Of art, guns and brown envelopes

Awkward moments over the claret at a 1960s dinner marked poet John Montague'sfirst meeting with an intimidating Charles Haughey, he recalls in an extract from his new memoir.

I really met Charles Haughey for the first time at a select dinner in an opulent private house. The cast of characters included a surprising number of those we would now call "movers and shakers". Our best-known architect, Michael Scott, was there, along with his pal Fr Donal O'Sullivan, SJ, director of the Arts Council. (Fr O'Sullivan was acting like a Trojan horse in that sedate institution, smuggling a great deal of modern, often abstract, art into the Irish consciousness, and also onto the walls of the Arts Council's offices on Merrion Square.) Also present was CS (Todd) Andrews, who had moved from his position as commissar of Bord na Móna, the Irish Turf Board (as in fuel, not horse racing), to CIÉ, which was responsible for the Irish public-transport system. Although I was acquainted with a number of these guests, it was Madeleine [ Montague's wife at the time] whom they really knew, and they liked her for her vivacity and intelligence, as well as the fact that she was an exotic Parisienne.

Haughey had the place of honour, as minister of finance, and the table was laden with the fine wines of which he professed to be a connoisseur. After a few glasses had slid silkily down our throats, Haughey turned the searchlight of his attention towards me. He clearly had not the faintest notion as to why I was there, and could barely even place me. He had, however, registered that I had a Northern accent, and Madeleine a charming French one.

The general conversation had begun in the usual way of genteel Dublin dinner parties, with a discussion of recent plays at the Abbey and Gate theatres. Michael Scott contributed a particular analysis of acoustics, since, in an earlier incarnation, he had been a minor Abbey actor, under the predatory name of "Wolfe". The plays of alderman McCann, the father of the actor Donal, had been having some success at the Abbey, which was still exiled to its temporary billet in the Queen's while the new theatre was being built. At one point, Mrs [ Maureen] Haughey piped up plaintively: "I don't see why there's all this fuss about O'Casey. I think John McCann's plays are much better. At least I enjoy them more than O'Casey's gloomy stories about those slums."

Todd Andrews laughed. "I take your point, Mrs Haughey. I'm from nearly the same neighbourhood myself." Encouraged, she asked: "And wasn't O'Casey a Protestant? How would he know about those people?" Todd laughed again. "Indeed! Who ever heard of a poor Protestant?" Minister Haughey had been surveying the table through hooded eyes. "Never mind her," he said brusquely, with a dismissive wave in his wife's direction. "She knows nothing about art."

Embarrassed, we moved away from theatre to discuss the early days of the State's economic growth, through companies like Todd's Bord na Móna, as well as the electrification scheme on the Shannon, and later on the Erne at Ballyshannon. Todd told many amusing anecdotes as to how the German and Russian technicians always gave, and expected, presents - a practice to which the idealistic young Irish former gunmen were completely unaccustomed. These zealous republicans might have learnt to kill, but they recoiled like virgins from the sight of a brown envelope, which they spurned with lofty harshness - until they realised that their scorn was interfering with business.

Madeleine chimed in, explaining how her tough-minded younger brother, Philippe, had said that there was no government official in France you could not influence by placing a discreet envelope on his desk. If he slid it open and seemed pleased with the contents, absorbing it into his files, your plea would eventually be heard. If it stayed on the desk, you were lost, and must know to whisk it away. This practice prevailed even in banks, Madeleine assured us.

"You're a bright one," said Haughey admiringly. "You seem to know how the world works. People like Todd here thought that truth lay in the barrel of a gun. That's necessary sometimes, but there are other ways of persuasion."

THEN A THOUGHT seemed to strike him, and he turned to me, lofting a full glass. "I can hear that you're from the North. But from which side of what we have to call 'the border'?" I gazed at him across the table - those shrewd, narrowed eyes; that blunt face, like a hammer-headed shark. He was intimidating all right, but everyone present had been assembled to please him, because of some necessary deal: I think it was the rebuilding of the Abbey Theatre, which was probably exceeding its budget. And of course the grant for the Arts Council depended on the minister for finance. So although I was beginning to find Haughey truculent and abrasive, and had been shocked by his show of disdain for his wife, I felt that I should not upset the apple cart, especially since Madeleine, who had also registered his sullenness, was teasing him gently.

So I gave him a quick summary of my family background, stressing the various individuals' involvement in the national struggle, but not their disillusionment after Partition. My Uncle Frank, a medical student, was supposed to have been in the same regiment as Kevin Barry, and according to my mother was one of Michael Collins's men, and had been at the Russell Hotel on that first Bloody Sunday morning. I could see no connection, however, between these stories of military prowess and the plump, flannel-sheathed, tennis-playing doctor who visited us on summer holidays accompanied by Stan, his equally stylish English pal.

Frank had a prospering practice in Chester, though I never visited him there, and was too young to get to know him well before he died in the England he had fought against. When I was at Yale, however, I did visit my Uncle Tom Carney, now a superintendent of the Interborough Rapid Transit, or subway.

In his flat New York accent, he told me how he had been a sharpshooter for the Irish army - which I could well believe, because he had struck the targets at the funfair in Bundoran with such precision and regularity that the exasperated proprietor had finally asked him not to come any more. His favourite story was how, when anti-Treaty forces were besieging Dundalk, he had been deputed to kill Frank Aiken, but had just missed him. I told Aiken this story years afterwards, and he was deeply amused. "So that was your uncle. I remember I moved at the last second, and the bullet burned along the side of my head."

I told Haughey that my mother's family, the Carneys, had inherited a souvenir book from the internment camp at Ballykinlar in Co Down. Uncle Frank had been there, along with Haughey's father-in-law, Seán Lemass, a future taoiseach - like Haughey himself. My Uncle Frank did not take to the Dubliner Lemass, however, because - ironically, considering his name - he did not attend Mass, something which was shocking to a patriotic Ulster Catholic for whom religion and national identity had become nearly the same thing. (But not surprising to me, considering that the IRA had been excommunicated en bloc.) Yet Lemass seemed always to know that he would overcome.

Among the coy and pious sentiments inscribed in the souvenir book (similar to those in the little albums from my Armagh school years), one verse stood out: that of Seán F Lemass. Unlike the others, there were no references to the Sacred Heart, the Blessed Virgin, or Holy Ireland, just a confident declaration: "I'd like to bet/ I'll come home yet/ With a brass band/ Playing before." Yet despite such occasional droll anecdotes, it seemed to me a sad story that I was telling, even though I tried to sweeten it with descriptions of rural Tyrone, and the strangeness of backwaters like Fintona. But only one thing seemed to interest Haughey.

"Tell me," he said, those heavy hooded eyes appraising me again, 'how does a boyo from the Clogher valley manage to get his hands on a bird from Paris?" There was a collective intake of breath, yet no one said a word: no one but Madeleine, that is. With her customary broad grin, she replied: "Because he's good-looking. Besides, he's bright, and writes pretty well."

"Oh, so he's a writer," said Haughey slowly, undeflected. "I know lots of writers. There's always one or two of them waiting outside the door, hoping to have a word with me." Keeping my cool with an effort, I widened my eyes in a pretence of curiosity, and asked: "Really? What are the names of these writers?" As I expected, he produced the names of only a few journalists: decent folk whose commentaries I followed, but none of whom had ever written a book. "I think you are confusing journalists with what we call creative writers," I responded patiently.

"YOU KNOW WHAT I mean, or at least you should. People like Patrick Kavanagh: you must have followed his unfortunate court case. And then there's Austin Clarke, who is as poor as a church mouse. In fact, why is there not a civil list for people like that, the way there is in England? They're too poor to even exile themselves! But you must know all this."

Haughey fell silent, brooding. The dinner party seemed to have collapsed, poisoned by these unexpectedly rough exchanges. The irrepressible Michael Scott managed to shift the conversation to the subject of wines, and soon he and Haughey were debating the better years of claret. It was clear that they were not Burgundy men, as they extolled, with an almost salacious relish, the "full body" and "rounded texture" of a certain Bordeaux. Michael was a past master at pleasing, at drawing the best out of, people, with his small glittering eyes and wide smile, but even he must have felt that the evening had failed, or at least had taken a wrong turn somewhere.

Before Haughey left, I found myself briefly alone with him, in a room with fine paintings by Irish artists. "I can understand that stuff," he said gruffly, "but I'm not sure what you're going on about. I know your uncles weren't very bright, if they didn't stay to reap the benefit of the new State. Ideals are grand, but they can be too costly. My father was from Swatragh, in Derry, and that's only a step above Fintona. We need people from the North down here; the problem's still not solved, and it's bound to come up again. And this Dublin lot don't know or care enough - it all seems far away to them. And that Cork lot know nothing except themselves."

Extract from The Pear Is Ripe - A Memoir by John Montague, published on Monday in hardback by Liberties Press. Limited slip-case edition also available