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  'Ahhhh! I see what the trouble is,' said Haggerty, pulling down Meredith's lower lip. 'He's put his choppers in upside down, someone fetch me a screwdriver.'

  Mr Meredith's aide-de-camp, Captain Clarke, called for a short pause while ' our spokesman's dentures are readjusted and his dignity restored'. A regular soldier, he was known to his subordinates as 'Here comes the bastard now'.

  The phrenology of his mountainous skull showed in contours through his military hair-cut. Erect and shining, his immaculate uniform hid a mess of ragged underwear.

  'No, no, no,' said Mrs Angel Eels, 'we've had enough delays, we got to finish this partitioning -today!'

  There was a murmur of approval. She glowed inwardly at their acceptance.

  She was a true daughter of the revolution, a tireless worker for the Party, sexually frustrated and slightly cross-eyed, the last two having something in common. At forty-one years of age, she now sat bolt upright, her black dress fastened high under her neck down to the floor, worn like a chastity armour that sealed her from all harm, and pleasure.

  Her late husband, Frederick Mortimer Eels, had been a professional circus midget. Twice nightly he was fired from a cannon into a net. That and cleaning out the elephants was his job, though he only got billed for the former. Angel had met him by accident. She ran over him in her gig. Born with an abnormal fear of men, Angel saw in Frederick all the innocence of boyhood. Lying in hospital under drugs from the accident, Frederick had proposed to her.

  Courting her in public was difficult, as she towered over him by three feet, and he made a point of only meeting her on the side of a hill.

  As the wedding day approached Fred Eels was seized with a sexual phobia.

  'Ha, ha, ha,' said the doctor, 'there's no need to worry, Fred. I've known far shorter men marry far taller women and they've had a perfectly normal sex life. Of course,' he added, 'you won't have anybody to talk to.'

  Love does something. At the wedding, Angel, for all her plainness, looked beautiful, and even Mr Eels looked and walked a foot taller. It was not to last. The honeymoon was fatal. Trying to change a light bulb in the bridal suite, Fred balanced on a chair and table, fell back in the dark, broke his neck, and died.

  The funeral, tho' purple sad, seemed a grim joke. The child-sized coffin lowered into the man-sized grave.

  'I'm sorry, Father,' an embarrassed grave-digger apologized, ' I thought it was her husband.'

  ' It is,' whispered the priest.

  'They must have buried him doubled up,' the digger told his wife that night. ' Some people will do anything to save money.'

  Since then, fifteen long years ago, Mrs Eels had no other love, but she had visited many, many circuses. In that time, frustration had snowballed and was thundering down the slopes of desire. It was a strange thing to be a widow and a virgin; secretly there were times she would have loved to have run naked down O'Connell Street, shouting 'I've just slept with a nigger man and this is me lunch break.' All this was now sublimated in the false zeal of a female patriot.

  By levering hard with the screwdriver and smashing four teeth, Haggerty had managed to release Meredith's dentures.

  Till now, monkey-faced Mr Ferguson had said little; now, drawing a breath he spoke in a sing-song manner.

  ' May I make a suggestion ? We only have this bit here to partition and the pubs close in an hour. Why not let's all put one hand on the red pencil and draw a line that falls naturally and peacefully into place ?'

  As he spoke his nose twitched, violently, an affliction from the Boer War. His regiment had camped near Spion Cop; the area was strewn with spherical white rocks like tennis balls. Issuing from his tent one morning, he saw three soldiers throwing a rock around.

  ' Over here,' shouted the enthusiastic soccer player.

  It sailed towards him, he removed his hat, jumped, headed it and fell smiling and unconscious.

  That's when it started. Mr Ferguson didn't mind. It got him out of the fighting with a disability pension. Twice annually he would report to a medical board who decided whether the affliction was diminishing. The day before these occasions, he would soak his nose in arnica and pull a tight elastic band over his head and down under his nose, thus holding it in a contracted position all night. The moment before the medical, he would remove the band, and the nose, sensing its freedom, shook with terrifying flexibility. So well had it behaved last time, the Board had increased his pension by a half.

  But back to now.

  On a show of hands, they accepted his suggestion. In what was meant to be a solemn moment, all hands held the pencil and pulled slowly across the map. All was silent, the room was filled with suspicion. Occasionally a gasp rent the silence as they all strained for the advantage.

  'Steady, someone's pulling to the benefit of Ulster.'

  'Lies, all lies.'

  'Who gave that jerk?'

  'Ah! I felt that.'

  ' Swine!'

  Finally the pencil reached its destination. Faces broke into relieved smiles, and a series of rapid unplanned handshakes ensued.

  'His hands feel nice,' thought Angel.

  Haggerty rang a bell. A Free State soldier entered the room.

  ' Pardon me, sir,' he said respectfully, his face lost in the obscurity of an overlarge cap, ' there are two men outside says they're the photographers.'

  ' Send them in,' said the gleeful Haggerty.

  The soldier saluted, and turned smartly about face, still leaving his cap facing forwards.

  Two morturial men entered the room. One was taller than the other as is often the case in Ireland. Dressed in black and wearing top hats they carried a coffin-like box into the room. The small one proffered a card.

  Cole Broth ers Professi ona l Morticians A mate ur Photogr aph ers

  The tall one possessed long bony fingers that crackled and snapped with healthy young rheumatism.

  ' I'll scream if he touches me,' thought Angel.

  The tall one appeared to be in charge, that is, he did less work than the other, which is usually a sign of authority. He made the short brother do his bidding with sibilant whispers and frequent nips on the buttocks. The little Cole brother worked under two difficulties - a stiff collar that lodged high under his throat and a new truss that played merry hell with his testicles.

  With polite interest and light conversation they all watched as the Brothers Cole assembled a scaffold of legs and equipment.

  Captain Clarke took to circling the apparatus, pausing now and then to tap the tripod authoritatively with his regimental cane.

  'Good,' he would say crisply, 'very good.' He tapped once more and the structure collapsed.

  ' If you'd try not doin' that, it would help,' said the little Cole.

  Finally, ' If the fine ladies and gentlemen will take up thoughtful poses, we will record the occasion.'

  The tall Cole beckoned Mrs Eels with a crackling finger.' If the lady will please be seated.'

  'Just a minute,' interrupted white-haired Mr Brogan, who had said nothing for three days but been under suspicion for stomach offences, 'no ill-will, mark you, but me being the oldest member here, I think / should be the central figure, me and me fine white head of hair.'

  He was ignored to a man, him, and his fine white head of hair.

  There were problems. Mrs Eels' cross eyes.

  ' If madam would sit profile,' was the respectful suggestion.

  Meredith smiled blissfully, forgetful of his missing teeth. Behind Mr Thwick, a hatstand grew from his head; the ears of Capt.

  Clarke, sitting cross-legged on the floor, stood out in terrifying relief against Angel's black dress, like the handles of the F.A.

  Cup.

  ' Keep your nose still, Mr Ferguson!'

  ' Sorry, lad, it only stops if I stick me finger up it.'

  'Do that then, or it'll come out blurred.'

  Ferguson dutifully thrust his finger into position, his bow legs framing the fireplace behind, the flames disappearing up his seat. S
tretched majestically across the front, head in hand, was handsome Councillor Andrew Burke, looking stern and intelligent, unaware that he had recently forgotten to adjust his dress before leaving.' I wonder where that draught's coming from,' he thought. Mr Brogan, still in a huff, stood with his back to the camera. ' I might as well show me fine white head of hair,' he thought. The magnesium flared, everybody blinked. It was over.

  Mrs Eels married the taller Cole Brother. Apparently, when posing her, his hand had touched her knee. He survived the honeymoon, which was ruined for her, the hotel manager had been a midget.

  Chapter Five

  Belfast is a big city. At one time it was quite small, even worse, there has been an occasion when there was no Belfast City at all.

  Thank heaven, those days are gone and there is now a plentiful supply of Belfast. Ugly and grey it spreads out, drab, dull, lack-lustre streets, crammed with the same repetitive, faceless, uninspired, profit-taking, soul-breaking buildings. The only edifices worth seeing are those erected long before the coming of the local council and the builder. Beautiful buildings seemed to taunt them.' Pull them down!' was the cry.' The Highway must go through.' The world, beauty, tranquillity and fresh air were being sacrificed to a lump of compressed tin with a combustion engine.

  Stately trees were felled as a ' Danger to lightning', and when one questioned them the answer came from a faceless thing called '

  Spokesman said'.

  Here, safe in its bureaucratic cocoon, we had the new vandalism of authority, power without conscience or taste; as it was with Belfast so was it with other cities, for now and ever after it seemed. In this metropolis lived many citizens. Most of them poor, with an additional burden, nowadays it costs more to be poor than it used to.

  Inside sternly furnished wallpapered rooms at number 356

  Queen Victoria Crescent, two young Customs officers were packing well-travelled suitcases.

  Webster was short and handsomish, with ill-cut straight brown hair and grey eyes, all in all a bit of a ladies' man, one bit in particular. By comparison, Peter Barrington, his tall, blond, rather wavering room-mate, looked slightly effeminate. The two had nothing in common save the English language, and even then Barrington had a superior accent for it. As they packed, the tops of the red buses passed and repassed the windows with their never ending pageant of adverts. 'Beechams worth a guinea a box', 'Take Andrews Little Liver . . .' 'Gynon Salts for the regular. .

  . .' 'Exlax'.

  The motive seemed to be 'Make people shit and get rich'.

  Strange, people won't believe in God, yet will swear by some blue pill that guarantees to rid them of baldness, bedwetting, distended kidneys, pox and varicose veins. Piles! A man with piles will believe any promise of a cure. Sitting on clusters of sore and distended veins, his mind goes awry and his judgement uncertain. Judge Jeffreys suffered from piles, and look at the havoc he wrought on the unfortunate followers of Monmouth. If it hadn't been for piles, Monmouth would have been alive today!

  Unaware of this historical truth, Barrington and Webster packed their cases.

  ' I cwan't sae I fwancy lwiving under cwanvas,' said Barrington, his accent almost obliterating the meaning of the words.

  The upper class sound of it ruffled Webster. He didn't like Barrington, but two sharing a room was cheaper than one.

  Webster's background was Poplar, docks, dirt, pubs. He had been born in a cockney family when cockneys were perfectly content with their lot, made good workmen, great craftsmen, superb soldiers and were the first to put up flags for the King and Queen.

  In the twenty-five years since World War I that had all changed; gradually the adulation for the Crown grew less and less. Queen Victoria had gone to her grave with the streets choked with mourning citizens; it was a very thin funeral crowd that watched King George VI to his rest; it followed that the funeral of our present Queen was going to be downright embarrassing.

  Behind the throne desperate efforts were made by those whose jobs hang by royal decree, to modify the Royal Family to meet the Social Revolution and make their little jobs more secure. The speech-writer royal was also under fire from the press; he had used the'

  My husband and I' opening so frequently that it was always good for a laugh in comedy shows, and b.b.c. variety departments chiefs in search of o.b.e.s were quick to strike it from scripts, one of their rare positive gestures. Barrington lit a cigarette. Unlike Webster, Barrington had been born into a class that denied him the joy of self-accomplishment; it had been all 'laid in' for him.

  His name was down for Eton three years before his birth, gilt-edged godparents, his baptism could be seen in The Tatler, London Illustrated and, in The Times a small notice to that effect.

  Despite all this he had been cashiered from the Guards for a certain incident with a young boy. It had been given three-inch headlines in all Sunday papers, those Sunday papers that are always both ' shocked and distressed' at crime and degradation; so shocked and distressed are they, that every Sunday they re-shock themselves as a 'Public Duty', this must be stopped! says the front page.

  Then the copy: Police Raid Den of Vice! Sixteen-year-old white girl found with black men! Working on information from one of our reporters, Scotland Yard Vice Squads this morning raided a Greek Club in Soho. Sgt. Henshaw c.i.d. reported seeing a hundred and twenty couples playing Bingo in the nude; when questioned the proprietor, Knessis Philominides, said that the players had felt 'hot'.

  Police removed certain appliances, an eight millimetre film projector, along with some films. Names and addresses were taken, among them eighteen-year-old the Hon. Maureen Campbell-Torrington of Bayswater. She was escorted by Pandit Nowarajee Gupta, Hindu seaman of no fixed abode.

  He told a Paddington magistrate,' I had two whiskies and a small port wine and everything went black. When I regained my sensibilities I was in a Black Maria handcuffed to ten other men who were also naked.' Asked to explain 40 lbs of heroin in his pugaree he said,' You are only doing this because you think I am Jewish!' He then showed them a photo of Ghandi and claimed diplomatic immunity.

  In the same way, poor Barrington had been exposed to the nation.

  His mother, Lady Norah, had been singularly unmoved by it all.

  As she told a reporter, 'I can't understand all the fuss, his father did this sort of thing all the time, and he got on awfully well,' but then she added, 'He worked in the Foreign Office.' An educated woman, she spoke eight languages and said nothing intelligent in any of them.

  She was one of those pale, powder-white, sedentary creatures who no matter when you called was always cutting flowers in the garden. As wars broke out she couldn't wait to start rolling bandages and knitting things for those 'poor men at the front'; in peacetime she ignored them completely.

  Lord Barrington himself was a devout Catholic and a practising homosexual; as he frequently said, 'practice makes perfect'. He was a fine military figure, and why shouldn't he be. From his ankles to his groins he wore Dr Murray's anti-varicose elastic stockings; from groins to mid-rib he wore severe male corsets, made secretly by Marie Lloyd's dresser; around his shoulders, laced under his armpits and knotted at the back were ' Clarke's elastic posture braces'; his glass eye gazed unseeing at the world, into its live companion was screwed a monocle.

  A stickler for fitness, he spent every morning lying on the floor clenching and unclenching his fists. In the 14-18 affair, he served as one of Haig's military asses, saluting, pointing at maps, walking behind v.i.p.s, shaking hands, posing for photographs and forever reminding the General his fly buttons were in full view of enemy snipers, and so won Haig's undying gratitude.

  Now his young son Hon. Barrington had been seconded to the temporary obscurity of the Northern Irish Customs. Webster and he were both due to organize a Customs Post along the new border near Puckoon.

  'Where the hell is Puckoon ?' Webster was about to ask, when there was a combined knocking and opening of the door, the speciality of landladies in need of scanda
l, as was Mrs Cafferty: standing there, her bones almost escaping from her body, she smiled a great mouthful of rotten teeth, a salute to poverty and indifferent dentistry.

  'I'm sorry yer goin' at such short notice,' she grinned, and handed the bill to Barrington.

  'Two pounds?'

  'That's one pound in lieu of a week's notice, sir.'

  Barrington placed his cigarette on the window sill and took a five pound note from a registered envelope. From 'Mummy'.

  'Oh,' said Mrs Cafferty, 'I'm sorry, we don't take cheques, sir.'

  'Cheques? This is a five pound note.'

  Confused and baffled by her ignorance of the higher currency denominations, she backed from the room, clutching the front of her flowered apron.

  'I'll bring me husband up, he knows all about dem tings.'

  Downstairs, his socks singeing in the heat of a near red stove, dozed the lord and master of the house.

  Robert Cafferty. Deep down in a fast disintegrating imitation leather armchair, he smouldered in mid-evening sleep. Around him his kingdom. On the stove, a blue chipped teapot was stewing the last life from its imprisoned leaves; on the mantelpiece a clockwork Virgin Mary, made in Japan.

  'Wake up, darlin',' said Mrs Cafferty, striking him gently with her clenched fist.

  'Ouch!' yelled Cafferty, leaping to his socks. ' Wassermarre, I'll kill the son of a - '

  'Look at this,' she waved the five pound note.

  'Oh,' he donned his glasses. 'It's a cheque .. . isn't it?'

  ' That's what I told dem, but dem says no.'

  ' I'll talk to dems.' He pulled up his braces and put his hat on as a sign of authority.

  Webster and Barrington could hear them coming up the stairs in a flurry of whispers.

  'Good morning to you both,' said Cafferty, appearing in the doorway, his face still drugged with sleep.