The Hounds of the Morrigan (47 page)

‘Putting on airs?’ the Gander repeated, as if he were hearing the language of a fool that could not be understood by people with a superior intelligence.

‘Janey!’ the little duck said sarcastically. ‘Anyone’d think you came out of a silver cockleshell to hear you talk! You came out of an egg, same as the rest of us—so it’s no use being stuck-up.’

‘Stuck-up? I beg your pardon?’ said the Gander.

‘Stuck-up and putting on airs such as would make Ghengis Khan look like a rag-picker. He’s always doing that, isn’t he?’

‘Oh, he is, he is!’ all declared.

‘I’m sorry,’ the Gander said in a supercilious way, ‘but the egression of language from your silly beak is an egregious folly from which you should desist.’

‘Oh, listen to the rocks coming out of his gob!’ the little duck jeered. ‘You’ll get your neck wrung for Christmas same as others, in spite of it. D’ye know what, Charlie? You give me the pip.’

‘Pray ignore him,’ the Gander said to thin air. ‘He is an object of no consequence and quite below the salt.’

The woman was laughing heartily now; as were Pidge and Brigit.

There was no more rain.

‘I thought you were all friends,’ the woman said.

‘Oh, we’re friends all right but we don’t hobnob,’ said the Gander.

‘I’ll hobnob you in a minute if you don’t watch yourself,’ the little duck said, bristling. ‘I’ll pull your pin-feathers out. It’ll be ju-jitsu and no holds barred. He gives me the croup! Somebody hold me back before I have to be dug out of him.’

‘I hear you are very brave,’ said Pidge to the Gander, partly to break up the argument.

‘It runs in the blood,’ was the haughty reply.

‘Breeding?’ laughed the little duck. ‘Who ever heard of a thoroughbred goose?’

‘It’s our History, you see,’ the Gander condescended to explain. ‘Watchdogs for the Romans, you know—that sort of thing. Military. And we are aristocrats, of course. Odd isn’t it, that we never hear of the
duck
that laid the Golden Egg?’

The little duck was fuming.

‘Oh? So ducks aren’t aristocratic—is that it? I suppose, Charlie, that you have never heard of the Duck of Edinburgh?’ he asked with some heat.

‘Can’t say that I have.’

‘Then you don’t know everything, do you—not if you’ve never heard of His Highness!’ the small duck finished in some triumph.

‘How brave are you?’ asked Pidge.

‘I’m gifted at it,’ replied the Gander.

‘I’ll say this for him,’ interposed the duck. ‘Only for him we were bunched. He even sang at them—“Our Dog’s Got Fleas”’ wasn’t it, Charlie?’

‘So you really are brave?’ Pidge said, wondering if this could be useful in getting them into the town with Cooroo.

‘Oh notoriously so,’ said the Gander, and he walked around delicately as if the ground might be dirty in some way.

‘Are you as brave as a—fox?’ Brigit blurted out.

The Gander took a backward step.

‘Did you say—FOX?’ he asked in a shocked voice.

‘It was only a joke, Charlie. She was only passin’ a remark,’ the duck said soothingly. ‘Fox is a word that takes
me
in the gizzard, right enough—but not you, Charlie.’

‘Of course not,’ the Gander said, but there was a quiver in his voice.

‘Of course not,’ the duck repeated. ‘Not you—that could mind mice at a crossroads. Not
you,
Charlie; not an old Gallowglass like yourself.’

‘I have never seen one myself—but it must be a horrid sight,’ the Gander said, by now quite recovered.

‘Oh it is, it is,’ all the other little ducks agreed.

‘It’s a sight that would have your heart up in your mouth, jumpin’ up and down on your tongue. I’m glad you’ve calmed down and that you’re not frightened any more, Charlie; for it greatly misbecomes you,’ the little duck said.

‘Frightened? Whatever do you mean?’ asked the Gander as haughtily as ever.

‘Oh, good. Now you are your old stuck-up self again,’ the duck said happily.

The Gander raised his proud head.

‘Show me a fox and I’ll show you a coward, sir!’ he said.

‘See that?’ said the little duck. ‘He’s not afraid, even though he could get his head snapped off same as if his neck was a bluebell stem. It’s all like seaspray on a lighthouse to Charlie—no effect. It’s all like hailstones hoppin’ off a rock to Charlie—no bother to him.’

‘Show me a fox,’ Charlie demanded. ‘Show me a fox and I’ll knock him down with a spit.’

This was the moment that Cooroo picked to wave his brush over the top of the boulder.

The little brown duck was the first to see it.

‘Oh, oh, oh,’ he cried, almost speechless at first. ‘A fox’s brush! A fox! Run for your lives!’

There was pandemonium then as the ducks and geese panicked and waddled for their lives, with high-pitched cackles and quacks. It looked as if someone had put spurs to Charlie for he was well out in front going at a good high trot. One of the other little ducks had fainted clean away and he lay beside Brigit, breathing gently. She didn’t know what to do about him so she left him alone, hoping that he would recover by himself.

Cooroo stood on top of the boulder.

‘Come back,’ he shouted, ‘I won’t touch you. Fainites!’

‘Fainites, me granny,’ the little duck shrilled; and he gasped as he ran on. ‘Oh, me heart! me heart! I’ll never be the better of it!’

‘Come back, come back! It’s all right—he’s not hungry!’ Brigit shouted.

Pidge thought: I suppose they don’t know that people eat them too after their necks are wrung, or they’d never stay near us.

The flight of the ducks and geese was stopped at Brigit’s call; but they wouldn’t come back and they stood in the roadway in a nervous bunch; one nervous entity on top of several legs.

‘It’s safe—he won’t harm you!’ Pidge shouted. ‘You won’t will you?’

‘No, I won’t. These are special times. I’ll show them I’m harmless. I’ll smile the way people do,’ said Cooroo, and he smiled broadly, his eyes dancing.

‘We know them teeth, don’t we?’ screeched the little duck.

‘Oh, we do, we do,’ all of the other little ducks screamed back. ‘We know them teeth, all right!’

‘Come back,’ said the woman. ‘You are under my protection.’

This made all the difference to the ducks and the geese and they came back, although warily.

‘I’m jumping down now,’ Cooroo said. ‘There is a flag of truce for the present, and we’ll say no more about bluebell stems or knocking people down with spits.’

‘You and your big gob,’ the little brown duck said threateningly to Charlie. ‘Another word out of you and into the mayonnaise your face will go!’

Charlie said nothing but began to nibble the grass.

There was a small moan from the little duck that had fainted and all the other ducks came at once to his side.

‘It’s Dempsey,’ said the little brown duck. ‘He must have had another brainstorm.’

Some of the others lay down beside him and fanned him conscious with the skin fans of their webbed feet, until he came back to life.

Brigit dipped some bread into the remains of the soup and offered it to him.

‘Can you swallow this?’ she asked.

‘That could slip down his neck like a mat on a helter-skelter. Thank you,’ the small duck said. ‘Get it down you, Dempsey, lad.’

‘Now, can we go, Pidge?’ Brigit said.

‘We are in the middle of thinking out a puzzle and I wonder if you could help us in some way,’ Pidge said, looking at the woman.

But, it was the little duck that had fainted away, who answered.

‘What’s the puzzle?’ he asked shyly.

‘This is Thick Dempsey,’ the first little duck said.

‘Pour oul’ Thick Dempsey,’ the other ducks all said, sadly.

‘You ever hear of the Speed of Light?’ the first duck asked.

‘Yes,’ said Pidge.

‘Well, Dempsey’s brain moves at the Speed of Mud, doesn’t it?’

‘Oh, it does!’ came the chorus back.

‘He has been this way ever since he was a little yella fella. He was only two days out of the egg when he was chased by a mad turkey cock that wanted to eat him. And while he was trying to dodge him, he banged his little head against a bucket. He was never the same after that. There he was, full of the joys of life, platherin’ about on his little webbed feet and sticking his bill up in the air and having a lovely time of it. The next thing is—he’s a tipsy-head,’ explained the first little duck.

He shook his own head sadly and added:

‘He’s stone mad but we all love him—these things happen in the best of families. Brains scrambled!’

A horrified shudder ran through all the others at the word: ‘scrambled’. The Gander, without lifting his head, murmured: ‘Language!’

‘Oh, pardon my French,’ the first little duck said, embarrassed. ‘I don’t know what came over me.’

‘Poor little Dempsey,’ Brigit said, stroking his head with her fingertip.

‘But you’d be stretched laughing at the same Dempsey,’ continued the first duck. ‘Say something funny for them, Dempsey. Go on!’

Dempsey was bashful at first, but he obliged.

‘The square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides,’ he said modestly.

There was a burst of laughter from all the other ducks.

‘Oh, himself and his squares,’ the first duck gasped. ‘Say another one!’

‘The circumference of a circle is equal to two Pi R,’ Dempsey said, and the rest of the ducks went into fits.

Between sobs of giggles, the first duck said:

‘Give us one of your oul’ tongue twisters, oh, do! I don’t know where he gets them from, I really don’t!’

‘Antidisestablishmentarianism,’ Dempsey obliged and he waited for the loud mirth.

All of the ducks were wheezing with laughter and one of them got hiccups so that he kept going ‘Qua-hick.’ A kindly friend gave him a peck at the back of his neck to give him a shock and make him feel better.

When they had all recovered, the first little duck said:

‘He has the brain of a jelly-fish, but we all love him, don’t we?’

‘Oh, we do, we do,’ the others sobbed and gasped.

‘The intensity of light falls off according to the square of the distance,’ Dempsey threw in without being asked; and away the others went again. Finally the little brown duck said:

‘What a comedian the stage lost in you, Dempsey. Now do you see what I mean about him? He’s really daft, poor lad.’

‘I think he might be very clever,’ Pidge said. ‘I believe he might even be able to tell us how to get Cooroo safely into the town among the people.’

Dempsey didn’t hesitate.

‘Let the fox pretend to be dead and let our dear Water Lady wear him round her shoulders in the fashion of a fur. People are used to that kind of thing,’ he said.

All of his friends had a powerful laugh at this, but when the cackles had finished, Pidge said:

‘I think that’s very clever. Could you do it, Cooroo?’

‘Easily,’ the fox answered.

‘Would you agree?’ Pidge asked the woman.

‘I’d be delighted,’ she said, laughing.

‘Dempsey! Me sound man! I always said you were brainy,’ said the little brown duck.

The woman bent towards Cooroo and he climbed on to her shoulders. He draped himself around her neck, letting his paws dangle.

‘How do I feel?’ he asked.

‘Lovely and warm and cosy,’ the woman said.

‘You look smashing! He suits her, doesn’t he?’ said the little brown duck.

‘Oh, he does, he does,’ all the other ducks agreed.

To Pidge’s eye, Cooroo didn’t look much like a fur but he kept this thought to himself. With Brigit’s help, he assisted the woman to her feet.

‘Don’t forget—he’s only on loan—you can’t keep him,’ Brigit said anxiously, looking up into the woman’s face.

‘Sure, I know that, child; and I wouldn’t want him any other way but the way he is—alive and beautiful and free,’ the woman replied.

Coroo raised his head and looked wisely into the woman’s eyes for a long searching moment. Then he touched her face with his muzzle in a foxy kiss and licked her cheek. He then lay against her again and made his eyes go glassy.

They all set off towards Baile-na-gCeard. And Pidge thought: I wonder what it will be like? We haven’t seen anything like a town since we left Galway behind.

After they had taken a few steps, the Poor Woman looked at Pidge and asked:

‘Have I just eaten salmon? Did I get cream with bilberries?’

‘Yes,’ he replied.

‘I knew what they were!’ she said triumphantly, and then they moved on.

Afterwards Pidge remembered the hamper and looked back; but everything had vanished. They followed the path around the base of the first mountain and walked on through the glen.

I
N
the real world, the Sergeant was tired of worrying and sick of cocoa. He was very disturbed by feelings in his mind that he was not being a proper Sergeant and that he was not really himself at all.

Several times he half-started out of his chair on an impulse to get out into the streets to ask the first person he met: ‘Where were you at ten past three on the morning of December the thirteenth, nineteen fifty-four’; just to prove to himself that he was still the Sergeant and that he knew how to do his duty.

Luckily, he did nothing at all; for in the end when he did go out, the very first person that he saw was the Bishop, who was going round the town looking in shop windows, pricing socks. He had spent a long, long time standing before the sock window at Alexander Moon’s Drapery in Eglinton Street, lost in dreams of his native place.

As the Sergeant sat brooding and glumly staring at the dark ring the cocoa had left in the bottom of his mug, his thoughts were broken into by quiet sounds from the front office. There was the sound of a drawer opening and after some rummaging about, the discreet noise of it shutting. This was followed by a loud uncontrolled guffaw of laughter, quickly smothered to badly-stifled sniggers.

What’s going on out there? he wondered gently.

‘Listen to this, Sergeant; it’ll give you a good laugh,’ the young Garda said, coming in and leaning carelessly against the wall. He had an old tattered book held open in his two hands.