'OF COURSE," the old man goes, loud enough for the entire Horseshoe Bor to hear, "what you've been reading over the last few days is only half the story, writes ROSS O'CARROLL-KELLY
“There’s a lot more to it than that – oh, that famous night of September 17 in the year 2008. A lot more. But you can torture me. You can electrocute me. You can – what’s this these CIA chaps do – watersports? You can give me the full treatment and still my lips will remain sealed – for Charles O’Carroll-Kelly is a man of his word!”
People go back to their drinks and their conversations, which kills him, of course. He hates not being the centre of attention.
“There was a knock on the front door,” he goes. Again, it’s up in the Fred Elliot decibel range.
“The time was 1am. At first, I thought it was Ross here – thought he’d met another nice girl in one of these, quote-unquote, nightclubs, that he likes to go to and was looking for a bed for the night, as was often his wont. “Imagine my surprise when I opened the door to see Brian Lenihan standing there. Brian Lenihan! As I live! Like Banquo’s bloody ghost!
“I had met the Minister many times and I knew he respected my views on all matters financial. Of course, he remembered me from when I was a member of the Legs of Lower Leeson Street school of economics, which Hennessy and I set up as a rival to the Doheny’s crowd.
“Brian was one of several young bucks who listened, with rapt attention and no little awe, as my solicitor and long-suffering golf partner and I held forth on the great issues of the day.
“Now, he told me in a hushed tone, he needed my help. I took him down to the kitchen. I noticed that he was nervous and fidgety. His suit looked like he’d slept in it. He had bags under his eyes and his tie was undone.
“He also stank of garlic, for which he apologised. He said he’d just come from McWilliams’s place, where he’d been given a cup of – can you believe it? – instant coffee. The garlic was to take the taste out of his mouth.
“‘I told McWilliams some old guff about it giving me strength and keeping me healthy and alert,’ he said, ‘so as not to hurt his feelings.’
“Then his eyes took on a sad, distant look. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I thought freeze-dried coffee crystals had become a Third World thing. I suppose it’s another sign of how much trouble we’re in . . .’
“Of course, I could understand the chap acting like he was – the financial world was collapsing around his ears. The Irish banks were running out of money fast.
“We sat at the kitchen table, and he leaned in close to me. In a hoarse voice, almost whispering, he said: ‘What would you do?’ “Well, I had troubles of my own, of course. Given the perilous state of the nation’s finances, I was having to seriously rethink my plans to repatriate the €48m that I hid in Andorra during the boom years, through a series of business fronts, including my cheesemongers in the Merrion Shopping Centre.
“But if there’s one thing that Charles O’Carroll-Kelly is famous for, it’s putting the national interest first. So I took a piece of kitchen roll and, on the back, I began to, very patriotically, sketch out a plan to save Ireland’s economy.
“The important thing, I said, was to avoid the kind of panic that would lead to a bank run. Most of our senior bank management, they’re great guys, really terrific – I should know, I played rugby with enough of them – but you wouldn’t trust them hold your ice cream cone while you tied your shoelace.
“It’s vital, I told him – I’d even say mandatory – that the public never finds out that these chaps were essentially taking depositors’ money and putting it on the City’s equivalent of a dead cert in the 3.30 at Punchestown – so keep emphasising the international dimension to this crisis . . .
“It was almost 3am when there was another knock on the front door. Who could that be? I thought. When I opened it, there, stood in front of me, was Mary Coughlan, whom I knew well from the famous tent in Galway. ‘Hello,’ says she.
“I’ve airbrushed out the expletives – this is a public bar, after all.
“She said she needed my help. She, too, had bags under her eyes. She also, I noticed, had bags at her feet – two black bin-liners, which were stuffed with €50 notes. Her life savings, as it turns out, which she’d withdrawn from the bank that very afternoon. ‘Do you still have that walk-in safe?’ she asked.
“I said yes – but it was no thanks to those Criminal Assets chaps. They wanted to dynamite it, even though I gave them the combination. One, nine, eight, two – year of the famous Triple Crown. Ollie and Slats and what-not.
“‘Yeah, whatever,’ she says, pushing past me into the hallway. ‘Look, this is only for a short while. I wouldn’t trust them fooken banks to find their arse in the bath.’ I told her to fire away. She stopped midway up the stairs.
“‘Is that Lenihan’s car outside?’ she asked. I said it was. ‘Don’t tell him I’m here,’ she said. I told her my lips were sealed.
“I went back to the kitchen. Brian asked me who it was and I told him it was Mary Coughlan. He said he hoped I didn’t tell her that he was here. I told him my word was my bond.
“Then I returned to my ministrations with the pen and the kitchen roll. Oh, the feeling of power. I was suddenly transported back to that basement wine bar, back in the day, as I sketched out a remedy for a country hovering over the, inverted commas, precipice. Except this time it would become policy.
“Within an hour, I had drawn up what would soon be unveiled as the bank guarantee scheme. Then I made a pot of plunger coffee. ‘None of the Nasa stuff you get around at McWilliams’s place,’ Brian commented, rather acerbically, I thought - as we sat and watched the sun come up.
“It was shortly before 7am when there was a third knock on the door. I went outside and opened it again. Who was it? Brian Cowen. As true as I’m still – barely – standing here. Another member of the Cabinet!
Of course, by now, I was running out of rooms in which to put them. The Taoiseach leaned in and, in a voice barely audible, said, ‘I need your help . . .’ ”
