The Queen's Own Evaders

"Do you doubt --? the Connemara Runners are best!"

"No! The Galway Cinema Ramblers!"

"The Waterford Shoes!"

These words, sprung out on the smoky air in a great commotion of tongues, ricocheted off the bar mirrors, passed undiminished through hiss of spigot, clink of glass and a great fish-scaling of coins, to reach me at the far rim of the crowd.

Alert, I tuned my ear.

"When it comes to that, the Dear Patriots are the men--"

"The Queen's Own Evaders! No finer team e'er took the incline. Their reflex: uncanny. Of course, here in Dublin, our grandest man is Doone."

"Doone, hell! Hoolihan!"

The argument raged above the tenor's singing, the concertinas dying hard in the Four Provinces saloon at the top of Grafton Street in the heart of Dublin. The argument was all the more violent because it was getting on late at night. With the clock nearing 10, there was the sure threat of everything going shut at once, meaning ale taps, accordions, piano lids, soloists, trios, quartets, pubs, sweetshops and cinemas. In a great heave like the Day of Judgment, half Dublin's population would be thrown out into raw lamplight, there to find themselves wanting in gum-machine mirrors. Stunned, their moral and physical sustenance plucked from them, the souls would wander like battered moths for a moment, then wheel about for home. All the more reason, then, for fiery arguments to warm the blood against the cold.

"Doone!"

"Doone, my hat! Hoolihan!"

At which point the smallest, loudest man, turning, saw the curiosity enshrined in my all-too-open face and shouted:

"You're American, of course! And wondering what we're up to? Would you bet on a mysterious sporting event of great local consequence? Nod once, and come here!"

I nodded, smiled and strolled my Guinness through the uproar and jostle as one violinist gave up destroying a tune, and an old man took his hands out of the piano's mouth and hurried over.

"Name's Timulty!" The little man gripped my hand.

"Douglas," I said. "I write for motion pictures."

"Fillums!" gasped everyone.

"Films," I admitted, modestly.

"It staggers belief! Timulty seized me tighter. "You'll be the best judge in history. In sports now, do you know the cross-country, 440 and such man-on-foot excursions?"

"I have personally witnessed two complete Olympic Games."

"Not just fillums, but the world competition." Timulty grabbed his friends for support. "Then, good grief, surely you've heard of the special all-Irish decathlon event which has to do with picture theaters?"

"I've heard only what I take to be the names of teams, tonight."

"Hear more, then! Hoolihan!"

An even littler fellow, pocketing his wet harmonica, leapt forward, beaming. "Hoolihan. That's me. The best anthem sprinter in all Ireland!"

"What sprinter?" I asked.

"A-n-t-" spelled Hoolihan, much too carefully, "-h-e-m. Anthem. Sprinter. The fastest."

"Have you been to the Dublin cinemas?" asked Timulty.

"Last night," I said. "I saw a Clark Gable film. Night before, an old Charles Laughton. Night before that--"

"Enough! You're fanatic, as are all the Irish. If it weren't for cinemas and pubs to keep the poor and workless off the street or in their cups, we'd have pulled the cork and let the isle sink long ago. Well!" He clapped his hands. "When the picture ends each night, have you observed a peculiarity of the breed?"

"End of the picture?" I mused. "Hold on. You can't mean the national anthem, can you?"

"Can we, boys?" cried Timulty.

"We can!" cried all.

"Any night, every night, for tens of dreadful years, at the end of each damn fillum, as if you'd never heard the baleful tune before," grieved Timulty, "the orchestra strikes up for Ireland. And what happens then?"

"Why," said I, falling in with it, "if you're any man at all, you try to get out of the theater in those few precious moments between the end of the film and the start of the anthem."

"Buy the Yank a drink!"

"After all," I said, "I'm in Dublin four months now: The anthem has begun to pale. No disrespect meant."

(continued on page 171)Queen's Own Evaders(continued from page 84)

"And none taken!" said Timulty. "But, breathing the same air 10,000 times makes the senses reel. So, as you've noted, in that God-sent three- or four-second interval, any audience in its right mind beats it the hell out. And the best of the crowd is--"

"Doone," I said. "Or Hoolihan. Your anthem sprinters!"

They smiled at me. I smiled at them.

We were all so proud of my intuition, that I bought them a round of Guinness.

"Here's to" -- I lifted my glass -- "the Connemara Runners--?"

"Right!"

"The Galway Cinema Ramblers? The Waterford Shoes?"

"Don't forget the Dear Patriots, and the finest out-of-the-country team of them all, the Queen's Own Evaders," said Timulty.

"Let me guess," said I. "With a name like that, the Evaders must be Irish living in London, who run extra fast so as not to be in the theater when God Save the Queen is played!"

Licking the suds from our lips, we regarded each other with benevolence.

"Now," said Timulty, his voice husky with emotion, his eyes squinted off at the scene, "at this very moment, 100 yards down the hill in the dark of the Grafton Street theater, seated in the fourth row center is--"

"Doone," said I.

"The man's eerie." Hoolihan tipped his cap to me.

"Doone's there all right, seeing the Deanna Durbin fillum brought back by the asking. And in just 10 minutes the cinema will be letting the customers out. Now, if we should send Hoolihan here in for a speed and agility test, Doone would be quick to the challenge."

"He's not at the show just for the anthem sprint, is he?"

"Good grief, no. It's the Deanna Durbin songs. Doone plays piano here, for sustenance. But, casually noting the entrance of his competitor Hoolihan, who will be conspicuous by his late arrival just across the aisle, well, Doone would know what was up. Saluting each other, they would listen to the dear music until Finis hove in sight."

"Sure --" Hoolihan danced lightly on his toes, flexing his elbows. "Let me at him, let me at him!"

Timulty peered close at me. "Sir, I observe your bewildered disbelief. How is it, you ask, full-grown men have time for such as this? Well, time is the one thing the Irish have in oversupply. With no jobs at hand, what's minor in your country must be made to look major in ours. We have never seen the elephant, but we've learned a bug under a microscope is the greatest beast on earth. So, while it hasn't left the Isles, the anthem sprint's a high-blooded sport. Now, introductions are in order. Here's Fogarty, exit-watcher supreme!"

Fogarty jumped forward, dark eyes piercing left and right.

"Nolan and Clannery, aisle-superintendent judges!"

The two men, called, linked arms and bowed.

"Clancy, timekeeper. And general spectators: O'Neill, Bannion and the Kelly boys, count 'em! Come on!"

I felt as if a vast street-cleaning machine, one of those brambled monsters all mustache and scouring brush, had seized me and now floated me out down the hill toward the multiplicity of little blinking lights where the cinema lured us on.

"Now listen to the rules!" shouted Timulty, hustling beside me. "The essential thing is theaters, of course!"

"Of course!" I yelled back.

"There be the liberal, free-thinking theaters with grand aisles, grand lobbies, exits, and even grander, more spacious, latrines. Some with so much porcelain, the echoes alone put you in shock. Then there's the parsimonious mousetrap cinemas with aisles that squeeze the breath from you, seats that knock your knees, and doors best sidled out of on your way to the Gents' in the sweetshop across the alley. Each theater is carefully assessed before, during and after a sprint, so a man is judged by whether the carpets are worn and trip him, and if there's men and women en masse, or mostly men or mostly women to fight his way through. The worst, of course, is children at the flypaper matinees. The temptation with kids is to lay into them as you'd harvest hay, tossing them like windrows to left and right. So we've stopped that. Now mostly it's nights, here at the Grafton!"

The mob stopped. The twinkling marquee lights sparkled in our eyes and flushed our cheeks rosy.

"The ideal cinema," sighed Fogarty.

"Because..." explained Clannery, "its aisles are not too wide nor too narrow, its exits well-placed, the door hinges oiled; the crowds a proper mixture of sporting-bloods and folk who mind to leap aside should a sprinter, squandering his energy, come vaulting up the aisle."

I had a sudden thought. "Do you -- handicap your runners?"

"Strange you'd speak of that. Sometimes by shifting exits, when the old are too well known. Or seat one chap in the sixth, another in the third row. And if a man turns terrible feverish swift, we add the greatest known handicap of all --"

"Drink...?" I wondered.

"What else? Doone, being fleet, is a two-handicap man. Nolan!" Timulty flourished a bottle. "Run this in. Make Doone take two swigs. Big ones."

Nolan ran.

Timulty pointed. "While Hoolihan, here, having already wandered through all Four Provinces of the pub this night, is amply weighted. Even all!"

"Go now, Hoolihan," said Fogarty. "Let our money be a light burden on you. Burst out that exit, five minutes from now, victorious and first!"

"Synchronize watches!" said Clancy.

"Synchronize my back-behind," said Timulty. "Which of us has more than dirty wrists to stare at? You alone, Clancy, have the time. Hoolihan, inside!"

Hoolihan shook hands with all, as if leaving to tour the world. Waving, he vanished in cinema dark.

Nolan came running back out with an empty bottle.

"Doone's handicapped."

"Good! Now, Clannery, Nolan, check and be sure the sprinters sit opposite each other in the fourth row, caps on, coats half buttoned, scarves furled."

Nolan and Clannery ducked in.

"Two minutes!" announced Clancy. "In two minutes it's --"

"Post time," I said.

"You're a dear lad," admitted Timulty.

Nolan and Clannery hotfooted out.

"All set! Right seats, everything!"

"'Tis almost over! You can tell. Toward the end of any fillum," confided Clannery, "the music has a way of getting out of hand."

"It's loud," agreed Nolan. "Full orchestra and chorus behind the singing maid. I must come for the entirety, tomorrow. Lovely."

"Is it?" said everyone. "What's the tune?"

"Ah, off with the tune!" shouted Timulty. "One minute to go and you ask the tune? Lay the bets. Who's for Doone, who Hoolihan?"

In the multitudinous jabbering and passing about of paper and shillings, I held out four bob.

"Doone," I said.

"Without having seen him?"

"A dark horse," I whispered.

"Well said! Clannery, Nolan, inside, watch sharp there's no jumping the Finis."

In went Clannery and Nolan, happy as boy-dogs.

"Make an aisle; Yank, you over here, with me!"

The men rushed to form a rough aisle on each side of the two closed main-exit doors.

"Fogarty, lay your ear to the door!"

Fogarty did; his eyes widened.

"The damn music's extra loud!"

One of the Kelly boys nudged his brother. "It will be over soon. Whoever's to die is dying this moment. Whoever's to live is bending over him."

"Louder still!" Fogarty, eyes shut, head pressed to the panel, twitched his hands as if to adjust a radio. "There! The grand ta-ta that comes just as Finis or the end jumps on screen!"

"They're off!" I murmured.

"Stand back!" cried Timulty.

We all stared at the door.

"There's the anthem! Tenshun!"

We all stood erect, still staring.

"I hear feet running!" gasped Fogarty.

"Whoever it is had a good start before the anthem --"

The door burst wide.

Hoolihan plunged into view, smiling such a smile as only breathless victors know.

"Hoolihan!" cried the winners.

"Doone!" groaned the losers. "Where's Doone?"

For, while Hoolihan was first, his competitor was nowhere in the soon dispersed and vanished crowd.

"The idiot didn't come out the wrong door --?"

Timulty ventured into the empty lobby.

"Doone?"

No answer.

Someone flung the Gents'-room door wide.

"Doone?"

Not an echo.

"Babe in the manger," hissed Timulty. "Can it be he's broken a leg and is fallen in there somewhere with the mortal agonies?"

"That's it!"

The island of men changed gravities and heaved now toward and through the inner door, down the aisle, I jumping in the air twice to see over the mob's head. It was dim in the vast theater.

"Doone!"

At last we were bunched together near the fourth row on the aisle, exclaiming at what we saw.

Doone, still seated, his hands folded, his eyes shut.

Dead?

None of that.

A tear, large, luminous and beautiful, fell on his cheek. His chin was wet. It was sure he had been crying for some minutes.

The men peered into his face, circling, leaning.

"Doone, are ya sick? What?"

"Ah, God," cried Doone. He shook himself to find the strength, somewhere, to speak.

"Ah, God," he said at last, "she has the voice of an angel."

"Angel!!?"

"That one up there." He nodded.

We all turned to stare at the empty silver screen.

"Is it Deanna Durbin ... ?"

Doone sobbed. "The dear dead voice of me grandmother--"

"Your grandma's underside!" exclaimed Timulty. "She'd no such voice as that!"

"You mean to say," I interrupted, "it was just the Durbin girl kept you from the sprint?"

"Just!" Doone blew his nose and dabbed his eyes. "Just! Why, it would be sacrilege to bound from a cinema after such a recital. You might as well jump across the altar at a wedding or waltz about at a funeral!"

"You could've at least warned us it was no contest," said Timulty.

"How could I? It just crept over me in a divine sickness. That last bit she sang, The Lovely Isle of Innisfree, was it not, Clannery?"

"What else did she sing?" asked Fogarty.

"What else did she sing?" cried Timulty. "He's just lost half of us our day's wages and you ask what else she sang! Get off!"

"Sure, it's money runs the world," Doone agreed, seated there, closing up his eyes, "but it is music holds down the friction."

"What's going on below!?" cried someone, above.

A man leaned from the balcony, puffing a cigarette.

"What's all the rouse?"

"The projectionist," whispered Timulty. Aloud: "Hello, Phil, darling! It's only the team. We've a bit of a problem here, Phil, in ethics, not to say aesthetics. We wonder if, well, could you run the anthem over?"

"Run it over?!"

The winners milled about, rumbling.

"A lovely idea." Doone smiled at himself.

"It is," said Timulty, all guile. "An act of God incapacitated Doone--"

"A 10th-run flicker from the olden days caught him by the short hairs is all," said one of the Kellys.

"All!" protested Doone.

"I think I handicapped him too much," said Nolan, thinking back.

"So the fair thing is--" Timulty, unperturbed, looked to heaven. "Phil, dear boy, also is the last reel of the Deanna Durbin fillum still there?"

"It ain't in the Ladies'," said Phil, smoking steadily.

"What a wit the boy has! Now, Phil, could you just thread it back through the machine and give us the Finis again, too?"

"Is that what you all want?" asked Phil.

The thought of another contest was too good to be passed. Slowly, everyone nodded.

"All right!" Phil shouted. "A shilling on Hoolihan!"

The winners laughed and hooted; they looked to win again. The losers turned on their man: "Do you hear the insult, Doone? Stay awake, man! When the girl sings, damnit, go deaf!"

"There's no audience!" said Timulty, glancing about, "and without them there's no obstacles, no real contest!"

"Why," Fogarty blinked around, "let's all of us be the audience."

"Fine!" Beaming, everyone threw himself into a seat.

"Pardon," I said. "There's no one outside, to judge."

Everyone stiffened, turned to look at me in surprise.

"Ah?" said Timulty. "Well. Nolan, outside!"

Nolan, cursing, trudged up the aisle.

Phil stuck his head from the projection booth above.

"Are ya clods down there ready?"

"If the girl is and the anthem is!"

The lights went out.

I found myself seated next in from Doone, who whispered fervently, "Poke me, lad, keep me alert to practicalities instead of ornamentation, eh?"

"Shut up!" hissed someone. "There's the mystery."

And there indeed it was, the mystery of song and art and life, if you will, the young girl singing on the time-haunted screen.

"Ah, look, ain't she lovely?" Doone smiled ahead. "Do you hear?"

"The bet, Doone," I whispered. "We lean on you. Ready?"

"All right," he groused. "Let me stir my bones. Jesus save me!"

"What?"

"I never thought to test. My right leg. It's dead it is!"

"Asleep, you mean?" I asked, appalled.

"Dead or asleep, I'm sunk! Lad, lad, you must run for me! Here's my cap and scarf!"

"Your cap--?"

"When victory is yours, show them, and we'll tell how you ran to replace this fool leg of mine!"

He clapped the cap on, tied the scarf.

"But wait!" I protested.

"You'll do brave. Just remember, it's Finis and no sooner! Her song's almost up. Are you tensed?"

"God, am I!" I said.

"Blind passions, they win, boy. Plunge straight. If you step on someone, don't look back. There! The song's done! He's kissing her--"

"The Finis!" I cried. I leapt into the aisle.

I ran up the aisle! I'm first, I thought. I'm ahead!

I hit the door as the anthem began.

I slammed through into the lobby -- safe!

I've won! I thought, incredulous, with Doone's cap and scarf the victory laurels upon and about me! Won! Won for the team!

I turned to greet the loser, hand out.

But the door had swung and remained shut.

Only then did I hear the shouts and yells inside.

Good Lord! I thought, six men have, pretending to be the exiting crowd, somehow tripped, fallen across Hoolihan's way. Otherwise, why am I the first and only? There's a fierce combat in there this second, winners and losers locked in mortal wrestling attitudes, above and below the seats.

I've won! I wanted to yell, throwing wide the doors. Break it up!

I stared into an abyss where nothing stirred.

Nolan came to peer over my shoulder.

"That's the Irish for you," he nodded. "Even more than the race, it's the Muse they like."

For what were the voices yelling in the dark?

"Run it over! Again! The last song! Phil!"

Whistles. Foot-stomps. Applause.

"Don't no one move. I'm in heaven. Doone, how right you were!"

Nolan passed me, going in to sit.

I stood for a long moment looking down along all the rows where the teams of anthem sprinters sat, none having stirred, wiping their eyes.

"Phil, darling ... ?" called Timulty, somewhere up front.

"It's done!" said Phil.

"And this time," added Timulty, "without the anthem."

Applause.

The dim lights flashed off. The screen glowed like a great warm hearth.

I looked back out at the bright sane world of Grafton Street, the Four Provinces pub, the hotels, shops and night-wandering folk. I hesitated.

Then, to the tune of The Isle Somewhere of Innisfree, I took off cap and scarf, hid these laurels under a seat, and slowly, luxuriously, with all the time in the world, sat myself down ...