‘Now the evil likes of you is nothing but a treacherous gurrier only fit to be a rat down in the likes of this vile place.’
Buster the Beastly rocking back on his heels, face contorted in a snarl and jutting his head towards the man in the battered grey hat.
‘With your phony quaint innocent verse dotted with primroses, go back and piss on the soil from which your refreshingly natural rhymes grow. You fucking bog peasant. Sure aren’t you cricking your neck kissing the arse of the visiting London intelligentsia, and still up to your bollocks in nettles and wiping your own arse with dock leaves.’
The man tearing off his grey battered hat throwing it to the stone floor and jumping up and down on it. Wagging his fists around his balding skull.
‘I won’t be insulted by the likes of worthless trash. Scum you are. Nothing but the worst slandering vicious wickedness, a poison so foul it would kill an oak tree standing a mile away from you.’
‘So long as you drop dead with it, you cunt, I’d be content.’
Rashers coming to the side of Darcy Dancer. His hand gently on his shoulder and smiling into his face. The sound of a fist socking flesh. And of a skull thumping and cracking on the floor.
‘I do apologize my dear Darcy for the unseemly unfeeling sentiments you’re hearing expressed. The world of art. Nothing but a nest of vipers of course. But soon a better class of café society will be arriving. But I see you’re just quiey here watching and listening. And even a litle bemused. Ah but I see our big bellied champion whistler is joining us who’s long been a fellow tenant of mine down here. Ah my dear Valentine allow me to introduce you to Marquis of Delgany and Kilquade. I was just explaining to his Lordship how you and I, products of good schools and families, have had to be incarcerated here in this malevolent homespun condition.’
‘And a worse place for barbarians you couldn’t find. And you whore you, don’t know your old friends now, over there in the Shelbourne stretching your legs out over an entire floor.’
‘Ah now Val, that may be temporarily true. But you see what I’ve brought for you. Sheena, over there. Price is usually a tenner. But as she’s a litde laggards tonight there is a fifty per cent reduction. For you of course there is a further discount of a quid making four pounds and only requiring two pounds and ten shillings in advance if you please.’
‘You’d sell the pubic hairs off your mother in her coffin, you whore you. I’ll pay you two and a half thumps in the gob. And have the lady for nothing.’
‘Please Valentine, I can see you’ve already shocked his Lordship here. That’s the type of uncalled for vulgar intransigence that really does try one’s patience. Don’t please fuck up my litde enterprise now, which has been such a long time organizing. Sheena needs some sprucing up, one admits, but you’ll find beneath her rags an awfully curvaceous creature. And there’s more where she came from. Her mother who presides over an assorted vegetable barrow in Henry Street is from a long line of genuine Mecklenburg Street whores, her poor dear father, a Guinness barrel having fallen upon his toe, is now an incorrigible invalid drinking to excess the very thing that crippled him in the first place.’
‘OK you awful whore you, here’s thirty bob and even that’s too much. Goodbye now, you bloody awful chancer.’
‘Ah Darcy, see what a brilliant ponce I am. I’ve sold Sheena not only to the whistling champ, but to four other insanely sexually frustrated chaps who I hope will all have the patient decency to peacefully wait in a row.’
‘That’s absolutely disgraceful.’
‘Ah I knew dear boy you’d disapprove. But you know, strange fact of life, the least expense is often involved in the making of the most profit. You do, don’t you, find this place unfitting. O dear. So do I. But take heart. There in the dark suits the far side of the room, stand gentlemen members of the Legion of Decency. Who are also on the government censorship board. Indeed I think I also spy militant members of the Legion of Mary. Dear me. I actually do. They are, bless their hearts, a most deadly serious inteioned people dedicated to stamping out Dublin vice. And although you may not believe it, these catacombs have produced more than their share of candidates for sainthood. In fact the Legion are here in such force, to investigate an apparition. Seen by four of the children. Yes. Happened one morning. I was the other side of that wall. Playing as it would unseemly happen, with my very lonely prick. While a miraculous and beautiful vision took place right in that corner where the water tank stands, and where you now see the statue of the Blessed Virgin in front of which burn those votive lights and candles. It appears that she said she had come to dispense hope to those most without hope. Indeed my dear boy, this hellish hole of Calcutta is now the Lourdes of Dublin. And take no notice of that gesticulating chap in front of the statue of Our Lady. He is, from the end of his foreskinless prick to the top of his red curly head, entirely Hebrew. From a good Jewish Qanbrassil Street family. Those are merely his traffic signals which he frequently employs directing Dublin traffic in the evening rush. Without him the whole city would be a nightmare of entangled bicycles and horsecarts not to mention motor vehicles. You don’t believe a single word I’m saying, do you Darcy. Think I’m spinning a fantastic yarn, don’t you.’
‘No, not actually.’
‘Ah I worship you dear boy. For your tolerant understanding. May I interject then the merest bit of fantasy. One of my former professors in Senior Freshman physics is actually over there, incognito of course, among that strange lot discussing astro nuclear quirks and quarks. He maintains that the atmosphere of this dungeon of despair allows them to reach the very heights of their theoretical explorations.’
‘And who is that next to them, talking to himself in the mirror.’
‘Ah dear boy, I’m entirely glad you noticed a lost soul. He is Horatio Macbeth. Sundays past, when both he and I were often low and lonely he visited for tea in my college rooms. Poor devil, banished to Dublin by his rich mill owning family, albeit with a very nice little private income. Fellow couldn’t restrain himself pinching ladies’ bottoms all over the better parts of Manchester. His great ambition, like us all, to be an actor. You will see him just before pub closing time mouthing his lines into any nearby mirror. Most impressively too. Frequently an entire jammed pub has ended up shouting bravo. He rehearses late at night at his reflection in the better shop windows up and down Grafton Street. Dear boy. I must but I must leave you here a moment. Do have another bottle of stout. While I slip away to see if Sheena is earning her keep. And also to collect for you the pawn ticket and my cufflinks. Despite this being the new Lourdes, arguments do appear to continue to rage in a blaze of insult and blame. And dear me, neither souls, morals, principles and especially chattels, are safe.’
Rashers disappearing under the arch of the passageway. The stench of bothes, smoke and fumes thickening. A cold swirl of air around the ankles as the doors to ante room and the street open and shut. Corks popping, songs singing, and one stands here a sore thumb. In this conflagration of discontent. The cold country night would have long settled now on Andromeda Park. My head on my pillow. Frost white over the fields. Beasts lonely mooing. And O my god, as I stand here deceived and thieved from, I’ve also stood up Miss von B. A girl grins from across the room. And Leila. Could she have once been someone like Sheena. Women must do anything, anything at all, for money. And now who’s this slipping up next to me. Leaning in close to one’s ear to whisper.