A Savage Poindexter

Saturday morning I went for my usual walk up to the old fort, along the back of the wall and past the cemetery, and then down the hill which has that nice view of the bay to the left.  It was a walk that was only possible to achieve under conditions of total sobriety, or if locked in the fever of a drunkard’s binge.  There was no accomplishing it in-between either of those states.  It was too hard for the functioning alcoholic, too easy for the teetering teetotaller.   I was closer to total sobriety having slowed down on the booze some months ago and on top of that last week’s stomachache had made of me an uncontaminated man momentarily – I was near enough at 0% volume if someone were to do a check.  Though I might have been alright for the walk, the morning wasn’t.  By the time I reached the fort, the heavens had come away and an awful teeming began with nowhere for me to go for shelter.  Except for one tree half a mile down the hill but it was so steep I’d have broken my hole if I started running.  So by the time I got myself to the bottom and into Frost’s Newsagents I was soaked to the bone.  The woman there acknowledged my predicament with a concerned frown.  You poor thing.  I held back at the door to drip and signal to the woman I was no dirty dog about to shake off all my wet in the place. 

On the racks I saw newly pressed copies of The Martlet and our rival publication The Democrat.  As soon as I saw that Democrat before me, I realised we had missed a beat and would no doubt be dealing with more controversy further along.  For the day of the vigil was upon us and we had on our front page a piece about the new (very eye-catching, I’d add) signage outside Maguire’s Snooker Hall. Meanwhile, there on The Democrat’s cover was a huge photo of the late Ernie Gilgan, moomin-faced and held together in his graduation robes, the precious future-giving scroll in hand, his whole life ahead of him etcetera.  The headline:  REMEMBERING OUR ERNIE THE DREAMER.  Okay, if you want to say it was dreaming he was at when he walked out and got hit by that truck, go on ahead, be my guest.  But of course I knew it was his literary ambitions they were referring to and not his unhurried wits.  We had to protect those dreamers.  As well as the cretins.  You never knew what they were liable to do.        

In most towns you had a thwarted prodigy on the brink.  An unappreciated wizard of the arts who could snap at any minute.  I believe the Berrills had stayed that way, were still that way now in their 60s.  Especially Phyllis.  Mysteries continued to swirl with respect to their solo or shared literary endeavours and my suspicions were aroused to a greater degree in recent days when for the first time I was able to see the upstairs of their house, on the whole a no-go area.  There was never any call to go up there.  That loo under the stairway satisfied everyone’s lavatorial obligations so there was no need to use the additional bathroom.  And why would I want to explore their bedrooms?  Sincerely, I worried about what I might see there.  The rumours of incest, though I did not hold them to be true, kept me with caution glued to the ground floor.  Generally speaking, one would be inclined to respect the privacy of others because the sanctity of one’s own is understood to be precious.  Then again, if the opportunity to snoop without consequence arose and you abstained from doing so, how admirable yet unrecognisable a human you’d be.  So it was there came a day this week when I found myself up there.  Phyllis was out – I believe she was attending the singing group in Monaghan she was a member of.  Oran was in the loo.  I was in the front room with Police Academy 2 on (which Oran and myself had been enjoying) when I heard him yelling from under the stairs.  I went to the toilet door and asked what was wrong and he said there was no toilet roll left.  He told me there was some under the sink in the kitchen but when I went to look there was none there.  When I told him this, he nearly wept, and said to check the bathroom upstairs.  If nothing was in there to check the bedrooms.  There might be a box of hankies or something, he sobbed.  I could empathise with the man’s distress.  Nasty business altogether.

There was nothing in the bathroom.  Just a bath and shower where they washed.  No toilet roll.  So I went into the bedrooms and the first happened to belong to Phyllis.  There were signs of a literary dreamer everywhere in her room.  Every shelved volume appeared to have a post-it note inside it, or a bookmark, or some other placeholder which suggested a savage poindexterism in the owner.  And framed pictures on the walls of some of her favourite men of letters at their handsomest:  Hemingway, Proust, Lord Byron.  As well as Jack Lemmon and Oliver Reed.  I knew her to love Ollie Reed.  At first when I entered, I thought one of the pictures might have been of her former beau, the hotelier, and I would at long last get a better impression of a Berrills out and about in the world, but in the end it was only Proust.

Also, numerous fancy pens with her name written on them, fancily.

Phyllis Berrills  

It looked like she hadn’t grown up much from the teenage time, but I wasn’t about to judge her, for I knew I had secrets in my own bedroom which would assuredly belie my current age and station.

There was also, strangely, a very old map of Carrickphelimy on the wall above the headboard of her humble single bed.  I thought Phyllis hated the town so this was rather jarring to see.

On a trestle desk near the window sat the source of all the CLACKing and it turned out to be neither a computer, nor (purely) a typewriter, but one of those electronic word processors with a green display at the front and built-in printing function at the back (like the older typewriters).  For some reason I expected to find a typing machine of some resplendence, being who her father was, an objet de curiosité, and I suppose this was also a curio, just not the antique I’d hoped for.  There was no sign of her evolving play anywhere as I saw no notebooks or even a mountain of foolscap like you’d expect to see near such a contraption.  Perhaps she had hidden her work-in-progress elsewhere in the room, put it out of eye’s way for safety’s sake.  But then I noticed a small sheet was lodged inside the paper table of the machine.  It was not your typical size (about A5) so barely noticeable behind a dusty guard.  I pulled back the covering and looked closer.  It appeared to be a letter she had written.          

Sir,

To state the blinding obvious, your paper has lost its purpose, its foundation, and footing.  It is a weakened and legless entity.  Lacking standing and dependability.  Your newspaper is crippled, impaired, call it what you will.  It might as well be dead like that boy.   This might be my final letter since you have refused to give over the name of the lad’s ‘killer’.  Therefore, I will leave you with my binding reproach which I pray you will take a moment to consider each day going forward and may it bring you consternation and a reasonable gloom forevermore. To be clear, there is not a drop of journalistic integrity left in the core of your crumbling corpus.    

Best,

B. Bluster   

Now, reader, having seen this, I no longer knew which part either of the Berrills was playing in this whole grand amusement.  Was it that Oran was writing the Tout pieces and Phyllis was drumming up more scandal by writing B. Bluster letters?  I knew of their fantasist ways but even this was a bit perplexing to deal with.  Surely these letters would only make their situation worse.

Since there was no roll to be found, and no paper readily available in Phyllis’ room, I went to Oran’s.  I couldn’t see anything in there as the curtains were drawn and everything was in darkness.  But there was paper all over the place so I grabbed the closest A4 sheets to hand and fled quickly to escape what was a rancid lifelong bachelor smell in the place.  I didn’t realise it, but it transpired that the pages I’d procured contained some of Oran’s own writings, but there was no time to read any of it, and no time to say sorry.  He appeared to acknowledge this himself when I handed the paper to him through the slightly open door of the toilet but ultimately didn’t seem too bothered.  Backside hygiene was the immediate priority.