Going Home
By BRIAN BEHAN The bookshops seem fairly evenly divided between the Behans and the Kcnnedys. It is being strenuously denied in Dublin that the late President is to be canonised as the patron saint of biographers. The tele centre, like everywhere else, is expanding rapidly. The masses are switched on and off at the will of the Tele Gods. I saw old friends with new titles like 'Head of Drama,' Director of Agricultural Programmes,' that reach out to two million farmers with the aid of government-sponsored tele centres. Soviet tractor-stations almost. Of course, now the local capitalist is embracing Soviet-style planning of national resources while the good Russian screams out for Marx and Spencers.
I tried to go for a swim in the local and only baths. 'You find me in a peculiar way,' said the attendant. 'The pool is open, as you can see, but the ticket office is not; so while I would love to let you in, I can't.' In a way it was just as well; it looked like a dinosaurian swamp. I made my way for a typical folk evening in the pub. Wet and dank, we huddled together waiting for the porter to work its magic. With each dark round the screechings against the British rose higher until it burst into the sexual splendour of the 'earth shall run red with redundance of blood.'
On my way to the university I pass a group of men and women in rags, waving aloft the flat bottles of the madmen's soup, their answer to the bed shortage. I pray it's strong stuff as I ignore their, leaders. 'God look down on you, sir, but your mother never reared one better,' and press on to Trinity. Students are serious people. Gown-wrapped, they assemble feudally under the leadership of a poorly-dressed ancient retainer, who, waving a mangled hand, calls on the students to arise for the president and dis- tinguished visitor. Here, also, the flag of 'Little Ireland' waves, with some students feeling that we should hire some extra-long stilts and leap- frog over Britain and into the Common Market. Their college life is one of mutual aid based on easy living. Now, like bunny rabbits, they peep out at the world of competition, of tooth and claw.
My hotel is rather grand and I get grand with it. I seem to grow and expand listening to the local bourgeois laugh in peculiarly classless accents. One man looks at me as though I have three heads. 'You're a guest of honour at the college, appearing on tele and then you tell me you're just a bricklayer? You're pulling my leg.' He looks as though he smells some fraudulent practice somewhere.
Opposite him, a smooth-faced priest eats quickly and silently, staring at the floor as though he is in devotions.
At the departure lounge, a small, neat, pink- faced Englishman is consoling a work-lined Irishman. 'Don't be too knocked Out by the sales conference, old chap. It's just that some of out production people don't give it sufficient thought.' Priest-like, he listens as the native assures him that he has not lost faith, but is even now pressing on with plans to push sales. A career woman recognises me and leaps forward as though she has won first prize at bingo. Her plane to Rome has been delayed an hour. She grates on me, so I advise her to use this valuable hour to test out the power of prayer.
Aboard the British Viscount 'St. Colurnban,' the pretty hostess babbles a gush of Gaelic. I pray to heaven the crew-cut Yank next to me won't ask me to translate, because I genuinely thought it sounded like Russian. We're off again, and from 2,000 feet Dublin looks a little provincial city, nestling by the dark-brown strand that stretches away into the morning mists.
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