Puckoon (15 page)
Should there ever be need he could,
whilst still in throes, pull a lever and be shot three hundred feet up to float
gently down on a parachute. The stained glass windows when open looked out on
to 500 acres of the finest grouse shooting moor in Ulster. He had once invited
Winston Churchill to come and shoot from the sitting position. In reply
Churchill sent a brief note, 'Sorry, I have business elsewhere that day.'
From his commode, the Count could
select any one of a number of fine fowling pieces and bring down his dinner.
Alas, this caused his undoing. The boxes of 12-bore cartridges, though bought
at the best shops in London, had sprung a powder leak.
Carelessly flicking an early morning
cigar, the hot ash had perforated the wad of a cartridge.
But to the day of
the calamitous fire.
It had been a fine morning that day in 1873. The
Count had just received his early morning enema of soap suds and spice at body
heat; crying 'Nitchevo!' he leapt from his couch. Colonic irrigation and enemas
had made his exile one internal holiday. Clutching a month-old copy of Der Tag,
and contracting his abdomen, he trod majestically towards his famed Imperial
outdoor abort bar. A few moments later the waiting retainers heard a shattering
roar and were deluged, among other things, with rubble.
' Himmel
?
Hermann ?
What did you put in the last enema?' queried the
family doctor of the retainers.
Flames and debris showered the
grounds and there, floating down on the parachute, came the Count.
' People
will look to me when I die,' he had once said. His
wish had come true.
In that fire had perished Fireman
Wreggs.
Now his great-grandson lay there
crying on the floor of Brent Lodge House. The pandemonium had snowballed and
perfectly good friends were hitting each other.
'There is no fire!' a very angry
Scoutmaster was saying, his paper columns flattened with water.
' There
is no fire!' he repeated as three firemen poured
eighty gallons a minute over him. 'You're ruining our costumes!' he shouted.
They silenced him by increased water pressure, at a hundred gallons a minute he
was sluiced backwards into a choked lily pond.
' Three
troop to the rescue!' he shouted through his umbrella of water lilies.
Solitary and floating alone in her
row 'D8' chair, its planks awash, was stone-deaf Miss Penelope Dingley-Smythe,
her hearing aid turned to zero. She snored oblivious of the hydro waters that
lapped at the soles of her little Victorian high-button boots.
The Brigade
were
being severely hampered by two things, a lack of water, and a lack of fire. Of
the thirteen hoses only six were at full pressure. Frantically lighting fires
as he
went,
Fire Chief Muldoon discovered a rusty
verdigris board covered in turncocks.
'Hallelujah !
'
he exalted as he turned the lot on. There was a rumbling sound under the earth.
Long forgotten fountains lived again, eroded pipes burst in all directions,
streams of water shot from under many an unsuspecting victim.
Thirty great jets hurled a screaming
scoutmaster twenty feet in the air, ripping his boots and socks from his feet.
Once gentle bidets suddenly gushed up unsuspecting old females,
giving a mixed feeling of fear and joy.
The delightful Juno-esque fountain
Naiad, her innards clogged this many a year, suddenly burst. Old Admiral Munroe
under his shower was flattened by the increase in water power. The ancient
brass geyser was trying to consume the new rate of intake and remain intact;
with steam everywhere, it started to boil and fall apart. As the Admiral took
to his heels, it exploded and hurled him naked into the corridor right on to the
teatray outside the door; seated on it like an aged
Puck,
he slid powerless down the steps shouting 'Foreeeeeee!' Tightly holding the
edge of his slender craft it hurtled down the wet stairs into the hall, and
finally shot out the front doors on to the lawn at the feet of Mrs Grimblenack.
'Madame!' roared the quick-witted
Admiral, ' Get out of my bathroom!' But she would have none of his finesse. 'If
you don't go to my bedroom at once I'll scream!' she said.
He fled into the countryside and
later was found dead from indecent exposure.
Repulsed by gunfire, his hat full of
bullet holes, Foggerty retreated deeper and deeper into Ulster. In the dark he
had seen two men running, swearing and carrying a coffin on their heads.
'Hello fellas,' he had said, 'it's
me, Foggerty.' In reply a fist had cudgeoned on his forehead. It was daylight
when he regained consciousness. ' I musta' been tired!' he yawned. It was two
days since he had last eaten. He was hungry. I could eat a horse, he thought.
He walked several paces, when a horse strayed across his path. 'Mmmm, it's too
big to eat,' he thought. 'I know
,
I'll ride it till it
gets slimmer.' The animal bolted with him.
It took him a-galloping and screaming
into the grounds of Brent Lodge, at the very moment when a Roman soldier dashed
from the main entrance pursued hotly by the police. In one rough move the son
of Rome took Foggerty's ankle, flung him from the horse, bounded on to the
animal and galloped like the wind from the grounds, followed by the police.
Stunned and mudspattered, Foggerty lay white and still on the ground.
But help was coming a' running. Down
the steps came a black chiffon-swathed harpy-like female; it was Madame Elaine
Grinns, spiritualist, mystique, laundress and amateur necrophile. Twenty years
she had forecast the return of her dead, sex-mad husband Nugent Grinns on the
back of a wild stallion; agreed, the horse had turned out to be an old farm
hack, but then he always was a modest man. Now there he lay, white faced and
grinning, the feathers of a chieftain in his crown. Gently she raised his head.
'Nugent, you have returned!'
' Hello
,
little darlin,' said Foggerty, grateful for any attention.
Slowly she led him up the great steps
into the smoking interior of the laundry room. 'You must rest,' she said, '
You
have been dead a long time.'
'Oh?' said Mr Foggerty.
'Dead, eh?
Well I suppose it happens to der best of us.
What's for
lunch ?'
' Food
later, dear,' she said starting to remove his clothes.
'Here, here, here,' said the startled
Foggerty, 'I'm not eatin' naked.'
'Nugent dear, you know very well I mu
st rub you with oil and spices, as was our custom,' she reminded him.
'But I'm hungry,' he insisted,
holding on to his trousers.
' Come
,
come, dear,' she said rolling up her sleeves, ' I don't want to have to kill
you again, you know how unpleasant it was last time.'
' Eh
?' said
Foggerty.
The Customs camp and its attendant
soldiers were returning to normal after the night's ructions.
' They
must have been i.r.a. I suppose,
Sergeant
?
' said Lt Walker.
'Oh yes sur,' was the confident
reply. 'No one else fires so many rounds and misses.'
A clatter of
hooves.
What appeared to be a Roman soldier galloped up to the
sentry.
' Halt!' he called.
' Have
you seen a circus go this way ?' said Shamus.
'Er, no.'
'Say sir when you speak to Julius
Caesar!' rapped Shamus.
'Sir!'
The Roman lashed his mount and
galloped over the frontier towards the back of the church.
'Who the
blazes was
that?' said Lt Walker doubling across.
'Julius Caesar,' said the sentry, and
wondered why he was demoted on the spot.
The sky was stone black with the
promise of snow. The glass was falling. The Atlantic tossed its cold white
curls into the wind.
Sitting by an oil stove in the
vestry, Mr Pills the verger polished the altar silver and sang. 'La de de de,
de da de de,' he hummed softly stopping occasionally to blow his cold wet nose.
The vestry was draughty and large and the only thing warm was the stove itself.
Occasionally he stopped to run one hand over the top vents, catching the
streams of warm air between his fingers. This weather was terrible on his
feet,
the circulation seemed only to go as far as his
insteps. From the welts of his boots he left a trail of yellow powder. An old
Australian lady called Miss Blewitt had told him of the trick when he was a
seaman on board the old P. & O. liner the Kaiser H ind. ' Put plenty of
sulphur in your socks and you'll never suffer from tuberculosis.' And true as
true, touch wood, for forty-eight years since he put sulphur in his socks, he
had never had the disease; he hadn't had it before mark you, but he definitely
hadn't had it since.
Old remedies were sometimes the best.
Had not the leeks sewn in the waist band of his long underwear staved off
leprosy? And where would he be without the dried onion skins in a bag around
his
neck ?
Dead from malaria for sure! One thing he
hadn't got a cure for was bad circulation, strange that, the one thing he did
suffer from, no one had a cure for. He had invoked the saints and had burned
many candles asking for 'Help for me poor cold feet'.
The saints had ignored him - he did
however notice that the candles had a better effect when they were held under
his feet.'
La la la de de de,' he went. He
watched the satisfying glint of old silver as it shone through the plate
powder.
From the corner of the room came the
conspiratorial whisper of Father Rudden talking rapidly to the Milligan. Father
placed one hand on Milligan's shoulder.' We'll re-bury him tonight in Holy
Catholic Ireland,' said the priest, his voice full of pride and achievement.
'You realize that we've only got two
more dear souls to bring back and we've won,' he waved his hands aloft like
battle flags.'
People will point to you in the
street.'
'Dey do dat already,' said Milligan
disgruntedly.
'Ahh!
But
this will be different, you'll be a hero! There he goes, they'll say, or, here
he comes, according to the direction you're travelling. On top of that, if the
Pope gets to hear of it, you could be made a Papal Knight.'
' Me
, a
Papal Knight ?' Milligan screwed his eyes up to get a better vision of himself
walking up the steps of the
'How are yer, Milligan me boy?' the
Pope would say.
' I'm
fine,
yer honour,' the Milligan would reply.
' My
, my,
my, Milligan, you done a fine job o' work diggin' up them stiffs and bringin'
'em back to consecrated ground.'
Milligan would smile, 'Well yer
honour, anything fer the old Church.'
Then the trumpets would blare out Danny
Boy by Cellini snd the Pope would give him a certificate, two pounds, and a
bottle of holy water. 'Arise, Sir Papal Knight
The
Milligan.'
'All right Fadder,' said Milligan,'
I'll do it.'
'And remember, Milligan,' the priest
said, a look of profound wisdom on his face, 'there's an old Irish saying -' he
paused, his eyes closed as though searching his soul. Milligan stood quietly
by.
The priest opened his eyes,' I can't
quite remember it at the moment,' he concluded.
Outside the gardener's hut Milligan
paused to light his pipe; a hairy arm reached out from the shed and laced
around his throat dragging him back.
'This is a gun in yer back,' hissed a
hoarse voice.
'All right,' gasped Milligan, 'as
long as you don't shoot I can stand it.'
The arm uncurled. He turned to see
Shamus Ford.
'Look lively,' said the gunman, 'take
yer clothes off, hurry.'
The pistol's blue mouth was directed
at Milligan's heart.
Slowly Milligan removed his trousers,
not without a feeling of apprehension.
'Dere's a limit to what I'll do,' he
warned the gunman.
Milligan wondered if this strange
metal-clad figure was one of them homosexual murderers that were so popular in
better educated countries. Naked, save for his socks, Milligan was told to
stand in the corner of the hut with his hands above his head.
' Now,' said the voice,' you'll stay
facing that way.'
The door closed behind him. The
outside bolt went home. He heard the gunman's horse gallop away. Snow was
starting to fall.
It was cold. Milligan lit the stove
and started to shout for help.
Next to the stove the coffin started
to singe.
Mr Moris Prells walked with
mathematical precision up the church drive. He had the white blotting-paper
complexion of a man who worked under cover and slept with the windows closed.
In his wallet, Mr Prells carried ten
neat calling cards wrapped in tissue paper. They were printed: Mr Julian S.
Prells, County Quantitive Surveyor.
Department of Weights,
Measures and Statistics.
Mr Prells calculated that at that
very moment his age was forty-seven years, three months, two days, ten hours
and forty minutes. His weight with the grey suit was one hundred and
sixty-eight pounds, three ounces. Life was a precise affair. One was better
equipped to face it with facts and figures at one's disposal. It gave one a
sense of certainty in an uncertain world.
At this very moment, if anyone were
to ask him the precise weight of the sewerage discharged by Puckoon he could
answer down to the fine ounce.
At parties he often told people
without being asked. One must have facts and figures. Each and every one of us
is a fact and a figure. His little meek wife, walking on an invisible chain at
his side, she was a fact and figure. In fact, at eighteen she had been a very
good figure. From his attic room he was able to watch her undress. Even from
that distance he was able to jot down 36, 20,
36
. That
was twenty-three years and five months ago; last week he had bought her a pair
of corsets 43, 29, 42, in memory of those happy 36, 20, 36 days.