Puckoon Read online

  ' Good God, look at the size of that rat,' one said, seeing the cat pass with a wig in its jaws. 'He mustha' put up a fight.'

  Placing a bottle of whisky by the bed they drank it and stumbled from the room.

  It was 4.32 in the morning as the crow flies.

  The last mourners had slobbered out their drunken farewells, their voices and great posterior blasts mingling into the night. Mrs Doonan drained an empty bottle, scratched her belly, and made for her bed.

  Somewhere in the night, Milligan, drunk and with lumps on his head, was wandering through the braille-black countryside: in his path a carefully written well. Splash! it went on receipt of his body.

  At 4.56 in the morning, the quietly patrolling constable Oaf was reduced to a kneeling-praying holy man by a leg-weakening shriek. The door of number 33 burst open and out screamed Mrs Doonan in unlaced corsets.

  ' There's a man in me bed, get him out!' she yelled, restraining her abounding bosoms.

  ' Madame, if you can't frighten him in that get up, I certainly can't!'

  'Do yer duty,' she said, ladelling her bosoms back.

  The constable undipped his torch, took a firm grip on his truncheon and entered the house.

  ' In that room,' she whispered.

  ' Leave him to me,' said Oaf, pushing her in front. He shone his torch on the bed. Mrs Doonan gasped and let fall her bosoms.

  'Holy Mary!' she gasped, 'It's me husband.'

  She fainted, clutching the policeman's legs as she fell, bringing his trousers to the ground. Now then, who would have thought a constable would use green knotted string for garters, and have red anchors tattooed on his knees? Ah, Ireland is still a land of mystery.

  'Helpppp!' shouted Milligan from the bottom of the well.' Helppp - pppp - pelp - elp - Ip -' it echoed up.

  'Who's down there drinkin' me water?' A white face peered down the cool shaft. It was Farmer O'Mara.

  'It's meeeee.'

  ' I know it's you, yer idiot! but what's yer name ?' 'Milligan.'

  ' Dan ? What you doin' down there, man ?'

  ' I'm playing the cello. What do you think ?'

  He threw Milligan a rope. 'Hold tight.' O'Mara was a giant of a man, his hands hung from his shirtsleeves like raw hams. He started to pull. ' God, he's strong,' thought Milligan, ascending draggletail from his watery bower.

  Drying out by the fire, O'Mara gave him hot tea and whisky. They awaited the morning. In the leaping firelight Milligan saw O'Mara's face. His eyes were cups of sadness, and seemed far, far older than him. A smile on that face would look like a sin.

  Milligan knew the story. O'Mara had married a raving beauty, Sile Kerns. When he started courting her every man in the village had been through her, every one in the village knew it, all except O'Mara. Him being so big they were frightened to cast asper-sions on the girl. The marriage bore three children, Sean, Laura and Sarah. It seemed that at last Sile had left her old ways behind her. Then O'Mara had

  caught her red-handed, the lover had fled across the countryside without his trousers which were shown as evidence. O'Mara was awarded custody of the kids. That seemed the end of it, things settled down, all but Sile, who was slowly going out of her mind.

  Losing the kids had done it. One night Sile got in to their bedroom and cut their throats. She would have had O'Mara too but for the fact he couldn't sleep for the toothache. She was taken away and put in Gedstow Asylum.

  There she sat out her life, sitting and looking at a wall, sitting and looking at a wall, sitting and looking at a wall. . . . From a man who laughed and loved life, O'Mara was cut down to a walking dead. It was thirteen years since then. Unknown to anybody, he still kept the children's beds made up and every night slept with a teddy bear and a dolly clutched in his great hairy arms.

  Now he bred horses. In the spring he'd watch the young rubber-legged foals racing through the sweet morning grass, and sometimes he could see three laughing children on their backs.

  They lay buried in the Churchyard of St Theresa. He comforted himself with whisky, and an eternal hatred of women. 'You drink too much,' Dr Goldstein told him.

  ' Drink too much for what ?' he asked in reply. The doctor, knowing his tragedy, stayed silent.

  Sgt Joseph MacGillikudie read and re-read the official report.' Is this all true ?' he asked the blinking constable.

  ' It's just as it happened, Sarge.'

  MacGillikudie removed his pince-nez. 'It's a mystery then how did Dan Doonan get out of his coffin, take his boots off and get into bed without a wig on, at the same time being stone dead.' MacGillikudie thought towards the floor, and tapped the pince-nez on his thumb.' Fancy! Him wearing a wig ?

  I've known Doonan, man, woman and boy, for thirty years and never did I know he had the baldness. He must have been a master of disguise.' He closed the dossier and stamped it

  'Unsolved'. Constable Oaf coughed, blinked and spoke.

  'Technically speaking, Sarge, coming back to life is no crime.'

  ' Oh yes it is! If you come back, for a start you need a birth certificate. Meantime supposin' yer wife married again ? What then ? Eh ? What then ?'

  'You can have her for bigamy,' smiled the Constable.

  MacGillikudie waved him away. 'No, no, no, it's all wrong, bugger off!'

  That night, wearing a cheap smoking jacket cut from blankets that his wife had made and laughed at, he lay in bed fuming and meditating.

  Crime! It obsessed him. When he joined the police he had destined himself for the high office of Chief Detective Inspector.

  After nearly twenty-seven years he was still eighteen promotions short. How could the Inspector have overlooked him for so long ?

  Of course, he had made mistakes. Like Dr Crippen. ' It looks like he did it,' MacGillikudie said, three days after the man had been hung.

  Nevertheless, there was no one alive who could match him for scientific criminological deduction. Fu Manchu, Sexton Blake, Charlie Chan, he'd read them all, he'd learned the hard way - paperbacks. The lights went out, his wife settled beside him.

  'Good night, Sherlock Holmes,' she said, laughing hysterically.

  One day, he thought, one day. He clenched and unclenched his fists under the bedclothes.

  Chapter Seven

  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 Barrington.

  '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 dispe
nsation 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 Ballyshag Bridge over the River 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.