The Irish president

The Irish President

There was an ole poet called Higgins
Whose rhymes never worked on the hustings
To rid himself of writers block
He talked books with theTaoiseach
Pygmalion’s professory to Bilbo Baggins

D.I.A.L.

Maggie sat at the corner booth of the bustling Italian café and tried to stop her hand from shaking, she thought it very odd that it was just the right hand. This was different to the panic attacks, this was different to the hot flushes, this was different to the sleepless nights, this was so different she had officially categorised it as strange. She’d just had a twenty-minute talk with her mother,

‘What exactly are you going to do after your A-Levels.’ her mother had asked. Nothing odd or strange about that she thought, Oh yeah, except Mam has been dead for ten years.

‘Waatta you wanna, Miss Haywood.’ the barista shouted, he had come around from the counter, Anna the only waitress was busy elsewhere, ‘Youaaaa early today No.’

‘Oh Mike, come on, cut the bullshit I can’t take the phoney Iti accent today, could you turn down the Louis Primo tape and just give me the usual, I’ve had a rough morning.’

‘Yeah, I can see that, you look as if you’ve seen a … ’

‘Mike, make that two Americanos. You OK Maggie ‘June Ryan, Maggie’s boss had just arrived at the coffee shop.

‘I followed you out, what happened, a hypo?’

‘No, it’s not that, it’s nothing really … June, eh thanks, I just had a bit of a headache, I needed a break.’

Maggie had worked with June for the last two years and while she liked June, she didn’t fully trust her. It wasn’t the seniority thing or June’s abrupt manner, it was just some nagging doubt, like one of those renaissance pictures which you need to look at sideways to get the true picture; reading it awry so to speak. Maggie smoothed off some imaginary fluff from her Marks & Sparks trouser suit, rearranged some of the debris in her clutch bag and then applied the necessary amount of lippie to cheer herself up. Her hand had steadied and she was more composed, she decided not to tell June about the tremor and definitely not about the flashback.

‘OK, as long as you’re alright. Joe Jones just phoned me. He wants to see you when you get back, he wants your opinion on the new retina security device, take your latest content with you as well’ she then added caustically. ‘You must be sleeping on the right side of the casting couch love.’ June had missed the sensitivity training weekend and reverted to type at the drop of a fedora. She quickly finished her coffee, gave Maggie her “concerned look,” and then left. Maggie didn’t immediately follow June back to work, she fancied another Americano, a scone to boost her blood sugars, and a minute or two to take in what June had said.

Maggie entered the boardroom, there was a small meeting in progress. Joe Jones, the “founding and funding” CEO sat at the top, and dead centre of the board table. Either side stood Tom O’Leary, the company doctor, and to Maggie’s surprise, June Ryan. They were reviewing documents that looked like photographs. Maggie thought that she could just make out the interior of an Italian café. Joe Jones stood, and said to Maggie

‘Miss Haywood, would you be so kind as to take a seat and tell us what happened to you earlier today.’ Maggie quickly looked at June for guidance; June flashed back a look to heaven. ‘It’s OK Miss Haywood, take your time. It’s fine, we know you’ve been talking to your mother; tell us about the flashback.

‘How did you …, why have you been spying on me’ Maggie looked directly at the flat TV screen hanging above Jones’ head, an internal security camera was trained on her work area, she then looked directly at June.

June remained silent, Tom O’Leary said softly to her, ‘I’m so sorry Maggie, just tell them what happened. It’ll help, trust me.’

Maggie had been working at the Dial Company, Dial dot com, Dial991.com, for a couple of months when she had “gone hypo”, fainted in front of June. She’d been diagnosed with hypoglycaemia, low blood sugar levels, a sort of inverse diabetic condition. This wasn’t really a shock to her as it sort of run in the family. What was a shock, Tom O’Leary had told her that she must give up smoking as well; the combination of the two could be medically catastrophic. Maggie found this to be a total understatement; the combinations of nicotine withdrawal and surges in her blood sugars resulted in panic attacks, a year long depression, and just for good measure almost hourly mood swings. Tom had prescribed the statin, the mini aspirin, the glycol supplement, and the beta-blocker; he was nothing if not thorough. At the end of all the treatments Maggie trusted Tom, he was after all an ex-smoker like herself, one of the dying breed. Based upon that trust she decided to tell her story.

‘June asked me to flesh out the Garcia biog with some local colour and some back story material from my life, I’d amassed more than I needed so I decided to edit the media on my i-pad this morning and then forgot that instead of logging on I was supposed to use I.R.I.S.’

Jones threw his pencil across the table, stopping Maggie in her tracks, ‘The what Miss Haywood?’

‘Oh it’s that new security gizmo that we’re trying out, it scans your eye image and links back to the central mainframe and authenticates that the i-pad user is me. “Internal Retina Input Security,” I thought June said you were interested in that?’

‘I was, I am, I, I, just carry on Miss Haywood.’ Jones voice wavered he was flustered and impatient, Maggie could not understand why.

‘Well, I had a slight head ache so I took one of the beta blockers that Tom, sorry, Dr. O’Leary gave me and I then attached the eye piece and the i-pad docking mechanism. But I don’t see where this is…’

‘Miss Haywood please, get to the story ‘Jones was starting to get under the deeper levels of Maggie’s epidermis, and not in any Frank Sinatra way.

‘I logged onto the new Google SatNav system and called up my parent’s old house in Cambridge, and instead of the simple aerial map view there is now a street view, so I could see my mother’s surgery as it looks now. The image is taken with a 360 degree, 3D camera. It’s good, the definition is… ‘

‘Miss Haywood, please concentrate, your imagination is running …’

‘Mr Jones, if you keep carrying on like this I will just shut up and I won’t talk to you or your geeks again, I know you have contacts, I’m not attacking your imagination’. She had had enough of Mr. Joey “Bloody” Jones. He gave her a thin wane smile that would have gifted him a line or two in “Mac the Knife” he nodded for her to continue.

‘I started to wonder how my mother’s GP surgery had changed over the years and while I was considering this the image on the screen, well it started to change. It, it, it sort of came alive It was like time-lapse photography but backwards. Paintwork refreshing, decaying, refreshing. Patients getting younger, sky lightening then darkening. Trees changing colour, yellow lines removed from roads, traffic reduces. It all speeded up and went into a purple haze. I thought that I had broken the i-pad and the IRIS. The next thing the image was of the house and surgery as it was in 1984 perhaps 85, I thought I could hear the sound of Bono singing “In the name of Love”, I got a whiff of that ethyl alcohol clean clinical smell from the surgery, Aunty Betty was cooking my Dad’s dinner, Mother being busy in the surgery. Then I think I blacked out again.’

‘Sorry Miss Haywood, what exactly, did you have another hypo.’ Jones had learned by his pervious mistake and kept his tone conciliatory.

‘No not exactly, it wasn’t like that, the next thing, I was sort of there. Firstly I was the observer then I’d sorta flipped into that reality.’

‘Maggie, did you take another beta blocker?’ Tom O’Leary asked.

‘Yes I did and it was really weird. I just laughed out loud and then, then I was just there. I was walking up the drive, my hair long again, light chestnut coloured, jeans ‘n’ jokey WHAM t-shirt. I could feel the pebbles under my tennis shoes; everything appeared much brighter than I remember. Should I go and see my Dad and Betty first, she lent me cigarettes. Should I go and see Mam in the surgery. I ended up not having any choice in the matter’

“Maggie, come here, I want a word with you”

“OK Mam, I’ll be there in a minute now.”

‘Are you telling us that you were actually speaking to her, you were there?’ Tom O’Leary asked excitedly.

‘Yes, even my thought processes seemed to be tuned in, no turned on to is more correct. I had dropped out of my time and into that moment in time. I was seventeen again, perhaps, perhaps not – but with some knowledge of things to come – it was weird I knew that it was April 1985 my mother wanted to know if I was going to follow her into medicine or do the diploma and the job with the local paper. I knew what I had previously said to her’

‘Maggie did you still have the IRIS device attached.’

‘Yes I think so. Sorry I’m not sure. What I can remember though, and very clearly, is avoiding that particular conversation with my mother all that month. Avoiding her, but asking Dad what to do, behind her back. He was always the easy number. Later in life, I’d always regret what I’d told her that day. Anyway, back to the past. It was after 4:30, so the last patient would have been seen and Mam would be marking up the patient records.’

“ Maggie, I meant to ask you what you intend to do after A-Levels , you mentioned at one stage something about a medical degree, I can help in that line you know.” She looked up from the mound of manila files.

“Yes I know Mam.”

‘I had decided that unlike in my real timeline reality, I would placate my mother in this one, I would tell her a white … ish lie. We chatted away for another fifteen minutes or so and then well, I just …’ Maggie turn her face away from Tom , June and Joe Jones, her eyes focused on something in the middle distance, a cold sweat crept over her, her finger tips started to tingle and the tremor was back in the right hand. She started to mumble something about black holes burned into Lancastrian cheese, her mind was simultaneously racing and slowing down, part of her mind could understand the silliness of what was happening to her, part of her mind didn’t care, part of her mind told her that she was 68 but another part said that she was 24. The hypo took a grip of her brain and Maggie slumped slowly to one side.

‘Well, Dr O’Leary are you happy with this part of the project, are there any variables or parameters that you wish to change.’ Joe Jones poured himself a glass of mineral water.

‘I’m not sure that we can carry on like this. We’ve regressed her too many times. Each time we take her back, it’s taking longer and longer for her mind to recover, she’s retaining more and more of the trip. Did you hear that reference to holes at the end?’

‘Yes, I get the impression that she’s remembering bits of this interrogation as well, it’s just the way she looks at me in the coffee shop, I’m sure she remembers.’

‘June, there’s no way that she can work that out. The neural programming we did on her right at the start of her induction period means that the only memory that she has of you is as her boss and senior editor.’

‘Yeah, that’s fine but why is she holding more back from me, three trips back she was telling me about the flashback, now it’s just a headache. What’s going on if she isn’t remembering?’

‘June, haven’t you worked it out yet.’ Joe Jones sneered the words across to her.

‘Obviously not Joe, please enlighten me.’

‘The primary objective of the DIAL project is to enable time travel via a combination of technologies. We have determined that all history is based upon the collective memory of society, and the recording of that collective memory is now based upon computer technology. By manipulating that technology at a “micro” level and using mild psychedelic drugs on susceptible subjects, we can effectively travel back to a point in their personal history.

‘Joe, I am the senior facilitator for this project, I do know our mission statement, I was the one who brought Maggie Haywood on board, I was the one who recognised the link between virtual reality, LSD, history and smoking cessation. For Christ’s sake, I even named the company DIAL after the Beatles song. What exactly am I missing?’

‘June, cool down. There were two possible side effects that we have been looking for which will mean that when we put this into production we will be able to charge more for the experience. This is after all a commercial enterprise.’ Tom O’Leary chipped in. A shadow straight from the 23^rd Psalm crossed June’s face. Joe Jones stretched his arms above his head, yawned, and then nodded for Tom O’Leary to continue.

‘June, you are right she is remembering more of each trip and there is a very simple reason for that. She is remembering more because she is taking control of the timeline, she is changing what happened in the past she is not merely observing she is, eh, affecting change’

‘Don’t you mean effect?’

‘No, she is influencing the change, the “effect” is to change the past, she is changing not only her history but all history. Well, of this particular time line anyway.’

‘You said there were two possible side effects you where looking for. What was the second?’

‘Ah, now you have the real clincher, the deal maker, where we get the big bucks from.’

‘OK Tom, cut it, what exactly are you on about.’

‘Did you notice anything different about Maggie today?’

‘No I didn’t.’

‘Excellent, the last couple of times we regressed “Maggie” we have used a different subject, but didn’t tell you. With a touch of neural programming each time, they “affected” the same change in the past and effectively became Maggie Haywood. Each time they “came back”; you did not recognise the change. You were the real experiment, not Maggie Haywood’

‘I don’t understand, what’s the point of …. Oh dear God I get it, you can send someone, anyone, back in time assume a different identity and if needs be can change key events for that timeline. You could change anything you wanted, and with a subject in the right psychotic state could change any event in history. History becomes multi dimensional, totally customisable.’

******

Dr Margaret Haywood sat at the corner booth of the quiet Italian restaurant, her mother was late for their usual Tuesday lunch date. Unconcerned, she popped a Bensons into her mouth, lit it with her Zippo, threw her long black hair back, and laughed.

Match Day 2

He should have left the mobile on the default Nokia ringtone. Waking up to ‘The Ride of the Valkaries’ thumping furiously in his ear added nothing to the ambiance afforded by his normal Saturday morning “headache”. Rhys Morgan loved lazy Dublin Saturday mornings; as soon as he heard his friend Gerry roar down the phone lazy, like Slim, had just left town.

‘Rhys, listen, I’ve managed to get a couple of tickets for the Welsh game, are you and Moira on for going.’ Gerry always shouted down the phone, he mistrusted the technology and believed that he could overcome its deficiencies by the sheer force of his natural bass tenor voice.

‘You must be bloody well joking me; of course I’m on for it. Where shall we meet? What about Doheny’s, they have a private bus going over to the Northside.’

‘Nah, last time I did that I missed the start of the game. That mortgage broker guy, Paul FitzGerald, is giving me a lift over. We’ll see you both at that pub at the arse end of Ballybough Road; at least the Guinness is drinkable there.’

The high falsetto voices of The Bachelors boomed, “Smile for me my Diane” out of the radio. Moira was making their Saturday morning fry: rashers, black and white puddings, sausages, well the Irish version anyway, tomatoes, eggs and fried bread. He squinted his eyes at the sun light streaming in through the kitchen window, dappling the far wall with slight smoky wavy shadows. Rhys had cut the weeping willow at the back of the garden last year. Moira reckoned that the tree was now a member of The Whalers as it resembled Bob Marley’s Rastafarian hairdo. Said tree, effectively jamming the sun’s partial refraction on the back kitchen wall. He stretched around Moira, gave her a peck on the cheek, got himself a cuppa and said

‘Gerry has just been on, he has a couple of tickets for us. You want to go’

‘Is it Corporate?’ She liked her creature comforts.

‘No it’s just the tickets and a couple of scoops before and after’

‘No, you go on; I’ll come into town after and meet up with you in the Shelbourne. We’ll get an early bird after the match. This lot should keep you going till then’.

He’d decided to get the 15A into town and then walk on up to Croke Park. Like a big kid he took one of the front seats upstairs, he could look out and eyeball any commotion on the streets. The Welsh supporters were always good craic and colourful when they come over. Girls with Daffodil faces, middle aged men done up as multi sequined latter day Elvises, capes akimbo. The Abercynffig Fifteen, for some reason, dressed as sailors, Dragons, daffs, huge leaks. “Bread of Heaven”, “Hymns and Aras” already being sung. Men dressed as big busted women shouting out ‘One, two, three, four listen to the Glynka roar – Ee Aww, Ee Aww’. Falling over laughing or just wide eyed and legless, no one cared, it was carnival. The Welsh had already lost two games, loosing against the Irish would almost be a pleasure, “sure the Irish are just Welshmen who could swim”.

Lowry’s is the last pub on Ballybough Road, a tough dour Dublin Northside pub. Thin Lizzy loudly greets everyone entering the pub:

“As I was going over the Cork and Kerry mountains I met with Captain Farrell and his money he was counting.”

A long dark bar: locals to the right, Welsh in the middle, Southside rugby supporters nervously to the left. The Welsh are happy and in full voice, oblivious to any tensions in the room, the locals are sullen, sunken eyed, and speak in that monosyllabic flat Dublin accent. They are unhappy that their mythic “hallowed ground of Hill 16” had been desecrated by the “Southside fannies”. The Southside fannies, male and female, speak self consciously with light West-Brit D4 accents, or Received Pronunciation in this part of the world. The room is decked out in light and dark blue shades, the Dublin G.A.A. colours; an Irish flag is draped over the unused pool table. The bar smells of stale beer, chips, urine, and cigarettes; the smoking ban doesn’t stretch to this part of town.

Rhys enters the bar in a jaunty mood ‘Pint of plain and a bag of your finest salted nuts please.’ The barman has that slack jaw look of the truly disinterested; he couldn’t even be bothered to grunt. He puts the glass, morosely, under the tap, fills it up three quarters, places it to one side of the tap. The Guinness ritual has started; couple of minutes later, the barman “tops” the pint and hands it over along with Rhys’s change and peanuts. Rhys checks his change and just cannot believe that the same round on the Southside would be another couple of yoyos. He then waits the regulatory five minutes for the pint to settle, takes a mouthful, perfect. He finally looks around and spots Gerry talking with some guy wearing a Leinster rugby shirt. Rhys assumes that the guy must FitzGerald.

‘Tricco will take those fucking Welsh pansies apart.’ Dublin was a village, people’s reputations get around quickly, Rhys had heard about Paul “Fitz”.

‘God’s gift to the Rugby intelligencia of Ireland, I presume” Rhys replied.

‘Yeah you thought yous was brilliant in the seventies well you watch us now , this is going to be our golden age, Shaggy, Rodge, The Bull Hayes are going to be massive. Gerry tells me that you come originally from the Taffy Mountains.’

Rhys decided to ignore this buffoon and get on with the serious matter at hand, pre match drinking. The three of them had managed to commandeer a small corner of the tricoloured covered table. A couple of lads in Celtic shirts, locals, nudge past to get to the toilets. Paul decided that this was fair game and bellowed out,

‘Rhys, you’ve lived here twenty odd years. You know what’s wrong with the Northside, it’s full of: soulless muddy shite coloured badly built corpo houses. Smack heads shouting at their methadone addled bitches. Discarded syringes sticking out amongst the dog shit and crisp packets. Kids in dark hoodies who have pieces. Ex PIRA men, ex CIRA men, Sein Fein men, druggies, knackers, skankers, cultchies and multchies. Oh yea that fucker Ronan Keating as well’.

The group of Southsiders around Gerry and Paul tried to move away. One or two of the Welsh caught some of his rant, and assumed that he was part of the local colour. The two guys in the Celtic shirts knew that he was not part of any local colour, if he was it was pure black, no lightness, no soul. The taller of the two turned around to speak, his mate pulled at his arm, he thought better of it and just carried on to the toilet.

‘For Christ’s sake Paul will you shut the fuck up you’re not in the Horse Shoe Bar now.’ Gerry had finally woken up to the fact that Paul’s mouth was more dangerous than walking into this pub draped in a Union Jack, singing The Sash my Father Wore. After another round of pints Gerry and Rhys managed to steer the conversation onto safer ground, well religion anyway, when a young kid, nine or ten, rushed up to Paul and said

‘Mister, you own the SUV Merc outside.’

‘ Yeah the Silver SLK , what of it.’

‘ I think you better check it out yourself.’

Minutes later Paul was thundering back. ‘Right, which of you bastards did that to my car, come on which of yer.’

‘Paul, my man, what on earth is wrong.’ Rhys was nothing less than sincere.

‘Listen you, you Welsh jumped up nothing, keep your mouth shut while I find out who painted B.R.C. in red and green all over my car. What exactly does B.R.C. stand for anyway, Yer set of hoop loving Northside fookers.’

‘ Eh, Oh, that’s  Byddin Rhyddid Cymru.’ Rhys replied sheepishly.

‘It’s Welsh ?’

‘Yes, it’s Welsh for Free Wales Army’

‘You have got to be joking me. You telling me that I’m in the heart of Dublin bandit territory and some Welsh taffy gobshite has painted me car. On match day, with “Free Wales”, you should all be locked up. You are the people who voted to stay with England aren’t you.’ The general hubbub of the bar had died down again. At the back of Welsh contingent a man stands up. He is six foot five or six, muscle bound, twenty stone, a twisted mop of black hair, a blacker beard. He was wearing a split green and red shirt, an old Welsh Irish combined rugby shirt, he was also sporting a black cap that stated “Brains is Good for You”.

‘Fe godwn ni eto. We will rise again. I painted your car. You got any problems with that.’ Paul Fitz’s Irish manhood had been besmirched; he stupidly decided that his only solution would be to have a go at the Welsh man mountain. Fortunately, for Paul, two Garda Siochana had entered the pub and had decided to stop the fun and games.

‘Right, who owns the multi coloured Merc’

‘I do, and it’s this Welsh cretin that painted it. What you gonna do about it’

‘Well Sir, it’s not the writing we’re interested in. Could we just have a few words. Outside Now!’

After the game: Hot dog and hamburger stalls decked with green bunting, women with prams selling chocolate bars “Five For A Euro” vying for trade on both sides of the street leading away from the ground. The carnival was happy but subdued. Rhys tried to put, a bad Welsh game, a bad Irish game, Oh Hell just a bad game behind him and into context. No one died, no one was injured, well only Welsh pride perhaps. Rhys realised that he was getting himself into a depression as black as Paul Fitz’s rant. Then the text came through. ‘At shela?  Go now with Mn.‘ Rhys knew that it was from Gerry, yet another piece of technology that was beyond him – predictive texting. Rhys could just about work it out. Gerry was at the Shelbourne Bar, with Moira and would like to meet up, he smiled.

The Shelbourne Bar was the antithesis of Lowry’s. Crystal chandeliers, penguined smiling barmen, leather seats, high tables and bar stools, low tables and sofas, bills presented in leather bound pouches, complementary nuts in silver bowls. The premium tables were those with a view of Stephen’s Green, adjacent to the open turf fire. Moira had arrived early and secured such a table. The three friends were on their second drink when Moira asked,

‘Rhys, what exactly did happen to Paul Fitz?’

‘The two Guards got him, the huge Welsh guy and the two Celtic supporters outside. They persuaded the Welsh guy to pay for a car clean – the paint was only emulsion and looked worse than it really was. The coppers then made Paul apologise to the two Celtic supporters on threat of a drink driving charge. They then forced him to give his ticket to the Welsh guy as a gesture of international good will. Then for good measure they impounded the car and told him to walk home as he was over the limit.’

‘Why did they bother doing any of that, he must have been scarlet with rage’

‘Well, the two coppers were Northsiders, they had interviewed the Welsh guy just after he had emulsioned the Merc. He had told them what Paul Fitz had said about the Northside. He also told them where he was from’

‘Sorry I don’t get it I can understand the reaction of  two Northside Guards but why did the Welshman bother painting the car in the first place’

‘He was from a depressed seaside area himself, Llareggub, and during the seventies Max Boyce had played the Workingmen’s Hall there. He, Max that is, had a long shaggy dog story about painting an arrogant Englishman’s car. When the Englishman comes back into the pub, livid, the reaction to the question “So what’s wrong with me painting your car” the timid Anglo response, to Welsh superiority, is supposed to be “No problem, it’s drying nicely”. The two coppers thought that this would be a fitting comedown for the likes of Paul Fitz. Unfortunately he didn’t supply the “pat” reply. The rest, as they say, is ….’

First

Bevan, nailed a bullet through Rusty’s head .

o

Shhhh, listen, careful.

cold, crying at the top of the stair

a muffled conversation, overheard.

0

We were the same age, six

I was a kid, he was middle-aged, a scruff.

Two of us copper tops

his curly, matted, mine combed straight .

o

The best of mates,

two Musketeers,

kimosabe buddies,

butts,

chain-male-linked-tight

tied tight, hand to collar,

Tin-Tin and Snowy.

mutts,

fabulous fighters, from the village.

o

His last was a Triumph

o

The top road to Cymmer

a slipped leather lead,

lightly so slightly,

slipped , with guilt.

Will he catch it?

o

A Bonneville flat out, ton up, did it’s worst.

Bevan, did the rest.