I Said Probably Now

Stilt detection, I scoffed, after skimming the page for myself.  They never had that issue with you two.

Aren’t you a laugh a minute, said Oran.

I was then as always given to discomfiture and imposterism regarding my quipping abilities.  I placed too much faith in my wits usually forgetting they were inevitably bound to fail me once my mouth got involved.

Both your parents still command some respect in this town, said Lavery.  From them who can recall. 

Get away with your provincial patronising, please, said Phyllis.  Command some respect, my arse. 

          Lavery had donned a peculiar manner now that he was in Oran’s company.  A slight diffidence had developed.  I wondered how long it had been since the two last clapped eyes on one another.  And if his nervousness had to do with guilt about the deeds of his younger self.  At the same time, it was a more humble Lavery than I’d seen before.  All in all this day he had come over with greater humility and conscience.

Tell me, he said to Oran.  What made you sneak into this place?

That whole town is fit to kill me.  Haven’t you observed?

Come on now, not the whole town.

Enough of them.  And filled they are with enough spite to set my house on fire.  

It’s true there’s been spite building but to be fair you’ve only yourself to blame.

You’re not serious, said Phyllis.

Even at his most tolerable, Lavery could not help but put his foot in it, his general pomposity never too far away.

Why? argued Oran. I did nothing wrong.  If the problem is journalistic integrity, then everyone must be completely mad because each piece clearly flouted the laws of science on at least one occasion.

But our readers weren’t to know that.  I’m partly to blame too.  Though a disclaimer might have helped, it didn’t strike me as correct at the time.  For the regular column on that page has always been historically factual.

So if we’re calling it a big hoax, you were in on it.

I suppose I was. 

It’s all bollocks.  Those pieces didn’t require a disclaimer.  The nonsense should have been enough to prime minds for illusion.  It is merely unfortunate the lack of educational standards around these parts. 

I myself had not felt morally or personally responsible for the Scouring Tout articles, being envoy and editor.  I could see why some might see it as a lie but Oran’s point that the material usually beggared sane analysis was a point that should have been well taken.  Lavery was raising the moral dilemma now which I hadn’t seen him do previously, holding the Berrills to account.  Fair play to him, I thought, for at least broaching the argument and creating substantive debate for each of us (bar myself, being wise to my station) to engage in.

          I’ll grant you our citizenry is largely gullible, but that does not mean we as enlightened minds should poke fun or connive.

There’s no connivery involved, said Phyllis.  If you are creatively inclined, there’s not much to be doing with yourself in this town so the sucker game becomes an attractive way to live with some contentment.

It wasn’t a sucker game I was playing, objected Oran.  I meant every word I wrote as the Tout. 

But not one of those words meant a thing, said Phyllis.  Twas all bollocks.  The letters of complaint I submitted were most definitely part of the sucker game, I can tell you.

The letters were made up too?

Not all of them.  A decent slew.

I pointed to the old Martlet Oran had found and said, Well, that part surely runs in the family by the look of it.

Phyllis appeared slightly taken aback by my observation as though this connection to her mother was only now occurring to her. 

          Even so, said Lavery.  The spite people have for the two of you goes beyond your affiliation with the paper.  There’s a general scepticism regarding your co-habitation as you should well know.

And who, may we ask, was first to spread those bloody rumours? snapped back Phyllis. 

Hey, replied Lavery.  I proposed there were improper affairs between the pair of you long before I knew you were going to stay shacked up together all your lives.   That fact did a far better job cementing the rumour in people’s minds than the slander I hurled as an upstart.

And you peacefully married still? enquired Phyllis, drily.

Of course I am.  Why wouldn’t I be? 

I don’t know.  These days it’s a mark of success to have a score of wives and husbands behind you.  If you read the papers.

Not my paper.

Your paper might be about the proles but you were never one of them yourself, were you?

You know what would have put an end to all those rumours before they’d a chance to begin?  If you’d gone out and obtained spouses for yourselves.  It’s shocking you stayed fancy-free all your lives but held up in that house.  With not a single gallivant recorded between either of you.

My gallivanting is none of your particular business.

One of the pigeons cooed aggressively in the rafters to remind us of their subtle presence in the place.  And maybe fed up with the bickering.   

I should be away, Lavery then said.  There’s golf to be played.

Go on, said Phyllis.  Away with you.  Thanks for the lift.

Before leaving, his face turned and became flushed with sympathy.  I rarely saw that face being one of his employees who was only ever on the sterner side of him.  The only time I saw this was if somebody died, or that day when the Gilgan parents came to the office.

Still I’m sorry what happened to your house last night, he said.  It’s grotesque.  And I hope they catch whoever did it and they’re banged up good for it.  

 

With Lavery away, Oran took us up to the projection booth where he’d found the old newspaper.  Dank and cruddy, it was full of groaning wood and preserved-as-if-stone paper.  Whatever technology had once been there for projection – like the giant screen out front – had been sold off or purloined and the port window where the movies used to beam through was now smeared and cracked.  Cardboard tubes littered the place.  Inside, the dreams and fantasies of multiple generations were represented in the mouldy old posters.  The Spirit of St. Louis.  Magnificent Obsession.  A Man Called Horse.  The Song of Bernadette.  Teen Wolf.  

          Mammy was supposed to bring these home one day, said Oran about the posters.  She never got around to it.

I saw a different mood in Oran and Phyllis as they surveyed the enclosure.  Their wistfulness was on show, a side of their respective characters they were not freely disposed to revealing. 

I used to sit there with my Tintin books, said Oran, pointing to a tiny wooden stool near the fire exit.  Remember?

Phyllis parped out a sound of concurrence.

The way he looked at the stool you could see all he wanted was to sit down on it again.  But it was far too small for a man of his heft.  I was in all likelihood the only one of us who might have stood a chance sitting down on it without breaking the thing apart. 

Do you want me to try it out? I suggested.  See how sturdy it is.

It’s a child’s stool, he said.  Not fit for any of us. 

Back at No 15, Oran was more than willing to share the private articles of his life, but I now got the impression he did not want me to sit on this little stool under any circumstance.  His attachment to the object, it appeared, was so deeply personal that he might murder me if I went anywhere near it.   

I thought hard to see if there was anything in the world capable of producing such wistfulness in me but I couldn’t think of anything.  Sure, I had memories which might bring a tear to my eye if I thought hard enough to recall them and their significance, but nothing in the way of objects or momentos.  Nothing.  They could burn my own house down now and I’d probably be okay with it.  I said probably now.  If fate is listening.