Poguemahone, p.13
Poguemahone, page 13
times
especially on Saturdays
when he’d be off once more
on his regular paper round.
Which always ended, without fail
with him enjoying the most magnificent chat
with his good old friend Professor
McVittie
who, of course, wasn’t really a
proper professor at all
but wore a white coat so as to make you think
that was the case.
Mr McVittie owned the newsagent’s at the
corner of
the street on which they lived in Morningside.
He was long since deceased.
But was still very much alive in the mind
of Troy McClory
yes & always would be
thought Troy
as he sat there, smoking & chucking
down drink
moderately relieved now the whiskey
was at last doing its work.
He almost felt like laughing, in fact
as he swirled the amber liquid round & round
round & round
at the bottom of the glass.
How could he ever have believed in
gruagachs, he wondered
with it being like something, maybe
that you’d find in a magazine
called Creepy
that he used to read
or maybe in one of the scarier Rupert Bears
– of the type he used to enjoy in Prof.
McVittie’s wonderful newsagent’s
where, in the distance
you could hear a little child
singing
ever so plaintively
‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’
just a little bit beyond the horizon
where all the trees
would suddenly, unexpectedly, come alive
& with claw-like roots against a moonlit sky
try breaching your bedroom
window to get in close to you.
In a world of hedgerows-come-alive,
& beyond those, the infinite void.
Because there’s a heavy whiff around Albion,
the professor used to say, which reminds
one of honeysuckle growing above the
porch of one’s front door
but also a sense of the destabilising
dark sublime
you remember that, my lad,
he sometimes used to say
with Troy, being young
not knowing quite what he meant
our lives at their most beautiful
they border an infinite void
he would say
as he turned each page filled with every
conceivable manner of
out-of-the-world creatures
in the land called Nutwood
including turtle postmasters and wild, shrieking
clockwork birds.
That was where such creatures as he
belonged, he thought
meaning the gruagach
so what was he going and thinking about them
now for, Troy wondered.
Especially having long since cracked
his substance abuse.
He didn’t rightly know.
All he knew was the dread had somehow
slowly begun returning.
& fiercely so
the imní, as we know it.
What, for Schopenhauer, as he knew,
represented the sight of a power beyond
all comparison superior to that of
the individual
& threatening him with annihilation
whose immensity in space and time
reduces the individual to naught.
He could just about hold the glass
steady in his hand
before looking down and seeing it
again as a claw-like root,
stealthily creeping around a rock.
Such a desperate affliction, them old
trimmlins, Nano used to say.
Yes, a fret to the living world for sartin sure, my
lad.
Coroner’s Report On Subject Troy McClory:
Number Of Units Consumed: 23
Time Of Disappearance: 00.55a.m–01.25a.m.
Exact Time Of Arrival Home To St Jude’s Hostel, Quex Road, Kilburn: Unknown.
With the only evidence that he’d ever been there in that room at all being what, initially, looked like a sixpenny coin.
But, in fact, was a small silver medallion which had been given to him by my sister one night when he was having his way with her and when he had admired its design, tinkling away there under her vest – to which she had it pinned.
Being a good little country girl, of course, and never going anywhere without her sacred Lourdes ‘Miraculous’ Medal.
Our Lady conceived without sin pray for us who have recourse to thee, read the inscription around the perimeter –
those same lines
he had used
all those distant days ago
incorporated them
into a song which he
had liked to sing
serenading my sister
about ghosts and saints
as he gently and softly crooned into
her willing, receptive ear.
Poor old Troy,
it sure was sad to see him go.
Even if my sister
yes, even if Una
she’ll often insist that I’ve got
it wrong
yes, the whole damned thing
that’s what she says
that Troy was innocent
& that most of the things he had
said or done were blameless
if a little immature
& irresponsible
with it all being down to my possessiveness
& bitter jealousy
but then she would say
that
she would have to, really
having been in love with the idiot
so there you are.
That’s the way it goes,
I suppose.
Although I’m sure that he did
get himself quite a surprise
the same fellow
when he woke up and realised
in the night that he was, in fact, dying.
No, not so much brazen cheek from him
then I’ll warrant
not so much T.S. Eliot
or e. e. cummings and his friend
so how do you like your blue-eyed
boy now, Mr Death?
O I like him very much
I like him very fucking well
Mr Semi-Rapist
pogue Iscariot
Mr Judas-Kiss McClory
as you, within seconds,
are about to find out.
I suppose, in a way, though,
it’s a pity that he didn’t live
even just to see
how well, against the odds,
the whole thing worked
out
for me and Una, at any rate,
God love her
& the terrific life that we’ve – somehow!
don’t ask me! – managed to
make here together, in Cliftonville.
& for her, especially, & her ongoing
adventures in the world of living theatah
daahling!
I mean, talk about ‘Fudge’
because I’m sorry
you can’t
absolutely zero chance
with her
looking more like a straw
than a human being now
skating and running
here and there around the place
with her bag filled with papers
containing all kinds of notes and directions
for the cast.
With her latest preoccupation being
the upcoming interview
with the TV show host Conan O’ Brien.
Who, I don’t know if you know, would
be about as close as you might be able to get
to a real and genuinely convincing life-size
gruagach
with those freckles and red hair
that great big tidal wave of a quiff you see
him sporting.
She calls herself a Conanite now, and swears
all ‘the gang’ will soon be appearing on the
Saturday-night show.
‘Because,’ she says, ‘isn’t he Irish yes from
the old country, the exact very same as us, my
brother. So hurrah, mo dheartháir iontach, Team
Coco – an dtuigeann tú?’
Then sticks up a photo right beside his –
of Ivanka Trump standing there next to ‘The Donald’
in that great big dumb Crombie coat of his
pouting & scowling like a porkie
on the porch of The White House
as the team from Fox Rolling News run around him
with a plethora of cameras and cables.
I think it must have been the day of his inauguration.
I’ve never seen anything like that Fox fucking News
because it never really stops does it
night noon and morning
breaking news
breaking news
with the actual truth being
that you’d be likely to get more truth
& fair reporting from Attenborough’s
snouty wee lizard, I swear to God.
With very little on it these
times, at least so far as I can see
only fellows with scarves around their
faces & these big eyes
ploughing trucks right into people
yes, letting this great big roar
out of them
as they gun the vehicle &
ram right into innocent
folks standing in queues
yes, that’s all you ever see
on the flat-screen tubes that
they have dotted all around
the hotel
some of them covering half
of the wall
& a long way
that’s for sure
from the little white-plastic
nineteen-inch black-and-white Pye portable
which poor old Tanith Kaplinski always used to
watch in the front room of Brondesbury
whenever she came home
in the good old days of the
Winter of Our Discontent
or, should I say, in this case,
Summer.
When she’d be returning from
her nightly practice at the dance studio
thinking that she was Margot Fonteyn.
O, nothing but the best for Miss Kaplinski,
certainly not.
Who was now, by all accounts – mirabile dictu! – in line
for the lead role in a forthcoming Benjamin Britten
opera in the world-famous Sadler’s Wells Theatre
that would soon show the lot of them
just like she’d promised she always would
show them, that is
after being flung out, unceremoniously, from
the family home in Stanmore – with her mother
contemptuously tossing all her bits &
pieces out after her, on the doorstep,
her gaunt and uncompromising, stern-faced mother.
The ‘old bitch’, as she called her.
Charming.
Never, of course, having known her father.
Now, as I sit here looking back on those days
relaxing on the window seat
in the lobby of The Cliftonville Hotel
what do I find Miss Kaplinski
doing
only having herself a great deal of fun
pretending she’s changing her name
clad in nothing but a single wee scrap
of cloth
pirouetting in front of the full-length mirror.
I’m Margot, she said to herself, Margot Fonteyn.
I’ll be dancing tonight in Sadler’s Wells.
Would you like to come along?
I’ll be performing in Offenbach’s Tales Of Hoffmann,
in which I play the mechanical doll.
So come along, will you –
please say yes.
‘Les Oiseaux Dans La Charmille’ – come &
be enthralled by my interpretation of
the doll-woman-machine.
The automaton.
Apart from Joanne Kaplan,
Tanith really did seem just about
the coolest chick back then
with only the littlest scrap of cloth –
yes, the teenshiest biteen
covering her shame as she glided effortlessly,
humming along with the Offenbach overture.
& then, with a hot drink, sitting down,
flicking through the cream vellum
of her manuscript,
humming away la la la la –
at which point she heard it
– soft, scarcely audible indeed,
that whispering, intermittent
rustling sound
the same kind of one that
you might hear grasshoppers make.
& after which she experienced
this other odd and equally unnerving
feeling
that someone close by
was watching her intently.
But not only just observing her
– all of Brondesbury Gardens.
With the sensation, in fact, becoming
so bad that she thought that she was
going to fall victim to a cardiac arrest
which was why she leaned against
the kitchen counter.
What am I? she heard herself saying
where what who
with her lips drying up as she endeavoured to
repeat the words
trying again to say
there’s no one else in the room
yes, no one else in this room
only me.
before deciding that this had happened as
a result of recent events
a consequence of the constabulary’s recent visit
to the flat.
All the same, it was the strangest feeling
as if she had found herself cruelly alone
dropped & abandoned in the
middle of a huge futuristic shopping centre
somewhere in New York, perhaps.
But London, no –
because they didn’t have that style
of building there.
At least not to the same extent,
she thought,
where men in suits stalked the corridors
not so much as uttering a word.
Where you heard fans swirl
air-con breezes somewhere afar
a vacuum cleaner droning.
exactly as it was doing now.
she had now become the tiniest of figures
she thought
trapped inside an immense conspiracy.
Directly above, long rows of icy-blue strip lighting
seemed to stretch to a vanishing point.
Who is Harry Kellerman and why is he saying those
terrible things about me?
What did that mean?
What meaning could it possibly have, that question?
She felt like a hand had closed around her heart
& kept on opening, then closing
in & out
becoming aware of another
equally urgent & similar question
this time in an even softer whisper:
Can
Hieronymous Merkin
Ever Forget Mercy Humppe
And Find True Happiness?
Over & over it repeated itself in her mind,
only this
time taking her back to the conversation
with Troy McClory
because it was him who had said it
yes, he who had posed the question
only three nights previously
when they’d all been in the front room
playing stoned Scrabble
so, after that, she didn’t feel quite so bad
dabbing at the beads of perspiration which
were multiplying on her brow
first hot
then cold
all those small & glistening pearls
lining up.
She smiled & tried to convince herself
she was relieved
even smiling as she said
yes, that is the question
can Hieronymous Merkin. . .?
but she never managed to finish the sentence
because when she thought that
Tanith Kaplinski found herself laughing
because what a thing to be thinking now
she wondered
why, all of a sudden, had that come into her mind?
I mean, why on earth was she bothering about that
now?
When she should have been studying the libretto
of Benjamin Britten
why was she not doing that
she asked herself
being much too experienced to take the role
in the opera for granted
even though it was the casting of a lifetime
and the director had more or less privately
confirmed it
I’ll do it later! she repeated to herself,
I’ll do it in the morning
in the morning yes
yes, that’s when I’ll do it
study it in the morning
when all the rest of them have left the house
as she picked up one thing
& then left it down
asking herself: now why did I do that?
As her heart kept pounding – & then what happened?
With her elbow, she knocked down a cup.
The noise that it made – it really was deafening.
‘Hello?’ she said. ‘Hello?’
Would you look at her, the wee girleen, unabashed
in her nipper tuck
would you look at the girleen there and
her, unabashed,
sitting there in her nipper tuck
aye, & divil a bother on her
sitting there, naked, nudie,
in her nipper tuck
God between us, do you hear me,
& all harm
not a bother on her there, ceilidh dancing in
her nipper tuck
brazen, God bless her, in her snow-white
nudie.
Before turning around and, to her surprise – discovering
nothing.
Nothing but the black-and-white TV, flickering away
in the corner.
