The Hounds of the Morrigan (13 page)

Thinking about this, he began to walk slowly away, rubbing the side of his nose with his thumb because he was perplexed.

When he had walked a few yards, he stopped. Goodness! he said to himself. I was bedazzled entirely and forgot me duty. It’s me
duty
that got left out!

He went back to the glasshouse and again knocked at the door.

This time Melodie opened it. The Sergeant waited, confident of a warm, even gushing welcome.

‘Who’s there?’ Breda called from inside.

‘It’s that fool with the face like a bashed crab,’ said Melodie.

‘What?’ said the Sergeant, not at all sure if he had heard aright.

‘Policemen get faces like that when they drink illicit liquor after confiscating it from hard-working poteen-makers. That’s what happens when they drink illegal booze!’ Breda said.

‘Shouldn’t drink the evidence,’ Melodie said severely; and she wagged her finger in his face.

The Sergeant went red from shame and anger. How do they know that? he thought. Is it true about me face? It was all right this morning when I was looking in the mirror. They’re just guessing. He squared up to them.

‘That’ll be enough of that,’ he said, ‘or you’ll be scrubbing floors in a House of Correction!’ He got out his official notebook and pencil.

‘Information has been laid against you,’ he intoned pompously, ‘by a passing Swedish rock-climber—’

‘A rock-climber? Round here? East of the Corrib? Nothing to climb round here,’ Melodie interrupted him.

‘He was on his way to a rock!’ the Sergeant said masterfully. ‘Anybody could guess And it was then that he saw a certain occurrence.’
that
!

‘What certain occurrence?’ asked Breda sweetly.

‘He alleges that items of furniture descended from the sky in the near vicinity of this glasshouse. The description of the furniture matches exactly some furniture that was taken from a store in Galway, and it is believed that you are in possession of these objects. He states that he saw you assisting it to land. What do you say about that?’

‘How was it stolen in the first place?’ Melodie asked, as if daring him.

The Sergeant blushed before replying sturdily:

‘The suspicion is that it was conjured in some way, for it certainly flew out of the windows in a manner not at all natural! Shoplifting in a new way no doubt; but there’s a law against it!’

‘You’re a buffoon, sir!’ said Breda.

‘And I under the impression that he was a scholar and a gentleman!’ Melodie said shaking her head sadly.

‘I never heard such misguided twaddle,’ said Breda.

‘Swedish hallucinations are no concern of ours,’ said Melodie.

‘Had
he
been at the alcohol too?’

‘Did you get him to blow up one of those balloons of yours to measure the amount he had drunk?’

‘Don’t tell us that he was as sober as a Judge—held up by string, most of them!’

‘The accusation is outrageous!’ said Melodie.

‘Monstrous!’ agreed Breda. ‘If we shoplifted—where’s the evidence?’

She stepped outside into the sunshine.

‘Inside that glasshouse,’ said the Sergeant.

Melodie emerged and stood beside Breda. She carefully closed the door of the glasshouse after her.

‘Oh really?’ she said.

‘We are very lambs of innocence,’ said Breda. ‘You have only to look at our faces to see that we are without a speck of guile.’

‘Speckless,’ murmured Melodic

Together, they presented two guileless faces to the Sergeant’s view.

Bashed crabs, he thought vengefully. ‘I’ve got a search warrant,’ he smiled.

‘Unspeakable Sergeant!’ cried Melodie. ‘Does that mean you are going to have a look inside?’

‘That is my intention, madam,’ the Sergeant replied stiffly.

‘Without evidence it becomes mere hearsay by a common informer, doesn’t it, Breda?’ said Melodie and she turned a very significant look in her friend’s direction.

‘Swedish people are not common!’ the Sergeant said severely.

Breda winked at Melodie. Then in perfect time, they snapped their fingers extremely secretly and slyly so that the Sergeant didn’t notice or even hear.

‘Go in and case the joint, don’t let us stop you,’ said Breda.

‘You are using the criminal idiom, madam; and with great fluency, I notice,’ said the Sergeant and he opened the glasshouse door and stepped inside. He paused to make a note in his notebook about Breda’s fluency in the criminal idiom and then he looked round the glasshouse.

It was bare.

Empty as a balloon.

Not one stolen object to be seen.

The Sergeant looked utterly crestfallen. When he came out, he was silent.

‘Well?’ sneered Melodie.

‘I’m keeping my eye on you two from now on,’ the Sergeant said darkly.

Unexpectedly, her whole manner changed. She became cold and terribly threatening.

‘If you are not very careful, Sergeant, my dear,’ she said and her words came like splinters of ice, ‘you could very easily find yourself Up The Amazon On A Rubber Duck. Be warned.’

The two women went inside the glasshoues and shut the door. He could hear them inside, sniggering.

As he walked away, he could hear that one of them was playing a tango on a tuba. He was too dispirited to even wonder where it had come from.

‘You’d want to keep your eye on those two,’ said a passing frog.

That’s it, he thought. I’ll never again touch another drop. I swear it. By the shiny buttons of my stainless predecessors, I swear it. Frogs talking to me. What next?’

The Sergeant went round the corner and had a good cry.

P
RESENTLY,
the Sergeant wiped his eyes. He undid the buttons of his tunic and reaching inside, he produced a small, interesting bottle filled with poteen, which he had personally confiscated only the day before.

‘This’ll put fizz in me,’ he said.

He unscrewed the top while scanning quickly in all directions to be sure that he was unobserved and then he had two or three stiff belts.

‘A belt of this is better than five pounds spent at the doctor’s,’ he said.

Feeling much better, he remounted his bike and pedalled along towards Galway. He hadn’t gone very far when he saw a great number of hounds approaching. They padded quickly past him and he dismounted to watch where they were going. To his delight, they went to the glasshouse, where they were admitted at once.

‘I have them now, the rogues,’ he said.

He cycled back to where he’d had his good cry, parked his bike and then he went and knocked at the glasshouse door. This time, he gave his very official knock.

Melodie Moonlight opened the door.

‘I see you are fond of dogs,’ the Sergeant said with a smiling innuendo.

‘Blow your nose!’ snapped Melodie Moonlight authoritatively.

For the tiniest moment, a small reflex jumped in the Sergeant’s right hand, fleetingly eager to obey her command, but he controlled it without any difficulty.

‘Who’s there this time?’ Breda called out.

‘It’s that nosey Sergeant again, trying to work his way indoors for a cup of tea,’ Melodie responded.

‘That pest? He’s becoming as well-known as a begging donkey!’

These two could cause a row in ten convents, the Sergeant remarked to himself, but they won’t get me going
this
time. Aloud, he said:

‘Have you got licences for those dogs, Madam?’

‘Don’t brandish your nose belligerently at me like that!’ said Melodie in a ratty tone.

Breda came to the door. She scrutinized the Sergeant carefully and then turned to her friend.

‘Don’t you think he has a nose like a duck, Melodie dear?’ she suggested gently.

‘Plug up your gob or I’ll blister you!’ quacked the Sergeant threateningly.

He stopped, thought for a moment, and then allowed his eyes to slide together so that he might take a peep at his nose.

He hadn’t got one.

In its place was a duck’s bill.

It wavered for a few seconds and then it was gone and his own comfortable old nose had returned.

I’m seeing things, he thought.

‘My,’ said Melodie admiringly. ‘Aren’t we pale blue today!’

‘And those ribbons in your hair—aren’t they madly wicked? How very pagan of you,’ said Breda and she smiled a secret smile.

The Sergeant drew his truncheon and took a step forward to assert his authority. As his foot moved, a flash of white caught his eye.

He looked down.

With horror he saw that his legs, his own beefy, well-muscled, hairy legs, were wearing dainty white ankle-socks and his feet were in buckled hornpipe shoes. As his gaze travelled upwards, he found that he was dressed as a little girl in a pale-blue frock with puffed sleeves and a tie belt, and instead of his truncheon, there was a skipping-rope with wooden handles and tinkle-bells, in his great, big fist.

Resting on his broad chest were the ends of two fat, flaxen plaits, tied with lavender ribbons. He touched one of the plaits, found that it was real and felt all the way up to his head, where he discovered that his Garda headgear had somehow changed into a cotton sun-bonnet.

Worst of all, one of the legs of his pretty pink knickers was hanging down below his knee, exposing all his frills to the world, because the elastic had given way.

‘The leg of your drawers is hanging down, Sergeant,’ Breda said vulgarly.

Oh mother! I’m bunched altogether now, he thought sadly. Thanks be to Providence, the lads can’t see me like this. The young Gardai would be sniggering at me, and then they’d be whistling after me and after that, they’d be laughing and mocking and pointing openly, until I’d be driven daft.

Angrily he went to throw away the silly skipping-rope. To his confusion, it was a truncheon again and he was very properly dressed in his uniform. He touched the peak of his cap for reassurance.

It’s that blasted poteen! It’s giving me visions, he decided, and felt a little comforted, his flummoxed brain not allowing him to realize that the women were playing a part in his discomfort and were even remarking in words, the changes that were taking place. He thought it was all happening inside his own head.

He struggled to carry on doing his duty.

‘Now you two! What about those dogs? Are they licensed or not?’ he asked crossly.

‘You won’t be told, will you?’ Melodie said with an impatient wave of her hand.

The Sergeant found himself Up The Amazon On A Rubber Duck.

He paddled madly with his hands towards the distant bank of the river before the piranha fish found out that he was there.

‘W
ELL,
here I am Up The Amazon On A Rubber Duck and the light bad. I haven’t felt this weird since I won a medal at a Feis,’ he said.

He reached the river bank.

Ireland seemed so far away; the vegetation round him was exotic and composed of secrets.

‘All I can do now is follow my nose and see where it takes me,’ he said and glanced round nervously.

Some seconds later, his nose was back in the Garda Barracks in Eglinton Street, Galway, with the Sergeant at his usual close distance behind it. He was sitting by the fire in the duty room. Hastily, he inspected his appearance to see if he was himself again. Finding that he was and that his trouser-legs were dry, he let out a sigh of relief.

A young Garda entered, holding a mug of tea.

‘Gimme that,’ the Sergeant said.

Startled, the young Garda handed him the tea.

‘Didn’t you go yet, Sergeant?’ he asked. ‘I thought you were off out in the country somewhere, doing your duty?’

The Sergeant swallowed the tea in almighty gulps.

‘Where’d you get that idea?’

‘I thought that a young Swedish rock-climber phoned in from Annaghdown to report something about flying furniture?’

‘Flying furniture? Don’t make me laugh! Do I look the kind of eejit to be taken in by a half-baked hoax like that? Thought made a fool of you, my lad, didn’t it? Nip outside now and see if me bike’s all right and don’t be talking out of turn.’

The young Garda turned to go—poking out his tongue when he thought he was out of the Sergeant’s view.

‘Keep that tongue where it belongs!’ roared the Sergeant.

‘Sorry, Sergeant.’

‘If it ventures out again—I’ll tie it in a knot round your nose.’

‘Yes, sir.’

The young Garda went outside thinking: He’d run his mother in and out of a hole after a fox, that fella. He has no mercy.

Alone, the Sergeant sat cogitating and feeling cowardly.

‘After all,’ he said finally, they hadn’t got any furniture in that glasshouse and as for dog licences—a minor offence. We mustn’t lose our sense of proportion here. And nothing on earth would get me near that glasshouse again; facing two such sarcastic little judies for the sake of furniture stolen from that gobdaw of a Manager. There’s always some poor woman with drink taken—I’ll go after them, instead.’

Immediately he was struck by the unworthiness of this thought and he cast it out of his heart.

For the present, however, he sat and brooded, while the cowardice in him struggled with the anger in him, but the thought that simmered most deeply in him was, sadly: Wait ’till I get my hands on that damnable poteen-maker, I’ll see that he gets a long stretch!

‘The bike’s all right,’ the young Garda said, re-entering.

‘Get on with your work!’ the Sergeant said fiercely.

I
T
had been such a long, tiring day.

Pidge was glad to sink into the feather mattress, feeling his limbs as heavy as stone in the soft bed. A strong drowsiness came on him and his eyelids closed and opened and closed again, very slowly, as he drifted into a beautiful daze of sleep. He thought it the most wonderful feeling in the whole world.

After a little while he felt his mind spinning off into a dream. There was a slow whirling of his being, as if he were inside a silent and gentle tornado that was taking him off on a journey of delight. It lifted him up to a great height and he was swimming like a dolphin in the sky and then it laid him back on the cushion of his bed, like a snowflake landing on water.