Like many others, I am left wrestling with the contradiction that was Charles J, writes Miriam Lord
Dammit, he's dead. Saw it coming, but it's still hard to take. And with a heavy heart, I have to write something about Charlie.
Some say he was mad, some say he was bad, but he was wonderful to know.
The canonisation has already begun. And yet, when CJH is finally laid to rest, they'll need maple-sprung turf on his grave to cope with the frenzy of dancing.
My dancing is long done. We danced - the scary statesman with the mischievous twinkle and the northside young wan with the cheeky pen - the set-piece routines of reporter and quarry. Neither of us in any danger: he didn't mind being sent up and I loved doing it.
Probably, because we were both winning on the deal; maybe, because we liked each other.
Then he waltzed into a tribunal chamber and I stepped out in disgust. As if I never knew Charlie's beguiling moves disguised feet of clay.
It's easy to love and just as easy to loathe, the bit in between is where it gets complicated. Today, a lot of people will be lining out happily on both sides. One suspects an awful lot more will be wrestling with the contradiction that was Charles J.
Count me among them. I'll always have a soft spot for Charles J Haughey.
He'll be lying in State in Donnycarney church. Stand by for a monumental collision of top brass and old biddies in Charlie country.
As for the lying in State part, he was no stranger to lying and he did the State some service.
This final scenario is so, so Charlie Haughey. He bags the big funeral, the due recognition and the grand exit, but not in the Pro-Cathedral, where ordinary leaders might choose their final send off. It had to be Donnycarney.
"I love being among my people," he was fond of saying. He'll be among his people right enough in Donnycarney. Only problem is, who'll provide the guard of honour?
A phalanx of pensioners, forever grateful for the Christmas turkey when times were hard, lining up and forming an arch of outstretched bus passes? Or a K-Clubhouse of millionaires, fashioning a discreet tunnel from large cheques before suffering inexplicable memory loss? It'll have to be a job for the Army.
Until recently, I lived down the road from Donnycarney church. My neighbour, Mrs Byrne - she's dead now - chided me once for writing bad things about "our Charlie".
She reared a large family in a small house and had known the bad times as well as the good. My protests that Charlie, maybe, had feathered his own nest at her expense fell on deaf ears.
She recalled his Ma, "a great seamstress", cutting down and redoing a pair of his father's old trousers so Charlie had something decent to wear when he started university. She knew how hard young Haughey had it and didn't begrudge him a thing.
That story came to mind recently when listening on radio to former taoiseach Garret FitzGerald, on the occasion of his 80th birthday.
As he spoke of the south Co Dublin social whirl, and of setting the world to rights at Saturday lunches in Dún Laoghaire yacht club, I couldn't get that image of Charlie Haughey and the hand-me-down trousers out of my mind.
It excuses nothing, but it explains a lot.
There were many sides to Haughey. He could be nasty and breathtakingly rude - I never experienced that. He cultivated sycophantic friends. He was a politician on the take. He cheated on his wife. He was also charming and generous and very funny.
Hugely gifted and a man whose enduring legacy will, in the shake- out, be about a lot more than Charvet shirts, Le Coq Hardi and generous "gifts" from rich well-wishers.
Charlie was at the height of his power, well settled into his Napoleon complex, when I wandered into his orbit wielding a notebook and a youthful ignorance of his fearsome reputation.
It didn't take long to see the effect he had on people. His entourage twittered and trembled around him in a state of nervous obeisance. They spoke of him in hushed tones. Most of his Fianna Fáil backbenchers did the same. Those who despised him stashed vengeance in the long grass.
The frantic scenes before he arrived at an official function verged on the comical. As taoiseach, he would sweep in, bang on time, schmoozing the welcoming committee lined up to greet him.
He worked a room like a pro, moving steadily through the crowd, shaking hands, leaning in slightly, making vital eye contact. People were charmed (except those who felt his much-vaunted charisma was more reptilian than rakish).
Haughey was secure then, after his years in the wilderness and the years fighting to get to the top. The 80s were a time for consolidation, for building up his statesman image and leaving the proper sort of impression behind for posterity.
His vanity, like his appetite for handouts, knew no bounds. Journalists who asked hard questions were dismissed with a cutting remark or simply ignored.
How did he get away with it? Probably because a lot of reporters saw it as a badge of honour to be given a rocket by Charlie Haughey and the story of how it happened always got richer in the telling. I can't remember the first time I met CJH, but I know I poked fun at him the following day. In the following years, he was always available for a few lines.
For me, the famous malevolent glare was more an avuncular glint.
Sometimes, I wondered if, deep down, he couldn't believe his own luck. He was mad to show off his wealth. In Kerry, invitations to join the party on the Celtic Mist were always extended and the best of wine flowed.
There was the obligatory tour, not to mention the obligatory leer, for visiting female hacks when the cabin housing his enormous bed was displayed. He was such an old charmer, such a desperate old goat, it was impossible to take offence.
When I won my first media award, a letter arrived at the office. The address was clumsily typed by an inexperienced hand; the printed "Abbeville" on the back of the envelope betraying the typist.
"Miriam, A hundred thousand congratulations," it began. "What with the All-Ireland and now the National Media Award, our cup overflows. As I feel very much part of it all, I would suggest that a quiet celebratory luncheon a deux might be appropriate?" It was signed "Charles J." and followed on by a bottle of champagne and a huge bouquet of flowers.
I never took him up on the offer.
Occasional notes charting the progress of my career followed. By now he was "Charlie." Not having a car, he often offered me a lift home if he was on his way back to Kinsealy.
On a long journey from Listowel, we stopped at Matt the Threshers for a mid-morning snack. He ordered champagne and revelled in the mini-commotion this caused in the bar. Ostentatiously pouring, Charlie purred: "I love being among my people." What affectation. Except, as was so often the case during our exchanges, it was said with a self-deprecatory glint.
That look that seemed to say "Isn't this gas, but look, they're all swallowing it."
As we neared my house in Dublin, we passed Donnycarney church. "My mother built that church," he declared, with typical modesty. Mère Haughey, it appeared, had been as adept with a trowel as she was with the sewing needle.
Then the tribunal and the day when he appeared in the box and asked people to take him for a fool. Nobody did. To an accompaniment of snorts and sniggers, he protested he didn't have "a lavish lifestyle."
Yacht, offshore island, north Dublin mansion notwithstanding, my mind went back to a sunny Sunday afternoon a few years earlier in Abbeville, when he invited me in to join his friends.
First, the obligatory tour, which just happened to go through a cold, round room in the basement. "We're restoring the dairy," he declared loftily. Then, seeing my eyes fall on the numerous boxes of empty champagne bottles, he murmured with no small amount of pride, "we had a little party last night".
His risible response to the Moriarty tribunal is best summedup in this magnificent answer: "Well, I think it all goes back to the fact I know nothing . . . and I am sure I am right in my recollection that I know nothing."
Dingle Pier a few years ago, and Charlie is too frail now to start the annual regatta by firing a shotgun from a launch out at sea. His presence still causes a stir among the adults. Haughey walks with his head held high, looking around the crowd with the air of a man who knows he is somebody. And he is, but to a dwindling audience.
"He used to be the taoiseach" a mother explains to her child.
That he was, and I was mad about him. I'll be in Donnycarney to say goodbye.