MANCHESTER UNITY OF ODDFELLOWSThe best Friendly Society
and, intrigued by this inscription when I first saw it on eBay, I could not resist buying it. I got it for a few pounds: Croxleys, though they are very solidly made, with great nibs, are not deemed to be as collectable as some other English pens, and the black colour, together with the inscription, lowers the value of this one even further. The Oddfellows, as I discovered, are an organisation akin to the Freemasons, claiming like them a leading role in the French Revolution, and an ancestry stretching back to biblical times, in this instance the expulsion of the Israelites from Babylon in 587 BC. And it struck me, in the course of remembering our relationship, that perhaps the organisation you worked for was a kind of Oddfellows, once a clandestine organisation with code-names and passwords, which had evolved into one which, ostensibly at least, worked for the greater good of society.
I remember your quoting to me a saying of Talleyrand’s, La parole a été donnée à l’homme pour déguiser sa pensée, words were given to man to disguise his thoughts, and perhaps that is true, for though my writing here, as you can see, is as calm and measured as my choice of words, it would not have been so had I written to you first thing yesterday morning after seeing the Irish stamp on your card, and the Dublin postmark. Then, my hand would have trembled had I put pen to paper, for Dublin, as you know, was a turning point in our relationship, like a door that closes off one prospect and opens up another; and I did not know whether to feel pleasure or pain that you were on the same island as me. It was some hours before I could calm myself sufficiently to write. But at other times I have not so deferred the moment, I have responded immediately and honestly, you can see how my writing is wavered by excitement or emotion, the hurried scrawl of my words as they struggle to keep pace with my thought. And then again, because I sometimes do not know what to feel or think, I write slowly to discover what those thoughts or feelings might be, finding them sometimes to turn out quite differently to what I had expected, for whatever happened in the past, even the immediate past, is changed when viewed in retrospect.
We had gone to Dublin for the weekend to celebrate my promotion to Head Keeper of Irish Art at the Belfast Municipal Gallery. We’d known each other for a year. Six months before, the Assistant Keeper, Sam Catherwood, had dropped dead of a stroke; and some months after that Freddy Burrows, the Head Keeper, took early retirement. Although I was next in line, I didn’t really expect to get the job; posts like this usually went to outsiders, so I was pleasantly surprised when I was told hours after the interview that I had been successful.
We stayed at the Shelbourne Hotel. I toyed with the idea of booking Room 217, where JFK and Jacqueline had stayed in 1958 during his presidential campaign, but it proved a little beyond even the means of my new salary. As it was, I managed to get 412, the number of Lee Miller’s room in Hôtel Scribe, telling the desk not to let you know that I had asked for it in advance. So when the key was handed over, you were delighted. Great number, you said to the concierge, and you turned to me and laughed, and he smiled discreetly and said, Yes, madam, it’s a very good room, overlooks the Green, I’m sure you’ll be very comfortable there. Imagine, Angel, of all the rooms they could have given us, they give us Lee Miller’s number in Hôtel Scribe, isn’t that amazing? you said. Yes, I said, and did you know that James Joyce used to drink both in the Hôtel Scribe, and in the Shelbourne? Really? you said, and I said, Yes, really, though I didn’t know it for a fact, it was more of a likely possibility, a way of letting you know that this was my territory now.
My job often brought me to Dublin, and I knew it well, whereas you’d only been there fleetingly. We ended up that night in Mulligans pub in Poolbeg Street, where Joyce set a scene from one of his Dubliners stories, ‘Counterparts’, it’s one of those dark pubs where the light seems filtered through nicotine and settling Guinness, and the Guinness there is really very good, you remember? That paradoxical edge of bitterness behind the creamy-buttermilk-thick black. Do you know ‘Counterparts’? I said, and you said, No. Well, it’s rather a depressing story, really, there’s this clerk in a law firm, Crosbie & Alleyne, Farrington, he’s called, and he’s supposed to be copying out this contract between these two parties, Bodley and Kirway, they’re called, you know how it was in those days, dip pens and inkwells, no photocopying, and he’s not really on the job, he’s the kind of man who slips out for the odd jar every now and again, and his boss, that’s Alleyne, he’s got this broad Belfast accent, comes in and says, Where’s the Bodley and Kirway contract? and Farrington makes some poor kind of excuse, he says, But Mr Shelley said, sir, he says, and Alleyne mimics him, he says, Mr Shelley said, sir, well, kindly attend to what I say and not to what Mr Shelley says, sir, says Alleyne, and when Farrington tries another excuse, Alleyne says, Do you take me for a fool? Do you think me an utter fool? and Farrington looks round him at all the other clerks, and pauses for effect, and says, I don’t think, sir, he says, that that’s a fair question to put to me, and all the clerks titter nervously at this impertinence, so of course the boss really flies off the handle then, and it ends up that Farrington has to make an abject apology to him, and he knows that from here on out his life is going to be hell in the office.
He badly needs a drink after all this, but he’s just spent his last penny on the glass of Guinness he’d slipped out for when he was supposed to be copying the Bodley and Kirway contract, so he pawns his watch, he gets six shillings for it, and he goes on a pub-crawl, he meets these various cronies on the way, and he tells them the story of how he faced down the boss, he acts Alleyne shaking his fist in his face, then he acts himself delivering the smart remark, and who should come in but another crony, so he has to tell the story again, only better this time. And all this time he’s standing the rounds, no one else seems to have any money.
Anyway, they end up in Mulligans, the small parlour at the back, we were in one off the snugs just off the front bar, and I gestured with the hand that wasn’t holding my pint, down there, I said, they made it into an Art Deco bar in the thirties, it’s really rather special in its own way, but this, and I gestured again, to the dark surroundings of the front bar, this hasn’t changed since Joyce’s time, and anyway, I said, two young women with big hats and a young man in a check suit come in, Joyce is very good on dress, one of the women’s wearing an immense scarf of peacock-blue muslin wound round her hat, it’s knotted in a great bow under her chin, and she’s wearing primrose-yellow gloves up to the elbow, and Farrington starts to make eyes at her, he thinks she’s making eyes back at him, but then when the party gets up to go she brushes against his chair and says, O, pardon! in a London accent, and he realises she’s way beyond his class anyway, and he starts to think of all the money he’s spent on his so-called friends, there’s nothing he hates more than a sponge, and then someone proposes an arm-wrestling match, and Farrington gets beat twice by the one of the cronies he was standing drinks for, a mere stripling, and he ends up getting the tram home by himself, past the barracks, it’s dark and cold and wet, he doesn’t know what time it is, his watch is in the pawn, he’s spent all his money that wasn’t even his in the first place, and he doesn’t even feel drunk, and when he gets home his dinner’s cold and the fire’s out, one of his boys tells him his wife’s out at the chapel, and he starts to mimic him, Out at the chapel, at the chapel if you please! And he takes a walking-stick and starts to beat him, and the boy cries out, O, pa! Don’t beat me, pa! I’ll say a Hail Mary for you if you don’t beat me, pa, if you don’t beat me, I’ll say a Hail Mary, and that’s the end of the story.