The Man Upstairs

                         THE MAN UPSTAIRS

Patricia divorced me last month. She said I was a wastrel and was not good enough in bed to compensate. I needed money and I needed a holiday. I could just about afford Ireland. A mate who ran pubs in Central London came from a small place in County Limerick; I’d been there a few times and decided to revisit, reckoning on a bit of judicious gambling. An oxymoron perhaps- Patricia would have dispensed with the oxy-.

It was a sleepy Irish town where the pubs outnumbered the combined total of other businesses. The best two were invisible to the naked eye. For the first evening (I could only afford two) I chose Dolores’s. I was something of a pedant, though louche in other matters, and I silently congratulated the Irish for their continued correct use of the apostrophe. To gain admittance you knocked on a door which when answered gave on to what appeared to be an old-fashioned grocer’s though it was mighty low on stock. Behind this shell lay the bar. Dolores with her twin brother Desmond ran it and they’d tell you that their total age was well in excess of 100. They did tend to talk of themselves as an indivisible pairing.

Oh it was dark in Dolores’s. Dark twenty-four hours a day. The place had the vaguest of opening hours and was generally at its best in the small hours though that depended on which of the two local officers of the law was on duty. There was the nice one known as Darling Man gardai who turned a blind eye to discrepancies, and the nasty one known as Big Bollocks gardai and with him you had to shut at the proper time. Next door was a garlic chippie which moulded its closing time to Dolores and which you could smell from way up the street. It was a one street town.

Dolores greeted me like the old friend I was.

“Would you be having a Guinness with me then, Charlie?”

“Now why would I wanting to throw liquid Marmite down my throat?”

We went through this routine every time.

“A Smithwicks if you please”.

Taking my first gamble there. Dolores didn’t get new bottles of the pale ale that regularly, and once it had tasted particularly rancid. On investigation it carried a best before of two years prior.

My friend in London had told him that Dolores had a new customer who seemed good on the horses and that he was in most nights. There was a fellow with a pork pie hat and an old cardigan down the bar and we nodded to each other in a non-committal sort of way.

“If it’s Galway you’re interested in he’s your man He’s a good man.” said Dolores.

Galway races. Famous the world over. Certainly nothing special as far as the quality of horse was concerned but a gambler’s paradise. I’d been there one year and the winner of the first race had opened at 20-1. Everyone in the know threw money at it so that it started at 11-8 and hosed up. They’d made their money early, the shrewdies, and could now enjoy another five days of fun. I sidled up to the pork pie.

“You’re not going to Galway yourself then?” he asked.

No I was not. At least not until I’d made some sort of little killing of my own. I was pretty boracic. Just a bit of stake money left. Pork pie provided a name for the following day. It ran unplaced. That rather did it for me.

“Never mind”, said Dolores when I popped in the following afternoon “There’s always tonight”.

“But I’m catching the plane. There’s a taxi due in half an hour.”

“I didn’t know you were going so soon.”. She looked genuinely mortified.

The cab arrived.

“Up here for a spot of fishing is it?”

“Only metaphorically” I said. I wasn’t in the mood for conversation.

But he was a friendly sort of chap, that sort of loose, relaxed type of Irishman that makes for good company.

“You know Dolores well?”

“Fairly. I was actually there for a few tips.”

“I understand. Geraghty was it you were after?”

“Is he the fellow in the pork pie hat?”

“He’s just the go between. Geraghty’s upstairs. He’s the best tipster I’ve ever known. He seems to have people in every yard from Willie Mullins to the local farmer. Yet he never goes anywhere. Just sits there in Dolores with a phone, a computer and a copy of the Racing Post.”

“Well he didn’t do much for me.”

“You never got to him. Pork Pie deals with the first punt himself. If he likes the look of you he passes you on to Geraghty and takes a payment for himself.”

“Dolores could have told me that.”

“Seems you made rather a quick getaway. You’re liked round here because you’re a friend of Michael’s”

My friend in London.

“Now look I’m going to give you Geraghty’s card.”

With one hand barely on the wheel the cabbie produced a cheap business card from his breast pocket. “Better Geraghty” it read “Every one you get I play too”.

“What’s that mean?”

“Geraghty’s not just a tipster. He actually bets himself on every tip he gives out. He rings his bookmaker in your presence and places his own bet. I’ve known him give the last four numbers of his bank card and show you it at the same time. Of course he’s got his thumb over the rest.”

“How very bizarre”

We all have our character quirks- Lord knows I’ve got a few. And I couldn’t resist a further bit of pedantry.

“That should be Bettor Geraghty you know, with an O”

The cabbie smiled.

“If I’d had a piping hot dinner for every passenger who’s pointed that out I’d have scalded me tongue long ago” he said.

Grammar and spelling are not lost arts in Ireland as they are on the adjacent island. Maybe something to do with the Christian Brothers. He continued.

“Geraghty checked that in Webster’s. The alternative spelling is permissible. It’s in case his priest sees it. So he says.”

“So it’s when Pork Pie is going to the pissoir. He’s really going to Geraghty upstairs.”

“Shit” It was all I could think of saying.

“Now would you be wanting me to make a U-turn.?”

It was tempting. I should’ve known Better.