist bursting through a chain: ‘Smash Internment Now!’

  Quite how it happened, to this day I’m afraid I still can’t say – all I know is that I was a little tiddly, dawdling and sleepily (the cans of Harp, I’m afraid) fingering the gypsy cut strings the hairdresser’d clipped and was paying absolutely no attention to them – actually shocked in a way when I looked up and saw them both embracing – Irwin with his tongue halfway down Charlie’s throat, in fact! The foggy mystery right then for me was: How can you suddenly fall in love when you’ve known one another for years and years? Well, you can, I’m afraid.

  ‘Why! Your face – it’s gone quite flushed, soldier!’ I cried when the comrade re-emerged. ‘Does your fancy man kiss you like that, you crazy fucking nancy boy?’ he said and hit me quite a thump. ‘Please!’ I said and demanded: ‘Let’s go get more Harp!’

  By the time we got home – ten more Harps on the bus – I was so tiddly that I just about knew my own name. ‘Paddy Pussy, dahling!’ I had decided to say to anyone who happened to cross my path. ‘At your service, deah! How can I help, you behstud?’ Not only ‘intended’, but in fact – actually did!

  And to a British soldier, of all people! ‘Name, please?’ – ‘Why, Paddy Pussy, dahling!’

  Not a very good idea! Especially when we got home and heard thirteen people had been shot dead by the parachute regiment in Derry. I was absolutely mortified, and not feeling quite so tough then, I can tell you!

  It all having, as you can imagine, the opposite effect on Irwin. ‘Steady on! Steady on for fuck’s sake, Irwin!’ was all I could hear Charlie saying as I sat with them in the darkened square, shamefully not thinking about the dead victims or their relatives but what combination of my luscious goodies I should go and try on first!

  Chapter Eleven

  Hysterical Jokes and Greeting Visitors in a Skyblue Negligee!

  When Dummy was at work, I’d spend my time reading magazines – Loving, True Confessions (‘I was a bedroom tease! My man was hooked on a hooker!’) – thinking to myself how if I did somehow manage to get a vagina, one thing I was certain of, and I didn’t care even who it was with, was that I wanted at least ten of a family. I know some women nowadays would say: ‘Pussy Braden! You’re out of your mind! You are out of your fucking tiny mind! Do you know, do you for one second know, what it would be like looking after that number of people?’ To which I could only say that I do and probably if the truth be told, probably know it a lot more than feminists or anyone else who might hold those views. You can just imagine it, lying there on your deathbed, the cancer or wha
tever it is, literally rampaging through you, and, from every corner of the world, in aeroplanes, ships, long-distance trains, all the children for whom, through thick and thin, you have broken your back, together now braving the elements, withdrawing savings, fighting bitterly with employers, simply in order to be at your side. And there you are, with your lank and tired hair, a few bad teeth perhaps but behind your eyes, that thing they know, and always have, which through this life sustained them, the thing we all call love. ‘Always you used to say to us, Mammy,’ they’d say, ‘like tooth and nail together fight but outside stick together! Do you remember that, Mammy?’ And would I remember it?

  My eyelids closing in a gesture of recognition – a small smile playing upon my lips. So many there with all their partners, each one of them of Mammy proud. ‘Who will love them for me?’ was a question I once had asked, when I dreamed of being from this world gone early. And now, I had my answer. Everyone would my children love for they themselves knew love and shared it. It would be sad, of course it would. But a happiness there would be too, perhaps even close to ecstasy. As all about me now they gathered and I heard their tender whispers: ‘Do you remember the little picture we had above the fire? With that sweet, entwining blossom and the words that read: “Chez Nous”?’

  And then once more, for the very last time I’d smile. Smile and whisper if I could: ‘Of course, my darling. Of course, my beautiful, lovely darlings!’ – each one of them from my hard stomach labours so lovingly sprung.

  And who would ever to deny it dare? To say: ‘They are not hers! For she has no vagina!’

  There would be no one. And as my eyelids slowly closed and the first tears pressed their way into the world, I’d clasp each hand and say goodbye, to each one adieu bid, safe in the knowledge that baby one and baby two, right up to baby ten, had all their lives been given it, and to the very end received it, that wonderful thing called love.