“Read it to me,” he said.
Miss Ambrosia stood up and cleared her throat, as if she was preparing for an audition, and read aloud from her notebook.
“The Minister and I have been married for more than thirty years and in all that time I have never had any occasion to question his loyalty, his deeply felt Catholicism or his abiding love for women. The Minister has always been in thrall to the female form.”
“Ah for Christ’s sake,” he said, storming over to the window, noticing the gathered crowd below on the street and stepping away again before they could spot him. “You can’t say that, you stupid bitch. You make me sound like I’m a philanderer. Like I can’t keep it in my pants.”
“Well, you can’t,” said Mr. Denby-Denby. “And don’t call Miss Ambrosia names, do you hear me? I won’t put up with it.”
“Shut up, you,” said the Minister.
“In all that time,” continued Miss Ambrosia, editing herself as she read, “I have never had occasion to question his loyalty or his manhood.”
“Jesus, that’s even worse. Do you even know what a manhood is? I’d say you do by the cut of you.”
“Well, that’s a bit rich,” said Miss Ambrosia, sitting down again. “At least I don’t blow little boys in motorcars.”
“I didn’t blow anyone!” he roared. “If anyone was getting blown it was me. Although, of course, it wasn’t me anyway, as it never happened.”
“That’s a great quote,” said Mr. Denby-Denby. “We should definitely put that into the press release. I don’t blow teenage boys. They blow me.”
“Is there anyone around here who can write?” asked the Minister, looking from one of us to the other and ignoring this last remark. “This is supposed to be the Department of Education, isn’t it? Does anyone in here actually have one?”
“Minister,” said Miss Joyce, using the tone she always employed when she was trying to calm a situation. I suspected it had been used many times over the decades that she had worked there. “Tell us what you want us to do and we will do it. That’s our job, after all. But we need you to provide guidance. That, after all, is your job.”
“Right,” he said, momentarily appeased and sitting down at the table in the center of the room before standing up again like a man with a bad case of piles. “First things first. I want the Garda who arrested me to be arrested and fired immediately from the force. No appeals, no holidays owing, no pension. Get on to Lenihan in Justice and tell him I want it done before lunchtime.”
“But on what charge?” she asked.
“The unlawful detainment of a cabinet minister,” he said, his face red now with fury. “And I want everyone who works in Pearse Street Garda Station to be put on suspension until we find out who leaked it to the press.”
“Minister, the Minister for Justice doesn’t answer to the Minister for Education,” she said quietly. “You can’t tell him to do anything.”
“Brian will do whatever I ask him to do. We go back a long way, the pair of us. He’ll stand by me, no problem.”
“I’m not sure that’s true,” she said. “In fact, the first communication I received this morning was from my opposite number in Justice who made it clear that Mr. Lenihan would not be available to take any of your calls.”
“That bloody bastard!” he shouted, knocking a file off my desk and sending about three hundred pages of departmental memos flying across the floor. “Then you’re to go over there and do it in person, do you hear me? Tell him that I have enough dirt to bury him if he doesn’t do as I ask.”
“I can’t do that, sir,” she insisted. “It’s against all protocol. And as a member of the civil service I certainly cannot be party to any suggestions of blackmail from one cabinet member to another.”
“I don’t give a fuck about your bloody protocol, do you hear me? You’ll do what I tell you or you’ll be gone by the end of the day too. And this is the line that I want put out there: the boy in the car was simply the son of an old friend who had fallen on some difficult times. I ran into him by chance, offered him a lift home and pulled over onto Winetavern Street to discuss the possibility of his getting a job here as a waiter in Leinster House. While we were talking, he dropped his cigarette, it fell to the floor and he simply bent over to retrieve it before the whole car could go up in flames. If anything, he was performing a heroic action and should be commended for it.”
“And as he did so,” said Mr. Denby-Denby, “your belt fell open, your trousers fell down, his did too, and somehow your cock landed halfway down his throat. Makes perfect sense. I can’t see how anyone would question an explanation like that.”
“You. Out,” said the Minister, pointing at Mr. Denby-Denby and clicking his fingers. “Get out, do you hear me? You’re fired.”
“You can’t fire me,” replied Mr. Denby-Denby, standing up with great dignity and folding his newspaper under his arm. “I’m a civil servant. I’m here for life, God help me. But I’ll go for a cup of tea and a slice and leave you to figure out how to get away with it, because I honestly can’t be bothered to listen to anymore of this nonsense. But let’s face it, lovey, of the two of us I’m the only one who’ll still have a job at the end of the day.”
The Minister watched him leave and I thought there was a chance that he might leap on top of him and bash his head against the floor but he had been struck speechless. I guessed that it had been a long time since anyone had spoken to him in this fashion. Miss Ambrosia and I looked at each other and we couldn’t help it, we bit our lips, trying not to laugh out loud.
“One word from either of you,” said the Minister, pointing at us now, and we scampered back behind our desks and kept our heads down.
“Minister,” said Miss Joyce calmly, ushering him back toward the table at the center of the room. “We can issue any press release that you like, we can say anything that you want us to say, but the key thing right now is that you come across to the electorate as contrite and don’t make yourself seem anymore ridiculous than you already have. It’s your political advisor who should be telling you this anyway, not me.”
“I beg your pardon?” he said, astonished by her impudence.
“You heard me, sir. No one is going to believe the preposterous tale that you just told. No one with any brains in their head anyway, so I suppose some of your colleagues might fall for it. But I promise you the Taoiseach will have you horsewhipped out of the chamber if you even try to take that line in there. And is that what you want? To ruin your political career forever? The public will forgive and forget, in time, but Mr. Lemass never will. If you’re to have any hope of a comeback in the future, then the trick is to go now before you’re pushed. Believe me, you’ll thank me for this in the long run.”