Pissup

“Lenihan y’bastard, come up with them purse strings, McCreevy never presided over such penury!”

Up comes Lenihan, chest puffed out like a pigeon, head puffed out like a Rice Krispie, eyes puffed and popped for want of more hot air.

“Come up Purse and let’s take stock.”

“Is Chucky comin’ Boss?” the airless eyes searchlight the room from their fleshy guard tower.

“Never my sweet, you won’t be upstaged tonight. Let the Belgians have and keep him and his sliteyed blueblack leer. Come up now.”

A mill a mull as the hall gets full with pinstripe, silks and tight knit wool.

“It’s avant garde new guard tonight Purse, great Aurthur’s seat’ll ring bright and solid and true. Listen! Lend your sow’s ear to that roar – there’ll be a session tonight as the rafters ring.”

“Bright and solid and true Boss!”

Elevated by the dais, the dumplings are asconce, an island for now amid the flow. Proud patriarchs, they watch from on high over high cheeks of high colour as about them the crush of tongue and flesh and hand in hand back slaps and bubbles with “Ah jakers howya!”

“Where are my Marys Purse, are they in yet? There’s order of pleasure to be discussed”

“I see them Boss.” The Purse flails a fist of sausages through the air, one of them hot-dogging, stabbing, making direction. The head dumpling sights along it with a gunner’s eye and grunts – they are in.

“Marymarymarymary, your bewitching, bow-legged feminine delicacy is well turned out this evening. Lead the way Coughlan, moonfaced and misunderstood, don’t fret, we’ll keep you warm and close tonight. Harney, the arse of the hydra, keep the conga line together you lapsed democrat.”

Up come the Marys, a quadrinity of duplicity – Coughlan, O’Rourke, Hanafin, Harney - up dance to the dais – clunk rattle shuffle stomp heel toe and thrust.

“Marys!” the Boss is crying with alarm “you’ll be rubbed red with exertion before it’s begun – Purse, call us to order.”

The Purse blows a coded whistle and makes the secret salute and a low soldier’s hush falls over the vaulted throng.

“Summon Carey and seal the doors.”

To a hollow drumbeat the slavering whip is presented by chain to his master’s fist. Lolling tongue and pigslit eyes flash through the dark leather hood whilst in his crotch an enormous erection burns beneath the taut thong of animal hide. A yelp and a snarl as the chain is tugged and a press as the crowd makes a hole.

“Easy boy.” The Boss coos and the whip settles down to worry his flesh.

Gather in, gather in let us shortly begin.” The Boss chortles the rhyme in his throat. And wavelets of sound lap the edge of the stage, hush soft of the hall gently breathing.

A great hock and a snort, a scowl and a smile as the Boss clears his ducts like a sewer for a song.

“Ah by winding red brick and bubbling black cobbles

We cumann tonight ‘neath old James’ Gate

And the Blueshirts have promised us pairs for tomorree

So’s we can louse and carouse and drink until late.”

Black ohs stretch pink and upturned faces, like toothed donuts they  roar and cheer. Then the Boss double clap like an old governess and great barrels are braced and tipped and tapped and as cries crescendo the very air bucks for nuts and nachos and sin-black stout, so the band strikes a devil dervish loose- whirligig wheeling away we go.

Isteach dó trí, knees and toes. Céilí lines crash and smash and amach. Dó trí a haon dó trí isteach dó trí, ears and nose and lusca.

Upon the stage the Boss has the Dev suit on and does a loose-limbed yankee barnhouse jig. All those that pass giggle and genuflect before an old man’s zombie skin, pallid and patriotic green and stretched like powdered latex over the Boss’s swollen, stomping form.

Clip clop clumpedy, clip clop clump – heavy hooves in shining leather while his elbows seesaw up the air and all the time poor Dev’s dead face, surprised and stretched, a banjaxed banjo, pince nez lopsided upon misshapen shades of a resurrected nose – clip clop, clip clop, clippedy clump. A sudden Tullamore roar, thick with smoke and stout, comes pouring from between the dead man’s lips and Dev’s desiccated parchment can take no more, bursting and tearing and falling asunder, drifting dandruff confetti down to the floor.

A whooping, laughing, tumultuous throng cheers and jeers and the band double-time. Wool-suited Marys, conga line chasing pulling in all but the Greens who skitter and yelp. Tweeded huddle of pumpkins guffaw in the corner swearing mad blind for Kirry “And sure ain’t she mighty!” Back-slapping boys, talk in the air, nod-nodding women and everyone “yes!” While the Boss and the Purse beam down on their kinsmen, grey muscles beating lies in their chests.

“How we lookin’ Purse? What news from the reserve?”

The Purse paws at his brocaded bag and loosening strings dips down inside and when up he comes fingers they turn a traitor’s farthing in the bleary eye air.

“The decision maker Boss, it’s all that’s left!”

With one rolling eye in the side of his great head the Boss fixes the heavy copper with a wary stare, the flips in the light – embossed harp, the queen’s head, embossed harp, the queen’s head – “Put that devil disc away Purse, decisions are later, tonight’s for the feckless, flathulach and free.”

Palming the coin out of sight, the Purse roundeyes the throbbing hall

“But Boss, the reserves, there’s none of it left!”

Like a cat at his elbow and up in his ear, the Boss pinches and hisses keep it down keepitdown.

A wave to the room “Look all about, the reserves are in porter and whisky and stout.” And then with a lash of his tourniquet tongue he’s whip-crack away “Purse, there’s whorin’ to be done!”

Like steam from a field that’s been over with cows, the hall fugs heavy and thick, as congas and céilís slow their ripples of motion in the dull press of drunkards, hotheads and thieves. The waves ease to a ripple, the surges, a sway, hangdog and haggard, all top buttons open and tails all untucked. Crumple crease, balled up jackets, discarded sashes, scarves and ties and rip ruptured seams. A voice hoarse as gunfire  it bursts, it’s the Boss, Marys on each arm and two at his wings. Wallowing sea anchors against undulation he staggers and sways and bawls out a song and then to the Purse with head back satisfaction “Look around you comrade, we proved them all wrong!”

Shaking off Marys like a bird of wet plumage “Get on now you harpies and leave us alone.” A hand of pride and infinite solace clamps hard on the shoulder of his first aide de camp “What’s botherin’ ya Purse, are we not pissed up to ninety? Sure the brewery’s empty, we’ve drinked it all dry!”

And the Purse in his trembling pork sausage fingers draws up again the copper of fate.

“It’s all we have left Boss – the emergency shilling, the coin that gets tossed when all hope is lost!”

But the Boss, never shaken, fits all in his stride, his shambling shoulder-hunched head-turning gait.

“Hope’s never lost Purse, only misplaced and ladykillers like us scare chance half to death.”

And closing a fist around the flat copper disc, he thumbs and then flips it head over harp.

“Decisions, decisions, he who hesitates loses. Heads it’s the early-house, tails we’re to bed!”