‘Good god, Crooks are you all right.’
‘Sir O I beg you excuse me. Sincerely excuse me. And forgive me. But that was funny enough about the gravy but when Catherine down the kitchen heard tell of it didn’t she fall over the pig bucket and straight into the bucket full of eggs.’
‘I see. I suppose they were the eggs for breakfast.’
‘Well they were sir and won’t they be well scrambled now by Catherine’s backside.’
Darcy Dancer leading Crooks off to bed. Up the main stairs. Crooks doubling up yet again. Hands cupping themselves over his stomach. Over his most recent and mercifully last little joke. As the damn man is drunk. Lame, footless and incapable. Heavier and heavier as one drags and pulls him forward in the dark. Down his lonely long hall. Up his own little steps into his anteroom. And wind and rain pouring in the open window of his chambers. Of course one had to just drop him like a sack of potatoes on the bed. And throw my grandfather’s old leather motoring coat over him. Under which, between groans, he still spluttered and laughed.
‘Ah Master Reginald, I’m done for. I’m finished. Sure I’m just an old butler who’s sharpened his last knife. Look at me teeth. O dear O dear. Buggered they are. Buggered. Squashed like a beetle.’
‘You must not fuss Crooks. Mr Kelly the dentist will have them right as rain again.’
‘Don’t I look a sight though in the meantime. With me cheeks caved in and me chin up near me nose. Ah god even with me eyes askew I am plenty handsome enough to attract the ladies.’
‘Of course you are Crooks.’
‘Cut a figure I do. When I have a mind. But now look at me. Sure what one of them decent ladies of this household would have even five minutes time to spare now on an old butler minus his teeth. Sure it’s only four paces there to that door. To hang myself inside from the rafter, like the two of me predecessors. Would you pass me now that bottle of the cough linctus medicine next to me clock on the mantel, Master Reginald.’
One did stand momentarily trepidatory out in the hall wondering if Crooks would string himself up. But the bottle of medicine, by its aromatics clearly containing my best Armagnac, would further assure Crooks not having the strength to stand up to get his neck properly in the noose. And one does rest quite assured that one will still have a butler albeit toothless in the morning. And perhaps even less than half dead.
Two candles burning in the dining room. Where I sensed much embarrassed silence may have ensued in the cigar smoke during my absence. But the fire still blazing a pleasant soft glow. Upon my reseating, his Lordship sipping his port, wasting no time in getting on to the subject of ladies. Whether they were to be better enjoyed long before or shortly after dinner. And whether the Pope, to whom his Lordship referred as the big guinea left footer in Rome, had the usual Neapolitan tart preferred by pontiffs as his main mistress or was the Vatican importing fluff and ecclesiastical arse from all over the kip including Sweden. Prompting the first real comment from Rashers all evening. Which he rather heatedly directed towards his Lordship whose eyebrows did raise.
‘I happen if you don’t mind to be a left footer you know.’
‘Ah forgive me my dear chap. If I did tread on your toes. But it is to my astonished surprise that you have any religion at all. Never mind being a left footer. But as you are of that regrettable persuasion, let me fill you up with some good Protestant preserved port then, sir.’
Clear consternation on his countenance, nevertheless Rashers pushing his glass forward under the flow of wine. His voice spluttering out.
‘Should it concern you in the least, sir, the fact of the matter is I’m a left footer by virtue of my mother. I am however to the Protestant manner born. I know I deserve your remarks. And I do regret that your membership in the casino was not possible to effect on the night in question. It rather became difficult for the club when someone was found stabbed under the roulette table.’
‘I see. A knife probably in the back.’
‘Yes it was as a matter of fact. And I’m awfully sorry about your fifty quid. I have every intention of returning it. I’m a bit short at the moment.’
‘I see. Perhaps since you were unable to pay it into the hand of your club treasurer it temporarily went down your throat. Or I daresay if not that, on the back of a horse.’
‘Yes as a matter of fact, both. I drank ten and put forty on The Bug to win. But you may not know that the toilet bowl you redeemed from my pawn ticket is of a very high quality of pottery. And comes of a well known sanitary manufacturer.’
‘Well forgive me my dear chap if, just below Tara Street bridge, I ran both it and the pram off the quay into the Liffey thinking as I did so that a pity you weren’t in it. Pram floated out to sea. But I’m sure your pottery’s still there preserved in the mud.’
In Rashers’s hurt and subdued voice an angry edge was evident. In spite of what obviously his presently somewhat testy Lordship represented in the way of a marvellous oasis of perhaps future invitations to hunt, shoot, fish, dine and drink on his estates. And his Lordship was clearly gathering up his vowels to let Rashers have further what for in the solar plexus. Rashers suddenly getting up to rap the table with his glass.
‘Pray silence. My lords, gentlemen. Permit me to recite some poetry. From the temporary depths of my dulcet toned Catholic testicles when they choose to chime and rhyme.’
Rashers indeed was beginning to show for the first time his true form. I must confess I was spellbound as he then reeled off stanza after stanza of The Old Orange Flute. And to feel from his fervour that he might, standing up to his oxters in Catholic gore and papist’s blood, have composed the damn words himself. But by god he did have his Lordship’s attention momentarily. Especially finally singing the last lines.
‘So the ould flute was doomed, and its fate was pathetic. It was fastened and burned at the stake as a heretic. And while the flames roared they all heard a strange noise, ‘twas the ould flute still playing the Protestant Boys.’
But as Rashers rendered a further few risqué couplets of another ditty suggesting less than noble references to ladies in general, one sensed his Lordship a little shocked. But he did clap rather politely and ask rather pointedly.
‘Aside from reassuring us that the road to hell is paved with popery, what else can you do my dear chap, or to whom, perhaps one should say.’
‘As you may just have noticed from my divertissement I am a tenor sir.’
‘Ah so I did notice. And I’m sure our host will not mind your singing for your supper. Some other time. And dear chap do sit down. Surely you don’t mean to curdle our port with a further medley of vocalized silly octaves. As you are sir, the most blatant mediocrity I think I have ever had the boredom to meet and your poetic pretensions are positively ludicrous and without the redeeming feature of being amusing.’
Rashers’s face flushed with fury, for a moment I thought he was about to swing the decanter of port crashing on his Lordship’s head. Or at least send a fist into the Marquis’ gob. And by the way Rashers’ hands were tightly knotted, Rashers must have thought he was too. But he stood rigidly silent. Taking into his lungs a long slow breath. And as the first shimmering tenor notes of Annie Laurie left Rashers’ lips I shivered in awe as the hair stood up on the back of my neck. His Lordship’s hand loosened on the bowl of his glass and fell away on the table, his mouth open as he sat utterly transfixed. Not even the candle flame flickering. And in the dim light of the dining room, as the last note came vibrating from Rashers’s throat, and was held shimmering in the air for what seemed a blissful heavenly eternity, the tears were tumbling down the Marquis’ face.