“Ah, what the hell!”
And he gave more applause, as did the men. It rang the rafters. It exploded. It concussed as all cried: Sure, what the hell! … Yeah! … Who gives a damn! … Well done!
The thunder died. Snell-Orkney stood there, blushing, as Timulty said:
“God, if you only had a brogue, what a teller of tales you would make!”
Aye! … Sure! … Right! said all.
“Would you teach me the brogue, sir?” asked Snell-Orkney.
Timulty hesitated. “I … well … ah, God! Why not! Yes! If you’re goin’ ta shoot off your mouth, best do it right!”
“Many thanks,” said Snell-Orkney.
Finn interrupted, hesitantly. “Somewhere along the line we have missed the point of your dear story. I mean, the reason you told us about the Queen and the King and all that.”
“How silly of me,” said Snell-Orkney. “We are the Sun King’s children. Which means that we have not seen autumn in five years, or seen a snowflake melt, or felt a winter wind, or heard a windowpane crack with frost. We hardly know a cloud when we see it. We are parched for weather. We must have rain, or possibly, snow, or perish—right, chums?”
“Oh, right, yes, right,” said all five in a sweet chirruping.
Outside, there was a pulse of light, thunder, sounds of possible rain, promises of snow.
Finn nodded, pleased. “God listens real close.”
To which the men added vociferously: Oh, you’ll get plenty of rain … Lots … You’ll drown … Prepare to swim.
Snell-Orkney went on: “We have followed summer ’round the world. We have lived in the warm and the superwarm and the hot months in Jamaica and Nassau.”
“Port-au-Prince,” said one of the chums.
“Calcutta,” said a second.
“Madagascar, Bali,” said a third.
“Florence, Rome, Taormina!” added the fourth.
“But finally, just yesterday, we heard, on the news, this is one of those years in Dublin with exceptional snow. Where in all the world, we said, would we most like to see snow? So we said, Let’s go north, we must have cold again. We didn’t quite know what we were looking for, but we found it in St. Stephen’s Green.”
“The mysterious thing?” Nolan burst out, then clapped his hand to his mouth. “I mean—”
“Your friend here will tell you,” said the tall man.
“Our friend? You mean—Garrity?”
Everyone looked at Garrity.
“As I was going to say,” said Garrity, “when I banged in the door. They was in the park, standing there … watching the autumn leaves fall off because the trees were loaded with ice!”
“Is that all?” cried Nolan, dismayed.
“It seemed sufficient unto the moment,” said Snell-Orkney.
“Are there any leaves left up at St. Stephen’s?” asked Timulty. “And are the damn trees covered with snow!?”
Nobody seemed to know. We all stood still.
“Hell,” said Timulty numbly, “it’s been twenty years since I looked.”
“Me? Twenty-five years,” said Garrity.
“Thirty!” admitted Nolan.
“The most incredible treasure in all the world,” said Snell-Orkney. “A few touches of scarlet and amber and rust and wine, the relics of time, the husks of old summer, somehow left on the branches. But the trees themselves! The branches, the boughs cloaked in sheaths of ice, costumed in frost, burdened with snow that blows away in plumes, whispering! Ah, dear!”
All were enchanted, “Aw, now … sure … well …, ” they muttered.
“He speaks deep,” whispered Nolan.
“Drinks all around!” cried Snell-Orkney, suddenly.
“He’s touched bottom,” said Timulty.
The drinks were poured and drunk.
“Now, where are them damned trees?” cried Nolan.
Yeah … By God … Right! said all.
And not ten minutes later we were all up at the park, together.
And well now, as Timulty said, did you ever see as many damned leaves left on a tree as there was on the first tree just inside the gate at St. Stephen’s Green? No! cried all. And what, though, about the second tree? Well, it was not so many leaves as it was frost and sheaths of ice and snow, that as you watched just lifted and blew in spirals and whirls down into the men’s faces.
And the more they looked, the more they saw it was a wonder. And Nolan went around craning his neck so hard he fell over on his back and had to be helped up by two or three others, and there were general exhalations of awe and proclamations of devout inspiration as to the fact that as far as they could remember, there had never been any goddamn leaves or snow on the trees to begin with, but now they were there! Or if they had been there, they had never had any color, or if they had had color, well, it was so long ago … Ah, what the hell, shut up, said everyone, and look!
Which is exactly what Nolan and Timulty and Kelly and Garrity and Snell-Orkney and his friends and I did for the rest of the declining afternoon. For a fact, autumn had taken its colors out, but winter had truly arrived to cover the park white on white. Which is exactly where Father Leary found us.
But before he could say anything, three out of the six summer invaders asked him if he would hear their confessions.
And the next thing you know, with a look of great pain and alarm the father was taking Snell-Orkney & Co. back to see the stained glass at the church and the way the apse was put together by a master architect, and they liked his church so much and said so out loud again and again that he cut way down on their Hail Marys and the rigmaroles that went with.
But the top of the entire day was when one of the young-old boy-men back at the pub asked what would it be? Should he sing “Mother Machree” or “My Buddy”?
Arguments followed, and with polls taken and results announced, he sang both.
He had a dear voice, all said, eyes melting bright. A sweet high clear voice.
And as Nolan put it, “He wouldn’t make much of a son. But there’s a great daughter there somewhere!”
And all said “Aye” to that.
And Snell-Orkney and his pals prepared to leave.
But seeing this, Finn raised a great hand to prevent.
“Hold on! You have improved the weather in and out of the park and the pub. Now we must hand back some of the same to you!”
“Oh, no, no,” was the protest.
“Yes!” said Finn. “Men?”
“Finn!” they responded.
“Shall we show them a sprint?”
“A sprint?” There was an onslaught of jubilation. “Yes!” “A sprint?” said Snell-Orkney and his chums.
Chapter 29
“There’s no doubt of it, Doone’s the best.” Added Finn: “Anthem sprinter, that is.”
“Devil take Doone!”
“His reflex is uncanny, his lope on the incline extraordinary, he’s off and gone before you reach for your hat.”
“Hoolihan’s better anytime.”
“Time, hell. Now? Before the tall gent with the pale face and his congregation get away?”
Or, I thought, before everything shuts at once, in a few hours, meaning spigots, accordions, piano lids, soloists, trios, quartets, pubs, sweet shops, and cinemas. In a great heave like the Day of Judgment, half Dublin’s population would be thrown out into raw lamplight, there to find themselves wanting in gum-machine mirrors. Stunned, their moral and physical sustenance plucked from them, the souls would wander like battered moths for a moment, then wheel about for home.
But now here I was listening to a discussion the heat of which, if not the light, reached me and Snell-Orkney’s crew at fifty paces.
“Doone!”
“Hoolihan!”
Timulty charted my face then glanced at Snell-Orkney and said: “Are you wondering what we’re up to? Are you much for sports? Do you know, for instance, the cross-country, the four hundred, and such man-on-fool excursions?”
“I’ve witnessed two Olympic Games.” said Snell-Orkney.
Timulty gasped. “You’re the rare one. Well, now, what do you know of the special all-Irish decathlon event which has to do with picture theaters?”
“The anthem sprint you have just mentioned,” said Snell-Orkney.
“Hold on,” I finally said. “What kind of sprint?”
“A-n-t-,” spelled Finn, “h-e-m. Anthem. Sprinter.”
“Since you came to Dublin,” Timulty cut in, “I know that you, being a fillum man, have attended the cinema.”
“Last night,” I said, “I saw a Clark Gable film. Night before, an old Charles Laughton—”
“Enough! You’re a fanatic, I know, as are all the Irish. If it weren’t for cinemas and pubs to keep the poor and workless off the street or in their cups, we’d have pulled the cork and let the isle sink long ago. Well.” He clapped his hands. “When the picture ends each night, have you observed a peculiarity of the breed?”
“End of the picture?” I mused. “Hold on! You can’t mean the national anthem, can you?”
“Can we, boys?” cried Timulty.
“We can!” cried all.
“Any night, every night, for tens of dreadful years, at the end of each damn fillum, as if you’d never heard the baleful tune before,” grieved Timulty, “the orchestra strikes up for Ireland. And what happens then?”
“Why”—I fell in with it—“if you’re any man at all, you try to get out of the theater in those few precious moments between the end of the film and the start of the anthem.”
“You’ve nailed it!”
“Buy the Yank a drink!”
“After all,” I said casually, “after a few times the anthem begins to pale. No disrespect meant,” I added hastily.
“And none taken!” said Timulty. “Or given by any of us patriotic IRA veterans, survivors of the Troubles and lovers of country. Still, breathing the same air ten thousand reprises makes
