The Destinies of Darcy Dancer, Gentleman

23

The night spent curled up in the warmth and snugness of a thatched store of hay. And one was not surprised at one’s rather sadistic impulse. And indeed rather enjoyed the thought of that bully maimed. And a dream of losing my shoes and coat in a big cinema. Later searching for the lost and found department. Up alleys and along doorless walls. An attractive girl I stopped to ask directions was curt with me. She later returned and apologized. And god even in my dream I seemed so relieved she had. Feeling as I was so awfully gruesomely crushed. Like Healy’s hand.

Two more nights were wet with soft moist winds. One sheltering under a leaking lean to. The next huddling under rusted sheets of corrugated iron. Eating raw cabbage and turnips. Then it snowed again. Left tracks behind me in my thieving. The whole damn countryside would soon be on my trail. Tried each big farm I came to. Ever enumerated all my gardening skills. And everyone suspiciously viewing my face turned me away.

Till one morning. Coming to the top of a gently rising hill. In the first sunshine for days. I stopped at a large gateway bordered with lawns. A straight avenue down between great arching beech trees. To a house with its windows shining and a gravel drive to its yellow door. Walking trepidatious between these railed fences. Green velvet paddocks. Mares with foals gambolling on the close cropped winter grass. A clocktower entrance to a stable yard. Where a red crinkly haired groom led a horse clattering across the cobbles.

‘Begging your pardon sir, but I am inquiring as to there being a position open for a stable lad.’

‘Well now I wouldn’t know. But there could be. As we had to kick a little bastard out of here yesterday. You’ll have to talk to himself the gaffer, over there by that stable.’

‘Thank you.’

Darcy Dancer crossing to a checked coated and capped gent in flared twill breeches and boots. Touching one’s forelock. And approaching this figure whose pinched reddened face held a cigarette nodding up and down between his thin lips.

‘And what do you want.’

‘Sir I would be inquiring as to know if you might be needing the services of a stable lad.’

‘Who sent you.’

‘I made bold to come myself sir.’

‘Who gave you that belt in the eye. And them bruises. We don’t want trouble makers around here.’

‘I was after having a fall sir.’

‘Fell me arse. Looks more like a beating you deserved. I’m just after putting my boot flying into a cur was sent out the gate you just came in. What do you know about horses. Who have you worked with before. Come on. Who.’

‘Well sir. Sure I am a butcher’s son but I have spent me time in the stables since I was a slip of a gossoon. Serving me time in the big house that was near where my father had his trade. I know a good bit.’

‘Lay hand to that fork. We’ll see what you know now. Go in there and muck out that box. We’ll see what kind of a job you do. Plenty of your type around thinking you know it all. Go on. What are you waiting for. Put your shoulder into it.’

Darcy Dancer entering the box. Laughter in the courtyard as this stallion reared and bucked and sent sparks flying off the wall with lashes of his hind legs. Ears flat back and his great yellow teeth bared to snap off my arm. Love and affection calms the horse. Provided you can administer these before you are bitten, trampled or kicked to death. Meanwhile step back out of harm’s way. Murmur quiet peaceful words. There, there now. Easy there. Quietly now. Good old fellow. Blow soft soothing breath up in your nostrils. And put on your head collar. There you are. My big evil fellow. Lead you out. So I won’t be killed. While attending to your toiletries.

‘Who told you take that horse out of that box.’

‘You asked me to clean it sir. And that big fellow not knowing me yet would as soon send me flying over the moon.’

‘Well ask first if you can remove a horse out of a box. And stand up straight when you talk to me.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘You’re a little know it all I can tell.’

‘I’m sorry sir I didn’t understand you the first time. May I be taking the horse out of its box sir.’

‘Take him out. And into that box there. And next time you’d better know enough to ask.’

Darcy Dancer shovelling up the matted brown knobs of dung and heaping it in the barrow. Lugging and forking in yellow clean straw from a stack. Shaking it up with the fork. Spreading the golden fibres neatly and evenly across the floor. Heaping it gently up against the walls. And storing that little bit extra in the corners. The gaffer coming to peer in over the half door. And grunting begrudging approval.

‘Well you know how to do something anyway. Now there’s no quitting here till you’re told. You’ll sleep up there over that stable. We’ll give you a try for a few days. Twelve and six a week and your keep. What’s your name.’

‘Dancer O’Reilly sir.’

‘Named after the great stallion himself I suppose.’

‘It’s a fact I am sir.’

‘Dancer is it. Well I’m Matt. Named after me hard working father. And I’ve no bloody time for slackers.’

‘I’m not a one for slacking sir.’

‘Well we’ll see about that. Just let me catch you stepping out of line, and you’ll hop it from here in a hurry I can tell you.’

The loft room was up a narrow worm eaten wooden ladder. Musty and dusty, a pile of oats in the middle of the floor. Little brick built cubby holes in the walls for chickens to lay their eggs. A wooden bench of a bed with a horsehair mattress. Three old dirty grey blankets smelling of hay and straw. Under which one slept till wakened each morning by a gruff shout of a groom up the steps. Peeling back the damp covers and arising already dressed in the chill darkness. Eyes still glued together in sleep. Pushing cold stale stockinged feet into Father Damian’s priestly shoes. Day after exhausting day. To go down into the welcome warmth of the horses below. Their comforting snorts and movements through the night. And now know what the life of Foxy was like. And it would damn soon make you go round biting off ears and smashing heads with hammers.

‘Get a move on there’s fifteen mares waiting yet.’

My hair and the passing days growing longer. The weather milder. And dust rising in the sunlight forking over the straw. Carrying armfuls of hay. My red chapped hand churning in pails of crushed oats and water. Lugging buckets of warm bran. And the pleasant moments grooming a big old mare who would stretch her head to each side and snort in ecstasy as I brushed her down. And Matt growling when he could find nothing to complain of concerning my work.

‘What are you doing standing there, haven’t you something to do.’

Felt like shoving my fork up his mean arse. Never a complimentary word from his lips. At night, even as I sat on my bed, I hardly had the strength to pull up the covers. And was already asleep as I slowly lowered my stiff limbs back. Aching in every bone. By days waiting in the basement hall outside the big kitchen of this house, holding cap in hand. Murmuring me country accents. Begorra, bedad, and humbly bending me head. To take my breakfast of porridge oats, tea, bread and dripping. Lunch of bacon potatoes and cabbage. Sitting at the most inferior position of the table to eat. With the other household servants who suspiciously regarded me when I did not bless myself at the sound of the Angelus. With the cook mumbling.

‘What have we now, a pagan in our midst.’

Looking up and seeing them all stare. And the cook once correcting me for my table manners. God what bloody inglorious moments. To find servants more full of snobberies than one is oneself. The maids all so self importantly jumping at the dingling sound of their assigned bells, rushing to a grey swing door at the top of the stairs as if it led to heaven. And one called Assumpta looking back over her shoulder at me all snooty and superior.

‘Don’t you wish now you could come up here.’

But matters distinctly worsened. An officious overbearing butler appropriately called Smears arrived. Who pranced about in a military manner reeling off his previous service in previous castles to previous Earls. And who straight off presided at the head of the table as if he were conducting a symphony. Keeping a long silver skewer by his plate which he tapped for our attention.

‘So that lunch may begin, are we all now fully gathered. And you what’s your name again. I have difficulty remembering common ones.’

‘O’Reilly. Dancer O’Reilly.’

‘Do please do me the honour if not the pleasure of sitting straight and take your elbows off the table. Although you have brought in the smell of them you are not out in the stables now. And you, young lady what’s your name.’

‘Assumpta.’

‘You are not to exhibit amusement when I bring another member of the staff to order. Clearly there must be severe changes wrought here. Standards are distinctly slack.’

Five thirty in the morning I started. And the clock bell was tolling eight in the evening when my work was done. With hardly a second through the day when someone didn’t have something unpleasantly new for me to do. Saddling and unsaddling. Cleaning tack. Hands now swollen red. Weals across my palms. Cut and blistered by bucket handles. Tumbling in under the blankets and merely a minute later it seemed tomorrow. Never again shall I treat the servants of Andromeda Park in a thoughtless and uncaring manner. Or attempt, as one was inclined to do in particularly shabby ways, to extract from them every last ounce of their daily energy. Not indeed that one could. For if they so wished they could be so jolly clever at avoiding work. Indeed one knew a servant’s trick or two oneself.

‘Now that I’ve got you all lined up. Who for the last time, thieved those five bananas.’

The mistress of the house in her persistent stingy mindedness was trying to keep track of every potato and turnip. Not to mention every biscuit and jar of jam. And she finally confronted us as well. But as I was usually out in the yard she seemed to think me unworthy of an accusation. And it was I indeed who did neatly thieve the bananas arrived one morning with peaches and black grapes in a great wicker basket from Smith’s of the Green. Later the cook was screaming at Assumpta, who also ruddy liar that she was, had stolen the remaining two herself. While trying to blame everyone else for the disappearance of the entire five. And Smears now went up and down the servants’ hall reciting.

‘I ain’t got no bananas.’

And one morning I was sent for to be given the embarrassing task of lugging baskets full of turf to drawing rooms and bedrooms. Which at first I at least found preferable to having to use a pick to clear away embedded big stones fallen from a wall in a paddock. Or collecting in from a field each day two mares who in their furious hatred of each other nearly kicked themselves as well as me to death. And I was surprised I was quite perversely enjoying dropping turf mould over the carpets as I went galumphing about. Till a bedroom door opened. And the mistress of the house stood there with a hair curling iron in one hand and holding her dressing gown closed in the other, promptly throwing a fit.

‘You. It’s you is it. Dropping turf all over. And in muddy shoes. You’re not to come traipsing through this house in muddy shoes.’

Only for a second or two did one worry about being sacked. One’s wages being hardly more than those of a slave. I was however momentarily mortified. But then clearly realized she simply lacked breeding and style to deal properly with servants. To first kindly approach smiling making some comments about the weather, and then to inquire after one’s health following which, and then only purely as an indifferent careless afterthought, to mention mud on one’s shoes. No damn ruddy wonder poor Irish peasants burned down so many of the sham gentry’s mansions. And left standing those belonging to the pure and true aristocracy.

‘And see that your hair is combed when next you come indoors. We’re not in the habit of tolerating scruffiness here you know.’

My god was I dying to let her have a piece of my mind. But instead pressed on choice wall areas a few blatant grubby hand prints so disliked by Miss von B. These regrettable people were not only known by a most common surname but were also glaringly nouveau riche. And even to be called upon to apply such a term makes one wince. I was of course supplied by Smears with an old pair of shabby slippers to wear. And another morning lugging in the turf baskets to the drawing room, I so longed to just flop down on the sofa. Not only from fatigue but with the persistent irritation of never being able to loiter and leisurely study the vulgarity of this house. With the ruddy grand piano covered with pictures of about a dozen priests and two dozen nuns, interspersed with photographs of what must be their son and daughter on their horses. The furnishings all so clearly contrived to give an appearance of expense. And just as one might have expected, there prominently displayed on a side table, was a copy of the most recent Tatler and Sketch. I picked it up. Thumbed the pages filled with photographs of recent hunt balls and other grand and fine happenings. And my god, there they all were. With their toothsome grins and tiaras. Assembled in the great castle hall through which I passed on my way to the Count’s dancing lessons. The Master of Foxhounds. Baptista Consuelo. The Mental Marquis. The amputating Vet. The Randy Major. The Slasher sisters. Even three of the bunch of flowers, Rose, Pansy and Marigold. Across whose elegant velvet lawns I wreaked such great hoof steps. The whole hunt. And sundry other layabouts, all having such a radiantly wonderful white tie time. And one particularly large laughing picture of the Mental Marquis and Baptista, captioned.

TWO HUNT MEMBERS TOGETHER EXCHANGING A JOKE

Can you imagine. Having a joke. When those two bare arsed people had long since had a blatant fuck in the woods. One did feel shocked. And forgetting myself completely, I just sat down. Plonking deep into the soft blue and pink sofa. Not knowing whether to weep or cry foul loudly up to the gods. And not exactly stunned but certainly feeling deeply sorry for myself. Till I turned towards a sound made near the door.

‘What is the meaning of this. How dare you.’

I of course now did sit momentarily stunned. Looking up from the glossy pages. The images of the happy faces of the hunt members still before my eyes. And for the moment totally oblivious as to where I was. Till I was looking straight up at this woman’s face. The mistress of the house. Glaring at me in a manner which was so demeaningly hostile I was tempted to slap her face. Of the eighty thousand things that came all at once into my mind to say. I selected the one hundred and twelfth. Wrapping my lips around my vowels in all my most haughtiest possible manner. Just as her next words were shouted accompanied by her raised eyebrows rising even higher.

‘Stand up at once.’

‘Yes ma’am. I’m sorry. I apologize.’

‘And don’t you use that affected voice with me.’

‘I’m after begging your pardon ma’am. Me accent slips betimes. Me ould feet were playing up the very divil with me and I did sit down to take the weight off for a thrice.’

‘You were reading that magazine, don’t tell me such fibs.’

‘Ah I was and all. You have me there ma’am. Twas the great grand things you’d see in them pages that I couldn’t tear the sight of me eyes away.’

‘Well you’ll tear yourself up and out of that sofa I’m telling you now and remove yourself at once.’

‘Ah yes ma’am. Fast as me ould legs will hop.’

‘And get back to your chores. Don’t you let me ever catch you doing such a thing again. The unbelievable nerve. Your dirty filthy clothes on my best damask sofa.’

‘I am sorry ma’am to have given trouble. Upon me word now it won’t happen again.’

‘You’re certainly right it won’t. You’re not to come up into this house again.’

The only thing to do was slink retreating out in the most menial manner possible. Bringing my hand up and down to my forelock. In nervous moments my accent seemed always to slip badly. But also as I so mortified headed out I bumped straight into and fell over a small carved and gilded Adam window stool. Crashing a vase off a nearby giltwood side table. By far the best piece of furnishing in the house. With its veined agate top held elaborately on six fluted tapered legs ending in gadrooned feet. Upon which one had presently bruised one’s vertebrae. And from which, O god, also was pouring a goodly amount of discoloured water. Dripping on to the light beige and bright blue and pink colours of the carpet. Which latter was, to say the least, in such excruciatingly bad taste anyway that it could benefit by an extensive dilapidation. The advantage of which was totally lost on madam who was now quite wildly hammering her fists around her head.

‘Get out, get out you clumsy oaf. Get out. And don’t let me ever catch you setting foot in this house again.’

Assumpta stopped me at the bottom of the stairs, trying to block my way past. Her eyes like saucers and her nosiness driving her crazy.

‘A thump from above in the drawing room has sent plaster down off the ceiling into the cook’s soup. Was that you did it.’

‘I couldn’t care less Assumpta if the entire floor descends into the bloody soup. And it was me who did it.’

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, sure you’re not fit loose in a house.’

And this night now passing off to sleep, angrily pulling on my penis. And less angrily thinking thoughts of Miss von B. Her bosoms and all the parts of her beautiful body. Especially the soft silky loveliness between her legs to where I so feveredly wished again to bring my fingers, lips and prick. Were I of full age and out of one’s minority I would propose to her marriage. Bring her back to my estate. Sleep my body naked next to hers. Wake with her head next to my head. Far away from these musty smells. And the tapping of rain on these slates. I will descend the grand staircase at Andromeda Park. Wearing the court dress stored many years in my mother’s wardrobe. The whole staff in their best livery. Gathered assembled in the front hall bowing and curtseying as I make my way down the grand stairs and go between them in my black satin breeches and white silk hose. A sovereign’s crown perched on my head. With Crooks geared out in blue gold trimmed court vestments announcing my ruddy bloody appearance.

‘My Emperors, Lords, Ladies and Squires. The King.’

Honestly thoughts like that make one feel so damn good. To have them every night before going to sleep. There I was. Instead of under the flaking broken plaster of this ceiling I was standing there elevated on the stair as the ball commenced. The orchestra on the landing, its violins, oboes, flutes and harps sweetly making waltz music. And the ballroom pulsating with the latest chic two steps. And I even imagined swirling with Edna Annie who upon my word was done up like a queen.

Of course at meal times Smears now suggested snidely concerning my demotion from turf carrier. That although I had inferred a familiarity with a previous grand household, it was all too evident that when not trained to it, a stable lad simply could not elevate himself to that of a pantry boy. But also these days he had it in for the master and mistress. Who according to him, and I devoutly agreed, were simply not to the manner born. Smears taking this attitude following confronting the mistress in a state of nudity and when, as is customary at such time, a butler remarks that madam was looking her best, Smears got a swat across the cheek for his trouble. Big pompous idiot that he was.

But by god, things came to a head one most absolutely marvellous evening. On the occasion of a large dinner party when forty eight guests were invited. Along with a small string orchestra. Candelabra were lit, and all the staff mobilized with two extra staff called in. Even I in the absolute emergency of the moment was delegated to lugging wines from the cellars and pulling corks. Naturally with one’s substantial knowledge, one privately paused to sample these mediocre liquids. With Smears up in the pantry in an absolute dither when he wasn’t castigating the socially inferior nature of the guests or bemoaning the shirtyness of the new staff.

‘Of course O’Reilly you wouldn’t know, but these people are quite honestly the most ordinary lot I think I have ever had to preside over in my career which previously has been exclusively in service to nothing but the best aristocracy hardly any of whom was below the rank of Earl.’

I kept racing to proffer bottles that I urged Smears to taste to make sure that the contents was the wine that the big folks required, my accent later slipping badly, but not overly noticed by a progressively squiffier Smears.

‘Smears you absolutely must taste this unremarkable burgundy.’

‘I think O’Reilly you are getting far beyond your station, smart lad though you sometimes give an indication of being. I could train you up if you didn’t stink of horse piss so much.’

I kept polishing his glass and refilling it for yet another taste. There being plenty of time before the guests got from the drawing to the dining room. Since Mary the cook had blown up the whole oven by mistakenly dripping something which was distinctly not butter fat into a roasting pan. Smears got so absolutely paralytically squiffed while the oven door was screwed back on that he served the sweet directly after the soup which had maids crashing into each other retrieving courses before they were even served. With no main course at all. The master and mistress were fulminating. The former shoving his irate red round face into the pantry.

‘God damn it, what’s wrong with you.’

There was quite sufficient wrong. For meanwhile Smears had fallen down the whole flight of servants’ stairs and although miraculously unhurt he could by now only totter holding his hands out in front of him like a blind man to feel where he was going. And I by god could hardly stand up laughing. It was the most wonderful night. Especially when the electric lights short circuited and the ruddy swing door to the servants’ stair flew open with a guest, his flies undone, his penis shifted out, was there nonchalantly peeing right down the servants’ staircase. Just as Assumpta and I holding a candle and with a massive cauldron of boiled potatoes were at last heading for the dining room where the guests now, were themselves roaring drunk not having got a morsel to eat for over an hour. And stupid Assumpta not knowing what a prick looked like, was heading half way up the dim lighted stairs and confronted by the guest peeing straight down at her, at least did recognize piss and both she and the potatoes fell backwards tumbling to the bottom of the stairs. God was I laughing. My belly wracked with pain. And I fear, my feet squashing spuds. And with Assumpta hors de combat, Smears squiffed, the master finally came storming right down the stairs shouting and screaming at the top of his lungs and rushing into the kitchen where at that very moment I had eight different bottles of liquors open with Smears and cook tasting each with the uttermost blotto sincerity.

‘You damn idiot fools. Where’s the bloody roast beef the bloody main course, the creamed damn onions. Don’t you know what you are doing.’

Smears reared up nearly as if he was sober but had to lean back and prop himself up with the table. Closing his eyes between his measured delivery of every couple of words.

‘I won’t take that language from you. When I have long had, prior to coming to this place, the pleasure and privilege of serving the true aristocracy and gentry. And not people who have merely made money.’

‘You’re sacked. You’re drunk, you’re sacked.’

Smears in the most strange quasi military manner, marching out the door. And towards me the wrath was suddenly turned. With my hand still wrapped around a bottle of Crème de Menthe. But he thought the better of continuing the tirade. No doubt remembering the plight of his poor starving guests. Who if indeed they had an appetite left at all, certainly now could not care much in their blotto state.

‘You. You bring the roast beef up this instant.’

Of course outside of fox hunting and horses there’s hardly anything else in this world I know how to do, but at least I do know considerable about proper butlering. To which, would you believe it I had just been promoted. Although Mary the cook, even in her own wobbling inebriated state seemed sceptical about my sudden elevation in the servants’ ranks. Murmuring under her breath.

‘Ah it serves them right to have a stable lad bringing them their dinners.’

‘I beg your pardon, Mary, note my fine grand accent. Sure I’m as good a butler as Smears ever was.’

‘Never mind that smart lip you, Dancer O’Reilly. And get these roasts of beef up to them, sure as it is they’re all nearly a cinder they’ll be carving.’

The two hired in waiters poised to carve. One of whom during the early darkness of the short circuit I saw popping the more valuable and pocket sized pieces of cutlery into his pockets, which must have been specially tailored for the purpose, as the vast number of pieces disappearing hardly made a bulge in his coat. Any moment I waited for him to be anchored to the floor by their enormous weight. Of course the short circuit also in its way saved much more embarrassment not only for ladies who were thinking it so much more romantic in the candlelight but also because it hid momentarily the now totally rebellious and drunken staff from view. Some of the guests were rumoured very important and prominent in government and business circles. Including two inseparable Dublin actors who shouted above everyone else, and inaccurately quoted Shakespeare. And a most unkempt and inappropriately dressed Dublin poet who not only had his shoes off drying his unbelievable stinking feet under the table, but was also spitting over his arm behind him in a genuine effort it seemed to avoid spitting directly on the table. And then arms waving and roaring while the little string orchestra played lightly an operatic piece.

‘Ah jasus will you give us a jig instead of that.’

The seemingly honest hired in waiter kept nudging me unpleasantly in the ribs, pointing out the two Dublin actors.

‘Look at them will ya look at the pair of them. Sure they’d jump on you as fast as they’d jump on each other.’

The evening temporarily seemed to settle down. Except a very sweaty recovered Assumpta was getting her passing bosom felt by the poet who kept grabbing at it between his yawns and barely disguised insults levelled at his host’s nouveau riche attempts to curry favour with the true cultured members of the Irish intelligentsia.

‘Ah you’re phonys, phonys, the lot of you.’

One did shut him up however serving out a grossly overcooked slab of roast beef. Upon which he fell like a ravening dog. Gobbling it straight off the plate with the peas as well. One of which flew from his lips and popped neatly down a lady’s décolletage. He of course went after it. And she behaved as if she were being raped. Which she was. With the gravy I held over her tipped over the two of them. Astonishingly at first no one appeared to notice the poet wrestling the lady straight to the floor, so busy were they all attempting to impress someone further down the table and all leaning forward to do so. And the poet was at the lady dog style as she tried to escape under the table. Fortunately everyone was of a class who would never mix with one’s own otherwise one would be sure to be recognized. And be mortified. As the entire table lifted right up from the floor in front of the ruddy guests’ eyes. With cutlery, food and wine sliding off upon those on the downward sloped side. With the poet underneath roaring.

‘Come here now till I get that pea.’

Or you

Whore

I’ll chase you

Till kingdom

Come