The Ginger Man - J. P. Donleavy [117]
They walked around the Soho Square and then in the Greek Street they went into a public house.
The kangaroo was talking at the bar. It raised its voice in song.
Tell me Britons
How do you know
You like it
In the Soho ho.
No joy no juice
You pigs no use
I want to know
How you like it
In the Soho ho.
There were some grunts and growls and MacDoon said now Danger these people here are good people enjoying their pints.
Grunt and growl
Spit and scowl
You poor pigs
Are just foul.
They were up. Fourteen in all moving toward the kangaroo which was singing come all ye faithful. The black brute Parnell was at them. It was on.
Parnell picking up the front man and holding him an instant above his head flung him against the advancing crowd. MacDoon rotating his staff over his head and they said get that little bastard of a helicopter and Mac neatly broke the man's nose. The kangaroo reached behind the bar and was draining a bottle of gin when a chair was lowered on his head from behind. The kangaroo fell spread-eagled to the floor. Parnell attacked from all sides with MacDoon pulling them off with the hook of the staff and beating them to the floor. The building trembling. Eight left of the fourteen, six unconscious under the trampling feet. MacDoon went down and they were kicking him and he was catching them by the ankles with the hook and tripping them to the ground. They were driving Parnell out the door and they were yelling these damn Oxford intellectuals think they can tell us we're pigs. They had Parnell out and drew the latches. They were dragging the unconscious figure of MacDoon to fling him on the street, saying we fixed that big fella, he'll not try that again. Outside a great war whoop. They turned to the door. Another war whoop and a voice yelling I'm coming through. The brown vomit-tinted door parted with a squeal of hinges and splintering wood. The door came asunder into the room. Parnell, face covered in blood, clothes in tatters, launched his ferocious counter attack and three of the remaining eight fled up the stairs crying the man is insane, call the bobbies. They were holding him off with chairs. A crowd gathering on the street. The sound of the police. A half-revived MacDoon and Parnell dragging the stricken kangaroo out the door stumbling into the street. Flinging the beast into a taxi and yelling into the terrified man's ear, away you Cockney bastard like the hounds of hell before we deliver the wrath of the Celts on your English skull.
The kangaroo groaning that it must have a drink or die. That life was not worth living without a lash of something. The taxi man was saying he would get the police if they didn't stop fighting in the back and that they better get to the hospital because they were covered in blood.
They came to a stop and hobbled into the white smells of this hospital Crippled trinity. Down the warm halls. The nurses coming out of closets everywhere to see the spectacle of the limping kangaroo.
In the hot head he could see out of the pinhole eyes the buxom nurses and the kind nun who got the Chinese doctor. And this nun said whatever is it? Did you go to a pub with it? We did. We've never had patients like you before and you are, you know, rather beat up, but the doctor will do an especially good job on his face, a serious wound. Parnell is a fierce man. O a brute man and Mac here, by God, could lay waste a Cockney hoard in his prime were it not for the fabulous thirst of your young English maidens and even others for a sup of his Irish juice.
The hospital called another taxi and together with the Chinese doctor, compassionate nun and thirteen nurses called from their beds they stood watching the tragic trinity troop out the gate. But the kangaroo, touched with a slight madness what with being poisoned by his own wind accumulating in the animal head and other