Puckoon

Chapter One

Several and a half metric miles North East of Sligo, split by a cascading stream, her body on earth, her feet in water, dwells the microcephalic community of Puckoon. This June of a Morning, the whole village awoke to an unexpected burst of hot weather. Saffron coloured in the bleach early sky, the sun blistered down, cracking walls and curling the brims of the old men’s winter-damp hats; warm-bum biddies circulated air in their nethers, flapping their skirts and easing their drawers. Joyous voiced children fought for turns at the iron pump, their giggling white bodies splashing in the cool water from its maternal maw; bone-dreaming dogs steamed on the pavements and pussy cats lay, bellies upwards, drinking the gold effulgent warmth through their fur; leather-faced fishcatchers puzzled at the coarse Atlantic now flat and stunned by its own salt hot inertia. Shimmering black and still, it lay at the mercy of stone-throwing boys; the bowmen of the sands took respite from the endless cavalry charges of the sea. Nearby, Castle Hill groaned under the weight of its timeless ruins, while the distant mountains came and went in the mid-morning haze. Old Danny Conlon was already setting up the evening edition with ink-tinted fingers, ‘Hottest Day in Living Memory’, it took something like that to get the Pope off the front page; so lay Puckoon caught by summer in her winter thrawl, as she lay thus dreaming ’twixt land and sea, all was light, and like a golden finger the morning was writ upon the scene.

Gleaming off-white at the foot of Castle Hill were the puzzled crumbling faces of the old peat cutters’ cottages, their glass eyes now dimmed with cataracts of neglect and dirt. The peat had run out thirty years ago and the peat cutters had run out not long after; some went to America, the rest stayed behind and hit each other with loaded sticks but it never really caught on and they dispersed. The cottages had been condemned as unfit to live in except during thunderstorms and depressions. The year after ‘the troubles’, the Irish Free State Government had bequeathed the cottages to those who had helped rid ‘Houly Ireland’ of the English, the Tans and for that matter, anybody. One such beneficiary was the Dan Milligan, son of a famous paternity order. With a roof over his head he had ceased work, living off his pension and his wits, both hopelessly inadequate. This sun-barbed morning the Milligan lay full length on the grass, head against the wall, his eyes lost in the shadow of his cap. His thoughts, few that they were, lay silent in the privacy of his head. Across the road, through a gap in the hedge, Milligan observed a nobbly brown dog snoozed down on the grass verge, now it was one of those creatures that dozes with eyes half open, but, to Milligan, a Catholic, it would appear the animal was giving him a long sensual erotic stare: Milligan moved uneasily in his holy Catholic trousers. ‘I wonder if he’s trying to hypnotize me,’ he thought, avoiding the creature’s eyes. ‘You can’t be too careful dese days wid all dem patent medicines about!’

In an attempt to break the white man’s supremacy, Paul Robeson had once remarked ‘All handsome men are slightly sunburned’. Milligan was no exception, he had also said it. He sat in the half upright. ‘I tink,’ he reflected, ‘I tink I’ll bronze me limbs.’ He rolled his trousers kneewards revealing the like of two thin white hairy affairs of the leg variety. He eyed them with obvious dissatisfaction. After examining them he spoke out aloud. ‘Holy God! Wot are dese den? Eh?’ He looked around for an answer. ‘Wot are dey?’ he repeated angrily.

‘Legs.’

‘Legs? LEGS? Whose legs?’

‘Yours.’

‘Mine? And who are you?’

‘The Author.’

‘Author? Author? Did you write these legs?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I don’t like dem. I don’t like ’em at all at all. I could ha’ writted better legs meself. Did you write your legs?’

‘No.’

‘Ahhh. Sooo! You got some one else to write your legs, some one who’s a good leg writer and den you write dis pair of crappy old legs fer me, well mister, it’s not good enough.’

‘I’ll try and develop them with the plot.’

‘It’s a dia-bo-likal liberty lettin’ an untrained leg writer loose on an unsuspectin’ human bean like me.’

It was a Dublin accent charged with theatrical innuendo; like all Irish he could make Good Morning sound like a declaration of war – which it usually was.

‘Now, listen Milligan, I’ll grant you a word wish. If you ever find yourself in trouble just shout “Squrrox”.’

‘Squrrox?’

‘Squrrox.’

‘Alrite alrite, Squorrox, I’ll remember dat. Squorrox,’ he repeated, ‘Right, Squorrox.’

He lay back, the sun grew on. ‘I must admit you write nice weather, mister.’ He held one arm up to the sky and eyed the frayed cuffs of a once-upon-a-time suit.

‘It’s goin’ home at last, still a suit can’t last for ever.’ But on reflection he remembered it had.

The shoulders were padded like angled flight decks, the trouser seat hung a foot below the crutch and the twenty-eight inch bottoms flapped round his legs like curtains. He shook his head sadly.

‘Ahh, they don’t make suits like dis any more, I suppose the age of Beau Brummel is dead.’

He recalled the day he’d bought it. The bride-to-be waiting at the church while he, the groom, was still at home, standing naked in front of a mirror, a top hat angled jauntily on his head. ‘By Gor, she’s getting value for money,’ he said.

‘Hurry up, Dan lad,’ his father was saying, ‘you’re late, and you can’t get married in that nude.’

‘And why not?’ said Milligan, admiring his honeymoon appendages, ‘Adam and Eve done it and look at the fine honeymoon dey had.’

‘Thank God,’ said the old man, ‘dere were no press photographers at dat weddin’, or the Houly Bible would ha’ been banned in Ireland for ever, perhaps longer.’

His two brothers had arrived with the suit just in time to get him to the wedding. He never forgave them, standing at the altar with two dirty great cut price tickets hangin’ down his back. It was all so long ago. Suits were cheap in dem days, this one only cost a poun’ ten shillin’. Prices must have gone up since then. ‘Why, it must be nearly two thousand pounds for a suit dese days,’ he reflected.

Kersploosh! A bucket of evil-smelling slops hit him square in his sleeping face.

‘And there’s more where that came from, you lazy bugger.’

The owner of the voice stepped from the cottage into the white sunlight.

‘God forgive yez for dat,’ spluttered the now reeking Milligan. ‘Me hat! Look at me hat.’

With nostrils and legs akimbo, she towered over him like some human Yggdrasill, blotting out the sun.

‘Owwwwwwwwww!’ shrieked the Milligan as she kicked the sole of his boot.

‘If you don’t get some work soon I’ll –’ she made the sign of slow manual strangulation. Milligan noticed that of a sudden there were no birds in the sky and the brown dog had fled.

‘Owwww!’ She kicked his other boot.

‘Darling,’ he whined – ‘you know full well dere’s no work round dese parts,’ and he pointed as far as the fence.

‘Poor Father Rudden is still looking for someone to cut the church grass, I’m going in for five minutes, if you’re still here when I come out in half an hour –’.

‘Owwww!’ She kicked his boot again. Like an Amen the cottage door slammed after her. All the world went quiet.

‘Holy God! Who in the blazes was dat?’

‘That’s your darling little wife.’

‘Wife? Wife?’ Agony swept across his face. ‘Man alive, I thought it was a man. Good God, did you see dem arms? Jack Dempsey would be world champion again if he could get ’em. What kind of a writer are you? First me legs, and now this great hairy creature!’

‘Don’t worry, Milligan, I’ll see you come out of this alive.’

‘Alive?’ He sat bolt upright. ‘Holy Christ! Is dis a murder mystery? If so include me out, Mister. I’m a Catlick, a Holy Roman Catlick.’ He listened towards the cottage. ‘I better get after dat job.’ He stood up, yawned, stretched, farted and lay down again. ‘No need to rush at it,’ he yawned. Kersploosh!! A bucket of evil-smelling slops hit him square in his face.

‘I’m gettin’ out of dis chapter, it’s too bloody unlucky for me.’

Spike Milligan

PUCKOON

PENGUIN BOOKS

Contents

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

THE BEGINNING

Foreword

Chapter One