Puckoon Read online

  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.

  With a rupee pocket money he'd enjoy the meeting from the middle of the course. The stands were a riot of colour. Pugrees, saris, white dhotis, there was the Maharajah of Kolapur in orange silk trousers, syces in white with polished brass shoulder trappings led in the horses, the Aga Khan, then a young man with many wives to go. Everywhere the smell of betel-nut and pan biddy.

  Milligan remembered his first bet with a short Hindu bookie who wrote his betting slips on rice paper so in case of raids they could be eaten. It was the Governor's Cup, the Derby of India. Milligan had picked out 'Cherrio', a pure white Arab horse, a Pegasus without wings. She sailed home.

  Milligan ran for his winnings only to find the Hindu bookie under arrest. Charged with molesting an Indian woman between races, he had protested he had never touched the woman. She said he had but she hadn't minded it. Apparently it was the policeman who was jealous and broke up the fun.

  Those days were all gone. It might never have happened.

  'You've gone quiet, Milligan,' said Rafferty, now three stone heavier.

  'No Irishman can enjoy himself alone for long, Rafferty. I was thinkin' of me boyhood.'

  Suddenly Rafferty went tense.' I think we're on the wrong road, Milligan.'

  'Whyd'you say that?'

  'We've just passed a Chinaman.'

  'We couldn't have come that far.'

  'I'm not joking. It was a Chinee, I tell you, not only that, he was wearing a policeman's hat.'

  'We never had that much to drink, did we?'

  They argued into the beckoning night. From the roadside, Constable Lee Ah Pong made a note of two drunken men arguing on a bike. He looked at his watch and then added the time to his report. He waxed mysterious and disappeared sideways into the dark.

  Ah Pong of Peking, China, had arrived in Dublin on a tramp steamer The General Gordon, engaged in smuggling monkeys from India to Tilbury.

  The Scottish Captain Gordon MacThun had lost his way many times before. Last year he set course for Madras and arrived at Elba. As Ah Pong remarked,' Scotsman doesn't know his Madras from his Elba.' The little Chinese had done the trip to escape the stark poverty of China and was soon happily walking in the stark poverty of Ireland. He had jumped ship in Dublin with his worldly fortune of twelve pounds in yens. The money was pre-Czarist and was in several stages of devaluation at the same time. It took a Dublin bank clerk eighteen hours and two mental breakdowns to work out the exchange. Ah Pong came out with a smile and asked the first stranger:

  ' Hello General Gordon, where China Town ?'

  Not having one, the Dubliner thought the next best thing would be the Jewish quarter. He took Ah Pong to Frogg Street and pointed to a sign ' Bed and Breakfast for hire.' A large woman opened a small door.

  ' You want a room ?' Mrs Goldberg asked.

  ' Please, I not make English much, hello - I come lite out Peking.

  Oh hello - General Gordon. Me.'

  'I don't know what he's sayin',' she shouted back down the passage. ' I think its General Gordon,' she added.

  'Wot is it?' Mr Goldberg came blinking-shuffling up the corridor.

  'Oh,' he saw Ah Pong. 'He's all right, he's a Foreigner, they eat anything. Come in, come in.' He made a friendly gesture with the Dublin Jewish Chronicle. 'You a tourist then?'

  'Me Chinee.'

  ' Oh, you a Chinee ? Well, well. We live and learn, eh ? How's Sun Yat Sen gettin' on ?'

  ' Cup of tea, Mr Chinese ?' asked Mrs Goldberg, removing the cost.

  Ah Pong made a sign in mime that he wished a bed for the night, lying on the floor and placing his hands along his head.

  'See that, Rachel,' said the enlightened Mr Goldberg, ' Chinese drink it lying down.'

  A puzzled Chinee watched as both Goldbergs took his tea stretched on the floor. Lodgers were hard to come by, and at all costs to be encouraged.

  A true son of the Orient, Ah Pong carried his customs with him.

  The Chinese New Year came. 'Happy New Year,' he shouted to a tram full of puzzled Dubliners and was bodily hurled off. For weeks he had searched for employment. His little store of money soon dwindled. One day he told the Goldbergs, 'Hello. Goodbye.

  Me I money all gone. No work here for Chinee. I bugger off, General Gordon.'

  The Goldbergs had grown very fond of the little man. He paid his rent on the dot and didn't mind chickens in his bedroom. Mr Goldberg remembered the new Republic was desperately short of policemen. They had advertised the fact in The Sligo Clarion

  -'Aden of good physique over 4 ft 3 ins. will find a good life in the new Irish Free State Police Force.'

  Inspector Gogarty Muldoon was hard put to it. He parry-diddled a pencil on his desk. 'A Chinee,' he kept muttering and looking out the window. ' God knows we need recruits . . . but a Chinee?' He stood up.

  A fine wreck of a man dissipated by a thousand nights of debauchery, he had obtained his present position by sending his immediate superior an April fool telegram. 'All is known,' that's all it said. The effect was startling. His superior had fled the country and was now a Sanitary Inspector in Madrid. The current shortage of men was Muldoon's only worry. Blinking at him was the pneumatic face of Sgt Behan.

  'He's a nice little feller, sir,' he said.

  'Nice, yes, Behan, but consider the prospect.

  If Ah Pong becomes a constable he's bound to succeed, as the Chinese are very clever. I read that. Now - ' the Inspector pulled the lobe of his nose, ' - he'll write to his relations in Peking and tell them that there is jobs over here with uniforms, lodgings, pay and allowances.' He looked at Behan. 'Don't you see, Sergeant? If Ah Pong gets in, ten years from now the entire police force of Ireland would be Chinese.'

  ' Including me ?' asked the worried sergeant.

  The Inspector didn't reply. 'We could make him a policeman if there's a quiet out-of-the-way post ter send him, and bring the Irish constable back to Dublin where he is needed.' He looked at the wall map.

  'Hmnn. Sergeant, bring me the constabulary strength of Puckoon.'

  'Right, sir,' Behan issued smartly from and back to the room.

  The Inspector turned the pages. 'Heavens alive! We're supposed to have a police strength of five out there and there's only two left. What's happened to the other three ?'

  ' Six years for assault and battery, sir!'

  'That's the place then. We'll train Ah Pong and then send him up there.'

  At 4.32 on the stroke of midnight, 7 dedicated men sat around a table in the vestry of St Theresa.

  'Men,' began Father Rudden, looking at the faces of O'Mara, O'Brien, Milligan, Rafferty and Dr Goldstein. 'I think you all know why we're here.'

  They nodded their heads, some grunted, Milligan said 'Yes.'

  'Good,' said Rudden. 'The trouble is this. Three people from Puckoon have to go through that Customs gate to see their departed. Those are the graves of - ' he read from a small piece of paper ' - Patrick Grogan, Harold O'Lins and Dan Doonan. God rest their souls. So - ' he sucked his breath through his teeth ' - unpleasant as I find it, I feel obliged to remove their bodies from that side for reburial over here. This can only be achieved by asking their permission - ' he pointed towards the Customs '- which I resent! Or bring them back secretively under cover of darkness. I favour the latter.'

  'Which is the latter, Father?' said Milligan.

  ' That's the under cover of darkness one. I have devised an infallible plan, which mustn't fail.'

  The brass stare of the oil lamp suffused the room, the faces of the plotters bathed yellow in the tallow light. The priest outlined his plan and swore them all to secrecy.

>   ' Before you go,' said Father Rudden, ' let's drink a toast!' He took a bottle of unblessed communion wine from the cupboard.

  'Beaujolais,' he said phonetically, ' 1920, a good year.'

  ' Be a better year when you open it, Father.'

  'Patience, Milligan, patience.'

  Patience, thought Milligan, that word was invented by dull buggers who couldn't think quick enough.

  'Now then,' the priest was saying, 'wine must be treated with respect.' So saying, he shook the bottle violently. 'Mix all the goodness in,' he said gleefully.

  Goldstein's Bacchanalian soul withered at the barbarities being meted out to the royal and most sensitive liquid known to men.

  Red Burgundy. He couldn't remember how long he had loved wine, but Red Burgundy had been his mistress since he was eighteen.

  Year after year his father, the late Ben Tovim Goldstein, had laid down wines in the little cellar under their house. Not being well off, the wine was usually only served on holidays. And such a fuss was made of it. Even in the frugal rationing days of the war, when they had a house in North Finchley, even with such food as tinned grade three Russian salmon, Poppa Goldstein would fuss along in the kitchen, making momma add this and that.

  The salmon would be cooked in cheap white Algerian wine and a hot mayonnaise sauce poured over the top. New potatoes grown on the allotment were French fried slightly brown and dusted with cheese at the last moment. Poppa would bring it in to his five hungry children with a great deal of noise and a good deal of rhetoric.

  'Caught this morning in a Scottish river and especially flown down by the r.a.f.,' he would say. ' Now, with this entree, what do we drink ?' 'White!' chorused his indoctrinated children. 'Yes, white,' he would beam.

  He would then take the white from a small ice bucket and feel it.

  ' Hmm,' he would murmur, looking pensively at the ceiling,' Forty degrees, just right,' and he would pinch his thumb and forefinger together and kiss it away. He made much of wrapping a clean serviette around the neck of the bottle. 'White Burgundy 1937, Chateau bottled, and imported by Mr Patrick Ford of London, who only bought at the candle light sales.'

  Now he would spill a little in a Paris goblet, and swirl it around, every now and then tilting the glass forward and savouring it with his nose.

  'When you are accustomed to it, you can tell by the bouquet exactly whether you are going to like it or not. The taste comes second, but that is usually just a confirmation of what your nose has already decided.'

  Here he sipped. 'As I thought! A little young, better in another two years, but still delightful.'

  He would pour them all a 'Damp Glass' as he called it. ' The older you are the more you get, so hurry up and grow.'

  They would all clink glasses and chorus' Lechayim'.

  Then the meat course and with it the red, round-bodied, luscious Burgundy.

  'Chambertin33,' said Poppa.' Liquid velvet grown just South of Dijon.'

  Just after breakfast Poppa would go down into the cellar and bring up one precious bottle. The war was on, France had capitulated, and no more red was coming into the country. After four hours he would decant, and then stand the green glass decanter in the dining room.

  'Idiots laugh at this ritual,' he would say, ' but we Oneophiles know how to get the best from the wine.'

  Father would hold the first glass of red up to the light and carefully examine it for sediment and colour.

  ' Poppa, what was the greatest meal ever served ?'

  Poppa puzzled at young Sean's question.

  ' The greatest I don't know but -' here he closed his eyes and put his finger on his nose. Suddenly he spoke. 'The meal served at the Tuilleries in 1820, I have a copy in my wallet, listen to this; no, better still, I will read you the most extraordinary menu, which proves that the French under no matter what harrowing conditions still attain the heights of civilization.' Poppa donned his glasses and read.

  'Dinner served at the Cafe Voisin, 261 Rue Saint-Honore, on December 25th 1870, 99th day of the siege.'

  Here he looked around to observe their surprise, then continued.

  Hors D'oeuvres Butter-Radishes, Stuffed Donkey's Head, Sardines, Soups, Puree of Red Beans with Croutons, Elephant Consomme Entrees, Fried Gudgeons, Roast Camel English Style Jugged Kangaroo, Roast Bear Chops au Poivre, Roasts Haunch of Wolf, Venison Sauce, Cat Flanked by Rats Watercress Salad, Antelope Terrine with Truffles, Mushroom Bordelaise, Buttered Green Peas, Dessert Rice Cake with Jam Gruyere, Cheese Wines

  (Here Poppa's face beamed)

  First service Sherry La tour Blanche 1861! Chateau Palmer 1864!

  'Now second service,' he emphasized:

  Mouton Rothschild 1846! Romanee Conti 1858! Grand Porto 1827!

  He folded the paper, and patted his brow where an excitement of perspiration had grown. They gathered by the menu that the Paris Zoo had been held in reserve for a Christmas Dinner. At the time young Sean was only seven, and the names of the great wine Chateaus that his father rolled off meant very little to him, but his father's persistence had borne fruit and the whole family were now confirmed lovers of wine.

  Right now, however, terrible things were happening. Father Rudden was pulling another cork to shreds and pouring the wine.

  ' Wine,' the priest was saying, ' is liquid Christianity, there was never a bigger argument against the teetotallers than the Miracle at Cana.' Five glasses clinked. 'Schlaunty!' they chorused. They all drank. They drank again. Then, several more agains, then a series of agains followed by one long permanent again. Father Rudden was starting to rock unsteadily. Laughter was coming more frequent, and an occasional song. The conversation got around to religion.

  ' I say,' said the suddenly enlightened Milligan, T say that Roman Catholicism is losin' ground.'

  ' Ha, Ha,' said the priest,' losing ground ? With 500 millions at the last count ?' O'Brien rubbed his chin. 'That's the trouble, it's like commercial television, never mind what kind of audience you got as long as you got plenty of 'em. The world is only concerned with numbers, not quality. It's a biological fact that you can't have numbers and quality. All things that continue in numbers run to seed. If not to seed they become a commune of non-thinkers like ants or bees.'

  The priest drained his glass. 'Rubbish!' he said, wiping his mouth.' Catholicism is still a great power.'

  ' I don't think so Father. Look, the Catholic Missionaries were in China three hundred years before Communism, and now?

  Where are the Catholics in Chinatoday ? Out! Finished!' 'We'll be back, you see.'

  'Not without a war Father,' interjected Rafferty. 'And that's no way to get converts.'

  Father was busy opening another bottle of wine, he spoke from the dark recess of the room.

  ' We'll have to wait and see, that's all that's left, wait and see.' He reappeared with a fresh bottle. ' Before I open this one, I want to make an appeal. We are in need of a fighting fund to help us with accessories. I should like to start by asking for donations right now!'

  There was a grim, long, embarrassing silence.

  'Come, come, come? I'm not asking for hundreds of pounds, just a little to start with. Will someone say ten shillings ?'

  'I can say it, Father,' said Milligan, 'but I haven't got it.'

  'I've got it,' thought Dr Goldstein, 'but I'm not going to say it.'

  O'Brien had opened his wallet and without a word spread three one-pound notes on to the table in front of the priest.

  'There, Father, that's for the lot of us, I had a good win at the races today.'

  With his hand shaking, and silenced by the vastness of the amount, the Father picked up the money.

  ' God bless you, O'Brien, dis will cover everything.'

  The glasses clinked again, the light from the lamp shone through the wine, and the ceiling was dancing with the leaping red rubies from below.

  'This will have to be the last one, early Mass tomorrow, Schlaunty!' said the priest as he drained his glass, made the sign of the cr
oss and fell backwards into the dark.

  'Ah, the poor man's tired,' said O'Mara, picking the priest up and carefully placing him on his bed. Milligan removed the priest's shoes.

  'God God,' said the Milligan, 'if I had dat many holes in me socks, I'd use 'em as mittens.'

  Little did he know that the priest frequently did. Money! That was the trouble. Money!

  Chorusing good nights to the sleeping priest, the five took the road home.

  It was a high, crisp, starry night, lovers were locked warmly in their doorways, noiseless was the moon-mad sea. Merrily the five followed the road to Puckoon that streamed silver ahead of them. Goldstein clung to O'Mara, O'Mara to Rafferty, Rafferty to O'Brien and O'Brien on to Milligan and his bike. This inebriated daisy chain stumbled forward. Although the general direction seemed to be forward, a lot of the time was taken in falling backwards and sideways; however, they were gradually making progress in all directions. Flanking the road was the dank dark of the Puckoon Woods.

  'This is just the night for poaching,' said Rafferty. 'Come with me.'

  He turned them sharp into a ploughed field and made for the trees.

  ' I got a few rabbit traps along here and one big fox trap.'

  'Do you use them torture traps, Rafferty?' asked O'Mara.

  ' Gins ? God no. Only bastards use them. I makes me own, painless and the animal can't hurt itself. I sent the plans to the r.s.p.g.a., dere tinkin' about it.'

  Milligan stumbled. 'Bugger-what's the r.s.p.g.a. ?'

  'Well,' said Rafferty, climbing a stile. 'It's supposed to be a society for the prevention of cruelty to animals, the idea is good, but I found that most of the people who join are dog lovers, that or cats, the rest of

  the animal kingdom can go to hell. Mind you, there are some real fine members.'

  The boots of the revellers were now great puddings of clay and mud.

  ' How much farther ?' gasped O'Brien.

  ' I got me traps all along der banks of the river in dem trees,' and he pointed off into the dark. Unsteadily they plodded towards the river, their travels interjected with drunken singing, frequent halts and bawdy laughter as some took to spraying the trees.