The Balls of Malta
By L.T.Jordan

(1987. All rights reserved)

It was, as they say at home, a nice soft morning as I made my way up Grafton
Street to meet my intended brother-in-law for a couple of pints and a chat.

We call it "soft" whenever the rain falls horizontally and we hope to God it
will pass quickly.

So there I was, rain streaking down the back of my neck, shoes leaking, no
raincoat between me and the elements. Not that I'd forgotten, you
understand. I merely didn't own one. I did, however, own a heavy Crombie
overcoat, and a lovely thing it was. Thrown over your bed on a winter's
night it was a darlin' thing. Good enough to dress out a corpse.
Regrettably, it was in the pawn. Very changeable weather, as my Mother would
have it, you wouldn't know what to be pawning. The fact that it had been
placed in the pawn earlier that morning meant that I had a few shillings to
spend and sure, who can have everything?

Out of the downpour I ran and into the dark comfort of McDaid's pub in Harry
Street there to find Lorcan, my intended brother-in-law.

"The hard man, Larry. How's the form?"

"Not bad, Lorcan. Yourself?"

"Grand, thank God. Eh, Larry, this is Brendan Behan.

I should mention that this conversation, like many others that followed it,
took place entirely in Irish, for Lorcan placed no value on things English,
nor did Brendan who had gone on record at the age of 16 by trying,
unsuccessfully, to blow up a British warship in Liverpool.

He had gone to Borstal for his trouble and while there had taken a leaf from
another Irish writer who, upon reading 'War and Peace,' announced, "Jaysus,
but that's a grand ould story. I hink I'll write one meself."

Brendan's first effort, "I was a Borstal Boy," appeared in an Irish journal
called 'The Bell.' Much later he turned this material into 'The Borstal
Boy,' which became a best seller and prompted Kenneth Tynan to write: "If
the English hoard words like misers, the Irish spend them like sailors; and
Brendan Behan, Dubllin's obstreperous poet-playwright is one of the biggest
spenders in this line since the young Sean O'Casey. Behan sends language out
on a swaggering spree, ribald, flushed, and spoiling for a fight."

Dublin, as someone else once said, is a city where wit is prized above
riches. It is also one of the most written about and least cared for cities
in the world. A city which sometimes manifests a curious and somewhat
ineradicable bent for the second-rate, as though it found the first-rate
uncomfortable to live with. Or simply boring.

On one of my rare visits to Dublin a few years back - notice I didn't say
holiday, for a trip to Dublin for me is more of a pilgrimage than anything
else - I spent a few quiet hours in a pub with Brendan's widow, Beatrice.
Oddly enough, it was raining that evening, too. We chatted pleasantly about
any number of things, including Brendan, his work, his friends, and the
like.

Her own story, 'My Life With Brendan,' had been published the year before.
It is a sad story of a man who could quote an 18th-century Gaelic poet as
readily as he could quote Joyce, Yeats, O'Casey, or Wilde. A story of a man
who said of himself, "Success is damn near killing me. If I had my way, I
shuld prescribe that success go to every man for a month; then he should be
given a pension and forgotten."

She felt, she said, that she had to write it. She had been quite upset with
Ulick O'Connor's recent book, 'Brendan,' and its allegations about Brendan's
supposed bisexuality.

When I asked her what life was like now, she answered, "It's like living in
a railway station."

As we approched closing time, I asked how she thought Brendan would like
best to be remembered. Her answer took me off guard, and yet, upon
reflection, it was dead on the mark. "Brendan would like to have a theatre
named after him. That would  be nice."

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The morning in question was in the early fifties, 1951, I think, and Brendan
was still earning his living  as a housepainter. His literary career, like
his death in 1964 at the age of 41, was still in front of him.

My intended brother-in-law was at that time an unpublished poet who spent
most of his working days balancing mathematical equations in a government
section called, CIE, for Coras Iompair Eireann, or the public conveyance
department.

Like most government bodies CIE never seemed to make a profit, and given the
irregular schedule of their buses, I'm not surprised. Listening to politicos
forever justifying the economics of it all would put bloody years on a man.
Seems we used to stand at a bust stop for a lifetime waiting for a bus to
come along. On one occasion I heard an old woman screech at a bus conductor,
"It's not CIE at all yiz should be callin' yourselves, but the Bleedin'
Banana Bus Company for yiz always come in bleedin' bunches."

How McDaid's ever became a hangout for poets, writers, actors, painters, and
a couple of defrocked priests is beyond me, but if you sat there long enough
you'd be worn out shaking hands. Perhaps it was because the place was an
ass's roar from the Gaiety and Olympia Theatres, or that Trinity College was
down at the end of Grafton Street or that the College of Surgeons and the
National University were around the corner.

Or maybe it was because people felt comfortable in the place. It was
certainly without pretension. You'd never see a policeman in it and the pint
was very good.

The barman called everyone "Mister EH," which, I suppose, made us all feel
equal. No names, no pack drill. "Ah, good mornin' Mister EH. Nice mornin'
thank God. Yes it is. A pint is it? Right yeh are." What can'd be cured must
be endured.

"Ah, Larry, ould son, Brendan was just telling me a gas bloody story," said
Lorcan, handing me a pint. May the giving hand never falter.

"Seems like some Yank came out of The Shelbourne Hotel the other morning and
got into Whacker Nolan's taxi. Poor man was devasted by the incompetence of
the Celt, as he put it, and asked Whacker if we Irish had a word for
'manana' like the Mexicans do. Whacker, God love him, never bats an eyelid
and says to your man, 'Yessir, matter of fact we have three of them, but
they all lack the urgency of the Spanish.'"

There are worse ways of spending a rainy morning, I'll tell you.

Brendan and I shared one thing in common. We were both Northsiders, having
the dubious distinction of being born a few short streets away from each
other in the slums of the north side of Dublin. Lorcan, on the other hand,
was born in Dun Laoghaire, a fashionable suburb on the south side, as the
newspaper columnists would have it, although I always thought God broke the
shovel when he made that place.

Brendan was about to tell another story when the door of the pub opened on
an elderly and very wet postman. "Large glass of Power's, please," said the
postman and dropped his cape and postbag to the floor.

"There's no such thing as a large glass of whiskey, as Oliver St.John
Gogarty once remarked," said Brendan.

"Ah, yes. Yer man. How's he keepin' at all?" inquired the postman.

"The ould bollocks is not well at all."

"Jaysus, all the ould crowd is droppin' like flies."

The next time I met Brendan was about a  month later in a pub in Henry
Street. Long since gone, it was called the Tower Bar and looked across the
street at Radio Eireann, the state-run broadcasting system. We were
fortunate enough in those times, I suppose, in that we didn't have to waste
time choosing a particular radio station to listen to, for there was only
the one, Radio Eireann.

If you had a strong aerial you could always tune in the BBC. This, however,
was considered to be unacceptable behavior in my circle of family and
friends. "God knows what class of cod's wallop thoe people would have you
listen to," was the way my father phrased it.

The Tower was home to any number of radio types who were given to dashing
across the street between broadcasts, throwing down a few quick gins, and
racing back to announce the travails of mankind to anyone who might be
listening. It was only strangers who lingered close to the door. Regulars
knew the dangers of blocking the way of hungover announcers.

"Jaysus, Paddy, a large gin, and quick. The nerves are gone."

"Why don't yeh have them out, like the teeth?"

"Never mind the bloody chat, and give me another. Put it on the slate."

The check-cashing and bill-paying procedures in the Tower on Saturday
mornings would do justice to the House of Rothschild.

Anyway, there we were on a warm Saturday morning, Brendan, Lorcan and
myself, having a few jars on the strength of Lorcan's paycheck when we were
joined by a radio actor whose name I've forgotten. He was, I recall, a large
man with rabbit eyes, smll soft hands, and a voice as gentle as a summer
lake. He also had the reputation of being a "toucher," one who is forever
borrowing money and forgetting where he got it from. But in a nice way.

"Ah, yes. The five pound note, of course, to be sure. Would Friday evening
be time enough for you? Terribly sorry about the delay. Had it for you last
Friday, but didn't see you here."

The radio actor was, as usual, in the horrors. His complexion was
reminiscent of white blotting paper. "Did you have any breakfast at all?"
asked Brendan. "A few eggs and rashers would do you the world of good."

"Merciful Jaysus, Brendan, but I couldn't look at the flag this morning,"
said the actor and called for a double gin. "I'm stuck with a bloody author
this morning, if you don't mind," he continued. "Introducing his new book on
my programme."

"Any author who has to introduce his own book shouldn't have bothered
writing it," said Brendan.

"Understandable, Brendan," said the actor, "but he's gooing to read from it
as well."

Brendan lifted his pint to his lips, drained the glass, and ran the back of
his hand across his mouth. "Reading your own stuff," he said, "is a form of
mental incest."

Shortly after that exchannge Brendan shouted a greeting at a small man in a
felt hat, and walked away from us. I recognized the man as Brian O'Nolan, a
famous columnist for 'The Irish Times,' whose writings appeared under the
pseudonym Myles na Gopaleen, or Myles of the Little Horses. He was famoous
as Flann O'Brien, the author of four novels in English, as well as the
famous work in Irish, 'An Beal Bocht,' since translated as 'The Poor Mouth.'
James Joyce said of O'Nolan, "A real writer with the true comic spirit." And
Brendan is quoted as saying, "I read him with relief and jealousy."

When O'Nolan left the pub, Brendan returned to our company, laughing.
"O'Nolan just told me he saw a huge Buick outside the American Embassy in
Merrion Square, and that it reminded him of a pregnant whale blwoing a mouth
organ." Thus, a wave of laughter followed O'Nolan's exit into the warm
sunshine.

But our glasses were bordering on empty and I doubted if we hade the price
of three pints between us. "Jaysus, but a ball of malt would go down well,"
said Brendan, a ball of malt being what a double whiskey is called in
Dublin.

Just then a young man entered the pub dressed in the resplendent
gray-and-red uniform of the Knights of Malta. In his outstretched hand he
held a cardboard box bedecked with small paper flags on pins, these flags
bearing the Maltese cross and being sold for whatever you'd care to give to
support the charitable works of the good Knights. You slipped your money
into a slot in the box and the Knight placed a flag in the lapel of your
coat.

The young man looked at us and rattled the few coins in his box. "Merciful
Mother," intoned the actor, "what in God's Holy Name is that?"

"With any luck at all," said Brendan, "it would be the money for the balls of Malta." €


<<<<<< Back