Miscellaneous

“THE CHARLES HAUGHEY I KNEW”

My favourite memory of Charles J. Haughey? Probably of him hanging from the monkey bars in the playground in Donneycarney singing the theme from the Lone Ranger. It was 1982, and Haughey was facing a motion of no confidence from the parliamentary party. It’s hard to imagine any Irish leader since Parnell preparing for a major political battle in such a fashion.

But then Charlie was never ordinary. Even on our first day at school together he stood out from the other boys, decked out (as he was) in the dazzling capote de paseo of a Basque Country matador.

In the hothouse atmosphere of St. Joseph’s C.B.S., Charlie made an instant splash. He and his pals Donagh O’Malley and Brian “Freckles” Lenehan were dubbed the “boys in mohair shorts”. They were a new breed of schoolboy – intelligent, flamboyant and openly contemptuous of homework. And their exploits became the stuff of legend. They were, for example, the first to use the phrase “Its all fun and games until someone loses an eye” in the modern, ironic sense. They were heavily criticised at the time, but that usage has since become standard.

Of the three, Charlie was always the star. He was a boy unlike any other – one people either loved or hated, but one to whom animals remained curiously indifferent.

To be sure, there was always a dark side to his personality. At Mass, he was invariably the first to offer you the sign of peace. But when you shook his hand you’d invariably find it covered in wads of thick green phlegm. Some attribute his strained relationship with Margaret Thatcher to such a handshake at a British-Irish Summit, although that was formally denied on both sides.

During school holidays, Haughey and I worked as window cleaners to make extra pocket money. We were hired by a Mr Flanagan for the princely sum of two and six pence a week. That later rose to four and eleven pence a week and, later again, to three deutschmarks and a set of novelty paper hats. The older window cleaners were suspicious of Charlie. They resented his habit of scrubbing glass in concentric circles (instead of the more traditional “up-and-down” method). But it earned him a reputation as a modernizer, and that brought him to the attention of local party bosses.

We didn’t see as much of Charlie after he entered the Dail. But for a while, of course, it seemed he could do no wrong. Then came the Arms Trial. I remember Mr Flanagan telling Charlie that his old window cleaning job was still there if he ever wanted it back. But Charlie declined. He said that window cleaning might be construed as a step down, after having been Minister for Finance.

He did, however, briefly take on a paper round in this period.

What’s often overlooked in the coverage since his death is the great love Haughey had for penny sweets. If you met him he’d always ask “Do you have any penny sweets? Can you get me any penny sweets?” As his star rose again in the late 1970s, he took to carrying bags of penny sweets around with him wherever he went. No one ever asked where all these penny sweets were coming from. That was our naivety, I suppose.

Our paths did cross occasionally in later years, and he always made a point of asking after my wife Eileen and our children. Actually, Eileen and the kids died in a house fire many years previously – as Charlie knew well. But that was his sense of humour for you. I suppose you could say the old devilment never left him.

A month after his death, it’s still hard to believe that he’s gone. Charlie had always said he’d bury us all, and on our last meeting I paid him a substantial deposit.

Charlie… Boss… we will not see your like again!