Adventures in Irish Country Houses
JP Donleavy. Copyright Victoria Mary Clarke 2001-08-21

A ferocious, filthy, fiend of a night.  Myself approaching Donleavy’s country mansion.  My driver, Botherwell, at the wheel.  Cursed Rolls almost didn’t make it.  Trouble with the clutch.  Botherwell at boiling point.  Traffic atrocious, too.  Ready to commit vehiculacide, undoubtedly.  A fine state of things.  Approaching the gates, now.  Massive metal things, looming up at us.  Opening the gates.  Botherwell sent flying, by unseen electric fence.  Most unfortunate.  I told him to wear gloves.  Marigold.
            Mansion ahead of us now.  A malodorous mist almost obscuring its magnificence.  Munificence, even.  Two great lions, guarding the doorway.  A couple of bald eagles, eyeing us suspiciously.  Rolls gives out a colossal fart and then expires, gracelessly.  I disembark.  Botherwell fetching the luggage.  Masses of luggage.  Hadn’t a clue what to wear.  Donleavy last of the Irish literary geniuses.  All the rest of them dead.  Opens the door.  The man himself.  No butler in evidence.  It is rather late.  Wearing a tracksuit.  Of all things.  Myself in evening dress.  Botherwell in tweeds and a monocle.  Most unimpressed.  Donleavy smiling, courteous, despite the lateness of the hour.  Leads us to the kitchen.  A clean, bright room with a sizeable stove and a round table.  Offers spring water.  “The purest in Ireland”.  Do Irish writers drink water?  So it would seem.
I compliment Donleavy on his kitchen. “It was,’ he says wryly “the work of the second wife.”  A moment’s silence.  I hesitate to enquire further.  Compliment him, instead, on delightful collection of plates, over the fireplace.  Naked, hairy men and strange fish.  Donleavy brightens.  “Do you like them?  Really?  Not many people notice them.”  Plates the work of daughter Karen.  Donleavy most solicitous.  Asks our opinion of the state of the nation.  Botherwell warms to the topic.  Traffic appalling.  I haven’t eaten.  Donleavy notices.  Foodstuffs and wine immediately appear.  Nice glass of red wine.  Feel much better.  Donleavy still on water.  Doesn’t drink, while working.  Most un-Irish-writerly behaviour.  Still, seems to work for him.
We talk about the house.  Donleavy delighted with it.  ‘Most wonderful, comfortable house.  Even has a sauna.  Not bad at all.’  I ask him about his first Irish house, in Wicklow.  ‘I was a pioneer.  Like the settlers in the Wild West.  Had to make my bed out of an old door and taught myself to make bales of hay.  My first time up there I found the head of a spade in the hedge.  And cut down a sapling to make a handle.’  Irish farm stock, obviously.  Despite having been born in New York.  You can take the man out of Ireland…… Donleavy twinkling, now.  Eyes a greenish colour.  Lichen?  Peat Moss?  Hair white.  Bearded.  Never did shave.  Not since the Navy.  “No such thing as a beard in Ireland, in 1946.  Couldn’t walk into a bar without getting into a fight.  In England, they would have thought I was a Commander, probably.’  Talks about his parents.  Mother from Galway.  Went to New York as a teenager , became a paid companion to a rich lady.  Travelled in style, developed expensive tastes, landed on her feet.  Father trained for the priesthood at Maynooth, changed his mind and grew orchids in Brooklyn.  Intelligent people, obviously.  Donleavy brought up in the manner to which he has become accustomed.  Expensive tastes, but not profligate.  There is an empty bottle of Chateau Mouton Rothschild, 1963, in the kitchen.  Only one, though.  Mother lent money to DeValera, to help finance the republic.  Dev repaid the loan.  Must have been a formidable lady.  Donleavy agrees.  “Even  Gaynor Crist was rendered speechless.  Had to give her his calling card, when asked his name.”
Donleavy still drinking water.  Myself and Botherwell  making light of the wine.  Complimenting him on his radiant health.  Accepts compliments incredulously, but graciously.  “My God!  Really?”  Obviously pleased.  Mother refused to allow Coca-Cola in the house.  Or anything of that nature.  Nothing that wasn’t home-produced, from their own garden.  ‘So I can’t really be an American, can I?” 
Glancing around the kitchen, curious tide-marks on the walls.  “Oh yes.  A lady friend cleaned the walls.  She may have missed a bit.  Lady friends often clean things, curtains and such-like.  For some reason.”  Botherwell slumped over table now.  Must be tired.  I suggest we all retire.  Donleavy seizes luggage in one hand, Botherwell in the other and leads the way.  Along a yellow, vaulted corridor.  Most cheerful.  The whole thing hung with Donleavy’s  watercolours.  Curious, charming, clever and witty.  Child-like yet sophisticated.  Purple dogs with elongated penises.  Black dogs with millions of teeth.  Brightly coloured birds with knowing looks and delicate legs.  A multicoloured Anaconda.  Ladies with clever faces.  Donleavy the artist, much under-rated.  I tell him he should exhibit.  He is considering it.
Upstairs.  Orange walls.  Naked ladies with pubic hair.  Fabulous stone staircase.  Most elegant.  My bedroom.  Brass bed.  Views of the driveway.  Fall into bed, with Donleavy’s Ireland.  Pass out and dream of purple dogs with enormous penises.
O my God.  Overslept.  Too comfortable.  Lunchtime already.  Photographer coming.  Got to get dressed.  Am I very rude?  Probably.
Breakfast still waiting in the kitchen.  Freshly squeezed orange juice, cereals, eggs.  No sign of Donleavy.  Most embarrassing.  Donleavy appears.  Has intercepted the photographer.  ‘Ah, there you are.’  Smiling, still tracksuited.  ‘Did you have some orange juice?”  He squeezes the oranges, himself.  I’m drinking coffee out of an Orange Order mug.  He notices.  The mug was a present from Marina Guinness. “You do realise that I am one of the few people who can go to the North and have as many Catholics as Protestants in my audience?  In fact, I invented a new kind of Catholic.  The Protestant Catholic.  A refeened kind of Catholic.”  Donleavy is quite wicked.  “But seriously, “  he says.  “Religion is good for the immune system.  It’s what the country needs, the restoration of the Church.’  He is speaking scientifically, of course.  Having studied Micro-biology at Trinity.
We discuss the lovely Marina.  “Ladies  sometimes don’t take to country houses.  Find them uncomfortable.  Not Marina.  I had a cow stuck in the bog, when she was last here.  Most people would take that as an opportunity to beat a hasty retreat.  I wouldn’t blame them.  But Marina was already down in the bog, when I got there.  Digging the cow out with her bare hands.  Her bare hands.  Can you believe?”  I nod, admiringly.  Uncertain whether I’ll measure up to Marina, in Donleavy’s estimation.
The photographer wants us to pose.  Donleavy takes me upstairs, so that I can select something for him to wear.  We settle on tweed knickerbockers.  He has a reputation to maintain.  Ireland’s best-dressed writer.  At my suggestion, he gets out a couple of shotguns.  “Stare down the camera, “ he tells me.  “Give them a threatening look and look as if you mean it.  Very important.”  It seems to have worked for him.  Always looks mean and moody in book-jacket photos.  A very good look.  I try to emulate it.  And fail.  While we pose, Donleavy tells me about a man in Wicklow who tried to sell him a shotgun with a curved barrel.  Was willing to knock a fiver off the price.
Back to the kitchen for coffee and cake.  Donleavy demonstrating lightning-fast punches, for the photographer.  Seven punches a second.  “I train every morning.  Four hundred punches, with six pound weights.  Have to use weights, or I’d knock myself out.”  Somebody timed him, once.  It was seven and a half punches a second.  ‘Most of them, you won’t even see.”  I suggest to Botherwell that he might like to try.  Botherwell not keen.  Neither am I.  “Boxing is the best form of exercise.  Almost all writers end up boxing,’ Donleavy says.  “Hemmingway, Mailer.  I almost boxed Mailer, once.  They were going to televise it.’
A polo-player friend arrives, for a chat.  We leave him in the kitchen, with four bottles of whiskey, and go for a walk.  Donleavy presents me with a blackthorn walking stick, which he himself has fashioned.  In the field, we stand and survey the bull, who is sniffing a cow’s backside.  I tell Donleavy that I don’t know about this.  I’m frightened of the bull.  He tells me about another journalist who came for a walk in the field.  He asked her if she could run fast and jump over walls.  She thought he was being patronising and wrote nasty things.  He was quite serious.  I don’t think I can run fast today.  He says not to worry.  “That bull knows my left hook.’  Somehow, I believe him.  He shows me the spot where he intends to make his cemetery.  He’s enormously fond of cemeteries.  Rain, pissing down.  Sky the colour of gun-metal.  Sweet smell of cow-dung.  I trail behind, with my stick, while Donleavy strides energetically ahead, demolishing thistles and collecting stray bits of plastic. 
Back to the house.  The polo-player cooks scrambled eggs and smoked salmon.  Donleavy sports a new pale green silk handkerchief, for dinner.  The polo player wants to organise a boxing match.  Donleavy versus Ulick O Connor.  Another Irish literary pugilist.  Donleavy has never lost a fight.  Doesn’t intend to start now.  Is willing to box O’Connor.  Bets are discussed.  Donleavy punches his own face fifty times every day.  My money will be on him.  The man is disciplined.  Drinks water.  Is fitter than I am.  I retire to bed and leave them to thrash out the details of the match.
Morning.  Sunshine.  A lone crow, standing on a lion’s head.  Late again.  Donleavy jumps up and salutes, as I enter the room.  “Sit down.  Sit down.  What would you like first, coffee or orange juice?”  Presents me with the Sunday papers.  I read my own article and ignore the rest.  He notices.  Reads it too.  Compliments the previous weekend’s gentleman on his sense of style.  The polo player offers him a cigarette.  He looks horrified.  Has never smoked.  Vowed not to, aged eighteen, in honour of a dead friend.  Seizes cigarette box, with interest.  “How much do they cost?  Four pounds?  You can’t be serious!  So you have a ten punt a day habit?”  The polo player agrees.  “And a couple of bottles of red wine.”  “Red wine?  That’s good for you.”  The polo player pours himself a whiskey.  “Whiskey,” Donleavy says, “ is there any better elixir?’  The polo player looks relieved.  “Donleavy has the only warm country house in Ireland,” he tells me. “I wouldn’t come here otherwise.”
Twilight.  A pleasant, crescent moon.  ‘You should never see the new moon through glass.  That’s my only superstition.’  Donleavy suggests we have dinner in the dining room.  Roast one of his own cows.  Organic beef, home-reared, the best in the country.  The dining room.  Magnificent.  Cherry red walls.  Curved at one end.  Paint peeling, where a lady friend came through the ceiling, with her bathtub.  Ladies particularly love the bathroom directly overhead.  I admired it, myself.  The dining-room fire blazing, scented with dried orange peel.  The Knight of Glin won’t stop looking at the fire-place, when he visits.  Fossilized Kilkenny marble.  The most beautiful fireplace in the world.  Donleavy says “Come away from that fireplace.”  He says “I can’t.  I simply can’t.”
Dining by candle-light.  Delicious roast beef.  Decent red wine.  “Victoria  is a girl I could get dangerous about”.  The polo player says to Donleavy.  “I know.  I know,” says Donleavy.  “I sense that about you.”  “If it was between the two of us, I’d have to kill you for her.”  “Really?  What would you use?  A gun or a knife?”  Donleavy is genuinely interested.  “A knife.  I wouldn’t hesitate.”  I dare him to take on Donleavy in a bare knuckle fight.  He demurs.  It is agreed that I am the sort of girl who should quite rightly be fought over.  That any man in his right mind would fight over me.  Enormously flattering.  Not another woman within a five mile radius.  Only me.  I could have any one of them.  All three.  Have another drink and consider the matter.
Dinner over.   Donleavy produces an elegant bottle of whiskey and Cuban cigars.  I reluctantly decline to smoke one.   Am enormously impressed, nonetheless.  The polo player tells us about a woman he won, in a game of poker.  An absolute cracker, with long legs and big bosoms.  “Wouldn’t  you agree she was a cracker?  A man would die for a woman like that.’  In the end, he didn’t take the woman.  He took her husband’s boots, instead.
                        We talk about bulls.  The polo player wants to take Donleavy to a bull-fight, in Spain.  He’s keen to go.  “How would we get there?”  “There  are cheap flights.”  “I do things properly.  I’m not going on some bloody cheap airline.  We’ll charter a plane.  And do they have good hotels?” Donleavy has a passion for five-star hotels.  I decide to make Irish coffees.  Donleavy comes bounding into the kitchen.  “What do you think?  Would a Spanish bull really have the nerve to take on Donleavy?”  I say that perhaps he would, not knowing any better.  “There’s nothing for it.  They’re going to have to get Donleavy in the ring with a Spanish bull.”  But the polo player won’t make arrangements, until Donleavy coughs up some cash.  Donleavy roars with laughter.  “You’re speaking to probably the most trustworthy man in the world.  And you want to see the colour of my money!  I like that about you.”  It is decided that Donleavy will need a Spanish speaking lady, to accompany him for the trip.  I suggest that we advertise for one.  This idea is met with approval.  It’s all settled. 
                        Far too much to drink.  I have to retire, and leave them to it.  Donleavy jumps up from the table and brings the others out into the hall, to wave me off to bed.  This is highly flattering.  Much, much later, I hear them go outside, to admire the stars.  As dawn breaks, I hear them call out to each other to sleep well.  When I awake, a little later, Donleavy is strolling up the drive, in his tracksuit.  My orange juice is waiting, when I finally go downstairs.