Best of Myles

by Flann O'Brien

  ‘By the way, have you read Victorian Doctor?’

  ‘Never heard of it,’ the blight says.

  ‘Most interesting book,’ you say. ‘All about Oscar Wilde’s father, gives a very good picture of Dublin life in those days …’

  ‘Oh, that?’ the bore says, his back turned in a very casual way as he interferes with some personal documents on your desk. ‘Ah, yes, I read that. Actually he meant to give the book another name, I hadn’t heard it was published under that title. I read it in manuscript as a matter of fact.’

  Thus you are vouchsafed a glimpse of the anonymous adviser, critic, confessor and daddy christmas of literary men.

  ‘Ever read Warren Peace by T. Allstoy?’ you inquire.

  ‘Ah, yes, I read that thing in the manuscript years ago. Is it published yet?’

  See? Grrrhhhhhh!

  Indeed, it is all too easy to think of other types of this baneful presence, this monstrous cretin. You have, of course—some time or other since 1939—encountered The Man Who Always Burned Turf? If not, please accept my solemn oath that he exists. Here is his line of chat:

  ‘Coal, is it? That … dirt! Shure what are you talking about man, what’s wrong with turf? Isn’t it the natural fuel for this country, hah? I got married in nineteen O five and since that good day to this one solitary lump of coal I haven’t let into me house. Know why? Because a turf fire, properly built in a proper grate, is the best—fire in the world. Don’t let anybody tell you different. I know what I’m talking about. I used to get turf—good black turf—off the canal-boats at fifteen bob a ton—delivered, mind. Ah yes … (an alcoholic frown, black but sad, is hoisted in memory of the good old days: the waste-pipe voice continues). At a time when plenty more was planking down thirty and forty … and … forty-five bob for the rakings and the muck of the British coal fields, dirt and smuts everywhere, blowing and puffing and poking for a half an hour in the morning to get the thing going, shure is it anny wondher the country’s half rotten with TB? Oh, say what you like, you can’t beat th’ old-fashioned turf fire. The whole secret of the thing, of course, is how you place the sods. End up—like this, look …’

  Empty match-boxes are used in illustration. There is one thing about that Man—you can always be certain that in his concrete garage resides (even today, 1945) at least three tons of peerless pre-war Orrel nuts, fifty bob a ton.

  IT’S QUITE a little time, I think, since I wrote on the subject of bores. I come back to this problem only because I have since encountered a pretty bad specimen. He is a monster to be avoided like the pledge, a colossal imposition who will make you very angry and cause your heart to beat like a sludge-hammer (stet). I refer to The Man Who Does His Own Carpentry And Talks About It.

  This savage lives in a little red brick box four by two, basically a one-room cell. Inside you have himself, the missis and the eight girls. Next week the eldest Anny is to get a job as a typist at eight-and-six a week in a solicitor’s office. This man has the place got out beautiful. And regardless. Suppose you happened to live a in telephone box—like the fourteen blonde women in the one under Moore’s statue any time I went to ring up. Well, I assume you would accept the thing and try to make the best of it. Not so, however, The Man Who Does His Own Carpentry; he makes it hard for himself—he builds partitions. He subdivides the sentry’s home and erects shelving, window-seats, cupboards, hot presses, built-in wardrobes. And anything in the way of circulation—I mean walking about—in that house takes the form and rhythm of a Cuban rhumba; your feet stay where they are, though your hips and knees move somewhat.

  The partitions this Man has made are exceptional manifestations in the sphere of Home Crafts. He is so handy with his hands (round the house in brackets), he has Vol. IV of somebody’s Building Encyclopedia. He makes this … thing, this ‘wall’, by laying a couple of sticks along the sagging unjoisted floor. Next, he introduces a long horizontal member into the room and raises it into the position of Mahomet’s coffin, strutting both walls and threatening to bulge out the gable. This, reader, is the ‘framework’. In between go the bits of paper. Yes, the bits of newspaper well wetted and rolled into soft balls. And there you are—you only wait for the thing to harden!

  Come into this prodigy’s signal-box some evening—it will be the first time you ever used a tin-opener to enter a friend’s house. He will rub his hands, grin, look obliquely at his ‘handiwork’ and without doubt you will find yourself, craven lout that you are, saying this:

  ‘Gob, you’ve laid out a lot of money on the ancestral home since I was last here, Mac. Who did you have on the job?’

  You are a friend, you have said the right thing. Now he can put on his act. Surprise, beating of the breast, walking backwards like a crab, letting the mouth hang open pointing at himself:

  ‘Who? Me? Is it me employ a contractor? Me, is it—me hand out me good money to your men when I have two hands God gave me and the chisel, hammer and hack-saw I picked up in Pauls’s of Aungier street? Is it hand out the money that’s put by for me old age to hooks and fly-be-nights that wouldn’t know a screw-driver from a bradawl, have the house for months occupied be lads makin’ tay and smokin’ cigarettes—in my time—ME …?’

  ‘But surely … surely you didn’t do all this yourself?’ (You are afraid to lean against the partition in case you suddenly find yourself in the ‘bathroom’—but you are saying the right thing still, you hypocritical dog!)

  ‘And why not? Shure there’s nothing to it man. There’s not a damn thing to it. Shure anywan shure even yourself could do that much. But come up till I show you the wee chest of drawers I put in the nursery …’

  Come ‘up’, mind you, and the ‘nursery’…! And all the time you have to pretend not to see the wife and eight children asleep under the ‘bookcase’.

  This man also makes all his own coffins. The bought ones aren’t a job, he avers.

  THERE IS one other awful man I feel it my duty to describe; I mean the one who is mortally curious to know ‘how is it done?’ This monstrous clown never looks at you when he is talking and never mentions names; he is a very wealthy; he says:

  ‘I went out to Leopardstown on the bike on Saturday. Lost a packet, of course …’

  You shrivel slightly at this humility of going to a race meeting on a bike, in order to lose the price of fifty taxis. You know this man is insane and cravenly await what you know is coming. He continues:

  ‘Who do you think I seen there?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Our friend.’

  ‘Our friend? Who?’

  ‘A certain particular party that you know and that I know.’

  What makes you choke with rage here is the realisation that you know perfectly well whom he is talking about and thus that you are yourself embroiled in his paranoia. The voice goes on:

  ‘On the inside, of course, chatting jockeys and owners, getting the card marked all over the show. And the big heifer of a wife standing about in the fur coat. Know what I’m going to tell you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That man put fifty notes on a thing that was rode be a certain jockey that wouldn’t be third home if he was on a V2. But did that take a feather out of our friend …?’

  Charnel-house chuckles follow, hinting that no feathers were taken out of this speculator. Your tormentor goes on:

  ‘Back in town at half six. I feel like an egg and a bit of toast and I walk into the counter of a certain place that you know and that I know. Who do I see there with two dames?

  ‘Our friend?’ (O wretched man! You have answered the fiend, and correctly!)

  ‘Sitting up there as large as life. Bowl of soup first, of course, but not without a drop of madeira in it. Know what he fancies next?’

  The monster has produced a penknife and goes through the wrist motions associated with the opening of oyster shells.

  ‘A dozen each for all hands. Know what they had next?’

  You would dearly love to say something outrageousl
y exaggerated, like ‘roast peacock’s breast’ but you lack the courage to stand up to this torturer. You say:

  ‘No. What?’

  ‘A whole turkey between the three. They were working away there for two hours’ chattin’ the heads off each other, with all classes of liqueurs being fired back thirteen to the dozen. And a taxi ticking away outside …!’

  There is a pause here. The fiend is getting ready for the finale, you can nearly hear him flexing his madhouse nerves. When the voice comes again, it is changed and earnest:

  ‘Now to my certain knowledge, that man is in a certain department of a certain store and he is paid the munificent subvention of three pounds fifteen per week. Three pounds fifteen shillings per week!’

  You know the sad watery eyes are looking vacantly upwards in mute puzzledom. You know that he is now about to enunciate his supreme interrogatory formula. You dread the impact of the end of this inevitable predestined ‘conversation’. But you are powerless. The voice says:

  ‘What I want to know is this …’

  Yes, there is a pause here. You knew there would be. Then:

  ‘How is it done?’

  You are a bit dazed. You notice his fingers go through the motions of pressing the keys of cash registers. You have received a pat on the back—this ogre’s only form of farewell—and he is gone.

  And you are lucky to be alive, so you are.

  OR HOW ABOUT a few brief notes on notorious practitioners of boredom? For example—

  The Man Who Can Pack. This monster watches you trying to stuff the contents of two wardrobes into a small attaché case. You succeed, of course, but you find you have forgotten to put in your golf clubs. You curse grimly but your ‘friend’ is delighted. He knew this would happen. He approaches, offers consolation and advises you to go downstairs and take things easy while he ‘puts things right’. Some days later, when you unpack your things in Glengariff, you find that he has not only got your golf clubs in but has included also your bedroom carpet, the kit of a Gas Company man who had been working in your room, two ornamental vases, and a folding card-table. Everything in view, in fact, except your razor. You have to wire £7 to Cork to get a new leather bag (made of cardboard) in order to get all this junk home. And offer outrageous bribes to the boots for the loan of his razor. Or—

  The Man Who Soles His Own Shoes. Quite innocently you complain about the quality of present-day footwear. You wryly exhibit a broken sole. ‘Must leave them in tomorrow,’ you say vaguely. The monster is flabbergasted at this passive attitude, has already forced you into an armchair, pulled your shoes off and vanished with them into the scullery. He is back in an incredibly short space of time and restored your property to you announcing that the shoes are now ‘as good as new’. You notice his own for the first time and instantly understand why his feet are deformed. You hobble home, apparently on stilts. Nailed to each shoe is an inch-thick slab of synthetic ‘leather’ made from Shellac, saw-dust and cement. Being much taller than usual, you nearly kill yourself getting into a bus. By the time you get home you have lost two pints of blood and the wound in your forehead looks as if it will turn septic. Or—

  But no—it is too painful to describe some of these fiends in detail. You have met The Man Who Can Carve? No matter if the dish be a solitary roast pigeon, the coat is taken off, two square yards of table cleared, several inoffensive diners compelled to leave the room to give the ruffian ‘a bit of freedom’. By some miracle everything carved by this person is transformed into scrag-ends, so that nobody gets anything that is eatable.

  Or The Man Who ‘Believes’ (or Does Not ‘Believe’) in this or that commonplace thing. One wretch does not ‘believe’ in electric radiators. He is horrified if you turn one on, pretends he is choking, makes motions of removing collar and tie. They ‘dry up the atmosphere’ of course. Just like the other oaf who does not ‘believe’ in real fires. Nothing for him but the electric fire. He has five or six in every room, and one or two on the stairs. A coal fire ‘only makes dirt’. It also ‘makes work’ and you have to be ‘always stoking it’. Whereas the electric fire (here he makes plugging-in motions) you just push it in and there you are! Four times cheaper than coal, gives twice as much heat, and so forth. The only thing you can do with this beast is to provide him with an electric chair, as a present for himself.

  Or The Man Who Wouldn’t Let A Radio Into The House?

  Or The Man Who Doesn’t Believe In Fresh Air? (‘Do you know what it is, there’s more people killed be that fad …’)

  Who then is the supreme demon? Would it be that not unfamiliar person who confesses that he never ‘sees’ the Irish Times?

  BORES is it?

  Faith now there is one monster I have overlooked and I know I have only to drop a hint and you will recognise him instantly. He professes to love his fartherland (stet) by reason of its sheer oddity; this endearing quality, he thinks, is enhanced by the brilliance of the indigenous autocthons and by every citizen’s mastery of wit, repartee, humour and paradox. Everything that happens ‘proves’ this man’s point.

  He is standing on the kerb, let us say, talking away (21 = 1 doz.) and one of the Cleansing Dept’s immense sludge waggons inadvertently backs into him and tips up smelly contents of hold so that he is deluged by it. You might think that should annoy him, might shut him up. Not at all. Two seconds later, a large section of the putresence begins to move, it crawls along the path and stands up! It is our friend of course—he is hurrying back to you; an aperture high up in the column of slime lets us know that he is grinning. He hobbles towards you badly injured in body but clearly filled with an immense happiness. He waves a plastered arm at you.

  ‘Where else,’ you hear the muffled voice saying, ‘where else could that happen but in Ireland!’

  That’s his supreme and universal apothegm. It embraces, defines and explains the whole of Ireland, all Irishry, everything Irish. More particularly it covers the following occasions:

  Late arrival and departure of trains, buses, etc.

  Non-repair of watches, shoes, etc., by appointed dates.

  Election of well-known illiterate, venal, criminal, or otherwise inadequate persons to Parliament or to high public office.

  Consumption of drink in police headquarters after hours.

  Discovery that beggar speaks Greek.

  Discovery that university professor cannot speak English, Irish, etc.

  Use of fake producer plants on motor vehicles propelled by petrol.

  Discovery that bin-man’s brother is Field Marshal in army forces of a Great Power unnamed.

  Incompatibility of mutually adjacent public timepieces.

  Pensionability of entire local populations in respect of military service, notwithstanding international convention as to non-combatancy of juveniles, children and women.

  Discovery that various ex-military personnel, decorated by an imperial personality for bravery in a past war, are unfriendly to imperial ideals.

  Banning as obscene of literary works advocating chastity, continence, honesty, etc.

  Participating by ecclesiastical authorities in real estate, financial and speculative enterprises.

  Philanthropic projects of distilling and brewing families.

  Distaste of Irish Times for organisation of government departments, etc., according to systems devised by non-nationals no longer resident here.

  Discovery that famous novelist is a peasant.

  Ready cashing of cheques in public house containing large notices stating this activity is not pursued.

  Unreliable nature of similar notices certifying the complete absence of rationed commodities.

  And so forth. This man’s crowning and abiding comfort is the conviction—gleaned from a life-time of incidents and remarks in the most unexpected places—that the Irish, though fiercely rebellious at heart, cherish a warm clean frank love for the Royal Family of an adjacent monarchy. With the concomitant phenomenon involving hatred of a certain imperial organisation a
s such and, simultaneously, a devouring affection for the individual Englishman!

  (Do you also, reader, feel you’re suffocating?)

  THERE IS still another monster I would like to warn you about. (To be warned is to be four-armed.) You have, very indiscreetly, complained about the price of clothes: worse, you have commented adversely on the quality of much of what is available. You see a light dawning in the monster’s eye and to your alarm you realise that you are for it. Fascinated, you observe him primly take a garment he is wearing between finger and thumb. (Too late to correct the absurd ambiguity of that last sentence.) He savours the fabric appreciatively, then courteously invites you to do the same. Your fingers, hypnotised by him, obey against your own strict orders. He appears to be wearing sandpaper but your cowardice does not permit you to say this. You withdraw your hand, covertly explore your fingers for splinters, and cravenly murmur some noises of approval.

  How old would you say this suit is?

  You are blushing furiously now—it may be shame or anger or both—but you still dare not protest.

  Would you believe me if I told you that I’ve that coat on me back for ten years. Know what I paid for it?

  You keep on making polite noises, sorrier than ever that you were born at all.

  Fifty bob!

  More muttering, swallowed curses, tears.

  And I’ll get another ten years out of it too, you can’t, do you know what it is, you can’t wear stuff like that out.

  Let me add that this gent has a brother wants to know How Much He’s Making In The Year, Go On, Tell Him, How Much Would You Say He’s Making Now.

  I AM HUMILIATED and astounded to find that in all my writings—and it goes without Synge that many of my writings are very fine indeed—I have so far made no reference to the P.S. maniac. Some people are absolutely incapable of writing a letter without a postscript and the postscript must go in even if the writer has nothing whatever to add. Where the postscript does make sense, the disease lies in making it a postscript at all instead of embodying it in the letter.