The Destinies of Darcy Dancer, Gentleman

by J. P. Donleavy

  ‘Only you’re too young I’d give you some whiskey. Now like I said never tell anyone this secret way. Nobody else knows it but meself, the Gaffer and maybe that fool Crooks. I have a good mind sometimes to scare the wits out of that big old eegit Sexton when he comes here simpering to the graveyard and I jump out at him like the holy ghost and send him blessing himself for miles running across the countryside.’

  ‘You must not do that to poor Sexton. He is not well in his mind.’

  ‘Sure haven’t I just said he’s an eegit. Bursting into the new housekeeper five times a day with a bunch of flowers. Don’t I know he’s not well in his mind. Isn’t he there up on the altar every Sunday with his grey hair slapped back wavy on his skull and it looking black as coal.’

  ‘And why shouldn’t Sexton’s hair be black.’

  ‘Because it’s as grey as your pony is white. Doesn’t he go to the ould can of motor oil in the stable and take a drop. And then brush down a bit of the soot from the stove that keeps the mares warm when they’re foaling. He mixes the filthy ould soot with the dirty ould motor oil till he gets a thick paste. Then he rubs it well in into his skull and plasters the hair back with the iron comb they do be using in the stable on the horses.’

  ‘If he wants his hair black surely that’s alright.’

  ‘It isn’t the colour that anyone minds. Sure once didn’t the priest wonder on the altar if he was in a place to get petrol with the smell of him. And then didn’t a gob of that muck get on the bottom of Father Flaherty’s gold chalice and make marks all over the altar cloth. But it was nothing mind like when he put perfume in it and sold the stuff in jam jars down the village to Kelly the chemist for a cure to the grey hair. Sexton’s Genume Compound, the eegit called it. With him printing out labels for it and all. They nearly kilt Kelly. There were women acreaming at him over the husbands greasy black hands they got laying holt of their heads. And the great mess it made of the pillows. But never mind that now. See the wood beyond. That’s where we’re headed.

  Foxy at a trot across the velvety soft meadows. Holding his arms up against briars and backing his way as he climbed through the thorn hedges. Jumping streams and ditches. And down a heathery hillside and around the stony shores of a lake. Up a steep bracken covered hill and on top Foxy pointed out across the bleak moonlit flatness.

  ‘’Tis out there just a little walk. But mind now it’s the worst of our travels. Many coming this way to-the woman have been swallowed up in the bog. Once you slip in there you’re done for. Never to be heard tell of again. But if they find you even after a hundred years you look like you only died yesterday.’

  ‘I want to go home.’

  ‘After we come all this way. I am going to sow me oats. Sure if you keep right behind me you’ll get across safe. But some of the holes go down ten men deep.’

  The sound of pigs honking and snuggling about in their pen. The back of a long thatched cottage standing desolate in its muddy farmyard. One door and three small windows. A wisp of sweet scented turf smoke descending from the chimney. Foxy putting his cupped hands to his mouth and hooting like an owl. A candle flickering past a window. One’s feet wet and chill. Falling twice up to my knees in the oozing bog. Back of hands torn by briars. And finger bones stung by thorns. Across all this flat haunted land. Like we’d reached another world somewhere the other side of the earth. Huddling near the warmth of a steaming manure pile.

  ‘I’m cold Foxy.’

  ‘Keep in close to the heat of the dung. Won’t be a minute now.’

  ‘We’ve been here ages.’

  ‘Ah sometimes it takes a little part of the night waiting.’

  ‘Why.’

  ‘She might have to give the ould fellow the slip.’

  ‘Maybe he’s heard your noises.’

  ‘Ah he’s nearly deaf. And the one eye he’s left with is nearly blind. But we have to get a spell away over the bogs where we’re safe with the woman.’

  ‘If he’s blind and deaf how could he find us.’

  ‘Ah he’s used to the place, he’d know every stump, ditch and hedge hereabouts.’

  ‘Could he not be lost and sink in the bog.’

  ‘Ah he’d be too wise for that. He’d know by his own steps where he’d be safe. And he could chase you up beyond with a hook and just by the heat of you he’d know where to swipe to lop off your ears. He nearly had me once only I’m too fast. And I had a raw potato I was chewing that I let him have it in the gob. It shut up his shouts with the spud locked in his mouth he was trying to dig it back out with his big ould fingers. I nearly couldn’t run with laughing.’

  Foxy hooting again. A wind rising. The moon passing behind thickening clouds. A donkey brays and a rooster crows.

  ‘It could be getting morning Foxy.’

  ‘It’s not morning at all. Sure the smoke is still coming out of the chimney from the evening fire. And them ould cocks don’t know when they’re crowing. And if it was morning, that mean rooster in there would be out charging pecking and clawing at us.’

  ‘I want to go home to bed now.’

  ‘I’m telling you wait. Or you’ll never clap eyes on your first cunt. And then we’ll go back by way of the big castle. There be shenanigans to be had there as well.’

  ‘I’m sleepy and cold.’

  ‘Go then. And be sure to watch where you’re stepping across the bog. And it’s worse for you falling in the lake. Pike in there ferocious, bigger and longer than you are. Rip you asunder. Sure they snap duck and fox down like flies and a few big rats they gollop is only to make them hungrier.’

  ‘I will stay.’

  ‘And it will be the better for you.’

  In the shadowy greys of dawn great wings of a bird flapping slowly across the brown bog lands. And curlews whistling as their flight dipped right and then left under the haunted sky. A snort of a horse. And the wind creaking the rusted corrugated iron roofed stables. As Foxy suddenly turns his head to look behind. And the murmur of holy shit slips from his lips. A face with a black patch over one eye looming over the wall followed quickly by shoulders coming in a giant heaving mass just behind it.

  ‘Ah you pair of dirty little blackguards I’ve caught you now and you won’t hoot again I’m telling you.’

  ‘Run.’

  ‘Run is it.’

  Foxy like a streak was up and over the heap of manure. Leaping down the other side and his feet pounding and splashing through the deep mud across the farmyard. A great hand descended clutching Darcy Dancer by the back of the neck. Lifting him up in the air his feet dangling. Then dropping to the ground with lights exploding and comets zooming with sparkling tails as a blow landed on the side of his face.

  A voice speaking. The smell of turf smoke and a flickering light. To stare up at a stained panelled ceiling. A hook holding a black kettle hanging over the orange glowing embers of a fire. High on a wall a red flame beneath a picture of a bearded long haired man, upon his chest his heart, out of which grew a cross. Like a statue Catherine the cook had in her damp basement room. And from a bucket of cold water on a chair, a white cold cloth came wiping blood from my brow.

  ‘Ah the poor darling. His eyes is opening now. You nearly kilt him.’

  ‘I did. And I would. And I will. If I ever catch him or that other one Slattery from beyond there in Thormondstown. They’ll be in the bog saving the cost of their funerals. They’ll be taught coming around here. And if this one needs another lesson I’ll give it to him right here and now.’

  ‘Stay away now from the child. Or I’ll fix you with a bat in the kisser with thier handle’.

  God love

  The poor little

  Defenceless

  Creature

  5

  In the late dying afternoon, a bird happily chirping just out the window of this dark strange room. One heard hoofs clip clopping far off on the surface of the hard road. Coming slowly nearer and nearer. The squeal and clang of a gate and wheels grinding over the pebbles to halt outsid
e. Then a loud rapping on the cottage door. My head still swirling as I lifted up on my arms. And voices raised outside.

  ‘He fell I’m telling you.’

  ‘Be gob never mind there are pieces of you missing, if you’ve touched a hair of that lad’s head I’ll do you here and now. Till you’re nothing more than rudis indigestaque moles.’

  ‘Gospel now, the lad took a tumble.’

  ‘Gospel is it. I’ll give you gospel and it won’t be from St Luke or the Corinthians. Nor will it do your inferiority complex a bit of good.’

  A smile of greeting on Sexton’s face. His hair gleaming black and wavy. A rug over his arm. As he steps across the earthen floor. And this large bosomy red headed lady wiping her hands in her apron.

  ‘Ah it was only a little blood spilled out of his ear and a cut there he got on the head.’

  ‘That bully of a husband of yours out there. Sure the lad is still in short trousers. And be gob you’re priviledged to be having gentry under the roof of this hovel. How are you Master Reginald.’

  ‘I’m groggy a bit. But I’m alright.’

  ‘Didn’t I warn you. Tell you. Keep away from the filthy likes of that Slattery leading you in your pure innocence astray. The dirty filthy pup. We had four of us to beat the truth out of him. Come now and we’ll get you back to the sylvan setting and dignities of Andromeda Park and far away from the dreadful bogs out here.’

  ‘I knew he was gentry. I knew it.’

  ‘Madam you should be overflowing with gratitude that a Darcy Darcy Thormond related by the best of bloods back to the last kings of Ulster, has crossed the threshold of your humble abode.’

  ‘O I am. I knew by them good boots he’s wearing, sopping muddy wet as they were.’

  ‘Come Master Reginald. I’ll give you a hand now. Forsooth we are to forthwith about to depart. Without being so much as offered a cup of tea. And I leave whores and sinners to suffer what hell the hereafter has in store for them.’

  ‘Who are you calling a whore.’

  ‘Now woman who said anyone was a whore.’

  ‘You did. You smarmy boot licker to the pagan gentry. Don’t you call me a whore.’

  ‘O lord what fools these mortals be.’

  ‘Well this mortal will rattle an iron pot off your head. Get out of here now.’

  ‘I will be gob. Sine mora. Get out and glad. And take this innocent boy away from the lickerishness concupiscence salacity and harlotry.’

  ‘That’s all you’re good for is them big words. You dirty Casanova.’

  Sexton turning back from the half door. A chicken scurrying out and two more shooting in. Followed by a marauding rooster. The rug tightened around Darcy Dancer’s shoulders. The gleaming white plates and cups and saucers on the dresser. Steam curling up from the kettle’s spout on the hearth. The woman her arms hanging out from her sides. Her bosoms set like two great prows of battleships cutting through waves seen in the war pictures of the illustrated magazine.

  ‘What was that you said.’

  ‘I said and you heard me, you dirty Casanova.’

  ‘Casanova is it.’

  ‘Cycling up to the young girls at every crossroad all over the countryside. To get them take a ride with you across your dirty filthy handle bars.’

  ‘No bog harlot will call me that. Not while my adoration is daily offered to the blessed virgin who stands righteous above me in her beautiful purity, you won’t, be gob make that slander of me I’m telling you.’

  ‘I will. And tell you to fuck off out of here as well. Casanova.’

  ‘Be gob woman Lord have mercy on the souls of your livestock if that’s the kind of lingo they hear. But I’ve said to you now. Don’t repeat that aspersion. Call me a homo, a paederast, a sodomite but be gob don’t use the word Casanova to me again.’

  ‘Casanova.’

  The tears flooding into Sexton’s eye. His fist raised shaking as he steps across the floor. A dog barking and a long groan of a beast out in the farmyard. The woman raising her own fist and with the other reaching for a pot on the mahogany sideboard behind her. Sexton grabbing for her upraised arm.

  ‘Get off me you. You big hulking dirty Casanova.’

  Two fisted the woman sinking her clutching fingers into Sexton’s hair. The writhing figures crashing backwards into the wall. Turning, twisting, pulling and tearing. Looming about in the shadows panting and grunting. Gasps from Sexton as his eye patch comes off.

  ‘O merciful lord almighty god.’

  A bell like clink and clang as a flying elbow pokes a metal tureen to the ground. And the chickens run scurrying out of the way back and forth, jumping to the sills of the windows to flap there against the panes.

  ‘Get your hands off me tits you viper.’

  ‘Bear false witness against me will you, you swamp trollop.’

  ‘Get your disgusting interfering claws off me personals.’

  ‘I’m merely clutching at the rubbery fat of you, madam.’

  The back of Sexton’s coat rent down its seam. His shoulders covered in whitewash from the walls. The woman’s hands losing their grip as Sexton, arms free, let loose long looping swings at the red haired head huddling to fend off the blows.

  ‘Mick, Mick the holy greasy terror is having me kilt. Come Mick.’

  Sexton momentarily ceasing his blows, pressing both hands down on the back of the woman, and turning his face away upwards towards the heavenly deity.

  ‘Dear lord my god and saviour give me strength as well as your forgiveness to chastise this female savage.’

  Out of the grey afternoon, sudden sunlight flashing in the tiny window. As more came flooding in the door behind a roaring Mick with a shovel. His one hand gripped holding it out with the long handled end stuck under his one good armpit, as the other empty sleeve of his coat flapped up and down.

  ‘Where are yez Agnes, where are yez.’

  The two warring figures hair engripped, waltzing across the room. Mick blindly swiping with the shovel. Missing the antagonists and carving a wide wood naked furrow down the polished length of the sideboard. Splintering a butter churn and smashing divers potteries to smithereens.

  ‘Ah jesus. I missed. Holt him still Agnes till I get a smell of his location.’

  Sexton, eyes closed and dentures stuck half out of his mouth. Hanging on to the woman as they tripped over a fallen chair and fell backwards. Crashing into the dresser. A hook catching in the torn tatters of clothing and the falling contorted bodies pulling the dresser plunging forward with cups, saucers, plates and platters crashing on the floor. Now turned white with spilt milk and the feathers of a chicken nailed flapping and cackling beneath the shattered shelves. While its winged comrade flutters down from the window sill to peck morsels from a loaf of bread.

  ‘Me dowry, me dowry. It’s ruined. Mick over here. Quick get a smell of him. I’ve a good holt. Dig him one with the shovel in the guts.’

  Darcy Dancer clutching himself in the blanket. Trembling with cold. Squeezing backwards into the corner behind the door. To pray to someone. That Sexton stays alive to take me home.

  ‘Now Mick now.’

  ‘I’ll get him Agnes.’

  Mick putting his nose forward sniffing. As his next step comes down squarely on a chicken. And he jumps back. With a swing of his body bringing the shovel whistling in a great arc. To slam in mid flight the squawking rooster across the room with glass shattering concussion into a photograph picture of a man in white raiment holding a hand up in blessing.

  ‘You eegit Mick you’ve smashed in the holy pontiff himself.’

  ‘Ah god I can’t see a thing at all without me eyes.’

  ‘Aren’t we in front of yez. Haven’t I a holt of him. His dentures has his mouth jammed. Now’s the time.’

  ‘In this heat of the house I can’t get me direction. Agnes let loose of the fucker and duck out of the way and I’ll cream him. Say where you are.’

  ‘I’m here, here. With the grease of his hair on me hands I ca
n’t keep a holt of him.’

  ‘Ah god with the noise I don’t know where you are.’

  ‘I’m here you eegit. With him getting loose.’

  ‘I’m coming now. Say where you are.’

  ‘Here you eegit. Can’t you hear the landing of the punches on me all over.’

  ‘I’ll put paid to him. Say where you are.’

  ‘Haven’t I said I’m here. Stop the talk for mercy’s sake. Clout him one with the shovel.’

  Agnes doubled over, arms crossed on her head. Sexton with the knuckles of one hand trying to reverse his dentures sticking backwards out of his mouth. Hammering his other fist downward on the crouched back of the woman. Mick holding the handle end of the shovel under his. chin and the handle length over his arm as he feels ahead with his hand advancing towards the sound of the struggle.

  ‘Is it him I’m feeling Agnes.’

  ‘You daft thing, wouldn’t you know by now the feel of your own wife. It’s him just to the left of you there now. The left, the left. Don’t you know the left. I’ve got holt of his arm and another on his belt. Carve his fucking head off.’

  The rooster lying feebly flapping its wings as it slowly turns-on its back in a circle, feet sticking in the air pointing up at the smashed picture of the man in white raiment. A sheep dog rushing to bark in the door and cowering away again. And Sexton pulling out his dentures.

  ‘Ah god so you bog trotters use language will you and gang up on me like Judases betraying Jesus at the last supper.

  Mick, the horizontal stump of his arm trembling in its sleeve, lifting the shovel up over Sexton’s bead. Darcy Dancer rushing forward from his corner. Crushing pebbles of sugar underfoot. Two pigs honking and snorting in the door, pink eats flapping over their eyes and biting and squealing at each other as they suck up the milk from the floor. Darcy Dancer pushing with two hands against Mick’s rear end. As the blind man’s rusty spear shaped shovel descends on the red haired woman’s back with a lung thudding thwack.