Collected Plays and Teleplays (Irish Literature) (42 page)

FADE OUT.
END

O’DEA’S YOUR MAN
Episode One: THE MEANING OF MALT

The scene, which will be the same for the entire series, is an old-fashioned (no electronic nonsense here) railway signal box. To the (viewer’s) right a battery of six shiny levers protrude, resembling exactly the beerpulls in a pub. There are a few plain chairs and on the parts of the wall which are not glass are printed notices, not necessarily legible.

JIMMY O’DEA
is seated, reading a newspaper. A little bell tinkles musically.
JIMMY
rises, puts the paper aside and listens intently. A distant whistle is heard.

JIMMY:
Ah-ha. The seven forty-two. It’ll be Rafferty again tonight, I’ll go bail.

(
He pulls down one of the levers, no easy job. He then sits down again.
)

Ah yiss. Yiss. Know what I’m going to tell ya. In twenty-wan years in this box I don’t believe I’ve ever pulled down wan of those signal yokes without half-expecting a pint of stout to come out down below somewhere. And isn’t it the right gawm I’d look if it did come, and me here without a tumbler to catch it in. (
Sniggers.
) It’d make ya laugh. Here is me signalman pulling pints for himself in the box, getting mowldy, forgetting to stop a train going into a single-line section after he’s let in another travelling in the opposite direction, and then . . . CRASH! And a thremendious death-roll. Yiss. Drinking on these premises is, of course, TEETOTALLY PROHIBITED. Yiss.

(
A loud and sustained crashing noise is heard, off. Jimmy listens but does not look out.
)

Ah yiss, that’s Rafferty, not a doubt of it. Sixty-wan miles an hour, and a speed restriction here of forty-five. That man . . . that man will get into trouble sooner than he thinks. It’s not that he drinks too much but that he doesn’t understand what drink IS. No use talking to him, of course. He knows all about drink and everything else. Stout or whiskey, it’s all the wan—down the hatch with it and then out with the fags. A walkin bucket of pison, that’s what that man is.

IGNATIUS:
That class of a man should be locked up.

JIMMY:
Yiss. ’Course, pison, that’s a thremdiously big compairtment of human debauchment in itself. Thremendiously big. Matter of fact there’s pison all around us—in th’air, in the light, in things we ate and drink. How manny people have died roarin after goin out at the break o’day to gather a plateful of musharooms? Ah yiss.

IGNATIUS:
I often heard them is dangerous men to sit down and ate. Taking yer life in yer hands.

JIMMY:
Bring the musharooms back, on with the kettle for the cuppa tay, four slices of toast, and then into the pan with the musharooms, and there y’are—a breakfast fit for the King of the Great Blasket Island.

IGNATIUS:
Yiss. And bags of trouble coming up?

JIMMY:
What happens me man half an hour afterwards? He starts yelpin out of him, houldin the gizzard, sweatin like a trooper on Vinegar Hill, and shoutin for the neighbours. A looderamawn of an oul fella comes in and says WHAT AILS YA, puttin the wind up all the dacent people in the vice-ininity. Me man lets another roar, and says he feels like he’d swallied a coil of rusty barbed wire that was now givin him blood pis’nin’ in the stummick and to get him a docthor for the love an honour of Saint Patrick. Th’oul fella says Hould Hard till I get to the dispinsery on me bike. Ah well, I suppose we all know the answer. . . .

IGNATIUS:
Yiss, begob. Docthor or no docthor, yer man is well and truly banjaxed?

JIMMY:
Be the time the docthor arrives, me man’s face is . . . pucecoloured.

IGNATIUS:
Well shure wasn’t it the price of him?

JIMMY:
What in heaven’s name have ya been doin to yerself, me good man? says the doc. Have ya been on a batter drinkin pints of whitewash? Yer temperature is wan O four.

IGNATIUS:
What would a slob like that know about temper’ture?

JIMMY:
Ah docthor, says me poor man, I swallied nothin oney a bit of toast, a cuppa tay and a little plate of musharooms I picked this mornin. Me stummick feels like the citadel of Sevastipol. That weeds you ett, says the doc, was NO MUSHAROOMS. Them things was poisonous fungus, fatal to man an’ baste. Stay aisy there till I get me pump from the cair.

IGNATIUS:
The doc was a fast worker.

JIMMY:
Ah now for pity’s sake, doc, says me segotia the patient (
his face now a nice tinge of black and tan
) me name’s not DUNLOP and I don’t want to be blun up like a tyre on a lurry.

Shut yer clack, says the doc, it’s me stummick pump I mane.

Yer man got better after seven days in bed, with nuthin going into him bar beef-tea and gru-ell. But it was a close shave, and ya could nearly hear the beatin of the wings of th’angel of death.

IGNATIUS:
If ya ett nuthin at all ya were right.

JIMMY:
The brother wanst treated himself to a tin of salmon from Japan.

What happened an hour later? Collapse, prose-stration and profuse paralysis. Sent for the docthor, of course. You’re pisoned, says the doc, but I have here what we call an Auntie Dote. He gets out his needle, fills it up with stuff the colour of water and then GOODBYE—he pumps all this how-are-ya into the brother’s backside.

IGNATIUS:
For desperate disases ya have to have desperate remedies, of course. Yiss.

JIMMY:
What was that Auntie Dote that ya gev me, asks the brother. Mostly strychneen, says the doc. Some people asks me is whiskey pison. Come here till I tellya, Ignatius. Whiskey is med from grain, like bread. It is the grandest nourishment anny man could ask for, it loosens up th’arteries, smoothes down the nairves, and gives the party takin it a luvly complexion. It does the heart good, if ya know what I mane.

IGNATIUS:
Aw, nuthin wrong with a glass o’malt.

JIMMY:
But . . . BUT . . . another particular thing arrives in the fermentation of the grain. Know what THAT is? Mister-me-friend FUSIAL OIL! And that’s the boy that makes the difference. When ya have an honest firm makin whiskey or stout, the amount of fusial oil that comes natural is small, just enough to give a man a kick. But never forget this—FUSIAL OIL IS PISON! That stuff that ya get from the doc with a needle—morphia—is pison too, but the dose is very small and does ya good. Do ya twig?

IGNATIUS:
Ah sairtintly.

JIMMY:
If ya start givin yerself fusial oil ad lib, ye’ll get headaches and a ferocious thirst, next convulsions, and at the heel of the hunt, you’re lucky if ya don’t pass out and die. Ah? Isn’t that a nice state of affairs? Too much fusial oil will drive a man mad.

IGNATIUS:
There’s no livin doubt, ya’d want to look out for yerself.

JIMMY:
The brother knows a lot about this. Wan day he was visitin a distillery—not in Dublin, by the way—and he sees a great big tanker pullin into the yard. It was like wan of the big perthrol yokes, but there was no name on the side. What’s this, says the brother to wan of the distillery men—milk for the firm’s canteen? Atachal, says yer man, that tank is full of fusial oil. Do ya want to kill the people, asks the brother. Ah no, says this hop-off-me-thumb, but we like to wake the customers up. They don’t expect to get just slop, and we don’t sell them slop. Our stuff puts life in them. Fair enough, says the brother, but I think the right place for your crowd is Mountjoy.

I told ya, Ingatius, that fusial oil can drive a man mad. There was fierce brutalities in the First World War. The Jairmins was very strong in some parts of the Front, and now and again stuck in some position where the Allies thought no power on earth could dislodge them. What did the generals do? They sent for a detachment of the Irish millytairy that was in the war. The Lord preserve us but the slaughter was ferocious. It’s not that the Irish crowd dislodged the Jairmins. They killed the whole damn lot of them, and took all their machine guns. And who was this Irish crowd, wouldya think?

IGNATIUS:
A crowd from Cork I’ll go bail.

JIMMY:
Wrong! The Dubalin Fusialeers, of course, every man-jack full of whiskey that was ninety per cent fusial oil.

But there’s a time and a place for everything, and I warn everybody to be careful when it comes to havin a glass of malt in a strange public house. Never forget the foe, the F. O.—FUSIAL OIL!

END

TH’ OUL LAD OF KILSALAHER
Episode One: TROUBLE
ABOUT NAMES

Players

UNCLE ANDY

PUDDINER
(
MARIE-THÉRÈSE
)

A. N
.
OTHER
, To Appear In Occasional Scripts, For Some Good Reason.

UNCLE ANDY
is a very old man, wears reach-me-downs that don’t fit, several waistcoats or gansies and inhabits a becketty armchair, cane type, which is littered with old flattened cushions and bits of blanket. Perhaps he has a heavy moustache and/or a bit of a smig. He hardly ever gets up. Anybody who thinks he is doting or living in the past will get a succession of shocks when Andy repeatedly shows that he not only knows everything that is going on but more than appears on the surface, and the proper remedy for big snags when they arise.

MARIE-THÉRÈSE
(
whom he calls
PUDDINER
.)
is his niece, and both apparently comprise the entire household. She is young, witty, flighty, and in dress and manner could be called a tart. There is a never-ending private war going on between her and
UNCLE ANDY
but usually
PUDDINER
manages to give as good as she gets
.

The accent of both will be Dublinesque but the script makes it clear from time to time that they are exiles in the country. Country customs and situations obtrude.

The scene is always a comic kitchen. The fireplace is better off-centre, and a real turf fire is desirable. The space to the right gives
PUDDINER
elbow-room for business of various kinds, or for a visitor, and the narrow table is necessary, as well as a few odd kitchen chairs. The long mantelpiece is deep, and there is room for a fiddle and bow on it over
UNCLE ANDY’S
head. (He sometimes mucks up the action by threatening to play.) Of three pictures, the one on the left would be a holy one (? St. Colmcille.), the centre one President Kennedy and the other perhaps one of the last Kaiser. Over the mantel-piece could also be a Crosóg Bhride and all sorts of incongruous objects with, fixed to the back wall, a double-barrelled shotgun. To the right of the fireplace would be a shortish sofa, with a back to it. A radio and/or TV set might also be on view.