J. Powers - Suitable Accommodations - An Autobiographical Story of Family Life - The Letters of J. F. Powers, 1942-1963

Trenarren Hotel

Greystones, County Wicklow

October 7, 1963

Dear Fred and Romy,

[…] For the last five or six days we’ve been running the hotel by and for ourselves. This, in the former respect, mostly means Betty, who even now is down in the kitchen — one of them — scraping grease off the wall behind the stove — one of them. I want you to understand what I’m saying but can only bear to look in for moments at a time in that region: there are what we would call four or five large rooms down there, all parts of the cooking setup: a room with stoves in it, one with a sink, one with a refrigerator, and so on, so that Betty gets plenty of exercise whenever she prepares a meal.

I am writing this from my office in the unused half of the hotel, somewhat away from the madding crowd. I have a distant view of the sea and a much better one of a filling station where there are Mobiloil and Castro signs, the latter being some kind of gas or oil, I guess. […]

What I should’ve said right away is that you don’t have to send a money order for the car; in fact, you don’t have to pay for it immediately, or even soon. […] Here was what gave me constant trouble: the hubcaps. Do not remove them unless you have to, and if you do, be sure you have them on just so or they’ll come off — they depend entirely on those little metal flanges which get bent and oh, what the hell … […] Be very careful, in this connection, Fred, or you’ll have missing hubcaps, and if there is anything that looks bad, it is a car with missing hubcaps, I think. Better you lose your manhood than your hubcaps. […]

Jim

JOE AND JODY O’CONNELL

Trenarren Hotel

Greystones, County Wicklow

October 8, 1963

Dear Jody and Joe,

[…] Boz asks me when we’re alone, walking down the street, why I don’t buy a house, and I tell him or I don’t, depending how I feel, but in a day or so or a week it happens again, and he is very gentle about it, and quite hopeless, I sense, that I’ll be able to pull it off. I see myself as an alcoholic at such times — not a bad person, really, but one from whom little can be expected. That, in outline, may be my problem. […]

You are there and we are here. I can see the sea out my window, about two blocks away, and it is municipal-swimming-pool green close to shore, with low whitecaps, and deep green on the horizon. Right across the road from the hotel, as I told Fred and Romy in a letter yesterday, is a filling station with Mobiloil, Shell, and Castrol signs, and not Castro signs, as I reported yesterday. My electric fire is on (and my own fires are banked), and I still have some wiring jobs to do on lamps if I decide to spend the evening hours here instead of in our bedroom, where we have an electric fire, Scotch and Irish (his and hers), and Boz’s transistor radio. We have been absolutely nowhere socially — tea once with the O’Faolains. The Dublin Theatre Festival came and went. We get The Irish Times delivered daily, and The Observer, Sunday Times , and Telegraph on Sunday, which, with churchgoing, pretty well takes care of that evil day. […]

We have just had lunch, Betty and I, tea, roast beef (not good) sandwiches, and several kinds of cheese, with nobody home but us and Jane and Terry. The latter is our dog. Only on loan, fortunately, the property of the hotel owners, who thought they wouldn’t be able to find accommodations for all three of them (they have no children) in London. Terry is a woolly dog, spayed (I believe the term is), with the body, or flesh consistency, of a woman, to the touch, that is. This I noticed this morning, when searching for fleas (we all seem to have bites). He (I refer to Terry) is a pleasant enough dog, has very intelligent brown eyes, and the kids love him. I can’t look at him, though, without wanting to clean him up, beginning with Murine for his eyes, which are suffering from erosion at the corners. Betty really has to take care of him: take him out at night, remove his collar, tuck him under his blanket in what is known as the Smoking Room here at the Trenarren.

Here there are Aer Lingus schedules for the summer of 1962 (take one) and a small so-called billiard table, with holes into which you try to get the balls to drop (it is like a pinball machine, not a pool table, though covered with good green felt). I must say I looked forward to a game when, on the first night here, the proprietor invited me to take the children into the Smoking Room whenever I felt like it, for a game of billiards. But you have to put in a sixpence, in order to open up the holes, and get about ten minutes of play. This, as you might imagine, can mount up with a family the size of ours all waiting to use the table and nobody but Betty and Himself with the slightest idea of the relationship there is between a sixpence piece and real money. There is a humming noise while the ten minutes are running out, and everybody seems to feel that this adds to the fun — a noise from somewhere in the table. What I was going to say, though, is that wherever Terry goes, there is a slightly doggy odor, and a layer of lanolin, too, and he goes everywhere, following the sun from bed to bed, room to room, during the day. I guess that ought to fill you in, along with what Betty will tell you in her letter. […]

We are glad to hear that Romy was delivered of her baby and that all is well.3 We hadn’t heard until your letters came. Now, for the love of life, why don’t you get Fred drunk and back him into a lathe or something? What about Dr D. in the role of the disbarred famous surgeon, asked to do a job, and actually turning in a whale of a performance for a half-pint? While you, Joe, and Dickie, and Dick Palmquist, and Leonard play cards in the next room, a candle in a bottle, and Jody is stalking around in a coat from Petters’s Furs? Somebody switches on the TV (updated from radio), and there we see the president of the United States (played by J. F. Powers) just completing a fireside talk on crime when suddenly, seen through the window, there are headlights — commercial here — and more headlights — and oodles of monks* pouring out of squad cars — too late, though, to prevent the operation. Titled Tragedy in Hardon County .

Cheers, and do write.

Jim

The owners of the Trenarren returned from London and took up occupancy in a few rooms of the hotel. It was not part of the agreement and led to a great deal of unpleasantness and, eventually, to Jim’s story “Tinkers.” (“So far it is writing itself. And also killing me.”)

DICK PALMQUIST

Trenarren Hotel

Greystones, County Wicklow

November 13, 1963

Dear Dick,

[…] You are lucky enough to have a friend who thinks enough of you to celebrate your birthday with a gift of champagne. As I recall, even when you provide same, it is hard to get anybody to come over and celebrate in St Cloud. It is the same the world over, though. I have always wished to be part of a going concern whose day-by-day existence makes for a few laughs, with our own stationery, office equipment, calendars, branches, and branch managers, perhaps a lake in Ontario where we go to relax (further) from time to time. You don’t have all those things, but you do have some and much more. So hang on to your job.4 Word is that Speltz will be the auxiliary, if that’s the way it’s spelt.5 Get that old suction pump going the moment he walks through the door — some of Mary’s pâté de foie gras gift wrapped in money might not be taken amiss. Talk down Alfrink’s heretical suggestion that laymen should do the office jobs at the Vatican and not the bishops.6 Stick up for Ottaviani.7 He is one of the first to talk against the bomb. His father was a baker, his mother a swan, hence his neck. Deny me and all my pomps. So much for good counsel, Dick. […]