Collected Plays and Teleplays (Irish Literature) Read Free Page A

downwards and meeting nobody’s eye. He then looks up with a mechanical smile. )
    KELLY: Good evening, gentlemen. Good evening, Town Clerk. A pleasant summer evening, thank God. How is your good lady, Martin? I believe she had a touch of cold.
    REILLY: ( Non-committally. ) Mrs. Reilly is all right, thank ye.
    KELLY: Ah, good. Shawn, I want a word with you afterwards at your convenience. ( He rubs his hands together briskly. )
    SHAWN: I do, I do. With pleasure, Chairman.
    KELLY: I want you to see the Minister about a certain matter. A word in the right place, you know. A little matter I want set right. There is certain backstairs work going on about the Fair Green, cattle-jobbers and publicans butting at one another to get the site changed, first here and then there. Result: delay, delay, delay. No Fair Green and the streets up to your ankles in it of a fair day. ( He realises that he still has his gloves in his hand: sighs. ) But that’s another matter. It’s not on the Agenda.
    ( He turns and walks back to his coat to leave his gloves. )
    SHAWN: I endorse, and I re-endorse, every word you say, Chairman. The streets, of a fair day, are a crying, desperate, insanitary shame. Isn’t it a terrible thing to have publicans putting down money to have the Fair held at their doors? Wouldn’t it make you disheartened in democracy? Wouldn’t it now?
    ( KELLY returns to the table, sits down carefully in the large chair at the head of it, sighs and smiles indulgently. )
    KELLY: Human nature, Shawn, not democracy. Poor old human nature.
    CULLEN: It doesn’t matter where you hold the Fair, you’ll have to drive the animals there and back and how are you going to make them behave themselves?
    TOWN CLERK: ( Moving over to the Chairman’s left with a heap of ledgers. ) I was just saying, Chairman, that I’m off to Dublin some of these fine days to the Department about a certain ting. The personal touch is a very important ting, you know.
    REILLY: ‘Touch’ is right. Up to Dublin on the ratepayers’ money to bum drinks off the highest in the land and to work some electioneering twist.
    KELLY: Gentlemen, we must have some order, some system, a little mutual respect. The Town Clerk will go to Dublin when he is instructed to do so by the Council. In the meantime, Mr. Reilly, he is entitled to the respect that is due to his office—
    REILLY: Ah, yerra——
    KELLY: —as Chief Executive Officer of this town. The dignity of the town is represented in his person.
    REILLY: ( Sarcastically. ) I see.
    SHAWN: Just as a Minister or a deputy is entitled to the respect that is due to the sovereign people of Ireland. Do you understand me, Martin? The Irish nation. ( He begins to pick his teeth. )
    CULLEN: I don’t see anything wrong with the Town Clerk, and Cork isn’t the worst place to come from. Didn’t Foley the sculptor come from Cork.
    REILLY: Who?
    CULLEN: Foley.
    REILLY: I suppose he died for Ireland, too.
    KELLY: ( He raps the table gently with his spectacle-case. ) Now, gentlemen, order, ORDER. A little bit of order, now. Mr. Kilshaughraun, I would like your attention, please.
    SHAWN: ( Desisting from picking his teeth abstractedly. ) I do, I do, Mr. Chairman, I do, I do.
    KELLY: And yours, Mr. Cullen. Mr. Reilly, too. I have a meeting with the P.P. at nine and we will want to proceed with expedition . . . and despatch so that I may get away in time. A little matter of the Christmas Coal Fund, very trivial but very important to the unfortunate poor of this town. Now, Town Clerk.
    TOWN CLERK: ( In a toneless, official voice. ) De following members are absent from this meeting, Mr. P. Meady, Mr. George Pealahan, Mrs. Mary Corkey——
    SHAWN: ( With feeling. ) Ah, the poor woman, the poor . . . suffering . . . patient . . . pious . . . decent, saintly . . . soul, she’ll never lave that bed again. Sure I seen her——
    TOWN CLERK: ( Raising his voice. ) Mr. J. D. Callen and Mr. Joe Hoop.
    CULLEN: I agree with you.
    SHAWN: Dr. Dan