Hogg surveyed his small stock of Irish. "Will a Mick Sullivan do?"
"Ah, well then, I'll try it. Such a big place as you are and divil a drop of Power's to bless yourself with."
"If you'd like something for a change," said Hogg, "there's this special cocktail here I've mixed in honour. A Crucifier, it's called." He at once realised that that must sound like deliberate insult to this man's cloth. "Blasphemous, I know," he said. "I apologise. But I consider that the name itself. Of these four, I mean. The guests of honour, that is. Father," he added.
"Well now, shouldn't we all be sticking to our own vocations and not stepping outside the lines to deliver judgments on what isn't our proper province at all? Perhaps you'd be willing to allow that it's myself as would be the proper and qualified judge of what's blasphemous and what isn't, me being the chaplain to those boys?" While he spoke his eyes roamed everywhere in Irish neurosis. In the corner there was the sound of someone being sick, a woman from the pitch of the retchings. Hogg showed minimal satisfaction, then swiftly shut it off. The chaplain saw. "Taking pleasure itself, is it, in the misfortune of some poor body's weak and delicate stomach and it fasting from dawn maybe?" The Prime Minister was heard to say:
"Well, as long as nobody blames it on the Government." There was dutiful laughter, though one young man, standing alone by the bar, nodded seriously. He had, like the Crewsy Fixers, very long hair, but it seemed as seedy as Hogg's own wig. His suit was not new; the side-pockets bulged. The chaplain poured himself another measure from the whisky bottle. Yod Crewsy and one of his group, a guffawing youth with very white dentures, came over to the bar, bearing glasses, Hogg was glad to see, of the later version of the Crucifier. Yod Crewsy said to Hogg:
"What you on then, dad?" Before Hogg could make an evasive reply, Yod Crewsy feigned to be surprised and overjoyed by the sudden sight of the seedy-maned young man with the bulging pockets. He put on a large record-sleeve smile and then embraced him with arms whose thinness the cut of his serge jerkin did nothing to disguise, saying: "Jed Foot. Me old Jed, as ever was. Glad like you could make it, boy." Jed Foot, mouth closed, smiled with his cheek-muscles. Hogg could not remember whether Jed belonged to the same alphabet as Yod. Yod Crewsy said to his chaplain: "Look who's here, Father. We're back to the old days. Happy times them was," he said to Jed Foot. "Pity you got out when you did. What they call a miscalculation. Right?" he said to Hogg cheekily.
"A memento mori," said Hogg, with poet's acuity. The chaplain chewed darkly over that before taking more whisky, as though Hogg had revealed himself as an anti-vernacularist.
"You got your mementos," said Jed Foot to Yod Crewsy. "Them songs. Pity I never learned how to write down music."
"Every man to his own like opinion," said Yod Crewsy. "You said the groups was finished. What you been on-the Western Australia run? Dead horrible, I know. Collie and Merredin and Bullfinch. They've been working you hard, boy. I can see that."
"I've been doing the clubs. The clubs is all right."
"Have another of these," said Hogg to Yod Crewsy. "A big one. A Crucifier, it's called."
"What I want," said Yod Crewsy, "is me dinner. Her ladyship here yet?"
"Herself will be the last to come," said the chaplain. " 'Tis a lady's privilege. You," he said to Hogg, "have the face of a man who's been a long time away from the altar. A Catholic face I said to meself as soon as I clapped eyes on it, and very guilty and shifty too with your self-knowledge of being in the presence of a priest of your Church and you with the boldness to be speaking of blasphemy and many a long year between yourself and the blessed sacrament."
"Look here," said Hogg. Swirls of toothed worshippers were about Yod Crewsy and his accomplices, but this Jed Foot drank bitter gin alone. "You," said Hogg, "and your bloody ecumenical nonsense."
"Is it yourself as would be daring to flaunt the shame of your apostasy in the face of a priest of your Church and spitting venom on the blessed enactments of the Holy Father himself?" He took more whisky. "I'll be troubling you," he said, "for another glass of fresh water."
It had been part of Hogg's cure to attend the services of the Church of England, a means of liquidating for ever his obsession with his dead stepmother who, Dr Wapenshaw had said, was really the Catholic Church. He was about to tell this chaplain that the liturgy of traditional Anglicanism was superior to that of reformed Papistry when the chaplain turned his face towards the entrance with mouth open in joy. Everybody else turned too. A lady was entering and, with her, a handsome and knowing Jewish man in his thirties. Hogg's heart turned over several times, as on a spit. Of course, of course, blast it: he should have known. Had not bloody Wapenshaw said something about her running the best pop-groups in the business? This was too much. He said to Mr Holden, who was standing by the bar, though not drinking:
"I've got to get out of here, I've got to."
"You stay where you are, fella, on the crease."
"But I've got to get to a lavatory."
"Now listen," said Mr Holden, his tea-coloured eyes very hard. "I've had about enough from you, fella, that I have. Obstruction for its own sake and going against the rules. You stay in till you're given out, right? And another thing, there's too many been made sick, and hard drinkers too from the look of them. See, they're taking that poor girl off now. I reckon those drinks you've been mixing will have to be looked into. Now what in hell's name -" for Hogg had pulled his wig down over his eyes like a busby. Even so he could see her clearly enough through the coarse fringe.
"Vesta, me dear," the chaplain was saying. "Five Our Fathers and five Hail Marys for being late." She smiled from her clever green eyes. She, never behind in the fashions, was in a new long-length skirt of palest pink and a brown biki-jacket. On the shining penny-coloured hair was a halo hat of thrushes' feathers. Her purse and shoes were quilled. All the other women at once began to look dated in their bright reds and greens. Hogg moaned to himself, desperately washing a champagne-glass below the level of the counter-top.
"You know my husband, I think," Vesta said.
"And isn't it meself he's been coming to for his preliminary instruction? Well, praise be to God, as one goes out another comes in." He swivelled his long Irish neck to frown at Hogg.
"What a strange little man," Vesta said. "Is he serving only from the top of his head, or something?" And then she turned to greet the Prime Minister with every sign of ease and affection. Her chief pop-group came over whooping to kiss her cheeks extravagantly, calling her, though in evident facetiousness, "mum." The photographers opposed fresh lightnings at each other.
"Oh God God God." groaned Hogg.
"Repentance, is it?" the sharp-eared chaplain said. "Well, you have a long penance in front of you for scoffing at the True Church itself."
A man with glasses, dressed in hunting pink, came to the door to bawl that luncheon was served. There was a ragged shouting exodus towards the Wessex Saddleback. Some, though, as Hogg saw, with very little satisfaction now, on the clearing of the bar, would not be wanting any lunch. Himself included. Shem Macnamara was one of the last to leave. He turned frowning to look at Hogg, mouthing the word "onions." He had, he was sure, heard that voice somewhere before.
Three
Hogg and John the Spaniard washed glasses companionably together, Hogg in a daze though, though he responded to John's excited comments on the event still proceeding with his usual courtesy. John had been swigging from half-empty glasses and was more garrulous than usual.
"You see that bloody thing, hombre? All ice cream and done like big monumento." It appealed to John's baroque taste and prompted memories of the victorious group-effigies erected by the Caudillo: the Crewsy Fixers, with drums and guitar, in highly compressed frozen confectioner's custard-whether really to be eaten or not was not clear, though the sound of laughing chiselling was coming through at that moment.