DISPLACED IN MULLINGAR:ONE OF THE REGRETS of my life is that I never developed a relationship with a horse. I am socially inadequate in Co Westmeath society, because conversations invariably focus on equestrian matters, and I'm always left with nothing to say.
People get so involved with horses that in some houses closed-circuit TV is installed, so that guests can watch the newborn foals in the stables, while they’re eating their dinner.
The foals in the stables lie down, or stand up, or duck under their mothers’ bellies to get milk, and everyone watches the black-and-white screens, with an intensity usually reserved for the more dramatic episodes of Casualty.
On Sunday last I sat through a supper of lamb chops without uttering a word. I was worried that the other guests might think I was depressed, and so, to demonstrate that I was capable of frivolous chatter, I mentioned that my cat had fleas.
My host stared at me as if I had just said that Joe Dolan was made in China.
“Well, I don’t think she has them any more,” I continued, digging myself deeper into the hole. “Last Friday I was eaten alive with them, in the bed; but I’ve had no bite since.”
I had an urge to scratch my beard, which I did, without thinking; but as my fingers dug into the hairs beneath my chin, other guests glared at me in such horror that I feared they might ask me to leave.
They didn’t. But I left anyway, and went home to bed, and got bitten again.
The General phoned on Monday morning, from the lake, and announced that it was midsummer. He said he was in the middle of Lough Ennell, stretched in his boat.
“My gilly is rowing as we speak,” he declared. “You ought to be here.” I was silent.
“For goodness sake, don’t make a martyr of yourself,” he declared. “Is your prostate on the blink?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The prostate,” he repeated. “Is it acting up?”
I said: “My prostate is perfectly fine.”
“Good,” he bellowed. “Delighted to hear it. A man over 50 should worry about nothing else in the world except his prostate; if that’s shipshape, then all the rest is roses.”
He persuaded me to go to Dublin, on Tuesday, with him and his niece; she wanted to buy a dress for a wedding. He drove the Mercedes, and I sat in the back seat, clutching my briefcase.
“What’s in the case?” his niece inquired.
“Nothing,” I confessed. “I just carry it for comfort.”
When I was a teenager I used to go to Dublin with a young flashy couple who drove an Austin mini. They smoked constantly. I would sit in the back seat in a fog of nicotine.
But it was worth it, just to walk around the city centre, and gaze at the shops; it’s what country people used to call “a day out”.
Dundrum Shopping Centre is ideal for a day out. I went up and down the sloping escalators all afternoon, imagining myself in Star Trek, and was only mildly disappointed that I didn’t get chatting to someone, the way I usually do, in Mullingar.
On Wednesday morning, in Dunnes Stores, I got chatting to Kitty, a white-haired old lady with sunken jaws and large spectacles, and as tiny as a bird. She talks to everyone and everyone knows her. She was staring at the top shelf in the dairy section.
“I don’t like Dunnes Stores milk,” she explained. “But I don’t see any small cartons of Avonmore – are they up on that shelf?”
I reached up and took down a small carton of Champion milk. “Will that do?”
“The bee’s knees,” she said.
I met her again at the cold meat counter, where she was getting slices of Denny’s ham, and again at the shelves of bread, where she was looking for something with high fibre, and again at the sweets, where she was trying to shovel jelly babies into a bag.
At the checkout I noticed little sachets of cat food in her basket. I said: “My cat only eats the fancy stuff that the pet shop sells.”
She sized me up. “You’re a very educated man!” she declared.
“Why do you say that?”
“I can tell from the briefcase,” she said, laughing, and then she darted away down the mall, like a tiny sparrow.
