First, Charlie wouldn't take the jump – next day he had a clear round. And no, we;re not talking about horses, writes MICHAEL HARDING
IT’S FUNNY how one thing leads to another. For example, last weekend, during the heat wave, I saved a woman from a bat, and she thought me a proper hero, though none of it would have happened, if it were not for the General.
Last Saturday he was holding the reins of his stallion at a show, and the stallion was screeching and baring his teeth, because of the proximity of so many mares. The stallion always goes mad for mares in hot weather.
Suddenly the General turned to me and said, “By the way, I need to Google my chopper”. He always uses my computer when he wants to research something.
I didn’t want to ask him what he was referring to, since there were ladies in jodhpurs all about us, but we did have a tete-a-tete later, in the elegant and subdued interior of Amber Court Chinese Restaurant.
I really admire the General, as he swaggers through the world, with a briefcase, and the confident stride of a Don Juan.
First he had to go to the Bakery to get a cake for the Duchess. The till was closed but they gave him a little strawberry cake anyway, for free, and the General’s eyes were popping out of his head with delight.
“There’s not many places would do that for you,” he declared. In Amber Court, we had barbecue spare ribs and double fried chilli chicken with extra chilli, because the General says chilli is good for the libido.
“The Duchess is in town,” he said, meaning his ex-wife, who lives in Dublin. She and the General are divorced for more than a decade, but every time they meet, they have a meal, drink to excess, and end up in a sweaty ecstasy on whatever couch is available.
The following day he’s usually exhausted, and he mutters things like, “never again”, as if consorting with the ex-wife had been an accidental moment of weakness, which he had in no way orchestrated.
But this time it was different.
“There was an incident last night,” he said. “And it has distressed me deeply.” I presumed he had gone too far.
“Au contraire,” he said. “I didn’t go far enough.”
“You didn’t?”
“I couldn’t.”
The General is a very masculine man. If the hair in his ears was hay, he’d have enough to feed his own horse. But now he was looking at me like a boy who had done something naughty.
“Charlie wouldn’t take the jump,” he whispered. There was a pause of seismic proportions.
“That’s why I need to Google it on your computer. There must be something one can take.” “Viagra,” I suggested.
“Nonsense,” he said. “That’s just for old people. I’m only 71.” I made a flippant remark as he was getting into his car later.
“Try again in the morning,” I suggested. “It’s going to be a hot day and with luck the heat might have the same effect on you as it does on your stallion.” And that’s how it all happened. On Sunday afternoon I was driving along the Ballymahon road when the phone rang. It was the General. I pulled in, beside a large house where a woman was waving from an upstairs window.
“A clear round!” the General declared. “I couldn’t be contained. She had to rein me in or she would have missed her train.” It was then I noticed that the woman in the window was screaming at me, and crying for help, so I rushed up the avenue and she met me at the door and said there was a bat in her bedroom, and she couldn’t get him out.
“He flew in the window and he’s hanging on the curtain.” I told her to stay outside while I went in to investigate. In truth, the bat had fled the building long before I got to her boudoir, though I didn’t mention that when I came back down.
“All clear,” I declared. “The bat is gone.” She said she really didn’t know how to thank me. “It was the will of God you stopped at my gate.” I was going to say it was not God, it was the General, but I didn’t. I said, “Yes, indeed, God works in mysterious ways,” and she smiled at me, and I could see the heat of the afternoon was having an effect on her too.