The Malediction of the Moneyed

Oran had seen some success over the years with articles showing up in Ireland’s Own and The Sacred Heart Messenger but whenever over the course of our friendship I happened to mention the possibility of getting him a gig at the Martlet he shut down with resignation and sadness as though he had a stronger chance of winning at Wimbledon that year, with no quality game left in him by all reckoning.  Lavery had something against him, Oran informed me.  Always had.  I’d thought Oran a good many years older than my boss but they were in fact about the same age and had knocked about in the same locale when they were younger, and both had attended the grammar school being as the pair of them came from affluence in the region. 

Lavery was from a family of landlords whose legacy in the town percolated with hundreds of weeping tenants.  Some say he acquired the paper out of embarrassment for the misdeeds of his ancestors, to give something back to the community after spending the better part of history taking all and everything from them.  Some wounds heal slowly, and some never disappear, leaving blisters or scars across the skin forever.  So even the most trivial things about him rankled people.  That Hillman Imp he drove for example used to annoy everyone blind simply because people knew it was just for show and really he kept a few Lambourginis out in Blackrock, which he’d only take for a spin to Dublin if there was call.  Lavery knew right well this reputation he had hanging over him.  He lived with antipathy looking him up and down and from all sides – the malediction of the moneyed, he acknowledged.  Although currently palpitating from the Gilgan boy’s death, Lavery was in truth no stranger to scandal in general, having associated himself with some rather unsavoury characters in his time, from corrupt wags and councilmen to the most insidious of insidious business dealers.   Once or twice someone had threatened to have him taken out to the border and shot, then buried where not even the keenest man or his dog cared to mooch.  Some of those who recommended such measures in the past now worked for the man.

I wondered what Lavery might have had against Oran since the writing my new friend provided fell within his wheelhouse.  He’d mentioned numerous times his hunger for good human interest stories and when I brought to him that first Scouring Tout article, he fell over himself with excitement, printed it the following week, and every single one I gave him afterward he accepted with enthusiasm regardless of the anonymity of the author. The Tout’s columns aided his brave vision for the paper.  And everyone by and large agreed.  After the reign of the Hannaways, the Martlet fell under the control of Jesuits and Father ‘Bilko’ Keown who steered the paper in an altogether holier direction.  For half a century it stayed a publication which promoted temperance and general piety in society until Lavery came along to liven it up with a bit of old-fashioned gossip and muck, to the quiet cheer of most of its readership.  The Jesuit influence hadn’t gone entirely.  To this day, as a matter of fact, Lavery proactively retained some pious staff members to give the paper the lightest possible touch of religiosity and keep the older parishioners happy.  He was not a man of faith himself.  His own stock lay in non-practising protestantism – which in this town meant you might as well have been an atheist, though he would never have claimed to be such a thing.

So under Lavery’s management the Martlet was revamped.  Dragged into modernity.  And the traditional front page spread filled with ads suddenly gave way to headlines like:

PRICE OF PINT LINKED TO MENTAL DECLINE IN LOCAL MEN

LOTTERY WINNER VISITS TOWN ON WAY TO BELFAST

LOCAL ROMEO POPS QUESTION AT WEEKEND BOMB SCARE

In time, I would discover that Lavery’s grudge against Oran stemmed from their childhood and extended to the other Berrills; indeed it originated with the other Berrills.  One morning on that busy school bus, which all the pampered ones took, Phyllis Berrills had defended her brother against the jibes of Lavery and his gang of check-tied, boy-sized pimples by verbally maltreating the future newspaperman, and in the doing so she used a word that was so foul it even unnerved the hardened bus driver, a word so repugnant and awful and offensive that I cannot even tell you what it was because Oran informed me he might go to jail if he said it.  I thought that was unlikely. 

On that first day in the house, Oran presented an additional reason for his alienation from the world of publishing. 

I always wanted to be among those recording our world, he said.  It has always seemed to me the most honourably conferred profession.  All the same, recording the world as it is must be quite the tedious task.  I’d be happier rendering it as it might be, should be, shouldn’t be even.  That there I’ve always felt is my cosmic directive.  God out there, or one of his colleagues, has put me on this path.  There’s more juice in rendering it as it is these days.    They’ve grounded themselves too much out there.  Realism is their only roadstead.  Has been for an age.  They’ve lost the ability to dream.

Well, that’s my job, day in, day out, reading the real stories, making them more real, and slightly more boring.    

And I take it this Portrush Flyer is real?

Of course, I said.  You’ve never heard of it?  A lovely journey up the north from Belfast.  They say you can see the hair of Scotland on a clear day. 

I’m unwise to such things, he replied.  Sure I’ve never left this frigging township, never mind.  Rarely even this Godmislaid place.  Why would I travel anyway?  I have all I need here.  Look at this DVD collection.  And the books. 

It’s a decent collection, I’ll grant you, but they can’t teach you everything in life.  Doesn’t experience count for anything with you?

No, he snapped.  Knowledge does the work.  The brain is all that matters.  You could plug me into a machine and give me a shot of all the experiences and I’d do.  I’d very much do.  I’d feel much safer with that injection in my skull than to be outside with that crowd.  My sister’s the same.  The world is mad out there.  Full of phonies and politicasters.  Who I’d rather not hear a peep out of. 

Not political? I asked.

Not a bit.  All I know is they’re divided by whoever favours the privates and whoever favours the pubics.  Some want it all private.  You just need to keep your pubic tidy, trimmed.  Others say have all that off.  A complete state of nothing.

I’m not political either.  I don’t get it.

Oh, I get it alright, he groaned.  This is why I tried to break it down in a funny way for you. 

It wasn’t that funny.

So be it.

I was only joking, I said to him.  It was kind of funny.  Kind of.

Right, I know I’m only a humourless bookworm but there it is.  I’m not sure if I like you, you know.  You and your Portrush Flyer.