We're happy to talk about sex, but money is the last taboo. Anne Enright isn't surprised, given the perversity of our uses for it
Everyone can talk about sex these days, but no one can talk about money. I mean intimately about money. How much you have. How much you want. How much you like it - or not. What you would do to get more of it. Money is a public material, yet we try to keep it to ourselves. We despair and gloat over it as quietly as we can - also count it and fail to count it, lose it, borrow it, gamble it, spend too much of it, buy the wrong things with it and never bring them back.
But money is real. Of course it is. Money is important. But nobody ever admits that some money is important and some money is not. Money spent on drink, for example, doesn't mean diddly-squat. Debt, too, is intoxicating and hard to grasp, so the money you spend on your credit card doesn't really exist either. But real money spent on - choose your reluctance - plastic toys, beggars, cut flowers, heating in upstairs bedrooms, now there's a waste of hard-earned cash.
So, yes, your grandmother spent a lifetime buying single rashers so you could blow her small bequest in a posh bar in the course of an evening, half of which you can't remember. No, you didn't even go to a restaurant with it; you threw it (violently) away. Besides, who needs her tuppence halfpenny when there is the sale of the house to look forward to?
You see, it is obscene, this subject. That is the word people use about money: obscene. The sorrow of it, and the disproportion. No, the €12,000 a year you spend on childcare does not mean you will give your children any pocket money - their needs are made of different stuff. One hundred cent does not always add up to the same euro. There is always "my euro" and "your euro", for a start. But even the cash - or the debt - in your pocket changes from moment to moment.
Do we think that money is good? I wonder about this, now that Ireland is said to be awash with it. We talk about nothing else, in a public, loud sort of way. But do we actually like the stuff, or trust it? We still don't think it is good for children, which makes the Holy Communion cash bash a more than religious initiation rite. Welcome to commerce, my dear.
Money is often described as dirty, and, as with all dirty things, there is a sense of glee to it, too. Time was when the men who made money in Ireland knew each other on a nod and a wink, like a community of adulterers, who were all in on the same secret. "Isn't it great?" And, "Look, we're getting away with it!" No wonder they did not stick to the rules. Even today, rich Irish people feel shame and self-righteousness in equal measure. Or they feel no shame at all. They deliberately rid themselves of shame. Which makes them either brash or brittle, but certainly boring in the long run.
But who'd be poor? And, yes, aren't the Irish great (again) for earning money? Still, we have to settle down to the stuff and spend it somehow decently. There are rules for this, developed by the European middle classes over many hundreds of years. Nobody will blame you for spending money on a good coat, for example. The same goes for good shoes. These are investments, as a house is an investment, though in what it is hard to say.
You are also allowed to be stupid with your money, but only in highly fetishistic ways. Silly shoes and designer labels are fetishes because we want them inordinately, for no good reason. But even though this wanting is highly perverse it is acceptable, just about. And I am not sure why. The main rules are: spend more on less, and eat really well. Empty out your rooms. Learn to say radicchio. This is not just snobbery; this is also a way to live cleanly.
Consumption is a spiritual problem these days, especially for the young. (It used to be a political problem, but there you go.) That is why the truly rich live like Buddhist monks, albeit with private aircraft.
Charity is also possible. But whether you keep it, splash it or give it away, you must never do the sums - the price of owning a car as opposed to taking several hundred taxis a year, for example. No middle-class woman should ever know the cost of the hair on her head (€40 every six weeks for the rest of your life, never mind the highlights), though we can all get into a spin about the cost of a lamb chop.
The only thing you can say for sure about money is that it doesn't add up.
No wonder the country abandoned it secretly, some short time ago, and started living on credit instead.