THE FIRST INKLINGS of the notion of the book that was to become The Ginger Man brewed in Ireland following American Thanksgiving Day of 1949. It was upon an afternoon of turkey, sweet potatoes, spices and Beaujolais, feasted over within a tiny house consisting of two cramped rooms, front and back on two floors, at number 1 Newtown Avenue, Blackrock, County Dublin. My host was Michael Heron and his then wife, Camilla. The latter an American dark-skinned beauty, new to Ireland and fresh from Paris, where she was a somewhat lesser chanteuse toast of the town than her friend Josephine Baker. Finding the Irish climate unbearably cold and damp, Camilla often had to remain abed to receive her guests, as she reclined stacked over with blankets and snuggled up in feather boas, while running an electric hot iron over herself to keep warm. Heron, a handsome, sensitively literate and gourmet Englishman, had shared rooms with me at 38 Trinity College, and later I married his sister, Valerie.
Michael Heron, with whom I shared rooms at Trinity College, contemplatively viewing the world and whose enlightened tastes for literature, food and wine formed a pleasantly influential background to one’s university life and whose beautiful sister became my first wife.
In these years following the end of the Second World War, the outside world’s spiritually uncivilizing influences, such as cars, plumbing and neon lights, were now showing up in Ireland. A population, long without a pot to piss in, were unearthing all kinds of newfangled shiny receptacles. And the last of one’s Dublin and university contemporaries were heading off to various parts of the globe. Some with chastened tails between their legs, others clutching hopeful degrees but all in search of two pennies to rub together. A few, more affluent, were grandly heading to tour exotic continents in search of further and better, if not more pleasant, particulars of life and soul. And it was upon this American Thanksgiving day I sensed that the celebratory, boisterous and resolutely careless mayhem world of Dublin which we had survived, and the benign, elegantly cloistered life within the sanctum of Trinity College which we had enjoyed and to which we had all originally come, were finally over.
With me in the background, Gainor Stephen Crist with his first wife, Constance. All in our tweeds and sporting exemplary respectability, one cannot remember the extraordinary circumstances that must have existed when this photograph was taken to find the three of us in front of my rooms at number 38 Trinity College, my name just legible painted in white on the entrance behind us.
We had been a small colony of foreign students in what was, on the surface and in language, apparently not a foreign land. But whose citizens we soon learned were deeply alien to us in other ways which we soon collectively referred to as having the “crut.” This being the name applied to the inhibiting, impenetrable encasement of intellectual and sexual repression which seemed to envelop the majority of the Irish in mind and body. But to this chronic condition there had been found exceptions. And within this room, where one Americanly, thanksgivingly dined, one was reminded of the bedroom above, where the likes of the patriot, revolutionist, housepainter, poet, playwright and raconteur Brendan Behan and other Celtic amoralists had cavorted. Their lewd antics often watched stoically by two lady spinsters from the high vantage point of their window directly across the street. And at whom, during his demonstrations of freedom of the flesh, Behan would shake, insert and pull upon various appendages hoping to inspire some expression upon their implacably expressionless faces. And as no reaction would come from the spinsters, the otherwise naked Behan would declare out the open top half of the window.
“Ah the blase likes of youse sedately up there are not to provoke me to remove me belt which for the sake of me own modesty I wear around me belly to hide me provocatively sensuous navel.”
The Dublin trams roared past this little house from early morn till approaching midnight, and daily one would awake to the clip clop of black-plumed horses pulling hearses and carriages of mourners on their way to bury the dead at Dean’s Grange Cemetery two miles farther up the road. I had on the odd occasion of missing the last tram back to my rooms at Trinity College, curled up, in the lumpy confines of a sofa in this front tiny room, once sleeping while Gainor Stephen Crist, the original occupier of this dwelling, sat across from me with a book reading the night away about Spain.
Although others who knew him well might not agree, Gainor Stephen Crist was an entirely enchanting man. He was straightly tall, elegant and precise and circumstances providing, was always supremely courteous in manner. The newlywed Crist had, with his first wife, Constance, rented for three pounds a week this small respectable abode, where the local Protestant vicar, soon after their taking up residence, came to deliver his calling card one quiet Sunday afternoon. Crist, pagan sensualist though he was, was delighted at this sign of civilization from just up the street and always, provided they were not looking for money, welcomed any impromptu caller, preferring to magnify rather than oppose the condition of crut he might encounter. Even when such was usually further aggravated by the infrequent bathing of those suffering it. And as it happened upon this Sunday four o’clock teatime, setting an example, both Mr. and Mrs. Crist, there being no bath, were attempting to wash down from a bucket in the tiny kitchen. Which meant they never properly met this minister of the Church of Ireland. For, these newlyweds, at the sudden knock on their door, could only venture forth wrapped in skimpy towels to open up a crack to their narrow little hallway where, upon inquiring of the caller, Gainor’s towel inadvertently fell and following the vicar’s gasp, they then saw his little white card get shoved under their door.
It was upon the narrow sidewalk outside this house that I more than a few times accompanied this pleasantly saintly man Crist, with his splendidly mystical way of wasting time, to nearby public houses, where he would philosophically tackle yet another personal mishap befallen him. Such as recently sending his gray herringbone tweed suit to be dry-cleaned. Which, duly returned thoroughly washed and scrubbed, had shrunken the sleeves and trouser cuffs up to his elbows and knees. And which only suit he now had to wear to collect from the train station and carry back home a birthday present of a Great Dane puppy received from a rich American aunt. This already large animal’s weak legs were not strong enough to support it and so it was borne everywhere in Crist’s arms. But the canine baby beast’s appetite was all devouring in these larder-bare days. Its daily diet requiring a couple of pints of milk and at least two pounds of freshly ground steak. And while Crist held starvation at bay with a sheep’s head simmering on the stove, from this same aunt came a further gift, a subscription to Fortune magazine, well known required reading for international tycoons.
But Gainor Stephen Crist, stickler for facts though he was, and like most Americans preferring efficiency, was also, in this land where facts were avoided and efficiency shunned, tolerant and uncomplaining. In his impoverished circumstances he would peruse the pages of Fortune and would, with his canine birthday present grunting, good-naturedly ferry the enormous armful to the nearest pub and there with the beast collapsed at his feet he would nervously tap the bar with the edge of a half crown, ordering for himself a double Irish whiskey and a glass of draft stout plus a pint of the latter for the dog. Then with a twiddle of fingertips he would have the immediately emptied glasses refilled and announce that both he and the dog were now in the proper frame of mind to begin seriously drinking and thinking and ready to indulge another quality I found attractive in this man and which he’d already instilled in the Great Dane of being an avid listener to anything that was said.
And
Especially to some
Things
That never got
Mentioned