Anglo-Irish Murders (10 page)

‘Spit it out, man.’

‘I think I should say…’ his tone was hesitant, ‘…that is maybe for the record I should point out that the British didn’t actually make the Famine happen on purpose.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Essentially, it was bad management.’

‘Cock-up, Laochraí,’ said the baroness. ‘Not conspiracy. Can’t you get that into your thick heads?’

Loud MOPE dissent dominated the next few minutes until the baroness restored order by asking for a comment from Kapur.

He smiled his gentle smile. ‘Ah yes. That was most interesting. Though I think perhaps it is a pity to concentrate always on the negatives. There are things to be grateful for too. Where would you be without the English language, whose literature your countrymen have adorned with such distinction? And as Professor Reilly pointed out last night, would you really rather have been occupied by any other colonial power you can think of? For occupied you would have been. And, you know, the history of the world shows that those places occupied by the British were peculiarly blessed.’

As the storm broke, his smile remained intact.

***

‘Well, Jack, I have to admit that Chandra Kapur was an inspired recruit,’ said Amiss after the session, as they clustered in a corner with Simon Gibson. ‘I could almost feel sorry for the MOPEs. They’re so used to presenting themselves as the friends of oppressed people everywhere that a brown imperialist is really hard going.’

‘Yes,’ said Gibson. ‘I particularly liked the way in which he simultaneously pointed out to them that Indians have suffered infinitely more than the Irish while also explaining the virtues of the British regime. I thought Kelly-Mae was going to have a seizure.’

‘It was also particularly nice,’ added Amiss, ‘when Okinawa put in that he had to admit that the Japanese record on the cruelty front was a lot worse than the Brits.’

‘And when Wallace added that the Scots could have gone on about the devastation caused by the Highland clearances, but they didn’t think wallowing in past miseries was the way forward.’

‘Not to speak of Wyn Gruffud’s lengthy contribution about how Welsh was doing much better under the British than the Irish language in the Republic.’

‘Don’t go overboard on the self-congratulation,’ said the baroness. ‘The shits are still in the ascendant. Now, who exactly is that unspeakable little jerk who talks like a mediator’s handbook?’

‘Billy Pratt? You know about him. He’s one of the DUPE spokesmen—you know, the peace-loving loyalists.’

‘It’s a vague term. You mean those Prod proles whose idea of showing their loyalty to the state is to knock off the odd Catholic or blow up policemen.’

‘That’s about right. Though these days Billy would describe such activities as “unhelpful.”’

‘Why doesn’t the other one speak?’

‘It’s his first conference, I think, and he doesn’t know what to say.’

‘There’s nothing to choose between Pratt and the MOPE shower, as far as I can see,’ said the baroness. ‘In fact he’s always jumping in obligingly to help them.’

‘Apart from the little matter of the DUPEs wanting to stay in the United Kingdom and the MOPEs wanting a United Ireland, of course there’s no difference between them,’ said Gibson with a hint of impatience. ‘For most purposes they’re the best of buddies. Under all that rubbish about dialogue, moving forward and saying yes to peace, they both want Northern Ireland to be carved up into fiefdoms which their particular chums can rape and pillage to their hearts’ content.’

‘I’m close to the stage,’ growled the baroness, ‘that if anyone else mentions the word “peace,” I’ll reach for my gun.’

‘I got there long ago, Jack. It’s just that I don’t have a gun.’

‘Any chance that they might learn something from Chandra and Oki?’ asked Amiss.

Gibson and the baroness looked at him pityingly. ‘You’re such an optimist, Robert,’ she said. ‘That shower would rather die than surrender their highly-honed sense of victimhood.’ She rubbed her hands. ‘All this is giving me an appetite. Let’s see what Philomena advises for lunch.’

Steeples caught up with them. ‘How’s it goin’?’

‘Fine,’ said Amiss. ‘And how are you?’

‘I’m the best. But I’m looking me dinner. I’m starving.’

‘Did you miss breakfast?’

Steeples looked at him as if he were mad. ‘I did not. Why would I miss me breakfast? But I haven’t had a bite since then. There were no biscuits with the coffee, so there weren’t.’

‘See that that deficiency is remedied in future, Robert,’ said the baroness. ‘We owe Gardiner a great debt of gratitude for stymieing Laochraí this morning.’

‘What time is tea?’ asked Steeples.

‘Four o’clock,’ said Amiss.

‘That’s a bit early, isn’t it? We’ll be famished by bedtime, so we will.’

‘Sorry, Gardiner, I mean tea and biscuits will be served at four. Our next meal—what the hotel calls dinner—will be at eight.’ Steeples looked at him aghast.

‘I always have me tea at six.’

‘But we had dinner at eight o’clock last night.’

‘Yes, but I had me tea on the way here, so I did.’

‘I’m really sorry,’ said Amiss, ‘but I can’t help you with this one, except to suggest that you pocket some biscuits this afternoon.’

‘If that’s the way it’s got to be, so be it,’ said Steeples. He accelerated towards the dining room.

***

Apart from a warning against the chicken, Philomena was too enraged to be of much help. ‘This is more than flesh and blood can stand. She wants to know the sodium content in the salad and then she says there’s nothing she can eat on the lunch menu and to get her a take-away pizza, cos she needs American food. Glory be to God and his Holy Mother, I may be only an ignorant country waitress, but even I know pizzas come from Italy. And I don’t know what sodium is but I bet there’s plenty of it in a pizza. And then to follow she wants two chocolate puddings, but she says they have to be low-cal. Can’t you turf her out of your conference and back on a plane home? She’ll have me in the loony-bin.’

The baroness grunted sympathetically. ‘You could just say no, Philomena.’

‘No is against company policy. We had image consultants.’

‘What?’

‘People who tell you how to present yourself better, Jack,’ said Amiss. ‘You could do with them.’

‘The country’s full of them,’ said Philomena. ‘All image and no feckin’ reality. Anyway they said we had to find the yesness in us—which turned out to mean that we have to put up with anything from the feckin’ guests if there’s any way of meeting their needs at all. Though if I had my way with this one, I’d have her doing press-ups on a diet of raw carrots.’ She paused. ‘Raw lite carrots, that is. Now what did you say you wanted, Jack?’

‘A dry Martini first, Philomena, straight-up.’

‘Shaken not stirred, I suppose?’

‘And make it a large one. We’ve got a rough afternoon ahead.’

Pascal O’Shea materialised suddenly and introduced himself. ‘I’ve a note for you, your ladyship. From Sean O’Farrell.’

‘Jack,’ she said. She scanned the letter, laughed and tossed it across the table to Amiss. ‘Dear Jack,’ it read, ‘I’m ever so sorry but I’ve been called away suddenly and didn’t even have time to say goodbye. Still, you’ll be in safe hands with Pascal and won’t miss me.

‘It’s been a great conference so far and I’m really sorry to miss the rest of it. Keep up the good work.

‘Be seeing you,

‘All the best,

‘Sean.’

Amiss didn’t trust himself to speak.

‘May I join ye?’ asked O’Shea. ‘God, I’m so hungry I could eat a nun’s arse through the convent gates.’

‘Pull up a chair by all means, Pascal,’ said the baroness. ‘But I have to hope that Philomena will have a more gastronomically attractive prospect to offer us for lunch.’

Chapter Ten

‘We didn’t know you could get money for doing this,’ said Gardiner Steeples, ‘so I got someone to do a wee compilation from existing tapes.’

Called ‘For Bible and Crown,’ the Steeples video mainly consisted of rather badly-shot parades and hymn-singing. There was much emphasis on banners showing William of Orange and other Protestant heroes, but some of the band music was good and Amiss found himself absent-mindedly tapping his feet to the beat of the drums. It ended, predictably enough, with a rousing chorus of ‘God Save the Queen.’ The MOPE contingent sat stony-faced, but Kelly-Mae could not be contained. ‘Racists,’ she said.

‘We’re not.’

‘Yes, you are.’

‘I knew someone would say that,’ said Steeples, ‘so I brought this, so I did.’ He handed Amiss another tape, which turned out to be a cheery procession of black Africans wearing Orange regalia and singing hymns.

Laochraí rallied. ‘You’re sectarian, which is just as bad.’

Kelly-Mae brightened. ‘That’s right. You’re sectarian. You can’t be a Catholic and join the Orange Order.’

Steeples looked across the table at Kelly-Mae. ‘Do you parade on St Patrick’s Day in America?’

‘I most certainly do. I march proudly in New York.’

‘And whose parade is it?’

‘The Ancient Order of Hibernians.’

‘And what do you have to be to join that besides being Irish?’

There was a pause.

‘Catholic,’ said Hamish Wallace.

‘Dead on,’ said Steeples smugly. ‘So why’s that all right and the Orange isn’t?’

There was a snore from Pascal O’Shea so loud that he woke himself up with a start. ‘Whassat?’

‘Nothing of consequence, Pascal,’ said the baroness. ‘Just a little tiff. Don’t let us disturb you.’

He closed his eyes again.

There was another pause. ‘Haven’t I read that they don’t let gays and lesbians walk in the New York parade?’ enquired the baroness.

‘Quite right too,’ said Kelly-Mae.

The three MOPEs looked at her in horror. ‘We dissociate ourselves from that comment,’ said Laochraí. ‘We are inclusive of all gender and sexual orientations.’

‘The Pope isn’t,’ muttered Kelly-Mae.

‘The Pope’s a reactionary,’ said Father O’Flynn.

‘I agree with the Pope,’ said Steeples.

‘So do I,’ said Wyn. ‘Homosexuality is an abomination before God and man.’

‘Anyway,’ said MacPhrait hastily, ‘Orangemen show they’re sectarian by talking about the errors of the Church of Rome.’

‘See now, why shouldn’t they?’ enquired Wyn. ‘The Church of Rome
is
full of errors. That’s why we had the Reformation…’

‘Too right,’ interrupted Hamish Wallace.

This caused uproar, with cries of ‘bigots, bigots’ from the MOPE corner.

‘Shut up, all of you,’ said the baroness. ‘Yes, Chandra?’

‘I’m sorry to say that if our Protestant colleagues are bigots, so am I. I think Hinduism superior to any other religion. And as for Muslims…’ He gesticulated gracefully.

‘And Laochraí,’ put in Okinawa, ‘would you tolerate my country’s main leligion?’

There was a puzzled silence.

‘Shinto,’ he said. ‘Emperor-worship.’

Amiss had difficulty keeping his face straight. The baroness didn’t try. ‘Well?’ she asked Laochraí with a big grin.

As the MOPEs looked at each other, Billy Pratt interjected, ‘I have no time for the Orange Order myself. I am very annoyed that this film is supposed to represent my culture. The Orange Order has been a tool of exploiters who wanted to suppress the socialist instincts of the working class.’

The relief of the MOPEs was palpable. ‘Absolutely,’ said O’Flynn. ‘Orangeism is one of those outmoded ideologies of the petit-bourgeoisie that we must rid ourselves of.’

‘How about starting with nationalism?’ enquired Kapur. ‘Is the world not struggling to develop beyond this particular outmoded ideology that has brought with it only hatred and war?’

The baroness cut into the ensuing hullabaloo. ‘It’s four o’clock now so we haven’t got time to slug this one out. Has anyone anything sensible to add about Gardiner’s film?’

Kelly-Mae, who had been looking very confused, broke in. ‘The difference is,’ she shouted, ‘that we have a culture and you Protestants don’t. Some traditions are not worthy of respect.’

The baroness stood up. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘we’ll have tea now. I don’t think we could better that as a conclusion to a session on tolerating each others’ differences.’

***

Dr Romaine Fusco of Geneva was good to look at but produced no controversy. The baroness’ perfunctory request for questions met a few brief and positive responses and then a dead silence to which she responded by terminating the proceedings abruptly.

‘Can we have a ten-minute break?’ asked Amiss. ‘We have some housekeeping to do.’

Dr Fusco having shown little disposition to linger, Amiss walked her to the front door, uttered a few platitudinous expressions of gratitude, borrowed an umbrella from Pat, delivered her to her waiting taxi and ran back to the seminar room.

Gibson and the baroness were walking up and down outside. ‘That was a crashing bore,’ she said to Amiss. ‘She was good-looking and more comprehensible that that ponderous idiot McGuinness, but blimey, was she tedious.’

‘Can’t disagree with you there.’

‘I mean, for God’s sake, the notion that the Swiss solution to having within its borders Italians, Germans and French could have anything to do with a mad place like Northern Ireland is completely…’ She searched for the right word. ‘…Mad. If you scoured the entire world you’d be hard put to find people more different than the Swiss and the Irish. Look at them. The Swiss are peaceful, law-abiding and obsessed with being neat and tidy. And they’re dull bastards as well. Say what you like about the Irish—they can be boring, they’re self-obsessed and wrongly think they’re endlessly fascinating, but they’re rarely dull. Except when they get self-important like the McGuinness buffoon.’

She shook her head vigorously. ‘What
is
it about academics?’

‘They’re trying to earn a crust like anyone else,’ said Gibson wearily. ‘She’s just another typical member of the travelling circus of commentators on Northern Ireland.’

‘That little shit got very enthusiastic about what she said anyway.’

‘Billy Pratt?’ asked Gibson. ‘Well, he would, wouldn’t he? So did Laochraí and Liam.’

The baroness snorted. ‘Of course. That daft bint obligingly presented them with a theory of cantonisation that helps them justify what their pals are doing in practice.’

‘Precisely.’

She brooded. ‘I hate DUPEs as much as MOPEs now. Who do you hate most among this mob, Robert?’

‘Kelly-Mae, probably. But that creepy Jesuit is pretty grim too.’

‘Good grief. Is he a Jesuit? Does Gardiner know? Don’t Orangemen think Jesuits are Satan?’

‘Of course they know,’ said Gibson. ‘They all know each other. But Gardiner will also know Call-me-Cormac was brought along to wind the Prods up and he’s had more sense than to rise to the bait.’

‘So far. The weekend is young. Now let’s go back inside and deal with these practicalities with dispatch.’

***

‘As for tomorrow morning…’ said Amiss, when he had finished talking timetable alterations.

‘I wanted to ask about that,’ said Steeples. ‘What are the arrangements for worship?’

Amiss looked at him hesitantly. ‘Father O’Flynn and the local Church of Ireland vicar are conducting an ecumenical service here at nine.’

‘Well that’s no good to me.’

‘There you are,’ said Kelly-Mae. ‘You won’t go because Cormac is a priest.’

‘I’ve no problem with priests doing whatever priests do, but I’ll go to no ecumenical service. People should practise their own religion and not be looking the lowest common denominator. I’ve a friend down the road and he says there’s a Presbyterian service in the local village at twelve and a mass in the chapel in Knock at the same time for those Roman Catholics who take the same view of ecumenism as I do.’

‘I agree,’ said Wyn Gruffudd in a low voice. ‘That’s why I’ll be leaving early tomorrow and not coming back until Monday morning.’

‘Elaborate, please,’ said the baroness.

‘I’m driving north to join a Baptist community for worship. As a strict Sabbatarian, I could not attend any secular events on a Sunday in any case, so I am no loss to you.’

‘I don’t want to be contentious,’ interjected the baroness, barely concealing her wrath, ‘but could you explain how a Sabbatarian comes to attend a weekend conference?’

‘No one else would go,’ said Wyn simply.

‘Anyone else want a service other than the ecumencial one?’ enquired Amiss.

‘Yes,’ said Gibson. ‘I’m with Gardiner on this as it happens.’

‘You’re an anti-ecumenical Presbyterian?’ asked the baroness in surprise.

‘No. An anti-ecumenical Roman Catholic.’

‘Well, bugger me, he’s one of yours,’ she announced benignly to O’Flynn. ‘All right, then. We’ll swap the ecumencial service with our midday session and then everyone will be happy.’

‘We’ll order a taxi for about fifteen minutes beforehand to take Simon and Gardiner to their respective churches,’ said Amiss.

Steeples shook his head.

‘I won’t need lifting. It’s an Orange anniversary service, so I’ll be joining the brethren on parade at the bottom of the drive around half past eleven.’

As one man, the other participants looked at him in astonishment.

‘Deliberate provocation,’ said Kelly-Mae. Steeples looked up and down the table. ‘This is supposed to be about culture. Well, this is my culture. And I’m expressing it. As far as I’m concerned the rest of you can have a rosary procession or embalm Druids or do whatever you want to do. But that’s what I’m doing the morrow, so it is.’

‘It seems perfectly reasonable to me,’ said the baroness. She looked towards the MOPEs. ‘Does anyone want to make anything of it?’

Kelly-Mae looked hopefully at Laochraí, who stayed quiet.

‘Good,’ said the baroness. ‘That’s that settled. Sometimes I think we might be making progress.’

***

‘I hadn’t spotted you for a pape, Simon,’ observed the baroness as they left the room.

‘You’re right in that I’m not a cradle Catholic. Came to it late.’

‘What brought on the conversion?’

‘Capriciousness? Boredom? Curiosity? A desire to give my mother a really good grievance?’

‘What did you convert from?’

‘I was born a Jew.’

‘Wow. That’s impressive. You’ve swapped a religion in which guilt is fed to you in your mother’s milk for one which encourages you to put your conscience on the rack at every opportunity. Obviously you didn’t convert to a namby-pamby Catholicism that has you holding hands with vicars.’

‘Of course not, I’m unrepentantly a fan of the pre-Vatican II church.’

‘Wonderful.’ She put her head on one side and thought hard. ‘Yes, you seem uniquely equipped to flagellate yourself with the sins of omission, commission…’ She paused and chortled loudly, ‘…not to speak of emission.’

‘What’s the joke?’ asked Amiss, as he caught up with them.

‘Never you mind,’ said Gibson.

***

Most of the evening went off without trouble. The British junior minister sent to host the reception produced a speech of such blandness that even Kelly-Mae—dressed for the occasion in an enormous green-white-and-orange frock—could not object. In retrospect, Amiss was to blame Lord Galway’s speech for the later trouble, for it went on so long that even more alcohol was consumed than on the previous night.

According to Gibson, the Irish had come up with Galway because they were trying to show that their inclusiveness extended to the old Anglo-Irish gentry. Having had a great deal of trouble finding someone who fitted the bill and who was prepared to travel such a long distance, they settled in the end, none too happily, for an octogenarian whose main claim to fame was that he was nice and had a large collection of Irish paintings.

Galway’s brief had been to spend fifteen minutes or so thanking everyone who had to be thanked wittily and elegantly, to talk a little about art and to produce some liberal sentiments about mutual understanding and moving forward together in the new millennium. Instead, to everyone’s bewilderment and, ultimately, horror, he embarked on a long account of childhood visits to Mayo, deeply tedious descriptions of hunts he had attended, the wonders of the local gamekeeper of his youth and mind-numbing tales of fly-fishing. He talked and he talked and he talked and when Pascal O’Shea opened a book on how long he would go on, even the optimists predicted an hour and demanded more wine.

Mindful of the baroness’ summary dealing with Gerry McGuinness the previous evening, some of the gathering looked at her hopefully, but she just sat there drinking wine and staring into the middle distance. After about fifty minutes, Galway finished an incomprehensible anecdote about a point-to-point and thanked his audience for indulging an old man. ‘You were surprisingly patient,’ said Amiss to the baroness on the way out.

‘What was I to do? Slug him?’

‘It was one option.’

‘Not him. He’s a nice old buffer.’

She looked around her truculently. ‘I’ve been thinking. And I’ve got very vexed. I can stand a lot. If we have to be exposed to the worst national stereotypes of everyone except—as it turns out—Indians and Japs, so be it. If necessary, I’ll also put up with arrogant Frogs, humourless Krauts, suicidal Swedes and lachrymose Russians. But I have my limits. Even though I am English, there are limits to my tolerance.’

‘And what is exceeding your limits?’

‘The stereotypical bloody English we’ve been lumbered with. Or to be precise, the stereotypical New bloody English.’

‘But why shouldn’t we have stereotypical representatives too? Isn’t that fair?’

‘Fair is only one bit of our stereotype. Why can’t we have something robust? The roast-beef aspect of our national character? Why are you four such wimps?’

‘Wimps are what the New English are supposed to be, surely? We’re all Blair babes now. All in touch with the feminine side of our character. Except you, of course, who frequently gives the impression of being solely in touch with the masculine.’