The History of the Ginger Man: An Autobiography

by J. P. Donleavy

  DINNLAY

  AS WE NOW ARRIVE IN CONDOM-

  FREE IRELAND

  I HAVE SOME CONTRACEPTIVES I AM GOING TO AUCTION

  OFF

  ON THE QUAY IN COBH

  “Ah, too, Dinnlay, let me say in parting that we hope to see no more. No more of the weak cunning and treacherous scheming in conspiracy against the valiant, honest and brave. And that such shall be ceased, desisted and stopped. That it shall be proclaimed that the perpetrators of same shall not benefit. That they shall not be glad or be made greater. That they shall instead be banished from us to languish forevermore in their ignominy. And leaving us, the innocent, with our ears wagging, eager to listen, and our gonads still intact. And so say I now good-bye.”

  GOOD-BYE

  AND JUST LET ME ALSO SAY

  THAT NEVER HAVE I

  EVER SEEN SUCH OUTRAGEOUS

  GLUTTONY

  “Dinnlay, I merely store up for the spiritually lean days that may be ahead, and the sustenance that may be in it. For in this respect, I don’t trust God, for He has disappointed me once too often. But now may the blessed Oliver Plunket intercede for us both. Adios, bueno amigo.”

  The previous hour we had steamed past the Old Head of Kinsale and on this misty, chill morning had entered Cork harbor. The small tender had come out on the gray-black choppy water and pulled alongside. The few passengers disembarking had already descended the ship’s ladder. For some reason, as I saw Gainor standing there below on the tender’s open deck, I felt I was looking at an apprehensive man. I do not know how those high up on the Franconia and peering down over the railings might have looked to him, but I was there with them and could see that tears were running down the cheeks of his lady friend, who had put him in possession of some funds. And the strikingly elegant widow of the ambassador seemed similarly bereft. Gainor now waving as he stood looking up from the tender’s tilting deck. White dots of cottages and houses to be seen on the distant shore. And there he finally was, lonely deposited back in Ireland. The woes of the world having left him all the way across the Atlantic. And now leaving him lonelier still. Blue Aran Islander’s cap on his head. He was going to hitchhike from Cork to Dublin. And I warned him he would more likely end up in Dingle. Or a muddy ditch. I asked him to give my regards to Behan and McInerney and to write me news of the old sod to the Isle of Man. And I wondered, as the tender, making its white wake as it pulled away, its bells ringing and diesel throbbing, if Gainor still had his coiled rope in his paper bag.

  The Franconia weighed anchor. And we passed out again into the Irish Sea. Watching toward shore, one could see again along its eastern coastline this innocent-seeming but infernal land one had come to love. As Gainor did. Its silver and cold mountain streams. Its grassy soft, green mounds of hills. Its bleak bogs and bereft spaces which grew pretty little flowers. Its hedgerows, where you could find the moist, glistening holly with its red pearls of berries sparkling bright on its sharp-thorned leaves. Providing, like Ireland itself, beauty which could prick your flesh like a nettle sting. But where one could go where no other soul goes. By old lakes, muddy ditches and over stony fields, where the dried brown thistles stand lonely sentinels withering away the winter. On the land from which this ancient nation grew its people.

  But it was to be many years hence before I would again walk this cold ground when spring was coming. After the frost had gone. And taking a lonely stroll, trying not to let the sorrow stored up in one’s life overflow. And one’s sadness spill over into grief. And so it was that Gainor Stephen Crist, the eternal tourist and almighty optimist, was unsafely back upon the Emerald Isle. And the next time I was to see him, several debacles in his life later, he would, just as he had predicted,

  Be sitting

  And turning those

  Printed pages

  Of

  The Ginger Man

  32

  ON THIS LAST DAY aboard the good ship Franconia, the reassuring, pleasant Joyce was my only companion. And in her cabin she was reading the last pages of S.D. The Irish newspapers got in Cork were now the first I’d seen in over a year. Making me familiar again with this small world which lived in its own perversely illogical concerns mostly with itself. With Gainor gone, and without our telepathic communication, it was lonely to have lunch. And at another table I could see his bereft lady friend, her head bowed. It was as if the ship had lost its vital force and heartbeat. Our waiter too was in drooping spirits at Crist’s empty chair. And he actually set the place and brought all the dishes on the menu which he said was to placate and atone to the deities, so as to ensure that Mr. Crist would eat as well ashore.

  God only knows and not even He would be sure what confidential arrangement Gainor made in the way of a gratuity with this droll and dedicated waiter. But now we were plying St. George’s Channel and making toward Anglesey and were abeam of County Wicklow and passing where I had first sat down on this coast to write the beginning pages of The Ginger Man. And here I was, lugging all these dormant, silent and unsung words back with me. To heaven knows what, except a desperation and resolve to get them printed and see the light of day somewhere. And it had better be sometime soon. Before the despairs of disappointment finally, as they were bound to do, overtook me. But at least I had, with a carbon copy, the words themselves still there on the page to read and inspire one to go on and never, never to give up.

  The afternoon light was growing dim on the waves as we rounded the point of Holyhead, where the Dublin mail boat landed its Irish bound for England. As the light faded, one had gone below to pack and then had dinner. Following which one had gone to walk out on deck with Joyce and her friend Lorie and suddenly in the darkness we found with surprise that we already lay midstream in the river Mersey. The ship now silent and stopped, having earlier passed all the sad sounds of tolling bells of the buoys in Liverpool Bay. Making it seem as if I had come back here to Europe by magic. And I had. Seeing now in the shadows the docks and the grimy blackness of this dark city of the sea. And silhouetted against the sky the great birds’ wings outstretched on top of the Royal Liver Building. The hill of this massive port climbing up behind it with the red tint of its brick buildings darkened over the years by the smoke of coal fires. Behind their polished windows, the rich merchants, their fortunes built from the commerce of this seaport, had their offices through these gloomy streets. Tingling went down my legs and I was on my toes and beside myself with excitement. Looking again and again up at the familiar big looming birds on top of the white-faced clock, past which I would pass so many times over so many future years.

  Now vanished from my mind, I felt that I had never been to America. That it was still the land I had yet to return to across the sea. While packing, I found a scribbled draft note of mine which I had given Gainor to deliver to Tony McInerney:

  DEAR TONY,

  AMERICA IS JUST A

  MASS OF DISSIPATED PRIDES

  AND

  IT'S LIKE TAKING AN

  ETERNAL

  EXAMINATION THAT ONE

  CAN NEVER

  PASS

  AND THESE TWO FAILED

  CANDIDATES

  HAVE JUST ARRIVED

  BACK

  ONE OF WHOM,

  IN HIS USUAL WAY

  AND WITH HIS USUAL CHARM

  HAS LEFT ABOARD THIS SHIP MANY A MOIST FEMALE EYE.

  SEE YOU SOON.

  My imperceptible arrival in the darkness of the Mersey River made Europe now seem a mysterious place. And a mild soft wind was blowing as the Franconia maneuvered alongside its dock. With the steamer to the Isle of Man moored just behind, I was relieved to know that it was not far that I had to go with all my trunks. Although there was dancing and the band playing and one’s heart quickened, the last night aboard was like a wake. I sat alone drinking Bass beer while watching the foxtrotting and waltzing. Gainor’s little lady friend briefly coming to sit near and we exchanged a few words. Hers spoken and mine by note. She seemed so believing and honest. Always gen
erously insisting on the trip in buying Gainor and I drinks. America had disappointed her too. And on my Franconia notepaper, I wrote,

  IN THAT LAND BACK

  ACROSS THE SEA

  THEY HAD A MACHINE

  WHICH SOLD HAPPINESS

  UNTIL THIS CONTRAPTION

  BROKE DOWN

  WITH EVERYONE TOO UNHAPPY

  TO FIX IT

  I recalled how Gainor seemed nervous as I met him the evening before his departure in a ship’s gangway with this pleasantly businesslike and so proper a lady. And I wondered what his feelings could be and how it was that he managed to instantly receive such selfless, devoted loyalty from women. As well as an odd gouge down the cheeks and broom handle in the ribs. Which, as he said, was better to get there than up the arse. Then having seen this little person watch Gainor with his Pan American Airways bag on the tender as it went off toward the green fields and the many little colored dots on yellow and white squares which was the city of Cobh, and as the small vessel moved away, with Gainor slowly growing smaller and smaller as his blue Aran Islander’s hat disappeared in a tiny dot, I knew now why I had asked in the words of The Ginger Man,

  And how was love so round?

  We disembarked next morning and I shook hands good-bye with the deep-sea diving submariner. I had already the previous day at Cobh waved encouragement to the departing kid who’d been banished to another cabin. But although I disagreed with his top-bunk pissing, I knew at least he’d be a winner ashore on the Emerald Isle and would, as his family obviously thought he might, find a ready environment for all his waywardness. At British immigration, held in the ship’s lounge, I wrote a matter-of-fact note that I was a writer, and for all time, now changing my identification from that of a painter. Always suspicious of the intruder, my passport was finally after ten minutes stamped and I was permitted to land at Liverpool on the morning of February 24, 1953, on condition that the holder of the permission did not remain in the United Kingdom longer than nine months.

  I got a porter to handle my several heavy trunks and on this Tuesday of the week I boarded the familiar Isle of Man steamer called Manxman, which was still moored, waiting just behind the Franconia, and set to sail at fifteen minutes before noon. But before leaving the Franconia pier, and as folk disembarked, one could see those who had been entangled in other limbs aboard the ship at sea, now rushing into the different waiting arms of their loved ones ashore. Setting not exactly the best example of loyalty and faithfulness. Then, as passengers were departing off into Liverpool, a taxi pulling away suddenly stopped and a girl got out and came running over to me. It was Gainor’s lady friend on the trip. Who, as most women did, had done everything she could for Gainor. She seemed so small and funny when I first met her. And now she came up smiling, but with her eyes full of tears on her jauntily pretty face. Her little brown eyes, thin lips and upturned jaw. She said good-bye and wished me very good luck and all good hopes about my book. And I gave her a kiss on the cheek. And even knowing that I would more than likely never see this little person again, it did not come strange that there should be what already seemed to be a lifelong bond between us. And there was now no question that as I stood on this side of the Atlantic Ocean, I felt I had come home.

  As we sailed for the Isle of Man out the Mersey and passed the docked Franconia, one felt so small. Seeing the parts of the ship where I had spent over eleven days. And in its unrushed world, life had taken on at least a vestige of vitality unknown to me over these past several weeks. When one could take tactile pleasure from the most simple and banal of things in life. In nearing England, the Tannoy on the ship was broadcasting familiar sounds and programs, such as “Housewife’s Choice” and “Worker’s Playtime.” The former program by request often playing the “Sabre Dance,” during which it was said housewives all over the United Kingdom dropped their brooms and scrubbing brushes and collectively threw themselves on their backs on their floors, tables and beds and kicked and shook their legs in the air. That is, if they hadn’t already invited the gas man, milkman or breadman in.

  Valerie and Philip

  Philip and I on the beach below the Anchorage, Port-e-Vullin, Isle of Man, where many an hour was spent playing, and where later, my daughter, Karen, would swim for hours unperturbed in the ice cold waves.

  Sensing friendliness in the world again, there had been at Liverpool a welcome letter waiting for me from Valerie. But still, left over in me from America was the vague feeling that people didn’t want to have anything to do with me, nor, as it happened, I with them. And now I was finding it a continued surprise as folk approached me without hostility. Plus the lack of suspicion when I approached them. But with Crist gone, I felt a forlornness. I missed too, the nervous panic I could induce into him as I would rear up over the chessboard and mime the devastation I intended to mete out to his pieces. We did play twenty-seven games of which I won eighteen and he, nine. But most I missed our exchange of comments. But could at least play some of them over again in my mind.

  “Ah, Dinnlay, I’m working for the resuppression of the working classes. And I am noteworthy at least as the first to introduce formalized hitchhiking to Ireland. And the first man ever to run up credit in pubs. In America I was the first man ever to knock another man into the subway tracks and to then, not that much later, walk off the platform myself, and on both occasions to have a train coming in the station that stopped only inches away from mangling us. And my last two nights in America, as I rode the subway through the night from last stop to last stop, I would awake thinking I could hear the Sunday bells of Dublin tolling out mournfully.”

  The Isle of Man, as it often did, seemed to have disappeared, until it suddenly rose out of the sea mists and we suddenly cut speed and maneuvered in to dock at Douglas. Empty now in winter without the holiday makers who swarmed here in the summertime. My mother-in-law was still away, as she frequently was, either visiting Zurich in pursuit of the teachings of Carl Gustav Jung or in India at an ashram. And so in this marvelous house on the sea, Valerie, Philip and I stayed on our own in the comparative luxury of the Anchorage. Two things now seemed to matter most. Rewriting and finishing The Ginger Man and getting somewhere to live. Which simply would mean a house and Valerie first obtaining from Mrs. Heron her modest inheritance. Meanwhile I set to work. Rewriting and amending passages through the novel. Taking sometimes breakfast and often tea on the terrace when the sun shone there and always spending hours staring out again on the waves of the Irish Sea. And even if it were wet chill and a gale blowing, one enjoyed heading out for bracing walks in heathers up on the promontory along the deserted road to Maughold Head.

  Slowly now recovering from my discouragement in this endearingly familiar place, and regaining full use of my voice, I let Ernest Gebler know I was back and issued him an invitation to come for a visit. Remembering Ernie’s sensible encouragement that had come from him just before leaving New York. And recalling that he himself in America had had the same feeling of helplessness and hopelessness. But he did assure me that my sanity would save me. Gebler’s letters always having purposeful ways of lifting one’s spirits. And I took sustenance from his mention of the daffodils which would soon be budding in his fields. And of the paradise of Lake Park, nestled as it was in its hill of pine copses. Its walled gardens planted for food. Its Ladies Garden landscaped for pleasure and scented with its medley of roses overlooking its exquisite lough. We’d walked and talked, tramping along the edges of this ancient oak forest which grew beside this glistening lough of black water. When even the most deeply solemn days had their lighthearted joys.

  And there was also in the last letter Gebler wrote to me in America a note to bring back a full copy of my manuscript and that he had been thinking about French publishers and that there were a couple of firms in Paris. He said too that New York was a fearsome place for loneliness which my dismal letters reflected. And one knew now what was wrong with such as Gainor and I, nonconforming persons abroad in North America and surr
ounded by a sea of conformity. And it was true that many a bleak time in America I longingly cast my mind back to Ireland, with all its abounding eccentricities. Remembering days at Lake Park when Gebler was still asleep and I’d walk alone out on his darkening winter fields through the dull, rusted, wet leaves on the ground. And then how Ernie at midnight, after he’d milked his cow, would, as we sat before the turf fire, wax eloquent over Irish whiskey, telling stories and, as the gales blew over these lonely hills, predicting the transplanting of human organs and dissecting the atom sometimes till dawn. And Gebler would remind me of these times of this eternal place hidden in the shadows of its small mountains.

  “Mike, if you go, don’t stay in America. You’ve got to come back to the stark and vivid, gusty light that beats out of these temperamental skies, where all is alive with silent life. Never mind that up here in the Wicklows and over there in the west of Ireland they are maiming each other with kettles of boiling water flung at you for the smallest imaginary slight. The cold and ancient remoteness of Ireland, Mike, is what we come back to from the wrecked land of America, where you’ll be wasting the living breath of life, day by day. But here in the old sod, spiders are flying their fine lines across the sparkling moisture on blades of grass. And there still is a hole above us through the cancerous cap of civilization through which our thoughts can escape out to the freedom of the cold void of the universe.”

  And now Ernest Gebler wrote to say he was soon on his way to the Isle of Man. And carrying plenty of news. First of Gainor, who, off the boat in Cork, disappeared for two weeks. Rumored to be in the company of the random met on highways and byways and in secretive little pubs. Talking and listening as he always did in these spellbound realms on the edge of our earthly universe. And finally to show up in Dublin to be present the evening before Ernie caught the plane and was having dinner in the Bailey Restaurant. Where Behan, in his full vaudevillian manner and in his sometimes bullying way, was berating one of his usually timid admirers, who dared express an original opinion. Behan was plunging a pointing finger into the poor man’s chest, which he had just done six repeated times this night. Whereupon a perfect stranger at a nearby table got up, walked over and remonstrated,