Jacques Brel and Louis Armstrong are sitting on the front step of my house in Clontarf on the northside of Dublin when I get back. I’ve been around to the Spar to get the first course. Most of my guests aren’t Irish, so they won’t be familiar with the excellence of Tayto crisps and I’d forgotten to buy a family pack earlier.
The two lads look up as I arrive and smile. I hear footsteps behind me and know, even before I turn, that the smiles aren’t for me. Eve, your woman from the Bible, has just appeared. The world’s first mammy is in the gear Liz Taylor wore in Cleopatra.
I find my keys and get the door open.
“Come on down to the kitchen. Don’t mind the dogs, they’re harmless.”
Buster Keaton is in the kitchen. He’s my waiter for the evening. I’m doing the cooking myself but Samin Nosrat is giving me a hand. Her Salt Fat Acid Heat is the only cookery programme I’ve ever enjoyed; it’s why I’m cooking tonight.
I’ve no interest in wine. “Sommelier” is one of those words that I have to look up once a year, to remind myself that it is a wine waiter and not someone who trains dressage horses. But I’ve enough Merlot to get us through the winter and the bottom half of the fridge is full of Handsome Jack, an IPA from the Hope Brewery, a five-minute walk from the house I grew up in in Kilbarrack, four kilometres up the road.
“So, Madame Eve,” says Brel. “How was it, the apple?”
“Ah, sure, Jacky.”
Eve’s accent is Irish; her mother was a Galway woman.
“Like, there’s apples — and then there’s apples.”
Armstrong laughs.
“That’s nice,” he says.
I love Louis Armstrong. I’ve read a lot by him and about him. On paper, he uses the word “nice” in endlessly brilliant ways. And now, in my kitchen, I’ve just heard Louis Armstrong say “nice”.
The crisps seem to be going down well.
“Do you have any salt and vinegar?”
It’s a new voice. Violet Gibson has arrived.
Buster must have let her in. I’ve been busy at the hob, worrying the soup. The Wikipedia entry for Violet Gibson is quite dry and almost dismissive but the woman sitting at my kitchen table with the dogs already on her lap is the Violet Gibson depicted in Lisa O’Neill’s extraordinary song of the same name.
“Why are you here, ma’am?” Armstrong asks Gibson. He takes a white handkerchief from a pocket and mops his head.
“I went to Rome,” says Gibson. “And I shot Mussolini in the nose.”
“You did?”
“Fair play to you, girl,” says Eve. “I wish I’d had that gumption, back in the day.”
They’re diving into the soup. It’s Hawaij Onion and Chickpea. I got it from an Ottolenghi book. I spent hours chopping the onions but I’m happy enough, as long as there’s football on the radio.
Buster drops a bowl — silently — just as Ursula Le Guin comes in the back door. I saw a documentary about Le Guin once, and her size, her smile, the way she held her head, her humour — she reminded me of my mother. The author of some of the best and strangest novels I’ve read was a ringer for my Ma!
“Sorry I’m late,” she says. “I’ve been outside, looking in. My natural habitat, I guess.”
“So, Madame Eve,” says Brel. “How was it, being evicted from the Garden of Eden?”
“D’you know what, lads,” says Eve. “It was great. The shame, the guilt — I love it. And I’m mad into the clothes. Figleaves, my arse.”
The main course is a stew, a Dublin coddle. I carry the pot to the table myself; I can’t trust Buster. I lift the lid and all the guests, except Le Guin, hoist themselves to see what’s inside — sausages and rashers knocking heads with floating spuds and carrots — and they see what they want to see. Gibson sees her Dublin childhood; she’s below stairs with the servants. Armstrong sees his New Orleans childhood; Brel sees his wartime Brussels one. Eve didn’t have a childhood but, whatever she sees, she’s grinning. Le Guin looks from face to face. She doesn’t have a notebook but she’s taking notes.
Armstrong breaks the silence. (Buster tried to, but couldn’t.)
“Do you have children, Monsieur Jacques?”
“No!” says Eve. “No way! We’re not talking about the fuckin’ kids.”
Le Guin — genius, and mother of three — is the first to start laughing.
Roddy Doyle is an Irish writer and dramatist. He will be speaking at the Cheltenham Literature Festival on October 12
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