“This ain’t no gourmet food shop any more. It’s a cash-for-gold outlet. Can’t do nothing for you. If your mother, on the other hand, is interested in selling any of her jewellery . . . ”
IT ALWAYS HAPPENS at this time of year that the old conscience gets to me and I end up going to visit the old dear. One thing that even my critics would have to admit is that I’m a people person and there’s something about Mother’s Day that brings out the really, really nice side of me.
She's living, these days, in the penthouse suite of the Four Seasons Hotel in Ballsbridge, bumbling about the place like the focking Major from Fawlty Towers– except twice as insane and botoxed up to the eyeballs – frittering away my inheritance on room service Moët and Himalayan spring hydrotherapy treatments. Still, like I said, you've got to make the effort, what with the week that's in it. She's on, like, the Wolfe when I arrive. Someone's getting it in the Jeff Beck, judging from the – this isn't a word – but shrillnessof her voice?
"Is that the Stephen's Green Shopping Centre?" she's going, beckoning me in. "Yes, it's about this – let me see have I written the name down somewhere – this Phil Lynottexhibition that you have running? Well, my problem with it is that it's drawing a lot of people from the – let's just say – wage-bearing classes to this side of the city . . ."
While she carries on blabbing away, I stort having a mooch around her suite – mainly to see if there’s any money I can rob. That’s when I spot it, on the nightstand next to her bed. It’s, like, 300 or 400 pages, tied together with green string. On the first page it says, “Mom, They Said They’d Never Heard of Sundried Tomatoes”, and I realise that it’s the script for the movie they’re supposedly making, based on her recession-era, misery-lit novel.
Don't tell me that it's actuallygoing ahead?
I sit on the edge of her bed. Through the wall, I can hear her going, "I don't care if he wasan icon of Irishness. I'm saying that the Ilac Centre is a far more appropriate location for something like that – that's why they built it where they did. I'd like to speak to someone more senior, please . . ."
I turn the page to the introduction, which I end up reading in one of those voices you always hear on, like, movietrailers?
Imagine you woke up one morning and the world as you knew it had come to an end. Zara Mesbur was a young girl enjoying a normal, happy childhood in south Dublin, playing the bassoon in her school’s junior orchestra and enjoying playdates with her friends, Louisa and Eily, in Dundrum Town Centre. Then came the terrible events of September 28th – and life for her would never be the same again . . .
I end up just shaking my head. She’s so full of it. I flick forward a few pages. It’s like:
Zara, a five-year-old girl, enters a shop. There are a lot of sleazy-looking men standing about – clearly working class, generally idle. The atmosphere is like that of a saloon bar in the old American west. They are all unshaven and they laugh in a way that many would consider uncouth. Someone is playing ragtime piano in the background. There is a man behind a counter wearing a string vest. He has many, many tattoos. Silence suddenly descends on the shop when she walks through the door. Zara approaches the man. The score should add to the tension of the moment. Everyone is waiting to hear what she has to say. Finally she speaks . . .
ZARA
I’d like a pound of organic truffle butter, please.
The men in the shop laugh cruelly at her. Zara’s eyes fill with tears. She can’t understand their reaction. She speaks to them indignantly.
ZARA
It’s for my mom. We’re having spicy salmon kedgeree with sweet potato latkes for brunch.
The men laugh again, uproariously, like it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever heard. Now, it’s the shop-owner’s turn to speak. He removes the toothpick from his teeth.
SHOP-OWNER
Sorry, little missy – this ain’t no gourmet food shop any more. It’s a cash-for-gold outlet. Can’t do nothing for you. If your mother, on the other hand, is interested in selling any of her jewellery . . .
One or two of the other men are heard to mutter, ‘Sweet potato latkes!’ while shaking their heads and laughing. Zara looks around her, taking in her surroundings for the first time. She suddenly realises that this is no longer Pious and Greene, purveyors of fine foods. It is, like the man said, a shop offering fast cash to people desperate enough to sell their wedding rings and gold fillings. Zara stutters . . .
ZARA
But . . . but I must have organic truffle butter.
Please. Please tell me, where can I go
to get organic truffle butter.
The shop-owner shoots her a callous, stiletto-shaped smile . . .
SHOP-OWNER
Try 2005!
I actually laugh? This is going to be the worst movie of all time. All of a sudden, I look up. The old dear’s finished on the phone. She just, like, snatches the script out of my hand.
“Ross,” she goes, “I’m trying to stop Grafton Street being turned into a bloody favela. I don’t have time for your unpleasantness.”
Chorming, huh? I’m like, “Hey, I came here to wish you an actual happy Mother’s Day. See did you fancy going out for lunch on Sunday.”
She’s there, “Oh, well . . . thank you.”
I’m like, “Don’t thank me. You’re paying. Especially if it looks like this piece of crap is going to actually happen.”
She cracks on to be hurt then. Except she can’t be hurt, of course. The woman’s made up of collagen, alcohol and black-morket organs.
She's there, "It is going ahead. And if you must know, Ross, the studio has very big hopes for it. They're calling it a post-millennial Angela's Ashes."
I laugh. I’m like: “Well, I wouldn’t go keeping Oscar night free. By the way, who’s playing the kid?”
And it’s at that exact moment that Sorcha steps into the room, carrying Honor, the two of them dressed in matching red Jeanne Yang summer dresses. Sorcha wants to be Katie Holmes so bad it’s no longer funny. I’m about to ask her what the hell she’s doing here, roysh, when Honor – who’s a total daddy’s girl – sees me and lets an excited squeal out of her.
And I’m sure you can picture my reaction when she turns around and goes, “Daddy, daddy – I’m going to be in a movie!”
twitter.com/rossock, rossocarrollkelly.ie
