Puckoon by Spike Milligan Page A

the
wall map.
    'Hmnn. Sergeant, bring me the
constabulary strength of Puckoon.'
    'Right, sir,' Behan
issued smartly from and back to the room.
    The Inspector turned the pages. 'Heavens alive! We're supposed to have a police strength of
five out there and there's only two left. What's happened to the other three ?'
    ' Six years
for assault and battery, sir!'
    'That's the place then. We'll train
Ah Pong and then send him up there.'
    At 4.32 on the stroke of midnight, 7
dedicated men sat around a table in the vestry of St Theresa.
    'Men,' began Father Rudden, looking
at the faces of O'Mara, O'Brien, Milligan, Rafferty and Dr Goldstein. 'I think
you all know why we're here.'
    They nodded their heads, some
grunted, Milligan said 'Yes.'
    'Good,' said Rudden. 'The trouble is
this. Three people from Puckoon have to go through that Customs gate to see
their departed. Those are the graves of - ' he read from a small piece of paper
' - Patrick Grogan, Harold O'Lins and Dan Doonan. God rest their souls. So - '
he sucked his breath through his teeth ' - unpleasant as I find it, I feel
obliged to remove their bodies from that side for reburial over here. This can
only be achieved by asking their permission - ' he pointed towards the Customs
'- which I resent! Or bring them back secretively under cover of darkness. I
favour the latter.'
    'Which is the latter, Father?' said
Milligan.
    ' That's the
under cover of darkness one. I have devised an infallible plan, which mustn't
fail.'
    The brass stare of the oil lamp
suffused the room, the faces of the plotters bathed yellow in the tallow light.
The priest outlined his plan and swore them all to secrecy.
    ' Before you
go,' said Father Rudden, ' let's drink a toast!' He took a bottle of unblessed
communion wine from the cupboard.
    'Beaujolais,' he said phonetically, '
1920, a good year.'
    ' Be a
better year when you open it, Father.'
    'Patience, Milligan, patience.'
    Patience, thought Milligan, that word
was invented by dull buggers who couldn't think quick enough.
    'Now then,' the priest was saying,
'wine must be treated with respect.' So saying, he shook the bottle violently.
'Mix all the goodness in,' he said gleefully.
    Goldstein's Bacchanalian soul
withered at the barbarities being meted out to the royal and most sensitive
liquid known to men.
    Red
Burgundy
. He
couldn't remember how long he had loved wine, but Red Burgundy had been his
mistress since he was eighteen.
    Year after year his father, the late
Ben Tovim Goldstein, had laid down wines in the little cellar under their
house. Not being well off, the wine was usually only served on holidays. And
such a fuss was made of it. Even in the frugal rationing days of the war, when
they had a house in North Finchley, even with such food as tinned grade three
Russian salmon, Poppa Goldstein would fuss along in the kitchen, making momma
add this and that.
    The salmon would be cooked in cheap
white Algerian wine and a hot mayonnaise sauce poured over the top. New
potatoes grown on the allotment were French fried slightly brown and dusted
with cheese at the last moment. Poppa would bring it in to his five hungry
children with a great deal of noise and a good deal of rhetoric.
    'Caught this morning in a Scottish
river and especially flown down by the r.a.f.,' he would say. ' Now , with this entree, what do we drink ?' 'White!'
chorused his indoctrinated children. 'Yes, white,' he would beam.
    He would then take the white from a
small ice bucket and feel it.
    ' Hmm,' he would murmur, looking
pensively at the ceiling,' Forty degrees, just right,' and he would pinch his
thumb and forefinger together and kiss it away. He made much of wrapping a
clean serviette around the neck of the bottle. 'White Burgundy 1937, Chateau
bottled, and imported by Mr Patrick Ford of London, who only bought at the
candle light sales.'
    Now he would spill a little in a
Paris goblet, and swirl it around, every now and then tilting the glass forward
and savouring it with his