Claire Kilroy: All Names Have Been Changed

On the side lane connecting the quays to Poolbeg Street, I encountered a woman sitting amongst dustbins. Her dress had ridden up to her hips, and she wore no underwear. The sight of her pubic hair was a shocking obscenity. Her thighs were dappled mauve, like Glynn’s daughter. He’d have gotten a whole chapter out of the scene, but I averted my eyes. The woman tugged at the hem of her dress with fingers gone rubbery from booze or worse and shouted something after me that I didn’t catch, something lascivious, judging by the tone. She was well pleased with the remark, such as it was, and threw back her head to laugh as best she could manage.

Crowd-control barriers had been erected along College Green. Teenaged boys had shinned up the lampposts. A lost child with a plastic flag was crying. A convoy of sodden floats and pipe bands trudged past in the rain, watched by people in anoraks. Jesus Christ, St Patrick’s Day. Empty bottles and cans littered the streets. I kicked through them like autumn leaves. The gates to Trinity were shut. The walled city had raised the drawbridge. Ambulances and squad cars nudged the crowd along like cattle. There was news of a stabbing on Stephen’s Green.

I crossed back over the Liffey to present my pounding hand to the Accident and Emergency in the Mater, thinking to get a head start on the crowd. I was too late. The crowd had a head start on me. The crowd had been there since time began. The casualties already outnumbered the staff a hundred to one. A fine big country nurse directed me to take a seat alongside the rest of the city’s drunken, drenched carnage and wait for my name to be called. We had a painful night ahead, the lot of us, during which time we were more than welcome to take a look at ourselves, take a good long hard look at ourselves in the cold light of day, tufts of wilted shamrock pinned to our scruffs, worse than any dunce hat.

It was my turn to read. I shuffled my sheaf of papers and cleared my throat:

‘The Professor’s forehead positively bulged with metaphors and imagery. Full to the rafters, so it was, worse than a pub on Holy Thursday. He hadn’t, of course, written a word in five years; not a publishable word, at least. Why let a minor detail like that impede you? Professor Flynn wasn’t remotely ashamed of the ludicrous figure he cut, having long ago lost sight of the fact that he was a preposterous personage. At times, it was possible to pity him. Mainly, though, it was not.

‘—Everybody hates me, he told the young girl.

‘—I don’t hate you, Professor Flynn, the young girl replied. She was beautiful beyond compare.

‘—Don’t you?

‘—No.

‘—You’re the only one. Oh, what would I do without you? Come here and sit on my knee. That’s it, good girl. Up a bit … Ahhhhh .

‘There were huffing, slobbering noises as the priapic Professor’s aged tongue explored the canal of the young girl’s ear, then he murmured her name, possibly to remind himself of it, what with his creaky memory (not getting any younger), or else as a ploy to distract the innocent creature from the sly progress of his hand, which was creeping up her thigh, groping for the leg of her drawers.

‘Genevieve panicked at the prospect of Flynn clapping eyes on her tatty grey pants, purchased by her mother many years previously in Dunnes Stores, Better value beats them all. Instead of slapping the old man’s hand away, as any sensible girl might, she yanked off her knickers altogether and kicked them out of sight under his desk, so sweet and obliging was her nature.

‘A happy sigh from Flynn, followed by a grunt and lurch as he parted the young girl’s knees and took aim. There was some fumbling. Yes, an extended period of fumbling. The girl waited patiently, gazing over the Professor’s shoulder at the array of trophies displayed on his bookcase. She didn’t wish to rush him. He was a great man, after all.

‘—Well now, said Professor Flynn, glancing down and clearing his throat. Would you ever look at that? Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone. It’s with O’Leary in the grave . He laughed hollowly as he tucked his lad back into his brown polyester trousers. The girl smiled weakly back. It was the most excruciating moment of her life. No wait, I am wrong. The most excruciating moment of the young girl’s life wasn’t to occur for another thirty seconds, when she had to crawl under Flynn’s desk to retrieve her tattered knickers, then step back into them one leg at a time while the mighty scribbler hungrily watched.

‘Professor Flynn burst into tears again. Fourth time already that night. It was a pre-emptive strike: the young girl was the one with cause for tears, but Glynn — I mean, Flynn — made sure to get the boot in first.

‘—Boo hoo hoo, he said, then swivelled an eye at Genevieve to check that it was working. Good stuff, the job was oxo. Was there no end to his crusade for pity? Flynn inhabited a world which, through his own mismanagement, had spiralled out of control. His wife had left him, his only child despised him, and it was just a matter of time before the college fathers turfed him out on his ear. Flynn was in service to nothing but his own capricious gift, which had abandoned him. And who could blame it? His voice had been described as inimitable in the past, but to Flynn it had become uninimitable. He couldn’t stop cogging himself. The descent into self-parody was complete.’

*

Of all my Chapter Ones — and there were more than a few — this was my favourite. It was the first thing I’d written that wasn’t tainted by despair, the only few pages of the past hundred or so to have afforded me any pleasure at all. I had turned an important corner in my writing life.

Glynn raised his glasses to his artist’s eye. ‘Be the hokey,’ says he, trading on that brand of Hiberno-English that had brought him so far, but only so far. Somewhere along the line, he had gotten it into his thick skull that the Irish were more charming than other nationalities, when the best that could be said of us was that we weren’t the worst. ‘Write that with your good hand, didya Dermot?’

‘Begob, I did not. I bet it out with this one, sir!’ says I, holding up my bad hand, wrapped like a parcel of meat. I’d as much a claim on that manic bog codology as he. We sat there grinning wildly at each other, the big Wicklow head on him, and the big Mayo head on me. Odd as it sounds, I was delighted that we were all back together again, birds in a nest, snug as a gun, after the best part of a month’s break. A beautiful afternoon in April, it was, so perfect it couldn’t last.

My good cheer was inappropriate, which only served to reinforce it. My latest Chapter One hadn’t gone down too well with the ladies.

‘I find your abrupt adoption of the Continental style sheet pretentious,’ was the only comment it elicited, from Antonia, who else? ‘This business of prefacing lines of dialogue with em dashes — who on earth do you think you are? Joyce?’ The rest of them just stared at me, the female gaze. Which was like the male gaze, only more observant.

‘I like it, son,’ Glynn concluded, his glasses still perched on his forehead. ‘A terrible beauty is born. You’ve been falling the wrong side of earnest for too long.’

‘I have, right enough, Professor Glynn,’ I nodded. ‘I am in firm agreement with you there. Wait till ye see Chapter Two! No more Mister Nice Guy, what?’ I made a series of faces at him, the way we did as school children before we’d acquired vocabulary to equal our malice. My enmity towards glynn I mean Glynn outstripped my ability to express it.

He for his part grimaced back for all he was worth. ‘Oh ho, no more Mister Nice Guy, indeed!’ he winked, rolling up his sleeves. ‘Every story needs a good villain, isn’t that right, Dermot?’