Collected Stories (101 page)

Androcles and the Army

“P
OLITICS
and religion!” Healy said when Cloone announced that he was joining the army. “Even a lion tamer you can't trust not to get patriotic on you. The next thing will be the clown wanting to join the Trappists.” He argued, he pleaded, he threatened proceedings for breach of contract, but Cloone retorted with arguments about the state of the country. Threatened by the Germans, threatened by the English, threatened even by the Americans, she needed all her children. Healy's long red nose, that ascended and descended like a helicopter, shuddered and began to mount at the very mention of Ireland.

“Look, Cloone,” he said, reasonably, “there's nothing wrong with the bloody country. It's the show I'm thinking of. 'Twill only be the mercy of God if we can keep going at all. And if you leave us there isn't another man in Ireland can do the job, and with a war on, I'm not going to be able to get one in.”

“Ah, damn it, I know, I know,” Cloone replied in anguish. “I'm not against the show, and I care more for my lions than I do for the show, but if I have to choose between my lions and my country, I have to choose my country. It's as hard on me as it is on you, but war is always like that. Look at the sugar!”

Till the last moment Healy continued to plead. He knew that not only would it be impossible to get another lion tamer, but even if he did, the man would not be as good as Cloone. Healy knew an artist when he saw one and Cloone was an artist. What others could do by fear, he could do by a simple dropping of his voice. Healy couldn't hear the magic in that sudden change of pitch, but he could see the result, for an angry lion would suddenly uncoil his tightened springs of muscle and lie down to be stroked like a cat. Cloone would play with it like a cat, his blue eyes soft with emotion, and mutter as though to himself, “God, Ned, isn't he beautiful?”

“Beautiful my ass!” Healy would think as his red nose began to ascend, but he would keep it to himself.

Anyone seeing Cloone with animals would be bound to think at once of St. Francis of Assisi, but Healy knew that that was all the saint there was in Cloone. He had a devil of a temper, and brooded for months on imaginary insults and injuries. He would begin to mutter about a half a crown that he swore had been unjustly stopped from his pay six months before till Healy, in despair, raised his eyes and hands to Heaven. “Listen, Cloone,” he would say. “I told you fifty times that there was nothing stopped. If you don't believe me, I'll give you the bloody half-crown to take your puss off me.” Then spasms of injured pride would run through Cloone like electric shocks, and he would cry: “It's not the money, Ned! It's not the money! It's the principle.” But Healy, who had been in the show business from the time he was five, knew that when artists talked about principle, it was never anything but temperament, and it took a man like him who hated animals but loved human beings to put up with it at all. Cloone knew that too, and knew that Healy had some sort of hold over him. “Cloone tames lions but I tame Cloone,” Healy had boasted one night in a pub, and Cloone had agreed with an exasperated giggle. He would do things for Healy he would do for no one else, but even Healy couldn't persuade him to stay on for the emergency. And it wasn't just because the show was only a ghost of itself, stripped by restrictions and regulations. It was pure, unqualified, bloodthirsty patriotism, a thing Healy simply could not understand in a mature man. “If,” he added darkly, “you can ever say an artist is mature.”

I
T WAS
a wrench for Cloone, because he really loved the few animals that had been left him; he loved Healy, and he loved the wandering life of the circus and the crowds of the small towns and fair greens. He went away with a breaking heart to be shut up in a Nissen hut, dressed in uniform, stood to attention, stood at ease, presented, formed twos with, formed fours with, as if he himself were only a mangy old circus lion, jumping to a cruel tamer's whip. Besides, he was an awkward, excitable man who could never remember his left from his right, and shouldered arms when he should have presented them, and he had to listen to tongue-lashings from a sergeant and not tell the sergeant what he could do with himself. It often reduced him to mutinous tears, and he lay on his cot at night exhausted, thinking of himself as a caged old animal, its spirit broken, dreaming of the jungle. Then he shed more tears because he felt he had never understood wild animals till his own turn came. All the same his desperate sincerity won through. They had to make a corporal of him, and, in the way of other great artists, he was prouder of his two miserable stripes than of all his other gifts. Drinking in a pub with another man, he couldn't help glancing at his sleeve with a smirk of delight.

Then one day he opened a local paper and saw that Doyle's WorldFamous Circus was visiting Asragh one evening the following week. Filled with excitement, he went off to ask for a pass. Of course, everyone in the battalion knew his trade, and he had no difficulty in getting the pass. The trouble was that everyone from the officers down wanted a pass as well. They all felt that they had a personal interest in the circus. On the afternoon of the show two lorryloads of troops left the camp for town. In the Main Street they scattered to the public-houses to wait for the circus, but Cloone hurried off joyously to the Fair Green, where Healy was waiting for him. In his temperamental way he threw his arms about Healy and sobbed with pleasure till Healy, in embarrassment, grabbed him by the shoulders and mockingly inspected his uniform, with the green gloves tucked neatly in the shoulder strap and the natty little cane.

“Give it up, John,” he said with a grin. “They'll never make a soldier out of you.”

“How well they gave me the stripes!” Cloone said defensively, and followed Healy to his caravan.

“Stripes never made a soldier yet,” said Healy. “A raw recruit is all you'll ever be.” He took down a bottle and poured half a tumbler of neat whiskey for Cloone and another for himself. “And why? Because that's not where you belong at all, John. You belong round here with the rest of the crowd.”

“Ah, God, Ned, I know, I know,” said Cloone, wriggling miserably on the edge of the bed. “I wake up in the night and think about it. But the Germans have it all planned out. They caught a parachutist with the plans. You have to face it, Ned.”

“I do not have to face it,” retorted Healy, his delicate nose vibrating at the very thought of it. “You'll never see a shot fired in this country, man. Sure, who the hell would want it? And anyone that did would be welcome to it as far as I'm concerned. I have enough of it.”

“I'll give you my word, the moment it's over, I'll belt it back here,” said Cloone. “Sometimes I think it'll never be over. Tell me, who have you on the lions?”

“Who do you think?” Healy asked gloomily. “Darcy—the strong man.” The last words he added not by way of information but as a sneer, for Healy, who had a wretched stomach, had seen the strong man screaming his head off with a toothache, and it had left a terrible impression on him.

“Ah, God, Ned,” Cloone moaned, shaking his head, “sure Darcy could never handle a lion. Darcy is too rough.”

“Darcy is too frightened,” Healy added sternly. “Drink that and we'll finish the bottle.”

“Is he any good with them?” asked Cloone.

“Ah, he's all right,” Healy replied with a frown—he was a fair man. “They don't like him, that's the only thing.”

“But how could they, Ned?” Cloone asked feverishly. “Lions could never get on with a strong man. Lions are sensitive, like women. What possessed you to give them to Darcy?”

“Who else could I give them to?” Healy asked angrily. “Damn grateful I was to him for taking them off my hands.”

It was like old times for Cloone, sitting in the twilight with his friend, and the old hands dropping in to ask how he was. He told them all about the importance of the army and the danger to the country, and they listened politely but with utter incredulity. It was at times like this that you could see Cloone wasn't really one of them.

When Healy went to take the gate, Cloone with a foolish smile nodded in the direction of the big cage and said, “I'll slip round and have a look at Jumbo and Bess.” They might have been two old sweethearts, the way he talked of them, thought Healy.

“Oh, plenty of time, John,” he said with a toss of his head. “They won't be on for half an hour yet.”

T
HE MAIN
satisfaction of the evening from Healy's point of view was the number of soldiers who came, officers and all. Healy could not help liking a bit of style, and style was something that was disappearing from the Irish countryside. He was only sorry for the miserable show he had for them, and the two lions that were all he had left him. And then their turn came, and Darcy stood ready, a huge and handsome man with a self-conscious air as though he did not even see the audience.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” the ringmaster explained, “owing to emergency restrictions, Doyle's collection of wild animals—the greatest in the world—has been considerably reduced. But the two lions you are going to see aren't just ordinary animals. No, ladies and gentlemen, these two terrible lions are among the most savage ever captured alive. In the capture of these two lions—especially for Doyle's Circus—no less than eight famous big-game hunters lost their lives, as well as an untold number of simple natives.”

Then the big cage was rolled on; Darcy smartly whipped the curtains back; there was a moment of incredulous silence, and then a laugh that grew into a roar. For, inside the cage with his cap off and his tunic open, was Cloone, sprawled on the ground against the bars, embracing Jumbo with one arm and Bess with the other. The two lions had a meditative air, as if they were posing for a photograph. At the tumult in the audience they raised their heads suspiciously, and fresh screams broke out, because Jumbo was seen to be holding Cloone's green gloves in his jaws while Bess sedately held his cane. There was an atmosphere of intense domesticity about the scene that made one feel that instead of a cage there should be a comfortable living room with a good fire burning.

“Mind the lions or the soldier will ate 'em!” roared someone from the back row, and this brought fresh shrieks. As a turn it was superior to anything that had yet been seen, but to the circus hands it seemed like disaster.

“Oh, my God!” muttered the ringmaster. “This is awful! This is terrible entirely! How could a thing like that happen, Darcy?”

“That's Cloone,” said Darcy with a puzzled frown.

“Sure I know damn well 'tis Cloone,” said the ringmaster severely. “But how the hell did he get in there, and how are we going to get him out? Come out now, John,” he called appealingly. “Come on out and let the show go on!”

“In a minute now, in a minute,” replied Cloone with a knowing smile. “We'll give ye yeer show when we're ready.”

“Ah, come on now, come on!” snapped the ringmaster. “We'll be the laughingstock of Ireland. Darcy, you go in and get him out!”

“Is it me?” Darcy asked indignantly. “How the hell can I go in with him there? They'd ate you, man. Where's my hot bar?”

Two policemen who had been sitting near the front approached with their uniform caps in their hands to indicate that this was merely friendly curiosity on their part and that nothing had yet occurred that required their official attention.

“Now, lads, what's this disturbance about?” asked the sergeant in a friendly boom. “Come out of that cage now like a good man, and don't be obstructing the traffic.”

Then Cloone began to giggle feebly as the humor of it struck him.

“Ye can't get me,” he said coyly.

“What's that you said?” asked the sergeant.

“You're afraid,” said Cloone.

“Who's afraid?” asked the sergeant.

“You are,” replied Cloone with an explosion of laughter. “There's nothing to be afraid of. We're all friends here.”

The sergeant looked at him for a moment and then put on his cap. It had something of the effect of a judge's donning of the black cap in a murder trial. The younger policeman with a shy air put on his own.

“Someone will have to get him,” the sergeant announced in an entirely different tone, the one that went with the cap.

“All right, all right,” Darcy said irritably. “Wait till I get my hot bar.” He grabbed it with a determined air and opened the door of the cage. The two lions rose and growled at him.

“Put down that bar!” Cloone said in an outraged voice as he staggered to his feet. “Put it down, I say!”

“Get out of my way, God blast you!” snarled Darcy. “Haven't I trouble enough without you?”

All in a moment the atmosphere of domesticity had vanished. It was clear that Darcy hated the lions and Cloone, and Cloone and the lions hated Darcy. For a few moments the lions eyed the strong man hungrily and growled; then they slunk slowly back to the end of the cage where a separate compartment was opened. Darcy, white in the face, slammed the door behind them, and then the ringmaster and the policemen, followed by Healy, entered the main cage.

“Come on, John,” Healy said, taking Cloone by the arm. “Come on now.”

“That's no way to treat my animals,” Cloone said, pointing at Darcy.

“John,” Healy said in a low voice, “remember the uniform!” A remark, as he said afterward, that he'd have to answer for on the Last Day, because he cared as much about the uniform as he did about the state of the country. But he was a man tamer as Cloone was a lion tamer. Each of them made his own sort of soothing, nonsensical noise.

“All right,” muttered Cloone, heading off in the direction of the lions. “Let me say good-bye to them and I won't trouble ye again.”

“Don't let that man open that cage door again or I won't be responsible!” Darcy shouted in a frenzy.