The Taoiseach rubbed his forehead. His temples throbbed, as if someone were performing the Anvil Chorus on an empty gasometer in his frontal lobe. The central part of his brain seemed to be inhabited by Zulus in South Africa drumming a happy Christmas to some cousins in Brazil. In the rear of his brain was a re-enactment of the Battle for Berlin. He found it hard to remember his name, never mind to think.
"I should have went for a job as a plumber," he intoned wearily, coiling a strand of hair around his finger and tugging at it sadly. Should have gone, mouthed his Special Adviser silently. "Honest. I never knew nutting, nutting, about what being Taoiseach meant. Lookit. Charlie never had no problems like these. Nor did Albert. Sometimes I tink dere's conspiracies and so on. Conspiracies." His voice faded away mournfully. The Taoiseach's Special Adviser, in a watchful silence, mentally disentangled the double negatives and the singular verb attached to a plural noun with the care of a bomb disposal officer disconnecting wires.
"Home every evening"
"If I'd have went for a job as a plumber, I'd be earning a hundred pounds an hour, no bodder. Home every evening at tree, tree tirty, out for a couple of pints of Bass wit de lads after Fair City. Instead of dat I chose dis. I don't know. Should have went for a job as a plumber."
"Might I suggest that a career in the Naval Service would have suited you, Taoiseach?" murmured the Special Adviser. "Your many talents would have equipped you admirably for naval duties. Foret'gallants. Jibs'ls. Futtock shrouds. And so on."
The Taoiseach muttered a few words of strangled Drumcondra and fell silent. Before him lay two sets of figures. One consisted of the revised estimates for army deafness claims, which included those from several thousand descendants of the men of 1916, whose lives had allegedly been ruined by the deafness suffered by their great-grandfathers. There was also the case being brought by one Mr Brian Boru of Clontarf, claiming hearing difficulties arising out of a clatter from a Danish broadsword. The second set of figures was a list of serving seamen left in the naval service: one dozen ratings, two petty officers and a rated captain.
"And none of them in the first flush, if you know what I mean," the Minister for Defence had pointed out.
"A little bit decapitulated, you mean?" said the Taoiseach.
Shuffled papers
Ah, that would be decrepit, his adviser observed inwardly. The Minister of Defence merely looked puzzled. The Taoiseach shuffled through the papers before him.
"De position is dis. De navy hasn't got enough recroots, and de few sailors dey have got is a bit long in the toot, is dat right? Average age, 58. And dere's so many jobs in de economy dat nobody wants to join de navy no more, is dat right?"
"Not exactly," replied the Minister for Defence. "I have two thousand applications sitting on my desk from willing ex-sailors who are anxious to return to the sea."
"Two tousand?" cried the Taoiseach, his voice suddenly filled with joy. `Two tousand! why, dat's only flippin' brilliant. Why didn't you say sumting, and here's me worrying and fretting and all, over nutting. Two tousand. Flippin brilliant."
"Two thousand Spaniards, I should have added," whispered the Minister for Defence. "I omitted that bit. They're all Spanish."
"De lot of dem, de whole lot?" cried the Taoiseach yet again.
"Just about, including the Commander in Chief of the Cantabrian Zone, the Captain General of the Straits Zone, and the Captain General of the Mediterranean Zone. Plus two admirals, all four commodores, three lieutenant-commanders and the skipper of the aircraft carrier Principe de Asturias. Plus the crew of the submarine Narval. But we haven't got a submarine for them."
The Taoiseach plucked at his hair. "Dere's sumting not quite right about dis, sumting fishy. They all want to be our navy? Why?"
"Taoiseach, if I may be so bold," purred the voice of his Special Adviser. "What is the nationality of most of the fishermen caught fishing illegally in our territorial waters?"
"Spanish of course - dat's what's so flummagasting about de whole ting. Why would dey want to arrest deir own fishermen?"
The Taoiseach's Special Adviser briefly savoured the union of the words flabbergasting and flummoxing before replying: "Maybe, Taoiseach, their intention was not to arrest the fishermen at all. Maybe it was simply to escort their fisherman in and out of our territorial waters, which they could trawl unmolested to their hearts' content."
Long silence
The silence which followed was long, before the Taoiseach simply muttered, in awe, "Janey." And then, after another pause: "De Army's bankrupting us, and we're about to hand over our only natural resource to the Spaniards. What should we do?"
"If I might suggest, Taoiseach? Might you not advertise for recruits for especially noisy naval service? You will be swamped with soldiers looking for a transfer, with a view to imminent deafness."
"But den dey'll all sue!" yelled the Taoiseach.
"True - but in the reign of another Taoiseach, Taoiseach."
A slow smile spread across the face of the first minister of the land. "And what do we do with de old salts in the naval service? Dey've all got peg-legs and parrots and can't walk, and expect to be paid in pieces of eight."
"Simple, Taoiseach. Let them play rugby for Ireland."