UNDER THE INFLUENCE

Gluttony, Intemperance and Lust

I finish the meal in self-disgust, full of food, full of drink and worst of all, full of guilt.  Yet again, I’ve overindulged, and now it's too late.

The evening had begun well enough.  I’d returned in good time to the Springfort Country House Hotel near the delightfully named village of Old Twopothouse.  There was time to shower and change into casual clothes before descending the old staircase for dinner.  The eldest son of the family who own the hotel greeted me and asked how my day had been in his heavy Irish brogue.  I ordered a large gin and tonic and sat down in a worn but comfortable armchair nicely positioned in front of a grand old fireplace with a crackling log fire.  I must have sat there for about half an hour before dinner, sipping the Gin & Tonic while staring at the fire’s glowing embers and reflecting upon the day.

It had been long, unusual, and, on the journey back to the hotel, somewhat melancholic.  Normally, when visiting our Mallow factory in the Irish Republic or our Girvan factory on the West coast of Scotland, I’m travelling with a team of engineers.  But I’m working alone on this trip, and it’s my fourth night away.

One of the owner’s daughters called me into dinner.  I crossed the polished wooden floors to the table, my shoes creating an echo around the high-ceilinged dining room, which, unusually, has curved walls at the corners.  I recall the painter Francis Bacon once lived in an Irish home with similar walls.  As I sat down at the beautifully laid table, complete with a pristine white tablecloth, the old oil paintings of long-dead noblemen seemed to be watching me.

I started the meal with pan-fried lamb kidneys in a mustard sauce.   That was an innocent enough beginning, although the mustard sauce was so intense it made me sneeze.  Having forgotten to bring a handkerchief and not wishing to spoil the equally pristine napkin, now laid across my lap, I had no choice but to pinch the paper napkin from under the little wicker basket of Irish soda bread to contain a series of increasingly violent sneezes.

For sure, my first mistake was ordering a bottle of Châteauneuf du Pape.  My second was agreeing to the side plate of chips, succumbing to that Irish restaurant habit of supplementing meals with chips.  As if the generous portion of beef bourguignon, with dauphinoise potatoes and steamed vegetables, carefully loaded onto the sizeable oval dinner plate, wasn't enough!  And the soda bread was completely unnecessary.

By the end of the main course, alcohol had undoubtably clouded my judgement.  Despite feeling stuffed, I ordered a dessert.  The amount of ice cream in the crispy brandy snap shell was gargantuan, but Piggy here ate the lot.  My final blunder was requesting an Irish coffee and, can you believe it, eating the three accompanying chocolates served with it.

Now, bloated and rather drunk, I'm slumped in the dining chair and contemplating my next move.  Through the dining room's large windows, I can see the sun has already set on this warm spring day, and dusk is now gathering.  I ought to get up and leave the table, but I've yet to finish this expensive bottle of wine.

There's no doubt about it, the company treat me well.  How did I land this job as Scientific & Technical Manager for two milk processing factories?  Sometimes, I feel like an imposter, but our departmental head seems to like me.  I wonder why?  I recall the previous incumbent of my role informing me over a social drink one evening last year that he was about to be promoted and wondered if I was interested in replacing him.  Surprising both of us, I said yes.  He must have reported this to the departmental head because, not long after, I was summoned to an interview.  To my amazement, I was offered the job on a provisional basis, subject to a satisfactory interview with each of the factory managers.

So, just before Christmas, I flew over to Cork via Dublin, hired a car, and drove north to our factory in Mallow, located on the N20 road to Limerick.  Here, in a noisy office with my predecessor alongside, I met the factory chieftain called Joe.  This tall and initially intimidating man sat back in his large office chair, legs apart, one hand manipulating his crotch, the other occasionally covering his mouth.  He spoke in a soft and quiet Cork accent, and at first, I couldn't hear or understand a word he said.  When he was briefly called out of the office, I turned to my predecessor and asked him what Joe had said.  "I haven't got a fucking clue mate", he retorted, raising my stress levels still further.

A clatter of plates jolt me from my reverie.  I notice the room is revolving slightly, the faces in the oil paintings drifting to the right.  The daughter is glancing in my direction, looking a little concerned.  I feel even more inebriated and a little nauseous.  Perhaps she’s noticed.  I close my eyes for a moment to focus on some sort of recovery.

Joe must have liked me.  We seemed to hit it off, once I could understand what he was saying.  Perhaps calling him ‘Sir’ helped.  I had wanted to show respect, particularly with me being English.  He must have phoned my new boss after the interview, giving his approval.  In contrast, Jim, the Scottish Factory Manager at Girvan, was far less intimidating and much easier to comprehend despite his rolling Ayrshire accent.  He too, apparently, gave me the thumbs up.

Within a few months, my first significant middle-management role was going really well.  I’d thoroughly researched the process for transforming milk, butter oil, sugar, and cocoa liquor into something called milk chocolate crumb, a key ingredient for making milk chocolate.  I had also implemented a long-delayed development project.  The team accountant, a likeable, heavy smoking and wig-wearing character, told me that the top man of our production unit was very impressed with me.  I felt proud to have succeeded in something worthwhile, especially after my personal crisis just a few years ago.

I open my eyes again.  Now I feel really sick, and my bladder is bursting.  I stand up, perhaps a little too abruptly, and composing myself, try to walk gracefully past the smiling daughter without swaying.  I thank her for an excellent meal and head straight for the ground floor toilet, hopefully just for a pee.  Standing at the urinals, a voice in my head says, “You absolute glutton.  You’ve zero restraint for self-indulgence”.  I agree.  It’s the story of my life.

On the spur of the moment, while attempting to zip up my flies, I decide to get some fresh air in the hotel gardens before it gets dark.  Leaving the large front entrance, I take a carefully controlled amble down the driveway, past the tall Cedars on the lawn.  The hotel grounds appear uncared for.  The borders are sparse, almost devoid of shrubs and flowers, neglected and unloved.

Early this morning, instead of going to the factory, I drove through the beautiful Irish countryside to Fermoy to meet the director of a Dairy Research Laboratory and inspect their facilities.  On the return journey, down sunlit and lonesome lanes, I had time to reflect on the visit.  But inevitably, as they frequently do these days, my thoughts drifted further back into the past. 

After a while, I stopped the car at a viewpoint and got out to peruse the landscape.  Despite being confident about the route back to the hotel, I felt utterly lost inside.  Lost and alone.  In truth, my outward self-assurance in the meeting this morning was an act; pure theatre.  Inwardly, I remain the exact opposite.  Frankly, I haven’t a clue who I really am anymore.  Is all of this just an act to hide my true character, the deceitful and callous me, even from myself?  The little boy and only child who started school so badly, who once wanted to be a fighter pilot, who married so young, who renovated an old bungalow he should never have bought, who left his wife for another woman.

There are the remnants of a rockery in the hotel grounds and a narrow path curving around it.  I stagger momentarily, regain my balance and divert down this dark byway.  I can hear a pigeon cooing in the trees.  The countryside feels so atmospheric, the twilight so loaded with history.  The English, my ancestors, let these people starve once.  Christ, how could they?  Small wonder they hated us and wanted independence.  Perhaps they still hate us, well, at least the Catholics in the north.  Could anyone ever forget such stone-hearted inhumanity?  Who was to blame?  But then, who readily confesses to their own guilt?  Do I?

When I drive the rental car from Cork airport through the city's northern suburbs, there is IRA graffiti daubed on the walls.  I hate those terrorists who murder our soldiers and bomb our citizens.  Perhaps revealing my own ignorant nationalism, I want Northern Ireland to remain with Britain.  I just do.  And yet, since working in the republic, I've come to respect, even love the Irish, and would never wish to offend them by mentioning such issues.  Nonetheless, it makes me feel duplicitous.  Deceit, it seems, comes easily to me.

The other week, while waiting for a colleague in a countryside pub, a man walked over from the bar to my table and placed a pint of Guinness in front of me.  He just smiled and walked silently back to a group of serious-looking men seated at a corner table.  What was that about?  Was it just an act of kindly welcome or to signal their acceptance of my English presence?  A declaration of tolerance or even forgiveness?  At least a truce?

Emerging from the gloomy shadows of the hotel grounds, I reach the road and the last remnants of light from the western sky.  I stop and clumsily lean back onto an old whitewashed wall adjoining a wrought iron gate.  My mind races in fluid flow, as it often does when I'm at that point of inebriation, when I'm under the influence.  I talk aloud to myself, unconcerned that someone may hear.  Anyway, why should anyone care?  Away from 'home', out here in the middle of nowhere, and deep in what is now a foreign country, I'm alone to contemplate and wallow in my own guilt.

It was much more than extramarital sex.  It was an overwhelming need to seek a more expansive experience, to get closer to someone, and engage in a deeper conversation, a skill my mistress and now my partner has in abundance.  But am I just making excuses for my lies and betrayal?  I ought to be under the influence of some rules for a moral and decent life, not those of gluttony, intemperance and lust.  I'm worse than those cruel English landowners.

Three years after leaving my wife, the hurt and the shock of my own actions are still raw.  At least, I can now admit that to myself.  Like my overindulgence this evening, I'm appalled at my lack of self-control and disgusted by my own behaviour.  Work, career, interests, and any hope for this nearly five-year-old relationship with my girlfriend must be put aside for one moment.  This moment.  Somehow, I have to arrest these guilt-laden and self-accusatory thoughts streaming through my head, bring some gravitas, some conclusion, and some finality.  I can then crystallise them into one psychological memorial to the wife I once had and bury it here in this remote place.

Birds sing in the gloaming.  I can hear cows mooing in nearby meadows.  A dog barks somewhere deep in the woods, its echo creating a sense of distance.  A car sweeps by, creating a swirl of dust and causing roadside grit to blast against the peeling white wall, infinitesimally eroding its surface.  I watch the car recede down the lane, the driver oblivious of me and the little dust storm he has just created.  The sound of his engine diminishes into the gathering darkness.

"Come on Son, it's time to walk back".
Who said that?  There is no one here.
But the voice is right.  The voice is sensible.  I choose to obey.
Unsteadily, I stand up straight and trudge slowly back to the hotel and to bed.

❏