Stitches.
IT IS now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere which she just began to move in; glittering like the morning star, full of life and splendour, and joy—
The Plain People of Ireland: Sure that wan went to the wall years ago, you must be mixin’ her up with some other party.
Myself: For me the Queen of France never died.
The Plain People of Ireland: And if it’s above the horizon you seen her, that’s fair enough, many’s a man seen more than the queen of France and him out in a boat fishin’, coopers of stout and sandwiches, half fallin’ out of the boat rotten fluthery-eyed drunk on porter and whiskey, sure is it any wonder you’re seein’ visions man? Sure Lord save us you’ll be Napolean Boneypart himself next above in the Grange weedin’ turnips.
Myself: I was at a wake the other night and every man jack was drunk—including the corpse.
The Plain People of Ireland: O faith now never mind the wakes, many’s a better man than you was happy enough at home be the fire with Knock-nagow or a good American cowboy story, there’s a very bad type of person goin’ around now that wasn’t known in our fathers’ day.
OVERHEARD
I tried to get it many a time. O many a time.
Well I could never see any harm in it.
I seen it once in a shop on the quays, hadn’t any money on me at the time and when I came back to look for it a week later bedamn but it was gone. And I never seen it in a shop since.
Well, I can’t see what all the fuss was about.
You read it, did you?
I couldn’t see any harm at all in it there was nothing in it.
I tried to get it many a time meself …
There’s no harm in it at all.
Many’s a time I promised meself I’d look that up and get it.
Nothing at all that anybody could object to, not a thing in it from the first page to the last.
It’s banned, o’course.
Not a thing in it that anybody could object to, NO HARM AT ALL IN IT, nothing at all anywhere in the whole thing.
O indeed many’s a time I tried to get it meself.
DO NOT for that singular interval, one moment, think that I have been overlooking this new Intoxicating Liquor Bill. I am arranging to have an amendment tabled because it appears that there is absolutely nothing else you can do with amendment.
My idea is to have the hours altered so that public houses will be permitted to open only between two and five in the morning. This means that if you are a drinking man you’ll have to be in earnest about it.
Picture the result. A rustle is heard in the warm dark bedroom that has been lulled for hours with gentle breathing. Two naked feet are tenderly lowered to the flower and a shaky hand starts foraging blindly for matches. Then there is a further sleepy noise as another person half-wakens and rolls round.
‘John! What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing.’
‘But where are you going?’
‘Out for a pint.’
‘But John! It’s half two.’
‘Don’t care what time it is.’
‘But it’s pouring rain. You’ll get your death of cold.’
‘I tell you I’m going out for a pint. Don’t be trying to make a ridiculous scene. All over Dublin thousands of men are getting up just now. I haven’t had a drink for twenty-four hours.’
‘But John, there are four stouts in the scullery. Beside the oat-meal bag.’
‘Don’t care what’s in the scullery behind the oat-meal bag.’
‘O, John.’
And then dirty theatrical snivelling sobbing begins as the piqued and perished pint-lover draws dressing gowns and coats over his shivering body and passes out gingerly to the stairs.
Then the scene in the pub. Visibility is poor because a large quantity of poisonous fog has been let in by somebody and is lying on the air like layers of brawn. Standing at the counter is a row of dishevelled and shivering customers, drawn of face, quaking with the cold. Into their unlaced shoes is draped, concertina-wise, pyjama in all its striped variety. Here and there you can discern the raw wind-whipped shanks of the inveterate night-shirt wearer. And the curate behind the bar has opened his face into so enormous a yawn that the tears can be heard dripping into the pint he is pulling. Not a word is heard, nothing but chilly savage silence. The sullen clock ticks on. Then ‘Time, please, time. Time for bed, gentlemen.’ And as you well know, by five in the morning, the heavy rain of two-thirty has managed to grow into a roaring downpour.
The Plain People of Ireland: Is all this serious?
Myself: Certainly it’s serious, why wouldn’t it be serious, you don’t think I’d try to make jokes about anything so funny as the licensing laws, why would I bring turf to Newcastlewest?
The Plain People of Ireland: If you’re serious so, it’s only a trick to get more drink for newspapermen.
Myself: Nonsense. Newspapermen couldn’t hold any more than they have at present.
The Plain People of Ireland: O faith now, that’s enough. That’s enough about that crowd. Remember well, many’s a county council meeting, fluther-eyed note-takers couldn’t get the half of it, stuff that days was spent thinkin’ out.
Myself: Hic!
The Plain People of Ireland: Faith indeed that was loud enough, well you may talk about putting down drink. Putting down is right.
Myself: Ut’s only mey undajaschin, d’yeh ondherstawnd.
I can see even another domestic aspect of this new order. It is after midnight. The man of the house is crouched miserably over the dying fire.
‘John! Look at the time! Are you not coming to bed?’
‘No. I’m waiting for the pubs to open.’
ON A RECENT Thursday I went to the pictures and saw a tall gentleman called Randolph Scott in a film called ‘The Spoilers’. At the end of the picture Randolph gets into a fight with another man in a pub. At the end of the fight there is no pub. The fight is so fierce that it is reduced to smithereens. Randolph, being the bad lot, gets a frightful thrashing, a frtfull throshou, a frajfyl tromaking, a fruitful …
The Plain People of Ireland: Whatsamatter?
Myself: Feel queer … dark … nase blooding … giddy … where am I?
The Plain People of Ireland: Ah sure you often meet that in the pictures, too—that’s altitude. You’re too high up. No oxygen. The pilots do often have a black out. Come on down lower in the page and you’ll be game ball.
Myself: All right. Thanks.
The Plain People of Ireland: Are you OK now?
Myself: Yes, thanks, I’m feeling all right now. Well, as I was saying, Randolph gets a frightful hiding, he is a terrible mess when the picture ends. But the following night I happened to see the same Randolph in another picture called, I think ‘The Texan’. All I can say is, fit and well he was looking after the hammering he got the night before.
The Plain People of Ireland: Will you have a bit of sense man. ‘The Texan’ is an old picture. A real ould stager man. But ‘The Spoilers’ is a new picture. It doesn’t say because you see the one on wan night and then d’other on another—
Myself: Say no more. I realise I have been hasty. I will think before I shoot my mouth off next time.
Yes. Let me see. Not bad down here. Sort of … cool. The daddy was a steeplejack but I was never a man for heights. Though many’s a time I bought an irish-timesful of chips from that Italian chap Vertigo.
What’s this I have in me pocket? Dirty scrap of paper. Some newspaper heading I cut out. ‘LANGUAGE IN DANGER.’ Of course if I was a cultured European I would take this to mean that some dumb barbarous tonguetide threatens to drown the elaborate delicate historical machinery for human intercourse, the subtle articulative devices of communication, the miracle of human speech that has develop
ed a thousand light-years over the ordnance datum, orphic telepathy three sheets to the wind and so on. But I know better.
Being an insulated western savage with thick hair on the soles of my feet. I immediately suspect that it is that fabulous submythical erseperantique patter, the Irish, that is under this cushion—beg pardon—under discussion.
Yes. Twenty years ago, most of us were tortured by the inadequacy of even the most civilised, the most elaborate, the most highly developed languages to the exigencies of human thought, to the nuances of interpsychic communion, to the expression of the silent agonised pathologies of the post-Versailles epoch. Our strangled feelings, despairing of a sufficiently subtle vehicle, erupted into the crudities of the war novel. But here and there a finer intellect scorned this course. Tzara put his unhappy shirt on his dada (Fr. for hobby-horse as you must surely know), poor Jimmy Joyce abolished the King’s English, Paulsy Picasso started cutting out paper dolls and I …
I?
As far as I remember, I founded the Rathmines branch of the Gaelic League. Having nothing to say, I thought at that time that it was important to revive a distant language in which absolutely nothing could be said.
THE SON of Pharaoh’s daughter was the daughter of Pharaoh’s son. Know that old one?
The Plain People of Ireland: How could that be, man? How could a man’s son be his daughter at the same time?
Myself: I said the son of Pharaoh’s daughter was the daughter of Pharaoh’s son. It’s all right, as you will see if you work it out with algebra. Let x equal the son of Pharaoh. Go further—call him Mr X. Then what you have is Mr X’s daughter was the daughter of Mr X, surely not an unlikely relationship in all the circumstances.
The Plain People of Ireland: Begob, you’re right, never thought of that, smart boy wanted.
Myself: Don’t go yet. There’s another way of looking at it. Call Pharaoh’s daughter Mrs Y. Then you have another story—the son of Mrs Y was Mrs Y’s son. See it?
The Plain People of Ireland: That’s one of the smartest things for a long time. You ought to put that into the paper.
Yes, the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. Then the other one, your man is looking at a photo and says brothers and sisters have I none but that man’s father is my father’s son. Who’s picture is he looking at? His own. Right. Then the other one, a fiddler in Cork had a brother a fiddler in Dublin, what was the fiddler in Cork to the fiddler in Dublin? Brother? No that’s wrong, you’re completely out there, the right answer is sister.
Remember the last time we played these little games when we were all together? Remember the yellow lamplight, ‘Spot’ with his torn ear, the shutters with the iron bar across them; the black kettle hanging from the old smut-furred chain in the chimney and the delicate fluted china teacups made in Belleek? Poor George was alive then and Annie was only a little girl, little thinking she was soon to marry. That was over twenty-one years ago, in Newcastle West, where daddy’s column of the Black and Tans was stationed. Dear old dead days, gone beyond recall.
Every time I start this flash-back act, I always come back to myself. That is because the past is … essentially … personal, you know. I mean, part of it is mine. They can’t take my memories away from me, persecute me as they will. Do you recall reading this in the Irish Times recently:
‘If you answer the knock of a “gas-man” with a pale, long, thin face, clean-shaven, wearing a dark or navy suit, soft grey hat, and silver-rimmed spectacles, make sure that he is a gas man. There is at present, says the police, a man going about the city representing himself as an inspector from the Gas Company. He examines the cooker, and, if he gets the chance, steals any money that may be lying handy.’
I suppose you blame me. You don’t hesitate to lie back in your fifteen-guinea armchair that creaks from the weight of your brutish, over-fed, suet-padded body and denounce me to your even weightier wife as a thief, a fly-be-night, a sleeveen and a baucagh-shool. Cliché-ridden ignoramus that you are, you probably go through that absurd act of pointing the finger of scorn at me. It only serves to show me how plump, pink and well nourished it is. But let me tell you that I, too, must live. I must eat. Some day I may call, stuff you into your own oven, and roast you on the glimmer.
I NOTICE these days that the Green Isle is getting greener. Delightful ulcerations resembling buds pit the branches of our trees, clumpy daffodils can be seen on the upland lawn. Spring is coming and every decent girl is thinking of that new Spring costume. Time will run on smoother till Favonius re-inspire the frozen Meade and clothe in fresh attire the lily and rose that have nor sown nor spun. Curse it, my mind races back to my Heidelberg days. Sonya and Lili. And Magda. And Ernst Schmutz, Georg Geier, Theodor Winklemann, Efrem Zimbalist, Otto Grün. And the accordion player Kurt Schachmann. And Doktor Oreille, descendant of Irish princes. Ich hab’ mein Herz/ in Heidelberg verloren/ in einer lauen/ Sommernacht/ Ich war verliebt/ bis über beide/ Ohren/und wie ein Röslein/hatt’/ Ihr Mund gelächt or something humpty tumpty tumpty tumpty tumpty mein Herz it schlägt am Neckarstrand. A very beautiful student melody. Beer and music and midnight swims in the Neckar. Chats in erse with Kun O’Meyer and John Marquess … Alas, those chimes. Und als wir nahmen/ Abschied vor den Toren/ beim letzten Küss, da hab’ Ich Klar erkannt/ dass Ich mein Herz/ in Heidelberg verloren/ MEIN HERZ/ es schlägt am Neck-ar-strand! Tumpty tumpty tum.
The Plain People of Ireland: Isn’t the German very like the Irish? Very guttural and so on?
Myself: Yes.
The Plain People of Ireland: People do say that the German language and the Irish language is very guttural tongues.
Myself: Yes.
The Plain People of Ireland: The sounds is all guttural do you understand.
Myself: Yes.
The Plain People of Ireland: Very guttural languages the pair of them the Gaelic and the German.
MY THOUGHTS
I was watching a hen walking about a garden recently. Occasionally it picked up dirt and ate it, but otherwise spent an hour of complete idleness. I fell to wondering why hens have two legs and later tried to reason out the pretext for giving a horse four of these useful jointed props. Why has a horse eight knees and a hen no knees at all? As to the legs, I decided that a horse has four because he is a draught animal and a beast of burden; his four legs give him more drawing power than two, just as four driving wheels enhance the utility of a locomotive. By why then has a rat four? Why not two-legged rats—(I seen them meself the day the new City Hall was opened in Cork)? Two-legged rats would probably roost like fowls and would perch on the rails of a bed rather than merely chew the wainscotting as they do every night at present. On the other hand, four-legged hens would present a problem as their roosting-perches would have to be made to measure individually according to the length of each fowl. Perhaps I’d better stop.
AN UNIDENTIFIED PARTY
‘SIR-SIR W. BEACH THOMAS asks “Is any animal anywhere quite silent?” The most extraordinary instance of almost, if not complete, silence in any land animal is the giraffe. It has been heard, I believe, to utter a very slight bleat when teased with food.’
This letter appeared recently in the London Spectator. It reminds me that I have been harbouring a strange little animal in my house for years. It looks not unlike a monkey, but since it roosts at night it must be something else. The ‘face’ is extraordinarily withered and old. The creature is covered with a coarse fur and has never uttered a sound. It feeds chiefly on books and newspapers, and sometimes takes a bath in the kitchen sink, cunningly turning on the taps with its ‘hand’. It rarely goes out and is in its own way courteous. I am afraid and ashamed to let anybody see it in case I am confronted with some dreadful explanation. Supposing it’s a little man cunningly disguised, some eccentric savant from the East Indies who is over here studying us. How do I know he hasn’t it all down in a little book?
The Plain People of Ireland: Yerrah man you’ll find it’s an over-grown rake of a badger you have in the house. Them lads would
take the hand of you.
Myself: Indeed?
The Plain People of Ireland: Better go aisy now with them lads. Ate the face off you when you’re asleep in the bed. Hump him out of the house before he has you destroyed man. Many’s a good man had the neck clawed off him be a badger. And badgers that doesn’t be barkin out of them is very dangerous.
Myself: Thanks for the warning.
The Plain People of Ireland: A good strong badger can break a man’s arm with one blow of his hind leg, don’t make any mistake about that. Show that badger the door. Chinaman or no Chinaman.
Myself: Thank you, I will draw his attention to that useful portal.
WHY CHAIRS? Consider that man was made before furniture. He was therefore made to sit on the floor. If today he finds it uncomfortable to sit on the floor, the inference is that the human body has been modified and impaired by thousands of generations of rascally chair-makers. Women have been altered in our own day by high heels. Between high heels and chairs they are the sort of people one is chary to approach. But I’ll tell you something. No chair in this part of the world can compare for its adverse effect on the human with a chair that has been invented by those Americans. I mean the electric chair. It’s as much as your life is worth to sit in that thing. (Yes, I know. In a distant part of the prison the lights are momentarily dimmed; Wallace Beery glances at Tyrone Power under his shaggy brows—both men being in the attire of lifers in the Big House—and mutters: Yeah, they got Joe. They got Joe, son. Joe was a swell guy. I gotta get out of here.) (And then that damn searchlight on the prison wall, the stutter of tommy guns, then escape, ESCAPE—
The Plain People of Ireland: Out into the jungle begob! Man-eaters an’ rattle-snakes and pigs as big as cows with tusks hangin out of them! They’ll never make it!
Myself: And supposing they do. Supposing they reach the coast, what then? The shark-infested Timor Sea!
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