Puckoon Read Online Free PDF

of beer revealed. ' Oh , dat's
mine,' said Foggerty, who was not such a fool after all.
    'Come on, Stan lad,' said O'Brien,
'give us one of yer love songs, one of dem with all the strains.'
    The spotty lad gave Mrs O'Toole an
appealing look.
    'All right then, we're not too busy.'
Despite the absence of a piano player, the lad came and stood dutifully by the
mute instrument. '
    Ladies and Gentlemen - ' he began. ' Order , please.' ' Silence for the
singer.' 'Is it free?'
    The lad went on: 'I should like to
sing the late J. Collard Jackson's lovely song "Eileen, My Eileen."'
    He raised the lid of the
beer-saturated piano, struck a note and started singing a different one. The
lad opened a raw red mouth, revealing great harp strings of saliva. At first no
sound same, then, welling from the back of his body there came a quivering,
tense, tinny sound, like a tram issuing from a tunnel. With the arrival of the
first uncertain note, the lad's eyes glazed over, as though a stricture of the
bowels was imminent; the singer's body went rigid, a series of stomach
convulsions ensued, then the whole body quivered. It
even frightened Dr Goldstein.
    '
Eileeeeeeeeeeeeeen ! Yoooou arrree my Queeeeennnn . . .'
    The agonized notes seemed to swell up
from the thorax and pass hurriedly inwards towards the back of the head, where
they were apparently trapped and reduced by a three-inch cavity skull;
rebounding, they escaped by struggling down one side of his clogged nose at
strength three.
    ' My Queeeeeeeeeeeeenn The finest I've ever seeeeeeeeeeeeeen ...'
    Puzzled spectators observed that his
lower jaw, unlike yours or mine, remained static; it was the top of his head
that moved. On high notes it was so acutely angled, most of the time was spent
looking up the singer's nose, a terrible sight to behold. He in-dulged in an
orgy of meaningless gestures, even the word 'it' was sung, trembling with
catarrhal extasy; time and again he raised his skinny arms to heaven, revealing
a ragged armpit from which protruded tufts of brown hair. Veins stood out on
his forehead, and sweat ran down his face as, purple with strain, he braced
himself for the last great note; bending his knees, clenching his fists, he
closed his eyes and threw back his head. In that tacit moment the observant
Foggerty spoke:
    ' Hey ,
Mister, you got a bogey up yer nose.'
    The last great note burst and was
lost in a sea of irreverent laughter. Red-faced, tears drowning his eyes, he
returned to the bar. The world of music was safer by far and J. Collard Jackson
stopped turning in his grave.
    The air outside was still and humid.
Without warning, the sky lit up in a moment of fluorescent anger: a fistful of
thunder racketed over Puckoon. ' God save us all from
the Protestant thunder,' gasped two wax-white old biddies, clutching their
bedclothes and making arthritic signs of the cross. ' Quick ,
Millie, the
Po
,' gasped the elder sister. ' Coming , coming, Sarah!'
    'Too late, Millie, too
late.'
    The reply came in a long, damp moan.
    Cool spindles of long-fingered rain came racing to the eager ground. Earth gurgled under the
delicious assault, the attarahent smell of earth and water wedded came wafting
from the ground.
    Heavier and heavier it fell. Even at
this late hour, ducks on the village pond could be heard acclaiming the deluge.
The whole sky was a cullender of water. Again and again lightning hurried
across the sky, blossoming like electric roses; the temperature fell, the closeness
split, a great song of silence followed.
    Millie was changing the bed linen,
spiders tested their webs and a drunk called Hermonogies K. Thuckrutes lay face
down in a gutter, singing softly.
    ' Good , we
could have done with that little lot,' said O'Brien, looking out the pub
window.
    Outside there was a strange muffled
sound. The pub door opened slowly, and there, reeling, smoke-blackened, and
smelling strangely of burnt rubber and singed flesh, was the near-carbonized
figure of the Milligan. The whole pub