Puckoon Read online

  - it's just - just anything they want to call it to ease their bloody consciences! A mother sees her child born deformed due to some drug she took during pregnancy and has the child put to sleep! What right have we ? When a man is mutilated in the war we don't kill him! We are the cowards. We can't stand seeing a deformed child. That child could grow up and enjoy life.

  Happiness is a state of mind, not body.

  O'Brien paused, then drank his drink, thoughtfully.

  ' Oh yes, oh yes, I was in der fightin' all of der way.' Little Mister Pearce in the corner was holding forth. From a parchment dry face, locked under a flat cap, twinkling blue eyes peered through heavy pebble glass lenses, giving him the appearance of a goiterous elf. Both his weathered hands rested on a walking stick.' In all the fightin' and the English never caught me.' He was speaking rapidly to a Mr Foggerty.

  Foggerty wore a long, foul, ragged black overcoat, which seemed to have grown on him. It was secured round the middle with repeatedly knotted string, from which hung various accoutrements, mug, hairbrush, spoon, fly-swat, tin opener. An outsize greasy brown trilby, set low on his forehead, gave him the appearance of having no top to his head, which in fact he hadn't.

  Son of a long line of camp followers, he had been relieved of his post as lighthouse keeper at the shale rock when he drew the blinds, to ' stop the light shining into the poor sailors' eyes'.

  The light was closed down, and these days ships have to find their own way on to the rocks. His father had been drowned after a brawl on the edge of a whisky vat, not that he couldn't swim; he tried to drink his way out. Alcoholic poisoning was the Coroner's verdict.

  'I tell you, he was so beautifully preserved, it seemed a shame ter bury him,' said the amazed mortician.

  'Yes,' went on Mr Pearce, 'I was wounded twice, once by me own side.' He said it with the same surprise

  as when it happened, and moved his biddy pipe to the other corner. 'You see, the Tans and the police was lookin' fer rebels; we was hid up in Clontarragh Street

  . One night we could hear them searchin' the places, all drunk. Finally they breaks into our place, they smashes up the furniture and lets fly a few rounds into the ceiling, me in the loft I gets it in the leg. In a few days it goes gangrene, so they smuggles in Goldstein and he offs with it.

  It was bloody murder, you should have seen the bill he sent me.

  Still, I survived.' He tapped his wooden leg with his pipe.' It's hollow.... You know why ?'

  ' No,' said Foggerty, nodding his head.

  ' It's hollow because I made it so. You see,' he puffed his pipe and looked up at the nicotined ceiling, 'Michael Leary wanted someone ter smuggle hand grenades out through the police cordon, so, I hollows me leg and I travels the bombs in that. And,' he laughed,' they never caught me.'

  Foggerty looked at Mr Pearce.

  Pearce looked at Mr Foggerty. It appeared to Foggerty that Mr Pearce had finished.

  'Oh!'he said.

  'Oh?' said Mr Pearce, 'Oh? I tell you a tale of Irish courage and hero-ism and all you can say is, Oh?'

  Foggerty seemed to struggle with his mind. Gradually a pathetic smile spread over his face. ' Fish!' he said.

  ' Fish ?' said Pearce,' Fish ? What about fish ?'

  'Well, it's different from "Oh".'

  Mr Pearce just looked at Foggerty. There was something amiss in this lad. Only that day someone had said ' Good morning' to him, and he seemed at a loss for a reply. Then again, Foggerty was the only one who had been a failure during the boom.

  'You'da been in real trouble if dem bombs had gone off in yer leg, mate. Yer arse would ha' been half way up yer back.'

  The voice came booming from Thomas Rafferty who stood six foot square. The pockets of his dark green jacket were congealed with blood, fur and feathers. When he wasn't poaching he was writing bits of poetry, but he lived by the trap.

  There was nothing like it. To sit on the banks of the Puckoon, eating a whole fresh salmon when the nobs in London were payin' ten shillings a slice for it.

  To walk on a silver cold moonlight night, in ankle-deep mist swirling in from the Atlantic; the repetitive crunch of boots on hard frost, hearing a barn owl shriek from the soot-black line of the venal trees, and the best of all the barking of a dog fox across the winter-tight countryside.

  'Yarowwwww!' he gave an imitation. 'If that sound doesn't give you a thrill, youse dead,' he grinned, then upended a box of dominoes on the table.

  ' I'll give you a game,' said Foggerty, eagerly. ' No you bloody well don't!' ' I beat you last time.'

  'I know you did and I haven't lived that down! Being beat by you is an admission of insanity, you stupid bloody idiot! No offence meant, mark you.'

  Behind the bar, Mr O'Toole was speaking to the pig-of-a-face that was his wife. He had married her twenty years ago, but still woke up white and sweating. On leave from France, he had come out of a drinking-hole in Sackville Street and bumped into a girl. It was dark, he was drunk, she was keen. He awoke next morning to find her in bed with him. He ran screaming from the house, her purse under his arm. He didn't get away with it. Seven weeks later, a giant of a man, seven foot high and smothered in red hair, walked through the door holding her by the hand.

  The monster lifted O'Toole off the floor and told him to get ready 'for marriage or death'. He had started to object, whereupon the monster had started to hit him with great bone-crunching knuckles. All he remembered was birds twittering and her shouting 'Don't ruin him for the honeymoon, hit him above the waist.' Leaving a trail of broken teeth he was dragged to the altar in the grip of two monsters who looked like kinfolk of Grendel.

  Finally, when the priest asked 'Will you take this woman - ' a hired ventriloquist from Cork said, 'I do.' And he was done. The marriage hadn't turned out too bad, well, actually it had, but otherwise it wasn't too bad.

  The red monster, her father, had died mysteriously of heart failure after falling under a train but not before willing them the Holy Drinker.

  'Where's the Milligan tonight, Maudie?'

  'I don't know. He was here this morning trying to cadge a drink,' she replied, looking over his shoulder at the handsome O'Brien.

  She had, in moments of dreaming eroticism, imagined herself clutching his members under the sheets. Whenever she saw a sign ' Members Only' she thought of him.

  The pub door opened, and in bore a podgy police uniform carrying the body of Sgt MacGillikudie. There was a rush for the door. He held up a calming hand but was knocked flat by the exodus.

  Arising, he dusted himself.

  'I'll be glad when dis town gets prison cells with locks on. Now - '

  he felt in his breast pocket, '- I'm here to read a brief notice.' He removed his helmet and inadvertently placed it over Blind Devine's beer. 'To all Citizens of the Free State,' he commenced.

  His speech was hesitant and clipped; a black Lord Kitchener moustache cut his face in two.' Next week military and civil members of the Ulster Boundary Commission will be passing through this area. Any hostility towards them will be penalized with fines from a shilling up to death.

  Ah, tank you - ' he accepted a free beer from O'Toole. 'Cheers!' he said and drained it to eternity. Blind Devine was groping.

  ' Some thievin' swine's stolen me beer!' he shouted angrily as only the blind have courage to.

  ' You might ha' drunk it.'

  ' I never forget any beer I drink!' shouted Devine. He flourished his stick, striking Foggerty a sickening blow on the shin.

  'Owwww!' screamed Foggerty, clutching his elbow.

  'Here, man,' said O'Toole, giving Devine a beer, ' drink this on the house and calm down.'

  'Well, I'll be on me way now,' said MacGillikudie, picking up his helmet.

  'What's this, then?' said O'Toole, pointing to the glass of beer revealed. ' Oh, dat's mine,' said Foggerty, who was not such a fool after all.

  'Come on, Stan lad,' said O'Brien, 'give us one of yer love songs, one of dem with all the strains.'


  The spotty lad gave Mrs O'Toole an appealing look.

  'All right then, we're not too busy.' Despite the absence of a piano player, the lad came and stood dutifully by the mute instrument. '

  Ladies and Gentlemen - ' he began. ' Order, please.' ' Silence for the singer.' 'Is it free?'

  The lad went on: 'I should like to sing the late J. Collard Jackson's lovely song "Eileen, My Eileen."'

  He raised the lid of the beer-saturated piano, struck a note and started singing a different one. The lad opened a raw red mouth, revealing great harp strings of saliva. At first no sound same, then, welling from the back of his body there came a quivering, tense, tinny sound, like a tram issuing from a tunnel. With the arrival of the first uncertain note, the lad's eyes glazed over, as though a stricture of the bowels was imminent; the singer's body went rigid, a series of stomach convulsions ensued, then the whole body quivered. It even frightened Dr Goldstein.

  ' Eileeeeeeeeeeeeeen! Yoooou arrree my Queeeeennnn . . .'

  The agonized notes seemed to swell up from the thorax and pass hurriedly inwards towards the back of the head, where they were apparently trapped and reduced by a three-inch cavity skull; rebounding, they escaped by struggling down one side of his clogged nose at strength three.

  ' My Queeeeeeeeeeeeenn The finest I've ever seeeeeeeeeeeeeen ...'

  Puzzled spectators observed that his lower jaw, unlike yours or mine, remained static; it was the top of his head that moved. On high notes it was so acutely angled, most of the time was spent looking up the singer's nose, a terrible sight to behold. He in-dulged in an orgy of meaningless gestures, even the word 'it' was sung, trembling with catarrhal extasy; time and again he raised his skinny arms to heaven, revealing a ragged armpit from which protruded tufts of brown hair. Veins stood out on his forehead, and sweat ran down his face as, purple with strain, he braced himself for the last great note; bending his knees, clenching his fists, he closed his eyes and threw back his head. In that tacit moment the observant Foggerty spoke:

  ' Hey, Mister, you got a bogey up yer nose.'

  The last great note burst and was lost in a sea of irreverent laughter. Red-faced, tears drowning his eyes, he returned to the bar. The world of music was safer by far and J. Collard Jackson stopped turning in his grave.

  The air outside was still and humid. Without warning, the sky lit up in a moment of fluorescent anger: a fistful of thunder racketed over Puckoon. ' God save us all from the Protestant thunder,' gasped two wax-white old biddies, clutching their bedclothes and making arthritic signs of the cross. ' Quick, Millie, the Po,' gasped the elder sister. ' Coming, coming, Sarah!'

  'Too late, Millie, too late.'

  The reply came in a long, damp moan.

  Cool spindles of long-fingered rain came racing to the eager ground. Earth gurgled under the delicious assault, the attarahent smell of earth and water wedded came wafting from the ground.

  Heavier and heavier it fell. Even at this late hour, ducks on the village pond could be heard acclaiming the deluge. The whole sky was a cullender of water. Again and again lightning hurried across the sky, blossoming like electric roses; the temperature fell, the closeness split, a great song of silence followed.

  Millie was changing the bed linen, spiders tested their webs and a drunk called Hermonogies K. Thuckrutes lay face down in a gutter, singing softly.

  ' Good, we could have done with that little lot,' said O'Brien, looking out the pub window.

  Outside there was a strange muffled sound. The pub door opened slowly, and there, reeling, smoke-blackened, and smelling strangely of burnt rubber and singed flesh, was the near-carbonized figure of the Milligan. The whole pub turned inwards as he entered. Someone made the sign of the cross.

  'Is it the devil?' said Blind Devine, hiding his matches.

  Milligan took his still smouldering cap and hurled it the length of the room.

  'Struck by lightning! That's all I needed was to be struck by bloody lightning!'

  'Are you all right ?' asked Dr Goldstein, handing him his professional card.

  ' It was only the rubber tyres on me bike saved me from being electrified. It struck the roots of a tree, bounced on ter me legs then travelled up to me head! Me hat, look at me hat!' he said, picking up the charred relic.

  'Here,' said Mrs O'Toole, 'drink this.' She handed him a small measure of cheap whisky. Even in moments of charity there was no need to be uneconomical.

  Through all this commotion, through all the thunder, singing and drinking, from the opposite wall two humans stared unwinking at each other, eyes choked with mutual hate, fury and frustration.

  She was Mrs Cafferty, he was known to her as Mr Cafferty, and there's no divorce in Ireland. But enough of this. Elsewhere important things were happening.

  Chapter Four

  It was to be a solemn occasion. As James Joyce says, ' real hairy'. In a brown and upstairs room at the Duke of Wellington Hotel ' Ireland', to quote ani.r.a. leaflet, was being'torn in two by traters', the last word being in red. At every door and window, standing, sitting, looking, listening, soldiers from both factions stood guard. Beyond them, another perimeter of men set off as listening posts. With the i.r.a. about, nobody was taking any chances, least of all the i.r.a. who were all home in bed. Rain was falling, and the men stood close to the walls for shelter. Inside, several high-ranking, grim-faced Boundary Commissioners from both sides faced each other across a giant map of Ireland.

  On one corner rested a mess of empty tea cups; half-eaten sandwiches, their edges curling, lay helpless in a thin film of tea that trembled on the floor of the tray. Lighting the scene was a mean yellow bulb covered with generations of fly specks. Across the map, running from right to left, was a thick red pencil line that terminated just short of the Atlantic.

  It was the threatened new border. In its path lay sleeping Puckoon. Points of interest and under discussion were represented by a forest of little flags on pins, forever being displaced by table-thumping members of the Commission. For ten whole days now they had argued the last few miles of frontier.

  Tempers were frayed, agreements infrequent and weak bladders put to the test. Mr Haggerty was complaining about the Ulster representatives' indecisiveness.

  He was breathing heavily from a short fat round body packed into a blue serge suit, every seam of which was under considerable pressure from the contents. He lost his temper and - more frequently -his arguments.

  'You'll a ll be in the Republic one day, so there,' he thumped the map with a fat furious fist, displacing numerous flags.

  Immediately, Mr Neville Thwick, a thin, veiny, eel-like man with acne, deftly replaced the flags. He had volunteered for the job.

  Insignificant since birth, sticking pins in maps gave him the secret power he craved. The walls of his attic bed-sitting room were hung with treasured maps of famous battles, campaigns and sorties. Solfarino, Malplaquet, Plassey, the Somme, the Boyne.

  There were three hundred in scrolls under his bed and scores more, carefully indexed, placed on every shelf and ledge. He possessed his own pin-making machine, and a small triangular printers' guillotine for manufacturing flags. Power, what power this combination held!

  Every night Mr Thwick would leave his desk at Mills & Crotts bird-seed factory and catch the 33a tram to his home. On arrival he would prepare tea and perhaps a one-egg omelette. After a wash and shave he would place a battle-map of his choosing on the floor. From a chest he would select a military uniform suitable for the period. Dressed so, he would pace the room, making little battle noises with his mouth. Last Sunday had seen his greatest victory. After much deliberation he had decided to re-contest Waterloo. Dressed as Napoleon he placed himself at the head of the French army of 600 flags. The thought of it had made him weak, he felt giddy and sat down to massage his legs. After a measure of ginger wine, he felt strong enough to continue. There followed a night of move and counter move. Despite knockings on the walls from sleepless neighbours, he continued his battle nois
es, thrusting flags hither and thither.

  He force-marched a platoon of French Chasseurs till their points were blunt, he reinforced Blucher with a secret supply of mercenary flags from Ireland and destroyed the Prussian threat to his flank. At three o'clock he played his master stroke. He thrust a white flag right into the English H.Q.

  Wellington and his staff were humbled in the dust. To the accompaniment of the people around hammering with shoe heels and brooms, he accepted Wellington's sword and surrender.

  Then victorious to bed with a hot water bottle and a spoonful of Dr Clarkson-Spock's Chest Elixir. Next morning, dressed as a civilian, with very little resistance, Wellington's conqueror was evicted by his landlady.

  Living in the y.m.c.a. curtailed his activities, but the present job kept him in practice until conditions changed.

  After all, peace, as any good general knew, couldn't last for ever, and the only way to en d wars was to have them.

  'Mr Haggerty, sir.' The febrile, castrato voice of Mr Meredith was raised in protest. 'Mr Haggerty,' he repeated, as he rose to his feet. One could see how very old he was, how very thin he was, and falling back into his seat, how very weak he was. 'Mr Haggerty,' he said for the third time, his pale hands flapping like mating butterflies, ' I protest at -'.

  He stopped suddenly, eyes closed, lids quivering, head back.

  'Ahhhhhh - ahhhhh - ' A pause, his face taking on that agonized look of the unborn sneeze. 'Sorry about that,' he muttered, wiping his eyes. 'Now.' He became stronger. 'I was saying th-atishooooo!' thundered the unexpected; 'ah-tishoooo!!' The convulsion shot his dentures the length of the room. Thud! went his head on the table, 'atishoo!' down went the flags, in sprang Mr Thwick. 'Oh!' shrieked Mrs Eels, a set of heavy dentures landing on her lap. Meredith lay back, spit-speckled, white and exhausted, his face folded in two.

  Mrs Eels returned his teeth on a plate covered with her 'kerchief.

  'No thank you, dear,' said the still muzzy Meredith, 'I couldn't eat another thing.'

  With his back to the map table and accompanied by terrifying clicks and clacks, Meredith wrestled to replace his prodigal dentures; finally, he turned to continue his speech, but remained silent. Staring pop-eyed, he staggered round the room pointing to his mouth, making mute sounds and getting redder and redder.