I ask what he figured when Gavin and Guggi started coming around in makeup.

Bobby lets out a sigh, as if he's going to have to tell me some bad news for my own good. "Now, Gavin's a very nice fella," he says. "I'm very fond of Gavin. When I knew them they were in this Virgin whatever-the-hell-they-were-called. They used to come down. I remem­ber once Gavin came down in a dress! I almost gave him a kick in the arse. And on another occasion Guggi showed up at the door with lipstick on and I said to him, 'Derek, your mouth is bleeding!' I must admit I frowned very much on the association. I'm very old-fashioned in that respect."

Gavin told me that the day he went to the Hewson house in his dress Bobby answered the door, looked at him with disgust, and said, "I'm opening the door to you now, but I never will again! Coming to get my boy looking like that!"

You're a Catholic, I say to Mr. Hewson, but Bono was raised Protes­tant.

"I was Roman Catholic and my wife was Church of Ireland," he explains. "Which in those days was unusual, it wasn't readily accepted. Both the boys were brought up as Church of Ireland. 'Cause I thought, well, the mother has to raise the children. When does the father see them? Only at nighttime. The responsibility is more or less hers, she should have it her way.

"Then he became mixed up with—I don't know what they called themselves, but they were some kind of a Bible group. I've always been a little bit cagey of those people who say they have all the answers. We never had rows but we used to debate the Bible for hours and hours on end. Because he seemed to think he knew all about the Bible. We used to have great arguments, go on for hours. We still do sometimes." He laughs. "I was a little skeptical. But then as he grew older it seemed to be working all right with him, so I didn't object."

[315]

"Bono told me that growing up he was allowed to find his own way."

"Spiritually? Well, that's true, because his mother died and there was only the three of us there—Norman, Paul, and me. He was a very exasperating child; he wasn't a bad child but bloody exasperating. My God, he really was. I'll give you an example that sticks in my mind and his brother Norman could confirm this. I remember one night we were having supper and we were sitting down beside the fire. My wife was alive at the time and we were having some kind of cakes. Paul took a bite and instead of putting it down on the plate he put it down on the shelf. 'You've got a plate, use it.'

"You wouldn't believe it, but we could not get him to admit that he should put the cake on the plate. The three of us—Norman was arguing with him too! I said, 'We're not going to bed until we resolve this thing once and for all!' My wife actually went to bed crying at one o'clock in the morning. At two o'clock he finally said, 'Yes, I was wrong,' and went to bed. Next morning he got up and he said, 'I only agreed because I wanted to go to bed.' He must have been twelve or thirteen. He lived in a different world even then. You'd say, 'Paul, will you slip upstairs and get me a hairbrush from the bedroom?' He'd come back and you'd say, 'Where is it?' 'Where's what?' 'Why did you go upstairs, Paul?' 'To go to the toilet.'

"And he's still the same! I warned Ali when she was marrying him. To this day I say, 'I told you and you wouldn't believe me! You were too much in love!'

"I remember on one occasion we had an awful row. I gave him a few thumps and threw him out in the hall and closed the door. I opened the door and I heard this sniggering. I looked and there was a banana skin and he was sitting on the stairs waiting for me. . . ." Suddenly Bobby laughs hard for a long time. Then he sighs and says, "Ah, he was exasperating, he really was. But there was nothing bad in him. He was living in his own world and we were sort of superfluous to it. And it still applies today. He was an extraordinary kid. He was very hard to nail down. We couldn't get him to study when he was in school, just could not get him to study. He'd go off to study and the next thing you'd hear him strummin' the guitar."

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