Women were sobbing,
that you are where you are,
till Art Mac Conchúir summons drink
with some extra for the poor.
before he enters that school
not for study or to play music
but to bear clay and stones.

 

Bates gently placed the fountain pen, a Parker, on the small wooden desk. He pushed his glasses back onto his wavy brown hair and rubbed his eyes before blinking a number of times. He was pleasantly weary having completed his translation of the epic Caoineadh Art Ó Laoghaire, the lament composed by Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill in 1773.

 

“Clay and stones,” he mumbled to himself as he got up and walked to the window. “Clay and fucking stones.” He peered through the smudged glass on York Street. A woman, scarved, walked towards Wexford Street. A man in a white Mackintosh headed towards Stephen's Green. Bates returned to the desk. He lit a cigarette, leaned back on the chair, closed his eyes and blew smoke at the ceiling's cracked plasterwork. And while he was doing this his lips were trembling as if he was in desperate prayer for some great favour. Then he straightened up, flicked the three-quarter smoked fag into the empty fireplace and picking up the fountain pen he wrote: “If you had left me in Cill na Martar and not paid heed to the memories of Concúr, Céadach and Laoiseach I might have been able to stay to soothe the dear faces, in my quiet dreams of the endless instants, those ever endless instants.” Bates read over the sentence a number of times as he put on the velvet black jacket which O'Donnell had given him and which was at least a size too small. He then hurried out the door, down the stone stairs, and under a villainous-looking sky headed smartly for the Peacock.

 

Gone now. Death having failed to solve anything because no one saw him come or no one saw him go but nevertheless time continued in its infinity, moving inexorably on, measured only by events. It is futile now to speculate about whether it was there before the Big Bang, lurking in the darkness long before our first steps on the African Plains or if it will be there when we and all memory of us has gone and the last star has died. Or for that matter if it speeds up or slows down, stretches out like elastic or warps in upon itself if it is constant throughout the universe as it records its little precarious and lucid moments, vague fantasies, empty promises, the anguish and the terror or simply as it is right now recording almost unnoticeable, something materialising in the void in a long white trench coat and black broad brimmer hat. Airt Uí Laoghaire almost undefinable in the gloom in his hunt for Cassie the barmaid who Bates had been gushing about. having heard it from O’Neill who in turn heard it in strict confidence from O’Donnell. La Belle Dame sans Merci, O’Donnell called her in the Peacock pub. The woman in the Elfin Grot, said O’Neill. Uí Laoghaire was hoping to meet her before some hairy-arsed bog trotter filled her head with fathomless lies so that he could bed and bang her silly. With time spinning on the mission brought him to the doors of the Peacock where those inside were celebrating the funeral of some fellow who had been interned in the Curragh in the forties. There was general agreement that the orations had been solid in exposing the sordid machinations of the cute-hooring Irish bourgeois fuckwits and one speaker insisted that despite reactionary rumours in certain circles, no guns would be allowed to go rusty. Some woman with an accipitrine eye was bemoaning to Bates about another retarded scribe who had introduced an unpalpable prolegomenon to her latest insurrectionary treatise. Bates sympathised and explained that some dickheads just don't get the literary dance of authentic scriptural sequence. "They are," he paused, "nothing but prickfucks."

 

 Uí Laoghaire entered the Peacock with some earth-shaking information. The lads were giddy because Marsh had told them how the previous week he was in the Blue Lion with Miss Reid when Tom Burke, the burly ODC from Oola walked in. He nodded to Marsh and approached two chaps who were sitting at the end of the counter. "That's my suit you're wearing," he said to one with a musket ball-like head.

 

The accused protested. He told Burke in a whinging voice how he had bought it from Baskin Guffin who had bought it from one of the clothes' stalls on Cumberland Street just around the corner a week earlier. Because he liked it so much he had been wearing it ever since, that he had sort of grown into it, he laughed and followed on with a desperate splurge of hocus- pocus accompanied by melodramatic arm gestures and strange lip manoeuvres. Burke continued to stare at him and then he put his finger against the talker's dry trembling lips demanding silence. "That's my suit and I'll prove it. There's a slight tear on the inside pocket." The suit was opened and sure enough. "Take it off."

 

"What?"

 

"Take it fucking off, trousers as well or the nurses in the Mater intensive care will be cutting you out of it."

 

"But its raining outside."

 

"Well, you can put your knickers over your head on the way home."

 

As Burke left with the suit under his arm he muttered to Marsh and Miss Reid, while jerking a thumb back at the semi-naked figure, “The sidewalk of life.”

 

"What's the source of this information?” asked Marsh suspiciously. He was wary of people slipping him notes and telling him to read and swallow as if he was a mobile waste paper basket and him completely in the dark as to where they had had their hands last. He was not over fastidious but he never forgot reading about how the Rickettsia microorganism attacked those who died in Ireland's Holocaust also incorrectly known as the Famine. He was sitting by the fire in Driminagh one night when winter loomed, his mother dozing off opposite in her tatty armchair and the crow staring up at his master's series of demented facial expressions probably wondering that if he had a bad pain in the hole he should see a doctor. But more likely, probably thinking in Crow thoughts that Marsh was going mad. Marsh read how when a louse sucks an infected person's blood, the rickettsiae in the blood enter the cells lining the louse's intestines: how this infection of rickettsiae was fatal to the louse but it did not die immediately: how it crawled from the infected person to an uninfected person sucking their blood and spreading the infection which initially caused headache back pain and fever: how this was followed by body chills a rash, aching pains and a congested face and then muscular twitching often confused with drunkenness and before death delirium and deep stupor the result of blood leakage from the small blood vessels that had fed oxygen to the brain.

 

"AArrhhh," he roared, jumping up and slamming the book down on the floor.

 

His mother let out a screech and almost tumbled from her armchair. The crow squawked and flapped three feet high in the air and moved close to the panting mother's leg.

 

"Whattsa matter Tommy?" asked the mother in a trembling voice.

 

"Not a fucken Englishman or a priest died in that. Not fucken one," he hissed.

 

"Its from the Dail porter.... the long fellow," Uí Laoghaire explained with a wink. "He had overheard some dipsomaniac Blueshirt talking to his poxed-up pratty pal from the justice department in the Dail bar about reducing the drink driving limit. Apparently, its to prepare us for shacking up with the Europeans so that eventually we can be used as cannon fodder against the Russians, the way the shit-stirring West Brit, Redmond, used the crowd in the First War who had funked the GPO."

 

"So we fuck out one set of masters for another well I know the side I'll be on," said Marsh.

 

"Abominable," muttered Bates through gritted teeth.

 

"Reducing it to what?" inquired Casey.

 

Uí Laoghaire took a gulp from his pint. " I forget the fucking numbers, you know the blood millefuckinggrams or whatever but It'll mean that the average punter will be over the drink driving limit after four pints."

 

There was a general intake of breath. Bates swallowed hard. O'Donnell shook his head in disbelief as Ruction's face became like a grizzly death mask. Casey headed for a piss. Clarke, from behind the counter, adopted a mystified expression as to the sudden absolute silence which like a Beckett play had the characteristics of not quite nothing but maybe something like little or nothing that could become a problem. Maybe something infanti simile which could become a massive pain in the arse. What rascality or scoundrelism is behind that spacelessness of sound he thought. Marsh disturbed the foreboding silence with a loud "FUCK!"

 

"Sure that would blow a hole in the constitution which is dedicated to the Almighty God," surmised Redican.

 

A furious discussion, full of distress and anger, expletive-ridden and interspersed with bouts of hysterical laughter followed from the gregarious group.

 

"It could be worse than that," added Uí Laoghaire.

 

"Only the end of the world could be worse than that,” said Casey who told O'Donnell that there was a smell of semen in the jacks.

 

"Smoking," explained Uí Laoghaire. "There's also talk of the barmen's union and fucky the ninth, elephant arse, in Leinster House doing a deal to ban the fags inside...."

 

"Ah here," said Byrne of the Knock is a load of Cock Brigade, "sure that would make the pubs as scarce as the comely maidens dancing at the crossroads of the back of beyonds."

 

"Well yis know me," cut in Ructions, "I'm as tight as a bull's arse going up a hill when it comes to unions but that barmen crowd I mean they hate hanging around the counter and watching us drinking and breaking our bollix laughing about absolutely sweet fuck all !"

 

"Speak for yourself Noel, but sure some people think I'm the walking and fucking roaring impersonation of big Jim himself, but I must say I've got plenty of unwarranted stick from barmen over the years.....fuckers giving me sly looks as if the tremor in me hand is not about hearing at the counter mind you, the sudden and unexplained increase of another sixpence on the price of the quality.

 

"Don't be fucken talking. Give anyone the bleeden shakes and fucken inflating inflation all over the kip."

 

"Don't shoot off in tangents," advised Byrne. "I mean if they want a smoking section well let the non-smokers go outside into the fresh air...."

 

"That's the solution," agreed Bates "let the fuckers catch pneumonia because not including yourself Noel, I find most non-smokers a pain in the top of the bottom of me hole."

 

"And a non-smoking barman the lowest," announced Ructions, "one of them said to me once, you've had enough for today son, go on home and buy your wife some groceries...."

 

"What a fucking liberty, yer wife! Sure how did he know whether you had a wife or whether you were playing offside!" asked O'Donnell.

 

"He knew by his sad mournful face," said Marsh. "Some syphilitic donkey-shagger once told me that I couldn't use the toilets without calling a drink. It was during the campaign to free Frank Keane and an incendiary was after going off in me fucken trouser pocket. I had to pull the fucken cistern down on top of meself to save me leg. Yer jacks don't work I shouted as I ran back out the fucken door."

 

Timmons, mature and thoughtful arrived and heard the shocking news. He ran his fingers through his straight grey hair and groaned.

 

"It wouldn't pass a democratic vote," suggested Ructions.

 

Bates gave a laugh as he polished his spectacles. "Democracy! That's a bleeden three-card trick. An illusion of choice. Participating in voting every so many years would be fine if the population was properly educated and informed," he lowered his voice, "but look at Hookie and the gang down there," he scrunched up his face, "for fuck sake. Remember the system was invented by a very intelligent bourgeoisie."

 

"If you use the word socialism they'll ask you if you believe in God!" Redican scoffed, "or they'll tell you that old Nick is under Tommy's trilby."

 

"Only brains," asserted Marsh giving the trilby a tap with his knuckle.

 

"Exactly," agreed Bates. "They're fucking brainwashed by years of indoctrination by the presstitute to doff their caps and tug the forelock to mindless consumerism telling them that they need some piece of useless junk that they didn't know existed or didn't want. Its all over the goggle box, soaps, sitcoms, reality shows with celebrities talking shite and a large section of the population ooing and aawing and swallowing the idiotic tittle-tattle as some kind of profound intelligence...and shouting 'Stop the lights'. Its only if people are properly educated about what a proper and civilized society should be that the vote is worth anything. Until then democracy is nothing but a clever tool used by the ruling class to fool the masses into believing that they have power when superciliousness is Lord of all."

 

"Bang on Ernie and the powers that be continue to endlessly spew out anti-socialist propaganda and fucking crap about the wonders of the market and competition," Uí Laoghaire cut in.

 

"Its only competition amongst the poor where the rich tell one section of the poor that the other section is the cause of their poverty. The survival of the fittest is the mantra for their ideal society, remember capitalism can be changed but it can't be civilized," said Casey.

 

"You know I was reading there recently or was it someone in McDaids that was talking but it was about anthropological evolutionary biology or some bolloxology. I had a few on me at the time but the jist of it was," announced Ructions as he lifted the pint glass to his lips while Marsh gave him a puzzled stare.

 

"That was some jist alright!" remarked O'Donnell.

 

Ructions put the glass down and gave his beard a swipe of the back of his hand. "I remember now it was Joey Betts, the summons server and he was telling Tony Cronin that this survival of the fittest lark by Darwin was all wrong and misinterpreted. That ruthless competition and the desire to want to be the alpha male didn't automatically mean success. It could be very fucking stressful with people always looking over their shoulders in case they'd get a spear up their arse from the little fucker who was hiding around the corner...."

 

"Sometimes like that in here," observed Byrne.

 

"The point was that cut-throat competition was not necessary to have a working society. That was simply the law of the fucking jungle and a hell for a great number of people. A civilized society is achieved through cooperation and inclusiveness and the ability to work together is what Betts was getting at," explained Ructions "these fuckers held that an unregulated market would inevitably reach equilibrium between buyers and sellers, supply and demand and workers, as a result, would be paid the precise value of their labour."

 

"Bollocks!" added Casey, "We all know from experience that an unregulated market does not regulate itself in that way. What becomes inevitable is that some successful entrepreneurs make it to the top of the greasy pole, they buy up the competitors and become monopolies and decide working conditions and pay etc. It’s a race to the bottom for the workers against multi-millionaires who now control the unregulated society,"

 

"Bang on," agreed Redican, "and a system with multi-millionaires is a diseased system.

 

".....So I says to crack face Kelly,  look the theory of Anaxagoras, like that of Empedocles before him is just a fucking fresh attempt at digesting the Parmenidean criticism," Davis laughed as he walked in the door with Edwards. The smirks soon vanished from their faces when Marsh informed them of Uí Laoghaire's awful news.

 

"Youse know what this is about? asked Edwards quickly grasping the tiger by the tail and addressing the company, " its about the rich wanting us to cut back on the gargle so that we can work harder and longer for the fuckers..."

 

"That's why they invented pub hours," added Davis.

 

"That's right," added O'Donnell, "and if we spend less on drink they will expect us to take a fucking wage's cut because the logic would be that we need less to live on. For those employed that is."

 

"The rural pubs would need to be warned, I mean this sort of carry-on will tear the heart out of the country. Four fucken pints and you can't drive sure that's a bleeden police state," declared Marsh, his face pale and morose. "I mean this is trying to implant some fucken alien culture on us. Sure the rural pubs are the gatekeepers of our sanity as sure as the confession box is for the holy oulwans and the relaxed atmosphere of the city pubs in daytime prevents the culchies from being driven insane by the rollicking rattle of the traffic not to mention getting over the confusion of the traffic light colours and some mistaking them for Christmas lights. If these were to become an endangered species what legacy would we have to pass on to future generations?"

 

"I agree Tommy," said Bates. "This sort of nonsense would fuck up the contentment and peace of mind of rural drinkers in particular. Sure imagine you're at the counter having had four pints...."

 

"Four well-deserved pints," corrected Byrne.

 

"Yes, well said Tommy and when you call another the publican gives you a wink and says in a depraved kind of whisper be careful cause if you're stopped on the way home you'll be done for drunk driving, Jeesus! and you never going more than 20mph on the way home anyway! What an appalling thought to put into someone's head in the dead of night! An idea contrary to everything the men of 1916 died for," he stood up on the table with the help of Ructions and O'Donnell, "This is a republic," he shouted, "A republic drenched in the blood of the dead generations and it was sullied over the years by the Dail creeps who have become nothing better than Redmondite whipping boys for big business. Coat trailing the section who abandoned the War of Independence, they joined the British side, raised a mercenary army which was armed by the British to fight the volunteer army so that as Jack Lane enunciated the so-called civil war was a continuation of the War of Independence which was fought until the volunteer army was overwhelmed by the British armed Irish mercenary army and now not fucking satisfied with that they want to alter the DNA of the Irish People to turn us into little Britishers..."

 

"Swallying pints of bitter, I had a moxy load of pints of that brew in the Grapes in Liverpool once and I could still find me way back to Huskisson Street," O'Donnell complained.

 

"Maiden's piss," shouted Bates as he thrust his fist which held his three-quarter full pint glass towards the sand-stained ceiling with a roar. Half of the remainder of the Guinness defied gravity as it headed ceiling bound and then falling back it splashed over Ruction's hairy head. "They want our race," he continued, ignoring Ruction's beer shampoo, " the race of Breen and Tracey to attain undefined dimensions, to fucking tail off into interminability and disappear up the arsehole of banality. They want the national conversation to be centred on who has the fanciest door knocker while at the same time they'd tumble a row of Georgian houses for the whiff of a property developer's brown envelope."

 

The pub was filled with cheers. "Fair play to yeh Ernie yeh bollix," and such.

 

"What's it like in the country at the moment?" Redican asked O'Donnell when the clamour had eased.

 

"Its easy going. Very easygoing," O'Donnell assured the company. "I mean if one was to come out of a nice homely pub a little under the weather, sure what harm would you be doing to anyone and you minding your own business and not fucking driving any faster to your little housheen than a trotting pony! Now if you had the unlikely misfortune to be hailed down by some deranged ex-altar boy drop-out from the Christian Brothers who had metamorphosed into a uniformed Archbold from the bowels of Templemore...."

 

"There's always fucking one," groaned wizen face Byrne.

 

"Well Sherlock fucking Holmes would have to get a blood sample," continued O'Donnell, "and to get a blood sample he would have to find a doctor. A doctor who is in another pub gee-eyed and would need to be gently encouraged out to his car where the keys would have to be placed in the ignition and the car in full revs jerking along in first gear would have to be escorted, mostly on the American side of the road, to the Garda Station, where the good doctor would have to be gently spoken to, plámáused and cajoled and steadied as his legs are set in motion in the right direction and aided into the cop shop with the delicateness that would normally be reserved for a red hated Cardinal entering a French brothel while he is singing an unknown version of  'The Boys of Barr Na Sráide'."

 

"A true rebel," shouted Casey.

 

"That's right," agreed O'Donnell, "his caveat to his Hippocratic oath was 'save all except Brits!"

 

"Tell them about Anaximander?" urged Redican.

 

O'Donnell chuckled. "Oh, yeah Anaximander. Of course, that wasn't his proper name but he acquired it because like the original Anaxi, he held that having studied calves and sheep that as the human young need a long period of protection man as he is now could not have survived and so he must have evolved from an animal which can fend for itself more quickly."

 

"So we're descended from Clare calves," Ruction quipped.

 

"There was this oul sarge in Kilrush who had a civilized understanding of law administration," continued O'Donnell. "This day he spotted Anaximander in his normal pissed out of his tree state staggering up the Back Road in Kilrush to where he had his battered Morris Minor parked. Muldoon, the sergeant, watched as Anaximander eased himself into the fucking driver's seat. He ran up to the car and knocked on the window. Anaximander looked out and gave him a friendly wave."

 

"Roll down that fucking window."

 

Anaximander obliged.

 

"Where d'yuh think yer off to?"

 

"To the Halfway, sarge, sure I always finish up there. D'yeh want a lift?"

 

"You're going nowhere in that state, hand me...."

 

"And what state is that sarge?"

 

"Don't play the philosopher with me, Anaximander. Pass me out those keys and be off walking with you to Mary in the Halfway and practise your philosophical conundrums with her."

 

"Tom Crowley was driving out of Kilrush in his Skoda when he saw Anaximander tottering up the hill on the Kilkee Road. "Be the lepping Lamb of Jesus," Crowley muttered to himself as he drew along the blowing, red-faced figure, "Has your car broken down?"

 

Anaximander stopped, gave a bit of a wobble, squinted at Crowley and hiccupped. "The shivering bollocks Muldoon," he spat out, "Muldoon the fucker took me keys."

 

Crowley, a stocky farmer who it was said had a sharp and inquiring mind gulped. "Under what act did the sycophantic cock sucker seize your keys?"

 

A fit of laughter rattled through the scarecrow-like figure. "Probably the law of seeing two white lines on the road where there’s fuck all," he spluttered.

 

"Sure that’s a metaphysical skull buggery. Its no laughing matter, did he caution you?"

 

"He told me to hand over the keys or face a few strokes of Schrodinger's Cat."

 

Crowley shook his head. "This is outrageous. He assaulted you with incendiary bombast the retarded badger's diddy. Completely against the spirit of private property that is sanctified in the Constitution. Article 41.5 or something. He should have cautioned you, put you under arrest and got a blood sample from Dr Collins who you know would not be dug out of Fennels until the small hours."

 

"For fuck sake Tom, I don't want to be arrested, sure I did fuck all wrong," Anaximander protested.

 

"That's a pertinent point, Anaximander. You are minding your own business and this fucking downtrodden repulsive, threatens you and seizes your car keys and you floundering in the shite of your own legal ignorance and here's this bunch of scoundrels who robbed a bank in Dublin and one of them in a wig is driving up and down the Naas dual carriageway for the last week according to the arsewipes and nobody lays a hand on the beggar and...."

 

"They'd be afraid Tom, I told Muldoon I'd be better off in Russia."

 

Crowley shook his head, "Don't know about that now! Think of your half acre. Are yuh going to the Halfway?"

 

"Yeh."

 

"Hop in so."

 

Anaximander manoeuvred himself into the Skoda. Crowley stared straight ahead. He was thinking. "Where's your car?" he asked suddenly.

 

"On Back Road."

 

"I have a rope in the boot. Let's tow it back and hide it near the Halfway. You report it stolen tomorrow, that'll put seven different kinds of shite up Muldoon."

 

Anaximander laughed as Crowley manoeuvred the car around on the hill. In no time they were back on the road heading towards Kilkee. At the Carnacalla bend, the sergeant had parked the squad car and was in conversation with a local man. There had been a report that a flasher in the vicinity had exposed himself to a number of women, some elderly, on a bus on their way to Ennis. Crowley cursed when he saw the sergeant. There was nothing for it now but to keep on driving.

 

"Did you see that?" the sergeant shouted to the local who was flattening a bunch of nettles with the boss of his shovel.

 

"What?"

 

"Anaximander the fucker, driving like Stirling Moss and only half an hour ago I confiscated his car keys. Bejaysus!" he grunted as he flung his garda cap in the car window before jumping into the garda car.

 

"Stop the fucking lights!" exclaimed the local farmer.

 

"Fuck it," shouted Crowley as in his driver's mirror he saw the squad car lurch from the grass margin onto the road. He put the boot down. The three cars bombed along the road towards Moyasta village a mile or so down the road. In the car mirror, it seemed to Crowley that Anaximander was shouting. He was not known for fast driving. A customer leaving Taylor's pub jumped back in as the cars tore through Moyasta to the sharp bend that followed the Kilkee Road. Crowley kept straight and headed up the narrow bog road. Anaximander held to the Kilkee direction which would take him to the Halfway as the tow rope snapped. Anaximander's car, despite him pressing the accelerator to the floor, soon came to a halt. The sergeant, a religious man, put the whole unexplainable business down to some mysterious act of the Almighty.

 

There was general laughter. "Yer making it up yeh bollocks."

 

"Totally true. That's the country for youse. A quare place."

 

"Nearly as good as Benson in Club Ui Chadhain the night he got the stroke," said Byrne.

 

"A stroke?"

 

"Yeah. A medical stroke. Tommie the barman called the ambulance. It was there in no time from the Mater just around the corner. The ambulance driver was surprised that he knew the barman. Didn't know he worked there. The paramedic checked out Benson who was sitting at the counter having started his seventh pint. He usually had about ten. Said he had a stroke and he'd have to be got to the Mater without delay. Yis can fuck off, Benson slurred, I'll go when I finish me pint. The driver, a Clareman, said OK and called two pints off Tommie.  One for himself and the other for the paramedic."

 

"That man knew his medicine, did Benson survive?" asked Casey.

 

"He lived at least another ten years."

 

"We're getting away from the point," said Marsh.

 

"We are," agreed Uí Laoghaire, "and its not just the drink."

 

"Its the principle," said Bates as Clarke planked a half dozen pints plus on the table.

 

"I think Tommy here should do a run around the rural pubs and let them know what's coming down the line from the Euro cock suckers in the Dail," suggested Ructions.

 

"Actually I'm planning on that," said Marsh " because I have a bit of business where the Cuckoo builds its nest."

 

Uí Laoghaire was a member of the Dublin Brigade when it was discovered that there was an informer, just one, in its ranks. One evening some volunteers took the informer, Morris, up to the Dublin Mountains. They stopped on the Featherbeds, Beckett country, under a low cloud. The day was done but having not yet decided to move into night it remained hanging on it seemed against the certainty of the still distant nightfall. It may have dawned on Morris that he was not there to appreciate the haunting connections which Beckett had with the area or to ponder on the inescapable absurdity of the human condition. Of course, he may have been unaware of the Beckett connection. Unaware of the child holding the hand of the old man in the long coat, plodding on never to recede, never to recede but infinitely receding in a kind of no-man's-land of a non-dimensional place, the pair unaware that they are lost between their existence in time and their lives in existence, knowing that their lives are over but still going on almost endlessly, wearisome and ever so slowly to a possible conclusion. However, it's more than likely that with Morris it was simply the terror of a sudden, impending death eating into the turmoil of his mind in such a beautiful but lonely place that energised him. Suddenly he burst from the car like a bat out of hell. Despite being wounded in the leg he skimmed over the heather and sedge and vanished into the mists of Kippure.

 

Sometime later Uí Laoghaire was strolling down Abbey Street. While he was vigorously sucking a zube to help him ease up on the fags his eyes were drawn to a long-legged woman in a mini skirt on the far side of the road. Very, very flighty, he thought. Could she be Cassie? Before he could dwell on the matter further his attention was distracted by a man who passed the woman going in the opposite direction. He stopped and stared. Lo and behold it was Morris, the escaped informer breezing towards O'Connell Street as bold as brass. Uí Laoghaire almost swallowed the zube as he watched the traitor turn and enter Wynn's Hotel. Wynn's Hotel where in 1913 in the Saints and Scholars lounge- the first meeting to establish 'The Irish Volunteer Force,' chaired by Eoin Mac Neil and attended by Pardraig Pearse, Eamon Ceannt, Sean McDermott and The O'Rahilly was held.

 

Also on Thursday 2nd April 1914 the inaugural meeting of Cumann na mBan was held in Wynns. Agnes O'Farrelly who presided was elected President. A Constitution was adopted which stated Cumann na mBan aimed 1.To advance the cause of Irish Liberty. 2.To organise Irishwomen in the furtherance of this object.  3.To assist in arming and equipping a body of Irishmen for the defence of Ireland.

 

A wave of outrage swept over Uí Laoghaire who was a man of impeccable integrity and intense patriotism. After all his name meant a descendent of the keeper of the calves and he was, in turn, a descendent of Lugaid Mac Con High King of Ireland in the late 2nd century who belonged to the Dairine who ruled Munster in those days. And from this esteemed lineage arrived King Laoghaire Mac Neill in the 5th century who is said to be a son of Niall of the Nine Hostages. The Dairine were later known as the Cora Loigade and their power declined until they lost their land as a result of both the Nine Year War (1594-1603) against the English and later the Cromwell confiscations.

 

In this eminent and patriotic gene pool of the Uí Laoghaire going back 1,500 years, there was not a single proven case of a traitor to the Cause. Uí Laoghaire, multi-talented, was also a historian and amateur archivist and was fully aware of this exalted history. Seeing this informer made the hairs bristle on the back of his neck. The damage that informers, paid or otherwise could do to a revolutionary struggle was not lost on him. He was aware that during the years leading to the Act of Union Dublin was riddled with spies and informers in the pay of Dublin Castle. There was a slush fund of millions in today's terms available to bribe the Anglo-Irish members of the Irish Parliament to vote for union which was described by Jonah Barrington an Irish Protestant as one of the most flagrant acts of public corruption on the records of history. It was said that the country was divested of political power by deceit, fraud and corruption. In Airt's penetrating mind and piercing sight, there were only two ways of dealing with these despicable specimens of humanity. One was to shoot them and send them on their way to the heart stone of Hell if they believed in it, and the other was to slip a novichok into their pint.

 

Uí Laoghaire turned sharply on his heel towards Amien Street. Almost without thinking his ingenious initiative took control of his brain. It decided that there was not the time to leg it to Gardiner Place to inform Goulding or Garland or for that matter to make it to Malone, the OC's house. Phone calls were naturally out of the question with Spratt or Pah Way earwiggin on the Castle receivers. The others! All off duty. Marsh, Walsh, Redican, Casey, O'Donnell, Dillon, Smith, Keane, Sutcliffe, Timmons, Ructions, Bates and more such and others more again all suspended, expelled or facing court-martials, some for disobeying Army orders by drinking and carousing in the Peacock. He hurried to the home of Tony Murray, the militant republican and poteen maker, on the North Strand where he knew there was a Thompson stashed in the outside toilet.

 

After borrowing the gun and checking the magazine for ammo he put it under his long white trench coat. Then he pulled down over his deep brown eyes his broad-rimmed, black hat and cutting a fine figure he strode purposely towards Abbey Street. He entered the hotel and sure enough, on making his way into the foyer he could see the informer through the glass doors. He was sitting at the main bar counter with a half-empty pint of Guinness in front of him and looking as if he didn't have a care in the world. And why would he when in those halcyon days nobody gave a fiddler's elbow about the IRA? In fact, the Legion of Mary instilled more fear in people than a man in a trench coat and a broad black brimmer. Standing behind the counter he noticed the barmaid stare at him with dark piercing eyes. He momentarily thought ‘I would, so I would.’  She moved away from where the informer was sitting and silently mouthed a word. Uí Laoghaire studied the lips. Her lips moved again. The word seemed to be 'Revenge.'

 

A rosy complexion hotel porter was eyeing a tall woman standing at the far end of the bar counter. He had seen her earlier emerge from the female toilet area and nod to him. There was something puzzling about her that he could not put his finger on. A tenuous suspicion of what!  The woman, in fact, was a pickpocket who was a man disguised as a woman. Then he saw her again and he took a deep breath for it suddenly struck the conscientious porter that the person was a man dressed in woman's clothes or drag or transvestism or something because he did not know what the proper word for this behaviour was.

 

The tall well-built porter did not consider himself a Holy Mary or a fuddy-duddy. Far from it. Indeed he could laugh at a risqué joke as heartily as the next fellow but this was stretching things. After all, he had served the hotel dutifully for over twenty years and he was not about to have the bar environment, his bar environment, sullied with some kind of carry-on that he was not comfortable with for at the end of the day he considered himself a Catholic first and a porter second. His plan was to move quickly, grip the interloping offender firmly by the earlobe and without fuss lead him to the street outside where a good puck between the shoulder blades would send him on his way.

 

The outraged porter took a single step towards his prey when out of the corner of his eye he spotted a tall fellow who had just entered. It was Uí Laoghaire who had pushed in the double doors and was trying to whip out the Thompson submachine gun from underneath the Mackintosh. Because of the track, the porter had set his mind on, he presumed, to his horror, that this fiddling figure was about to expose himself to the respectable and eminent bar clientele. He grabbed a stool and raised it above his head as Uí Laoghaire managed to extricate the Thompson. No sooner had Uí Laoghaire levelled the Thompson to sweep across the back of the unsuspecting traitor when the quick-thinking porter's stool flew through the smoky air.

 

Because Uí Laoghaire had the broad black brimmer pulled low on his forehead the hurtling stool was not in his line of vision. He was about to shout, in his deepest Jim Larkin voice “One out, all out” when the stool landed. It hit Uí Laoghaire on the shoulder knocking him sideways. The Thompson gave an involuntary burst and the bullets embedded themselves harmlessly in the immaculate stucco plaster ceiling.

 

"What the fuck am I going to tell Murray about the Thompson," Uí Laoghaire gasped to himself as he hurried past Liberty Hall having discarded the Mackintosh and hat in the Liffey. "I hope his fucking fingerprints weren't on it."

 

Time following on as time must it crawls uneventfully past an old man who is sitting in the bar side corner next to the window of Mullet’s pub on Amiens Street. He is aware but uninterested in the increased chatter volume as the pub welcomes mourners of sorts from what adventurist historians would record as the funeral of the dear departed Dublin Uí Laoghaire. The Uí Laoghaire mourners or some of those who were still in the land of the living and were aware of the fact arrived in dribs and drabs as befitting the sombre occasion. A few, like Greenslade and Long, who were not public house aficionados, having long ago abandoned the expensive hobby, stood looking around with lost expressions as if they had expected to find themselves in Heaven but through some unexplainable divine quirk had instead arrived in Limbo. A number looked for tea to the barman's astonishment.

 

"Five teas!!! I only have one cup which has a tendentious crack and anyway I don't know how to make tea. My family were Fenians and registered in Kilmainham jail, not Indians." He did relent however and made a cup for Peggy Moore or Miss Fitt as Bates called her, the dark Miss Fitt.

 

The walls of the sparse kitchen-like pub were adorned with republican iconography. Portraits of the hunger strikers, Bobby Sands prominent. Dan Breen, and Sean Tracey among the signatories of the Proclamation and the matchstick Celtic crosses made in prison. Greenslade looked at a photograph of Con Colbert taken in Pearse's St Enda's school. Poor fucker! He married into the Clare O’Donnells.”

 

"He's in a kilt," observed Redican.

 

"Musta been where Simon's cross-dressing began," surmised Joe Edwards.

 

O'Donnell smiled as he ordered two pints from the barman.

 

"Leave me on me own," Redican ordered.

 

"You can bet on it," said O'Donnell.

 

"What's this about cross-dressing?"  Davis asked.

 

"He went to England dressed as a woman after the Fallon carry-on," explained Des Keane. "Gender-bending I think they call it nowadays."

 

"A very good-looking woman," corrected O'Donnell as he passed a pint to his brother Frank.

 

"I saw him before he left, he was a real ride," enthused Miss Reid, her Nefertiti eyes still suggesting traces of an exotic feline predator.

 

"Yeah, I went with Ernie here."

 

"Was he dressed as a woman too," asked Marie Mac Mahon amid the general laughter?”

 

"No. Ernie was the escort."

 

"Did he try to drop the hand?" continued Mac Mahon.

 

"His behaviour, like any good Tipperary Catholic boy, was impeccable."

 

"A same-sex marriage with two different sexes," confirmed Long.

 

"And the rainbow crowd thought they were ahead of the times!!" mocked Greenslade.

 

O'Donnell explained how they were driven to the Belfast /Liverpool ferry by a Derry chap. As they approached the gangplank the suitcase O'Donnell was carrying opened almost at the feet of a British soldier who was standing at the foot of the gangplank.  A special branch man stood nearby. Nobody moved.

 

"But under us all moved, and moved us......"  said Long in a gentle voice.

 

"Ernie the fucker stood there and I couldn't bend over...."

 

"They'd see yer jocks," suggested Keane.

 

"I don't know what they'd see, I wasn't wearing any...I'm joking, I couldn't bend over because I was afraid the wig would fucking fall off and I couldn't say to Ernie to pick up the stuff because I had never practised speaking in a woman's voice."

 

"I couldn’t bend down because I didn’t know what else was going to fall out of the case and I was petrified with fear,” explained Bates.

 

"The soldier bent down as I tried to give a sheepish smile to the branch man. Only then did bollicky involve himself."

 

“I suddenly realised that I was a good husband.

 

"Collaborating or were you practising going on the game," wondered Redican.

 

"I called him everything on the boat and then a waiter or something knocked on the cabin door and addressed me about if we wanted tea or coffee. I stared at the fellow waiting for Ernie to answer and he did his going dumb trick again before finally copping on. That was another bollocking from me before we had even cleared the quays."

 

"And be Jaysus in the Butterly in Trinity you couldn't shut him up telling us about the bourgeoisie treading on eggshells," said Davis.

 

An elderly man quite stooped, made a cautious entrance.

 

"Bennie," Davis snapped a greeting to the pale-faced, furtive-looking figure in a black overcoat.

 

The man acknowledged with a nod and without a word he gingerly made his way to the far end of the bar.

 

"You'd never think to look at him now but that man in addition to demonstrating his high level of intellectual acumen he also had an uncanny ability to adjudicate on very complex and high-profile cases which necessitated a fucking thorough and analytical understanding of the interaction between the opulence of the legislative executive and the squalor of the common man on the street," explained Davis.

 

The others were laughing.

 

"I'm telling yis, in his day that man would knock the tapsy off McBride or any fucking senior council. Sure wasn't it him who sorted out the Whelan case even though Whelan was banged to fucking rights."

 

"So what judicial conundrum did he unravel to do that?" asked Miss Reid.

 

"He discovered where the foreman of the jury lived."

 

A woman in skin-tight slacks went past. "Did yeh see that, le quem de la quem," groaned Greenslade.

 

"Ritchie, the hard," O'Donnell greeted another oldie who was weighed down with a briefcase.

 

"Not the hard anymore," the former prison escaper replied.

 

"Go way outa dat, you look fine."

 

"You should know that you can't go on looks. Everything in me clapped out body is arse about face. I have things going on in me insides that they haven't invented names for yet. Terrible fucking things. I'm living on time snatched from death but I'll die on me feet 'cause the hospitals are full of superbugs since they gave the nuns, the Daughters of Wisdom, the boot but other than that I am fine."

 

"I'm sorry to hear that?"

 

"No, you’re not. You don't give a fiddler's fuck."

 

"Well, actually I sort of do and I sort of don't."

 

"See that oulfella who just hobbled in?" asked Edwards about a man with a scabrous appearance.

 

"Fuck. He looks in a bad way."

 

"Yeah. Jimmy Grant. Rheumatoid fucking arthritis to start with. Says he got it from all that lying on the damp grass on the border."

 

There was a guffaw of laughter.

 

"Musta bin riding young wans when he was lying in the whenever 'cause he sure wasn't bushwhacking British soldiers," concluded Long.

 

"Remember Simon when you were taking the car with the couple?" asked Edwards.

 

"Good Lord! Me?"

 

"Can I inquire?" asked  Briege O'Doherty, the ever-curious academic with the pharaonic cheekbones. She had arrived with a small group.

 

"Himself and Ernie were taking a car off Pearse Street one night. Ernie stood watching the street while O'Donnell slipped into the driver's seat," continued Edwards. "he was fiddling with the wiring when Ernie tapped on the window and said 'Out!' They walked smartly down the Street and he asked Ernie what the fuck was going on. There was a couple riding on the back seat, Ernie said, who obviously became paralysed with fear when O'Donnell sat in."

 

“Don’t remember that at all,” said O’Donnell. “Imagine a couple I didn’t know riding in the back seat of my car!!!”

 

"Imagine seeing him in the dark," surmised the exuberant O'Doherty.

 

"I don't want to hear any more," said Moore as she nursed the cracked tea cup while Hookie Russell's wife gave out a cackle like a mad cock on heat.

 

"Bates and O'Donnell, more terrifying to couples riding on car back seats than the Legion of Mary, Frank Duff eat yer miserable heart out," Long declared as somebody was bawling out the 'The Broad Black Balaclava of the IRA.'

 

"Sounds like that love song 'you be my cough and I'll be your phlegm,'" remarked Collins.

 

A thin-faced man sporting a carefree wisp of silver hair nudged roughly past in the growing hubbub: "Sorry, sorry pal, poxy prostate, an not a poxy public jacks anywhere, the poxy useless bunch of pox bottles up in that poxy Dail."

 

"That man has a voracious vocabulary," remarked Casey.

 

"There's a public toilet in Sandycove," said O'Donnell.

 

"That man is fucking right," Redican observed sympathetically. "The Dail Blueshirt fucks closed them all years ago. If they were still open they would have privatised them anyway, like the bin collection and they nearly got away with the water...."

 

"You're right Noel," agreed Edwards. "We vote the fuckers in to look after us, social welfare, pensions, public transport, health, and what they do in thanks is try to sell the whole fucking lot off at a knockdown price to their mates who are then given the opportunity to become millionaires by ripping us off."

 

"When they sell everything. No more fucking government, they'll be out of a job," said Davis.

 

"You must be joking, and lose their big salaries!!! What they'll be doing then is waiting for one of the privatised operations to collapse because of the management rip-off in salaries and their job then will be to rescue it with a big fat juicy government grant from our taxes," suggested MacMahon.

 

"Don't be too sure about the water," O'Donnell warned. "Unless its copper fastened in the Constitution they'll be back to rip it off and make millions selling it to their British and European accomplices who will need it to fulfil their large population needs."

 

Danny O'Connor, a former intelligence officer of the Dublin Brigade with the help of Casey and O'Donnell, rose up in his wheelchair like a Pharaoh. He gestured downwards with his hands. O'Donnell thought that he was signalling that his trouser flies were unbuttoned. "Me knees," O'Connor declared emphatically. "Me fucking knees are in rag order, fucking rag order and because I have no VHI I'm waiting on a list for fucking ever....." he continued in a tone which suggested exhilarated despair.

 

"Until the cows come home," O'Doherty elaborated. "I heard about that list. I was told that this man in Donegal was on that list for shingles, then he died. His daughter took his place, she got wobbly on the legs and upped and died, then her son, third generation who is now getting on ....."

 

"Has he got the shingles?" inquired O'Donnell.

 

"No. Heart trouble, a satellite somewhere in the sky is keeping him alive so now this son is preparing to follow him onto the list so's to keep the place like for his son."

 

"What are you trying to do?" Edwards asked Long who was leaning in on him.

 

"I'm trying to hear Briege. I need to stay on the left because I don't hear with me right ear very well. It's like as she says, I don't know how fucking long I'm on a list for a hearing aid."

 

A flailing, lip-smacking, figure as if from a ghastly drama staggered past knocking O'Connor back into his wheelchair. "Did yez fucking see that? Not even a 'sorry' as if I was a useless heap of shit."

 

"Don't flatter yourself," O'Donnell quipped.

 

"Actually Danny, that man is suffering from Parkinson's or one of those ailments that makes you behave as if you were being permanently attacked by a swarm of bees," explained Redican.

 

"Or worse. Fucking wasps," Byrne warned.

 

"He'd be a sniper's nightmare," Long concluded.

 

"There's a right-wing element at large in this town at the moment," said Redican. "Like last summer, a really hot day I was with the missus. She was getting her hair done. There was a bit of a ledge on the window which I sat on. I took off me jacket and just in me t-shirt I had me arms out..."

 

"Like you were a model for a Grunewald Crucifixion painting?"

 

Redican laughed. "I had me eyes closed as I was facing up at the sky. Then I heard this car radio blasting out Wu-Tang Clan rap or something, then it stopped. I opened me eyes. A big fucking fancy car slowing right down and this pinstripe lowers the passenger front window and shouts out...'Go and get a job yeh fucking bum,'"

 

There was a burst of laughter. "A fucking job!!" Redican continued, "and me after working for over forty years on low wages!"