The Ginger Man - J. P. Donleavy [93]
"Do you know what my ambition is when I get money? To move into the Shelbourne Hotel Strut in through the front door and tell the porter would you garage my Daimler for me please"
"No, Kenneth. Would you garage my car"
"Jesus you're right That's it. My car. Would you garage my car. And into the Shelbourne rooms. They say it's the most beautiful bar in the world. Have Malarkey come and meet me. How do you do, Tony, how are things in the Catacombs?"
"Yes, Kenneth, you have the arse of a servant"
"You mean for riding. Built for a horse. Do you know that if it weren't for the British this place would be so many wild savages."
"I'm glad you've come to see it that way."
"The Irish feel that children are brought down upon them by the wrath of God for screwing. All you hear is that if it weren't for you kids life would be rosy and we could have a good time. But we worked and slaved ourselves to the bone to give you a little more than we had and now look at you, won't bring a penny into the house. No-good loafer wasting your time with these books when there are good jobs on the railroad."
"Geek."
In the eight o'clock sound and smell of Jury's lounge, they sat with stretched legs and toes twitching in their shoes, thawing damp bones in the centrally heated air. Priests scattered through the room, red faced, watery eyed and smoldering. Immaculate collars choking their scarlet necks, clerics in pain. With waitresses, young, black and round. Potted palms. It was not what was inside but what was outside that made what was inside so good and desirable. Because outside there is the gray wet over everything. And it came up through the shoes, soaking socks and squealing between the toes. Near here is the Bank of Ireland. So great and round and granite. Outside it a whore and a beggar.
"Well Kenneth it is fitting indeed that we should have the comfort of this fine room for our last day"
"That waitress, did you notice her teeth? They were white."
"Her eyes very fine too."
"Why can't I feel I could ever marry one of these girls?"
"Nothing more fashionable these days than to marry down, Kenneth."
"Be marrying one of my own, that's the trouble."
"I like your blood, darling."
"Yeah. My whole sexual life depends on the nuances of wealth. Come back from a good hard ride around the edges of the estate looking for poachers."
O'Keefe leaning back in this sudden glory, continuing with mellow aplomb.
"I pass the scullery out back and call, I say, Tessie, what's for dinner and Tessie scurries into the cook. Lady O'Keefe has already told me what's for dinner but in my little democratic way I have a banter with the scullery maids. Lady O'Keefe at one end of the table and I'm at the other and we discuss the estate and horses. I ask her what she did at the flower show and if any of our blossoms took a prize. After dinner to the library for expresso with a twist of lemon and a bottle of Hennessy. She reads me a play till ten. Goes; up to her room. I wait in the library for about ten minutes and go up to my own. I notice that the door between our rooms is slightly ajar. I wait a discreet ten minutes, tiptoe over, give a delicate knock, may I come in dear? Yes dear, do. Ha."
"Eeeeeee. Kenneth, if you're ever rich it will be an anticlimax."
"By God."
On O'Keefe's head a brown dirty tweed cap. Women in this lounge looking at the two of them with their legs stretched all over the place. And they were cocking their white ears to hear that bearded man go on about such fantastic things with that awful accent of his and who is that man with his haughty ways and county voice, flicking his fingers exquisitely and rolling his head back to belch laughter. So sure of themselves.
And between priests and pouting matrons were business men from Manchester who made furniture to sell to the civil servants for the sitting room and they were a little red faced, with a touch of proud overtone in their voices. They wore striped blue shirts with white stiff collars and their gent's natty suiting with white pin stripe and short coats where underneath it all were