Padraig Flynn gazed at himself in the mirror, at the lustrous auburn locks that flowed in waves from his noble forehead, writes Kevin Myers.
Ah, the sheer class that exuded from his every pore! And see, the aristocratic sweep of white hair, like a gull's graceful wings over each ear! Modesty, he reflected, is an admirable virtue, but false modesty is surely a vice: it limits ambition, vision, imagination.
Modestly, to be sure, he recognised the limits of his talents: he was no Abraham Lincoln - but then how could he be? History had not given him the opportunity to be, and for that, history was so unfair. What price the Louisburgh Address? He braced his shoulders and stared once more into the mirror. And would an Abe Lincoln have performed as well as he, The Sage of Mayo, had done in Brussels? He fixed himself in the eye, and murmured: Well, would he? No, surely not. It wasn't possible. Europe had not seen a meteor to compare with him since - oh who? Churchill? But he was a bad European. Well, perhaps de Gaulle? No: a man of little grand vision. Bismarck? Possibly. But how many houses had Bismarck owned? No more than a couple.
His mind roamed over the 19th century, until it came to Napoleon. Was that it? Was he a rebirth of Napoleon, only in a taller, handsomer form, with those striking good looks, and the lithe athletic body? He stepped back from the mirror and gazed over his elegant figure. No longer in the first flush of youth, of course, but. . . he sucked in his stomach, and stuck out his jaw, to absorb that slightly emerging second chin. Yes, he could easily pass for 35.
Suddenly, he caught sight of a molecule of white at the foot of the rubescent forest on his scalp. What? He whipped out the magnifying glass he kept about his person at all times and pressed it to his eye. He examined the offending molecule carefully. Mother Macree! His roots were showing! "Mini!" he cried in the house intercom. "Mini! I need you here now!"
"Coming, Dadsie," carolled the melodious voice of Mini Cooper-Flynn from the far side of the 200-bedroom house. Each bedroom was en-suite, but Beverley Cooper-Flynn's en-suite itself had an en-suite, which in turn connected with a third en-suite. It was possible for Mini to attend to her nose in one en-suite, her toes in the second and her twos in the third.
"What's that?" he cried, distraught, his famous eyebrows reaching over his forehead like the McDonalds arches, but culminating in a carefully tufted winglet at each apex. Mini Cooper examined her father's scalp closely. "Yes, Dadsie, it's a white root."
Padraig Flynn, EU Commissioner Extraordinaire, Statesman, Multiple House-Owner, Founder of a Dynasty, stared in horror. "Quick!" he cried. "I'm leaving for the Mahon tribunal in half an hour!"
Mini turned towards the pharmacopoeia on the wall. There were several hundred vials of hair dye, hair tonic, gel, conditioner, toner and rinse. "What colour are you now?" she cried, examining the many bottles. "Is it Bois de Boulogne Chestnut Russet? Or Maroon Cocoa, With a Hint of Crème Caramel? Or is it Tangerine Brulée with Oakwood Garnish?"
"I don't know!" shrieked P. Flynn. "You were in court the last time I needed it dyeing, so I asked Audrey to do it. Get her, Mini, and get her now!"
Audrey interrupted her school run - an uninsured tractor on which were perched 20 or so children, with three more being towed behind in wheelchairs - to rush back to her beloved father's side. "It was more than one," she said breathlessly, hurriedly rummaging through the hundreds of bottles. "We ran out of the first, so I had to try a second, but I ran out of that too, so I went to a third."
"WHAT WERE THEY?" screamed the Bonaparte of our time.
"Umbrian Umber, I think. With some Café Mocha in Ochre. Plus some Burnished Palomino Poo. Or was it Red Bay in the Sunset from Calvin Klein? Sorry Dadsie, I just don't know."
"DON'T KNOW? DON'T KNOW?"
The two sisters exchanged looks and, shushing their father, began to mix a variety of colours: rubicund, arrowroot, cherry, flaxen and mahogany tints went into the cocktail, in which they carefully immersed their father's hair, save for two supra-aural tufts which, wrapped in protective silver paper, were to remain white.
The Flynn mane emerged a strawberry chocolate hue, but with the dangerous inner glow of a thermonuclear conker reaching critical mass. In an all-brown world, it could have served as a lighthouse to warn shipping off the Greenland Bight about Malin Head.
The three of them gazed proudly at themselves in the mirror: the preposterous royal family of Mayo. Beverley its own Princess Dye: Pee its buffoonish Ard Rí; and Audrey, its own Paul Henri.