Puckoon (6 page)
'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
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. Stretched 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.
Belfast is a big city. At one time it
was quite
small,
even worse, there has been an
occasion when there was no
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
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
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 scandal, 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.
