Breakfast on Pluto

Breakfast on Pluto
falls in a logical progression from
The Butcher Boy
and
The Dead School
, which is about two Dublin schoolteachers
caught in a psychological maelstrom of drugs, music and youth culture.
Breakfast on Pluto
embodies the kinetic frenzy of its predecessors through the eyes of a new kind of Irish
enfant
terrible
– a sentimental yet ironic nineteen-year-old transvestite with a temper.

The Troubles in Northern Ireland have pricked scores of literary imaginations throughout the years, and will no doubt continue to do so. McCabe’s latest may be the most
successful book yet to be born out of the violence, and with its surety of voice and stunning originality, it moves beyond the parochial Troubles novel. Where
Breakfast on Pluto
succeeds is
where others have failed – by underlining the vast contradictions inherent in the Irish conflict, of brutality and kindness, horror and gaiety, conviction and apathy. With a sassy narrator
clad in an ice-cream-pink mohair sweater, humming the tunes of Barry White as he sashays into a London disco-pub on the verge of exploding, it is a mosaic of sound, colour and spirit. The
underlying grief resonates deeply and personally, transforming what could be a literary trifle into an obsessive gift, from a man who may be one of Ireland’s finest living writers.

Courtney Weaver,
New York Times Book Review

Breakfast on Pluto
was a UK chart hit for Don Partridge in 1969

D
O
F
IONÁN AGUS
R

I Was a High-Class Escort Girl

A Word of Advice from Dr Terence

The Life and Times of Patrick Braden

Although I’m afraid I don’t get too many clients these days! I can just imagine the reaction of my old acquaintances if they saw me now, sitting here in my silly
old coat and headscarf – off out that door and down the Kilburn High Road with the lot of them, no doubt! Still, no point in complaining – after all, every beauty has to lose her looks
sometime and if the gold-digging days of poor old darling poo poo puss are gone for ever, well then, so be it. I ain’t gonna let it bother me, girls! Just give me Vic Damone,
South
Pacific
, plus a yummy stack of magazines and I’ll be happy, as once more I go leafing through the pages of
New Faces of the Fifties
,
Picturegoer
,
Screen Parade
, gaily
mingling with the stars of long ago.

Old Mother Riley they call me around here, never passing up an opportunity to shout: ‘How’s about you, darlin’?’ or ‘What’s the chance of a bit tonight then,
Mrs Riley?’ whenever they hear me coming in.

Quite what they would have to say if they suddenly became aware of just how many ‘bits’ the old girl has given away in her time, I would dearly love to know! Sometimes – it can
be hard to resist, let me tell you! – I find myself on the verge of calling back: ‘Why yes! But of course, boys! I’ll leave the door open tonight and you can all troop in and give
me a jab! Why not!’

Shouldn’t be long running then, methinks! Embarrassed-out-of-their-lives, poor little innocent red-cheeked, shovel-wielding horny-handed sons of the soil of counties Sligo, Leitrim and
Roscommon!

But, best that it should never come to that, for the truth is that they’re all grand fellows. What benefit them, now that so many years have passed, to know the sordid, squelchy details of
the life that once was lived by darling Patrick Braden –
sigh
! – sweetness pussy kit-kit, perfumed creature of the night who once the catwalks of the world did storm as
flashbulbs popped and, ‘Oo!’ she shrieked, ‘I told you,
from my best side
, darling!’

As off on the arm of Mr Dark and Broody then she trooped! Rock Solid handsome man, mysterious kind she liked. Who would bass-voiced coo: ‘I love you!’ and make her stomach gurgle
till she’d swoon.

Write it all down, Terence told me. ‘Everything?’ I said. ‘Yes,’ he said. Just as it comes to you.’

It was great, him saying that. Especially when he listened so attentively to what you read, making you feel you were his one special patient and that no matter where he was or what he was doing,
all you had to do was call his name and there he’d be: ‘Well? And how’s the scribe?’

That was what he called me – the scribe! Ah! There you are! How are you today, my old friend, the scribe!’

Which made his vanishing act all the harder to bear!

You wake up one morning, call out his name as usual and what do you find? There he is – gone! as they say in Tyreelin.

I won’t pretend I wasn’t upset. I bawled for days. ‘How do you like that, then?’ I said to myself. ‘You certainly made a right idiot of yourself this time, Braden,
scribbling all that rubbish and thinking it would make him stay for good!’

But I mean, there’s no harm in hoping. There was no harm in hoping, was there? That every morning you’d wake up and there he’d be – standing right in front of you,
looking at you and smiling in that lovely way he was going to do for ever.

Just how beautiful that might have been, I certainly haven’t the words to describe, despite all the supposed skills I am supposed to have in that particular field! (At school Peepers Egan
used to say: ‘Braden! These essays of yours – they’re absolutely wonderful! If only you’d settle down! You could be so good!’)

I don’t regret writing all this (in the end I put a name on it –
The Life and Times of Patrick Braden
– original, eh?) because some of it he definitely did like –
I know, because he told me. ‘This is terrific!’ he said one day and raised his bushy eyebrows over the page. ‘It really is!’ And all I could think of then was –
don’t ask me why! – him putting his arm around me and saying: ‘Pussy’s mine! She’s mine and she belongs
here! With me.
’ One of his favourite pieces of all
and he used to keep asking me to show it to him was the bit about Whiskers, although he knew that strictly speaking he should have been encouraging me not to call her that (after all, to him she
was
my mother), which I wouldn’t have minded because for him I’d have called the old bat anything.

It was a beautiful crisp Christmas morning. All across the little village which lay nestled on the southern side of the Irish border, one could sense an air of tense but
pleasurable expectancy. Already the small birdies, as if conscious of the coming mood of celebration and acceptable self-indulgence which was so much a part of the much-loved season, had begun
their carefully co-ordinated invasions, their industrious beaks like so many arrowheads stiletto-jabbing the frosted gold-tops of the early-morning milk bottles. Even at this early hour, there are
one or two children playing – cork guns being proudly displayed and nurses’ uniforms flaunted in so many minx-like parades. In places, the snow has begun to melt but this is still a
scene that any seasonal greeting card would be more than proud to play host to. A door closes quietly and the first Mass-goer makes her way determinedly through the streets, her Missal clutched
tightly and her knitted cap pulled firmly about her ears. Through a gap in the clouds comes the peal of a church bell. Already, the beloved pastor of this parish, Father Bernard McIvor, will be
busying himself inside his sacristy. Donning the starched vestments which, it would later be the contention of ill-formed psychiatrists, were partly responsible for his son’s attraction to
the airy appareil of the opposite sex.

For him, in many ways, these Christmasses have lost their meaning. Once upon a time, as a young curate, he remembered, he would have held his congregation in thrall with tales of yuletides long
ago, and of the special meaning the season had for all Christians throughout the world. His homily topped off, as a plum pud with a sprig of holly, with one of his truly awe-inspiring renditions of
‘The Holy City’ or perhaps ‘O Holy Night’, for which he was renowned throughout the length and breadth of the county. Or had been, once upon a time. But sadly those days
were no more. When asked why he no longer sang in the church on Christmas morning, his eyes would appear to glaze over and he would regard his inquisitor with an expression of mystification almost
as if the reasons were far beyond him too. Which they weren’t, of course, for as many of his parishioners knew, despite rarely giving voice to it in public, the what might be termed:
Change in Father Bernard
dated back to a single 1950s morning in the year 1955 and to no other – the morning he inserted his excitable pee pee into the vagina of a woman who was so
beautiful she looked not unlike Mitzi Gaynor the well-known film star. And then arranged for her to go to London so that there would be no dreadful scandal. ‘Dear, dear. I wonder what is
wrong with Father Bernard,’ his parishioners would say, adding: ‘He’s not the man he was at all.’

It would have been nice, of course, if at any time in the intervening years – particularly at Christmas – he had arrived down to the Braden household with a little present for his
son. Which he didn’t, of course, with the result that Yuletide celebrations in that particular establishment consisted of one plate of Brussels sprouts, a midget of a turkey and God knows how
many half-human children growling and tearing at it like wild animals. And, of course, ‘Mummy’ sitting puffing Players in the corner, shouting: ‘Quit youser fucking
fighting!’ and ‘Stop tearing the arse out of that turkey!’ as Santa jingle-belled all the way to the North Pole. What? On the television? Are you out of your mind? Whiskers Braden
couldn’t afford to buy televisions! She had her ciggies and bottles of stout to purchase! Any jingle-belling there was took place on the beat-up old wireless on the mantelpiece above our
dazzling array of wee-wee-stenching undies.