Poguemahone, p.16
Poguemahone, page 16
This would have been in the very
last days of October
not long before the whole sad project
was seen to collapse
& such a racket, I swear to God
as this creature created
& her not more than a slip of a thing
what Nano would have described as
a little biteen of a kippeen
meaning hardly there
at all, so she wasn’t.
Except that everywhere she went
she seemed to be addressing adoring
crowds
for that, at least, was what she appeared to think.
O yes, I’m engaged in a very important
project at the moment,
she confided over breakfast one morning,
compiling a volume provisionally entitled
‘The History Of London’.
Well, Lord above
you really do have to say it
is there anything that can compete
with the young and their boundless ambition
get out of my way or I’ll take out
your kidneys and eat them in front of you
the very same as a turkey’s gizzard
for I’m so special,
talented and unique
that everyone has to know
the story of my life.
But then, in another way,
I suppose you have to hand it to them
because if you’re not confident then
when you’re in your late teens
and early twenties
then when are you ever likely
to be
considering what’s in store for most
of us
even if the greater proportion
of her particular story,
like the majority of her pronouncements,
it amounted to not a great deal more
than complete and utter fantasy
as did the opera that she claimed
to be preparing
based on the work of
Dory Previn, the composer’s wife.
It was nearly impossible not to
meet her on the stairs
always in a hurry
clambering down with an armful
of books
on her way to convene
with some fellow ‘soul-travellers’ &
‘metaphysical explorers’, at The Golden
Dawn restaurant
or, perhaps, The British Library –
for she really did see herself as quite
the intellectual scholar.
Yes, Miss Iris Montgomery-Carew sure
did cut quite a dash
& stopped, at least for a while,
the poor old bruised and now somewhat uncertain
Mahavishnu Temple in its tracks.
Even if a few,
primarily as a consequence of jealousy,
vehemently criticised her attempts at poetry
describing them as ‘wilfully
unintelligible’ –
a view which I have to say that I found
most surprising
considering some of the raiméis
that they’d listened to in the past
and praised to the skies,
most notably from Blondie McBondie
the handsome Scot
standing like some latter-day Rock Messiah
blathering Bob Dylan and T.S. Eliot
on the fucking table with the eyes gone
skewballs back in his head
I mean, what on earth were we supposed to think
– the second fucking coming or what?
But class will out, I suppose you have to say,
and it has to be admitted that, in the end,
almost in spite of themselves,
many of them grew to admire her.
Because, whatever else about her, Iris
definitely did possess an estimable aristocratic grace.
She genuinely did, wandering around the flat
in a deep-blue satin kimono
declaiming her own great chunks of verse
which, on occasion, with her taking it all so seriously,
it appeared as if she might be
on the verge of incurring
a seizure of some kind.
Sometimes, indeed, you’d actually witness her break
down and cry
starting to mutter things about her father
& which was interesting
at least initially.
But, after a while, I have to admit
that I found myself becoming impatient
especially after paragraphs of this great big
so-called forthcoming London history of hers
which she routinely referred to as her ‘tour de force’
& kept going on about
night after fucking night, you know?
With most of it, sad to say, amounting to
little more than sentimental adolescent
schoolgirl gibberish
more raiméis, in otherwords
buckets of balderdash.
History Of London?
I thought as I watched her,
A Neurotic Human Matchstick Tells Its
Tiresomely Predictable Story perhaps!
Ah yes, poor old Iris Kippeen-Montgomery.
And it was after that, to be honest
that I found I didn’t really, any longer, care
as I went off and got gloriously drunk with the old
crowd back in The Bedford Arms.
Before finally returning to my
place of concealment
and, I suppose, somewhat buoyed by
a skinful of ye olde uisquebaugh
pressing my already flushed cheek
against the skirting and, without
so much as a care in the world, began emptying my
lungs and
giving it everything I’d got.
Rise her, Dan!
as they used to say in The Bedford
lift the rafters, me auld segocia!
& so I did,
gave it my all
right there in the middle of the night
it must have been well past 3a.m.,
gazed upon approvingly
by a plump-bellied harvest moon.
Rise her, Dan, attaboy Fogarty!
Will you come to the bower
o’er the free boundless ocean! H’ho ye girl ye! Give
us a gander at them two luscious globes of flesh!
& finding myself deriving such a cic
from my escapades
not to mention the astonished Iris’s reaction
to my humorous request
– even more gratifying than the one I’d
received from poor old Tanith, God rest
her soul.
I could see no reason not to go thar barr –
that is to say, going over the top.
As I caught a hault of a crock of withered flowers
& sent it flying across the room.
‘Bejapers aye!’ I remember cackling,
simultaneously striking the boords
a good smart kick with my foot,
‘And sure why the devil wouldn’t we
have ourselves a grand old ceilidh!
You’re a topping girl, Ma’am, so you are so
you are! fair play to you, Miss Montgomery! Oh
now!’
But that was just the start of it, really
& what with me being aware, as I say,
that
not only was our most recent tenant a poet
of considerable promise, but the actual
author of the
forthcoming publication, sure to be a masterpiece
entitled, yes:
‘The History Of London’
that I concluded there really was nothing for it
but to regale Miss Iris
with a personal and particular favourite of
my own, taught to me by my very own Auntie Nano
namely, ‘The Green Eye Of The Little Yellow God’
& in which, coincidentally, there
happens to be a mention of a certain ‘Old Carew’ –
so how’s that for serendipity?
He was known as ‘Mad Carew’ by the subs
at Kathmandu
He was hotter than they felt inclined to tell!
I flung back a chair and performed
a gay little dance,
bashing a few pots & pans
as I did so.
Before clearing my throat and once again
raising the rafters
with all the gusto I could humanly muster.
Good man, Dan, I shouted, man alive, Fogarty
but you are the man, rip it up like the man
you are!
There’s a green-eyed yellow idol to the north of
Kathmandu
There’s a little marble cross below the town
so there is
so there is
och troth indeed and sowl there is!
Well, such a laugh, I can’t tell you
whenever I saw Miss Montgomery’s
shocked reaction to that.
I must have danced ten or maybe even twenty jigs
battering and kicking the skirting as
I did so.
But then, of course, there’d be silence after that
– often, perhaps, for days.
Weeks, even.
With the result that
it was hard to even get a word out of her now.
A development which surprised a lot of her
colleagues – none more so than those with whom she
laboured, her fellow tutors in the Killiburn
Polytechnic, where she lectured part-time.
With the actual truth being – quite apart from
complaining of ‘hearing loud noises’ – like her
poetic heroine, Sylvia Plath,
Iris Montgomery-Carew
had once more
become privy
only this time with a vengeance
to certain familiar distressing memories of her father
which, all her life, from time to time,
had continued to plague her
with her never knowing when
it was exactly they were going to strike
– and when she discovered him, her actual
parent, standing in his dicky bow
behind the curtains
staring intently over at her
– well, I mean, you can imagine!
But, unlike Tanith Kaplinski,
Iris Montgomery-Carew
neglected to tell anyone about these, or similar occurrences,
including the rustling noise she could have sworn
she had heard
& which had reminded her of nothing
so much as the sound that grasshoppers
made.
Yes, decided not to open her mouth about any of it
– which was, maybe, wise.
Because, I mean, who’s going to believe the like of
that
secret rooms and the presences of ghosts, Irish
wet-on-the-brain drunks
and concluding, childishly,
that what you were dealing with
what it was, all along, was
an evil-intentioned gruagach.
Whatever that is.
I mean, honest to God
when you think about it
who in their right mind
is going, for a second, to believe a
fairy story the like of that
even if towards the end of my life
or one of them
when my liver packed in
after a lifetime of supping in
them auld Killiburn hostelries
Malachy Breslin did
build me an actual secret room
to provide me with shelter
and, by a mysterious coincidence,
located it in the very same
place as where my very own
maw-hir
my own poor
afflicted mother
God rest her
once upon a time
in the fifties
took her own life
one sad day before dawn
in that very same attic
by stringing a
holy medal and a
scapular around her neck.
Honestly!
Such a parcel of speculative,
wayward raiméis
or seafóid –
fanciful garbage, as
Nano in her heyday,
would, no doubt, have insisted.
Secret rooms and little wee men
the size of goblins, pshaw!
Not unlike, I suppose,
a lot of the discursive old rambling
nonsense
that I used to like to put,
particularly on Sundays,
when it was raining,
into the pages of my
trusty dialann
yes, my personal diary
recounting my own particular view
& intimate history
of London City
as if the likes of me could
be entitled to have a history
& me but the shakings
of the Fogarty bag
the dribbly issue
of a long line of peasants
with divil the bit of
a peerage or a title
to be anywhere seen
or indeed anything
at all
as might commend our
worth to anyone
but, nonetheless,
I did my best
yes, to tell the story of
sweet Una and me
and all the old Fogartys
that were cast out to be exiles
like so many poor old Gaels
before them
landing their
sad little biteen of a
brown paper parcel
on the shores
of the Thames
with all its
ships
&
towers
&
of course
temples
once upon a time there was a city
which grew up out of nothing
a heaven on earth
for all the people to enjoy
including both my sister
& I
yes, that would be Una
not long released from the
orphanage in Wolverhampton
getting bits and pieces of
old work wherever she
was fit to find it
already seeming pale
& aged beyond her years
a great big lump
of expendable domestic leavings,
the shakings of the bag
clattering around with her mop
and bucket
wielding those implements
night and day
beginning at the tender
age of eighteen years
labouring in office
after
office
after
overlit
office
everywhere she goes
being watched and surrounded
by the eyes of the London
departed
furtive loafers
& policemen
in walrus moustaches
staring along with the rest of the dead
but not unkindly
in the streets of a city lit amber
by gas
where shadows fall on yellow stock brick.
Hark! Look at those Salvation
Army brassmen
with their ladies alongside
in coal-scuttle beribboned
poke bonnets.
Goodness gracious
but that’s just the start of
it
for now what we have
is Una ‘Lady’
Fogarty’s
alternative
History Of London.
Where she would even set down
the story of ‘The Mysteries’
of which not a word
had e’er been spoken in her
family
&
never would
owing to the sensitivity of
its subject
Yes, the mysteries
the girls who surreptitiously
used the very same beats
as the more established prostitutes
& who, once they had ‘hooked’
their man
left him to pay
their cab fare to where
their homes were situated
often as not being ordinary
housewives
who only worked when they
had to
had to
had to
wrote Lady Fogarty
in the grip of the trimmlins
& who were known
as the ‘mysteries’
simply because
so little was known about them
with ‘Dotsy’ Fogarty, our very own mother
entering the ranks
in the aftermath of a court case
not long after giving our Una
up for adoption
in 1954
where a sympathetic judge
had found her not guilty
of pulling the plug on
not only one
but eight little infants
in the hospital
in Paddington
where she’d worked
temporarily
as a nurse’s assistant
and whose lives, thankfully,
had been saved
in
the
nick
of time
yes, thought Lady Una
I’ll write all that
because it is the truth
in my own private, personal
history of this city
where I wandered after
leaving the orphanage up north
in this fabulous new land
of music hall & song
& smoky saloons
& cellar bars like Nano’s
who of course was not my aunt
at all
I only made that up
a little birdie
for the purpose of keeping
myself entertained
&, as well as that,
ensuring that the story keeps
moving.
Indeed, I only wish she was
our relation
or anything to do with us at all
lovely Aunt Nano
holding court like she did
in that grand old Gaelic
flaithiúil way
down in the most blissful
anarchic dungeon among everyone
priest & pauper
because it was London no one
prevented them from making
their own rules
stage-door johnnies
bookies
