'Darcy and O'Mara' is a novel by Arthur Cronin.
Click here to buy the paperback or download the ebook for free.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

The Moral of the Story


I like to sit in the glasshouse and think about politics or the universe or whatever I'm holding in my hand, and once I was holding a rabbit. I don't know how I came to be holding a rabbit, so I decided to stop thinking about it, and eventually someone told me to put the rabbit down.


My cousin Albert spent one summer working for the local community council with his friends, Neil and George. They spent most of their time cutting briers on ditches. Actually they spent most of their time cursing briers on ditches as they stood back and looked at all the work they had to do.


When they were in the pub one evening, Neil overheard a conversation about horses. One man gave a tip on a horse called 'Don't Fear the Reaper', and another man tipped a horse called 'The White Knight'. Neil wrote 'White Knight' on his right hand. 'Don't Fear the Reaper' was too long to write on his left, so he just wrote 'Death'.


He was always writing things on his hands so he wouldn't forget them. Sometimes he got bored when there wasn't anything good on TV. Reading a book seemed like too much effort, so he tried to read a narrative into what he'd written on his hands. Sometimes he got paranoid and he believed there was some truth to the stories. On the following day he saw 'Death' on his left hand. '10.30 Thursday' was beneath 'Death'. That was meant to remind him of his dentist appointment, but he saw it as a date with death. He certainly wasn't going to make it easy by letting a dentist put things in his mouth.


Neil was supposed to go to work before going to the dentist. When he didn't turn up, Albert and George went to his house to look for him. They found him hiding in a shed. He showed them his hand and he gave his interpretation of it. The cuts on his hand from the briers made his interpretation more believable.


"You're making it too easy for Death," Albert said. "You're in a place with countless things that could be used as lethal weapons. There's even a scythe in here."


Neil left the shed and ran through the fields. Albert and George caught up with him, and they convinced him to go to the pub to calm his nerves. The pub wouldn't officially open for another few hours, but unofficially, it never closed.


Albert bought a round of drinks and they sat at a table in the corner. There was a fish in a glass case on the wall. The man who caught it just put his hand into the river and pulled it out. He held it up and it glistened in the sunlight. He said it was luck, but people thought he must have some sort of a special power. They followed him around. He used to turn the hose on them when they gathered outside his garden, but they liked that. They used to believe it gave them some of his powers, albeit very diluted ones. One of them hit his head with a hurley and knocked himself unconscious. He couldn't remember what he was trying to achieve with this act. Another one set up a garden centre, and it was reasonably successful. His name was Dineen, and he put the success down to being soaked by the man who caught the fish. People used to go to Dineen when they wanted some sort of supernatural intervention or to get the benefit of his exceptional foresight. They stopped going to the man who caught the fish because he wasn't open to the idea that he possessed exceptional gifts, other than his skill at chess (a gift that he didn't really possess). There was no evidence that Dineen's foresight had improved since being soaked by the garden hose, but he seemed to have gained wisdom because of his perceived powers, and also because he seemed so serene amongst the flowers in his garden centre.


Albert was reminded of Dineen when he saw the fish on the wall. He suggested they pay a visit to the garden centre to get the great man's opinion of Neil's hand.


Albert expected Dineen to dismiss the idea of a date with Death, and thus calm Neil's nerves, but Dineen took it seriously. He looked out over the valley beneath the garden centre as he thought about the message on the hand. A man called Blarney had a farm at the bottom of the valley. No one knew why they called him 'Blarney'. Some people suggested it was because he was made of stone. Dineen couldn't help looking at Blarney's farm as he looked from his garden centre. He said, "I can't help thinking of Blarney."


"If anyone would be working for Death around here," George said, "it'd be Blarney."


"Just stay away from Blarney until after half-ten," Dineen said.


Albert, George and Neil thanked Dineen and they went to work. As they were looking at the briers, Albert noticed a man in the distance. He thought it was Blarney, and he was right. The three of them hid at the other side of the ditch, but he had seen them. He wondered why they were hiding from him. He remembered his generator, which had been stolen on the previous day. And they must have stolen it, he thought.


When he got to the place where they were hiding he said, "Give me back my generator, or else. I'll leave it to ye'r imaginations to decide what 'else' is. It won't be a picnic. If I don't find the generator outside my back door when I get home for lunch, I'll start loading else."


He walked on again. Albert, George and Neil went back to Dineen's garden centre. "You were right about Blarney," Neil said. "He thinks I stole his generator."


"Yeah, I thought it was something like that."


"What am I going to do? He wants it back by lunch, but I don't have it."


"Show me your other hand," Dineen said. "Maybe the solution to your problem is on that."


When Dineen read the words 'White Knight' he said, "Of course. Murphy is the man to sort this out. It all makes sense. Death is on your sinister left hand, but the cause of right and good is on your right hand. Murphy even has a white horse. They hate each other anyway, and Murphy will definitely take on Blarney if we portray it as a battle of good and evil."


Dineen went with them when they visited Murphy. He had a lust for life that could be heard miles away in his thunderous voice, and he loved nothing more than a good fight, even if it was just threatening Blarney with a pipe.


When Blarney went home for lunch, he was greeted by Albert, George, Neil, Murphy and a pipe. Murphy told him to stop threatening Neil, or else. He said he already had all the explosives he needed for 'else'.


Blarney didn't say a word. Albert, George and Neil took Murphy to the pub to buy him a drink. They finally got around to starting work on the briers at half-four that afternoon. They only had time for half an hour of cursing before going home.


Albert and George were at Neil's house at nine o' clock that evening when the doorbell rang. It was Blarney. He was with his two brothers, a pipe and a plank with a rusty nail in it. "Give me my generator," Blarney said.


Neil realised that 10.30 could be p.m., rather than a.m. He said, "Just wait here, and I'll have it in a minute."


Albert, George and Neil left the house through the back door. They ran away through the fields. "Where are we going?" George said. "We can't just keep running."


"We've been approaching this the wrong way," Albert said. "You don't fight evil with good. You fight fire with fire. Fight evil with evil. We should go to Mulligan's house."


No one ever went to Mulligan's house if they valued their limbs. Too many of his acquaintances had bits missing, and none of them were fully there in the head. But Albert, George and Neil had no other option. They could hear Blarney and his brothers behind them. They ran into the west, with the sun on their faces until it set, its departure filling them with a dark foreboding.


They ran for three miles until they got to Mulligan's place. It was a crumbling house at the bottom of a valley. The house was surrounded by trees and covered in ivy. A narrow twisting road led to the driveway, which hadn't been driven on in years. The briers and gorse at either side were encroaching on the driveway, making it into a footpath. It was no longer wide enough for a car.


As they walked towards the house they could hear the sounds of a party. The sound of fighting dominated. They made their way through the crowd in the garden and they tried to avoid the airborne bottles. Two men were fighting over a bicycle bell. One of them was trying to make the other one eat it.


A band played inside. They sang songs about drinking and fighting, and they looked as if their songs were autobiographical. They weren't put off by the sound of breaking glass and fighting. Couples danced to the music. They proved just how narrow the line was between dancing and stabbing each other. There was a table full of bottles and a metal bin full of something that tasted as if it would melt a plastic bin.


It was nearly half-ten. Neil said, "I have an appointment with Death at half-ten and ye bring me to a place like this."


"Relax," Albert said. "He'll have plenty other customers to deal with here."


They walked right through the house and went out the back door. Two men were digging a hole outside. Neil thought it was a grave, but George said, "They're just digging for the hell of it, just like that woman breaking the floor tiles in the hall with a hatchet, or like those men setting fire to the sofa in the garden."


Neil started to relax after half-ten, but then they saw Blarney and his brothers. Albert, George and Neil tried to avoid them, and the crowd was big enough to get lost in. Blarney and his brothers drank from the bin and they looked lost too.


Albert, George and Neil were in one of the front rooms when the clock struck midnight. The whole place went silent and the lights were turned off. Neil was terrified. It seemed like an appropriate time for Death's arrival. A door opened and the crowd parted, but instead of the dark void of Death, a white birthday cake appeared, with lighting candles to chase away the darkness. Mulligan blew out the candles and a woman in a bikini emerged from the cake. "Just what I wished for," he said. She sang 'Happy Birthday' and then the band played 'For he's a jolly good fellow'. Everyone joined in. His birthday celebrations had officially begun at midnight, though they had started the party a few hours earlier, and it went on for a few days.


Mulligan went around to all of his guests and gave them slices of the cake. He sorted out the dispute between Blarney and Neil. When he asked what the problem was, Blarney said, "He stole my generator."


Mulligan turned to Neil and said, "Did you?"


"No," Neil said.


"Fair enough," Blarney said. He spent the next few hours talking to Neil, telling him all the intimate details of his life, all the disappointments and failures, often talking through tears.


They met Murphy at the party too. He gave Mulligan a painting of a bird as a birthday present. Someone else gave him a used generator.


When they were in the garden, looking at the dawn sky, George said, "So what exactly triumphed here? Good or evil?"


"Maybe neither," Albert said. "We could have been reading too much into it when we portrayed it as a battle of good versus evil. We imposed that narrative on events just because of Neil's hands."


They overheard two men talking about horses. One of them mentioned a horse called 'The Moral of the Story', and he said this horse couldn't lose.


"That sounds like an omen to me," George said. "We should bet on 'The Moral of the Story', and if he loses, we'll know that we've been reading too much into things."


They watched the race on the TV in the pub. 'The Moral of the Story' came in last, so yeah, they were reading too much into things.


The moose's head over the fireplace enjoyed the general election. It was full of twists and turns and it ended with the brief cessation of fighting we get once every five years, when politicians can debate things calmly and rationally. The hurling championship is underway again, and the moose's head enjoyed that even more. They got all the fighting out of the way before the games even started, and then went on to focus on the actual hurling, which seems like a more sensible way of doing things. If politicians were playing they'd spend the whole game fighting and then play a minute of hurling after the final whistle.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

The Vase


One of the garden gnomes keeps falling over. It's the one who plays the saxophone. The wife thinks he's trying to headbutt the one who plays the banjo.


My Uncle Harry married a woman called Bridget who grew up on a large estate in the country. Her parents still lived in the manor house. They had a maid and a butler, and they always had guests staying with them, so they were never alone. In the summer there wouldn't be a free place at the breakfast table.


They had a party in the middle of July and they invited all the relatives. Harry and Bridget went with their children, June, Rachel, Alan and Ronan, and June had her kids, Daisy and Graham, and of course her husband, Dan.


After they arrived on a Friday afternoon, Alan took a walk around the gardens and he remembered playing there when he was young. He had spent many happy hours getting lost in the maze with the other kids, or playing hide-and-seek with the peacocks, not that the peacocks ever did much seeking and they weren't very good at hiding.


His reminiscences were only interrupted when he walked around a hedge and saw a woman standing next to the fountain. This was Elinor, a friend of his cousin Ruth, but it took a few seconds for Alan to recognise her because he hadn't seen her in years, not since she was sixteen, and in the intervening years she became about two foot taller, much slimmer, and able to see without those huge glasses that frightened the cat. There was nothing frightening about her now. Alan imagined birds landing on her hand, butterflies flying around her head, himself climbing a ladder to her bedroom window.


He walked over to her, smiled and said hello. She smiled too, and said, "Hi Alan. It's great to see you again."


"I was just about to say that too. And I'd never have said anything more sincere in my life."


She laughed. He suggested a walk in the maze and she said, "Lead the way."


When they came back out of the maze half an hour later, Alan was telling his story about the time he was attacked by a swan, and she was fascinated by it, but before he could tell her the ending, they bumped into William, one of Alan's cousins from his mother's side of the family. He seemed to go out of his way just to bump into Alan. William played rugby, and when he bumped into people on the field they had a habit of losing consciousness and being unable to move for a long time afterwards. Alan was going to ask if he was practising for the next round of rugby-related accidents, but there was something very menacing about the way William was glaring at him. With the glare, he was trying to say 'Stay away from that woman or say goodbye to your head', but Alan had no intention of staying away from Elinor. He was falling in love with her, and no amount of glaring was going to keep him away. He had every intention of staying away from William -- that's what the glare kept reminding him to do.


Lots of Alan's young cousins were swarming around the house that weekend. Daisy and Graham were part of the swarm. They were playing hide-and-seek at about five o' clock, and Graham went to look for a place to hide in the kitchen, but he was distracted by the sun shining on the tap near the window. He stood there and stared at the tap, and completely forgot about the game. Alice was doing the seeking, and when she had counted to a hundred she started looking for the others. She went to the kitchen first. She walked right past Graham, and she didn't notice him as he stared at the tap. He didn't notice her either.


The maid did notice Graham when she came into the kitchen, but she couldn't figure out what he was up to. She stood there and stared at him as he stared at the tap.


After Alice had found all the others, they helped her in the search for Graham. They went back to the kitchen, and Alice asked the maid if she'd seen Graham. The maid slowly shook her head and said 'no' without taking her eyes off him.


The kids left to look elsewhere, but they were back half an hour later. This time they all looked very carefully over every square inch of ground and in every cupboard, and eventually Daisy spotted Graham, still staring at the tap. "There he is!" she said, and pointed at her brother.


"Where were you?" Alice said.


"Hm?... Oh, I was just looking at the tap."


They had another game of hide-and-seek, and this time they all stared at things, but they were all found straightaway, apart from Graham. They forgot about him when they were called for dinner.


After dinner, they all went to the drawing room. Alan stood by the sideboard with a glass in his hand and a glint in his eye as he told Elinor his story about the time he got his foot stuck in a flowerpot half an hour before a wedding, and he was the best man. "It was very funny. The man with all the bees said I'd more lives than a flat cat. I don't know what he meant by that."


She laughed, and he smiled because not everyone found it funny. But then he noticed the glare of William, and he suggested to Elinor that they go for a walk in the gardens. They left while Bridget's father, Eamon, was sitting on an armchair by the fireplace, talking about the time he spent in Singapore. "Of course, I couldn't tell one box from the other, but they seemed to think that I was from the office. And I have to say I let them think it when I really should have told them I was there for the horse..."


He was interrupted briefly by the butler, who brought him a letter and said, "A message from the rowing club, sir."


The 'rowing club' was code for the bookies, and the letter contained Eamon's winnings from the races that day. He said, "Ah yes, the rowing club," and winked a few times at the butler. "Now, where was I..."


The kids were showing no signs of tiredness as the evening wore on. They were running around in circles on one of the lawns when Alan and Elinor approached them. He was saying to her, "Of course I never really believed it was a bat, but it's just one of those things you have to play along with."


"Yes."


When they saw William come around the side of the house they both hid behind a hedge. She told Alan that she couldn't stand William's company, and hiding was the only way to avoid him. He said he was all in favour of hiding from his cousin.


They heard William ask the kids if they had seen Alan and Elinor, but the kids had been too busy running in circles to notice anything. When William walked on again, Alan and Elinor came out from behind the hedge and continued on their way.


They went to the orchard and walked through the trees. They stood in the glasshouse and looked out as the stars began to appear above. They walked back towards the house in the last of the evening light, but when they turned a corner, they bumped into William again. Alan thought he'd be tackled if he tried to hide behind a hedge now, so he just stood there and tried to avoid the glare. Elinor looked down at her shoes.


William pointed a finger at Alan and said, "What..."


He was interrupted by one of the kids, who pointed at the dog and said, "He's shaking his head at the peacocks again."


When William turned around, Alan and Elinor made their getaway. They went back inside and said goodnight, but they agreed to meet again later, after everyone else had gone to bed. As Alan went to his room, all thoughts of William had been erased from his mind. There was nothing but Elinor above.


Within an hour, all of the lights had been turned off downstairs. The moon lit up the rooms at the front of the house. The shadow of a man dressed in black moved across the carpet in the drawing room as he tiptoed towards the door, but he stopped suddenly when he heard a voice from the other side of an armchair. "And I said to her, If you think for one second I'm going to pretend to be your gardener... You know, you do have quite stunning eyes."


There was silence once more. The thief went around to the front of the armchair and saw Eamon, sound asleep with an empty brandy glass in his hand.


The thief left the room and went down the corridor to the study. He opened the door as quietly as he could and stepped inside. He took a few steps towards the opposite wall and stopped suddenly when he saw a woman dressed all in black.


"Who are you?" he whispered.


"I'm... Gladys. A cousin of... him." She pointed at a portrait on the wall.


"Why are you dressed all in black?"


"I don't know. Why is he dressed in a cloak?" She pointed at the portrait again.


"You should know -- he's your cousin."


"Well why are you dressed in black."


"I asked you first."


"Well maybe I'm dressed in black for the same reason you're dressed in black."


"That's what I thought."


"So what are you here for?" she said.


"I haven't made my mind up yet. What about you?"


"I asked you first."


"I haven't made my mind up."


"Well then neither have I."


"Fine," he said. "Is there any particular reason why you came to this room."


"No particular reason. What about you?"


"No particular reason."


They stood there for about thirty seconds before he said, "Look, we might as well both go for the safe or we'll be here all night."


"Fair enough. How were you going to open it?"


He opened a bag and showed her the explosives.


"There's enough there to blow up the whole house," she said.


"There's barely enough to open the door."


"You'll wake the whole house."


"It won't even wake the dog."


"What dog?"


"Exactly."


"This is stupid," she said. "What if it breaks the vase as well?"


"So you're after the vase too?"


"So you're after the vase."


"We both know we're both after the vase."


"And we're not going to blow anything up."


He thought about it for a while and said, "Why don't we steal the safe? I did that once before. It's not as difficult as it sounds."


"What if the vase isn't in it?"


"Good point... How were you going to steal it?"


"I heard he keeps the combination for the safe in a book in the library so he won't forget it."


"What book?"


"I don't know exactly, but it's a book about bog-draining."


"There can't be too many books about bog-draining."


There were five shelves of books about bog-draining in the library.


"We'll never find it," he said.


"Do you want to try blowing them up?"


"Yes, I do want to try blowing them up."


"We just have to look."


They started looking through the books on the first shelf. Alan was upstairs in his room. He kept looking at his watch, and at one o' clock, he left the room and tiptoed down the corridor.


The thieves in the library looked through all of the books, but they couldn't find the code for the safe. The only interesting thing they came across was a drawing of a wine bottle, a very detailed drawing. She suggested a trip to the wine cellar. "If we find this bottle of wine, then we'll find the code. I'd put money on it."


"I know you've got this thing against explosions, but..."


He stopped talking when she put a finger to her lips, and pointed towards a table behind him. He looked around and saw a young boy staring at a goldfish bowl.


The two thieves walked over to him, but he never took his eyes off the bowl. For about ten minutes, they stared at him as he stared at the goldfish. Then she coughed to attract his attention, and Graham finally looked up. "Oh, hello," he said.


"Hello," she said. "Are you... Do you like goldfish?"


"Well, they're not exactly dogs, but..." Graham started laughing when he realised that he'd been staring at the goldfish for hours.


He told them about the hide-and-seek, and then he said, "I think this goldfish is deliberately ignoring the other goldfish."


The thieves stared at the bowl with Graham. They could see the goldfish in the moonlight. None of them noticed the door opening and the footsteps on the carpet. The maid had seen a betting slip on the ground next to Eamon's chair earlier in the evening, and she was anxious to get hold of it before anyone else. Herself and the butler had made a lot of money from Eamon's tips over the years. His wife didn't know anything about it, and they all wanted to keep it that way. When the maid noticed the betting slip on the ground, there were other people nearby, and she thought she'd never get it without being seen, so she decided to come back after everyone else had gone to bed.


She retrieved the betting slip from the drawing room, and as she was walking past the library she heard voices. When she went inside she saw Graham and the thieves staring at the goldfish bowl. She stared at them for a while too, before leaving the room and going back to the servants' quarters.


It was only after she had gone to bed and turned out the light that the penny finally dropped. "They're thieves!" she said to herself. She got up again and went to the butler's room. She told him that there were two thieves with Graham in the study. He got a club he used just for these occasions, and left to investigate.


Alan and Elinor had been walking down a corridor upstairs when they heard the door to William's room opening. They ran to the end of the corridor and down the stairs. They hid in the billiards room for a while, and listened at the door.


The butler went to the library and saw Graham staring at the goldfish bowl. He wondered if the maid had imagined the two thieves, but then he heard footsteps outside, and he left the room with his club. The thieves were hiding behind a sofa in the library. They looked at each other in the moonlight, listening carefully to the sounds in the room. There was silence after the door closed. He said to her, "You know, you do have quite stunning eyes."


Alan and Elinor had left the billiards room. They were just about to turn a corner when they heard footsteps close by. They stopped and leaned against the wall. The butler had heard footsteps just around the corner he was approaching too. He stopped and listened, but he couldn't hear anything then. He tiptoed forwards, stopped, and listened again. Then he ran forwards, ready to strike with his club, and he struck the man he bumped into just around the corner.


William lay unconscious on the floor, a sight that would have delighted all of his opponents on the rugby field. It certainly please Alan and Elinor as they passed by.


The whole house was woken seconds later by the sound of a small explosion. The lights were turned on, and most people went to the library, where the safe was. Graham was staring at a plant on a small table outside. There was no one in the library, and the safe was undisturbed. They were all getting ready to go back to bed when Eamon came into the room and said a few words he shouldn't have said in front of the children. Then he said, "They've blown off the door to the wine cellar and taken some of my best wine."


The vase they had come for was still on the windowsill in the library, and the cat was walking all around it, occasionally brushing off it. Alan and Elinor were outside in the maze, doing their best to get lost.


The moose's head over the fireplace was disappointed to see Liverpool lose the Champions' League final. It wasn't a great game, and it was a nice reminder of the good old days when the European Cup final was guaranteed to be one of the worst games of the season. Tedious football followed by wild celebrations and devastation -- that's the beauty of European football.

Friday, May 18, 2007

The Orchestra


The strong wind makes the garden dance and provides the perfect musical accompaniment. All the local daisy farmers become entranced by the daisies' dance in the sun.


My cousin Charlotte joined an orchestra. She wanted to play the violin, but too many of the violinists had lost limbs while performing. The copper pipes was the instrument to take up if you weren't averse to head injuries. She soon discovered that the pig was the most dangerous instrument of all. In the end she decided to play the alarm clock.


She loved travelling with the orchestra. Sometimes they stayed in hotels in cities. Sometimes they slept on mattresses in fields and the birds were their alarm clock. Some birds sounded like a note played on the xylophone when they flew into a tree. Other birds glowed in the dark and acted as light bulbs so they could read or look at their hands. Charlotte read travel books, and sometimes they played in places she'd already read about. In one of those places, all of the birds were red. The travel book had never mentioned this, so Charlotte decided to write her own.


A man called Jack joined the orchestra. He was an electrician, but he decided to become a pianist after seeing the film made about his life. In the film he was portrayed as a pianist for the sake of convenience. They also armed him with a hand gun, for convenience. Charlotte spent a lot of time listening to him because he provided some great material for her book, even though most of what he said was from the film. He dreamt of living that life he saw on screen, spending days in his boat, shooting things. Nights would be full of excitement. In the film he had to steal a diamond from a glass case in the centre of a huge room that was full of bubbles, and if one of the bubbles burst, the alarm would go off. As with most things he did, he had to shoot his way out. He never actually played the piano with the orchestra, but he could make electricity dance with his fingers.


A woman called Cynthia used to play the ice with a metal bucket, but she walked out when the conductor told her he'd rather hear a seal falling off a bus shelter. She set up an orchestra of things you can hit with spoons, and within weeks she had over a hundred members. One of them used to play the harpsichord until it was stolen by a one-armed man. He searched the world for that man, but to no avail. He walked over mountains, where he heard Bach from somewhere underground, and when he came to a guest house to stay for the night he noticed that his hair had grown upwards to create a magnificent architectural structure over his head, and he heard a beautiful symphony when he saw it in a mirror. You couldn't get much of a sound out of it when you hit it with a spoon, but Cynthia let him into her orchestra anyway, and he proved to be a huge attraction.


Charlotte's orchestra travelled to a place where butlers lived in the wild. They'd been released into the woods following the decline of the manor houses in the area, and some of them had kids. There can be as many as ten in a litter of butler puppies. The fully grown butlers taught the young all the survival skills of etiquette. Many knives were incorrectly placed and wine glasses were broken during the learning process. The puppies loved to play, often biting each other's heads. Charlotte's orchestra made friends with the butlers, who were only too willing to serve them. Every musician had a personal butler. Charlotte wrote about them in her book. She enjoyed observing their behaviour.


Cynthia was jealous of the butlers. When Charlotte and her fellow musicians were staying in a woodland clearing with their butlers one night, Cynthia's orchestra launched a raid and captured many of the butlers. Jack tried to fight them off with an umbrella. He assumed he'd be able to do it because he did it in the film, but it didn't work in real life.


They needed to get their butlers back, so they hired a man who'd been shot in the head many times and lived to tell the tale, or his version of the tale. His stories often involved aliens or Australians who kept jumping up and down and were always drinking beer. Australians objected to his racial stereotyping. Boomerangs often flew by his head, and sometimes they hit him, but he didn't mind. They'd knock on the door of his head, but they couldn't get in, unlike the bullets.


He managed to get the butlers back, but this only incensed Cynthia, and the Australians were on her side then. She led the charge against Charlotte's orchestra, who all ran away. Charlotte saw only one possible ending, and it was the ending used in Jack's film. It involved a speedboat chase and explosions.


When Charlotte and her fellow musicians reached the coast they found two speedboats. She realised that they couldn't possibly conduct a speedboat chase where one orchestra and their butlers are chased by another orchestra and their Australians.


It ended with the conductor apologising to Cynthia for his remark, and she agreed to re-join the orchestra. The other orchestra, the butlers and the Australians were released into the wild. Charlotte would have loved to have been able to observe them. She thought it would make a great sitcom, with the three groups getting on each other's nerves because of their differences. But she had to move on with the orchestra.


The moose's head over the fireplace is looking forward to the Champions' League final on Wednesday. It's Liverpool against Milan again, just like two years ago. It's unlikely to be as dramatic as that, but as long as Liverpool win, the moose's head will be happy.

Friday, May 11, 2007

The Teddy Bear and the Fascist


I've been looking at the leaves in the wind and thinking about monks. The monks in my thoughts have just been staring back at me. I suppose I could make them do more than that, seeing as they're in my thoughts, but they feel like guests. It'd be rude to make them dance or to tell them when they've out-stayed their welcome. So they could be there for a while. I suppose I should offer them a drink, and it'd be rude not to have one myself as well.


My cousin Albert nearly made a fortune in the art market with his friends, George and Neil. The artist was Neil. He once tried to draw a cartoon, but it didn't come out right. It was meant to be a teddy bear kicking a fascist on the shins, but if you didn't know that, all you could glean from the drawing was that Neil hasn't been too well lately.


He drew a speech bubble coming from the teddy bear's mouth. It said 'I'm kicking you on the shins'. He wrote 'teddy bear' over the teddy bear, and 'fascist' over the fascist. Then he added a speech bubble for the fascist. It said 'I already know that'. Laura, a friend of his, saw the cartoon and said, "Is there something you want to talk about?"


He drew a red X over the cartoon. She thought this was his way of holding up a thought bubble with the words 'yes, I want to talk about something, but I can't put it into words'.


She showed the drawing to her friend Diane, who worked in a gallery. Diane thought it was brilliant in the light of the artist's troubled mind. When she spoke to him about it he said, "I don't like fascists. I don't like teddy bears either. I was going to do one of a penguin electrocuting a teddy bear. I don't like penguins either."


He did some more cartoons and they appeared in an exhibition, along with a photo of him with a lemon in his mouth, just to put his drawings in context.


He became the latest sensation on the art scene, but Diane started to question his artistic intentions because of the dance he did every time he got paid. When he started singing as well, she said, "You're not really this 'troubled soul' they're making you out to be, are you?"


"Not as in... No."


"You just wanted to draw a teddy bear kicking a fascist."


"It was meant to be a statement against fascists, because someone called me a fascist. I'm not pro-teddy-bears. I should probably do one of an ostrich pecking a teddy bear to death just to show that I'm not pro-teddy-bears."


"Who called you a fascist?"


"Keith. He's a total bastard. He called me a fascist just because I said he's a tree hugger."


"And why did you feel a need to defend yourself by drawing a teddy bear kicking a fascist?"


"I don't know. Maybe I am troubled."


"You're not."


"No, I'm not. I didn't really think about it at all. I was just doodling while I was talking to someone on the phone."


Diane was prepared to overlook the fact that he wasn't really troubled, as long as people were willing to buy his art, and many people were willing to buy his art. The one thing they all had in common was that they could spend a fortune on art without having to mortgage any of their houses.


Neil was making a lot of money. Albert and George wondered if there was any way of cashing in on his success, and that's when they thought of Dempsey.


Dempsey once needed money and he tried to kidnap a country singer, but he kidnapped one of his neighbours by mistake. He held him in a caravan and sent a ransom note to the man's wife, but she wouldn't pay. The man himself was delighted with his week in the caravan, and he ended up paying Dempsey for the service. Many other men paid him to kidnap them so they could spend a week or two away from home.


Albert and George suggested to Neil that they could make a fortune if he was kidnapped. His rich fans would pay any ransom, no matter how big it is. Neil agreed to go along with this, so he went to the caravan and Dempsey sent a ransom note to Diane. He demanded a hundred-thousand euros.


Albert and George went to see Diane in the gallery on the following day, and they told her they were worried about Neil because they couldn't find him anywhere. She told them about the kidnapping, but she didn't sound too concerned about it. Albert asked her if she'd asked any of Neil's fans to help pay the ransom. She said, "They won't pay anything. They're delighted with this. Neil's work will be worth a fortune if he dies, especially if he dies violently. They're sitting on a goldmine."


"Weren't they already sitting on a goldmine?"


"You can't have too many goldmines."


Albert and George didn't like the way it was so easy to generate more goldmines if you already had one. It wasn't fair that those who were without a goldmine found it so difficult to acquire one.


They explained their difficulty to Neil, and they managed to get him to agree to a plan where they'd fake his death and then get him to produce more of his drawings, which they'd sell for a fortune.


But Neil's career as an artist came to an end before his fake death when people found out why he had the lemon in his mouth. A woman had told him she'd kick him in the balls if he put a lemon in his mouth. He thought he might enjoy it (partly because she was beautiful and partly because she made it sound like an offer rather than a threat), but it turned out to be as much fun as putting the lemon in his mouth.


People's perception of him completely changed. They made the same realisation that Diane made: that he wasn't really a troubled soul. He was just someone who'd drawn a teddy bear kicking a fascist.


The moose's head over the fireplace enjoyed the final of the snooker. At one stage it looked as if it was going to finish in the afternoon, and then a few hours later it looked as if it was going to go on until after three o' clock in the morning, but in the end it finished at one o' clock, after twelve hours of play. Snooker would be the perfect spectator sport for a moose's head who spends his days on the same spot over the fireplace. But he loves hurling too, another great sport played with sticks. It's one of the quickest of all sports. The general election has its moments of entertainment too, but it would be a much more enjoyable sport if it was played with sticks. Although that's the sort of sport Sinn Fein would excel at, so the sticks are probably better off decommissioned.

Thursday, May 03, 2007

The Eccentric


The temperatures are creeping up. The trees are putting on their summer clothes. One of the neighbours often adorns her garden with well-dressed people on summer evenings. The place would look empty without a man in a suit holding a champagne glass. The role of the man is often played by a cousin of hers called George. People call him 'Gentleman George' because he's always impeccably dressed. His uncle Alfred taught him that you could tell a lot about someone's character by looking at their socks. He also said that it was rude to look at other people's socks. Alfred died in mysterious circumstances as he was trying to break into a Georgian house through the attic. In later years, George saw a deeper meaning to his uncle's advice about the socks. Most people didn't think there was any meaning to it -- they just thought it was typical of his contradictory views and advice. He had thousands of aphorisms, and some were bound to contradict others. Some of George's cousins are sure they heard Alfred say 'Never break into a Georgian house through the attic'. But the two aphorisms about socks stuck in George's mind. The meaning he read into them was that people with a truly good character feel no need to have it constantly on display. He did his best to live up to this, and he wore trousers that were slightly too long. We have plenty of relatives who could adorn our garden in a similar way, but then they'd start talking about things they've stood in, and the effect would be ruined.


My cousin Hector's twins, Alice and Grace, were trying to teach their puppy how to nod his head. They had made a little hat for him especially for the lessons. Hector was getting bored after an hour of watching them try to get the hat on the puppy. So he was glad when his friend Steve called.


They went to see Sean. He used to collect stamps and cough. He considered both of these activities to be hobbies. He only took up stamp-collecting because it was much more practical than being a butterfly collector, and he had wanted to be a butterfly collector because it seemed like a refined hobby. He thought that a bit of self-improvement was needed after he cleaned the house one Spring. He saw himself at point A, an unrefined man who coughed and pointed, and he saw the ideal at point B, a refined man. Being a butterfly collector was the only attribute he could hang on B, and it was written on a mental piece of cardboard hanging from a rusty nail that he hammered into B. Apart from collecting butterflies and giving up pointing, he couldn't think of any other attributes he could hang from it. And how to get from A to B was a problem too, even if B was just a butterfly collector who didn't point. Being firmly fixed at A meant he'd make an awful mess if he started collecting butterflies, so he went for the stamps instead.


When Hector and Steve arrived at Sean's place, he was taking photos of things around his garden. This was another attribute he'd hung on B. If he was still at A he'd have a zoom lens and it'd be focussed on the windows of other houses. They asked him if he wanted to go for a game of snooker. There were many A-like qualities associated with snooker, especially when the game is played in the local club, with its 8:1 ratio of rats to tables (there were two tables), but the professional players dressed up like butlers, and a servant to a refined man was as close as Sean was going to get to B, so he said yes. Actually he said, "That would not be unagreeable with the standards I've climbed a stairs to attain and look down from a balcony on the gardener amongst the roses."


They took that as a 'yes'. He was doing his best to sound refined, but being stuck in the wasteland between A and B gave him the freedom to sound refined without actually making sense.


He spoke like this to the balls as he was playing snooker. They met a woman there who was interested in his behaviour. He told her about his journey to refinement at B. She said to him, "I think you've actually reached C, eccentricity. It's probably not in C. Eccentricity wouldn't be in an obvious place like that. It'd be in M, or somewhere funny, like J."


"Where are you?"


"I don't know."


She was lying on the other snooker table when she said that, so she was probably somewhere funny.


Sean liked the idea of being eccentric. It sounded much easier than being refined, and the easy option always appealed to him. Laziness was a point he'd reached years ago (there isn't a letter for laziness -- it's all in the journey rather than the destination, or the lack of a journey). When they finished their game of snooker he wanted to go straight to the pub to start being eccentric.


As they waited for their drinks at the bar, he said, "I've been pointing at blue things a lot recently."


"Sean is an eccentric now," Hector explained.


A man called Dylan was drinking a pint at the bar. He said to Sean, "I have a job for you."


If Sean had thought that his career as an eccentric would involve doing jobs, he'd have chosen to be refined instead.


Dylan told them about how his wife's mother bought an antique barometer in an auction in the town hall. His aunt, Cynthia, was trying to buy it too. She says she put in a bid but the auctioneer had deliberately ignored her, possibly because she had previously suggested he was of the bovine ilk. So she went to the stage and took the barometer, leaving the money she had bid. She ignored the objections of the auctioneer and of Dylan's mother-in-law. His wife had been putting pressure on him to retrieve it. Dylan wanted Sean to distract Cynthia while he took the barometer from her hall.


"How am I going to distract her?" Sean said.


"She's always had a thing for eccentrics. Just be yourself and you could keep her entertained for hours."


When Sean found himself face to face with Cynthia he thought he'd struggle to keep her entertained for a minute. He said, "I've been pointing at blue things a lot recently. And a few grey things. But never red things. There was one green thing. It smiled at me. And I've also been... looking at... raisons... Swordfish."


Cynthia went to the sideboard and picked up a porcelain cat. Then she went to the window, opened it and said, "If you don't start re-tracing your steps right now, I'm going to throw the cat at your head."


Dylan returned the barometer to the hall with the speed of a man who knew how good her aim was.


She said to Sean, "You're the worst person they ever got to distract me."


"Sorry."


"What was all that rubbish about the blue things and the swordfish?"


"It's... y' know... an eccentricity."


"You're an amateur."


"This is my first day in the job."


"You need a mentor. I can send you to a real eccentric. His name is Lawrence, and he lives about a mile away. Go to see him and you'll learn all you need to know about eccentricity."


Hector and Steve went with Sean to see Lawrence. He was smoking a pipe in his front garden when they arrived. He liked to watch the smoke rising to the sky. He thought there was a little bit of him escaping with the smoke, on a trip to the blue sky, or when he's inside he's spread around the house, escaping through the open window in the kitchen. He felt there was less and less of himself the more he smoked. He said he once spent a night smoking his pipe under the window of a woman he was in love with, letting the smoke curl and weave and rise in the air, expecting it to take on a ghostly form in front of her window, a form that would somehow express his feelings for her. He put all of his mental energy into this, and it worked too.


He had songs in his head that he rarely let out to play with the smoke, but sometimes in the pub when the time was right he'd sing and the whole place would go silent to listen to him. He had a beautiful deep voice. It wasn't the best sort of voice to recreate bird calls, but he often went to the woods or walked through the fields shortly after dawn and he talked to the birds, trying to replicate their calls, but he said things like 'You there' and 'I'm busy' in different accents.


Sean told him about his choice of career and the doubts he was having because he didn't think he was up to the job.


"Have you ever considered a career as a litterateur?" Lawrence said.


"Wouldn't you have to read books for that?"


"Not necessarily, no. As long as you can come up with a good reason for not reading them. I knew someone who was able to sustain a considerable literary reputation despite having never written anything, and I don't think he read anything either. Someone would ask him what he thought of Baudelaire and he'd say, 'Baudelaire? I'll read Baudelaire when I'm in my own grave and I feel an overwhelming need to turn over.'"


"Yeah, but who's going to ask me if I've read Baudelaire?"


"That's a fair point. This isn't the sort of place where literary reputations thrive. It's the perfect place for people who don't read or write, but it's not the place for litterateurs who don't read or write. You could always have a go at being a raconteur."


"That's not a bad idea. I think I'd be less out of my depth in that line of work."


"In every life there are countless minor incidents that you can spin out into a sprawling story. And then there are a few more significant incidents that don't need spinning. For instance, I once had what you might call an 'affair' with Cynthia. I first met her when she was standing on a table at four o' clock in the morning. I decided that an affair was the only possible outcome of such an encounter. She agreed with my assessment and we proceeded to let ourselves be carried away by the gale force winds of a typical affair. We spent two months in an isolated house in the country while the owner was being chased through South America by a Russian assassain. It was an idyllic time. Even the sound of gunfire and shattering glass didn't detract from the experience. We toured the country with a German folk band and she acted as their interpreter, using her limited knowledge of German, their facial expressions and facial hair to interpret what they said, a process that was strongly influenced by the world view that pervaded her mind at the time. Everything was coloured by a beautiful Autumn melancholy, and the sound of German voices was the perfect soundtrack. I took her to a party in a house with a huge hall and a grand oak staircase. There were countless tables there for her to stand on. It was here that she met the man who took her away from me. He claimed to be of Russian nobility. He swept her off her feet and provided a place for her to stand (right in front of him) that was better than the most ornate table. He was probably lying about being of Russian nobility. Something about his vowels made me think he came from Waterford. She knew he was lying too but she's the sort of person who'd be more attracted to a man claiming to be of Russian nobility than to the genuine article. I probably could have killed that attraction if I told her he was really from Waterford, but that's not the sort of thing I do. To be genuinely noble is to gracefully withdraw from a woman's life in such situations and not to think about her again until someone tells you she burnt down a house. It was always going to end like that. She knew that as well as I did."


Sean was full of enthusiasm for his new career. He went to see Cynthia with Hector and Steve, and he said to her, "I'm a raconteur now."


"Of course you are. Sure God help us. Will you tell me a story so?"


"I will. This is a story about a man who releases himself into the world through smoke and a woman who stands on tables..."


He repeated the story Lawrence had just told them, with a few alterations. He mentioned that the Russian nobleman was really from Waterford and he also mentioned an incident when the other man used his smoke to seduce a woman on a balcony, which started an affair with her, so he was glad when the other woman fell for the man from Waterford.


Cynthia stared at him in shock. When Sean heard Dylan driving away outside he said, "I just made most of that story up to distract you while they took the barometer. He didn't really have an affair with a woman on a balcony. I don't know about the Russian man really being from Waterford. I know some people from Waterford. It's a nice place. Maybe out in Russia the women there would be sick of the sight of Russian men, but then a fella from Waterford comes along and he seems impossibly exotic. They'd love the sound of his voice. I wouldn't mind being exotic, now that I've given up on being eccentric, but that would take more work than anything because I'd have to go to somewhere like Russia. Or some backward country. Then I could appear sophisticated as well."


Hector and Steve had already left the house. They had headed for the exit as soon as she went to the sideboard and picked up the porcelain cat. It wasn't the first time Sean had a cat thrown at his head. The last one ended up enjoying it. Sean didn't. But at least that cat was soft, although the methods it used to cling to his head proved more painful than the initial impact -- that's when the cat started to enjoy it.


Hector and Steve could hear Sean's reaction to the impact of the porcelain cat. They waited for him outside. When he came out he announced his retirement as a raconteur. He was thinking of becoming an idler instead.


They went back to Hector's house. The puppy had eaten the hat. Alice and Grace were trying to teach him how to shake his head, but to little effect.


The moose's head over the fireplace is enjoying the snooker on TV. He can't predict who's going to win this year. The referees would be the butlers, and butlers aren't allowed to be eccentric. They're the ones cleaning the balls with their white gloves at the request of the players. True eccentricity would be spending all day hitting balls around a table with a stick and only calling the butler to say, "Could you clean that ball for me, Jeeves."