Carlo Gebler

A selection of Gebler's work, previously published in Fortnight magazine

[The Party] [The Artist] [Bumped] [Ottawa Diary] [The Visitor] [Sailing] [The Cat] [Willard's Brother] [My Cliff Richard Moment] [Man-Woman Barber-Massage] [She's Leaving Home] [Confessions of a Curmudgeon] [Kids] [Guns] [The Circus] [Eleventh Night - Twelth Day] [Envy] [Disappointment] [From the Local Paper] [History]

The Party

It was late. Many of the guests were drunk. He'd had a lot of hydroponic skunk. Everything swayed except for a woman in a tight fake snakeskin top who was staring at him across the room. He'd never seen her before."Wanna know the secret of a good marriage?" someone shouted in his ear.was now sitting on the host's knee, he saw, in the corner. She took a swig of the opium tea and made a face at him. "Expect the worst and you'll never be disappointed," said the shouter. His mouth was dry from the grass. "I need water," he said, and dashed into the kitchen. It was tiny and crowded with dirty dinner plates. He ran the tap. Someone come in. Snakeskin. She had lipstick on her teeth. She wanted to clean the stain off but she could not get her finger to connect. He had to do it for her with his handkerchief. They shook hands formally. Her name was Mary. "Are my breasts too small?" she asked. She pressed her moulded front towards him. He glanced at the door. She closed it with a backward kick. "What you think?" he said.thought they were. Then she asked him if he knew that breast augmenter was now available?"No.""From Peter Jones, of all places, where my mother shops." "Really."was hard when cold, she explained, but at body temperature it became soft and malleable. All a girl did was slap it on her chest, wait ten mins., mould it into shape and hey presto, the thirty two AA was a thirty eight DD. "Of course," continued Mary, her eyes blazing, "what do you do when the boyfriend comes round and you've got the stuff on?" said nothing. "'Tops on tonight,'" she said, in a husky temptress voice, "'but bottoms off, darling. It's more exciting.'" She shoved her hipsters down a couple of inches, showing of her hips and the white flanks below. She smiled at him. to this moment he was amused and dreamy. Hydroponic had that effect. But now, suddenly, that state of mind vanished. He was sober. "Have you seen 'Flubber'?" he asked. She hadn't, so he explained. It starred Robin Williams as a scientist who invents an infinitely elastic substance which he calls flubber.film, he continued. His wife couldn't stand it. But the children loved it.colour drained from Mary's face. Then the colour came back. He thought he could see her thinking, I'm going to ignore that. I'm going to push on.asked her what she did. Something in magazines, she explained. Nothing interesting. It was just a job. Drab. But it paid the rent. Then she told him she had been to a convent school in Cheshire. She told him that when she was sixteen year old schoolgirl, she had wished for certain things and now, aged thirty-six, at least as far as job and parties and living in London went, she'd got what she wanted. She had it all except, which she would never have realised aged sixteen, this all, well, hadn't she said it already, it was just drab.felt a twinge of sadness. He must go. But not immediately. She'd think he pitied her and that wouldn't do. He allowed a decent interval to pass, then he said, "I have to go." backed against the door. She put her hands behind her back. She tilted her head to the side. Like St. Sebastian before his martyrdom, he thought, grimly.must talk to a friend, he said, outside. Besides, they couldn't hog the kitchen.stepped sideways. Release, he thought. But it was a feint. As he reached for the door handle, she stepped forward and threw her arms around his neck. Next thing her mouth was against his, and her open lips surrounded his tightly closed lips.knot of sadness swelled. There was a pause. She was waiting for him to act. He could take her or leave her. Such self control could only mean a degree of desperation he did not want to think about. stepped back and they stood facing each other. rolled her lips, one against the other, to repair any damage to her lipstick."Is my slap all right?" she asked, with fake bravura. he was mellow. That was the grass. Then he was sober. That was the pass she made. Now he was bloated with sadness. That was the pain he had seen. And all this happened in less than thirty minutes, he thought."It's fine," he said.thought she was going to cry but instead she said, "It's the Sunday's I can't stand. Fucking, fucking Sundays."I know," he said. And he knew she knew he knew, and she knew he knew, and so on. It was a perfect moment of perfect understanding. Then it was over. Gone. They nodded at one another and stepped out into the fug of the living room to mingle with the other guests.
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The Artist

I had to go to Hampstead. The best way from west London is up Fitzjohn's Avenue, but for some inexplicable reason I have a block about this road. Every time I hit Swiss Cottage and imagine I'm heading on to Hampstead, I invariably go up the Finchley Road instead and wind up in Hendon. Really, this is a mistake I shouldn't make. I was endlessly in Fitzjohn's Avenue as an adolescent; I used to visit the flat of the woman who taught me to swim. I should know it by now. there I was in Swiss Cottage. With the bicycle. En route to Waterstone's, Hampstead, to give a reading. It was a damp, dank, March afternoon. The traffic flowing from the south was thick and clotted. I saw an oldish man in a beige baseball hat scurrying along the pavement. "Excuse me," I said, "is that Fitzjohn's Avenue?""No, that is.""Ah." I'd almost made the old mistake again.'s Avenue is steep and I said something about its being too hard to cycle up. I moved forward. The man in the baseball hat moved in the same direction."I haven't had a car since 1973," he said matter-of-factly. "I saw then the car was going to destroy the world. Now I walk twenty miles a day."fine mizzle of London rain began to fall. "Shall we walk together?" he suggested. "It might help to quicken the journey." It was like something a character met by Synge in the Congested Districts might have said, except this was in London and the speaker's accent was estuary refined (I guessed) by art school. This was a good guess because next thing he said, "I'm an artist."Oh. Figurative or abstract?""Figurative, of course" he said testily. I was getting in the way of his story. He'd been in the West End, he continued, just that morning, doing his twenty miles, and had happened to pass the gallery where, last month, he'd thrown in some of his pictures. "And you know what?" he continued."What?" "I couldn't be bothered today to go in and collect my paintings. The art world! to put it frankly, I just can't be arsed."sighed wearily. "They're done, my paintings. Finished. Over. They sell. They don't sell. I don't care."sigh and he was off. He had a unique gift for drawing. For as long as he could remember, he could just look at someone and then immediately reproduce their essence with a few deft marks on paper. did he take advantage of this gift? Of course not. Which is typical human nature, isn't it? At art school he wanted to be a Renaissance man. He wanted to excel at everything. To be just a painter was insufficient. He wanted to be a great poet, a great musician, a great writer and a great dramatist as well."And that's when it started to go wrong," he said darkly. He told a story. Pierre Boulez conducting a new piece at the Purcell Rooms when he, the artist, bounded onto the stage with his clarinet and started to improvise along with the orchestra. The crowd booed. The police arrived. There was an unseemly scuffle. On another occasion, his attempt to paste his own poems onto a Salvador Dali painting at a Bond Street opening led to a short custodial sentence. listed several other examples of his desperate attempts to secure the attention of the world. It was fruitless art terrorism, of course, but far worse was what he said. One good job after another at one art school after another he destroyed by lashing out verbally, and he lashed them all, abstract, conventional, figurative, expressionist. In the end there wasn't a school of painting in the world with which he didn't pick a fight. By the mid- seventies his life was done. He retreated to a room in Hampstead, whence he had hidden ever since. "It's only in the last few years," he continued, "that I've come out. I'd never have talked to you like this before.""How did you manage to survive economically?" I wondered.eyes went wet. "There were just a few collectors, a few good souls, and they just insisted on having the work because it was so damn good and they paid me and they took it off me and that's how I lived."stopped. We were now three-quarters of the way up Fitzjohn's avenue. Leafless trees and the road magically empty of traffic. "For thirty years that's where I had my studio," he said, pointing to the garret of a red brick building. "I only moved up to the heath last year.""Amazing," I said. "You were there." I ran my finger down the building to the basement. "And that's where I used to get taken. The woman who lived there, she taught me how to swim.""Oh yes, her," said the artist, and mentioned her name. "Very nice woman. Dead now," and we set off again, as if there was nothing whatsoever in any way remarkable about this coincidence.
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Bumped

from the publishers rang. 'Newsnight' wanted me for their post-referendum special from Belfast. afternoon, I rolled up to Broadcasting House. The front looked very closed. Moments later, sashaying through the back gate, I had a metaphor attack (the first so far). On the day after a referendum in which, uniquely, Protestants and Catholics had acted together, the only way in to the state broadcaster was through a Portakabin. It was like going into a dodgy warehouse to buy some porno. Not my best conceit. I rejected it instantly.Green Room was an RTE/Newsnight co-production. Guests and technical staff from the two jurisdictions were co-mingling and troughing. A blonde PA, plate on lap, was on the phone to Ken Maginnis. I overheard a short, tetchy exchange. She put the phone down. 's insisting on eating a rather nice piece of liver, said the irritated PA, forking an enormous piece of something into her mouth. Her munching colleagues nodded agreement. Unconscionable. How dare the man eat and not come straight on the box.I went off to the lavatory. Jam packed with 'Newsnight' guests. I opened the door of a cubicle. There was man already in there doing what men do with a lavatory bowl. His crop of curly hair seemed familiar. I knew this man. But who was it? Of course. It was the other Maginnis but spelt McGuinness. Martin. Excuse me, I wanted to shout, this is my traditional pissing route. Then a lantern jawed minder appeared and I saw that the joke was as cheap as the last literary offering. I really was going to have to pull my socks up if I was going to scintillate for Jeremy. few minutes later I was back in the green room. Now Martin and Co. had arrived, everyone else, for some unaccountable reason, had scarpered. This left just me and another man I didn't recognise. We each sat in a corner, like old timers in the American Wild West, invisible on the edge of the saloon. Meanwhile, the McGuinness gang, fresh from the range, hogged the bar so to speak, which in this case was a table laden with the BBC fare.my perch I watched Martin. It was interesting. When I trough I pick what's nearest. Not Martin. He peers intensely at the food, his forehead furrowed, and he appears to be thinking , Will I eat that? No, that one looks better. No, no, that one looks better still. And the sandwich selected for culling is then placed with fastidious precision on his plate. Suddenly, I could feel another metaphor, just above to hove across the horizon like a battleship. His manner at table was like Sinn Fein's pick'n'chose attitude to the Good Friday agreement; we'll have this but none of that . . . But I dropped the idea quickly as another quip well below par. Martin had his plate full. His face wore a look of excited anticipation. The first morsel, gripped fastidiously between finger and thumb, was arcing towards his open mouth. Suddenly, the 'Newsnight' assistant popped her lovely English face around the door and said, "Mr. McGuinness." He looked up, startled. In the flesh, he doesn't look like the faintly demonic Harpo Marx we know and love from television, more like a poor impersonator of virtual Martin. It's a sad fact but in life nothing looks as good as on the box."Make up," trilled the assistant. . McGuinness said something about being on the verge of eating. But like all Brits, the assistant was intransigent. Jeremy Paxman'd started, the show was rolling. stood. His expression was dolorous. Once again Irish history was following its old tragic trajectory. At the very instant poor Paddy was about to tuck into his tea, up popped Britannia to drag him off to the Calvary of beige foundation.slouched away, minders in tow. I heard the other old timer chuckling. Poor Martin, he had been so looking forward to his tea. I would have laughed myself but I didn't because at that moment the 'Newsnight' assistant slid back and sat down across from me. face was rueful. I have seen this face before. On 'The Larry Sanders Show'. This was the standard television face adopted by young female assistants when they have to break the bad news. "You've bumped me," I said, before she did. Yes, she apologised. Too many items. She was terribly sorry. , it doesn't matter, I said, emphatically. was puzzled. Was this sarcasm? Ulster irony? wondered how to explain that I'd brought this doom on myself. Three crap literary conceits and you're out. That's God's way. The slightest sign of bad literature and He will have you bumped. Simple as that. But would she understand this? No chance. I picked up my coat and reprised, "Really, it doesn't matter." it could have been worse, I thought, slinking through the Portakabin. Thank goodness Martin & Co. weren't present to witness my humiliation. Oh yes, if He'd wanted, He could have made the bumping so much worse.
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Ottawa Diary

It years ago, I was in an hotel outside Cienfuegos, Cuba. A large group of middle-aged French-Canadians sat by the pool and hissed at the old waiter in the disgusting, time-honoured Cuban style, then fell about laughing at their brilliant mimicry, and their Quebec daring. at the bar a Cuban whispered to me, "Capitalism, campanero," and shrugged his shoulder. It seemed that my economic system not only exploited, it also produced ill-mannered yahoos. spool forward ten years to Ottawa airport and my next encounter with Quebeckers. I was at the luggage carousel when a young woman with the face of the silent screen actress, Louise Brooks, came up. My bag is too heavy, she explained, in charming Frenchified English. I lifted it onto the trolley for her. Not heavy at all. Telephone numbers were exchanged. I told her I had come to Canada to attend a literary festival.the evening I turned on the television in my hotel, as one does. Forty stations and rising. On North American television there is no distinction between programme and advertisement, so content and commerce are part of the same seamless flow. On the Shopping Channel I watched a woman who was mostly made of silicon interview Mr. Juice Man, maker of the JuiceMan Juicer. "You put the apples and bananas in here," he explained to her, "push the plunger and out comes the juice. Now you do it." "Oh can I," she purred. Now she pushed down the plunger, and as a thick white substance spurted from the spout, she smiled lasciviously at the camera. It was terrific bad porno.between the demonstrations there were testimonials from happy customers. Soft focus close-ups of well spoken Canadians who pronounced on JuiceMan, and their consumer satisfaction. For these people, and presumably for the rest of us watching in North America, consumption was the principle civic virtue. To enjoy complete product satisfaction were the mark of the good citizen. It also had the additional bonus of getting you on national television. next morning to the Mall, where else? At every turn I was greeted by shiny uniformed retail staff, all eager to mid-wife my purchasing decision. They was something almost lover-like about their attentions. "They have to be tarts," said a droll Canadian, when I related the experience later, "There are twenty people waiting in line for their McJob." So unemployment is driving up standards in the service sector. J.M. Keynes must be turning in his grave. evening the Louise Brooks look-alike came to a reading bringing a friend. In the bar afterwards, the friend, Charlotte, shook my hand quickly and began to talk. Her mother was Anglo, her father a Quebecker; she was raised Ontario. Her temperament, she said, was Latin passion over laid with Anglo-Saxon reserve; she was passionate but also punctual, reliable and honest, and a dedicated enemy of corruption. She told me the Canadian national character had much to be admiredÑenergy and a belief in fair play, for exampleÑqualities she had in abundance, she claimed. But on the down side, when it came to back-stabbing, Canadian's were in a league of their own. "Look at Greg Rusedski," she said. "He gave up his Canadian citizenship and became British to advance his tennisÑand why not? Then the guy nearly wins Wimbledon and press here trashes him. Could we say well done? Oh no. Not now he'd become British. That's typical Canada."this she returned to her character. She was placid, she said, and she had a ready knack for getting on with people. And as she rattled on, it suddenly seemed that this was not so much a conversation as a sales pitch. Her personality was just one more product of consumption. If she failed to get me to like her and I turned away showing no interest that was a lost opportunity, but if I liked her, she could ring up another sale. my last day I crossed over the river to Quebec and went to a small roadside inn. In Anglo-Canada all the waitresses wore shorts and sweatshirts with corporate logos but here it was different. Here the waitress wore their own clothes and each one wore a dress. There were no artificial tans or expensive teeth on display. I won't say they were more real but certainly these were women as I recognise them; and certainly they had not embraced the virtues of the Anglo-Saxon retail world. I sat at the table I remembered the bar in Cuba. That scene of French-Canadian unruliness had been imprinted for ever in my memory. On the strength of that experience I'd thought Quebeckers were foul. Now, after the week that had passed, I was having to revise my opinions. Suddenly, the retention in Quebec, of a non-North American, French speaking, anti-corporate identity, represented by something as simple as a waitresses wearing their own clothes and speaking like human beings and not like graduates of the Macdonalds College, suddenly that seemed nothing short of a miracle.
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The Visitor

Children ate and ran off to watch the Beatrix Potter video Marjorie had rented out. Looking round, he noticed the photograph of Marjorie's daughter was in its place but the one of Nick, her son, was gone. "Where's Nick?" he asked.was there when he last visited, four or five years before. shook her head and put her hand over her face. "Haven't seen him for eighteen months," she said. "It's a terrible thing for a mother to cut off her son. But I had to. The photograph went as well. Into a drawer I mean. I have it. I just can't bear to look at it."began. He'd heard bits before. But he'd never had the whole piece. And because they hadn't been to see this old family friend for years, the end was new."He was an angelic child," she said. "Then at eight, something happened. Nick changed over night. One moment, lovely, the next, a nightmare. But talented. Oh, yes. That boy could draw. He could make models. He could sculpt. He could do anything."sentences were fluent. No stumbles, no breaks. "When Nick was sixteen, Ken died. Well, you remember."did."Nick went to his room after his father's funeral, drank two bottles of Beaujolais. He'd always drank slyly, with other boys at school. Now he drank openly. "But somehow he got his GCSE's, his A-Levels and a place at art school. And he got his degree. "And when he finished, he said, 'I want to be a painter.' And Muggins here, I stump up the deposit for a studio. I buy materials. He gets the dole, of course, but instead of paying the rent, every penny goes on drink. He's evicted. He comes to me crying. I do it all over again. New flat. New deposit. After five or six times around the block he's back to me again. He has no where to live. None of his friends want him. He's had four or five lovely girl friends but they don't want to know him either. He's all washed up and he's only twenty-five. "So Muggins here says, Come home. Muggins here thinks, I can stop the drinking, I can put him back on the straight and narrow. Of course I can't. He drinks everything in the house. He starts stealing from me, and his sister. We have to hide our money. "I contact AA. I read the books. I tell Nick he should de-tox. I tell him I'll pay. He says, Yeah. He agrees. He cries. He says he's ruined himself. He says he's sorry. He says he'll take the cure. But when the time comes to go, there's always a reason he can't go. "And all the time the house gets wilder. He has these awful cronies around. I begin to fell unsafe in my house, plus I know Nick and his mates are stealing what ever they can lay their hands on. "One day I say, Hey, Marjorie, catch yourself on. Out, I say, I can't have this anymore. So he goes. Moves in with one of his bevy-merchants. Promises he won't drink. Of course he does. From time to time he turns up here. He always looks terrible. He always wants money. I don't want to but I always end up giving in. I'm Mum."Then I have a call. The hospital. Nick's fallen in front of car. Both arms broken and the hospital are pumping his stomach out. "I go to see him. I'm very cool. There's no point my telling him he has to get himself sorted. It has to come from him. We talk. He wants to come home with me from the hospital. I say, no, we've tried living together at home, and it didn't work. "He stays in hospital. Of course it takes ages to recover. He's run down. He leaves hospital. Straight back to the old routine. Within weeks he falls in the street again. Breaks the arms in the same places again. Back to hospital. Now he needs steel plates. He gets ulcers. I go to see him. We have the same conversation we've had for the last ten years. He wants money. I won't provide it. He promises he'll get himself sorted. I know he won't. I realise there's nothing I can do. Nothing. It'll be either kill or cure and I'm powerless to influence him one way or the other. "Then and there I make my decision. I say, When you want real help, you find me. Otherwise, I never want to see you again. That was the year before last. I haven't seen him since."went to the cabinet in the corner, open a drawer and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. "Mind if I smoke. I'm back on the fags. I hadn't touched a fag for twenty-five years."had one in her mouth and the trembling flame of a lighter held to the end. "Now I'm forty a day."s
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Willard's Brother

I had dinner in Belfast. I came back quite late to the house where I live near Enniskillen. I decided to reward myself with a drink for not having had a drink.
I put a little Bush in a glass. Then I stood in the middle of the kitchen. I don't know why. It was fate I think. Standing motionless, listening to the re-assuring burble of the fridge, staring at the black, blank kitchen windows, I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. t was moving along the side of the wall on the other side of the room. It was a blurred shape. I didn't really take it in. That's an enormous beetle, I thought. Or spider. Spider's can be very big.
Can they? came the sceptical voice from deep within that always challenges complacencies. I would have to look. I swivelled my head blithely and then, immediately before I had recognised what it was, a very large quantity of adrenaline was released into my stomach. It really was a case of the body getting its anxiety in first.
It was black all right, but it wasn't a spider or a beetle. It was furry and it had four legs, and a tail, very long. It had a curious way of moving. It didn't so much run or scurry, as leap in a serious of graceful arcs. And as it arced so elegantly along the floor, I remembered two things; I remembered the Ladybird edition of 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin' which my children do so love me to read to them—it's packed with illustrations of these furry little creatures arcing beautifully in a medieval German town; and I remembered 'Willard'. This was an early seventies exploitation movie that featured—if I remember correctly, a ten foot version of one of these. The close-up shots of Willard's malicious face, all sharp nose, twitching whiskers, and carnivorous eyes, were particularly memorable. And there was no doubt about it; it was Willard's younger brother—he the same long whiplash tail—that I was now seeing, at the end of this unexpected sequence of memories, nipping behind my dish washer. Oh fuck, I had a rat and he was in my kitchen.
My house was once a rural Ulster school. The kitchen is in the old boy's cloakroom. The living room is a classroom. Foolishly, I let the architect prevail upon me to knock the dividing wall. In other words, the house is open plan. The rat wasn't just in the kitchen—he had the whole place to range over.
Remembering tales from childhood of rats nibbling the eyelids of sleeping babes, I hurriedly closed all the children's bedroom doors; then I returned to the kitchen with Tessa our Chihuahua-Corgi-Dachshund cross-breed. There was, I felt certain, a soup�on of Jack Russell in Tessa's gene pool. It was, I hoped, the ratting gene and that she would see off Willard's brother.
I retired to my bedroom (which is off the living room) and stood listening. I heard growling. I heard sniffing. I heard light barking. But I did not hear the noise of strife or the high pitched squeak of a rodent trapped in a terrier's jaws. In the morning, well booted of course to prevent anything untoward happening to my toes, I approached the kitchen. Tessa was on the sofa, miles off, snoring contentedly. It was a very dark winter's morning. I flicked on the light and scanned the floor for a rat corpse. Nothing.
Then something made me look towards the shelf beside the cooker. And there he was, sitting up on his back legs, looking at me with his blank eyes and twitching his whiskers. It was my new friend.
I wondered if I could take a plate from the dresser, throw it and cut him in two, as Odd Job might. But before I could act, the rat read my mind. He jumped neatly onto the hob, squeezed under a gas burner and vanished. Oh fuck. He wasn't just in the kitchen. Now he was in the cooker.
The children were dressed and called to breakfast. Everyone, mobster-style, opted to sit on the side of the table facing the cooker so they could keep an eye on it. Then we all bundled into the car and drove to the school bus pick up point; it is also a general shop.
"What have got for a rat?'
"You'll want this," said the owner, presenting me with a green cardboard box with 'Steel Rat Trap' written on it, "and while you're at it, try that to." He presented me with a tube filled with Rat Glue.
"Spread it on cardboard," he explained, "pop a bit of bread in the middle, and Bob's your uncle. Rat comes to a sticky end."
Ha, ha, ha, yes, very funny.
Back home I discovered my wife had fled and now I was all alone with my visitor. I phone the rat catcher. Avoid glue, he said.
"Why?"
"Because it doesn't kill them; he'll just get stuck and he'll be alive. You'll have to kill him yourself."
"Ah."
I set the trap. I went and stood outside the kitchen windows and waited for the lovely sound of a steel spring closing shut. I heard nothing. The milkman came and commiserated. Then the rat catcher pulled up.
"Trouble," he said, "trouble." He had blue twinkling eyes. He looked like a sixteenth century Saxony miner as drawn by DŸrer.
The rat catcher searched the kitchen while I hovered.
' "Oh yes," he muttered, when his light illuminated a forest of black droppings behind the rubbish bin. Our visitor had
'been living Chez GŽbler some while it seemed.
' "Have you any chocolate?" he asked.
' I have too many children so usually I don't have chocolate because the little blighters eat it all. However, my wife had been given, but two nights before, a Rose's Selection box that was hidden behind the pelmet of the cupboard. "Give us one with a nice thick coat," said the rat catcher.
' I selected one of the toffee fingers.
' The rat catcher unwrapped the sweet, smeared chocolate all over the evil prongs, then set the trap behind the bin. "They don't like our smell," he whispered, sniffing the air.
' We left the house.
' Half-an-hour later, I returned, alone. With the sweeping brush I pulled the swing bin out and peered behind. Eureka! There he was, lying in the trap. The bar had hit the rat so hard it had made a dead straight line right across his neck. There was also mess all over the trap of a kind you don't want to know about.
' I carried the trap outside with the fire tongs. I levered the bar back and released the corpse onto the garden table. Perhaps I would leave him there for the family to see? My day's bag. On second thoughts, I thought, no.
' I washed the trap under the garden tap. When I went back to the table, spade in hand, he was gone. A magpie or our cat had got him.
' I called my wife. "The rat is dead," I said.
' "Excuse me, but I don't want to hear that word," she said. "Can we please stick to Beatrix Potter. It was a mouse."
'
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Sailing

we drove onto the ferry at Rosslare, the tyres rumbling on the ramp, I thought about islands. The advantage of islands, obviously, is that it's hard for invaders to get at you. They have to get wet and armies don't like that. The disadvantage . to France. Or perhaps it's simply that I have more children.decided to eschew the dining room ("That's where people go to escape from children," said my wife sagely), and opted for the buttery. was a long queue snaking like a lower intestine up and down the room. Tyga went ahead to reconnoiter."I'd advise the beef," she said, when she returned.
"In Ireland always eat Irish," the children chorused, echoing our only culinary nostrum.were a family of Danes behind us. One of the children ARTS COUNCIL IRELAND doned our food and got in a lift. This took us somewhere we didn't want to go and then we couldn't we find our way back to where we started, either. The maps on the walls were completely indecipherable. (Suddenly I could empathise with the couple stuck on the M25 for three days)., we found a stewardess called Tippula ("Latvian?" I queried, "No, Mullingar," she said) who lead us to the cinema. Here we saw Mulan a stirring Disney cartoon set in ancient China with a progressive feminist message. is the story; girl, Mulan, disguises herself as boy and goes to fight for the Imperial army against dastardly Huns.
She turns out to be better than all the men (what a surprise) yet because she's a chick, she also gets to marry the Prince (you'd never have guessed that, either, would you?). follows the formula honed to perfection in Aladdin, and other Disney efforts; take something good (here China, whose modest contribution to civilisation includes Confucianism, printing and gun powder) pastiche their belief systems and re-configure all native characters so they talk like Yanks.
Stir in message "all men are losers"then thrust pap on an defenseless world and clean up. audience loved it. Listening to the children, my own included, gooing and cooing around me in the darkness, I was struck by the awful realisation that most of the audience had seen this muck already and were back for more. They were addicts and this small sweaty box where I sat was a new form variant crack-house, except it was culture, not cocaine, that everyone was fixing up with. nightmare ended and we went to our cabin. t was hot and claustrophobic and someone was killing horse above us and the animal wasn't going quietly.
Unable to sleep, I went to the cabaret. Riverdance has a lot to answer for. Onstage, while Ginger Baker's brother thrashed a bodhran, girls in tiny shimmering Irish dancing dresses were playing spoons on their upper thighs and smiling suggestively. The audience were whooping with excitement. Here was Ireland at it's most aggressively asinine and energetic.left the cabaret and wondered off.
Here and there, dotted about the boat, (and balancing the cabaret) knots of traditional musicians were playing impromptu sets, surrounded by do-nuts of reverent listeners who clapped politely at each break, like a Wigmore Hall lunch time audience. We may be an island no one would dare (or want to invade) but now there's no need. We've taken Mulan into our hearts and we've re-configured our own culture for consumption abroad, either as saucy low art (down there with the lunch time pub stripper) or as po-faced high art which deserves a kick up the behind. Ciad Mile Failte. Such were my thoughts as the ferry lumbered south across the dark sea.went to bed (the horse killing was still in train) and slept fitfully dreaming of Chinese-American cross-dressers in Irish dancing frocks, armed with spoons and intent on world domination.
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The Cat

One Christmas Eve, the children appeared carrying a box.
"Dad," they squealed, "surprise!"
I peered in and saw two little balls of fluff. One was a black tom with white paws.
"He's Blackberry," they explained.
The other was a brown and white female, whom they had named, Blossom.
The kittens went in the hall along with a smart litter tray. Unfortunately, toilet protocol wasn't in their genes. Blackberry and Blossom shat everywhere but the tray. One day, they did it in the enamelled Victorian bread bin, on the bread. That was it. I threw the bread bin away and, despite the protests of my children, the young cats (as they had now become), went out to the shed.
They would never come back into the house, I said.
Years passed. Blackberry and Blossom grew to be expert killers of small mammals. They liked to smear the blood of their victims on our front step as a sign of respect. Our house began to smell like an abattoir.
Like the cats, the children also grew, and the time came when the older ones could manage the school bus. A routine developed. Every morning, we'd pick our way over the doorstep, littered with twists of gut and bloody flaps of skin, tumble into the car and drive to the post office where the bus stopped.
After this, I would drive home, and I would usually meet one of my neighbours on the road, coming the other way, driving like a bat out of hell. Bloody man, I always thought, he's going to kill something one day, going that speed.
And then, one day, as I made the return journey, a little later than usual, I saw something dead on the road. I pulled up and wound the window down. It was a black cat with white paws. There was blood on the tarmac. It couldn't be Blackberry, I told myself. He was big; this was a small cat. Then I remembered my own father and how he deflated, when he died, like a punctured Li-Lo. I went home. "You know that bloody man who drives like a lunatic," I said to my wife, and I gave his name, "I think he's killed Blackberry."
"No."
"Well, there's a dead cat on the road who looks like him."
My wife went off to look and came back. She wasn't certain either.
"Blackberry might just appear," she said. "We should wait."
We waited. By the following morning the birds had eaten the eyeballs of the corpse, leaving two seeping pink hollows, and the fur was stiff and filthy.
"Is that ours?" the children chanted, as we passed on the way to school.
"Dunno," I said but I knew now it had to be.
On the way home I stopped at the corpse again. I was going to get out and throw the body in the ditch. But now I had accepted it was Blackberry, I didn't want to touch it. I went home. Dermot was painting the house. "I'll do it," he said. He borrowed a spade and went and did it.
That evening I told the children Blackberry definitely was dead. Blossom moped for a few days, and my heart hardened towards my lunatic neighbour. Every time I passed him now, I glared and mouthed, "Cat killer." But he was always driving so fast, I doubt he ever noticed.
Then the car broke down, outside our house. This is why I have RAC Homestart, I thought; I made the call and, an hour later, a mechanic appeared.
"Lift the bonnet, please," he asked.
As I did, I heard mewling. When I'd got the bonnet right up, I saw Blossom sitting on a small ledge behind the engine. She'd climbed up from below. The mechanic leaned forward and smacked her face. She squealed, and bolted.
"Sorry, I had to do that," said the mechanic before I could say anything. "Cats are for ever getting up into engines like that. It's very common. They like the warmth. Look at the hair on the shelf. Your cat's been at it for years."
I peered at the shelf. It was covered with hair. Years and years worth, but all black and white, not brown and white.
"What's wrong with getting a bit of warmth now and again?"
"What's wrong with it!" he said. "I'll tell you what. Your cat's up in the engine, asleep; you jump in and drive off, quickly; the cat hasn't time to jump out. Now you're motoring. Your cat's holding on, desperately but eventually he tires, then he falls, then he hits the tarmac, and bosh, even at ten mph, he splits his head, and he'
This was news to me.
"How far could a cat hold on?" I wondered aloud.
The mechanic looked around. "About half way up that hill," he said. Unfortunately he was pointing at more or less the spot where I found Blackberry's body.
"You'd be amazed how often people kill their own cats like that. Now, could you fire the engine, Mr. Gebler?"

My Cliff Richard Moment

"Go and get bread," said my father.
"I must pee," I said, taking two half crowns from him.
I went to the lavatory, counted to twenty, flushed. Then I ran into my bedroom and retrieved the matchbox from under my mattress.
I left our house and began to trot down the hill. In the matchbox was a sixpence I had found in the street and hidden for an occasion like this. Scampering along I felt the gorgeous coin jiggling.
I got to the bottom of hill.
"Oi! Speedy Gonzalez. . ."
It was a Teddy Boy; they were always sitting on the wall. I slowed down; running would only provoke them. "You cunty. . . what's the hurry?" he shouted.
I looked ahead; eye contact was fatal. I sucked in my cheeks to stop my blushing. I knew I mustn't show fear. It would only encourage them.
I passed out of their sight. I felt tired. Fearfulness was exhausting. Then I remembered my secret mission, and perked up.
A few more minutes and I came to the parade with its half dozen shops. I went straight in to the confectioners. The radio was playing and the girl behind the counter cocked her blonde head towards it.
"The you~ng ones," she sang along, "oh~oh, the you~ng ones."
Where ever I went that summer, this song was playing. The singer was Cliff Richard. I thought this an odd name for a man. For a start Richard was a first name, not a surname. As for Cliff, well, a cliff was a thing like a river or hill, not a proper man's name.
I looked at the counter; at one end, Flying Saucers, Barratt's Sherbet Fountains, Cup-Tie Chews, Fairy Milk Drops, gob stoppers, Black Jacks, candy shrimps, aniseed balls, Razzle Dazzle chewing gum balls (grey gum surrounded with a crust of candy), liquorice pipes with red speckles on the end for embers, and liquorice laces coiled around a small red sweet, these last known as David's Slings.
The rest of the counter was chocolate: Mars Bars, Cadbury's Dairy Milk bars, Crunchies, Flakes and Fry's Chocolate Cremes.
Sixpence would buy a lot of sweets but they would take a long time to eat. My father would then wonder why I wasn't back with the bread. His suspicions aroused, he would smell my breath and inspect my tongue when I did get home, and that way he would discover what I had done. This was how he'd caught me out before. And then, I would be in trouble on account of having broken the no sweets ever rule.
White sugar was the secret weapon of consumer capitalism; I'd get the old lecture. I'd have to scrub my teeth. I might even have to go on a 'special' to the dentist (who I saw every three months as it was).
The penalties, if I was caught, were appalling. I made my decision.
"Fry's Turkish Delight," I said. The hand with my sixpence smelt of match head and sandpaper.
The girl, still singing, exchanged bar for money.
I went out, then decided on one further precaution. I scuttled round the billboard at the end of the parade, and onto Martin way, a wide road lined with factories. Nobody would see me here.
I took the wrapper off the Fry's Turkish Delight. Cars and flatbed lorries flowed by. I nibbled off the chocolate, then ate the jelly. It was thick and sticky, delicious. It reminded me of the paste that we used at school to stick leaves and twigs to our friezes except that stuff smelt of almond and this smelt of sugar.
A Pickford's removal lorry passed. I tried to imagine what it would be like to sit in the cab, and head away. Then I realised I had no idea where I might head towards. I was eight; I didn't know anything but the regime at home and Morden and the Teddy Boys.
I stopped watching the traffic and looked at the clouds instead. They were big and white. That was when I realised I was singing, "The you~ng ones, uh~huh, the you~ng ones."
My bar finished, I went back to the parade. I put the wrapper in the wire bin where wasps nosed among sweet papers and went into the bakers.
Walking home, ignored by the Teds this time, loaves wrapped in coarse tissue paper under my arms, I carefully wiped each tooth with my tongue, front and back, I rinsed my mouth out with saliva. Then I spat and spat until the saliva was clear. By the time I reached our gate, the chocolate after taste was gone from my mouth.
I tripped down our path and rang the bell. Waiting on the doorstep, the involuntary singing started again; "The you~ng ones, uh~huh, the you~ng ones."
My father opened the door, heard the singing, scowled.
"Oh God," he said, "another victim of consumer capitalism."
I ran to the kitchen, dumped the bread and ran on into the garden. [top of page]

Man-Woman Barber-Massage

As the inflatable drew in with our party—there were seventeen of us and we were sailing towards Syria on the gulet, a broad-beamed vessel moored a hundred yards out to sea—I saw we were about to arrive at a typical Turkish village of old houses piled higgledy-piggledy and lovely gardens of lemon trees. We disembarked onto a quayside of rough pine planking. A rusting sign here read, 'Man-Woman Barber-Massage.' I stroked my chin. "A shave," I said, "would be nice."
"No time," said one of the adults. "We have to feed the children." We entered the village proper; it was cool, it smelt of rose water and it was filled with enticing carpet shops. Dinner was abandoned in favour of retail; the children found a knot of Turkish patriarchs and began to talk football.
"Leeds good, Galatasaray useless," I heard my thirteen year old piping. The chuckles of old Turkish men rolled along the darkening street. I noticed Jason, an adult, was gone. "Where's Jason?" I asked.
"Barbers," someone said. Ah-ha, I thought, my chance. I scooted down an alley and entered 'Man-Woman Barber-Massage.' I found Jason being lathered-up by a twelve year old Harvey Keitel look-alike.
I sat in a battered chair. A second barber appeared. He was about nineteen years old; he wore a vest and he also looked like Harvey Keitel—Harvey as the pimp in 'Taxi Driver'. Obviously, this was Small Harvey's bigger brother.
Big Harvey whacked on some Turkish music, lathered me up and began to shave me with a cut throat; he did it efficiently and surprisingly gently. As he ran the blade across my neck, I did not think I was vulnerable. On the contrary, I thought how hard it must be to cut the windpipe. As usual, this was the hubris that proceeds a fall. The two Harvey's now switched places; Big Harvey began to cut Jason's hair with an electric shears, while Small Harvey applied first pure alcohol and then wax to my face.
"Is this normal?" I wondered.
"Oh yes," murmured Jason. "In India the barber's always wax you."
The wax was kneaded in. I touched my face; it felt smooth, almost metallic. I made as if to stand. Suddenly, Small Harvey had his hands on my shoulders and was digging his fingers into my muscles.
"Jason, do they massage you in India after shaving?"
"Not normally."
"Take shirt off," whispered Small Harvey.
"Off shirt, we no mind," Big Harvey crooned in my ear.
"Ah, no, I'll keep the shirt on, if that's all right," I said.
"Oh cripes," said Jason. "Trouble?"
I stood up. "Thank you very much. have over." I reached for my wallet.
Small Harvey wagged a finger and grasped my wrist.
"Pay somewhere else?" I asked.
It wasn't as unlikely as it sounds. Many Turkish establishments separated the point of service from the point of payment.
Small Harvey led me through a doorway and then pulled back a curtain. I expected to find a cash till, with the mother of the two Harvey's, sitting behind. Instead, I found myself facing a very large bed with a green counterpane. Ah.
I was about to say something when there was a very loud bang, the kind that comes as an electric plug comes out. I knew this because I once worked as a rigger in a film studio. Strange, I thought, and a nano-second later, all of 'Man-Woman Barber-Massage' was plunged into total darkness.
"My hair," wailed Jason, from the barber's chair, "it's only half done."
"Please to undress," whispered Small Harvey.
"I don't want to undress," I said, trying to sound firm but cool.
Small Harvey was trying to unbutton me. decided I must act. set off at lick and collided with something. It fell with a crash. I wondered would Big Harvey now grasp the truth; this seduction wasn't going according to plan. There was a second loud bang as the plug went back in. He had. The lights came on again. The electric shears began to chatter.
"Thank God," shouted Jason, "I couldn't have faced your children with a half-Mohican."
"Thank God," I said, re-entering the barbers proper, "I can see to leave."
"Where were you?" asked Jason, "and what were you doing in there?" Big Harvey was staring at me sadly and shaking his head. His look told me that I was an immense disappointment to him. A few minutes later, after we had paid and were about to leave, he pointedly kissed me on each cheek. His face wore a pained expression, and his eyes were wet with the tears of a disappointed man.
Outside, we hurried off towards the brightly lit street where we'd left our children and companions. "Was what I thought going on next door?" asked Jason.
I nodded.
"Oh dear. But they were very nice about it really, weren't they? After all, they only turned the lights out."
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She's Leaving Home

I t was strange to be back in London's Kings Cross. Last time I was here, I went to a Tattoo parlour opposite the old Scala, and a man inscribed a rose on my upper left arm.
This Monday, more than a quarter century later, I was in a mini-cab with wife, my oldest daughter India, and several suitcases. Dinwiddy House was sighted. This was the hall of residence where India would live for her first year at university. It was a khaki and glass cube. Like most university buildings, it was hideous.
We heaved the luggage out and hawked it inside. Now the fun started. Like a prison, Dinwiddy house has endless security doors but no signs. We asked at least half-a-dozen Chinese students the way before we finally got to her room.
Actually, room is a misnomer. It was really a rather nasty pod. The mattress was grubby. The wardrobe doors were hanging off. The drawers were missing their knobs. The shower (the room was en suite) had shed several tiles.
I listed the room's defects on the form supplied and marched to the accommodation office. A slim Barbadian woman with gold hoop ear-rings stood behind the desk.
"I'm not impressed," I said, handing her the list, "especially after having paid what I paid for the room."
A dark pair of brown eyes gazed sadly at me.
"Once everyone's settled we'll turn our minds to repairs," she drawled, sounding like Prunella Scales in 'Fawlty Towers'.
"Couldn't the room have been fixed before term started?"
"We've been very busy," she said, smiling faking. In other words, would I just be grateful and stop complaining.
It was time to change subject. We'd not lugged duvets and so on from Enniskillen. Where did we go, I asked, to get the bedding kit?
"Go to 'C' block stairwell at six o'clock with a hundred pounds," she said gracelessly, taking the complaints sheet from the student behind me. I stomped off like a peeved old Colonel.
An hour later we stood in a queue in Woolworth's, our shopping trolley laden with pots and pans. India was in self-catering accommodation.
The man in front of us presented the cashier with a bag stuffed with sweets from the Pick 'n' Mix stand.
"Two ninety-one," she said. "I've only eighty-three pence," he said, holding out a fistful of coppers. "Tell you what," he continued, take out the red ones. I don't like them red ones." We waited for ten excruciating minutes while the cashier unloaded the bag until eighty-three pence worth of sweets were left. London's always had it's eccentric inhabitants; what's changed is the number of them.
At six I presented myself at 'C' block stairwell. There was no one around. I went to the porters lodge to complain.
"Course there weren't no one selling bedding," he said, "they sold out two days ago."
"Why didn't the woman in the office tell me?"
"This is a student hall of residence. What d' you expect? Efficiency."
I was annoyed but also, frankly, I was delighted. If there was no bedding, India would have to come home with us to the house where we were staying. We could postpone cutting umbilical cord one more night.
I returned to the room. "You'll have to come home with us." I could barely conceal my delight.
She frowned. "No way." If she didn't stay how would she ever make friends. "I'll sleep under my coat," she said, firmly.
The three of us went to the porter's lodge. I complained again.
"I think I can get the loan of a duvet for her," said the porter.
"Go on then," said India. "I'll sort it out."
Her life without us was about to start. "Goodbye," we said. Brief kisses were exchanged. We left.
Outside, rain was pouring. There were derelicts and whores sheltering in doorways. We should have sheltered too but we felt too depressed to linger. We just wanted to escape to the far side of London, to our friend Gina and her warm house.
We schlepped through the wet down Pentonville Road, then stopped at the bottom to cross. My wife was so wet even her lipstick was running.
"It's amazing," I said, in my best cheer up voice. "We met all those years ago, and now, nineteen years later, here we are, dropping our daughter off at university. We'd never then have guessed then it would end like this. Would we?"
She bit her lip and shrugged as if to say, no, we wouldn't have guessed and if you don't mind, I'd rather not talk about it.
The green man flickered. We hurried across.
"You really don't you think it's amazing, how it's ended?"
My wife was silent and stone like. She would not be drawn. We hurried towards Kings Cross underground. As we stepped in air gusted into our faces. It was hot, and smelt of diesel and burnt dust, and for an instant it brought tears to our eyes. [top of page]