Continuing the unexpurgated extracts from the Ballina diaries of the late 1960s...
Monday, October 6th, 1966
Maureen, who betrayed me so heartlessly for Seβn∅n, the vet-in-waiting, pounces on me as I arrive at the library this morning. Her demeanour and dress suggest a storm-trooper expecting a seek-and-destroy order at any moment. As usual she is accompanied by her mongrel Zero, who looks a lot less threatening, though as ugly as ever.
Maureen demands to know if it is true that Seβn∅n threw a party the weekend before last without inviting her.
I have to think fast, which is not made easier by the attentions of Zero, who is attempting to either urinate on my leg or engage it in a sexual act, perhaps both.
"A small soirΘe did indeed take place at his abode," I informed her, "but not the kind of thing that would have interested you". What I was thinking of was the heaving mass of drunken students, the shrieking of young women and Bob Dylan's music, but - as I realised too late - Maureen was outraged at the notion that it was a select gathering from which she had been excluded.
"That fecker. I'll sort him."
I think I actually heard her growl as she turned away. Zero's growl is definitely not as deep. How was I ever attracted to this woman?
Tuesday, October 7th
Miss Cartwright has clearly entered the manic phase of her self-analysis obsession.
Worse, she is attempting to get our readers interested. This morning another box of books arrived, most of them by dubious American authors, bearing titles like The Centre of Being and Relaxation for Growth and various vague amalgams of the two. Even cataloguing these ridiculous books gets me down.
I then have to arrange them on the only free shelf, in an almost inaccessible area at the back of the library. Miss Cartwright grandly refers to our new "inner self department". She was not amused last week when I joked about finding the "inner shelf". Speaking of spiritual insights, it was intimated to me some time ago by Miss Cartwright herself that she had become disillusioned with her swami, though no details were forthcoming.
I was given to understand that she had advanced beyond his understanding (she mentioned something about being on a "higher plane") and that he could teach her no more. However, while I would not wish to embarrass Miss Cartwright by asking her outright, there is a rather more credible story going about town.
Apparently Miss Cartwright believed that her chosen swami was a young Eastern mystic on a brief visit to the West (I mean the Western world, rather than the west of Ireland), who was known to her as the Maharishi Jaim Si Ogun.
Unfortunately, this turned out to be a well-known chancer from Knockmore: real name, Jamesy Hogan. This fellow has more schemes and scams on the go than a Prohibition-era gangster in Chicago. Anybody would have recognised him and warned her off, had Miss Cartwright not been so secretive about her mystic meetings. The poor woman was undoubtedly the last to discover the cruel fraud perpetrated on her, about which the town has been laughing behind her back for the past week.
Apparently Jamesy had gone the whole hog, or Hogan, and dressed up in a fake white beard and swami's robes made from his landlady's best bed-sheets (just the robes, not the beard).
As well as his weekly fee, he apparently also milked Miss Cartwright for the return train fare to Dublin, where he was supposedly living, when in fact he used to hitch down from Knockmore every Friday evening. God only knows what sort of rubbish he imparted to her under the guise of enlightenment.
Friday, October 10th
A dull grey morning, relieved only by the knowledge that even if it develops into a dull grey evening, it is still Friday, and I am out of here at 5 p.m. I have been thinking about Miss Cartwright and the evil Jamesy Hogan. If the story is true - and I have a horrible feeling it is - then it also helps explain why my employer has now veered so dramatically from Eastern mysticism to the worst excesses of the Western self-discovery industry.
Miss Cartwright brings out a protective streak in me which I did not even know I possessed. After a little time elapses, I may try to interest her in Buddhism, which I myself have begun to study as an antidote to the stifling Catholicism which has played such havoc with my own soul (and body).
Anyway, whether she realises it or not, Miss Cartwright has already learned to her cost one of the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, namely that life is mostly disappointment and suffering.
(to be continued)
bglacken@irish-times.ie