The Second Mister (3 page)

D
uring
the distant days of my brathood, I greatly admired the songs of Elvis Aaron Presley. Elvis was born on the 8
th
of January 1935, several years after Kruger Kavanagh had returned to Dunquin from his American exile. Is there a connection between these two great men ? Yes, but only a very minor one, as I will presently demonstrate.

Kruger emigrated firstly to Springfield, Massachusetts, I think shortly before the outbreak of the First World War. During his time abroad, according to his own telling, he got to know everyone of importance in the U.S., but scarcely anyone else. He had some connection with a theatre company in New York and is believed to have at least visited Hollywood. These facts provided him with an impressive corpus of reminiscences which he made good use of after
his return home in the late Twenties.

He established a guest house in Dunquin where for forty or fifty years he played host to the great, the good and the not so good. As one of the latter, I first stayed with him in June 1961. On my second evening there, a Rolls Royce came over the hill from the direction of Ballyferriter. This was most unusual as the preferred mode of transport in
West Kerry at that time was the Raleigh bike rather than
the Rolls Royce. An elderly English couple got out and in
dicated to Kruger that they would like to stay the night. A
tsunami of charm poured forth from our mutual host.

The way into the guesthouse was through the bar which had a plain concrete floor and two seats from a bus of great antiquity. These were provided for those who, as the night went on, were losing their struggle with the perpendicular. There was a large hole in one wall from which Kruger dispensed considerable quantities of wisdom and porter. When the English lady saw the condition of the bar she came back out and said:

“We can’t stay here Mr.Kavanagh, we’re used to staying in Grade A hotels
”
.

Kruger’s face reddened as he planted his two strong hands firmly on his hips. He stayed silent for about ten seconds ( a record for Kruger ). He then looked his escaping guest straight in the eye and replied:

“Madam, I have been in every hotel from New York to San Francisco and my establishment is equal to any of them ….”.

Then came the bit of pure genius:

“…and when I say New York to San Francisco, I mean travelling by way of Suez”.

The guest house had doubled as a shebeen for many years.
It was granted a liquor licence in the late Fifties, but only after a celebrated court case. Brendan Behan was a regular visitor to Kruger’s and he celebrated the event with a poem in the Irish Times. This began with the noted stanza:

“ ‘Tis a terrible thing to be breaking the law,
But ‘tis worse to be left with a thirst in your craw,
We’ll be decent and legal with pints in our paw
When we wet the new licence with Kruger”.

Kruger was the owner of a van which was known throughout West Kerry. It was very old but it did possess pneumatic tyres, although that might come as a great surprise to anyone who had travelled in it. It had to be driven with all the windows open as the exhaust came up through a hole in the floor, rather than being dispersed in a more conventional manner. There was also a small hole in the roof which had to be avoided in wet weather. Jokingly, I used to call the decrepit vehicle
“ An Spéar Van”.*
I think Kruger approved of the name, as I heard afterwards that he often used it himself. Needless to say, he claimed the sickly witticism as his own. I never did tell him that the first name that came into my mind was
“ An Sean Van Bhocht”.
**

Kruger started to drink glasses of port when he was in
his early sixties, something which was then unknown to
his wife.

The injunction
“ Na h-abair faic le Cáit”*
was generally issued as soon as we left Dingle for home
.
On one memorable afternoon he broke his journey back to Dunquin to visit the very elderly proprietor of small pub. The two men chatted amiably for about fifteen minutes. Unfortunately his host’s mind had started to fail him. Kruger stamped out of the bar with great indignation and little dignity after being asked:

“How are the people of Dunquin, and how is that old rascal Kruger Kavanagh?”

Kruger possessed a high intelligence and a truly enquiring mind. These qualities however never seemed to lead to anything other than a great charm which in turn never went anywhere else. He sometimes reminded me of the great Okavango river which instead of flowing to the sea goes inland and eventually evaporates without a trace. His
great ego, like all great egos, invited puncturing. Kerry then, as now, had a thriving population of low types and it was inevitable that sooner later some of these would put Kruger in their sights.

Kruger had hung on the dining room walls several inscribed photographs of celebrities he had known. The was a photograph of the then President which carried the message “
Do Kruger O’Caomhán
,
fear iontach. Eamon de Valera”.
**

There was a signed photograph of a celebrated star of the silent
screen and which described Kruger as
“ My greatest lover”.

Kruger was not at all religious: he frequently referred to
the newly de-canonized St.Philomena as “
The Reactor”
. His wife Cáit made up for him. No objection was raised when she came back one day from Dingle with a large picture of the Sacred Heart which she hung on the dining room wall. The holy icon was not remarked upon until one morning about a week later, when the guests came down to breakfast to find that during the night some impious hand had written on it:

“ To Kruger, with affection and respect.God.”

I must admit that I myself did not always forego opportunities to have fun at Kruger’s expense. One day, knowing exactly what the response was going to be, I asked Kruger:

“ Abair liom Kruger, an raibh aithne agat ar Elvis ?”
*

His eyes glazed over for a fraction of a second, and then gathering himself, he replied gently:

“ Cara mór a Phádraig, cara mór.”
**