Flann O'Brien: Plays and Teleplays

  BURKE: Who is that?

  NO. 2: Burke.

  BURKE: What was that?

  NO. 2: Burke. Your own man, Burke.

  BURKE: Ah, I don’t know. I’d say I’d give him a tight game.

  NO. 1: Come on, Mr. Kelly. (Hands him cue.) We’re ready for the fray.

  BURKE: Right-O. Just one game. I’ll have to go home after that.

  NO. 2: Good enough. I’ll polish you off in no time.

  (They begin to play. Camera leaves the table and concentrates on NO. 2 and the other two bystanders, who are following the play in silence and exchanging glances. Finally:)

  NO. 2: Well, blast me anyway! This Kelly can play alright, hah?

  BYSTANDER: He certainly can.

  NO. 2: A red, a black, a red and a blue, and then leaves nothing on. . . .

  BYSTANDER: Must have been taking a few secret lessons. Sure he was never much good even at billiards.

  NO. 2: In league with the divil.

  NO. 2: Good Lord, there he goes again. . . .

  FADE OUT.

  END OF PART 3.

  PART 4

  Limited close-up shot of BURKE (KELLY) abstractedly entering taxidermist workshop and immediately turning back to hang up coat and hat on peg behind door. He gives a cry when, turning, he sees two reasonably well-dressed men, complete strangers, sitting on chairs in the body of the room.

  BURKE: Ow! You startled me! Who are you?

  (One man rises, smiles and extends his hand.)

  CASSIDY: Mr. Kelly? My name’s Cassidy. My friend here’s Tim Riordan. You ask who are we? Well, we’d better present our cards.

  (Two small folding cards are shown.)

  CASSIDY: Won’t you sit down, Mr. Kelly. We just called for a little chat.

  BURKE: (Making for chair, bemused.) Detective Branch? Lord save us! How did you get in here?

  RIORDAN: That’s my little speciality, Mr. Kelly. I have a bunch of keys in my pocket that would open any door in the world.

  BURKE: (Sitting down.) Don’t tell me this place has been burgled.

  There’s no money kept here, and all this stuff (sweeps hand) would be no use to anybody.

  CASSIDY: Ah no, it’s not a burglar we’re after.

  RIORDAN: Something a damn sight more important is worrying us, Mr. Kelly.

  BURKE: Stolen property, I suppose. Well, we act in good faith when anybody sends an animal for treatment here. It might be a deer shot on private lands, but how are we to know?

  CASSIDY: (Seriously.) Mr. Kelly, I want to ask you some questions and must remind you that we are police officers and I therefore formally caution you.

  BURKE: Oh, that’s all right. I always do anything I can to help the law. But what the devil is the trouble?

  CASSIDY: For several days we have been investigating the disappearance of a Mr. Burke, who worked here with you. He just vanished.

  BURKE: (With feigned astonishment.) Burke? Yes. He hasn’t reported for duty for over a week now. I thought he was sick.

  RIORDAN: Well, he’s not in any hospital.

  CASSIDY: And it was his landlady who raised the alarm. It seems Burke was a man of very regular habits.

  BURKE: So he was, and a painstaking clever man at the sort of job we do here.

  CASSIDY: His landlady reported the matter to the police, and we have been on the job since. Do you know anything about Burke’s disappearance, Mr. Kelly?

  BURKE: Nothing at all. How do you know he didn’t go down the country to a funeral or something, or maybe go off looking for a new job across the water?

  CASSIDY: He didn’t. We have a way of checking that sort of move with other police forces. We carried out a very close examination of his bedroom in the digs.

  RIORDAN: Took samples of various things, and photographs.

  BURKE: Well, it’s . . . it’s very mysterious.

  CASSIDY: Apart from the fact that he hadn’t paid his rent for the week, a thing he always does on the nail, he took nothing away with him from the bedroom. Common things like pyjamas, shaving gear, hair oil—they’re all there.

  BURKE: What about loss of memory?

  CASSIDY: Genuine cases of that are easily noted. He has some friends, including members of that club you attend yourself. We have questioned them all. None of them has seen him or heard a word about him. You might say he may have entered some religious house to make a retreat. Every possible establishment of that kind has been contacted and none of them ever heard of Burke or anybody like him.

  BURKE: I know it’s not the season but perhaps he went for a swim, got a cramp or something, was carried out and drowned. He was a swimmer, I know that.

  CASSIDY: Yes, and he might have taken a trip to the moon, too. He worked here every day, Mr. Kelly. Are you serious that you know nothing at all about his disappearance?

  BURKE: Nothing whatever. How could I?

  CASSIDY: You were alone with him every day.

  RIORDAN: In this very workroom, with the door closed.

  BURKE: Quite true. And for how many years? At least eighteen. I was very fond of Burke and I’m sure he’ll yet turn up.

  CASSIDY: Perhaps. But dead or alive?

  BURKE: Burke wasn’t beyond a big leg-pull. What do you mean dead?

  CASSIDY: Just that. DEAD.

  BURKE: If the poor man’s dead, where’s his body?

  CASSIDY: There are many ways of getting rid of a body.

  RIORDAN: Yes, but few of them are absolutely safe.

  BURKE: Well, I can only say that I never read detective stories. But I know about a lot of dead animals that don’t disappear at all. We make them live again in this house. Even mice start a new life here.

  CASSIDY: At this stage I don’t intend to give you details of all our enquiries or their scope but I promise you some surprises when you are interviewed by my chief superintendent. We have been in this house four times already without your knowing it.

  BURKE: Well, well, that is one surprise for a start.

  RIORDAN: And very likely we’re not finished yet.

  CASSIDY: Do you see that range or furnace of yours?

  BURKE: I do.

  CASSIDY: We had the ashes in it taken away and analysed, ashes and other remnants. Know what they turned out to be?

  BURKE: That furnace is used for destroying the insides of animals stuffed here.

  CASSIDY: They were the remains of human bones.

  BURKE: (Dismayed.) For heaven’s sake!

  CASSIDY: We believe those bones belonged to Burke.

  BURKE: That is ridiculous, the height of nonsense.

  CASSIDY: And the State suspects that you are the man who murdered Burke.

  BURKE: Look here, you must be going off your head. Very likely, you’ve been drinking.

  CASSIDY: I don’t touch drink at all. I prefer work.

  BURKE: Now that I look at you, the pair of you look like two fellows who’ve been on the batter for several days.

  CASSIDY: What we look like doesn’t matter. You are under arrest, Mr. Kelly.

  BURKE: (Aghast.) I’m WHAT? Under arrest?

  CASSIDY: Under arrest. You must come with us.

  BURKE: Are you seriously saying that I’m under arrest . . . for the murder of Burke?

  CASSIDY: On suspicion of that.

  BURKE: But that’s ridiculous and impossible.

  CASSIDY: Maybe so. But that will be a matter for the court to decide. You will get a fair trial.

  BURKE: I nearly have to laugh. You chaps are crazy.

  CASSIDY: (Standing up, with Riordan.) We have a car outside, round the corner. Just put on your hat and coat, like a good man.

  BURKE: For the last time: are you serious or just trying to be funny?

  RIORDAN: Dead serious.

  CASSIDY: When we get to the station you won’t be in any doubt at all.

  BURKE: (Rising.) Well, I’ll get my coat and hat and go that far with you. There can’t be much harm in that.

  CASSIDY: Nowadays, when a man is charged
no matter for what but not yet tried and convicted, he’s very well treated. In law he’s still innocent.

  RIORDAN: You’ll get the same food as the rest of us, and cigarettes as well.

  BURKE: (Facing camera, wide-eyed.) Just fancy this! Me, Kelly, charged with murdering Burke, to be tried, maybe convicted, and then hanged! Well . . . well . . . well.

  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 cro
wd, 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.