J. Donleavy - Leila - Further in the Life and Destinies of Darcy Dancer, Gentleman

‘No, not actually.’

‘Ah I worship you dear boy. For your tolerant understanding. May I interject then the merest bit of fantasy. One of my former professors in Senior Freshman physics is actually over there, incognito of course, among that strange lot discussing astro nuclear quirks and quarks. He maintains that the atmosphere of this dungeon of despair allows them to reach the very heights of their theoretical explorations.’

‘And who is that next to them, talking to himself in the mirror.’

‘Ah dear boy, I’m entirely glad you noticed a lost soul. He is Horatio Macbeth. Sundays past, when both he and I were often low and lonely he visited for tea in my college rooms. Poor devil, banished to Dublin by his rich mill owning family, albeit with a very nice little private income. Fellow couldn’t restrain himself pinching ladies’ bottoms all over the better parts of Manchester. His great ambition, like us all, to be an actor. You will see him just before pub closing time mouthing his lines into any nearby mirror. Most impressively too. Frequently an entire jammed pub has ended up shouting bravo. He rehearses late at night at his reflection in the better shop windows up and down Grafton Street. Dear boy. I must but I must leave you here a moment. Do have another bottle of stout. While I slip away to see if Sheena is earning her keep. And also to collect for you the pawn ticket and my cufflinks. Despite this being the new Lourdes, arguments do appear to continue to rage in a blaze of insult and blame. And dear me, neither souls, morals, principles and especially chattels, are safe.’

Rashers disappearing under the arch of the passageway. The stench of bothes, smoke and fumes thickening. A cold swirl of air around the ankles as the doors to ante room and the street open and shut. Corks popping, songs singing, and one stands here a sore thumb. In this conflagration of discontent. The cold country night would have long settled now on Andromeda Park. My head on my pillow. Frost white over the fields. Beasts lonely mooing. And O my god, as I stand here deceived and thieved from, I’ve also stood up Miss von B. A girl grins from across the room. And Leila. Could she have once been someone like Sheena. Women must do anything, anything at all, for money. And now who’s this slipping up next to me. Leaning in close to one’s ear to whisper.

‘Excuse me now. I’m a bit of a nut. Been nineteen years in Grangegorman. Let out an odd weekend now and again to be enjoying a pint of stout among normal people like yourself. But I was once meself a gas meter reader. And a devout Catholic. And if you don’t mind me saying it’s a disgrace that the likes of that Buster and a worse friend of his, Danno, should be allowed down here in the vicinity of the holy happening of the apparition. I’m reformed now. And haven’t made an impure suggestion to any mother superiors on the doorsteps of their convents when I’d come a calling in me guise as a monk. And that’s a fact. And hear that roaring and drum pounding now. That’s Danno. And he’s coming in here by the sound. And I can tell you sir, I’m going. Goodbye to you. And thanks for your kindness to me.’

Emerging from the dark passage, a massive figure, sweat pouring from his brow. Yellow and black rotted teeth in his yawning open jaws. As he grins and holds up a half full whisky bottle in one hand and beats his other in a fist on a great drum strapped to his shoulders. Lurching in to stand next to Buster the Beastly.

‘Me name is Danno, when I’m not abroad under me nom de plume of the Reverend Felix de Gascoigne Dilettante, blessing nuns up the bifurcation with me genuine beeswax candles. Shut up now. The bunch of youse. I am here waiting for your emotional attention. And youse now, with a belch out his arse, just heard me friend here in the shoes too short for him give you a fucking valuable piece of his mind. Give us your wet kiss of fealty youse whore British debutantes. While I’d be playing football with the preserved head of Cromwell youse would be playing football with the head of the Blessed Oliver Plunkett off his altar in Drogheda and kicking the last dry old tooth hanging from his cheek out of him. Dehumanized now he may be. But by god he’ll be canonized yet. And if any of youse don’t have faith in me predictions or so much as mildly offend me friend Buster here doing his fucking utmost to entertain you, I’ll stuff the lot of your heads in the fucking Wicklow gap. Listen now while I beat me Lambeg drum I took off an Orangeman. I’m a mental and physical demolitionist. To the animate and inanimate. Pull the fucking lead pipes out of houses. And before pawning them would wrap them around youse necks who don’t pay attention and listen to me while I’m telling you. I have just come from singing Ave Maria up there at the top of Nelson’s Pillar. With a pint of stout in one hand, me prick in the other. Pissing down one hundred and thirty eight feet on top of the populace waiting for the tram to Dalkey and them all thinking it was a spot of rain. That will give you just an introduction to the fact that I am the most evil scoundrel that any of youse ever met. I am an itinerant. And betimes I am a hospital porter. Humping the female corpses. The breath out of some of them would kill you. When I don’t like the look of someone dying in the bed, I give the undertaker measurements six inches too short for the coffin so’s the legs have to be broken to get the dead bugger in. When it comes to living and breathing women I am mad on them graduates of the higher institutions of learning. When I am not fucking a woman in peace then I am at war and am given to violence of a violent nature. I am an unreformed informer. Sentenced to death in the absence of my presence, by the high command of the Irish Republican Army. I would beat an old defenceless lady out of two pence. Ah, you’d ask, what is there good about me, I’ll tell you. As a true example of the native treachery and viciousness I could be a great tourist attraction. And a living warning of the villain that you’d do well to keep well away from.’

‘You should be put in a cage.’

‘Who said that. Sure behind me drum with this bit of chain now I’d undo round me waist I would remove the head off the fucker in this room who said that. That’s a threat. I am only just after lifting a publican up by the scruff down there on the Aston Quay and stuffing his grey old head in his own brown old shit bowl. No one will tell me I’m barred from a premises. And don’t any of youse use the wrong tone of voice with me.’

‘No Danno, I’m Buster your friend. Put away your chain, give us a beat of the drum and tell us about the holy revelation you encountered down there on the quay.’

‘Me friend here now in that suggestion stated a fact. Never mind the apparition in this place. Didn’t I down there on the quays a June summer evening passing a tree look up in the branches to see the Blessed Virgin herself. She said hello Danno. Instead of saying hello or praying back up to her asking for a fucking miracle on the spot, didn’t I look up her sky blue habit instead. By god by the look of youse faces listening, if I said she had no knickers on you’d dance out of your minds with rage at the blasphemy. And be next asking me to swear on a stack of bibles the height of Nelson’s Pillar, that the immaculate lady had no cunt. And that I swear. She did not have one. And she said, go Danno from this holy spot and spread the news from Inchicore to Sandymount. And now here’s a recent poem now I wrote meself.’

Sure as

Me name is Danno

I’m a fucking terror

To trust me an inch

Is a mile of error

While some ladies love me

I’m still held in dread

For the rest of the hypocritical bunch of you

Would fucking love to see me dead