Puckoon (9 page)
'Good night, Sherlock Holmes,' she
said, laughing hysterically.
One day, he thought, one day. He
clenched and unclenched his fists under the bedclothes.
The funeral of Dan Doonan came
treacle-slow from the church.
'Benedictus Deus,
et
pater Domini nostri Jesus Christi, Pater misericordium et deus' . . . chanted
Father Rudden, walking on ahead. As long as he said something in the Latin they
all thought they were getting value for money. As a young priest it bothered him
that the faithful never took the trouble to learn the meaning of Latin prayers.
As a
test,
and under the influence of an overdose of
whisky he had intoned the whole of a dirty story in Latin, which concluded with
a solemn 'Amen' from the congregation.
They approached the new Border
Customs Post. From a hut, a-buttoning his coat
came
'Good morning,' he said in those
uneasy Civil Servants tones; not so much a greeting to the day as a farewell to
personal liberty.
'A few formalities sir,' he
continued, thrusting the Customs card at the priest.
' Read
that, will you ?'
' We
have nothing to declare, sir,
this is a funeral.'
' What
have you got in the coffin
?' 'You must be joking,' said the priest, his face going purple with anger, and
his anger going white with rage!
'I'm not joking
sir,
I am merely doing my duty.'
'Very well.
Inside the
coffin is the body of 98-year-old Dan Doonan. Now let us pass!'
Ireland had been hard hit since the
migration to America. Only the mad Mrs Bridie Chandler from the great ruined
farm on the moor ever sat for him. Once a week she came galloping up, a great
mountain of fat astride a black stallion; sweeping into the studio she'd strip
off her clothes and shout 'Take me!' The first time had been shock enough.
Faddigan had run all the way to church.
'Father,' he gasped, 'is it wrong to
look at naked
women ?'
'Of course it is,' said Rudden,
'otherwise we'd all be doing it.' He had finally given Faddigan a dispensation
to photograph her, providing he kept at a respectable distance.
Faddigan never did work out how much
that was in feet and inches, and he never did
comprehend '
How a woman could spread out in so
many directions at once and still stay in the same place.'
His wife arrived one day when he was
printing the negatives and beat him silly with a bottle of best developing
fluid at 23 shillings a pint. 'You dirty pornographer,' she said, and left him
for good.
The small green shop bell tinkled
briefly, and in came three men with the dangling Dan Doonan.
' Is
he
drunk ?' inquired Mr Faddigan.
'No, no,' said one of Dan's
supporters, 'he's got leg trouble.'
' What's
his
head hangin' down for ?'
' He's
got
leg trouble right up to his neck.'
' Oh
. Just
sit him in the chair.' Doonan slid to the floor. '
Ups-a-daisy,' said Faddigan kindly.
' We
want
passport photos.'
'Is he going away then?' 'Yes.'
'Where to?'
'We're not sure, but he's got a
choice of two places.'
'Just hold him like
that,
I can see he's an old man. Smileeee
..
. .
There, that's it. If he's pleased
with the result, perhaps he'll come again.'
' Oh
, he'll
never be that pleased,' said the departing trio. And they carried dear Dan
away.
Autumn laid a russet hand over the
county. The great summer trees cried their leaves to the ground; dead, hollow
spiders clung transparently to once geometric webs; swallows enumerate on
wires; the golden penny that was the sun devalued. Wan shafts of sunlight
struck Puckoon like old ladies' uncertain fingers. The fox went farther afield,
his coat thicker, his stomach thinner; the seasons were on their endless march
and the North wind was greening the tree trunks.
'Tank God the grass has stopped
growin',' Milligan said, as he greased the scythes for their long hibernation.
' Oh
dear, dear, dear! Is this the age of the common
man ?'
If so, no one regretted it more than the common man
himself. Who was the common man? You point to anybody and say, 'You are the
common man,' and you'd get punched in the nose. Liberation from slavery! That was
the cry from Wat Tyler to Castro. What a lot of cock! Any man is willing to
become a slave, as long as he was paid enough.
There was no such thing as anything,
and sometimes even less.
'Hello, dere.'
Milligan looked to the voice. It was
the black-coated Foggerty wandering aimlessly along outside the church wall,
eating an unpeeled banana.
' I'm
on me way to the
meetin'. You
coming?'
'The meeting?
Good God, I forgot! That's right.'
Milligan rushed into his overcoat and made quickly for the Church Hall, on his
bike, Foggerty running alongside.
' Why
you
holding your head, Milligan ?'
' I
got a headache.'
'Don't come near me den,' cautioned
Foggerty, 'I don't want to catch it.'
The dead leaves scattered before the
two men. 'I. suppose,' thought Milligan, 'now the grass has gone, the next job
will be the leaves, Nature works hand in glove against the likes of me.' Bein'
alive didn't give you a moment's rest. He felt his legs. They were as thin as
ever.
The corrugated iron roof of the
Puckoon Church Hall reverberated to the angry shouts within. Every now and then
little cakes of rust fell free and settled on the heads of the assembled.
It was a very important meeting.
The whole of Puckoon was there; the
front bench was packed to a fifth full, the flag of the Republic nailed bravely
to the wall behind the Speakers' rostrum.
'We're not going to put up wid dis,'
said Mrs O'Brien. 'Every time I want ter visit me father's grave I have to be
searched by the customs man and,' she added, 'he's got cold hands. On top of
that, I got to show a passport of meself.'
Down she sat. Up she stood.
' It's
a disgrace.'
Up she stood, down she sat,
'I've
had enough of it!' She whacked her umbrella down flush
on the recumbent head of Mrs Ellis. Up she stood.
' Ohhh
!'
she screamed. Down sat Mrs O'Brien, up stood Father Rudden waving a calming
hand, 'Steady now, steady, I know how you all feel. Can we continue with
further complaints in relation to the new
frontier ?'
Mr Murtagh, stinking town clerk and
amnesic, arose with a sheaf of closely typed quarto papers, removed his reading
glasses and began to read.
'Ahem!
Report of an
accident on the
Puckoon.
As we all know this bridge has been divided in two by an
unthoughtful boundary commission.'
There were three cries of 'Shame!'
and one of 'Bastards!'
Last week, a motor car containing a
driver and a charabanc of old pensioners were in collision.
The car finished on the Ulster side
of the border and the charabanc on ours. As a result the case was being held in
two countries at once. Witnesses were rushed by high-powered car from court to
court to give evidence and they weren't getting any younger. The driver of the
charabanc, a Mr Norrington, a retired English actor, had been thrown from his
driving seat, his body
laying
athwart the border; now
his legs were being sued by the passengers of the charabanc, and his top half
was claiming damages from the car driver.
The solicitors predicted that the
case would last three years because of the travel
involved
.
Murtagh concluded with a flourish of his papers. 'Any
more ?
'
asked the priest, peering around.
'No?'
'Yes!' Mr O'Toole jumped to his feet.
'This boundary affects me, terribly. My pub is all in this side of the border,
all except two square feet in the far corner of the public bar.'
' Is
that a
hardship ?' asked Father Rudden.
' Is
it ? That two
square feet is in Ulster, where the price of drinks is thirty per cent cheaper.
Now, every night, me pub is empty, save for a crowd of bloody skinflints all
huddled in that corner like Scrooges.'
Father Rudden promised a solution and
closed the meeting.
With Rafferty's
weight on the cross bar, Milligan pedalled home from the meeting via the Holy
Drinker.
They had tried to get into the cheap corner but were crowded
out. But never mind, no matter what price you paid for liquor, it always tasted
better
.
'My lord, you're heavy,' Milligan
grumbled.
' Don't
ferget half of it is you, Milligan.'
'I'm only complaining about your
half, which after all is the biggest.'
' Well
, I'm
grateful for the lift, Milligan.'
'With you holding me by the throat, I
had no option.'
' It's
just
my way of askin'.'
A lemon-peel moon rose into the cold
sky. Milligan whistled.
'Dat's a nice tune.'
' It's
part
of the Eroica Symphony -1 wrote it.'
' You
write
the Eroica ?'
'Yes.'
' What
about
Beethoven ?' 'Yes, I wrote that as well.' 'You bloody liar.'
Cheerfully he whistled his next
composition, Grieg's A Minor Concerto by Milligan. Life wasn't too bad. The
trouble with Man was, even while he was having a good time, he didn't
appreciate it. Why, thought Milligan, this very moment might be the happiest in
me
life.
The very thought of it made him miserable.
Still, he had known happier times. To
be born in India the son of a Sergeant-Major in the Indian Army, that was a
different start from the other boys.
Living in India those days was
something. People who had been hungry unemployed farm labourers in Ireland were
suddenly unemployed n.c.o.s in the British Army, with real live servants of
their own. The first house he remembered was 5 Climo Road, Poona. Built after
the Indian mutiny, the walls were whitewashed and the ceiling was a tightly
stretched canvas.
At night young Dan would watch the
tracks of the mice as they scurried across it. The front of the house was half
trellis and half wall. A corrugated iron canopy stretched out from the roof to
hold back the sun. In the monsoons the water thundered on to the iron sheets
and made it sound like a different world. What wonderful days they were, full
of golden dreaming, where nothing matters except 'now', everything was always
in now, tomorrow was no good until it became now, and as there appeared to be
an endless supply of now, nothing else mattered. The whole family lived
together; Grandmother, bed-ridden Grandad, Aunty Eileen, Uncle Hughie.
He had developed a craze for the
saxophone and body building.
He managed to combine the two.
Stripping to the waist, wearing a pair of underpants painted to look like
leopard skin, he stood in front of a mirror, playing Valse Vanity and doing
knees bend.
He was quick to discover that
pressing certain notes on the saxophone brought various muscles into play. For
instance, bottom E flat showed the right bicep to advantage, middle C
alternating with bottom C brought the pectorals into play.
More complicated combinations
followed. Lying flat playing middle C fortissimo and arching his back from the
legs gave prominence to the lines of the abdominal ridge.
Holding
the saxophone above the head, bending backwards and playing repetitive B
sharps, showed the deltoids in all their flexed glory.
From this simple beginning, a unique
idea was to formulate.
For two years he worked on it in
absolute secrecy. It turned out to be a Concerto for Alto-Saxophone and Human
Muscles. Full of zeal he entered the work in an amateur talent contest at the
West End Cinema, Poona. Pouring with sweat and blowing notes in all directions,
he was watched in mystified silence by a baffled Hindu audience. After twenty
minutes of grunting strainings he was booed from the stage. He later sold the
idea to a travelling Armenian herbalist who, with delusions of grandeur, tried
to curry favour by performing it before the Czarina, but he was shot by a
palace guard whilst trying to invade her bedchamber.
Then there was 'Soap' Holloway. The
favourite trick they played on him was talking him into messing his pants, then
telling his mother. One evening' Soap' fell out of a nim tree. He lay there
very quiet. 'Come on, you'll be all right,' young Dan said.
' He's
not
breathing,' said a kid.
They ran and told his mother. The
last they saw of ' Soap' was his father carrying him at the double, his mother
running alongside crying and saying something. It didn't matter
what,
'Soap' wasn't one of them any more. On hot nights,
Dan's mother would move his bed into the small garden. He would lie there,
looking at the sky through the mosquito net.
There was the Plough - that one was
easy. The rest could go to hell. He would fall asleep to the peculiar smell of
the nim tree and the distant chug-chug of the engine that lit the Empire
Cinema.
Poona had one of the finest race
courses in India. At the height of the season it was the thing to belong to the
Western India Turf Club. At an early age Milligan got the taste for horses and
betting.