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The old man leaves me a voice message from a pay phone and tells me to meet him on the North Circular Road with a change of clothes and the megaphone he bought to protest against women being allowed to become full members of Portmornock Golf Club.
I possibly shouldn’t? It’s technically outside my five Ks, but I’m guessing the Feds would allow it since he’s being released from prison. Yeah, no, the dude has agreed to – what they call – purge his contempt, meaning he’s promised to stay away from unlawful assemblies, remain within the distance of his residence required by Covid regulations and stop acting the dick generally.
He storts – I swear to fock – taking off his clothes in my cor
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I meet him on the corner of Eglinton Terrace and North Circular Road with a big smile on his face and a freshly-lit Cohiba resting in the V-sign that he’s flicking to a passing Gorda cor. He looks healthy and rested, like he’s just spent the weekend in Monort.
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I wind down the window and I’m there, “Get in, will you, before they change their minds and haul your orse back to jail?”
“Jail is nothing to be afraid of!” he goes, slipping into the front passenger seat. “A very clever man – and I am prepared to accept it might well have been me – once said that when you’re locked up, it’s not where you are that kills you, it’s where you’re not!”
“In terms of?”
“Well, what I meant was, the worst thing about prison is the thought of what you’re missing on the outside! And I missed nothing, because the entire world is in suspended animation!”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I kind of hoped you’d come out of there all filthy and emaciated and, I don’t know, depressed? ”
"None taken, Kicker. No, I had a rather enjoyable time – quote-unquote – inside! Hasn't changed much since I was in there for, well, corrupting the planning process and so forth! Although I think the Governor was rather happy to see the back of me this time!"
“Why?”
“Oh, I managed to persuade one or two chaps on my landing that the entire Covid scare was created by a shadow world government who are conducting a trial run for a totalitarian global state! We had a mass removal of face masks in the exercise yord yesterday!”
“I honestly can’t understand why so many people like you?”
“That’s very nice of you to say, Ross! Did you bring my clothes?”
“They’re on the back seat there.”
“And the megaphone?”
“It’s underneath your Cole Haan camel hair coat.”
“Excellent!”
“What’s it for?” I go, except he doesn’t answer. He storts – I swear to fock – taking off his clothes in my cor. He slips his shirt off over his head without even unbuttoning it.
I’m like, “What the fock do you think you’re doing?”
He goes, “It’s nothing you haven’t seen before. We’ve shared a shower in Portmornock.”
“The showers in Portmornock are bigger than my house. And I didn’t have to look at you. Jesus, don’t you dare take those trousers off.”
He goes ahead and takes his trousers off.
“Oh, fock,” I go, because I suddenly spot a Gorda checkpoint up ahead on Gordiner Street. “Just leave the talking to me, okay?”
I pull up. The dude – not long out of Templemore would be my guess? – is clued-in enough to know that an old man sitting in a cor in just his Y-fronts is more than a little bit suspicious.
The old man doesn’t leave the talking to me? He goes on the big-time offensive. He’s like, “How are all my friends in the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs?”
That’s what he says – word for word – sitting there as naked as the walrus that washed up on Valentia Island.
The Gorda dude is like, “Can I ask you where you’re coming from?”
“I am coming from Sir Joshua Jebb’s school of behavioural correction on the North Circular Road,” the old man goes, “where I have spent two weeks undergoing attitude reconditioning treatment at the insistence of one of our less learned privy counsellors.”
I point to the old man’s release papers on the dashboard. I’m there, “He’s just been released from the Joy for breaching the lockdown. I’m bringing him home.”
He’s like, “Can I ask you why he has no clothes on?”
“No, you may not!” the old man goes. “Drive on, Ross!”
I don’t drive on, though. I’m there, “He was just changing out of his prison clobber.”
“You see, this is how it storts!” the old man goes. “You give the police emergency powers to do whatever they hell they want – and pretty soon, they’re doing whatever the hell they want!”
“Sir, can I ask you to put that cigar out and put on your mask?”
“You know, 14 months ago, none of us would have believed it possible to subject perfectly healthy people in this country to house arrest! Even when we saw the first lockdown in China, we all thought, no, that wouldn’t work here! China is a country founded on the principle that human beings are mere instruments of collective national policy! It has no culture of liberty! Of freedom! Of golf! We in Ireland value those things too highly to surrender them voluntarily! But we did! And now we are about to learn – as many others have learned through history – that those freedoms, once surrendered, are very difficult to get back again!”
I’m there, “I think he got a real taste for the hooch inside,” and the Gorda dude nods like he understands. “I’ll bring him straight home.”
We end up getting waved on.
I’m there, “Are you trying to get arrested again?”
“When people are frightened enough, you can get them to do absolutely anything you want. Do you know he said that?”
“It sounds like Hennessy.”
“Ronnie Kray.”
“Not far off then. You still haven’t told me what the megaphone is for.”
“I’m hosting another one of my famous anti-lockdown rallies, Ross, in the Iveagh Gordens.”
“What about the terms of your release?”
“Chorles O’Carroll-Kelly will continue to fight this repression, Ross, just as he fought to protect one of the few remaining safe spaces in which men could golf in bloody well peace! Ad victoriam, Ross! Aut vincere aut mori! ”