I had been to Creeslough before, on holiday with my girlfriend. Her father was a Creeslough man. We stayed for three weeks in a farm worker's cottage that had been passed down through generations of her family. We had a wonderful time. It hardly mattered that the cottage was a dank and dark monument to bad taste and the Irish winter. It was summer. We spent most of our days on the beach and most of our nights gazing at the stars and the moon.
"Come on, let's make ourselves a new life here in Donegal," I said one balmy night. "It will be like starring in The Quiet Man."
"You're drunk," she replied, seductively. "Shall we go to bed?"
It was against this backdrop of fanciful dreams that I did the unthinkable. I resigned from my job and made plans for the future. I took a lease on the holiday cottage and made a deal with my I-can't-believe-you're-doingthis-but-I'm-calm-about-it-because-it's-just-a-stupid-phase-you're-going-through-girlfriend . . .
The road into Creeslough was as wide as a Parisian boulevard. Not surprisingly, it promised more than it delivered. It was as if the village had rolled over and gone to sleep until summer. It was just before 10 p.m., early March. Fortunately, a shop was still open. I parked in the white glare of the window light. I needed some basic provisions to sustain me until morning: milk, bread, tea, butter, jam.
I got back in the car feeling slightly uneasy. The cottage was a mile outside the village, back in the direction I had just come from. I took the first right up a narrow lane and drove as far as a gathering of pine trees on the left. The gable end faced on to the road. There was a concreted bay between the garden wall and the front door. I parked the car and lingered in the rain for a few moments.
The house didn't look in any better condition since I was last there. The whitewashed walls were mottled and brown, the sills bore the flaky remnants of an ancient green paint job. The windows were streaked with grime and shrouded in lace curtains the colour of a widow's veil. As I pulled open the front door brown sludge washed over the top of my boots. I threw on the light and recoiled at the scene. A water pipe had burst in the attic and emptied its contents down the walls, covering them with a thin layer of blue mould. The fridge and cooker had been coated with something black and alive. A throw rug floated across the miniature lake in the bathroom like the decomposing body of a small furry animal.
I crept through the rest of the house, my depression deepening with every step. The furniture in the livingroom hadn't changed since I'd last been there - in fact, it hadn't changed since yellow plastic was at the cutting edge of settee coverings and chipboard was the new mahogany. The carpet pattern looked like random vomit stains. The air was damp enough to swim in.
The bedroom, at the far end of the house, had escaped a soaking. It was habitable at least, though I changed my mind on closer inspection. The corner of the mattress - the mattress I was supposed to sleep on - had been chewed. I found tiny piles of black droppings scattered around and guessed it had been eaten by a rat.
Of the many unhappy experiences of my boyhood - French kissing an earwig that had crawled into my harmonica immediately springs to mind - none has stayed with me more vividly than the night I woke up to find I was sharing a pillow with four mice. Even now I sometimes close my eyes and find the scene painted on the inside of my eyelids. The thought of sharing a cottage, never mind a bed, with a rat was my worst fear realised.
I ran out screaming into the night, jumped into the car and frantically tried to insert the house key into the ignition. I was going back home. Of course I was going back. But to what?
Ritual humiliation? "Back already, darling? I wasn't expecting you until next week. I'll put the kettle on." My senses started to unscramble. I coaxed myself back indoors. Everything looks better in the fresh light of a new dawn, even rats and 1950s furniture. Of course I was staying.
I had a fitful night and woke early. Thin shafts of sunlight speared through the window grime. I threw some water on my face and stepped outside. The storm of the previous night had abated. An army had been up all night polishing the countryside. The pine trees in the garden were gleaming, the air was freshly laundered and seemed to magnify life itself. Over the crest of the hill by the cottage I could just see the top third of Muckish, a black and smooth table mountain that dominated an otherwise gentle landscape. It looked alien, as if some supernatural force had left it there by mistake. A scattering of clouds so white they could have been boiled floated across the azure sky.
This was more like it. . .
I spent the next few days washing down walls and laying out poison. I hung the carpet out to dry, and transported the fridge and what was left of the mattress to the local dump. After a long search I found the withered body of a rat lying in a corner of the attic. It was long dead, the victim of a diet of horsehair and coiled springs. I was ecstatic. To celebrate I carried the television set into the garden and put a hammer through the screen. I had wanted to do this for years, or at least I thought I did. I have long been one of those confused people who combine a passionate belief that television turns people into antisocial morons who can barely string a sentence together with a three-year unbroken record of watching Brookside. The puritan in me felt a certain satisfaction as the screen crashed and splintered. This was soon replaced with the emptiness which comes from knowing that never again would I set eyes on Susannah Farnham's hair or hear Jacqui Dixon's dulcet Scouse accent as she chastised her errant brother, `Aw-er ar Mi-kill."
To fill the terrible void in my life I thought it best that I find myself a job. . .
A brief spot of farming ended sadly and badly in a cattle mart. He thought of his previous job at The Guardian and looked to local newspapers . . .
Donegal seemed to have more newspapers than Fleet Street. The Democrat, the People's Press, the Journal, the News. I flicked through them all, looking for the job adverts. I could have been anywhere in the world. It was all the usual stuff: irate local politicians, planning rows, sporting triumphs, wedding photographs featuring fat brides with big hair and grooms with bad teeth. The jobs didn't signpost a lifetime of adventure: tractor driver wanted; assistant required by Gary's Pet World; Sales! Earn £400 a week.
The Tirconaill Tribune was different from the others. It didn't have job adverts or many adverts at all, just stories as rambling and epic as a Dickens novel.
I turned to the inside pages. Every story read like the public lynching of someone in authority: the Church, the Government in Dublin, the phone company, the electricity board. On the back page there was a story about drugs which read like it bad been written by a journalist on LSD.
Looking back it was obvious. Sure, it was a step down from the Guardian - let's be honest, it was a drop through a trapdoor from the Guardian - and it meant going back on all those promises I made to myself about seeking new challenges. So what? I never did have much time for all that New Age gibberish anyway. . .
When I arrived at the Tribune's offices, a white-haired man was sitting on the front steps. He was smoking a Sherlock Holmes pipe. A small fawn dog was lying at his feet. The newspaper's name was painted in brown above the door in a script that went out of fashion with Ganex raincoats and Terry Thomas. The T of Tirconaill and the b of Tribune had flaked off.
"I'm looking for the editor, John McAteer."
He took the pipe from his mouth. "Who wants him?"
I explained I was looking for a job. He stood up. "You'd better come in," he said, the beginning of a smile in place. "I'm John."
I'd never been interviewed for a job before by a man stroking a dog on his lap, like one of the bad guys in a James Bond movie. He said nothing while I told him the story of my life. School, university, rock bands, journalism college, the north of England. Childhood dreams. The Guardian. The cattle market. . .I can do shorthand. I can do typing (a lie). I can sell adverts (ridiculous). I would gladly sit through any boring meeting he cared to send me to (negotiable).
I told them the newspaper was fantastic, its spirit, its obvious pride in the community, the humour. I lied about Charles Dickens and said that all newspaper articles should have at least 234 words in the opening paragraph. Really, I couldn't have felt more at his mercy if I was naked and he had a branding iron in his hand.
"Sorry but we don't have any jobs," John said.
"I'm cheap," I said.
"We still couldn't afford you."
In the end I had to beg. "Listen John. I really need a job. I'm desperate," I said. "Funny that. So are we." He shook my hand. "Okay, let's see how it goes but do me one favour, will you?"
"Anything."
"Stop grovelling. If you work for the Tribune you don't grovel to anyone."
I spent a few afternoons flicking through the back issues. . . I could see the future stretching out in front of me: a steady procession of priestly retirals, Boys' Brigade anniversaries and somnambulant council meetings. Woodward and Bernstein would have been pushed to find some excitement in that lot. My heart sank and my brain began to compose a begging letter to the editor of the To Weekend 3
From Weekend 1
Guardian:
"Dear Sir, You may not remember me but I was once. . ."
I got as far as the part where moving to Ireland had been a massive success but now that phase of my life was over I was prepared to do my old job for a tenth of the money he used to pay me when my eyes fell on page five of a Tribune from 1996. It was dominated by a picture of farmland lost beneath floodwater. Below the photograph there was a paragraph that read:
Bernard Lafferty, formerly of Creeslough, died of a heart attack last week in Los Angeles, California. As many people will know Bernard was the butler to the American heiress Doris Duke, who made him executor of her will after she passed away in 1993. Outrageous claims that Bernard murdered Doris Duke were never proved. The funeral was held in Los Angeles last week. Sympathies are extended to his relations and friends in the Donegal area.
"John, have you seen this?" I showed him the page with the picture of the flood and the paragraph about Lafferty.
"Lennon floods. Happens every winter. And?"
"No, not the floods, Bernard Lafferty. Did he murder Doris Duke?"
"I don't know. That's what it said in some of the papers at the time. Does it matter?
"But what if he did? What if the boy from Creeslough murdered the richest woman in the world and the Tribune got the story? That would make them sit up at the Guardian, wouldn't it? It might even make a paragraph or two in the New York Times. Can I do the story? "You can if you like." He shook his head. "But not now. Creeslough Hall has been demolished. Speak to a couple of people in the village and write a thousand words, will you? I'd do it myself but I don't have the time."
Our hero took to playing gaelic football, drinking in the Corncutter's Rest and writing stories and obituaries. One day Newt Gingrich came to Creeslough to trace his Irish roots . . .
"Gingrich is an Irish name?" "No," said John, "but Doherty is. He claims he's a Doherty.
The Doherty Clan Centre was on Inch Island, on the Inishowen peninsula. Gingrich was scheduled to turn up at 9.30 a.m. This was a big story. It wasn't every day that the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives turned up on the Tribune's doorstep. I assumed John, as the editor, would want to be there for the occasion. But he insisted that I go, saying, "After all, you're the genealogy correspondent."
Newt Gingrich happened to be one of my least favourite politicians in the world; one of my least favourite people, in fact.
Don't get me wrong. I admired Newt for building as career bon "family values" while conveniently forgetting that he once visited his cancer-stricken wife in hospital to tell her he was having an affair and wanted a divorce. How could anyone fail to be impressed by the first House Speaker in history to be fined for breaking Congressional ethics rules who still had the chutzpah to lecture Bill Clinton about morality? If a hypocrite could persuade the Irish-American community to vote him president just because his great-grandad once owned a craft in Donegal, then you just have to shake your head and say "That's politics."
As to his interminable stories about great Dohertys down the ages. They were an undistinguished bunch, actually, enlivened only by the tendentious inclusion of Eva Peron on the grounds that her maiden Spanish name (de Duarte) sounds like Doherty as pronounced by a drunk. Thankfully John Hume arrived and the clan's answer to A.J.P. Taylor dashed off to shake his hand . . .
There was a smoothing of dresses and straightening of ties. Through the crush I could see the familiar helmet of grey hair in the doorway. It really was Newt Gingrich, the third most powerful politician in the US. I'd never been in the same room as someone so powerful. When he walked into the room I could have sworn the air temperature dropped by 10 degrees.
Behind Newt trailed a steely-faced female, who I later discovered was his press officer, carrying as briefcase. She was followed by a photographer, Mrs Gingrich and two secret servicemen with bulges under their jackets.
"Wonderful," Newt cried, as he surveyed the room. He was either a fantastic actor or had never been to a house clearance sale before. "Just wonderful. Oh, look, a photograph of a Spanish admiral. Look, darling, a photograph of a Spanish admiral. Wonderful. Evita. Is that Evita? It is. Wonderful. Fantastic."
Once Newt had calmed down, the clan chieftain made a short speech welcoming him to Donegal. John Hume then told the story of how he met the speaker at a White House dinner on St Patrick's Day and discovered both their mothers were called Doherty. The clan historian then gave a lecture about the great Dohertys down the ages.
A procession of local dignitaries then shuffled forward to present Newt with a variety of Doherty clan certificates. He received them graciously, promised to hang them on the wall of his Washington office and handed them to his press secretary who rolled her eyes.
The clan chieftain stepped forward once the presentations were over. "And now the bad news," he began sheepishly.
My ears pricked up. People started murmuring. The clan chieftain stumbled on: "The thing is, Mr Gingrich, we can't find any record of your family tree on our database of two million names. Perhaps if you could provide us with more information. . ."
A politician friend of mine once told me that there were two golden rules in politics: never get caught in bed with anyone younger than your daughter (or your daughter), and never ask a question if you don't know the answer.
Newt had broken one of the golden rules.
Some politicians have the ability to retain a semblance of composure in the most stressful of circumstances. This is a talent that separates world statesmen from mere mortals who hang around on the fringes of politics, like press officers and journalists. This probably explains why Newt kept smiling and his press officer looked as if she wanted to wrestle the clan chieftain to the floor before he said another word. But it was too late. Forty-five million Americans now knew that Newt Gingrich wasn't one of them. Oh, deep joy.
No News At Throat Lake by Lawrence Donegan is published by Viking (£15.99 in UK)