portrait of a woman of character

Hoddlebun has prevailed upon me to store more of her luggage.
She rang me as the sun was going down over the heartland of South Kildare.
I took her call watching from the big bay window at the chateau, as the light of dusk sent a scattering of shadows through the garden of my father.
I said no at first.
But the Dad was listening to the conversation and when I'd hung up, he told me I was being hard.
So I relented.
Folks, at the moment there are sixteen assorted Hodders suitcases, clothes bags and book boxes, living in the west wing of the Chateau de Healy.
Two extra suitcases will be joining them tomorrow.
Big ones.
When the Mammy arrived home tonight she was quite bemused by the situation.
"Lucky your father was here," said the Mammy. "If you'd asked me, I'd have told you to tell her to f--- off."
Ah yes.
The mot juste.
She wasn't finished.
"You know son," opined the lady known as Lil, "you're going to be driving up and down to Dublin with that girl's luggage for the rest of your life."
It was like a gypsy curse.
Ring of truth and all that.
Later tonight Hoddlebun phoned again.
We had a vintage exchange which I must try recording for posterity.
Well, if not for posterity, at least for the pyschiatrists.
Someday they're going to want to figure out what made me flip.
Seriously though.
Anyhoo.
The subject of our late night conversation was not suitcases.
It was a mystical experience that the Bun thinks she's had.
She began: "Jamie, do you remember when I saved that guy's life? The ninety year old guy in the street?"
I caught my breath.
"What?" I said sharpish.
She repeated her question.
I ventured something like: "Oh, you mean the guy you sat with for five minutes after he tripped outside Trinity College."
Hod said: "Yes, the guy whose life I saved."
I said: "Are you still insisting you saved his life?"
She said: "Yes, he was haemorrhaging in the street."
Somewhat wearily I intoned: "What does haemorrhaging mean?"
She said: "It means bleeding."
I said: "So he'd fallen over and he had a cut."
Hoddlebun sighed.
With measured grace she insisted: "No, it wasn't just a cut. He was haemorrhaging badly from his face."
I asked: "What part of his face?"
She said: "His nose."
I said: "So he had a bleeding nose."
My big haired friend sighed deeply. Apparently I was testing her patience.
She said: "I really did save his life. He was haemorrhaging from the face and he had a fractured skull."
An incredulous James: "He had what?"
A persistent Hodders: "He had a bone broken in his skull."
With modest foreboding I enquired: "What bone?"
She said: "His nose."
There was one of those special little silences which often occur in my conversations with Calamity Annie.
Finally I spoke.
My voice was what Scottish psychoanalysts call a wee bit strangulated.
I said: "So he'd fallen over and broken his nose and you sat with him for five minutes."
Annie shushed me decisively.
"Just listen to the story," she instructed. "Anyway, after the ambulance took him to hospital, I kept in touch for years. We became friends."
Rather churlishly the mighty Heelers once more chose to interrupt this paean to selfless humanitarianism.
"What do you mean you kept in touch?" quoth I.
"I used to send him text messages," sayeth she.
"When?" quoth I.
"At Christmas," sayeth she.
"How many Christmasses did you send him a text message?" quoth I.
"Four," shot back the Bun without hesitation.
"And they weren't just those circular Happy Xmas text messages that you send to everybody whose number is stored in your phone?" quoth I.
"No," cried Bunford a tad unconvincingly.
You have to hand it to her bold readers.
She's good under cross examination.
Doesn't even pause for breath.
The culmination of her story, if I understood it correctly, went as follows.
She'd kept in touch with the guy. Then one day his daughter rang to say he'd passed away with pneumonia. Hodders had been studying for her medical exams which were taking place the next day. That night she decided to focus on pneumonia and the lungs.
"And pneumonia and the lungs came up," Hodders proclaimed triumphantly. "The whole exam was full of them. I think it was the guy's way of saying thank you to me."
There was another of our special little silences.
When I spoke it was through gently grated teeth.
"Annie," I said, "you're telling me you think the guy was in heaven tipping you off that pneumonia and lungs would come up in the medical exam? You think he inspired his daughter to call you because he knew when you heard about his fatal pneumonia you'd put two and two together and study lungs? Do you think he was in some way responsible for setting the exam? Do you think he actually picked that time of year to die to say thank you as well?"
Our conversation ended soon after that.
Do I sound unkind in this account gentle travellers of the internet?
I admit it.
William Somerset Maugham would have written the same story and found a way to make himself likeable.
But I have been so roundly Bunned over the years that I can no longer cloak my persona, even my literary persona, in the habilements of affability.
I have supped full with Hodders.
Do not judge me too harshly.
I'm telling you.
The greatest saint in heaven would be rendered a bitter atheist after five minutes listening to Hodders' spiritual stories.
I have no idea if she's delusional, fantasistic or just plain nuts.
Alright, I must still admit the more humbling, the more shocking possibility.
If she really is God's favourite, (and sometimes he picks the ones we'd least expect), if she's God's favourite I tell you, then everything she said, the whole insane caboodle, could...
all...
be...
true...