Puckoon
Spike Milligan

From page 58

"Where the hell is Puckoon?" Webster was about to ask, when there was a combined knocking and opening of the door, the speciality of landladies in need of scandal, as was Mrs Cafferty: standing there, her bones almost escaping from her body, she smiled a great mouthful of rotten teeth, a salute to poverty and indifferent dentistry.
"I'm sorry yer goin' at such short notice," she grinned, and handed the bill to Barrington.
"Two pounds?"
"That's one pound in lieu of a week's notice, sir."
Barrington placed his cigarette on the window sill and took a five pound note from a registered envelope. From `Mummy'.
"Oh," said Mrs Cafferty, "I'm sorry, we don't take cheques, sir."
"Cheques? This is a five pound note."
Confused and baffled by her ignorance of the higher currency denominations, she backed from the room, clutching the front of her flowered apron.
"I'll bring me husband up, he knows all about dem tings."
Downstairs, his socks singeing in the heat of a near red stove, dozed the lord and master of the house. Robert Cafferty. Deep down in a fat disintegrating imitation leather armchair, he smouldered in mid-evening sleep. Around him his kingdom. On the stove, a blue chipped teapot was stewing the last life from its imprisoned leaves; on the mantlepiece a clockwork Virgin Mary, made in Japan.
"Wake up, darlin'," said Mrs Cafferty, striking him gently with her clenched fist.
"Ouch!" yelled Cafferty, leaping to his socks. "Wassermarre, I'll kill the son of a-"
"Look at this," she waved the five pound note.
"Oh," he donned his glasses. "It's a cheque... isn't it?"
"That's what I told dem, but dem says no."
"I'll talk to dems." He pulled up his braces and put his hat on as a sign of authority.
Webster and Barrington could hear them coming up the stairs in a flurry of whispers.
"Good morning to you both," said Cafferty, appearing in the doorway, his face still drugged with sleep. "Well, well - " he looked round the room in mock surprise, "so you're leaving," and without a break, "Sorry we don't take cheques."
Barrington snatched the note from Cafferty's hand, tearing it in half. "For God's sake," he said angrily, snatching the remaining half, leaving behind yet a smaller piece.
The Caffertys moved together for safety.
"Here!" Barrington hastily counted out four brown ten shilling notes. "Brown, dat's the colour of money," thought Cafferty.
"Sorry we don't take dem cheques," he said, leaving the room. They could hear her hitting Cafferty as as he stumbled down the stairs. One hour later Webster and Barrington sat side by side on hard black leather seats rocking sleepily on the train to Puckoon. Back in 356 Queen Victoria Road, Barrington's cigarette on the window sill was burning the house down.
"Hello, Hello, Prudential?" said the smoke enveloped Cafferty, "Hello? I want to take out a fire policy..."

From page 27

'Yes, there's plenty of work to be done, Dan,' the priest was saying. He led Milligan to the gardener's hut. A small wood plank shed tucked in a cluster of cool elms. 'Them's the tools.' The priest pointed to four sentinel scythes standing in the corner like steel flamingoes.
'Ooh!' Milligan backed away. 'They look awful heavy, Father. Would you like ter lift one to see if me fears are founded?'
'Saints alive, Milligan, there's no weight in 'em at all, man,' said the priest, lifting one and making long sweeping strokes. 'See? No weight in 'em at all,' he repeated, holding his groin for suspected rupture. He stood at the door and pointed out. 'You can start against that wall there and work inwards. If only I was younger.'
So saying, the priest made off up the path. As he did, Milligan thought he heard suppressed laughter coming from the holy man. Carefully Milligan folded his jacket and cap and placed them on the roots of a flowering oak. He turned and faced the ocean of tall waving grass. His unshaven face took on that worried look of responsibility. Spitting in his hands he took hold of the instrument. Placing his feet apart he threw the scythe behind him, then, with a cry of 'Hi ayeee! Hoo! Hup-la!' he let go with a mighteous low curling chop; it started way behind him but, never a man of foresight, so great was the initial momentum, by the time the scythe had travelled ninety degrees it was beyond his control. All he could do was hang on; the great blade flashed past his white terrified face disappearing behind his back, taking both of his arms out of sight and sockets, at the same time corkscrewing his legs which gave off an agonized crackling sound from his knees. For a brief poetic moment he stayed twisted and poised, then fell sideways like a felled ox. 'Must be nearly lunch time,' he thought as he hit the ground. The Lord said: 'Six days shalt thou labour and on the seventh thou shalt rest.' He hadn't reckoned wid the unions. Forty-eight hours a week shalt thou labour and on the seventh thou shalt get double time. Ha. It was more profitable to be in the unions.
As Milligan laboured unevenly through the afternoon, long overgrown tombstones came to light,

	         R.I.P.
	  Tom Conlon O'Rourke
	Not Dead, just Sleeping

From page 40

The lad went on: 'I should like to sing the late J. Collard Jackson's lovely song "Eileen, My Eileen."
He raised the lid of the beer-saturated piano, struck a note and started singing a different one. The lad opened a raw red mouth, revealing great harp strings of saliva. At first no sound came, then, welling from the back of his body there came a quivering, tense, tinny sound, like a tram issuing from a tunnel. With the arrival of the first uncertain note, the lad's eyes glazed over, as though a stricture of the bowels was imminent; the singer's body went rigid, a series of stomach convulsions ensued, then the whole body quivered. It even frightened Dr Goldstein.

'Eileeeeeeeeeeen!
Yoooou arrree my Queeeeeeennnnnn...'

The agonized notes seemed to swell up from the thorax and pass hurriedly inwards towards the back of the head, where they were apparently trapped and reduced by a three-inch cavity skull; rebounding, they escaped by struggling down one side of his clogged nose at strength three.

'My Queeeeeeeeeeeenn
The finest I've ever seeeeeeeeeen...'

Puzzled spectators observed that his lower jaw, unlike yours or mine, remained static; it was the top of his mead that moved. On high notes it was so acutely angled, most of the time was spent looking up the singer's nose, a terrible sight to behold. He indulged in an orgy of meaningless gestures, even the word 'it' was sung, trembling with catarrhal extasy; time and again he raised his skinny arms to heaven, revealing a ragged armpit from which protruded tufts of brown hair. Veins stood out on his forehead, and sweat ran down his face, purple with strain, he braced himself for the last great note; bending his knees, clenching his fists, he closed his eyes and threw back his head. In that tacit moment the observant Foggerty spoke:
'Hey, Mister, you got a bogey up yer nose.'
The last great note burst and was lost in a sea of irreverent laughter. Red-faced, tears drowning his eyes, he returned to the bar. The world of music was safer by far and J. Collard Jackson stopped turning in his grave.