Celebrated Letters of John B. Keane, page 26
Even if all the hair is not grey it would be sufficient if the hirsute area above the auricles were ever so slightly tinged.
When you anointed us with Greyfix it worked admirably as far as you were concerned. We were as black as ever we had been and your cronies wondered at the redoubtable napper which defied the years and refused to play host to a single grey hair.
You were a man apart for a while but in the end people grew suspicious. Add to this the fact that a tiny but ominous bald patch made its appearance on your poll. At first this was easily concealed by the deceitful deployment of some of the longer hairs in the patch’s vicinity but as time wore on and the bald patch expanded its holding we remaining hairs became painfully aware that it would only be a matter of time before it made an outright bid for monopoly of your entire crown. If anything you became even more panic-stricken than we were and wisely you decided to withhold further applications of the much-vaunted Greyfix. It was the wisest move you ever made and ever after when we would hear people say that poor old Tommy Scam hadn’t a brain in his head we would bristle as we never bristled before.
While our numbers did not increase there were no further losses and you vowed to allow nature full rein, sustaining and maintaining your remaining hairs. We have served you well and we have survived the excesses which have done for so many of our immediate colleagues and for greying hairs on every pate all over the world. We feel like parodying old Polonius as he addressed his son Laertes in Hamlet:
Those hairs thou hast and their adoption tried
grapple them to thy poll with hoops of steel.
I am certain that if Laertes had been allowed to grow older and greyer those would have been the precise words used by his father. The Elizabethans were great warrants to coin the colourful phrase. The father of this day and age would be more likely to say, ‘Keep your hair on, son.’
If you had persevered with the application of the murderous Greyfix we have no doubt whatsoever but that your head would now be as bald as the proverbial billiard ball.
It is, we believe, a fine thing to grow bald naturally because all bald men are possessed of shapely, presentable heads which look dignified as well as romantic. However, brains like yourself who forfeit precious ribs through vanity are possessed of mediocre craniums which need considerable camouflage when our artful coverage is withdrawn. What a sorry sight you would be without us. A duck out of water would be infinitely more prepossessing.
We would now like to issue the following statement as an assurance to those who are apprehensive about growing grey and we would expect you to instruct your writing hand that the statement be written in characters clear and submitted to the world through whatever means you may think most effective.
Grey hairs are the harbingers of tolerance and maturity. They complement the lines that come with age and remember too that from a sartorial viewpoint grey goes with everything. For a black head a man needs sprightly feet whereas for a grey head a sensible pace is all that is required. No great feats are expected from the men whose heads we adorn whereas a man with bright colours might be expected to perform feats as colourful as his hair. The old Gaelic poets must take their share of the blame for derogatory attitudes towards grey hairs. When they wrote of men with black hair they compared it to the raven’s wing and when they spoke of men with red hair they said it was burnished like the sun. When they spoke of men with fair or blonde hair they said it glistened like gold but when they spoke of men with grey hair they said of them that they were as grey as badgers or as grey as goats.
They should have said as grey as mottled silver or as grey as an evening sky or grey as doves at daybreak or grey as a stand of winter beeches or grey as the Burren of the County Clare or grey as the snowy owl or grey as the Northern Diver. There are a thousand beautiful shades of grey. There is the gentle grey of sea mist, there is the silvery grey of slates under a full moon and there is oyster grey in the bed of the sea. It’s great to be grey when you come to think of it.
For one of the finer tributes paid to us grey hairs we must look once more to Shakespeare. In the first act of Julius Caesar when the conspirators are selecting their henchmen, the requisite characteristics of the various nominees are taken into account. Somebody suggests Cinna the poet and the motion is carried.
‘Let us have him,’ says his nominator, ‘for his grey hairs.’
No more than his grey hairs, mark you. We would also like to make it clear that we male hairs do not expect females to retain their greyness just because we insist upon doing so. For us, however, the retention of our natural grey is the paramount consideration. Even the theatre today has the good sense to realise that black and white are no longer the dominant shades of drama. Greys are now preferable to sheer blacks and whites because unlike these primary colours grey has many shades, each more subtle than the next.
Of all colours we may also presume that grey is the most conciliatory by virtue of the fact that it never obtrudes or dazzles. It has, we believe, a calming quality and we have noted inflammatory situations where the timely arrival of a grey-haired man had the effect of imposing peace and tranquillity upon the warring factions. We who are grey have spoken and, happily, we find ourselves in this time and place presentable, abundant and hopeful that we will never again be subjected to chemical pollution.
Sincerely
Your Grey Hairs
The Memory Writes
Dear Brain
I recall a votive mass commissioned by your loving mother for the fulfilment of her private intentions. Your father had gone to his grave but six months earlier and if there are choirs of angels in the regions beyond they were surely gathered in their entirety to sing that sainted soul into heaven.
For his likes, heaven if there is one, with its indescribable effulgence and pain-free felicity, was most certainly devised as a just need for his humanitarian activities during his all too short stay in this crucible we call the world.
You were in your late teens and, like all mothers, yours still cherished delusory hopes that you might yet entertain a vocation for the priesthood. The votive candles shimmered in their polished candelabra and no sound save the rustle of the sacred vestments obtruded into that solemn place other than yours and your mother’s gentle breathing.
How is it that occasions like these which are designed to impose pious sentiments on the participants very often induce responses which are far from spiritual, responses alas which are the direct opposite of those intended. I am only your memory and cannot choose what you wish to recall. I am a good memory and I store much that is eminently quotable and well worth visual replay, but you prefer to summon up the less savoury aspects of your tainted past.
Instead of praying for your father’s soul you permitted your mind to wander to a visit of Connelly’s Circus when it had played a matinée in your childhood, and what was it you thought of? The elephants, the lions, the horses and ponies, the juggler, the monkeys? No indeed, oh most lascivious of wretches! Even in the sacred place where you and your mother came to worship you might have been partially forgiven if you had remembered Loco the red-nosed, potbellied clown who had every child under the canvas in stitches.
Earlier that morning I had high hopes for you. Quite unexpectedly and delightfully you recalled glimpses of the snowy summits of the South Kerry mountains in all their pearly whiteness as they strove to survive the warming winds of a bright May morning. There is a godly gleam from mountain snow when the sun assails it. I would have forgiven you if this recollection had persisted throughout the celebration of the holy mass for there is a deep spirituality secreted in the beauties of nature, a spirituality so glorious that God is forever manifesting Himself and his artistry through its magnificent intricacies.
No such lofty pursuits for you, however, who preferred to resurrect the only scene in that particular circus which provoked criticism from the local parish priest, who described it as obscene. That was when Mona Bonelli, the Italian contortionist, wearing only the skimpiest of briefs and the barest of bras danced on to the centre ring under the spotlight’s glare. Her dazzling smile captivated all present but you more than any. Immediately she lifted the hoop through which she would thrust her seemingly boneless body you started to drool and slobber like a starving hound on beholding a string of pork sausages. Granted the girl was sensual and sinuous, even voluptuous when she felt so disposed, but there was a hardness and a craftiness about her which you refused to recognise.
All that concerned you was the way she displayed her shapely body as she twisted and screwed her muscular limbs. There were, I will concede, no angles to her, no warps nor wrinkles nor blemish that could be perceived by the naked eye. With curves she was bountifully endowed and aided by the make-up, the perpetual smile, the shimmering sequins on her scant apparel and the bright spotlights she did succeed in unsettling the less discerning and non-artistic males among the audience.
Long before her performance drew to a close you were completely carried away, and to think that you would preserve this far-off exhibition for the sacred occasion devoted to your father’s memory.
I have forgotten the number of times you have recalled Mona Bonelli and countless other scantily clad and unclad visions to induce nocturnal slumber when by the simple expedient of saying your night-time prayers your conscience would just as easily have entrusted you to the waiting arms of Morpheus.
You could not know, of course, poor, weak-willed organ, that the glamorous Mona Bonelli was in reality none other than plain Biddy Muldoon from the county of Waterford and that she was not the nineteen-year-old titian-haired beauty that she was supposed to be. Rather was she a forty-year-old, mousey-haired, drop-out housewife who had allowed herself some years before to be seduced and latterly taken in tow by the moustachioed ringmaster of Connelly’s Circus. Her deserted husband had ever after made it a point to remember the ringmaster in his prayers, day and night, ‘For,’ said he to a freshly acquired helpmate, ‘he has taken the scourge of my life upon himself and heaven will surely be his lot, for he will suffer his hell in this world.’
Later that evening, the same Mona Bonelli or Biddy Muldoon was seated in the local hotel where your father had invited you to partake of an orangeade whilst he sampled the excellent potstill whiskey for which the hostelry was renowned. Mona Bonelli, the luscious, titian-haired teenager from the land of the Tiber and the Po was now showing every single one of her forty years and deprived of the glamorous aids of her contortionist’s trade she looked a very ordinary creature indeed. You failed to recognise her and even when she vainly tried to ogle your late, lamented father by crossing and uncrossing her still shapely legs you still could not call to mind the body that had transported you such a short while before.
I can never comprehend why you still persist in remembering the more tawdry experiences of your past especially since I carry a large stock of beautiful visions which you would have no trouble to remember if only you made the effort. Among other things I have an excellent range of truly beautiful faces including those of your ageing mother and your long-suffering spouse and, of course, the innocent faces of your children. I lovingly preserve those of your maiden aunts and benevolent uncles and, dare I mention her name, the lovely Lily Lieloly. No memory could be blamed for cherishing that angelic face.
I have an exciting repertoire of sporting occasions from the lowliest of donkey derbies to the heart-stopping drama of the Aintree Grand National, from your own humble contributions on the playing fields to the dizzy heights of the great Olympics. No television set will ever serve you as well as I do and yet you all too often employ me to recall the basest of your activities.
I have a priceless accumulation of sunsets, no two of which are alike and were you to excavate my recesses you would find such an array of wonders treasured over a lifetime that your heart would be permanently uplifted. There are my vaults of cloud formations, cataracts, dawns, twilights, sunbeams and, of course, my seascapes ever ready to reveal themselves.
Remember the blizzards, the cloudburst and the fuming, raging anger of the oceans. Remember the rolling reverberations of the great thunderstorms, the crackling, the booming and the lingering echoes as the turmoil spent itself in the all-absorbing bosom of the sky. Remember the surging, sweeping floods, their inestimable passion concealed in the sibilant deceptive surges. Oh those rampant, riotous waters, dirging and delving and loamy! I can bring to mind the sounds and the pictures in an instant. Just say the word and I will recall for you the first kiss, the first embrace, the first love of those halcyon days when your heart was unsullied and pure. I have so much that is elevating, so much that will bring you closer to the ideal of self-purification, the only ideal which will truly prepare you for the transition from a known state to an unknown. Prompt me, poise me, nudge me to work for our good. Resist the evil pressures that would have me prostitute my talents so that your unworthy whims might be gratified. Let me resurrect for you the glories and the good deeds, so few in your lifetime to date. Upon recalling these you may go forth and emulate, thus inspiring me to renounce the inglorious and the ignominious.
I will conclude now but before I do I would like to recall for you the most heroic incident which might be credited to you. You were but seven then and you were in the company of an even younger girl who happened to be your playmate of the time. As the two of you passed Drumgooley’s farmyard gate, having wandered from a rustic picnic organised by your mother, who should come fussing and flapping from the fowl-run but Drumgooley’s gander, a fearsome creature with a nerve-shattering cackle whenever he felt his flock was in danger.
Bravely you ordered your young charge to run for her life while you manfully stood your ground and diverted this bloodthirsty barnyard braggart until she had run clear of danger. Allowing for your age and size this was a monumental feat of bravery, of selflessness, of knight-errantry. It was, however, never to be equalled in the long years that followed but in recalling it I may perhaps remind you that there was a brief but glorious while when chivalry was your long suit.
Finally I would ask you to use me for the betterment of your immortal soul while conceding that I must also be spiced a little now and then if I am to be entertaining as well as exalting.
Sincerely
Your Memory
The Fists Write
Dear Brain
You have never used us on the face of a woman and for this we partially forgive you. You have never used us on the face of a child and for this we are also ready to partially forgive you. You have never used us on the face, head or body of a man who was down and for this too we partially forgive you. Alas, I cannot forgive you everything, though I wish I could.
I remember the night you smashed to pieces every breakable object in the apartment of your partner in your last affaire d’amour. So terrified was that unfortunate creature that she threw herself at your feet and begged you to leave but no! You persisted in pursuing your orgy of destruction which was later to cost you dearly in financial terms for you were obliged to foot the bill in toto for every shred of damage you caused.
Oh poor, foolish, vain fellow! Know you not that affairs are the most short-lived of all relationships. Even a fist knows that. An affair comes like a jet aircraft from the east, dominates the heavens overhead for a few brief moments and then disappears into the western skies and is never seen or heard from again.
An affair is like an air-filled toy balloon which takes off in all directions at once when its wind is released. It rasps, snorts, squeaks and screeches with a passion and ferocity unbridled, and then flops on the floor a tattered parody of its former self. An affair is a mere sneeze which gathers slowly and disperses quickly. You should have known this and accepted your rejection when your correspondent announced that she had her fill of you and fancied another.
You raised us instantly, your loyal and long-suffering fists, and spent your fury on the inanimate. Battered, bloodied and bruised you thrust us inside your coat and staggered to your home where you didn’t even have the common courtesy to lave us with ordinary tapwater or dab us with iodine. We suffered for days on end because of your carelessness.
We will be the first to admit that we are only part-time organs. Sometimes we come and go like lightning, other times like flash floods but alas there are times when you retain our services far above and beyond the call of duty and these are the times when we dislike you most.
It is easy to justify the clenching of a fish as a weapon of defence or as an instrument which might be used to strike a football or a punchbag or indeed for involvement in a fair bout of fisticuffs where the protagonists are willing and able to take each other on.
However, there is a time to unclench, to release, to forgive and forget and to carry on with the business of living and this is where you frequently failed us, for you would not instruct your heart to relent.
So it was that we were unwillingly retained when we might have been peacefully broken up into our many components. Being part-time organs provides us with many compensations so long as you, the proprietor, use us as part-time employees.
When your anger goes we go. In fact we need never exist if you were not so quick to react, if you were not so easily incited, so readily influenced for all the wrong reasons.
We fists are often petrified and activated for reasons of which we rarely approve and if you were to ask the average fist why it is so clenched and why its knuckles show so white, that fist would shake its figurative head in sorrow and frustration and then hang it in shame. We know because we are fists and a fist is not an instrument of affection or love. It does not lie down with peace and harmony. It is hard and hurtful and the longer it remains in this state the less good it bodes for those whom it may encounter. It has little discernment while it remains closed and often all and sundry can fall foul of it with disastrous consequences for its victims and proprietor.
