Best of Myles

by Flann O'Brien

  Briefly, the ranks of my respectable and loyal Escorts have been infiltrated by cheats and disaffected elements who have, however, surpassing competence at the game of voice-throw. Extraordinary utterances have been made in public places, but nobody knows for certain who made them. Worse, intelligent and perfectly genuine remarks made by dowdy young women have been completely ignored by the person to whom they were addressed, whose first instinct is to turn round and search the faces of inoffensive strangers to find the ‘genuine’ speaker.

  I will have more to say on this matter in a day or two.

  THE ESCORT MESS

  THE TROUBLE I referred to the other day began like this. A lady dumbbell hired out what she took to be a genuine WAAMA League Escort, and went with him to the Gate Theatre. Before the play and during the first interval dozens of eavesdroppers were astounded at the brittle cut and thrust of the one-man conversation. The lady herself, who barely knew how to ask for her porridge, was pleased at the extraordinary silence that was won by her companion’s conversational transports. Quite suddenly he said loudly:

  ‘By the way, old girl, is that your old woman’s dress you are wearing tonight?’

  Simultaneously, the unfortunate client found a printed card shoved under her nose. It read:

  ‘Don’t look round, don’t move, and don’t scream for the police. Unless you sign on the dotted line promising to pay me an extra fiver for tonight, I will answer in the affirmative, and then go on to talk about your wretched tinker-woman’s blouse. Play ball and nobody will be hurt. Beware! Signed, the Black Shadow.’

  The poor girl, of course, had no alternative but to accept the proffered pencil and scrawl her name. Instantly she was heard to say in her merry twinkling voice:

  ‘Really, Godfrey, it’s the first time I ever wore the same gown twice, why must you be so quaint! One must make forty guineas go a bit further nowadays, you know, tightening the belt and all that.’

  WORSE TO COME

  After the show there was an extraordinary scene in the foyer. The lady’s husband called to fetch her home, and was immediately presented with her IOU by the ‘Escort’. The demand for £5 out of the blue made his face the colour of war-time bread. He roared at his wife for an explanation. Floods of tears and mutterings was the best she could do. Then the husband rounded on the escort and denounced him as one who preyed on women, an extortionist, and a blackmailer of the deepest dye.

  ‘And you over there with the whiskey face on you,’ he added, apparently addressing a well-known and respected member of the justiciary, ‘I don’t like you either, and I’ve a damn good mind to break your red neck!’

  The flabbergasted jurist (not that he was one whit less flabbergasted than the excited husband) turned the colour of cigar-ash and ran out into the street in search of a Guard. In his absence the husband began to insult the wife of another bystander and to ‘dar and double-dar’ her companion to hit him. This favour was no sooner asked for than received. The unobtrusive ‘Black Shadow’ gallantly ran forward and picked up the prostrate figure, adroitly extracting in the process every item of silver and notes in his pockets. It was a chastened warrior that was delivered in due course into the arms of the rain-glistening Guard.

  All this, I need hardly say, is only a beginning. Horrible slurs on our civilisation were to follow.

  THOSE ESCORTS

  LET ME give some further details of the Escort mess I mentioned the other day. When it became generally known that a non-union man had succeeded in extracting a five-pound note from a client by menaces, hordes of unscrupulous ventriloquists descended upon the scene and made our theatre foyers a wilderness of false voices, unsaid remarks, anonymous insults, speakerless speeches and scandalous utterances which had no known utterer. Every second person wore a blank flabbergasted expression, having just offered some gratuitous insult to a stranger, or, perhaps, received one. Of course, blows were exchanged. Innocent country visitors coming to the theatre for the first time, and unaware of the situation could scarcely be expected to accept the savage jeers of some inoffensive bystander. Nor was the boot always on the same foot. The visitor’s first impression of our intellectual theatres was all too frequently a haymaker in the belly, the price of some terrible remark he was heard to have made as he pushed in through the door.

  Practised theatre-goers have trained themselves to listen for the almost imperceptible little pause between the genuine answer to a question and the bogus addendum of some ill-disposed ventriloquist. Thus:

  ‘Have a cigarette?’

  ‘No, thanks (pause), you parrot-clawed, thrush-beaked, pigeon-chested clown!’

  ‘Do you like the play, Miss Plug? (pause) I’m only asking for politeness, because how an illiterate slut like you would presume to have an opinion on anything is more than I can understand!’

  ‘The first act was wizard, actually. (Pause). There’s egg on your tie, you pig!’

  And so on, I regret to say.

  MOREOVER

  Several people prefer to remain inside at intervals nowadays. They are afraid of their lives of what they might blurt out if they ventured forth for a little air. This means, of course, putting up with the quieter and more deadly snake-bites of the seated malcontents, living in a phantom world of menacing mumble, ghost-whisper, and anonymous articulations of the most scandalous character, not to mention floods of threatening postcards. This sort of thing:

  ‘Slip me a pound or I will see that you ask the gentleman beside you where he got the money to pay for his seat. Beware! Do not attempt to call for help! Signed, The Grey Spider.’

  ‘Empty everything in your handbag into my right-hand coat pocket and make sure that nobody sees you doing it! Otherwise you will spend the evening plying strangers with salacious conundrums, even in the middle of the play. Don’t think too hard of me, we all have to live. I have a wife and ten children. I do this because I have to. Signed, The Firefly.’

  ‘Pay me 25s instantly or I will make a holy show of you. Be quick or you’re for it. No monkey work! Signed, The Hooded Hawk.’

  ‘This is a stick-up. Slip off that ring and drop it in the fold of my trousers. Otherwise you are going to heckle the players in the next act and think of what Hilton will have to say. Signed, The Mikado.’

  This is merely the background of this ramp. What happened afterwards is another day’s story. Just imagine Lord Longford saying: ‘Has anybody here got a handball? I challenge any man here to a moonlight game above in the gardens, against the gable of the Nurses’ Home!’

  ‘PUT FIVE single bank-notes in an envelope and stick the envelope under your seat with chewing gum before you leave the theatre for the first interval. Stay out for at least ten minutes. No monkey-work, mind. Fail me in this and I will fix your hash for you. Signed, the Green Mikado.’

  The somewhat scared lady who showed me this mysterious missive at the Abbey the other night asked me what she was to do. Naturally, I counselled courage and no truck with the evil voices that were infesting the national theatre like plague-nits in a rat’s back. I promised her the assistance of my genuine WAAMA League Escorts, in ever-growing volume, until the stream became a torrent. Grievous and sombre as the prospect was, I assured her, our mighty and illimitable resources would be marshalled towards the common-end. I then telephoned for my ace-escort. His wife said that he was out, but that she would send a message to him. I knew that he had no wife. He arrived just as the curtain was going up.

  DRAMATIC INCIDENT

  My lady friend had bravely ignored the threat and all of us sat down for the second act with some little trepidation. Just how would the dread Mikado strike? What did he mean by his threat to settle my friend’s hash? I was waiting every moment to hear her make some horrible remark, of which she would be as innocent as the child unborn.

  Quite suddenly the blow fell. It happened that there was a lengthy pause in the play where the story had reached a stage of crisis. A pause, but not silence. A player standing on the left of the stage electrif
ied the audience by saying:

  ‘Do you know, I have been wondering all night who in the name of Pete that fat cow in the fur coat is. The one second from the left in the third row!’

  I turned to my own escort, thunderstruck.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he whispered. ‘Your lady friend is fifth from the right. The addendum was mine. I was expecting this. It is common Leipzig practice.’

  Meanwhile, the unknown victim was being assisted out, the theatre was in uproar, the curtain had been rung down and the livid husband was already on his way behind the scenes to ask the reason why.

  HORRIBLE DEVELOPMENTS have taken place in the Escort scandal. One particular theatre has become a bedlam of ‘voices’ and coarse badinage, notwithstanding the foolish rule of the management that ‘no one who looks like a ventriloquist is to be admitted.’ If you say something, no one will believe that you said it. Even a simple ‘what-time-is-it?’ simply evokes a knowing smile and an involuntary search of the nearest bystander’s countenance; that or some extraordinary reply like ‘Pie-face!’ ‘Who wants to know?’ or ‘Time we were rid of a hook like you!’

  Meanwhile, decent people are taking steps to protect their interests. I was at a play the other night and could not help overhearing a scandalous monologue that was apparently being recited by my neighbour on the right, a very respectable-looking elderly man. I watched him through the corner of my eye and saw the hand go into an inside pocket. Was he searching for his card? Was he The Black Dragon about to shove some printed threat under my nose? Yes, yes, the small white card was in his claw! In a second it was held adroitly for my gaze. Imagine my astonishment when I read it:

  ‘I give you my solemn word of honour that I am a civil servant and that the appalling language that you hear coming from me is being uttered by some other person. Signed, JUST A MINOR STAFF OFFICER.’

  You see the point? He was afraid to say this. Because if he did, his explanation would be instantly followed up with a coarse insult to my wife, who was sitting beside me.

  EACH WITH HIS OWN CARD

  I had further evidence of this later in the foyer. I was standing smoking when a small gentleman said to me: ‘Excuse me for addressing a stranger, but I cannot help assuring you that it is only with the greatest difficulty that I restrain myself from letting you have a pile-driver in your grilled steak and chips, me bucko?’ Instantly he produced a card and handed it to me:

  ‘So help me, I am a crane-driver from Drogheda, and I have not opened my beak since I came in tonight. Cough twice if you believe me. Signed, NED THE DRIVER.’

  I coughed and walked away. Just for fun I said to a lady who was standing near: ‘Hello, hag! How’s yer ould one?’ Her reply was the sweet patient smile that might be exchanged between two fellow-sufferers from night starvation. What a world!

  Next day I want to tell you about the lady who hired out two Escorts, thinking that each would keep the other down.

  A CLASH AT HEADQUARTERS

  THERE WAS HELL and holy bedlam at a recent meeting of the inner council of the Myles na gCopaleen WAAMA League. Our horde of literary ventriloquists sent in a demand for more pay. I agreed to hear a deputation from them, although determined to take my stand on Order 83 and to die rather than concede a blue farthing. They were barely in the room when I heard myself saying: Well, gentlem’n, I’m not surprised to see you, I may say right away that I recognise that your wages are ridiculously low and that an increase of fifty per cent is the least I would have the effrontery to offer you.

  Before I had recovered from my astonishment, the spokesman said that such a response was disappointing, but that they were prepared to accept the increase under protest and without prejudice to their right to re-open the matter after consultation with their union. Then they filed out. The whole matter was over and done with before I had an opportunity of opening my beak. I mention the humiliating episode only because I see in it the idea for a new and exclusive WAAMA League service. Why not make my ventriloquists a bulwark of the Trade Union movement? Why not use their unique gifts to bring the parasite boss class to heel? Why not arrange beforehand, beyond yea or nay, that you will get the answer you are looking for? I’m talking to Mr O’Shannon.

  My little engraving today is intended to help you through life. It shows, and very plainly, too, how to cross a river without letting your top hat get wet. You use your cane, see. Of course, you are finished if a clap of rain comes when you are in mid-stream. All this is surrealist stuff. The Senegalese tiger will eat the tri-coloured bread. Observe that small cottage in the picture. It is an old Land League cabin. Valuation: On land, 15s; on other hereditaments, 13s. Arrears of rates payable to the County Council, £84 8s od. A tall farmer is sitting inside the cottage, sucking his hollow tooth. His wife, daughter, and nine strong sons are in Amerikey. There is not a stick of furniture in the house, no fire, no food, no other living thing, unless you want to count eleven gaunt rats. But the man is happy, he smiles to himself and keeps fiddling absently for a watch-chain that is long gone. A sharp fox’s smile flits on his old face. He is undoubtedly suffering from an incurable disease. There are weals on his legs from the whipping of the wind, his trousers have no seat. Long-standing suppurations of the joints have elongated his thin fingers. But he is happy, his mind is pleased. He is a member of WAAMA.

  A recent visit to the ‘Plough and the Stars’ set me thinking. Here is the old play re-vitalised and re-done by new players. It is better, perhaps, but different. Could it not be ordained that a play shall be played by the same players so long as they live? If after the years one or two have died, a brief programme note could explain the absence of the missing characters and the remaining players could work in suitable gags. ‘Ah, sure it was here poor ould Fluther used to come in the good ould days, the Lord be good to him, the place has never been the same since he went.’ Picture the Covey as an old man of seventy, the sole survivor of the original caste, trying desperately to carry on the play single-handed, muttering all sorts of explanations and blessings on the departed in between his own lines.

  Possibly when the last player has gone to his reward, I might be prepared to hear of an entirely new company being recruited to do the play. But not until then.

  AT THE PLAY

  ‘To within five minutes of the fall of the curtain on the first act people were streaming into the reserved seats, requesting those already seated to divulge the numbers of the seats they were occupying, to arise to let them squeeze past, and frequently to arise again to let them struggle back on their discovering they had entered the wrong row and invariably the wrong end. The stage was completely blocked from the view of those behind; the tip-up seats were banged up and down, and the ‘tut-tuts’ ‘shushes’ and more robust imprecations frustrated all hopes of listening to the play.’

  From a letter to the Irish Times.

  Yes, yes. I know. I have been campaigning on this matter for many years. Please see my design for a doorless theatre in the ‘Irish Engineer and Builder’, June 1933. My idea is that the patron should approach his seat through a trap-door situated where he keeps his feet when seated. The patrons approach the building through a cellar and locate their seats before they enter the theatre at all. They then mount velvet-runged ladders and reach their seats with the minimum fuss and interference. Take your stand at the back of such a theatre and watch the audience arriving. There is no door, entrance or exit of any kind. All is silence and soft light. After a time you hear a gentle click and, hey-presto, a solitary bald head has appeared in the middle of the parterre. One by one, heads appear silently throughout the vast auditorium. The usual hot-tempered, wrangling about seats and ticket stubs is going on hell for leather in the cellar, but not a word of it reaches the sacred cathedral of the drayma.

  Occasionally, if you like, a wit will book a seat and hoist a sack of potatoes instead of mounting the ladder himself. This will not make much difference unless it is done on a large scale. A ‘house’ that is composed mainly of solemn sa
cks of spuds would probably have a bad effect on the players and even offend a certain type of female playgoer, who is fastidious about what she is asked to sit beside. The knobby shoulder of a bag of Kerrs Pinks would not appeal to many ladies, excepting possibly our handful of native Marxy-arxies, the little girls who read what they are told to read by the Left Book Club. But please excuse such a boring digression.

  ANOTHER THING

  Incidentally, I don’t know that it is fair to complain about the row made by an audience without also adverting to the clatter that comes not infrequently from the stage. Often in the theatre I can hardly hear myself talking or assuring my doxy that so-and-so is the same fellow that played so-and-so in so-and-so, he’s very good, he’s a civil servant in the Department of Agriculture, I met a sister of his in Skerries, and so on. Actors should conduct themselves like the rest of us and practise the unobtrusive intonation of the gentleman.

  As regards the correspondent’s other complaint about loud feeding during the course of an important play, this can be got over by hoisting trays of grub through the trap-doors at half-time. The humiliating exodus for whiskey (how is it so few can stand a play cold sober?) could also be prevented by sending up rubber tubes through which our middle-aged sucklings could draw their golden pap without leaving their seats and inconveniencing eccentric people who don’t drink.