The Destinies of Darcy Dancer, Gentleman

by J. P. Donleavy

  ‘I’m kilt.’

  ‘O tempora o mores, no sweeter sound is there than, the thump of justice.

  ‘It’s, the young one Agnes gave me a shove.’

  ‘What’s wrong with ya, ya blind fool. Smash the holy father the pope and now murther your wife.’

  The figures crumpled upon one another in a mass of entwining limbs. Gasps of air sucked in and breath heaving out of chests. A shadow at the door.

  ‘Vas is diss. Achtung. Stop. Stop. At once immediately. I call the police stop.’

  Miss von B, riding whip in her hand. Smacking it into her glove. The end of the long thong falling over the tip of her black boot. As she stood legs astride in derby hat, white breeches and brown hunting coat. The antagonists slowly standing. Grabbing back pieces of their clothing still clutched in other hands. The pigs rooting and snorting for tid bits in under and around the upturned furniture.

  ‘What ist diss fight. You should be ashamed. Grown people. Do you not know any better.’

  Miss von B’s blonde hair coiffeured in a net under her hat. Spurs on her boots. A gold pin stuck sparkling with a large diamond in the white scarf at her throat. Upon which she places her hand as the avian livestock flap in her direction to escape. And the woman of the big bosoms points her finger.

  ‘Isn’t she the fine one now coming in here. Giving orders. With the heathenish gang of you from over there in Thormondstown raping me.’

  ‘Achtung. Shut up you woman. What do you know about rape. I know about rape. Come. We go.’

  Sexton bowing. The pink darkness of his toothless smile. Long scratches dripping blood down his concave cheeks.

  ‘Excuse me Countess for my temporarily suspended phonetics. Occasioned by the recent dislodgement of my false choppers both uppers and lowers.’

  Sexton brushing his dentures off on his sleeve. Placing them back in his mouth and taking them out again.

  ‘Ah god haven’t they been maltreated out of shape by you savages. Let’s out of here now, Master Reginald and leave the habitués of these waterlogged banshee riddled bogs to stew in their ignorance. And madam, my esteemed Countess, a lady of your high standing and dignified status should not have to witness the unpleasant consequences of a common brawl.’

  The red haired woman, holding her torn flowered garment together across her chest. Following Sexton out the cottage door, her neck craned forward spitting words between Sexton’s shoulder blades as he guided Darcy Dancer with a hand behind the dark haired head.

  ‘I’ll be suing you, you cycling romeo, for damages. And the sacrilege of smashing in the face of the pontiff.’

  Miss von B shaking the rein of her horse as it pulls its head away to grab more grass. Her backside two gleaming mounds of white under her kid skin breeches as she pulls herself up over her saddle and shifts a thigh over the mare’s quarters to seat herself. Sexton helping Darcy Dancer up into the trap, wiping a place dry and placing him snug on the leather cushion and wrapping him tight in a blanket. The woman clutching the leg of a chair in her hand, holding it up shaking at Sexton who wags his finger down at the red fuming face.

  ‘Sue madam, sue if you like. Continue to conduct your hate and strife. Sure it will be good to hear evidence given concerning this occasion with all the attendant reasons, wherefors and whatfors. And as the searchlights of publicity is placed upon you in the dock and your faulty slanderous testimony is recorded in the books for all time, just remember that there is he, the eternal omnipotence above you, who shall be the final judge. And in the exercise of his great level headedness he will sure as hell put the flames scorching you in your rigor mortis.’

  ‘Don’t be talking as if yez are the only saint on earth. I’ll get the lawyers to you bunch for the damages. Trespassing, breaking and entering. Rape. Assaulting a blind disabled and altered cripple. I’ll have the writs out after you.’

  Sexton face up to the skies. His palm raised to the fine falling mist. A sudden beaming ray of sun casting a shimmering blaze of purple green and orange in a rainbow out over the brown bog lands.

  ‘Dear god, to whom these days can we say, dearly beloved. Sure the Prince of Peace himself would break a leg running to escape from the likes of the pair of you. But look at the irony of that now. Beauty in the heavens. Over a miserable bit of landscape the likes of this.’

  ‘Well there’ll be bloodshed on earth, yet. Wait and see. I’ll get you.’

  ‘And if you do madam you’ll only be bringing grief to the pistils petals and stamens grown by a poor humble common gardener. Ah and who knows it may do your lunatic self esteem a world of good. But beware you don’t get a fatal fist in the gob first.’

  The red haired woman throwing the chair leg whistling past Sexton’s ducking head as he slaps down the reins and the barrel shaped Petunia takes off galloping after Miss von B’s horse cantering ahead up the pot holed drive.

  ‘Go on you dirty romeo, go home and put more of your black filthy grease on your hair.’

  Two small scraggly ash trees on either side of the gate out to the tar black shiny road. Which stretched straight out into the white mists descending from hills ahead. The emptiness in all directions. As we rolled over the steamy smell of Miss von B’s horse’s dung freshly plopped. And another rainbow now high above the first, spanning all the countryside from one end of the world to the other.

  ‘Ah Master Reginald, you’ve learned your first lesson in life. Unless you were better off where you’ve been, you’re always better off where you are. But no matter where you’ve been or where you are you’ll never know if you’ll be better off where you’re going. Are you right, now.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thanks be to the sacred heart of Jesus your beautiful gentle mother wasn’t alive to witness any of that back there. But the real sad horror of it all. Is your blind man. He isn’t only missing an arm and like meself, an eye. But didn’t a mare he was after beating with a club throw him from her back on to the ground and then come with her teeth, and with one swift awful mouthful like the handiest surgeon who’d ever wielded a scalpel, bite completely off all the things most men are born with between their legs.’

  And you’d

  Not think

  The pair of them

  Back there

  Would need this soon

  Another sample of justice

  Following that

  6

  His foot treading on one of Foxy’s bottles, Crooks in the dawn of the day of the bog fight, sailed on his backside and tumbled on his head down the stairs and broke his left arm and right collarbone. M’ss von B heading out for her early morning canter found him groaning at the bottom of the landing that overlooked the grove of beeches.

  For many days Crooks looked very poorly indeed perambulating about the house. His face pallid, his arm in a black sling and with one of my father’s old purple velvet smoking jackets thrown over his shoulders. He sat many hours at the side of the kitchen range sipping Catherine’s cabbage soup and referring the reputedly medicinal contents of a pewter flask frequently to his lips. While Miss von B held sway in the reception rooms above as she stood with her whip over Norah and Sheila on their knees scrubbing their way across the tiles of the front hall. And Crooks, shooing at the cat when it sharpened its claws on the leg of the kitchen table, would announce.

  ‘Of course, when I am back on my feet there will be changes in this house and soon.’

  Out in the barn, Foxy was another mass of welts, bumps and bruises, seated on his milking stool slapping away the kicks of the cow.

  ‘I’ll get them. All four of them cunts. One at a bloody time.’

  Foxy groomed my pony, blacked its hoofs and plaited its mane and turned me out in some splendour each hunting day and I’d find him evenings before by lantern light in the tack room rubbing my boots and leathers.

  ‘But Foxy it will be the worse for you if you try to get revenge.’

  ‘Ah it’ll be one full moon and before it’s half up in the sky, I’ll be gone
out of here and be far away. All I’m getting in this place is pennies for wages anyway. Join the circus or something like that. It’ll be here now soon at the village. Have you been pulling your prick like I told you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did the juice come out.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You want to keep pulling. Just a few little tugs is not enough.’

  The bog fight still the talk of the countryside all these months later. With the maids still snickering behind their hands. And Crooks thinking I had with Foxy put the bottles on the stairs. Now each full moon, with the moist slates on the barn roofs shining silver, I watch out the window across to where I can just see through a valley made by the tree tops. And beyond, the distant darknesses of the rest of the world. Leaving me standing here as the gales come roaring out of the west and bang doors somewhere through the night, making my life all fearful and lonely. And that I, like Foxy should go out and away from Andromeda Park forever.

  Appearing white faced and chilled but far more dapper than usual with a reddish moustache sprouting on his upper lip, Mr Arland patted me reassuringly on the back. Repairing as we did now to the salon, daily aired and recently spick and span with its furnishings dusted and the warped cover of the grand piano gleamingly polished. At the big map table in front of a roaring log fire we sat and on the large globe of the world traced the ancient excursions of St Brendan.

  ‘Ah yes Kildare, to be sure, St Brendan discovered the new world long before Columbus did. Quite extraordinary how scholars jump to their sometimes premature conclusions. Even the Vikings were on those nether shores five hundred years before that chap the Spaniard. Although dear me, does it really matter when one considers America’s total and abysmal lack of culture.’

  And Sexton, prior to rushing as he did all over the house with his vases in the wake of Miss von B was one morning in the flower room cutting and pruning his stems. And arranging his winter greeneries, holly, wild berries and bog grasses, when he held up a catkin.

  ‘Now this unisexual inflorescence would do that intellectual humbug Arland a world of good presenting it to his inamorata he’s paying court to away over there on the outskirts of town.’

  ‘What do you mean by that Sexton.’

  ‘I mean the young blue eyed lady with the long golden hair who rides to the hounds like a little queen. Sure she’s a distant relation of the Thormonds if not the Darcys. And Baptista Consuelo are her christian names. Now wasn’t that fool Arland refused as he asked for her hand in marriage. And he hardly knows the girl.’

  ‘Mr Arland is not a humbug nor a fool.’

  ‘Ah little you know. He was a fool a fool, sine dubio, a fool. Refused he was as he knelt, knelt would you believe it, on the very steps of her house with his nosegay. Sure the decent people inside didn’t know what to do answering the door to that besotted suitor. He was lucky it was pouring rain which kept the crowd to a minimum who were spying on the ridiculous spectacle from behind every curtain and abutment.’

  ‘Mr Arland never did that.’

  ‘He did. He did. He did, I’m telling you. Sure he’s a perfect stranger to the girl and what would she want with the likes of him when she could have the biggest earl, cattle dealer or duke she fancies in the district. Sure it’s divitiae virum faciunt everywhere these days.’

  Before Christmas as the wet early afternoon days grew dark, Mr Arland escorted me in the governess’s cart drawn by Petunia to the great castle for dancing class. And the first of twelve to be held following lunch on Monday Wednesday and Thursday of each week. Bundled up in rugs and hatted with sou’westers, we fast trotted the five miles by the winding road, the breeze blowing at us warmed by the steamy fat quarters of Petunia. Passing as we did around that half of the village green where I saw the large stone house behind its tall clipped hedge and iron fence. A gravel walk between neat square lawns up to the granite steps. And when Mr Arland turned to look back staring at the grey building, his eyes moist with wind and mist, there came no reprimand as I asked.

  ‘Mr Arland what is the literal of divitiae virum faciunt.’

  ‘Riches make the man.’

  Not till we finally came in under the arch of the gate lodge of the great castle, clip clopping over the pebbled drive under vaulted silver branches of the beech trees, would Mr Arland arouse from his silence. And as the road dipped downwards he said, let’s have a run. And snapping the whip we’d go hair flying over the remaining winding road through the park land. To rein to a stop on the gravel in front of the entrance door. And there before us with its great towers and turrets rising in grey stone splendour stood the castle I had so often seen in the distance across the countryside.

  Mr Arland lifting and thumping the knocker, an iron fist on an iron arm. Letting it fall pounding on the thick slabs of oaken wood. And we waited and waited till he pulled on a gleaming brass knob set in the wall.

  ‘I prefer not to have to use this bell as it rouses too many of the servants who shortly will be at many windows nosey to see, who it is who is calling upon the high the good and the mighty.’

  Inside, the sound of heavy beams, chains and shackles being loosed. Scrapes and bumps as the massive portal opens. And we entered this fortified vestibule to go up steps and through another pair of oaken doors and out into a huge hall, its vaulted ceiling high as clouds, its walls hung with flags, weapons of war, portraits and emblems, and the whole chamber as big nearly as all the rooms of Andromeda Park put together. A tall bent grave faced butler called Simpers received us and took our coats. It was said he always examined the cut and fabric of each garment, and would, with apparel offending his sensibilities, hang them in a place which he thought suitable to their inferiority. And I saw him hesitate with Mr Arland’s naval great coat before deciding that it deserved to be hung well. And before Simpers returned, Mr Arland gave me a little bow and smile.

  ‘Kildare, don’t sneeze, don’t fall, don’t trip and don’t associate with those who do. But waltz well. Ta ta.’

  Mr Arland brushing down his waistcoat and lapels, disappeared through a door to another room off the hall where he was lecturing several collected ladies on the architecture of the Byzantine. And I was left standing there in the monstrous semi darkness as Simpers with his permanent stoop shuffled out of the shadows and led me away from these towering walls hung with their vast tapestries, ancient killing implements and where beneath these trophies and in the glow of a log fire I felt awfully sad about Mr Arland and his love spurned by the blue eyed girl with the golden hair who lived in the town in the grey stone house overlooking the village green.

  Behind Simpers I went by a door up a candlelit stair hung with portraits to a landing. Then by another door up another staircase to a dark long hall and by pink carpet past endless bedroom doors and intersecting corridors. And yet by another door and up more stairs of more portraits to finally emerge in a large attic hall half way down which was a large room with a skylight and the windows barred. Here, with music crackling out of a great horn of a gramophone, a blond curly haired gentleman stood attired in light blue tights with three prominent little bumps bulging between the fork of his legs where no horse yet had bitten away what men usually had there. And flexing the muscles of his thighs he lisped in his high pitched voice.

  ‘Ah my last little victim has arrived. And who may I ask are you.’

  ‘I am Reginald Darcy Thormond Dancer Kildare.’

  ‘Ah you are already a dancer. Good. O.K. Pay attention. I am the Count Brutus Blandus MacBuzeranti O’Biottus and although I am named after the Greek comic poet I shall stand for no nonsense or comedy. And you will obey me. You will not speak. You will stand like so poised. And you will be fearful of your very life. Understand.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes, sir, you say.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  The seven of us, four girls and three boys swirled around on the dusty floor. The Count pounding the worn broken keys of an upright piano. His metronome ticking and his sh
rill cries. With four white candles flickering in the breeze of his gesticulating arms.

  ‘Dance you silly little children, dance with the élan of the gazelle before I must tear my hair out in agony.’

  Tea brought at four. Two great silver trays of scones steamy hot under linen napkins. Golden yellow beaming balls of butter. Honey, damson and gooseberry jams. Soda bread, ham, chicken and egg sandwiches. Silver pitchers of cream. The Count holding the back of his hand stiffly out under his chin to catch drips from his cup. And he stood to bow to our host’s mother who called.

  ‘How Blandus are they getting on.’

  ‘Ah the little darlings they are so wonderful. Simply wonderful. Look at them there, won’t you, so serenely sitting. But dance, never, they are too much like cattle, the ankles far too thick, my dear lady. Since I am a genius, it is such a waste of my most precious time. Better to teach them to plough and milk the cows. Ah but I am descended from fighters, and I will not my dear dear lady give the poor darlings up as a lost cause. Until of course I am exasperated beyond the redemption.’

  A brougham came to call and drawn by two prancing greys, I was fetched back with three other little dancers two girls and a boy who regarded me with the deepest suspicion and I asked to be dropped at the front gates of Andromeda Park from where I could run free and wild by a short cut through the woods scaring up pheasants lurking in the dark passages under the rhododendrons.

  And Miss von B upon my closing the front door came strolling out of the blue parlour, her high heels clicking on the tiles and her silk stockinged legs with long sinewy muscles splayed as she stopped and took her ivory cigarette holder from her mouth and blew a puff of smoke upwards into the chill of the entrance hall.

  ‘Ah what use is to clean. You have just come in like to a barn and make more muddy mess. While I am hoping perhaps to progress in ziss house while that Crook is hors de combat. But when everything spick and span it is quick again dirt and smear.’