Flann O'Brien: Plays and Teleplays Read online

  CULLEN: Do you know, I don’t see any necessity for an election. There’s no need for it.

  REILLY: You’re right there. We’re as bad as we are, but there’s no reason for getting ourselves into a worse mess.

  CULLEN: Because what have they to do only get together, sink their differences and form a strong national government, a government that everybody in the land will respect?

  KELLY: Ah, Mr. Cullen, if only poor old human nature could be mastered; if only we could re-mould the universe nearer to the heart’s desire. I’m afraid poor old human nature is the trouble.

  REILLY: Don’t deprive the poor Chairman of his chance, Tom.

  CULLEN: Why not, Mr. Kelly?

  KELLY: I fear such a plan would not work, Mr. Cullen.

  (TOWN CLERK, still at Minutes, mumbles something about filling of Rate Collectorship.)

  CULLEN: But why, Mr. Kelly?

  KELLY: Because between the parties, Mr. Cullen, there is what we call . . . an ideological . . . antipathy.

  REILLY: A what?

  KELLY: Do I make myself clear, Mr. Cullen?

  CULLEN: (Very doubtful.) Well . . . that’s right, too . . . but still. . . .

  KELLY: Oil and water, Mr. Cullen.

  CULLEN: All the same, I don’t see why they don’t bury the hatchet and forget their differences and form a good strong national government composed of the best elements in the country. I mean—who wants an election?

  REILLY: The Chairman.

  KELLY: (Sternly.) What the Chairman wants, Mr. Reilly, is a little order so that we may transact our business. The election is a constitutional requirement and must be accepted by all loyal citizens. (He turns to Town Clerk and signs Minute Book. Then, briskly:) Now, Town Clerk, what have we got on the Agenda?

  TOWN CLERK: (Briskly.) I’ve a few letters here, Chairman. Here’s the usual one from the Tourist Association asking for the three guineas. We pay every year.

  SHAWN: (Nodding heavily.) I do, I do. Nivir was money better spent. We must do everything in our power to bring the beauties of this town that is so full of grand . . . historical . . . rich . . . archaeological and scenic wonders to the notice of the world at large—and to the notice of our own grand flesh and blood beyond the seas, the seadivided Gael in America. Not three guineas I’d give them but four.

  REILLY: I never seen an American in this town in me life bar lads that come with Duffy’s Circus.

  CULLEN: Ah, sure we might as well pay. It won’t break us.

  KELLY: I think we are agreed that the subscription should be renewed. It would be a very retrograde step to cancel it. Results in such cases must be slow.

  TOWN CLERK: (Repeating slowly what he is writing.) ‘Ordered . . . dat . . . de subscription . . . be . . . renewed.’ (Proceeds.) I’ve a letter here again from lad Shandon about de Small Dwellings loan. It’s not a nice letter at all. He’s very sharp. He talks about gombeen men. Will I read it for ye?

  KELLY: (Annoyed.) No. Mark the letter ‘read.’

  REILLY: I’ll back up any ratepayer but not that tinker’s son. Tell him to go and have a jump for himself.

  KELLY: (Fingering his watch.) Now, Town Clerk, what else have we?

  TOWN CLERK: I’ve another letter from de Department here about Miss Peake de typist. (He lifts his head from his papers.) Begorrah, do ‘oo know, they are very angry with us. (He reads.) ‘De proposal cannot in any circumstances be entertained. This officer is on her present scale, thirty shillings by five to forty-five shillings, for only one year and it is considered that this represents adequate remuneration having regard to de extent of her duties.’

  REILLY: (Angrily.) I suppose what we think doesn’t matter.

  SHAWN: Ah, you know, the Government machine is a very slow . . . sure . . . finely tempered instrument. They do have to refuse everything to be on the safe side.

  REILLY: (Ignoring SHAWN, his voice rising.) I suppose the chosen and elected representatives of the people don’t matter at all. They’re just something for some jackeen in a Dublin back-office to kick around.

  KELLY: (In mild deprecation.) Now, Mr. Reilly, where will that get us?

  CULLEN: (Innocently.) It’s a shame, because Miss Peake is a nice good little girl. A cousin of your own, Martin, I believe? A fine girl, God bless her.

  REILLY: And what are you yapping about? What about it if she is a cousin of mine? Doesn’t she earn her hard-earned salary?

  CULLEN: Lord, I never said a word against her.

  TOWN CLERK: Of course, de increase would have to come out of de rates.

  REILLY: (Exploding.) What are you bleating and blathering about, you Cork fly-be-night, bleeding and besting the ratepayers to the tune of four hundred and fifty pounds a year with your fine fat fees for fairs and markets, too bloody cute to take a bottle of stout but up to Dublin on the bum on the two train every Saturday?

  KELLY: Order, Mr. Reilly, please. ORDER!

  REILLY: I don’t give a damn for you, the Minister or anybody else. (He snaps his fingers.) I don’t give that for you.

  SHAWN: Yerra, now, we’ll put de increase up again.

  KELLY: I propose that we ask the Minister to reconsider the matter, Mr. Kilshaughraun, to kindly interest himself in the matter on behalf of the Council. Is that agreed?

  (REILLY, CULLEN and SHAWN relax.)

  TOWN CLERK: (Recording the decision.) Carried unanimously, Nem. con., as the man said.

  KELLY: (Briskly.) Well, next business, please.

  TOWN CLERK: De next item is de election of a rate collector for de Number Two district. (Sensation.)

  REILLY: (Astonished.) WHAT!

  CULLEN: (Seriously, very surprised.) What’s this, in the name of God? How could that be? How in God’s name could that be, Town Clerk?

  REILLY: (In a steady, cold voice.) You’re a bloody Cork liar.

  KELLY: (With firm but unemphatic precision.) Gentlemen, I am informed by the Town Clerk that the next business is the election of a Rate Collector. I am bound to consider it—

  REILLY: (Excited.) Be God, this sort of stuff won’t work. You won’t get away with this. There was no Notice of Motion. Ye can’t fill a job without Notice of Motion—

  KELLY: As a matter of simple fact, Mr. Reilly, there was. Let us have accuracy if nothing else.

  CULLEN: I don’t understand this at all. I never heard a word about it.

  REILLY: There was no Notice of Motion. This is some class of ready-up, and I’m not going to sit here and stand for it.

  SHAWN: I do, I do. There was Notice of Motion all right. I remimber it well. Handed in be the Chairman himself.

  CULLEN: It’s the first I heard of it and that’s the God’s truth.

  REILLY: Be God, there’s a ready-up here.

  KELLY: Town Clerk, was there Notice of Motion? Kindly acquaint the members with the facts of the situation.

  REILLY: (Roaring.) BE GOD, THERE’S A READY-UP HERE. There’s a dirty crooked deal been put through here, if there isn’t my name isn’t Reilly. Some fly-be-night is being walked in onto the ratepayers’ backs.

  KELLY: Town Clerk, will you please answer my inquiry and do so expeditiously?

  TOWN CLERK: (Searching among his records.) Notice of Motion was handed in by the Chairman in the following terms, that is to say (pause): ‘I hereby give notice that I shall move at the next meeting of the Council that de vacancy for a rate collector in de Number Two district should be filled.’ (He looks up.) Sealed, signed and delivered to me in person by the said Chairman. Sure it’s all here in black and white in me book.

  (KELLY puts his head in his hands wearily.)

  REILLY: (Excitedly.) Be Gob, you have it all off, haven’t you? It’s down in your little book. (The phone rings.) It’s down in your little book!

  TOWN CLERK: (Rising to answer phone and ignoring REILLY.) Excuse me now, gents.

  REILLY: (Almost shouting at TOWN CLERK, who has risen to cross room to his own table where the phone is.) It’s all down in your bloody little book, you
Cork twister.

  KELLY: Order, Order! Please control your language or I’ll leave the Chair.

  TOWN CLERK: (On phone.) Hello, hello! Are you there? Who’s dat?

  REILLY: You’ll leave the Chair? I dar you to leave the Chair. I dar you and I double-dar you to leave the Chair—

  TOWN CLERK: (Shouting above Reilly’s voice.) Hello! HELLO! Who, Shawn? Shawn Kilshaughraun? He is. He is indeed. Hold on to the wire now, avic! (He turns to the meeting.) A call for yourself, Shawn, boy.

  REILLY: (Banging the table.) Because if you leave the Chair, you won’t be able to wheel your own man into this job (his voice rises) and by the time the matter comes up again there’ll be a full quorum here—THAT’S WHY YOU WON’T LEAVE THE CHAIR!

  SHAWN: (Loudly and unctuously on the phone.) I do, I do. Shawn Kilshaughraun speaking.

  REILLY: THAT’S WHY YOU WON’T LEAVE THE CHAIR!

  CULLEN: Ah, now there’s too much bitterness in this room tonight, God forgive us all.

  KELLY: At any rate there is far too much shouting and noise. Nothing is the worse for being quietly said. We don’t shout when we are saying the most important thing we ever say and that’s our daily prayers. (SHAWN on phone: I do, I do.) We are bound to consider everything on the Agenda. We have no alternative. We must do everything in an orderly way, we must have some system. Notice of Motion first and then deal with the matter in due form and in proper time at the next meeting following. Order, a respect for the rules of civilised order, will enable us to do our work efficiently and promptly.

  REILLY: I SAY THAT’S WHY YOU WON’T LEAVE THE CHAIR! YOU’RE AFRAID OF YOUR BLOODY LIFE TO LEAVE THE CHAIR! YOU’RE AFRAID OF YOUR BLOODY LIFE TO LEAVE THE CHAIR!!

  SHAWN: (From the phone.) I do, I do. Certainly. What’s that? What? WHAT?

  KELLY: (Severely.) This much I will say, Mr. Reilly. Your language is not only a reflection on yourself but an insult to Council and an affront to the people of this town. In offering abuse to my person as Chairman of this elective assembly, you offer it to your fellow townspeople. Having said that much, I will say no more. I will pass from that and ask the Council to deal with that matter which has been brought forward in due order by the Town Clerk. I refer to the filling of the vacancy in the Number Two district.

  SHAWN: (On the phone.) She is, boy. A lovely . . . mild . . . grand . . . good-natured article. I do, I do.

  REILLY: (Very quickly.) If you go ahead with this twist, well and good, but you’ll rue the day, you’ll rue the day—mind that. (His voice rises.) There was no Notice of Motion except what was cooked by that crooked Town Clerk. You must give notice under the Public Bodies Order. (His voice rises to a shout and he bangs on the table.) I take me stand to the Public Bodies Order. (He rises, kicks back his chair and stamps to the window, where he remains with his back to the audience: he turns his head and shouts.) I take me stand to the Public Bodies Order.

  CULLEN: Now, Martin, we have to go by what is written in the official Minute Book of the Clerk. If he says there was, that’s an end to it.

  TOWN CLERK: Shure who would believe a Corkman?

  SHAWN: (On the phone.) I do, I do.

  KELLY: Very well, gentlemen. I propose the appointment of a very excellent person who has always impressed those that know him with his modest and gentlemanly bearing. Though not a native to this town—indeed he is a stranger to it—he has come among us from larger and busier haunts of men—I refer to the capital city of our land—and given those of us who have the honour to partake of social intercourse with him the benefit of an experience that is both wide and expressive of all that is best in contemporary affairs.

  REILLY: Lord save us! Lord save us!

  KELLY: A graduate of the National University which was founded by Cardinal Newman to enable the cream of our Catholic youth to partake of the benefits of University education, he read a distinguished course and gave every satisfaction to his masters. In the field of athletics he gave no mean account of himself, being to this day the possessor of a silver-cup for the long jump. A member of the Gaelic League for ten years, he speaks the old tongue with a fluency that many a person twice his age might well envy. As straight as a rod in character, honest as the sun, courteous in all his dealing with his fellow men, I think he is the most suitable person we could hope for. I therefore propose formally that he be appointed by the Council. I think we are lucky and privileged to have him.

  REILLY: (Who has half-turned from the window to listen to this address with exaggerated signs of astonishment.) I wonder who this fellow is when he’s at home. Begob, there’s wonderful people living in this town that I never met. He has the Irish, too, wha—? Taw shay mahogany! Kaykee will too!

  (SHAWN, who has been listening intently at the phone suddenly bursts into a roar of rough laughing, which subsides into long gurgles with ‘I do, I do’ discernible here and there.)

  CULLEN: Who is this, Mr. Chairman? His name?

  KELLY: O, I beg your pardon. The gentleman’s name is (he hesitates and stammers in confusion) . . . Strange—Mr. Strange.

  SHAWN: (On the phone.) I do, I do, sure I could go down there any day on me bicycle, I could meet you in Biddie Brannigan’s and have a glass of good Irish whiskey with you, what grander, finer thing could we do?

  (REILLY, who has left the window, walks right through the room and comes to rest facing down at the Chairman with his back three-quarters to the audience.)

  KELLY: Mr. Hoop, perhaps you would second my proposition. Perhaps you would be good enough.

  HOOP: (Looking up from his book.) Aye, surely.

  TOWN CLERK: (Reading what he is writing.) Seconded by Councillor Joseph Hoop.

  REILLY: (Still glaring down, speaking in a hard, subdued voice as if genuinely shocked.) I have seen many queer dirty jobs done in this room in me time but my God Almighty, I never thought I’d live to see this. Some fly-be-night that was never seen or heard of in this town, as sure as God a relation of the Chairman’s or of that fancy widow Crockett that he’s running after. WHO IS HE? Where is he from? Is he going to be wheeled in onto the ratepayers’ backs just because he’s related to the Chairman’s fancy woman?

  KELLY: (Angrily, rising to his feet.) That’s enough of that talk! I’ll thank you to keep Mrs. Crockett’s name off your bad discourteous tongue.

  REILLY: (Excitedly.) Is that why? Eh! My God Almighty! (He rounds on the others.) Are yez going to stand for that? Eh!

  KELLY: This man is intoxicated!

  TOWN CLERK: He is a little bit inebriated with his own verbosity, if I may so remark.

  CULLEN: Martin, you’re going too far. I always support the Chairman. He has never nominated a bad man yet. In any case the Minister will only sanction a man that is A1. I think we might give this man a trial. I don’t know him personally.

  REILLY: (In a low voice.) Tom, Tom, I’m ashamed of you. This man really wants to get his own or this widow’s relations in by the back door—(he points) look at that face of him, did you ever see shame plainly written on a man’s face so plain!

  KELLY: May God forgive you, you ignorant and slanderous traducer of people who never hurt you.

  SHAWN: (On phone.) He married a grand big heifer of a woman. I do, I do.

  REILLY: (Exploding.) Because I’m not going to stand for it. I’m not going to stay here in the same room with such criminality. (He makes a mad rush for the coat-stand, grabs his hat, rushes to the door, wheels round and shouts a final denunciation:) We’ll see, we’ll see, whether you’ll drive a coach and four through the Public Bodies Order. We’ll see whether the Public Bodies Order is just a bit of paper! Wait and see, wait and see!

  (He slams the door and is gone. There is complete silence. KELLY mops his brow.)

  SHAWN: (On phone, very softly.) I do, I do, I do.

  TOWN CLERK: De proposal is passed, subject to de Minister’s sanction. Begob, that’s what you’d call a man that’s very violent in himself, God be good to him.

  KELLY: (Philosophically.) This much
I will say. As a younger man I was myself inclined to be a bit . . . contumacious. A bit . . . contumelious. Later I came to a realisation of the golden virtue of temperance. I do not refer to the subject of intoxicating drink. My allusion is rather to temperance of hand, act and tongue. For, after all, what is a gentleman but one who has his temper under perfect control? The exhibition we have witnessed is saddening. It was all very . . . very . . . sad. Let no man say, however, that I pass judgement. Nothing of the kind. Mr. Reilly is a man for whom I have the highest regard. He has many golden qualities. He has his failings, too, one of them he displayed tonight. Gentlemen, I am very sorry.

  (The door is thrown open, interrupting the Chairman’s address. REILLY rushes in bare-headed with a hat in his hand. He hurries to the stand, puts the hat on it, takes another one off it and jams it on his head. Then he rushes out again and slams the door, without a glance at the table.)

  KELLY: More I will not say. Let us now pass from that and return to what is public rather than personal. Town Clerk, what is the next item?

  TOWN CLERK: (Jauntily slapping his book closed.) The next item, Mr. Chairman, is a smoke. The meeting is finnee.

  CULLEN: Ah, good.

  (There is a general relaxation. SHAWN is muttering a few soft ‘I do’s’ on the phone. JOE HOOP stands up, marches to the door, turns and gives a loud thick smiling ‘Good night’ and is gone. CULLEN starts putting on his coat and hat briskly.)

  CULLEN: I’m so afraid we’ll have rain. My corns are telling me so.

  SHAWN: (On phone, simultaneously with following conversation.) Ah, yes. I do, I do. The little ferim. It is indeed. A rich . . . fertile . . . richly cultivated . . . grand . . . fine . . . delightful . . . little ferim. Ah, glory be to God, a grand . . . rich . . . fertile . . . glorious . . . well appointed . . . healthy . . . herbaceous . . . delightful ferim of land . . . yes.