‘Why are you doing this to me madam.’
‘Doing to you. I’m not doing a damn thing to you.’
‘Well you are rather acting like a femme galante.’
‘Of course I am. Because you are the most darling gorgeous creature I’ve seen for days. Don’t you find me as attractive as I find you.’
‘Yes. But you are extremely forward too.’
‘Can a woman be any other way in a land of wife beaters and onanists. I say Ronald I shall have champagne.’
‘Of course you shall my darling. And you have I see haven’t you, met my most marvellous friend. His Lordship the Marquis of Delgany and Kilquade. Not that either of us give a damn about Debrett. But I saw him darling, perform the most excruciatingly delightful triumph above our heads, on the black and white lino tiles of this hotel’s lobby. Which has long been the altar upon which the most sacred of Irish society have been either worshipped or sacrificed. A treat.’
Darcy Dancer hardly able to move. Crunched elbow to elbow. The lady Black Widow turning to other faces. Voices roaring. Eyes smarting in the smoke. Drinking one’s dreams. The present future rearing marvellously. And racing away out of one’s past. A green tweeded gentleman. Called the White Prince. His face as black as a lump of Welsh coal. Rashers’s wine cooler again and again refilled. Bottle after bottle. Making him look ever more benign. Leaning in towards my ear to confide.
‘Of course my dear chap, that’s the secret, one gets a first bottle and my Ardagh Chalice does the rest.’
‘But who are all these people.’
‘Ah. Marvellous question that. Marvellous. Your naïveté is stunning dear chap. Never lose it. In a nut shell. They are for the most part the multitude and many from the landless class. And then there are the singular and few of the landed class. The former mingling with and chancing their arms with the latter. He, with his ears sticking out, is a gas meter reader. Whom I dare say is in search of intellectual stimulus. Or more likely, free drink. That bousy looking chap who just poured his drink over his head is a housepainter from Crumlin. That more obnoxious bastard there is a wall plasterer from Dolphin’s Barn. Who propounds his sensitive nature as he curries favour among the bloodstock breeders from Meath and Kildare. But ah. There. That chap. He has just come in from the Stock Exchange. Over in Anglesea Street. Of course it’s only a ruddy room with a circle of chairs enclosing barely enough space to decently fart in. But dear me, nice work if you can get it.’
‘But why are they all here like this.’
‘Ah marvellous question that. Marvellous. But for your recent performance one would by your question think that you were only the most recently arrived of arrivistes. They want, my dear chap. Simply to get each other’s goat. However that chap. The stunted one, thin and all hunched up. Euphemistically one refers to him as the Royal Rat. He wants your money first. Made his first roulette wheel out of an old car tyre. Since then the Royal Rat has in various dungeon basements, helped relieve chaps of their fivers. He actually pawned his dying mother’s bed. Chucked her on to an old pile of burlap to breathe her last. I thought it damn cruel. Sensible chaps like myself of course take a damn dim view of him having profitlessly to the spirit, encouraged as he does the frittering away of chaps’ inheritances in his dingy dank casino. But ah, dissipation. That’s what it’s all about. Hold death away by intemperance, unchastity and extravagance. Then death is welcomed. Those entering these Buttery precincts do so to squander their fortunes to the wind. Scattering fivers like autumn leaves. It’s too sad sometimes. To then see them slink off with their tails between their legs. That’s the marvellous thing about not having been left a bean. One does not spend. One only helps to spend.’
A baggy grey suited chap. Cigarette dangling between his lips. Pushing himself forward to squeeze in behind Rashers’ back. His hand up to the side of his mouth as he whispers. And Rashers turns and roars.
‘You blatant cunt. And I hate using the word. But regrettably it is the only one which applies. Coming to whisper about the plight of the creative artist in my ear. Can one imagine anything more ghastly. In the Buttery. As if I gave one boring damn about your awful nonsense. Had a rhyme published in your local country village newspaper, have you. And now you bring your abysmal ignorance to Dublin. Expecting for your pathetic lyric scribbles to be patted on the back and be thrown free lamb chops from one’s dining table. Fuck off.’
The baggy grey suited chap. A sickly smile on his face, blending back into the voices. The teeth. The eyes. The laughs. And sighs. Rashers transporting a cigarette from some one’s gold preferred case into the end of his ivory holder. Dragging the air down the length of former elephant tusk. His haughty musical voice sounding from his rather rabbit looking mouth.
‘The arts like Catholicism is a disease of the mind, my dear chap. Although I was born a papist I was saved from its worst corroding consequences by a childhood in India among the untouchables. A decent public school situated on a well known English river saved me as well. But of course one stands by the Romanists when Orange men up north there are thundering their drums and threatening to interfere indiscriminately with Catholic testicles. One then shall fight. One doesn’t give a damn how one’s human rights are infringed. It’s one’s animal rights one doesn’t want mucked about. But damn. One does above all prefer the rich ladies. Even to willingly placing one’s lips upon their au blet thighs. Leaving thereon the white indentation of one’s fevered mouth. And even some small pleasure is to be found in one’s pressured caress of the unresilient flesh of riper ladies’ haunches. Better than contretemps any time. Dear me. But the bad name of the Irish spreads all over the world and is only improved when they become a laughing stock.’
‘I hope you realize Mister Ronald that I am Irish and some of your remarks are not awfully flattering.’
‘You my dear chap. You. Macgillicudy. Marquis of Delgany. Prince of Kilquade. You are a genius. It matters not at all that you are Irish. And if I were not tainted that way myself, I would be bereft of my unerring sense of theatricality which enabled me during my too few undergraduate years to win wagers by running up and down Grafton Street in the thick of the morning shopping throngs. With one’s corpus spongiosum hanging loose wagging up and down. Which thankfully it did thereby riveting the attention of all. Which prevented one’s face being recognized. Let me fill up your glass, Macgillicudy. And by god I am Irish, you know. It was those damn penal laws gave us our wretched inferiority. Then my good chap, with the flight of the Wild Geese departing for saucier shores. It left what you now see surrounding you here in this Buttery. And the greatest of ironies. Protestants liberated us. Freed us from the British yoke. And then by god left installed straight down Molesworth Street our marvellous gobshite bureaucracy. But it’s a blessing. While they have their thrilling time putting their sticky fingers into tight government circles, us sybarites can play splendid with our perversions and appetites. Of course my father accused me of ratting on the war. Disinherited me of his pitiful chattels. Said if I would not fight for king and country I could not have his spoons and saucepans. I of course promptly purloined his Purdey shotguns and delivered them to the appropriate broker. Bash on regardless. That is the cry dear chap. Through the funerals of friends. Trampling the rose gardens of enemies. Bash on regardless. The cry of any self respecting member of the élite.’
The Buttery suddenly emptying. Darcy Dancer following Rashers Ronald up the steps to the street. The Black Widow just behind me. The portrait painter Leo waving a bottle of champagne and roaring out something about diphthongs from the hotel entrance. Baptista tugging the Marquis behind her by the kilt. The stockbroker removing a club from under his coat and flattening unconscious in the gutter the plasterer from Dolphin’s Barn. A punch out of nowhere landing on the face of the grey baggy suited artistic chap as he made an attempt to enter a motor car. His cigarette smashed flat between his teeth. The élite piling in over the prostrate bodies. The waiting vehicles packed like sardines. And now roaring off with springs squealing laden with entwined bodies. A pair of lady’s feet sticking out in front of the driver’s face. Speeding over the roadway in the black night. Swerving around corners. Shadowy gable rooftops flash by out the window. Someone distinctly tampering with my fly buttons. Here I am. Flying. Through this low life. In some strange secret womb of the damned. In this city. Not a time to be particular. Impossible to tell if a male or female hand is tinkering with my balls. Whose brain knows or cares. The Black Widow pointed a finger at me. Her voice. Loud and clear.