Myles Away From Dublin Part 1

Flann O'Brien.

MYLES AWAY.

FROM DUBLIN.

Introduction.

Nothing is easy to pin down about the author of this book, particularly his various personae, or the names he adopted for them when appearing in print. For my purpose it is simplest to call him Myles, as Myles na Gopaleen was the name he is best remembered by for his excursions into the columns of newspapers. However, this is not simply a supplementary volume to The Best of Myles, which was a selection from 'Cruiskeen Lawn', the column he wrote for the Irish Times over a period of twenty-five years, because in writing an entirely new column, 'Bones of Contention', for the Nationalist and Leinster Times he adopted not only a new name, that of George Knowall, he also took on a new persona, that of a quizzical and enquiring humorist who might be found in a respectable public house in Carlow. It had been my intention originally to make a selection from both the Nationalist and the Southern Star, Skibbereen, but the John James Doe of 'A Weekly Look Around' never managed to become a person in his own right, and the column was patchy and tailed off after the first year and barely saw out a second, albeit there were one or two typical Mylesian pieces. To have included them here would have been a disservice to the man who addressed himself faithfully to his Carlovian readers.

One of Myles's remarkable achievements as a columnist was that of consistency supported by a spring of imaginative energy; for whatsoever the vicissitudes of life generally, and those attaching to people in and around newspapers in particular, he maintained an extraordinary output right up to and including the year of his death in 1966. Another remarkable strength was the quality of his writing. Homer nods, but Myles's delight in language never leaves him and whether he is writing on the seasonal and annual events, the weather or the Dublin Horse Show, he is always able to make something fresh. To write well is not easy, nor is it a gift like perfect pitch; it is difficult and demanding. No one could pick his way round the hazards of journalistic cliches with such deftness as Myles, nor turn them to such good use when it suited his need, as in the 'Myles na Gopaleen Catechism of Cliche', with which he rewarded the devoted followers of 'Cruiskeen Lawn'.

The persona he presented to the people of Carlow, under the name of George Knowall, was different from the one who addressed the plain people of Ireland in the Irish Times, yet his felicitous use of language, his delight in words, and his uncanny ability to see through humbug and cant were employed to the same end.

To those admirers of Myles who know a little about his life, he drops various autobiographical hints that can be picked up and enjoyed. Since what happens to him is as much grist to his mill as are the absurdities recorded in the daily papers, we nearly always get a bulletin about his health when upset, and a gentle swipe at the medical profession and the undignified absurdity of being in hospital when the misfortune arises, as it does periodically in the following pages. We are treated variously to a broken leg, influenza (with a note about a lady who survived an operation when young and spent the rest of her life talking about and embellis.h.i.+ng the event), vaccination, a phantom heart-attack wrongly diagnosed, convalescence, hospital treatment, and the operation that probably concerned his last illness. Doubtless he would have agreed that there is only one fatal illness, the one that kills you, and would have used this unfas.h.i.+onable medical apophthegm as a text. Certainly his absence from the pages of the Nationalist was of long duration preceding the appearance of the operation piece, but nowhere is the sharpness blunted or his verbal enthusiasm dampened in any of the pieces he wrote after his return.

The Myles of the Nationalist is eminently sensible and proclaims himself born into a lower middle cla.s.s family, something that 'connotes, of course, ultra respectability, carefulness amounting to perhaps contempt of the real poor ...'. And it is from this position that he writes in these pages, though he personally was never victim to the hypocrisies inherent in that position. He delights in curious and arcane knowledge, though he has no time for 'facts' as purveyed say in radio quiz programmes or in the Guinness Book of Records, a 'book full of extraordinary allegations, for the veracity of which no source or proof is given.' When he himself takes an interest in something, such as the word 'dowse', and follows it through all its meanings and implications, we get a truly adventurous and delightful journey with a courteous and attentive guide.

The Myles of the Nationalist is erudite, urbane and informative and on the whole a country cousin to his metropolitan self. I have seen no reason to arrange the material here under subject headings, since he treated his readers with such attentiveness that the pieces are better read chronologically, as they were published, one subject written about once being taken up again at a later date. The provincial Myles was always mindful that his readers.h.i.+p was a loyal and local one and he goes out of his way to address Carlovians as such, taking the trouble as often as not to allude to recently published matter in a previous edition, whether an article or an editorial comment. One such, a feature on agriculture, encourages and this against the tide that took Ireland into the Common Market a gentle attack on agriculture as being 'alien and un-Irish', claiming that in a study of Irish poetry from 1500 to 1750 there is no mention of the subject, save allusions to pasturage, hunting and the keeping of domestic livestock, including deer. Normally, the supplementary matter in a newspaper which devotes a special feature to a subject supports the burden, its central aim being to attract advertising, and it would appear that Myles was as much a licensed jester in the Nationalist as he was in the Irish Times. Indeed, the delight we take in a humorous columnist, from Beachcomber to Peter Simple, is that he can take the mind away from the ponderous absurdities of the editorial and the obsessional attention to the topicalities of the day, and enable us to see things in a truer perspective, for comedy is as much at the heart of the matter as is tragedy, and likewise as durable. Not many columnists can justify publication in book form.

As the George Knowall of the Nationalist is a country relation of the Myles of Dublin, so they are both part of a composite human being who wrote those extraordinary works The Third Policeman, At Swim-Two-Birds and the play Faustus Kelly. For the two former he chose the name of Flann O'Brien and it is difficult sometimes to reconcile even two different Flann O'Briens as one and the same author. There are tides in the affairs of men, surmount them as we may, that do have a profound influence on the direction a man's life takes.

James Joyce didn't let World War I interfere with his single-minded literary endeavour, while it involved the whole of Europe in carnage and ma.s.sacre and dominated the lives or fortunes of many other writers, both Irish and English; but World War II forestalled the appearance of The Third Policeman by over twenty-five years and made it a posthumous publication. There are various ironies in the life of the author that are almost as mysterious and other-worldly as the events in At Swim-Two-Birds and The Third Policeman and who knows what might have happened had the latter book been published rightfully as it was written, immediately after At Swim-Two-Birds. I myself have unearthed two characters in At Swim who originally appeared in the pages of a French writer, Alphonse Allais, whose work was only translated into English and published here a couple of years ago.

In bringing this selection together from the columns of the Nationalist the intention has not been to search out and garner more of Myles for the sake of it, but to show again that as one more facet of this many-sided writer appears, there is the certain knowledge that no one will ever be able to see the whole at any one given moment. He was a man who disappeared from his own photographs, knowing that a photograph is not a prophecy, but a moment, an expression frozen in time. His future is in his writing, and this volume is part of that future.

Martin Green.

Newlyn, March 1984.

Note.

The pieces collected here were first published in the Nationalist and Leinster Times, Car low, between 1960 and 1966, under the heading of 'Bones of Contention'.

The fiercest of them all.

For a reason not clear at all, humans impute to animals motives and behaviours quite alien to them; it is not easy to work out the inter-relation of the man-animal kingdom. Notionally, man is the ascendant and dominant cla.s.s. Is he in fact, though?

The red setter lying at the fire knows every word I say. And if you were to lay a finger on me, without even going to the trouble of pretending you are going to hit me, he would spring up and tear you asunder.

Although cats are not strictly speaking domesticated at all, preserving a private life of their own (particularly its nocturnal side) they are faultless time-keepers inasmuch as they show up on the dot at meal times and in cold weather they take the fullest advantage of fires. In matters of cleanliness indoors they are most fastidious and it is fallacy that they are afraid of dogs. A cat on the war-path will terrify any dog, though a chase is often conceded as a matter of exercise and fresh air.

We attribute almost limitless intelligence to monkeys, no doubt because of their anthropoid appearance and the human skill with which they drink tea and smoke cigarettes. Elephants we consider very wise and admire the gentleness with which they behave, notwithstanding that they weigh several tons.

What of the rat? He is not a very personable fellow and often carries a selection of typhus and bubonic germs in his fur coat. All the same, I confess I cannot withhold from him a certain measure of approval. His cunning is proverbial and must be highly commended, if only expressed in his feat of remaining alive at all. Probably no creature in this part of the world has so many mortal enemies. Not only are dogs, cats and humans after him but he has special enemies such as the hedgehog. I have read that it is estimated that there are 8,000,000 rats in Ireland alone, a great number of them natives of Dublin.

The Major Fauna.

Few of us have soldiered in the Far East and for that reason have only the most perfunctory acquaintance with the great beasts such as the lion, tiger and leopard. The snake family we hardly know at all, thanks no doubt to St Patrick. Our nearest bears are probably in Siberia, crocodiles infest the foetid swamps of India and the Abominable Snowman is still tramping around the slopes of the Himalayas. Apart from indigenous minor fauna the rabbit, the hare, the goat and the deer that seems to be about the limit of our knowledge of the Wild, a compound of snooping, hearsay and Walt Disney. I keep away deliberately from the subject of salmon for therein we have a mishmash of poaching, gunplay and perjury. In a way, we can claim to be innocent enough.

We live with Nature, hoping that modest benefit may accrue to us without undue exertion; we give thanks when a fat grouse dies from heart failure at our feet, and with resignation we accept the fact that pheasants cannot expect to live forever.

But these notes of mine today are directed to asking the reader to name the most ferocious animal in this part of the world. The badger or the bull? Neither. The dog whose fangs drip with hydrophobia? No. Man himself? Hardly. Quoting from two books I have read, let me name the brute.

It is the shrew. The shrew is a little thing weighing about half an ounce, in appearance very like a small mouse except that he has a long pointed snout and a shorter tail.

Mind This Fellow.

Naturalists are agreed that, considering his size and needs, nothing in the whole animal kingdom can compare with the common shrew in savagery and voracity. Tigers are clumsy messers in comparison and they always pick a smaller animal when in search of prey.

The shrew is permanently in a towering rage and, notwithstanding the fact that in his last meal of a few hours ago he ate three times his own weight, he is perpetually a martyr to hunger. If nothing better can be found, he will kill and eat another shrew murder and repast taking merely a matter of seconds. But he has no hesitation in attacking, killing and trying to eat the whole of a rat, who must look mammoth in proportion to himself. Part of his armoury is that, apart from the ability to unleash a filthy smell, his tiny biting apparatus contains a glandular poison which can paralyse victims almost no matter what their size. His appet.i.te is quite insatiable, his unending rage is quite startling and by the time he is 15 months old he has eaten himself to death. He is afraid of absolutely nothing except the possibility of doing without his dinner.

Should the Irish farmer beware of the shrew and even set shrew-traps? He should not be, for the shrew eats snails, slugs and every manner of insect while awaiting some larger and more succulent dish. But the question does not arise, for there are no shrews at all in Ireland. St Patrick again!

Some notes on playing the game.

I was startled to read recently in the giant Sunday issue of a San Francisco paper the casual statement that handball is the national game of Ireland. It made me think generally about games. What is a national game or, for that matter, what is a game?

The dictionaries are a bit vague here. A game is said to be any amus.e.m.e.nt or sport, or a contest played for recreation or as an exhibition of skill. It seems also that the word 'game' meaning creatures other than what is meat, fish or poultry and which you go after with a gun is really the same word, as also is gaming in the sense of gambling.

It is not so easy to decide within those meanings what a national game is. In western continental Europe it is probably true to say that the national game of most countries is soccer. But would it be true to say that the national game of Spain is bull-fighting, or is bull-fighting a game at all? Is boxing a game? The Swiss spend a lot of their time skiing and otherwise cavorting on snow and ice. Could that be called their national game? And if one were to get into an acrimonious argument with a member of the j.a.panese nation, one might suddenly find oneself in mid-air and then slammed to the floor with a shattering crash merely as a result of partic.i.p.ating in the national game of ju-ju. Deciding on the US national game would take some thought. Baseball comes to mind but there is also great emphasis on basket-ball, ice hockey, football and ... handball.

With the Ancients.

The founders of our civilisation took their games very seriously and left a heritage in the matter, as is evidenced by the fact that this year there is world-wide partic.i.p.ation in the Olympic Games.

The Greeks called their games agones, which are mentioned in the Iliad. They were by no means exclusively recreational athletic exercises but were part of religious observances. Games were held as part of funeral rites or in thanks to the G.o.ds for some military triumph or a disaster averted. Olympia was a naturally enclosed place not far from Athens, lined with statues of great athletes of the past and surmounted by a chryselephantine statue of the Olympian Zeus by the famous sculptor Pheidias. The games in their ritualistic aspect were evidence of the refinement of the Greeks as they took the place of the savage custom elsewhere of slaughtering slaves and captives on the grave of any important man who died, as an offering to the G.o.ds.

What were the events of the games? The foot race was important, being usually decided in heats and run over about 200 yards. For a time there was also a race in heavy armour, highly recommended by Plato as great training for the army. Next came wrestling, not very different from the all-in stuff of today. Then came the pentathlon, a miscellaneous 5-game contest which included the long jump. Tall tales were in fas.h.i.+on even then, and the record shows a wonder-man named Phayllus credited with a jump of 35 feet. I am told this is quite impossible but there may have been something special in the h.e.l.lenic air of those days. There were boxing contests similar to those of today but subject to the condition that a boxer who killed his opponent, unless by sheer accident, not only was disqualified but was severely punished. (That is a condition we do not insist on today.) Chariot-racing, a very dangerous event, was also very important and as many as 40 chariots taking part in the same race. And that was about the lot.

The Decadent Romans.

The Roman games, or ludi, veered away from the good clean fun of the Greeks. Everything was on a vaster scale and the Colosseum, which still stands substantially in Rome, was reputed to seat 350,000 people. These games also had at least a nominal religious significance. Chariot races were very popular, the war-cars being often hauled by as many as four horses. The coa.r.s.eness of the people's taste was shown by their love of the aspect of the games known as venatio the baiting of wild animals in the arena, setting them on one another or on criminals and slaves. Remote provinces were ransacked for rare and ferocious animals. Lions, tigers, giraffes, elephants and crocodiles were on frequent display; on one occasion Pompey provided 600 lions and on one occasion of the celebration of a victory of Trajan, 11,000 wild animals were butchered in the arena. Julius Caesar himself is credited with having invented bullfighting. In due time Christians were thrown to the lions but the 'normal' prize attraction was the gladiators who had to fight to the death and who were chased out on to the arena with red hot irons where they showed reluctance or fear. There were even women gladiators, being matched with dwarfs.

Our Irish Game.

We started, however, with handball. It seems beyond dispute that the true Irish national game is hurling, for we are told that Cuchulainn could not undertake any journey without pucking a ball ahead of him and following it. (The true roots of golf may be there.) It seems true, however, that handball did originate in Ireland about a thousand years ago. Today it is one of the most popular games for men in the United States. The first man to work out the modern scientific system of play in the 1850s was a Tipperaryman with the engaging name of William Baggs. Another pioneer was named David Browning and in 1885 John Lawlor won the Irish champions.h.i.+p. In 1887 Lawlor was matched with Casey of the US for a purse of $1,000 for the best out of 21 games, 10 to be played in Cork and 11 in the US. Lawlor won six games in Cork but Casey won seven straight in New York and thus won the match.

It seems a pity that handball is not encouraged more in the schools here for, the capital cost of the alley apart, it must be one of the cheapest as well as one of the most vigorous sports imaginable.

The bridge at Athlone.

Up to ten or twelve years ago how vague one can be on comparatively recent happenings! an arriving diplomat would be greeted at airport or railway station in Ireland by a detachment of what the natives insisted on calling the Blue Hussars. These were ordinary army men but they were mounted and wore a blue dress uniform which was set off with certain gay tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs.

Cynics murmured about comic opera police and some sourp.u.s.s.es asked how much this nonsense was costing the taxpayer but the people in general liked those boys in blue and admired their glistening horses; if an objector pointed out that they did not pay or were a dead loss, the answer was 'Does the army itself pay?' What army on earth does pay? If a country must have one (as apparently every country must) why not make it worth looking at on ceremonial occasions and get away from this awful monotony of nameless men in battle-dress and steel helmets marching endlessly away to G.o.d knows where?

Suddenly the Blue Hussars were abolished. No official reason was given. Possibly some civil servant, suffering from his occupational disease of indigestion, found that their extinction would save the country 20 and that maybe another five could be made by flogging their uniforms to the Queen's Theatre. That sort of reasoning is contemptible.

A Silly Remark.

A few weeks ago in a restaurant I heard a member of a group which I would describe as of the student cla.s.s point scornfully to a paper and say: 'They can't even write or print correctly. They call the Costume Barracks at Athlone the Custume Barracks.'

That rather shallow of military dress, between the garb of the Blue Hussars and the defenders at Athlone, is my excuse for referring here to the Custume Barracks at Athlone. When a student myself, I tried to write an extended essay on Sergeant Custume and remember being deeply shocked at the way any information about him was so diffused and scanty. I cannot reveal, even now, his Christian name. There is no consecutive account of him in existence in print and among the scattered data is the Memoirs of King James II, to be seen in some libraries, and A Diary of the Siege of Athlone, not to be seen in any library except the British Museum, where it is an unpublished ma.n.u.script, author described as 'Engineer Officer' but otherwise unidentified.

The Critical Bridge.

Some people insist on identifying an important stage in Irish history with the Battle of the Boyne; decisive as that was, the Battle of the Shannon should not be ignored. It was there that Sergeant Custume and ten unnamed comrades gave their lives in a vain but very courageous gesture.

The year was 1691 and the Jacobite war here was coming to a climax. The Irish armies, under Maxwell, a Scot, had been driven across the Shannon at Athlone but were encamped in good order on the western bank of the river. The stout masonry bridge which they seemed to command consisted of nine arches plus, at the western side, a drawbridge with a tower or castle nearby, this bridge separating them from the Williamite armies under Ginkel. Clearly it was Ginkel's job to take the bridge and cross the river.

On this apparently simple situation, any records I looked up are surprisingly vague. The Irish on the Connacht side broke the bridge but it is not clear whether they demolished part of the masonry structure or simply raised the drawbridge. The two forces were roughly equal except that the Williamites had great superiority in artillery and had probably attacked the tower housing the machinery operating the drawbridge and disabled it. In any event, Ginkel's army had to cross the Shannon using a bridge, part of which was missing.

After a bombardment lasting 98 hours, his men started across the existing part of the bridge in the middle of a June night, carrying ma.s.sive beams and planks to span the broken part of the bridge. So skilful and stealthy were they that they had their timbers in position before the defenders knew exactly what was happening; the confusion was probably due to the nonstop exchange of gunfire across the river.

It was here that Sergeant Custume came to notice. He went to his superior officer and volunteered, with ten men who accompanied him, to tear down the shaky structure of planks. He was given permission to attempt what seemed a quite impossible task, for the timbers were ma.s.sive and gunfire at the spot was unrelenting. It may seem comic to add that Sergeant Custume and his little company wore armour but the detail is important inasmuch as the rifle, with its revolving missile of great penetration, had not yet been invented and bullets from straight-bore muskets bounced off armour. Custume and his men did the apparently impossible job, and all were eventually killed. Another company which took their place were likewise wiped out.

In a strict military sense, it was all a waste of blood and time. Yet I wish the young fellow I mentioned at the start would learn the considerable difference between the words Custume and Costume.

Uprooting, upheaval, a coming havoc?.

I suppose it is a commonplace to say that life is a series of crises, all fraught with danger. Three familiar points of crisis are birth, marriage, death. But there are many, many others, some of them quite unexpected, some very frightening. Some seem even pleasurable. But you never know what tomorrow's day will bring. Maybe it's just as well.

I came almost literally to the crossroads recently. I had to move house. That phrase itself can be troublesome. The decent reader will know immediately that it means changing from one house into another or to be even more explicit s.h.i.+fting the furniture. The reasons for having to do this are innumerable. It might be a natural growth in the family, the terrible smell from some putrescence in the garden next door, or an all-out attempt to s.h.i.+ft the wife's mother, who came for a fortnight in 1926.

But changing house is not as easy as it looks, if it ever looked easy. Most of us do not know how complicated being born frequently is because we don't remember the occurrence. But n.o.body who has changed house is likely to forget it. I write this 'at home', i.e., the change has not yet been made. But the bruises of the 'softening up' artillery barrage are still very keenly felt. I am plain scared. The day takes on the sombre guise of Der Tag. Translating a simple term into German seems to give it a sinister edge.

It is only on moving house that a man realises the unbelievable a.s.sortment of stuff with which he has surrounded himself in say ten years. Start, say, with old letters. They should have been torn up many years ago, of course, but they are still there, h.o.a.rded and yellowing. The householder cannot make out who wrote them and about what. What is the meaning of the postcard which is headed warning in indigo ink with the message If it happens again action will be taken?

Under the stairs in a rusty biscuit tin is a lady's full length ball dress probably fas.h.i.+onable early in the reign of Victoria. Why is it there and who put it there? It couldn't be the property of your wife because she had not been born when it was in vogue and anyway would not be seen dead in such a ludicrous invention. For that matter, what is the front a.s.sembly of a child's Edwardian tricycle doing under your bed? Who put that there?

Brain Was.h.i.+ng.

The removal merchants are quite alive to the speculative nature of their trade and the unpredictable character of their customers. You are a sober, prudent individual and you go to one of them to get an estimate of cost of house removal. Jaunty as your step may be going in, you feel very much in need of an ambulance coming out as I did. I set out initially to give the reader a word-by-word account of my interview but now find I cannot: it would be too harrowing. But let me just lift the hem. I am shown into a small room in which is seated at a desk a ruffianly-looking Gauleiter who does not look at me but barks out a demand for my name and address. I sit on a chair facing him, for there is no other. The dialogue starts like this: 'Moving? I see. Scaling things down, ah? Lost the job, I suppose?'

'I didn't lose any job.'

'I have them in here every day. Drink. The number of decent men destroyed by drink is terrible. It is drink, drink, drink, night and day. Home, family and religion all is ignored. Just drink and then more drink.'

'If you refer to intoxicants, I may say I never touch them.'

He looked up at me for the first time and frowned.

'But there's just one thing worse than drink,' he rasped. 'Women!'

'I have been happily married,' I managed to croak, 'for twenty-five years.'

'I have them in here every day. And the married men are the worst. Home, faith, fatherland all gone down the Swanee to fly after some ugly strap of a farmer's daughter.'

'I happen to be married to a farmer's daughter and she is not an ugly strap.'

'And that's another thing. The children are neglected. Never get a decent hot meal, dressed in rags and out all day robbing orchards. A law unto themselves. And you call this a Christian country.'

'I didn't call this country anything.'

'And then you have every spare penny spent on those dirty papers they send over from London.'

I can't go on not this week, anyhow. In five minutes I had completely forgotten the object of my call, which was to get a quotation for the removal of furniture. I found myself making abject confessions on small but rather personal matters such as occasionally sleeping in my s.h.i.+rt on particularly cold nights in winter. I cannot remember whether at some stage I broke down and cried. Certainly I was terrified. The ogre opposite me seemed Evil incarnate. I will see if I am strong enough this day week to take up again the shattered thread of my narrative. Right now I am going out to have a small whiskey.

That business about moving house.

I presume this week to lay to my heart this flattering unction that the reader who looks at this also saw what I said last week about the havoc and horror of 'moving house'. I promised to continue the grim record. Today I make the attempt. I write this 'at home'. Those gaunt words may possibly convey what I mean. I have not yet been railroaded. I am still at home, but in a very quaking one. How soon will the ceiling come down?

The ogre whom I had met in his own office had said that before an estimate could be given, an inspection would be necessary. At the time I thought this reasonable enough. After all, if somebody has to s.h.i.+ft something, surely that somebody is ent.i.tled to a preview of the stuff to be s.h.i.+fted?

The Inspector Cometh.

I was in a state of terror. Every knock at the door gave me fresh spasms.

Eventually, the worst happened. Himself was on the doorstep. I had quite forgotten about this sinister term 'Inspection' but was soon to learn its true meaning. He was to auction stuff, therefore wanted to know what the stuff was. The true meaning of the word was The Great Snoop, the derogation of myself personally and the undisguised implication that my property was rubbish.

I opened the door myself. He stepped into the hall and, to my alarm, started to take off coat and hat. This clearly meant he was going to stay for a while if not, indeed, for a whole weekend. My wife had often reproached me for my bad companions and dissolute pals. What would she make of this situation when she returned from her morning shopping? It boded ill for me.

'I'll just stick this stuff,' he said, fingering his outer vestments, 'on the rack.'

The thing I have in my hall is what is commonly called a hall-stand. It is a sort of family heirloom, made of mahogany and at least a hundred years old. At least technically it is an antique and may be of great value. I would be surprised but not quite flabbergasted if a diligent search of its interior revealed the inscription 'A. Stradivarius fecit' carefully concealed. Yet this gorilla called it a rack!

'I hope you're not going to take this up,' he said, stamping on the floor of my hall, 'it's always better to keep the floor covered when you're selling. Woodworm, you know. Buyers are cuter than you think.'

It was perfectly good linoleum, bought not two years before. I just gaped. He was already in the main living-room off the hall.

'Well, good heavens,' he said as if stunned, ' what is that?'

'You mean with the four legs?'

'Yes, just there in the centre.'

'It is supposed to be a table.'

He laughed coa.r.s.ely and made an entry in a small dirty notebook he had produced. 'We might even call it an objet d'art at that,' he remarked. 'The legs is all bawways. But we could throw it in with something worth flogging. People count every half crown these days, you know.'