WHEN Georgie Canty saw Louis Golden at the Customs counter of the airport he muttered "Bastard!" under his breath: which was what he hoped most people in Ireland thought of Mister Louis Bloody Well Golden, editor of The Daily Crucifix, "Ireland's One and Only Catholic Daily"—and one too many at that!
Georgie's eyes closed, his mouth zipped tight. His duodenal walked slowly all round his waist with spiked boots. It stuck a red-hot sword in through his navel. It pulled his liver out through his ribs. His eyes closed in agony. . . .
He lifted his lids and his eyes swivelled down the counter-length at Golden—at his long neck like a heron, his little rabbit's puss with the two white teeth like a nutria, the hunched shoulders of a constipated stork, and the same soapy grin for the Customs officer that he probably switched on whenever he'd be talking to a bishop. As he looked at him Georgie wondered if there ever had been a plane-crash in which everybody was saved, except one man.
That night at the United Bankers! With himself and Golden, two of a platform of four, debating the motion That the Irish are the Most Tolerant Race in the World. Three sentences. Three not too lengthy sentences about how silly it is for Irishmen to be chasing Freemasons as if they had four horns and two tails; and there he was, the next morning, crucified in The Crucifix under a three-column headline—BANKERS DEFEND MASONS—and, on page four, a leading article entitled, "So this is Holy Ireland?" signed Louis Paul Golden. Naturally he was barely inside the door of the bank before he was called into the parlor.
"I understand, Mister Canty," old Plummer smiled at him across the carpet with teeth that would clip a hedge, "I understand that you saw fit to defend Freemasonry in public last night? Is that correct?"
Now, of course every man in the bank knows perfecfly well that there isn't a month that old Plumtree Gum doesn't toddle off to the Masonic Hall with his little apron and all the rest of his regalia; and, for all anybody knows, he might be the great Mah Jong of Molesworth Street, he might be the Prince Mason of the Western World. So, what could Georgie do but rub his palms, smile a man-of-the-world smile, and utter these famous last words:
"Irishmen are in many ways absurd..."
They heard Plummer's roar outside in the Foreign Exchange Department. After that it was ding-dong-bell for five minutes... Who—would somebody please, please, tell himmwho ever asked anybody to defend anybody in private or in public? And if, by any possible chance, however remote, anybody ever did happen to require the kind services of anybody why should anybody think that his brilliant services were what was specifically demanded by the occasion7 And, furthermore, there were people in this city who were very well equipped to defend themselves for themselves. And furthermore, he himself had lived in this city for f~ty odd years and he had never made any secret of the fact that he was a member of the Worshipful Grand Order, and if he was ever required to defend himself he could do it very well indeed thank you without anybody's assistance! And, furthermore, and especially, he would be greatly obliged ff people would have the goodness to remember that their job, first, foremost and before all, was to consider the interests of the institution that paid them and made them, which would be a jolly sight better thing for all concerned than to be going out and opening their bloody gobs to make roaring asses of themselves in the bloody press, and he would be infinitely obliged to Mr. Canty if he would remember that. And, furthermore...
Not a peep out of Georgie. He sat dumb as a goldfish until he heard the voice of God Almighty bidding him good-morning in a voice like a hangman's chaplain, followed by the words: "I will consider later, Mr. Canty, what disciplinary action may be most appropriate to the occasion." As Georgie walked back over the two-and-a-half miles of marble floor to his cubby-hole not a sound was heard, not a funeral note, except for some scut softly whistling "Will ye no come back again?" He had not done much work in his cubby-hole that day, waiting to be packed off to some back-of-beyond like Killorglin or Cahirciveen. After six weeks without one good night's sleep, he had applied for a week's leave of absence, on a doctor's certificate.
THE loud-speaker retailed a female voice in Irish, of which he understood only the word Gurrabbulluballoo, which means, "Thanks." He opened his eyes to see the queue trailing out. He was the last man on the plane. He took the last seat. He found himself sitting beside the last man in the world he had wanted to see again. Their safety-belts got entangled. Golden looked up and at once shot out his paw:
"Georgie Canty, for all the world! Well, isn't this the real McCoy. This is great luck."
Georgie shook his hand warmly:
"Louis Golden. Well, I'm delighted. Simply delighted to see you. Traveling far?"
"Let me help you with that belt," said Golden, and he tucked Canty in like a baby in its pram. Then he patted his thigh. "How's tricks? I heard you weren't too well."
"Not bad, not bad. And yourself? And the missus? All the care doing well?"
As they roared down the runway for the take-off Golden blessed himself piously. Canty thought it just as well to do a fiddle, also, around his third vest-button.
"I suppose," he said presently, trying to suggest (but only suggest) a faint sneer, "you're off to some ecclesiastical conference?"
Golden leaned over with a confidential, crooked grin and nudged Canty.
"Mattherofact, d'ye know what I was doing the last time I was in Paris? I was touring an Australian Jesuit around the night-clubs. He was very agreeably surprised."
"In which sense?" asked Georgie, modulating between innocence and insinuation. Golden only laughed and waved a tolerant claw.
"Harmless. A bit of leg. Nothing more. The usual routine. We did about five or six of them. Folies Bergeres. Bal Tabarin. Chin-Chin. Eve. The Blue Angel. Nothing at all to it."
Georgle squinted sideways at him, thinking of the moths in the Bal Tabarin coming out in the altogether.
"Did you approve?" he enquired.
"It's not a question of approving." When he said "question" his two white teeth went bare. "It's all a matter of atmosphere. When in Rome, and so on."
He grabbed the hostess by the hip and ordered two double-brandies. This, mind you, at nine-thirty in the morning!
"Morals," he explained to Georgie, "morals in the sense of mores are always affected by time and place. For example, would you walk down O'Connell Street in the middle of the noon-day with nothing on but a Lastex slip?"
"The Guards'd have me in the Bridewell in two ticks."
"There was a fella walked down the Rue Royale last year with nothin' at all on. He was only line five francs. Betty Grable could walk down the beac at Biarritz in a G-string and a smile and nobod would look twice at her."
The brandy was going to Georgie's head. He leaned over and laughed:—
"I believe Lady Godiva rode down Broadway wan time in her skin and everybody ran out in wild excitement to see the white horse. But if that be so what's this I hear about the bishops not wanting girls to wear cycling-shorts?"
"Who would? cackled Golden, and they went hard at it.
They were still arguing the toss over the Channel, and whether it was the six double-brandies, or the elevating sensation of being up in the air, Georgie began, in spite of himself, to find the little runt almost bearable. It was not until the Eiffel Tower appeared out of the smoke that he brought down the question of Freemasons:—
"You knew blooming well that night that I wasn't defending Freemasonry. But in spite of that, you bastard, you came out in your rotten rag and tore the guts out of me."
"Editorial policy." Blandly.
"Do you realize that you nearly cost me my job?"
And he told him all about it.
"Ah! Not" cried Louis, genuinely distressed. "For God's sake! Is that true? Well now doesn't that show ye what Freemasons are!"
All the same he stuck to his guns. Georgie had to grant him that he stuck to his guns.
THEY were still at it as they whirled around The Undying Flame in the bus; and as Georgie had not booked a hotel he went off with Louis; and by the time they were finishing lunch, and two bottles of Nuits Saint George, they had arrived at the Arian heresymabout which they both knew sweet dam-all —and were still at homoeusion and homousion at half-past four in front of two Otards and the Care de Paris in the blazing sun.
"Now, look Louis, you flaming scoundrel," Georgie was saying, "your trouble is you're a moralist. All you want is an autocratic, oligarchic Church laying down the law about everything from cremation to contraceptives. You're a Puritan! That's what you aret"
Louis leaned a gentle hand on Georgie's arm and breathed on him like a father confessor.
"Georgie! I'll tell you something. Here in Paris. As bloke to bloke. I have exactly the same pashtms as you have. But I know me pashunsl I know themw and they're dynamite! And what's more, the pashuns of every Irishman are dynamitel And double dynamite! And triple dynamite! And if the priests of Ireland are hard on their own people, it's because they know that if they once took the lid off the pashuns of Irish men and Irish women, aye and of Irish children, the country would BLOW UP! Look at Saint Paul!"
Georgie looked and saw a smashing blonde. Louis dragged him ashore, and the pair of them took Saint Paul down to the Rue Donan where Golden knew a little bar called of all things Le Crucifix; and then they took Saint Augustine, who was a bloke Georgie said he never liked—and he didn't care who knew it!—across to a bar on the Quatre Septembre where they had four flat Guinesses for enid Ireland's sake; and then they took the Manichees and the Jansenists, and Pascal up to the bar at the Gale dn Nord; and then they went up to Sacre Coeur to say a prayer, and lean on the balustrade, and Louis explained all about Modernism to Georgie, and Georgie said it was his cup of tea, and to hell with the Council of Trent anyway for jiggering up everything; and then they had dinner near the old Pigalle, with two more bottles of Nuits Saint George; and then nothing would do Louis but to prove he wasn't a Puritan by going off[to the Bal Tabarin where they had two bottles of champagne obligatoire at three thousand francs a nose.
All Georgie could remember after that was seeing twelve girls coming out on the platform, with about as much on them, if it was all sewn together, as would make a fair-sized loin-cloth for one Zulu, and telling Louis, with his arm out to the twelve girls:
"There y'are! Janshenist'd shay thatsh shinful! And you—And you're a fellow I never liked, and I don't care what you think!—you agree with them!"
"No! Exhplain to ye! Nothing that God made is shinful Couldn't be. Shin is in us. Those girls aren't even an occashun of shin. And why? 'Cos they don't bother us."
"Bother me," said Georgie. "Bother me a helluva lot. That little wan with the green hair would bother Saint Augustine!"
"God's truth?" asked Louis.
"'Struth," said Georgie.
"Come on out," said Louis, getting up.
"Sit down," shouted Georgie, dragging him back.
"C'mout," said Louis, getting up again.
"Down!" shouts Georgie, hauling him down again. "Out!" shouts Louis.
"Be quiet!" shouts everybody, and your two men began to shout at everybody else, and to fight one another and a table gets knocked over, and champagne gets spilled on a girl's dress, and the twelve girls pay no attention at all only kicking away up in the air like galvanized geese, and the two of them get hauled out and slung out on their backs on the pavement. Like one man they rush back. Like one man they get slung out again. At that they get up and they look into one another's faces, their noses one inch apart:—
"You dirty little Freemason!" says Golden, baring his two teeth, and his lips glistening in the moonlight. "You rotten little Puritan!" says Georgie with the hate of hell in his voice.
At that the two of them stopped dead as if they were a pair of waxworks out of the Musde Grevin, horrified by the sight of the hate in one another's faces. They were so horrified that they burst into a wild fit of laughing. They rocked there in one another's arms, falling over one another with the bitterness of the laughing and the hatred and the shame.
A taxi drew up beside them. They tumbled into it. And the next place they were was in the square in front of Notre Dame because Georgie said he wanted to see if the moon could laugh at them as much as it laughed at the gargoyles. The square was empty— it was after one in the morning. The two of them linked arms and began to stroll along the river singing the saddest Irish dirges they knew. Georgie used to say afterwards that he often thought of the poor women inside in the Hotel Dieu enduring the pangs of childbirth while the two of them were bawling away about their wild Irish rose, and wouldn't she come home again, Kathl-e-e-en! For the rest of the week they were inseparable.
WHEN Georgie and Louis meet nowadays in the street, they always greet one another warmly. They ask after one another's health. They send their regards to one another's wives. If a companion asks either of them, "Who was that?" he will say the name, add, "Not a bad sort of chap," and feel the shame of that night burning in him all over again. For, of course, the truth of the whole matter is that once you go on a drunk with a fellow you're stuck with him for life; and in Ireland every bitter word we say has to be paid for sooner or later in shame, in pity, in kindness, and perhaps even in some queer sort of perverted love.
