Robert Wilson - Eureka Street - A Novel of Ireland Like No Other

`Well, you would say that,' the interviewer replied, an indomitable, investigative smile on his brave and trustworthy American face.

It wasn't so much that real history was rewritten. Real history was deleted. Its place was taken by wild and improbable fictions. Ireland was the land of story and just Us campaigners had always been the best storytellers. They told the world a simple story. They edited or failed to mention all the complicated, pluralistic, true details. It had always been thus and the world had always loved it.

Theirs was a narrative in which the innocent, godly CATHOLIC Irish were subdued and oppressed by the vicious English and their Protestant plantation spawn. Italian socialists, French Maoists, German Communists and the entire population of Islington swallowed it all whole, but every now and then inconvenient voices were raised. Why do you guys shoot young boys for stealing cars? How socialist is that? And that business of blowing up shops, bars, cafes, it doesn't feel enormously left wing, does it? How come you have to kill so many Irish to liberate the Irish? Although these were infrequent objections, they still nonplussed the boys and girls from just Us who had no logical riposte.

This simply didn't happen in America. The United States presented a trusting, sentimental face for Jimmy Eve. He puckered up whenever possible. True, in America he diplomatically downplayed just Us's supposedly socialist credentials. But he hardly had to. The Americans were not going to draw any parallels between just Us and the spick Commie rebels in South and Central America. Just Us was full of white guys.That was enough.

All this had a superbity that Chuckie could not match but he incorporated Eve's Broadway-hit status into his own spiel. He began to develop two separate personae for dealing with these businessmen. If required, he could be the ultimate croppy boy within seconds, lamenting the filthy English invasion of his land. He became the ultimate Catholic, he grew misty-eyed when talking of the Kennedy clan and blessed himself, inaccurately, before signing any documents. He even began to affect a spurious command of spoken Irish until one sharpeared Star Trek fan pointed out that the noises coming from his mouth sounded suspiciously like the Klingon for `Phasers locked and ready, Captain'.

Alternatively, he sometimes found it useful to assume an entirely English manner. East Coast WASPs responded to this particularly well. They had a vague belief in some vestigial Northern Irish aristocracy. Chuckie knew he sounded more like Perry Mason than James Mason but they seemed to go for it.

There had been one frightening occasion upon which Chuckie had made an initial miscalculation. He had sailed into an important meeting in Boston doing his full Mick routine. `Top o' the mornin' to yous all, now. What say we get all our aul jawin' done and then we get down to Maloney's for a few o' the fine stuff?'

He was just about to start complaining about the health of his pigs when he noticed the frowns on the faces of the four men around the table. Then he noticed their striped ties and highly polished brown brogues, the pictures of old college rowing eights on the walls. It looked like there were fancy old WASPs in Boston too. His transition was immediate and effortless. He smiled thinly at the only man he'd met previously.

`I do apologize, old boy. I've just been listening to some unspeakable bog-wog called Eve on the motor car wireless. They're always banging on about something or other these days. Drives me barmy, I must confess:

He sounded dreadful. His phoney David Niven accent was mangled by his customary broad Ulster tones. He thought the men might punch him for taking the piss but, as always, it worked a treat. They gave him some more money.

He saw many parallels between the bullshit that Eve was selling and his own success. Indeed, he began to watch each television appearance that the Irish ideologue made, and as Eve's lies and fantasies became more abhorrent and ever more stepped up the wildness of his own approaches. Chuckie Lurgan and Jimmy Eve sold Ireland long and short, begetting their monstrous perjuries in tandem, united in an hallucinatory jubilee of simulated Irishness. Chuckie even began to feel something like a grudging affection for his hirsute counterpart.

This uneasy twinship came to a riotous head near the end of Chuckie's second week away from Max. In Washington to tell some lies about a textile company he wanted to start in Dungiven, Chuckie had become so famous that he gave a newspaper interview. In this piece, he had mentioned that he was a Protestant. Jimmy Eve was in town for a few nights, giving head to any Irish-American congressmen who came his way. Spookily, it was the first time that he and Chuckie had coincided geographically. Eve was scheduled for another multitude of television-appearances. The producer of one network show happened to see the little piece about Chuckie and decided, uncharacteristically, that it might be a good idea if, just for once, Eve was confronted by an alternative view. He called Chuckle's hotel and booked him to appear the next night.

Chuckie had been missing Max for near a fortnight. He felt himself growing rather grumpy. He called her every couple of hours but it didn't begin to be anything like enough. He grew mutinous and peevish.

Additionally, on the night before his first television appearance, Chuckie failed to sleep. He was remarkably agitated. All his life, this fame business had been magical to him and now he was about to achieve some small renown on his own part. And, whatever he believed about Jimmy Eve, he could not deny that the man was becoming increasingly famous. Chuckie, veteran Protestant Pope-chum, was familiar with this sensation of reluctant awe.

By the time Chuckie arrived at the television studios the next evening, he was so nervous he had practically stopped breathing. While in Make-up, the producers came to see him and were concerned about his evident anxiety. He could see that they were considering cutting him from the show. He was ashamed. He excused himself and sat unhappily in a cubicle in a nearby restroom.

After a few lonely minutes, he heard footsteps. A cubicle door was opened close by. Chuckie waited, scarcely breathing. The business of defecation had always embarrassed him and he decided to wait until this invisible man had finished his task before he himself could leave.

He grew conscious of strange noises: scrapings and small impacts. Suddenly uneasy, he looked up and saw a man staring down at him, obviously perched on the cistern of the nextdoor cubicle.

`How ya doing?' the man asked, airily.

`Fine. Thanks'

'You on the show tonight?'

Chuckie nodded.

`Got the jitters?'

Chuckie nodded again.

`Hold up.!

The man disappeared from his position. There were more scuffles and then Chuckie heard a polite knock on his cubicle door. Bewildered, he opened it. The man pushed into the cubicle beside him, locking the door behind him. He took a mirror and some small papers from his pocket. He set them on top of the cistern behind Chuckie's head.

'Outs the way, man. I got just the thing for confidence problems.'

Happily, he proceeded to cut four fat lines of cocaine on the little mirror. He pushed it in Chuckie's direction.'Go for it, big guy. If you get this in you, you'll be a star.You'll get a fucking Oscar.'

He put a thinly rolled-up dollar in Chuckie's hand. Chuckie stared at the little mirror and its four tracks of powder. Now Chuckie was not altogether a drugs virgin. He'd done a little speed, he'd smoked rejected it as a thin person's vice. He was, in essence, a conservative man. But he was also an anxious conservative man.

He stuck the tube of money in his nose and inhaled one of the lines of powder. His eyes pricked and his face appeared suddenly delicious. He felt as though he would like to eat his own lips. He put the dollar in his other nostril and hoovered up another track. This time, his very gonads grew elated. He had an ecstatic sense of simplicity. He cursed himself for never having previously investigated the Wonderful World of Cocaine.