The Ginger Man - J. P. Donleavy [108]
The kangaroo groaning that it must have a drink or die. That life was not worth living without a lash of something. The taxi man was saying he would get the police if they didn't stop fighting in the back and that they better get to the hospital because they were covered in blood.
They came to a stop and hobbled into the white smells of this hospital Crippled trinity. Down the warm halls. The nurses coming out of closets everywhere to see the spectacle of the limping kangaroo.
In the hot head he could see out of the pinhole eyes the buxom nurses and the kind nun who got the Chinese doctor. And this nun said whatever is it? Did you go to a pub with it? We did. We've never had patients like you before and you are, you know, rather beat up, but the doctor will do an especially good job on his face, a serious wound. Parnell is a fierce man. O a brute man and Mac here, by God, could lay waste a Cockney hoard in his prime were it not for the fabulous thirst of your young English maidens and even others for a sup of his Irish juice.
The hospital called another taxi and together with the Chinese doctor, compassionate nun and thirteen nurses called from their beds they stood watching the tragic trinity troop out the gate. But the kangaroo, touched with a slight madness what with being poisoned by his own wind accumulating in the animal head and other things like this shower of lovely silver dollars, shot out the door and came in the other until they were racing around the taxi in one door and out the next. The nurses' quarters alive with popping heads until these three weary wastrels set upon each other choking and collapsed and were taken away. The hospital people waving goodbye.
27
Dangerfield turned up the gas flame and rubbed his hands at three o'clock on this gray Friday afternoon. He took a bottle of gin from the pouch of the crumpled kangaroo. From the bed the stricken voice of MacDoon.
"What in God's pukka name have you got there, Danger?"
"E. Just e. Holy water. A little fast blessing for all of us. Parnell, wake up. Up I say. MacDoon for God's sake see if he's dead in there. Don't want to smell up the room with corpses."
Parnell wreathed in bandages stirs, looks out from under the covers and goes in again.
"Danger, come over here with that."
"O I had this neatly tucked away in the bedlam. Looting is part of the battle. You think now MacDoon that this is going to be a time of richness. Do you think that now. Or that from over there the motor birds are bringing me an egg. Big. Big. Nothing like that land of the big big rich."
"Danger, Listen to me. I want you to know your friends will stand by you during delivery of egg. Never let it be said I deserted in an hour of wealth."
"Mac, I think a bit of the Algeria for a breather. We destroyed the city of London in one mighty blow."
"I'd say however, there was a bit of the counter attack somewhere."
"There was that. Mac, one of these days I'm going to tell you the story of how I joined the Legion of Mary. The things of the inner struggle. Intestinal and other things. But got to spruce up. First little bit of the Parnell's peanut butter. Nothing like the nut butter. O I've had the speedy trip to the broker with the ungreased pram. I've had the pride. You wouldn't believe it Mac but at one time I wouldn't stoop to the pram greased or ungreased. Or live on woman's earnings. But through all this, the battering, shell shock, detours and even falling into the minor traps of Egbert Skully, I've come through with part of the inner man still there. Onward you crazy Christian soldiers. Just call me Major Dangerfield"
"Major bring me the bottle"
"And Mac only once. Once, mind you, have I ever had the ignominy. I'll take all the rest but not the igno."
"Danger, let nothing more be said to spoil or foul the beauty you have released into this room. Give us the bottle"
"Parnell. Up out of the covers. I've a request to make. Would you ever now have a clean shirt for my urgent appointment at five which demands I present myself without stains of blood or battle."
"A shirt in my closet there I wore in the nick"