The Ginger Man - J. P. Donleavy [3]
"Wait."
"Well, ghosts won't bother me on a full stomach and certainly never if I had a full sex life. Do you know, at Harvard I finally got Constance Kelly in my power. There was a girl who strung me along for two years till I found out what a fraud American womanhood was and I squeezed her right under my thumb. But I can't figure it out. I never could get it. She'd do anything but let me in. Holding out for wealth on Beacon Hill, I would have married her but she didn't want to get stuck at the bottom of the social ladder with me. One of her own kind. Jesus, she's right But do you know what I'm going to do? When I go back to the States when I'm fat with dough, wearing my Saville Row suits, with black briar, M.G. and my man driving, I'm going to turn on my English accent full blast Full up to some suburban house where she's married a mick, turned down by all the old Bostonians, and leave my man at the wheel I'll walk up the front path knocking the kid's toys out of the way with my walking stick and give the door a few impatient raps. She comes out A smudge of flour on her cheek and the reek of boiled cabbage coming from the kitchen. I look at her with shocked surprise. I recover slowly and then in my best accent, delivered with devastating resonance, I say Constance ... you've turned out... just as I thought you would. Then I spin on my heel, give her a good look at my tailoring, knock another toy aside with my cane and roar away"
Dangerfield swinging back in the green rocking chair with a wiggle of joy, head shaking in a hundred yesses. O'Keefe striding the red tiles of the kitchen floor, waving a fork, his one live eye glistening in his head, a mad mick for sure. Perhaps he'll slip on one of the toys and break an arse bone.
"And Constance's mother hated my guts. Thought I'd suck her down socially. Would open all the letters I'd write to her daughter, and I'd sit in Widener Library thinking up the dirtiest stuff I could imagine, I think the old slut loved them. Used to make me laugh thinking she'd read them and then have to burn them. Jesus, I repel women, damn it Even this winter down in Connemara visiting the old folks, my cousin, who looked like a cow's arse wouldn't even come across. I'd wait for her to go out and get the milk at night and go with her. At the end of the field I'd try to nudge her into the ditch. I'd get her all breathless and saying she'd do anything if I'd take her to the States and marry her..I tried that for three nights running, standing out there in the rain up to our ankles in mud and cow flop, me trying to get her in the ditch, knock her down, but she was too strong. So I told her she was a tub of lard and I wouldn't take her to East Jesus. Have to get them a visa before you can touch an arm"
"Marry her, Kenneth"
"Get tangled with that beast of burden for the rest of me days? Be all right if I could chain her to the stove to cook but to marry the Irish is to look for poverty. I'd marry Constance Kelly out of spite."
"I suggest the matrimonial column of the Evening Mail for you. Put no encumbrance. Man of means, extensive estates in West. Prefers women of stout build, with own capital and car for travel on Continent. No others need apply."
"Let's eat. I want to leave my problem uncomplicated."
"Kenneth, this is most cordial."
The toasted bird was put on the green table. O'Keefe driving a fork into the dripping breast and ripping off the legs. Pot gives a tremble on the shelf. Little curtains with the red spots flutter. A gale outside. When you think of it, O'Keefe can cook. And this is my first chicken since the night I left New York and the waiter asked me if I wanted to keep the menu as a memory and I sat there in the blue carpeted room and said yes. And around the corner in a bar a man in a brown suit offers to buy a drink. Comes and feels my leg. Says he loves New York and could we go somewhere away from the crowd and talk, be