“I wondered if it was the alcohol that was giving me the facelift..”

A few years ago when I was visiting my dad in Ireland he took me to his friend's house for Sunday lunch. We arrived earlier than the other guests and were ushered into the sitting room for a pre-lunch drink. It was a cozy mismatched room with red walls covered in sun-bleached family photos and old paintings in gold frames.  A fire had been lit and was fighting to keep the draught of a cold June day out. It felt familiar, like a scene from my childhood, the nostalgia both intoxicating and bristling. I sat on a cushioned nook in between the heavy curtains that framed the old paned window and chatted with my dad while our host went to get us drinks. The next guests to arrive were a kind, recently retired couple from Canada who were on vacation in Ireland visiting friends. They glowed with health and fitness their vibrant sports outerwear looking awkward against the muted vintage of our surroundings. They had been invited to this lunch at the request of the 3rd and final couple to show up, *Henry and his wife *Fifi. Dad was not particularly fond of Henry and had tentatively warned me about his drinking problem, ironic coming from someone with their own life changing issues with alcohol.  We walked over together to say hello,

“ How did you manage to have such a beautiful daughter!?” Henry boomed at my father.

My dad usually quick to answer had no comment leaving me to laugh politely as I regressed to a lanky uncomfortable 14 year old. Already nursing a tumbler of whiskey he dived into telling me how he used to work in Kenya on a trout farm and now he lives in Ireland carving smoked salmon for his brother-in-law's company.  Dad had mentioned he was a good carver. 

“ Do you realize I’m almost 80 years old?” he barked.

 Wearing a dusty black blazer, over a maroon sweater and jeans he reminded me of old Irish men I would see on the side of the road, who spent their days leaning against the stone walls muttering to each other as the world drove by.  Dandruff peppered his shoulders while the whisky bleached his cheeks a vein-plump red. 

“Once an addict always an addict” he smiled over the lunch table, his wine glass filled to the brim with more neat amber liquid.  

During our conversation, I mentioned I had two young children back home in America. 

“What do you mean?” He demanded. “How old are you?” 

“I’m 46!”  

“No you’re not!” he countered like a colonel to his junior, “You can’t be much older than your twenties!”  I wondered if it was the alcohol or his bottle-top glasses that were giving me the facelift. 

As a child growing up in England, he had been sent to boarding school and got expelled, rebelling against a system that he said, was set up to educate the young of the British Empire.

“God awful places,” he growled as he bent into this glass.

Turning his back on The Mother Land, Henry traveled the world in his twenties making his living playing music. He was a blues guitar player.  During his adventures, he had been given a guitar by Keith Richards, opened for Chuck Berry, and chatted with Hendrix.  Watching the Doors play live in San Fransico he said Jim Morrison had the most amazing singing voice he’d ever heard.

Like many alcoholics, Henry housed a cruel streak wrapped up in humor.

“ Don’t sit me anywhere near my wife!” He bellowed when the host was seating us.   

“ Oh look I’m next to the prettiest girl in the room”  he declared to the table as he took his place next to me, his wife sitting opposite. I smiled at her, my toes pulling at my shoes.

Later he told me the story of how he and his wife met. He had gone to work for her husband as the groundsman. He and Fifi fell in love and ran away together.   

“She’s cool,” he said. 

I thawed a little. 

As the meal progressed he proudly told me that unlike other people these days he is not saddled with any debt and he doesn’t have a mortgage.

“…another rebellion against the system!” he slurred. 

“So do you rent then?” I asked

“Oh no!” he said, “both me and my wife have money, family money!”

Ah! That kind of rebellion, I thought.

As the meal ended, coffee and pudding were brought out. I excused myself to use the bathroom. There was an old loo with the cistern high up on the wall behind it, a long chain for flushing. A slow whirlpool pushed the loo paper around the bowl instead of down. I waited patiently for the trickling water to fill again. When I came back to the dining room Henry was asleep, his arms and legs crossed, head bobbing, glass empty.

*name has been changed.