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

A figure emerging from the shadows of the passage. Stepping up behind Danno with a bottle raised and swinging it downwards smashing on the back of Danno’s head.

‘And that’s the way you’ll be by god you disgusting insult to religion.’

A fist flying catching Danno mid nose as he falls forward like a giant tree. His face crunching and bouncing off the side of his drum. Whisky splashing and broken glass scattering across the floor. Buster the Beastly rising slowly on his toes and turning to look down over his shoulder upon the horizontal unconscious body.

‘Ah me flattened friend, most prostrate. Sucked every sup your mother had to give you from her breasts. The poor woman in her consternation watching you grow from a babe in arms swinging from her apron strings, into the big violent whore you are lying there. I will give you another poem now, an epitaph commemorating you in case you are coffin stretched ready for Glasnevin cemetery where they’d have to deconsecrate the ground to lie you in it.’

Behold

Many times and oft

In the course of his life

Was he sad

But it was nothing

Compared to the times

He was mad

And absolutely nothing compared

To the times

He was fucking bad

Sound of bagpipes outside. The door opening. A voice calling attention. Six tweed capped macintoshed gentlemen, their coats bulging, stepping in. Another shout of command. And the platoon taking up positions over the prostrate Danno. A hand reaching to turn over the unconscious face.

‘Commandant, he’s in no fit state now to be executed.’

A seventh gentleman appearing in the doorway. Wavy curly hair above a domed forehead, taking a butt of a cigarette from his lips and crushing it on the floor.

‘In that case remove that fucking criminal’s body from the room and if he wakes up, keep him under close arrest.’

The body of Danno carried disappearing into the back passage. Conversation and voices seeping back into the hushed gathering. O my god, that broad skulled curly haired visage, the very gunman whose kinky head I baptized with the leg of some piece of furniture one night in Lois’s studio as he was waving both his prick and his Polish nine millimetre Parabellum about the room. Still wearing the same mustard coloured sweater I remember so well. And he’s walking straight towards me.

‘And what have the tweedy likes of you got to say for yourself. Is it nothing. Well keep it that fucking way. Now the rest of you bunch of British homosexual bollocks here gathered, hear this. Ireland integral is Ireland free. And no one is to touch another bottle of stout on that table which is of this moment commandeered until my men have had their fill. Pass me a bottle of stout, put out that electricity and let’s have a candle or two.’

‘Don’t you dare.’

Naked Binky shouting from the passageway. A man jumping to pull the light out of the ceiling. A flash of blue flame and in the darkness cigarettes and candles lighting up. Buster the Beastly now disappeared down the passageway, and the Mild Man in the grey suit, previously in attendance, raising up his own bottle of stout among the newly arrived.

‘Ah it’s grand by this candlelight to see patriots of the purification squad in action. Up the Republic lads. And will someone sing us Stephen Foster’s My Old Kentucky Home.’

The commandant lowering his bottle from his mouth and wiping his lips, shouting above the heads.

‘Sing the man his song, and that’s a fucking order.’

‘Never mind the old kip in Kentucky, sing us, would you live on woman’s earnings.’

‘Who said that.’

‘It wasn’t me.’

A voice yodelling. The platoon of patriots in close order drill. Corks pulled out and their bottles at the ready. As their elbows bend to the commands called out.

‘Bottles to the lips. Drink.’

The squad in clockwork unison. As the foaming black beer pours down the stretched back throats. And their arms lift over their heads to throw the empty bottles whistling across the room to smash against the sackcloth draped wall. Strains of a violin coming from the dark passageway. The feet of more arrivals on the steps outside. The door opening. The Mild Man in the grey suit shouting.

‘Begorra it’s the socialites.’

Binky stepping over the supine figures, as he crosses the room. An apron tented out over his erection. His wiry arms outstretched towards the newcomers.

‘Just so long my dears that you are not the gobshites, you are my sweetie pies welcome to my litle tea party.’

Beads of perspiration on Rashers’s brow returning to Darcy Dancer’s side. A nervous smile on his face. His fingers gently touching Darcy Dancer’s arm.

‘Darcy it’s so good of you to remain so silently patient. Road’s not yet quite clear back there. I fear the dangerous atmosphere down here grows even more dangerous by the second. Some awful gin and lime spivs have just come in the door whom one occasionally encounters in the gilded cage of Davy Byrne’s when one is imbibing one’s Black Velvet. And dear me, they are in the company of a chap from your neck of the woods, a Master of Foxhounds. That lady likes being fucked standing on her head, and is the wife of a top government minister. The chap in cowboy boots and hat, armed with two revolvers, with her is mad, as well as being a damn good bridge player. O dear I do apologize for having brought you here.’

‘Well I am about to leave.’

‘But dear Darcy, you mustn’t yet. I so need your reassuring company you know. I am a fragile person, really. Among such as this lot. There’s the Sober Judge, his inebriation on the bench is legendary. Just behind him, the Royal Rat, my erstwhile associate who runs our little casino. Pawned his own mother’s sick bed. While she was still in it. Imagine he was pushing her on a handcart down the road when the heavy rain woke her up. You wouldn’t believe such a hunched decrepit figure could also be the brother of Clarissa and the Black Widow. And that man with the hanky is the Mourner. Never without a tear or sob. Tréslugubre, mélancolique, funebre, to put a French word on it. Attends funerals by day. And wakes such as this, at night. A sad evening to be made even sadder. He’ll bring this entire room sobbing uncontrollably to their knees. Tiresome of course if one had more randy things on one’s mind. You mustn’t go.’

‘Rashers, I really do feel one wants to return to the Shelbourne to bed.’

‘But ah wait, here’s the very chap now, getting on the table with his contraption. The vacuum cleaner salesman. As to who would have use of such in Ireland one will never know. Under the suction most carpets would vaporize in dust anyway. You mustn’t miss this demonstration. Ignorant or clever man, one doesn’t know which, but I suppose in our backward way of life, having the end of a vacuum cleaner to stick one’s organ into would help relieve the nationwide celibacy. Summer time he demonstrates how it catches flies. Dear me, he’s engorged already.’

A single candle left lighting the room. Jeering and cheering. Fist shaking and laughter. The salesman on the table entangled with his vacuum hose, tripping and landing bare arsed among the parcels of unopened bottles.

‘There are ladies present.’

‘As a decent Catholic and native born Irishman I object.’

‘Dear me, Darcy it would seem there are prigs present. And I sincerely hope the root of his penis is firmly connected to the rami of the os pubis and ischium. Else his organ will end up in his dust bag. Of course so many demonstrations have distorted the obtuse cone of his extremity. But by the look of that copious substance coming out of the orifice of his urethra, everything is working. I think I’ll have him deliver me a vacuum at the Shelbourne.’