Diary
The decline of cities can be measured by the disappearance of once thriving secondhand bookshops. Liverpool lost hers years ago; Birmingham possibly never had any. Edinburgh still has a few, but those sell either remaindered copies of the latest novels or antiquarian books, and that's not what I mean at all. Green's, in Dublin, used to be such a delight, with shelves laden with cheap and exceptional books. When I visited it last weekend I was reassured to see the old lady on her usual Perch up a ladder on the second floor. I was there three years ago and she was aloft then, and for all I khow she has not been down since. 'I've a grand head for heights,' she told me. Alas, though she may have been her old, air-borne self, everything else has changed. A more torn, water- marked and uninteresting collection of books would be hard to find. Worse, the Prices have risen alarmingly. I was asked f20 for a dilapidated History of Rome and left as soon as was decent.
13 itterly cold though it may have been at the weekend, with the Wicklow hills glittering with frozen snow, Dublin sim- mered close to boiling point over the Contraception Bill, the Kerry babies tri- bunal, and the Lovat case. The tribunal, Inquiring into the murder of one infant stabbed to death and thrown into the sea, and the suspected murder of another found buried in a field, has been in session for weeks and is reported daily and at length in the newspapers. In spite of the tragic brutal of the inquiry, involving as it does urinal Gardai, pig-ignorant citizens of Ker- ry, and demented priests breathing hell- filre and perdition, the case, none the less, has strong elements of farce, from the Ponderous debating on whether perjury is still a reserved sin for which absolution can Only be given by a bishop, to the appear- ance in the witness box of Sister Aquinas from Sister Mechtilde, two nuns straight Irniri Central Casting, guaranteed to revive fiendish memories of kindergarten days and put the fear of God up those legal fellas on the Bench. The Lovat case, on the Other hand, tickles nobody's funny-bone. Ann Lovat was the 15-year-old who went Into labour during her school dinner hour and gave birth in the open air, in the Grotto of the Virgin. Both she and the child died. The village priest said that he Was aware of her condition but that he regarded it as strictly a family matter. The nuns and the neighbours said the same. The girl's family protested that they hadn't noticed she was pregnant. It was an exam- Pie, with a vengeance, of minding one's °Wo business. As for the Contraception Bill, the virulence of clerical and lay opposition grows by the hour, with govern- ment deputies being threatened with re- tribution ranging from mere murder to eternal damnation. I spent most of Satur- day in the National Gallery of Ireland, attending a Book Day organised by Cos- mopolitan magazine, and when I wasn't muttering about literature or signing odd volumes, I was listening to a furious discussion on birth control, the Pope, and the dogma of the 'sacred sperm'. I was reliably informed that the Pope is obsessed with sex; that his message is 'a cross for every crotch'; that his visit to the Emerald Isle has set the country back a hundred years and put the bloody and slumbering armies of superstition and bigotry on the march again — it was regrettable that infants should be thrown into the sea, or dropped behind a cowshed wall, but the spilling of the 'sacred sperm', whether into the ground, the centre pages of the Catholic Times, or more tidily into a rubber sheath, was the one and only mortal sin. Men, of course, don't like to be left out in the cold, and men, of course, paradox- ically, were shouting the loudest and most, hysterically against the introduction of the Pill. Meanwhile back in backward Kerry, something has happened which may be only the first pimple in a rash of miracles. Three local children were paying their daily visit to St Mary's Church — set between the National School and the Jesse James Tavern — when they saw the hand on the statue of Jesus move, and the eyes of the Blessed Mary flicker in His direc- tion. Later that day Father Michael O'Sul- livan came across 30 schoolchildren saying the Rosary in that portion of the church where the strange goings-on had taken place. Hundreds of people are now stream- ing into the village of Asdee, and the Vicar General of the Diocese, Monsignor Sheehan Listowel, has begun to question the children. I must say it makes our national flurry over Clive Ponting, who so far hasn't mentioned that he was visited by either a winking or waving Angel of the Lord, seem dull by comparison.
Arriving at the airport I was met by a friend who had got up at dawn and driven from Galway to take me into the `It's nice to know in this ever-changing world that there's still something you can rely on.' city. The Irish have a genius for hospitality, and the servile class — those working in bars, hotels and restaurants — are amaz- ingly civil to their customers. They have a talent for pretending to be inferior. The English are so used to being first ignored and then abused by waiters and bartenders that such kindness reduces them almost to tears. When I entered the Shelbourne Hotel, a lady insisted on escorting me to my room and showing me how the television and the bath plugs worked. Room service, I was told, could be called at any hour, and the red carnation, the tea-towel with the print of the hotel, the cuddly toy and the box of chocolates were mine to take home. That evening 20 of us from the Book Day had a delicious meal at a restaurant called Bailey's during which I had forcibly to dissuade the waiter chap from wiping the crumbs from my mouth. I had a very interesting talk with someone about trees, particularly the growth of woody shrubs, the study of which is apparently called dendrology. I've been trying to think ever since of how I can drop this new-found word into casual conversation. 'I was doing a spot of dendrology in the back yard the other day' sounds pretentious somehow.
rr he return to Heathrow got off to a bad start. The Aer Lingus lady said she didn't want me to carry hand luggage aboard. If the plane lost height during an emergency, she said, the compartment above me might open and I could be laid out by my own baggage. I replied firmly that in the event of such a catastrophe as a sudden fall from the sky, far from being annoyed I should positively insist on being laid out, and refused to hand over my luggage. Once I was shakily in my seat, executive class no less, the captain wel- comed on board members of the London Symphony Orchestra. They were, of course, separated from me by a curtain, but I went into a daydream about the sinking of the Titanic, and wondered if there would be time, if there were an emergency, for the orchestra to get out their instruments and play 'Abide with Me'. But then, remembering I'd had a job to get one small suitcase on board, I thought it unlikely that they'd been allowed to stow their cellos and whatnots in the overhead compartments. Imagine my astonishment, therefore, when I sud- denly heard the strains of 'Silver Threads Amongst the Gold' floating up the aisle behind me. It turned out to be recorded, not live music, and a tune immensely popular at the moment in Irelatid. Typical really, when you think of it, that a country seething with discord over the possible use of chemical warfare on the sacred sperm should send a sentimental ballad of yes- teryear to the top of the charts. 'Darling, I am growing older,' I warbled, as the plane flew on through the silver clouds.
Beryl Bainbridge
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