'Darcy and O'Mara' is a novel by Arthur Cronin.
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Wednesday, January 26, 2005

Taking books to the shed.

I looked at the trees as the sun went down. The sun is staying up for longer these days. The bleak mid-winter seems like false advertising when you notice things like that.

My cousin Hugh bought a lamp for Aunt Bridget’s birthday. Uncle Harry had a party for her, but he wasn’t allowed say how old she was. “I don’t know,” is what he’d say when people would ask him. “I don’t care,” is what he’d say when people asked him again. When Hugh was walking up the garden path with the lamp, he couldn’t see where he was going because the box was so big and he tripped over a hose. The box fell and he heard something breaking inside, which he assumed must be the lamp. He hoped it wasn’t the lamp, but seeing as that was the only thing in the box it was unlikely to be anything else, so he wasn’t hugely surprised to find it broken. But just one small piece of it had broken off, so there was still hope of retrieving it. He thought it could be glued back together, and his uncle Harry gave him some glue. He went to a room upstairs and took the lamp out of the box. He put some glue around the edges of the broken bit, but then he dropped the glue into the box. He put his hand in the box and felt around, and he felt something sticky at the bottom of it. He said to himself, “Now what could that be?” He spent about a minute trying to figure out what it was, giving the glue plenty of time to set before he finally thought of glue. His hand was stuck to the bottom of the box, but with his free hand he put the broken piece of the lamp back in its rightful home, and he left it there to set. He went downstairs, and rather than admit that he had got his hand stuck to a box, he walked around with his hand in the box and he told people he was carrying it. Naturally someone eventually asked him where he was carrying it to and that was the one detail he didn’t think of when he came up with the story about carrying the box, so he just said the first thing that came into his head. “I’m carrying it to the shed.” And obviously someone eventually asked him the most pertinent question of all: what’s in the box? That’s the other thing he didn’t think of. This time he said, “Just some old books.” After spending twenty minutes walking around the house, bumping into people, he realised that the walking around the house and bumping into people was a major flaw in his plan, especially as he was telling them he was going to the shed with some books. But then all of the details in his plan fell into place. The thing to do would be to just go to the shed, so he did. On his way he met Uncle Harry in the kitchen. Harry said to Hugh, “I need your help. You’ve got to get everyone out of…” But Hugh interrupted him. “I’m taking some books to the shed,” he said, and continued on his way there. He was disappointed to find the shed locked, but that wasn’t a major problem because he didn’t really want to go to the shed anyway. He just needed somewhere quiet to think about how to rid himself of the box. He walked into the back garden and met his cousin Jane. She said to him, “Do I have a hairpin in my hair?” He suggested that she look in a mirror but she said she’d have to go all the way to the house to check that, and he asked her why she didn’t just feel her hair with her hands and she said her hands were wet. When he asked her why she didn’t dry her hands she said, “Same reason as the last one.” But then he thought that being stuck to a box shouldn’t prevent him from looking at someone’s hair anyway, so he looked and couldn’t find a hairpin. She thanked him, and he walked on down the garden path until he got to the point where the path forks off in two directions. Daisy and Graham, my cousin June’s kids, had put up a little signpost with two signs for Aunt Bridget’s pet peacock. One of the signs said ‘To the fair’ and the other one said ‘Some earth’. There was a little sun drawn in blue ink over the word ‘earth’. Hugh wondered which way he should go. He wanted to avoid the kids, and they’d probably go where the peacock would go, so he should go the other way. He tried to put himself in the position of the peacock, and wondered which path it would follow. Hugh thought it would go to the fair because it would want to show off its feathers in public, so he took the other one, but when he turned the next corner he came across a group of people watching the peacock fight with a small mechanical robot made of tin. It looked as if Daisy and Graham had arranged this. When someone asked Hugh what he was doing with the box he said, “I’m taking some books to the shed,” and he backed away from them. He retraced his steps and went down the other path. This one was much quieter. He sat on a garden seat and tried to figure out how to remove his hand from the box, but the sight of the peacock fighting with the robot reminded him of The Wizard of Oz. The robot was like the Tin Man and the Scarecrow in one - it seemed to scare the peacock anyway. And the path he was following wasn’t exactly the yellow brick road, but it was still a path he was following. He wondered if Jane was the lion. But then, that would make him Dorothy. He’d rather be the lion, and when he thought about it, it made more sense for Jane to be Dorothy. Instead of looking for home, she was looking for a hairpin. “But if I’m the lion,” he said to himself, “that would suggest that courage is the one thing I need.” The thing that this suggested to Hugh was that he should just pull his hand away from the box. So he put the box on the ground and stood in it, with his feet at either side of his hand. Just as he was about to pull his hand away, his cousin Chloe came along and asked him what he was doing. At first he was going to say the first thing that came into his head, but then he thought, no, have courage. “I’m standing in an effing box.” Only he didn’t say ‘effing’. Chloe was delighted with this. She shouted out, “Hey, come here. Hugh is standing in a box.” She didn’t say ‘effing’ or anything. Everyone came along to see him, and then he wished he’d told her the first thing that came into his head, which was that he’d lost his shoes, but that didn’t come into his head for about a minute after she’d asked him. Everyone stared at him for a while and then someone asked him what he was doing in the box. “What does it look like I’m doing?” he said, and Chloe said, “Apart from just standing in a box, it looks like you’re holding onto something.” This was heading in a slightly more promising direction for Hugh. He said he was holding onto Aunt Bridget’s birthday present but then someone asked him why he’d need to stand on it and he said he had to hold it down, so then someone asked him if this thing was alive and he said it was, and then someone said that if it was alive before then it surely wouldn’t be alive any more with Hugh standing on it. Hugh said nothing for a few seconds, and the breather gave him time to see the flaw in his plan. He should really be Dorothy, not the lion. There really is no place like home. So he headed straight for the house as fast as he could, which wasn’t very fast because his feet were still in the box and he was jumping along. Everyone else was walking just behind him. When he got to the end of the path he fell over a kerb, and his hand finally became detached from the box. Chloe picked up the box and said, “There’s nothing at all in this.” Everyone looked at Hugh, but the only thing he could think of saying was something about taking books to the shed, so he said nothing. Chloe said, “Wait a minute. He’s just trying to distract us from something.” Hugh remembered what his uncle said to him earlier, something about getting people out of something, so he said, “Maybe I am.” They all ran into the house, and they found Uncle Harry in the dining room. The dog was sound asleep on the sofa, with his paws in the air, and there was a strong smell of alcohol in the room. The birthday cake on the table looked as if it had been iced very recently. There was also a violin on the table. Everyone looked very suspiciously at Uncle Harry, but he just smiled back at them. Aunt Bridget asked him what was going on, and he said, “Nothing at all’s going on,” and then he winked a few times at Hugh. They all turned towards Hugh, looking very suspiciously at him, but he didn’t mind because at least they weren’t wondering how he stuck his own hand to a box.

The moose’s head over the fireplace looks bored. I’d like to be able to help him out in that respect, but what do you do to make the life of a moose’s head more interesting? Taking him for walks would be tricky. He doesn’t have the body to carry his own head, and carrying it myself would look odd. The wife suggested a pram but that wouldn’t be any less odd. It’d be difficult to think of a odder baby. I’m not sure he’d appreciate a walk in the woods anyway. He must have seen more than enough woodland in his life.

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

Giving up smoking.

I walked all around the garden yesterday, along the paths. The grass is too wet to walk on, after all the rain and sleet and snow. Snow isn’t so nice when it comes with sleet and rain.

My cousin Charlotte decided to give up smoking, but some of her friends and family questioned her resolve, which only increased her resolve to give up smoking. But they were right to question her resolve. She couldn’t go a whole day without a cigarette. She still kept up the pretence that she had given them up, so she was always looking for chances to get away from the friends and family to have a smoke. Her parents, my aunt Joyce and uncle Cyril, had a party and invited all the family. A lot of them were staying for the whole weekend, so Charlotte knew she’d have very few chances to be on her own. On Friday afternoon, she went for a walk in the fields behind the house with a few of her cousins and friends. She was looking for a chance to get away to have a cigarette, but she noticed that the others seemed to be looking for something. When she asked them what it was, one of them said, “A jazz band.” They went on with their search and she returned to hers. She finally found a way out when she remembered that she’d promised to help her mother make some sandwiches, so she told them she had to go and left. On her way back to the house she went to the shed, lit a cigarette and sat on a deckchair. It was her last chance for a smoke until after midnight, when she slipped away from the party for a while and went into the back garden, but her cousin Hugh came out and caught her. She asked him not to tell anyone else about the smoking and he agreed. He said to her, “If you want to hide the smoking, coming out here in the dark is the last thing you should be doing. I saw a red light in the darkness and straightaway I said to myself, Charlotte is smoking again. Or if people think you’re acting suspiciously, going off on your own and that sort of thing, they’ll know what you’re up to. They’re all waiting for you to start smoking again. So don’t go off on your own. You should be doing the opposite of that. If you smoke in an environment where smoking is completely natural, and lots of other people are smoking too, no one will notice it.” Charlotte wasn’t so sure of this. She said, “People will notice me smoking.” But Hugh said, “They won’t if you’re completely natural about it. Come back into the party and casually light up a cigarette, and I guarantee no one will notice it.” Charlotte decided to give it a try because she knew she couldn’t hide the smoking for ever. So she went back into the party, lit a cigarette as casually as she could, and Hugh was right – no one noticed. He was delighted that his plan worked so well. He was talking to Joyce as Charlotte smoked, and she didn’t notice at all. She was even smoking herself. She was telling Hugh about how Cyril promised to cut down on the drink, but she had a suspicion that he was drinking behind her back. She said that when she came into the room the other day she had a feeling that he’d just hidden something under the sideboard, and she got a smell of drink from his breath. She was looking for a way to catch him red-handed. Hugh felt he could solve any problem then, and even as she was talking a plan was forming in his mind. He said, “What you need to do is leave a small red light in the back garden, then tell him you’re going out to have a cigarette. You go out and turn on this red light, then he looks out the window and thinks the light is your cigarette, so he thinks it’s safe to have a drink. Then you come back in and catch him in the act.” Joyce liked the idea, and she said she’d give it a try on the following evening. Charlotte had left the party again because she found it too nerve-wracking to be smoking in front of all those people. She preferred smoking on her own, even though there was a chance she’d be caught. She’d just have to look for excuses to get away from everyone for a few minutes. She went shopping in town with some of her cousins on the following afternoon, and she was able to go off on her own then. She had a beret and dark sunglasses in her handbag, and she put these on when she was smoking, just in case she bumped into anyone she knew. Her mother was shopping for a small red light, but she couldn’t find any. She had a battery operated lamp at home, and she bought a small red lampshade for that. When she brought it home she realised that it would look too big to be a burning cigarette if she left it in the garden, so she’d have to leave it in the field behind the house instead. She decided to test it in the evening just after the sun went down. She went into the field with the lamp and a small round table to hold it. Charlotte was already in the field, having a cigarette, and when she heard her mother coming she put it behind her back. She said she was just there to admire the sunset, and she never wondered why her mother had the small lamp on the table because she was more concerned about the cigarette behind her back. She couldn’t keep her hands there forever, and she started to think it was time to give up the pretence about giving up the cigarettes, but then a jazz band appeared over the hill. They walked towards Charlotte and her mother, and as they got closer, Charlotte could see that they looked very dishevelled. Their clothes were torn and dirty. They seemed to be exhausted too. The drummer carried a snare drum and some cymbals, and the cymbals made a noise with every step. Charlotte still had the beret and dark glasses in her handbag, so she took them out and put them on. She put the cigarette back in her mouth, and started snapping her fingers and nodding her head to the beat of the cymbals. When the jazz band reached Charlotte and Joyce, they all stopped. They were too tired to say anything. The trombone player fell over and Charlotte applauded. Joyce put down the table with the lamp and applauded as well.

The moose’s head over the fireplace looks as if he has to put a lot of effort into staying awake. The wife’s uncle was here last night and he has a very monotonous voice. Even though the things he was talking about were quite interesting, it was still difficult to stay awake because of the voice. After he’d gone, I was alone in the kitchen and when I heard the buzzing of the fridge I thought he said something about an otter dying in an unplanned explosion. I said, “Yeah,” and nodded my head. The moose’s head obviously hasn’t recovered yet.

Wednesday, January 12, 2005

Steve McQueen

Out in the garden with the trees and the sky, complete silence, apart from the sound of the birds, which is nowhere near silence. There are hundreds of birds around the place and they’re about as silent as big metal things hitting off other big metal things. You wouldn’t choose to locate your garden around big metal things that hit off each other, but you get used to the birds.

My cousin Jane once made little straw hats for the garden gnomes in her parents’ garden. When she lifted one of the hats on a beautiful July morning, she saw that the gnome beneath was wearing a tiny pair of sunglasses, and she wondered where he could have got those from. She went for a walk down a quiet road with her friend Claudia, who said she had a vague memory of picking blackberries on this road a few summers ago when a man who looked just like Steve McQueen went by on a motorbike just like the one Steve McQueen used in The Great Escape. Jane said, “You probably just dreamt it.” When they got back to her house, she told Claudia about the tiny pair of sunglasses on one of the garden gnomes, and she lifted the hat to show her, but the sunglasses were gone. She lifted the hats on all of the other gnomes too, but there was no sign of the sunglasses. Claudia said, “You’re the one who’s dreaming things… I’m sure I had a straw hat when the man who looked like Steve McQueen went by.” When they met again in the afternoon, they were both wearing straw hats. They went for a walk down the road to pick some blackberries. They used the hats to hold the berries, but they regretted this after about twenty minutes. The sun was strong, and they really needed the hats on their heads. They were talking about a film they had seen, but they stopped when they heard a buzzing sound from somewhere. They thought it was a bee or a wasp, but the sound was getting louder all the time. They turned around and saw a tiny motorbike with a sidecar coming down the road. One of the garden gnomes was in the sidecar. A small plastic man was on the motorbike, and he was wearing the sunglasses. Jane’s younger brother, Tommy, was standing in the front garden of their house with his friend Darren, who was holding the radio control for the motorbike. This was Darren’s birthday present. They put the garden gnome in the sidecar and they were playing with it in the garden, but they turned their backs for a few seconds and when they turned around again it was gone. Jane and Claudia watched it go by and disappear around the corner. Neither of them said a word. They were both afraid to mention the motorbike in case the sun had affected their heads and they were just imagining it. Jane eventually broke the silence. She said, “I liked that bit with Keanu Reeves and the garden centre.” “Yeah.”

The moose’s head over the fireplace has been staring straight ahead for days. It started when a nephew of mine stood on a chair in front of the fireplace and swung a watch in front of the moose’s eyes. When he stared straight ahead, I thought he was just pretending to get rid of my nephew. That’s what I did, although the plan broke down when he told me to bark like a dog. I ran like a man trying to get away from my nephew instead. He told the moose to make the sound a moose makes, something he hasn’t been doing in a while, but the moose retained his dignity by staring straight ahead. He made my nephew look like a bit of a fool, standing on a chair with the watch in his hand, and to retain his dignity he said to the moose, “Just stare straight ahead instead,” something he’s been doing pretty much non-stop ever since. I tried all the usual things, like snapping my fingers in front of his face. Actually, that’s the only thing I tried because it’s the only usual thing I could think of. There’s horse racing on the TV today. If that doesn’t snap him out of it, nothing will.

Wednesday, January 05, 2005

They're Butterflies.

I was out in the garden for a while. Just standing there, outside in the garden. A deep breath of the cold fresh air. Breathing and standing. And watching the dog try to bury a plate in a flowerbed, but that was only one percent compared to the ninety-nine percent standing and breathing. Actually it’s a hundred percent standing and breathing. I didn’t fall over and stop breathing when the dog tried to bury the plate. I just said ‘good dog’.

My cousin Alan once forgot his own name when he met a girl in the pub. He just said the first name that came into his head and he assumed that that would be the correct one. But it wasn’t. He told her his name was Frank. He only realised that he’d given her the wrong name on the following day, but it was too late to back out of it then. He felt that failing to remember your own name wouldn’t be the way to go about impressing a woman you’ve only just met, so he kept up the pretence that his name was Frank. He remembered her name, Rita. When she introduced him to her family and friends as Frank, he realised that it would be almost impossible to get out of it now. Alan’s sister, my cousin June, has a habit of buying stupid things. She once bought tiles for the kitchen that had images of newts on them. They were very cheap, probably because they had newts on them. When Alan went around to look at the tiles, he said to his sister, “Why did you get tiles with newts on them?” She said, “Is that what they are? Newts?” He told her that they were definitely newts, and she said, “And what are newts?” He felt that he’d be breaking bad news to her if he told her that they were a bit like frogs, only uglier, so he said, “They’re a type of butterfly. Only without wings.” June was delighted with this. She couldn’t believe she had to pay so little for kitchen tiles with butterflies on them. Alan was driving by his sister’s house with Rita one day, and he decided to call in so he could introduce her to June, Dan, Daisy and Graham. It was only when he rang the doorbell that he remembered the name. He had forgotten to tell his sister that Rita thinks his name is Frank. When June opened the door she said, “Hi Alan.” Out of the corner of his eye he could see Rita looking at him, but he avoided eye contact. He introduced her to June and they went inside. When they went to the kitchen, Alan saw a way out of this mess. He pointed at the tiles and said, “What do you call those things again?” June said, “They’re butterflies.” Alan winked a few times at Rita, and there was a vague look of understanding on her face. When June went out of the room for a while he said to Rita that his sister always gets the names of things mixed up, and it’s much easier to just play along with her own naming scheme rather than put her right. Rita believed this, but when Daisy and Graham came into the room later, Daisy said, “Hello Uncle Alan.” He whispered to Rita, “They’re just pretending that that’s my name in front of their mother. It’s easier this way.” She believed this too, and Alan was delighted with the way he extricated himself from that situation, but he wondered if his relationship with Rita could ever work. Sooner or later, he’d have to tell her that his real name is Alan, and he couldn’t imagine how he’d possibly explain that. June’s husband, Dan, hated the newt tiles in the kitchen, and he was always trying to think of ways to get rid of them, but June loved her ‘butterfly’ tiles. The plan he eventually came up with was to buy real butterfly tiles and tell her that these were the newts after they’d moulted, and it worked too. She loved the idea of changing the tiles from the ones with the newts before they’d moulted to after. The new tiles had been put up and the newt ones removed when Alan and Rita next visited the house. June noticed Rita looking very closely at the butterflies on the tiles. June said, “They’re newts.” Rita could have sworn that it was newts that were on the tiles and that June thought they were butterflies. She looked very confused as she stared at the tiles. She turned around when Daisy and Graham came into the room. Since the last visit, Alan had told his sister, Dan and the kids the story of how Rita came to believe that his name is Frank, so Daisy said, “Hello Uncle Frank,” and Graham winked a few times. Rita was more confused than ever then. She thought his real name was Frank and that they were pretending it was Alan. The thought occurred to her that it was she who had made the mistake with his name. When they left June’s house, she said to him, “This is a bit awkward, but is your name Frank or Alan?” Alan thought it was more than a bit awkward, but he knew that the time had come to tell her the truth. He said, “It’s Alan,” and he expected to have some explaining to do, but she said, “I’m terribly sorry. I had a lot to drink on that night when I first met you and I must have got your name mixed up with someone else’s name. I thought it was Frank.” She was very upset about this, but he insisted that he didn’t mind at all. “It could happen to anyone,” he said. “I’m terrible with names.”

The moose’s head over the fireplace seems to have a wide-eyed stare. I know someone who looked just like that after she got contact lenses, but I don’t think the moose’s head would have much use for them. You’d never see him reading. Maybe he’s just surprised about something. If he could write, he could let us know, but he doesn’t have the hooves. That’s probably why he doesn’t read either.