chest of drawers, and all her things, books and breakfast, about her. She is married. She can live in this bed. She can eat in it, and read in, and take to it on a regular basis.
And if the bed is a palace to her, then Charlie is her magnificent fat guest. Against the rose pink of the eiderdown, his sandy hair is all aglow. It streams downwards, and swirls around his body’s dents. It stops in a line around each ankle before leaping, like an escaping fire, in little tufts from toe to toe. Golden hair courses down his belly. It hangs in little beardlets from under each pap and fizzes out from under his arms. Ada never tires of it, how it runs in currents, like he has just risen from a bath–and the joke at the top, where his head has been rinsed altogether clear. Because Charlie is very bald.
He is the kind of man who looks like he should be wearing a bowler hat, but Charlie is vain of his pate–he used to sit me on his knee, as a child, to stroke it–and he often goes bareheaded, to give it the benefit of a breeze. He does favour a scarf, though, and has a tendency to growl and clear his throat, also to tap his chest, rewrap the scarf, and to settle and resettle the lapels of his camelhair coat. Charlie is seldom without his coat. He fills a room in a way that is always confusing because, though he gives the impression of being small–the baldness, or maybe a stubbiness about his thighs–he is actually quite large and his refusal to settle may come from a concern that he will not fit. Charlie is only ever passing through. He never takes a cup of tea. It seems that he has information to impart though, after he has gone, it is often hard to know what that information might have been. His voice is low, and urgent, and very pleasant. He makes people feel warm and uncertain, as though they might have been conned–but of what? They look down to check their hands but nothing has been taken, there is nothing there to take. So he is not liked for it–not exactly. Charlie’s charm is completely pointless. And no one knows where he is from.
Spillane is a Kerry name, but his accent is English, with a bit of Clare in there, and all of it Dublinified. There is no doubt, with his mangled vowels, that Charlie wanted to blend in–unless he wanted to stand out, in some way. Still, no one believed a word he said. I remember disbelieving him personally, at the age of eight.
There was something about a horse (there was always a horse). There was the Lord Leinster story, and the endless Shelbourne Hotel stories, and the 1916 Rising story which was sometimes referred to, but never actually told. ‘Ah yes, Mr Spillane,’ says the man in the shop, winking at me over the counter, ‘that would have been in the Glory Days.’
What did Charlie buy me? A sherbert fizz. Of course.
I remember him best with my skin. The creeping delight as he bent down to whisper; the bristle of his moustache and the grease of his tweed. He tickled you with the idea that there was something hidden in his hand or pocket–and there never was. Charlie played Find the Lady with no lady: he just loved the flourish, and after the flourish he loved to leave.
Poor Charlie. His was the first corpse I ever saw; massive and still under Ada’s rose-pink eiderdown. Which is why it is a kind of blasphemy to write of their marriage night in the same bed–though blasphemy seems to be my business here.
I would love to remember how he died–whether with a noise in the night, or a lengthening silence in the middle of the afternoon. It must have happened while we were staying there. It might even have been the reason we went back home. But such details and dates were too terrible for a child to take in, it seems, because my mind has blanked them out–but completely. All I remember is the aftermath, trying not to laugh as we were brought up to the room.
It must have been the February of 1968. I was still eight, Liam was nine, and we were going up to ‘say goodbye’ to
And if the bed is a palace to her, then Charlie is her magnificent fat guest. Against the rose pink of the eiderdown, his sandy hair is all aglow. It streams downwards, and swirls around his body’s dents. It stops in a line around each ankle before leaping, like an escaping fire, in little tufts from toe to toe. Golden hair courses down his belly. It hangs in little beardlets from under each pap and fizzes out from under his arms. Ada never tires of it, how it runs in currents, like he has just risen from a bath–and the joke at the top, where his head has been rinsed altogether clear. Because Charlie is very bald.
He is the kind of man who looks like he should be wearing a bowler hat, but Charlie is vain of his pate–he used to sit me on his knee, as a child, to stroke it–and he often goes bareheaded, to give it the benefit of a breeze. He does favour a scarf, though, and has a tendency to growl and clear his throat, also to tap his chest, rewrap the scarf, and to settle and resettle the lapels of his camelhair coat. Charlie is seldom without his coat. He fills a room in a way that is always confusing because, though he gives the impression of being small–the baldness, or maybe a stubbiness about his thighs–he is actually quite large and his refusal to settle may come from a concern that he will not fit. Charlie is only ever passing through. He never takes a cup of tea. It seems that he has information to impart though, after he has gone, it is often hard to know what that information might have been. His voice is low, and urgent, and very pleasant. He makes people feel warm and uncertain, as though they might have been conned–but of what? They look down to check their hands but nothing has been taken, there is nothing there to take. So he is not liked for it–not exactly. Charlie’s charm is completely pointless. And no one knows where he is from.
Spillane is a Kerry name, but his accent is English, with a bit of Clare in there, and all of it Dublinified. There is no doubt, with his mangled vowels, that Charlie wanted to blend in–unless he wanted to stand out, in some way. Still, no one believed a word he said. I remember disbelieving him personally, at the age of eight.
There was something about a horse (there was always a horse). There was the Lord Leinster story, and the endless Shelbourne Hotel stories, and the 1916 Rising story which was sometimes referred to, but never actually told. ‘Ah yes, Mr Spillane,’ says the man in the shop, winking at me over the counter, ‘that would have been in the Glory Days.’
What did Charlie buy me? A sherbert fizz. Of course.
I remember him best with my skin. The creeping delight as he bent down to whisper; the bristle of his moustache and the grease of his tweed. He tickled you with the idea that there was something hidden in his hand or pocket–and there never was. Charlie played Find the Lady with no lady: he just loved the flourish, and after the flourish he loved to leave.
Poor Charlie. His was the first corpse I ever saw; massive and still under Ada’s rose-pink eiderdown. Which is why it is a kind of blasphemy to write of their marriage night in the same bed–though blasphemy seems to be my business here.
I would love to remember how he died–whether with a noise in the night, or a lengthening silence in the middle of the afternoon. It must have happened while we were staying there. It might even have been the reason we went back home. But such details and dates were too terrible for a child to take in, it seems, because my mind has blanked them out–but completely. All I remember is the aftermath, trying not to laugh as we were brought up to the room.
It must have been the February of 1968. I was still eight, Liam was nine, and we were going up to ‘say goodbye’ to
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