Puckoon (10 page)

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.