The Pointing Man (complete)
The Pointing Man
This all then is as true as I’m Irish. Which I am.
Judge for yourself. And, as it’s Irish, there’s blood and tragedy and burning in it, and the mystery of that island, the little dog of Europe.
So.
There stood the house as old as time. And in the very middle of that house –– the very middle, mind –– one of those towers from the time before time, from time immortal and built by the giants. Sure, it was that old, and with the rest of that huge house wrapped around it, a great brocade cloak, hugging that tower for all to keep each other safe. And so atop it, over that great house there he stands, the Pointing Man, right up there, above the cornices and the pediments and such like, pointing as if he knew the right and wrong of it and guarding the whole thing.
Once upon a time, they told me, he was carrying, on his highest turret there, his lordship's coat of arms and the like which has fallen away. So he’s left by himself high and pointing. Who’d he be? St. Peter and Paul, St. Ignatius Loyola with the armour on him, or back and back and one of those giants themselves masquerading as a saint. But then might it not just be that one night of moil and thunder suddenly in the howling storm there he was, not a part of anything but himself.
Which ever way you look at it, there’s now The Pointing Man, the sign of the strength of that tower within, with its mighty walls fifteen foot thick if they’re half an inch. A blessing to it he was and a blessing he is. And –– this is it –– a curse to those that meddle.
Well –– so –– now, while other places were destroyed and burnt to the ground in the Bad Times from Cromwell to the very present, the house stood there, protected inside and out with The Pointing Man a mighty defense against the perils of the moment.
There’s a story, not mine either, was that in the ‘17 –– or was it the ‘21? –– they came –– and that would be the IRA –– they were along to set the place alight.
It was a cloudy night and black as Satan’s hole. There they were with their cans of petrol and their matches all but struck, when didn’t the clouds part and the moon, a full moon at that, shone right on The Pointing Man and wasn’t he right there and pointing right at them –– right –– at –– them? He was. And they were off and no one ever saw so much as a shadow of them or their like about there again. But, and take note here, they say that the one of them choked that very night on a bit of gristle in his stew and was dead of it in ten dreadful minutes. And the other two were taken by the Black and Tans and we all know to what ends that’d bring them.
But that’s not it. Sure, that’s not my little tale.
Here it is, little but close. It’s near to us. It’s in today’s Ireland of computers and helicopters and glossy, glassy buildings. But Oh Ireland! Oh Erin! Oh Dail Eireann! Under it all aren’t you still alive with the power and the mystery and the eternal sorrows.
Right then.
This nice young man comes up to the house, dressed in his best, clean shirt, clean shaven, tie and all. Up he comes and says, he says he’s after wanting a cottage to rent.
So they tell him then to go down into the office where it is in the very foundations of the place, with the windows themselves all but underground and seeing the sky and the tree tops up and over the bank in front of them and a little line of pretty flowers on the sills down there. So into the office he goes, and who does he find there but the brand new secretary, just hired from grooming the horses and a sight better with them than with a typewriter. A slap dash young thing she is.
“Come in,” says she, “and sit yourself down,” with never a thought for the safe, in there behind her being wide open and the week’s wages all there, the stacks of pound notes (that’ll be the Euros) all there for him to admire. And she thinking nothing about it at all, at all.
Their chat was of the cottages and the rent and such and then he looks at his watch and jumps to his feet.
“Aren’t I late!” he cries. “I must be off.”
And so he is. But he’s not late at all. He’s seen enough and he’s off with his tinker friends and he a tinker himself in spite of all his sprucing. So now it’s off with the shirt and the tie and isn’t he telling them about the great pickings and an easy lock to boot?
And that very night they’re back, back to that big old house looming at them and the Pointing Man pointing. Telling them, wasn’t he, to stay away and not to be meddling? And that cloudy night and the full moon sailing sure enough up above, The Man up there and the dogs howling and they not taking a blind bit of notice, too intent on their business weren’t they, to see the signs?
In they go. Easy as a bitch’s wink. And would you believe it, not cracking the safe with dynamite like they do in the films but manhandling the whole thing out and into his lordship’s car and off they go not waking a soul.
Now there’s a funny thing and why they’re away without a bit of trouble.
It’s those dogs, there in the kennels, barking the whole of that dark night, and that’s why no one’s paying mind to what went on below there. The butler, in his courtyard house just by the kennels, he had taken thought to that moon. Didn’t he know that the dogs would be baying all night with it that big and round?
“Right,” he says to himself, “the full moon. It’ll be a noisy night.”
So he’d stuffed his ears with the cotton wool against it all. How, then, could he be hearing a little spurt of gravel from under those tires? And, upstairs, there’s his lordship, just that one particular night the only one in the house, all alone and hadn’t he taken a sleeping pill or two? He had. He often did. He never slept well, the poor man.
Now, it’s the next morning. The butler’s up bright and early –– and the first thing he sees is the car’s not there on it’s usual spot. Well, he knows right off that isn’t good. And the next thing he finds the doors down to the cellars wide open. He’s into the office in the twinkle of a little eye. The whole place is upside down, with the drawers all pulled out. And there’s the safe –– gone.
He’s a fast thinking man, the butler. First thing he calls the Garda and he’s telling them what’s up, and then he’s off into the house and waking his lordship with the terrible news.
Now the Garda’s not how they used to be at all. They’ve jumped into their helicopter quick as a dog on a rabbit. And they’re away in the air and in no time and with a bit of luck they’ve spotted those tinkers with the car beside the river there, and them just finished with an ax on the safe, and stuffing a sack with all the papers and money and the like and some of it flying about with them is such a rush and the police chopper making such a flurry.
Well, the tinkers are up and off and down the river bank, into a boat and rowing as if the hounds of Hades were after them. You could say they were right with the Garda there flattening the water with the blades of their infernal machine and calling down to them.
It’s here that you have to start thinking because of what’s comes next. You have to think of the depth of things Irish, how the voices reach up and draw back down. Never mind the factories, new and shining and the new little, neat little houses all along the road side. Never mind that. Ireland is Ireland yet.
So, there, rowing the boat, is the biggest, strongest of them tinkers, a great big gaw of a man he was and wouldn’t you imagine that he’d have said:
“Here, lads, the oars are mine. I’ll have us across in a jiffy.”
That’s just what he might have said.
But now all of a sudden, doesn’t this bulky man drop those oars and stand up there in that boat and in the middle of the river, clutching his chest, mouth open and the blood pulsing from it in jets like water from a pump. So, and a great cry on him if you could but hear it before he pitched into the swirl of his own blood in the river and was gone.
Gone and so are the other lads, not caring a dot for that sunken friend of theirs, taking the oars and themselves to the other bank and off in the van they have waiting for them there with their sack and all. Except for the sinking, it was all in the plan. It’s another story again how the Garda caught up and had them on their next botched job.
Forget about them, will you? Think about the dead man, because he was dead right enough and found down the river, and not the river and the drowning that got him, but his heart was burst and he was inside himself a mass of blood and bruising ––
That’s it then. That’s it. Dead. And because why? Because they didn’t know, them tinkers, they didn’t know what to leave alone for the best. They didn’t know the power the ancient, of that house and there, the sign of it all, The Pointing Man, taking the meddlers and destroying them.
This all then is as true as I’m Irish. Which I am.
Judge for yourself. And, as it’s Irish, there’s blood and tragedy and burning in it, and the mystery of that island, the little dog of Europe.
So.
There stood the house as old as time. And in the very middle of that house –– the very middle, mind –– one of those towers from the time before time, from time immortal and built by the giants. Sure, it was that old, and with the rest of that huge house wrapped around it, a great brocade cloak, hugging that tower for all to keep each other safe. And so atop it, over that great house there he stands, the Pointing Man, right up there, above the cornices and the pediments and such like, pointing as if he knew the right and wrong of it and guarding the whole thing.
Once upon a time, they told me, he was carrying, on his highest turret there, his lordship's coat of arms and the like which has fallen away. So he’s left by himself high and pointing. Who’d he be? St. Peter and Paul, St. Ignatius Loyola with the armour on him, or back and back and one of those giants themselves masquerading as a saint. But then might it not just be that one night of moil and thunder suddenly in the howling storm there he was, not a part of anything but himself.
Which ever way you look at it, there’s now The Pointing Man, the sign of the strength of that tower within, with its mighty walls fifteen foot thick if they’re half an inch. A blessing to it he was and a blessing he is. And –– this is it –– a curse to those that meddle.
Well –– so –– now, while other places were destroyed and burnt to the ground in the Bad Times from Cromwell to the very present, the house stood there, protected inside and out with The Pointing Man a mighty defense against the perils of the moment.
There’s a story, not mine either, was that in the ‘17 –– or was it the ‘21? –– they came –– and that would be the IRA –– they were along to set the place alight.
It was a cloudy night and black as Satan’s hole. There they were with their cans of petrol and their matches all but struck, when didn’t the clouds part and the moon, a full moon at that, shone right on The Pointing Man and wasn’t he right there and pointing right at them –– right –– at –– them? He was. And they were off and no one ever saw so much as a shadow of them or their like about there again. But, and take note here, they say that the one of them choked that very night on a bit of gristle in his stew and was dead of it in ten dreadful minutes. And the other two were taken by the Black and Tans and we all know to what ends that’d bring them.
But that’s not it. Sure, that’s not my little tale.
Here it is, little but close. It’s near to us. It’s in today’s Ireland of computers and helicopters and glossy, glassy buildings. But Oh Ireland! Oh Erin! Oh Dail Eireann! Under it all aren’t you still alive with the power and the mystery and the eternal sorrows.
Right then.
This nice young man comes up to the house, dressed in his best, clean shirt, clean shaven, tie and all. Up he comes and says, he says he’s after wanting a cottage to rent.
So they tell him then to go down into the office where it is in the very foundations of the place, with the windows themselves all but underground and seeing the sky and the tree tops up and over the bank in front of them and a little line of pretty flowers on the sills down there. So into the office he goes, and who does he find there but the brand new secretary, just hired from grooming the horses and a sight better with them than with a typewriter. A slap dash young thing she is.
“Come in,” says she, “and sit yourself down,” with never a thought for the safe, in there behind her being wide open and the week’s wages all there, the stacks of pound notes (that’ll be the Euros) all there for him to admire. And she thinking nothing about it at all, at all.
Their chat was of the cottages and the rent and such and then he looks at his watch and jumps to his feet.
“Aren’t I late!” he cries. “I must be off.”
And so he is. But he’s not late at all. He’s seen enough and he’s off with his tinker friends and he a tinker himself in spite of all his sprucing. So now it’s off with the shirt and the tie and isn’t he telling them about the great pickings and an easy lock to boot?
And that very night they’re back, back to that big old house looming at them and the Pointing Man pointing. Telling them, wasn’t he, to stay away and not to be meddling? And that cloudy night and the full moon sailing sure enough up above, The Man up there and the dogs howling and they not taking a blind bit of notice, too intent on their business weren’t they, to see the signs?
In they go. Easy as a bitch’s wink. And would you believe it, not cracking the safe with dynamite like they do in the films but manhandling the whole thing out and into his lordship’s car and off they go not waking a soul.
Now there’s a funny thing and why they’re away without a bit of trouble.
It’s those dogs, there in the kennels, barking the whole of that dark night, and that’s why no one’s paying mind to what went on below there. The butler, in his courtyard house just by the kennels, he had taken thought to that moon. Didn’t he know that the dogs would be baying all night with it that big and round?
“Right,” he says to himself, “the full moon. It’ll be a noisy night.”
So he’d stuffed his ears with the cotton wool against it all. How, then, could he be hearing a little spurt of gravel from under those tires? And, upstairs, there’s his lordship, just that one particular night the only one in the house, all alone and hadn’t he taken a sleeping pill or two? He had. He often did. He never slept well, the poor man.
Now, it’s the next morning. The butler’s up bright and early –– and the first thing he sees is the car’s not there on it’s usual spot. Well, he knows right off that isn’t good. And the next thing he finds the doors down to the cellars wide open. He’s into the office in the twinkle of a little eye. The whole place is upside down, with the drawers all pulled out. And there’s the safe –– gone.
He’s a fast thinking man, the butler. First thing he calls the Garda and he’s telling them what’s up, and then he’s off into the house and waking his lordship with the terrible news.
Now the Garda’s not how they used to be at all. They’ve jumped into their helicopter quick as a dog on a rabbit. And they’re away in the air and in no time and with a bit of luck they’ve spotted those tinkers with the car beside the river there, and them just finished with an ax on the safe, and stuffing a sack with all the papers and money and the like and some of it flying about with them is such a rush and the police chopper making such a flurry.
Well, the tinkers are up and off and down the river bank, into a boat and rowing as if the hounds of Hades were after them. You could say they were right with the Garda there flattening the water with the blades of their infernal machine and calling down to them.
It’s here that you have to start thinking because of what’s comes next. You have to think of the depth of things Irish, how the voices reach up and draw back down. Never mind the factories, new and shining and the new little, neat little houses all along the road side. Never mind that. Ireland is Ireland yet.
So, there, rowing the boat, is the biggest, strongest of them tinkers, a great big gaw of a man he was and wouldn’t you imagine that he’d have said:
“Here, lads, the oars are mine. I’ll have us across in a jiffy.”
That’s just what he might have said.
But now all of a sudden, doesn’t this bulky man drop those oars and stand up there in that boat and in the middle of the river, clutching his chest, mouth open and the blood pulsing from it in jets like water from a pump. So, and a great cry on him if you could but hear it before he pitched into the swirl of his own blood in the river and was gone.
Gone and so are the other lads, not caring a dot for that sunken friend of theirs, taking the oars and themselves to the other bank and off in the van they have waiting for them there with their sack and all. Except for the sinking, it was all in the plan. It’s another story again how the Garda caught up and had them on their next botched job.
Forget about them, will you? Think about the dead man, because he was dead right enough and found down the river, and not the river and the drowning that got him, but his heart was burst and he was inside himself a mass of blood and bruising ––
That’s it then. That’s it. Dead. And because why? Because they didn’t know, them tinkers, they didn’t know what to leave alone for the best. They didn’t know the power the ancient, of that house and there, the sign of it all, The Pointing Man, taking the meddlers and destroying them.
posted by Romayne Dawnay at 4:08 PM
0 comments
