Short Fiction of Flann O'Brien Read online

  —You probably took a dangerous over-dose.

  —Next thing I know I’m awake. It’s dark. I sit up. There’s matches there and I strike one. I look at the watch. The watch is stopped. I get up and look at the clock. Of course the clock is stopped, hasn’t been wound for days. I don’t know what time it is. I’m a bit upset about this. I turn on the wireless. It takes about a year to heat up and would you believe me I try a dozen stations all over the place and not one of them is telling what the time is. Of course I knew there was no point in trying American stations. I’m very disappointed because I sort of expected a voice to say “It is now seven thirty P.M.” or whatever the time was. I turn off the wireless and begin to wonder. I don’t know what time it is. Then, bedamnit, another thing strikes me. What day is it? How long have I been asleep with that dose? Well lookat, I got a hell of a fright when I found I didn’t know what day it was. I got one hell of a fright.

  —Was there not an accumulation of milk-bottles or newspapers?

  —There wasn’t—all that was stopped because I was supposed to be staying with the brother-in-law. What do I do? On with all the clothes and out to find what time it is and what day it is. The funny thing is I’m not feeling too bad. Off with me down the street. There’s lights showing in the houses. That means it’s night-time and not early in the morning. Then I see a bus. That means it’s not yet half-nine, because they stopped at half-nine that time. Then I see a clock. It’s twenty past nine! But I still don’t know what day it is and it’s too late to buy an evening paper. There’s only one thing—into a pub and get a look at one. So I march into the nearest, very quiet and correct and say a bottle of stout please. All the other customers look very sober and I think they are all talking very low. When the man brings me the bottle I say to him I beg your pardon but I had a few bob on a horse today, could you please give me a look at an evening paper? The man looks at me and says what horse was it? It was like a blow in the face to me, that question! I can’t answer at all at first and then I stutter something about Hartigan’s horses. None of them horses won a race today, the man says, and there was a paper here but it’s gone. So I drink up the bottle and march out. It’s funny, finding out about the day. You can’t stop a man in the street and say have you got the right day please? God knows what would happen if you done that. I know be now that it’s no use telling lies about horses, so in with me to another pub, order a bottle and ask the man has he got an evening paper. The missus has it upstairs, he says, there’s nothing on it anyway. I now begin to think the best thing is to dial O on the phone, ask for Inquiries and find out that way. I’m on me way to a call-box when I begin to think that’s a very bad idea. The girl might say hold on and I’ll find out, I hang on there like a mug and next thing the box is surrounded by Guards and ambulances and attendants with ropes. No fear, says I to meself, there’s going to be no work on the phone for me! Into another pub. I have to wind up now and no mistake. How long was I knocked out be the drugs? A day? Two days? Was I in bed for a week? Suddenly I see a sight that gladdens me heart. Away down at the end of the pub there’s an oul’ fellow reading an evening paper with a magnifying glass. I take a mouthful of stout, steady meself, and march down to him. Me mind is made up: if he doesn’t hand over the paper, I’ll kill him. Down I go. Excuse me, says I, snatching the paper away from him and he still keeps looking through the glass with no paper there, I think he was deaf as well as half blind. Then I read the date—I suppose it was the first time the date was the big news on a paper. It says “Thursday, 22nd November, 1945.” I never enjoyed a bit of news so much. I hand back the paper and say thanks very much, sir, for the loan of your paper. Then I go back to finish me stout, very happy and pleased with me own cuteness. Another man, I say to meself, would ask people, make a show of himself and maybe get locked up. But not me. I’m smart. Then begob I nearly choked.

  —What was the cause of that?

  —To-day is Thursday, I say to meself. Fair enough. But . . . what day did I go to bed? What’s the use of knowing to-day’s Thursday if I don’t know when I went to bed? I still don’t know whether I’ve been asleep for a day or a week! I nearly fell down on the floor. I am back where I started. Only I am feeling weaker and be now I have the wind up in gales. The heart begins to knock so loud that I’m afraid the man behind the counter will hear it and order me out.

  —What did you do?

  —Lookat here, me friend, I say to meself, take it easy. Go back now to the flat and take it easy for a while. This’ll all end up all right, everything comes right in the latter end. Worse than this happened many’s a man. And back to the flat I go. I collapse down into a chair with the hat still on me head, I sink the face down in me hands, and try to think. I’m like that for maybe five minutes. Then, suddenly, I know the answer! Without help from papers or clocks or people, I know how long I am there sleeping under the green pills! How did I know? Think that one out! How would you know if you were in the same boat?

  (Before continuing, readers may wish to accept the sufferer’s challenge.)

  —I am thinking.

  —Don’t talk to me about calendars or hunger or anything like that. It’s no use—you won’t guess. You wouldn’t think of it in a million years. Look. My face is in my hands—like this. Suddenly I notice the face is smooth. I’m not badly in need of a shave. That means it must be the same day I went to bed on! Maybe the stomach or something woke me up for a second or so. If I’d stopped in bed, I was off asleep again in a minute. But I got up to find the time and that’s what ruined me! Now do you get it? Because when I went back to bed that night, I didn’t waken till the middle of the next day.

  —You asked me how I would have found out how long I had been there after finding that the day was Thursday. I have no guarantee that a person in your condition would not get up and shave in his sleep. There was a better way.

  —There was no other way.

  —There was. If I were in your place I would have looked at the date on the prescription.

  The Martyr’s Crown (1950)

  by Brian Nolan

  Mr. Toole and Mr. O’Hickey walked down the street together in the morning.

  Mr. Toole had a peculiarity. He had the habit, when accompanied by another person, of saluting total strangers; but only if these strangers were of important air and costly raiment. He meant thus to make it known that he had friends in high places, and that he himself, though poor, was a person of quality fallen on evil days through some undisclosed sacrifice made in the interest of immutable principle early in life. Most of the strangers, startled out of their private thoughts, stammered a salutation in return. And Mr. Toole was shrewd. He stopped at that. He said no more to his companion, but by some little private gesture, a chuckle, a shake of the head, a smothered imprecation, he nearly always extracted the one question most melodious to his ear: “Who was that?”

  Mr. Toole was shabby, and so was Mr. O’Hickey, but Mr. O’Hickey had a neat and careful shabbiness. He was an older and a wiser man, and was well up to Mr. Toole’s tricks. Mr. Toole at his best, he thought, was better than a play. And he now knew that Mr. Toole was appraising the street with beady eye.

  “Gorawars!” Mr. Toole said suddenly.

  We are off, Mr. O’Hickey thought.

  “Do you see this hop-off-my-thumb with the stick and the hat?” Mr. Toole said.

  Mr. O’Hickey did. A young man of surpassing elegance was approaching; tall, fair, darkly dressed; even at fifty yards his hauteur seemed to chill Mr. O’Hickey’s part of the street.

  “Ten to one he cuts me dead,” Mr. Toole said. “This is one of the most extraordinary pieces of work in the whole world.”

  Mr. O’Hickey braced himself for a more than ordinary impact. The adversaries neared each other.

  “How are we at all, Sean a chara?” Mr. Toole called out.

  The young man’s control was superb. There was no glare, no glance of scorn, no sign at all. He was gone, but had left in his wake so complete an i
mpression of his contempt that even Mr. Toole paled momentarily. The experience frightened Mr. O’Hickey.

  “Who . . . who was that?” he asked at last.

  “I knew the mother well,” Mr. Toole said musingly. “The woman was a saint.” Then he was silent.

  Mr. O’Hickey thought: there is nothing for it but bribery—again. He led the way into a public house and ordered two bottles of stout.

  “As you know,” Mr. Toole began, “I was Bart Conlon’s right-hand man. We were through ’twenty and ’twenty-one together. Bart, of course, went the other way in ’twenty-two.”

  Mr. O’Hickey nodded and said nothing. He knew that Mr. Toole had never rendered military service to his country.

  “In any case,” Mr. Toole continued, “there was a certain day early in ’twenty-one and orders come through that there was to be a raid on the Sinn Féin office above in Harcourt Street. There happened to be a certain gawskogue of a cattle-jobber from the County Meath had an office on the other side of the street. And he was well in with a certain character be the name of Mick Collins. I think you get me drift?”

  “I do,” Mr. O’Hickey said.

  “There was six of us,” Mr. Toole said, “with meself and Bart Conlon in charge. Me man the cattle-jobber gets an urgent call to be out of his office accidentally on purpose at four o’clock, and at half-four the six of us is parked inside there with two machine-guns, the rifles, and a class of a home-made bomb that Bart used to make in his own kitchen. The military arrived in two lurries on the other side of the street at five o’clock. That was the hour in the orders that come. I believe that man Mick Collins had lads working for him over in the War Office across in London. He was a great stickler for the British being punctual on the dot.”

  “He was a wonderful organiser,” Mr. O’Hickey said.

  “Well, we stood with our backs to the far wall and let them have it through the open window and them getting down offa the lurries. Sacred godfathers! I never seen such murder in me life. Your men didn’t know where it was coming from, and a lot of them wasn’t worried very much when it was all over, because there was no heads left on some of them. Bart then gives the order for retreat down the back stairs; in no time we’re in the lane, and five minutes more the six of us upstairs in Martin Fulham’s pub in Camden Street. Poor Martin is dead since.”

  “I knew that man well,” Mr. O’Hickey remarked.

  “Certainly you knew him well,” Mr. Toole said, warmly. “The six of us was marked men, of course. In any case, fresh orders come at six o’clock. All hands was to proceed in military formation, singly, be different routes to the house of a great skin in the Cumann na mBan, a widow be the name of Clougherty that lived on the south side. We were all to lie low, do you understand, till there was fresh orders to come out and fight again. Sacred wars, they were very rough days them days; will I ever forget Mrs. Clougherty! She was certainly a marvellous figure of a woman. I never seen a woman like her to bake bread.”

  Mr. O’Hickey looked up.

  “Was she,” he said, “was she . . . all right?”

  “She was certainly nothing of the sort,” Mr. Toole said loudly and sharply. “By God, we were all thinking of other things in them days. Here was this unfortunate woman in a three-storey house on her own, with some quare fellow in the middle flat, herself on the ground floor, and six blood-thirsty pultogues hiding above on the top floor, every manjack ready to shoot his way out if there was trouble. We got feeds there I never seen before or since, and the Independent every morning. Outrage in Harcourt Street. The armed men then decamped and made good their escape. I’m damn bloody sure we made good our escape. There was one snag. We couldn’t budge out. No exercise at all—and that means only one thing. . . .”

  “Constipation?” Mr. O’Hickey suggested.

  “The very man,” said Mr. Toole.

  Mr. O’Hickey shook his head.

  “We were there a week. Smoking and playing cards, but when nine o’clock struck, Mrs. Clougherty come up and, Protestant, Catholic, or Jewman, all hands had to go down on the knees. A very good . . . strict . . . woman, if you understand me, a true daughter of Ireland. And now I’ll tell you a damn good one. About five o’clock one evening I heard a noise below and peeped out of the window. Sanctified and holy godfathers!”

  “What was it—the noise?” Mr. O’Hickey asked.

  “What do you think, only two lurries packed with military, with my nabs of an officer hopping out and running up the steps to hammer at the door, and all the Tommies sitting back with their guns at the ready. Trapped! That’s a nice word—trapped! If there was ever rats in a cage, it was me unfortunate brave men from the battle of Harcourt Street. God!”

  “They had you at what we call a disadvantage,” Mr. O’Hickey conceded.

  “She was in the room herself with the teapot. She had a big silver satteen blouse on her; I can see it yet. She turned on us and gave us all one look that said: Shut up, ye nervous lousers. Then she foostered about a bit at the glass and walks out of the room with bang-bang-bang to shake the house going on downstairs. And I seen a thing. . . .”

  “What?” asked Mr. O’Hickey.

  “She was a fine—now you’ll understand me, Mr. O’Hickey,” Mr. Toole said carefully; “I seen her fingers on the buttons of the satteen, if you follow me, and she leaving the room.”

  Mr. O’Hickey, discreet, nodded thoughtfully.

  “I listened at the stairs. Jakers I never got such a drop in me life. She clatters down and flings open the halldoor. This young pup is outside, and asks—awsks—in the law-de-daw voice, ‘Is there any men in this house?’ The answer took me to the fair altogether. She puts on the guttiest voice I ever heard outside Moore Street and says, ‘Sairtintly not at this hour of the night; I wish to God there was. Sure, how could the poor unfortunate women get on without them, officer?’ Well lookat. I nearly fell down the stairs on top of the two of them. The next thing I hear is, ‘Madam this and madam that’ and ‘Sorry to disturb and I beg your pardon,’ ‘I trust this and I trust that,’ and then the whispering starts, and at the wind-up the hall-door is closed and into the room off the hall with the pair of them. This young bucko out of the Borderers in a room off the hall with a headquarters captain of the Cumann na mBan! Give us two more stouts there, Mick!”

  “That is a very queer one, as the man said,” Mr. O’Hickey said.

  “I went back to the room and sat down. Bart had his gun out, and we were all looking at one another. After ten minutes we heard another noise.”

  Mr. Toole poured out his stout with unnecessary care.

  “It was the noise of the lurries driving away,” he said at last. “She’d saved our lives, and when she come up a while later she said, ‘We’ll go to bed a bit earlier to-night, boys; kneel down all.’ That was Mrs. Clougherty the saint.”

  Mr. O’Hickey, also careful, was working at his own bottle, his wise head bent at the task.

  * * * * * *

  “What I meant to ask you was this,” Mr. O’Hickey said, “that’s an extraordinary affair altogether, but what has that to do with that stuck-up young man we met in the street, the lad with all the airs?”