Shrimps and Plainbreeds

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From ‘The Scouring Tout’, Carrickphelimy Examiner, March 21

I am your national TOUT.  The one that reveals.  That unabashedly squeals.  It is a world full of keen whispering.  And I am listening.  For you, my dears, my Carrickphelimys and phools.

The early morning bus out of Antwerp took us to the borders at Baarle for about 9.15.  The low country was most inviting.  The sun shone yellow on our heads.  The sky was gorgeous, a slightly cracked soft crystal overlay.  We had been told that on the country roads near Zondereigen we would encounter a bizarre road sign for a place called Pmurehia, a very small country which did not appear on any known map. It was told to us by a man in a bar who said nothing more except that it was such a strange place we would be ‘compelled’ to write about it.

What was Pmurehia?  I had never heard of it.  Neither had my racist companion.  Which was perplexing for it seemed to me she of all people would know the place considering her detailed knowledge of the world and its peoples.    Northern Europe, particularly this sector, though not without its beauty, is a rather bland and ordered place, everything where it ought to be; the masters of mapping would not have allowed a whole country to go undiscovered.  Yet when we looked at our maps, there was no Pmurehia marked.  My racist companion suggested the sign might be a trap set by some backwoods cannibals, of which she had advised there were many known to exist in the region.  Being your dedicated tout, of course it behoved me to investigate this uncharted district.  I had heard in the past of strange plains of existence, temporal shifts, and inter-dimensional gateways, but to my knowledge, dear reader, such phenomena had only ever been recorded in our own fine country of Ireland, so I am not lying when I tell you I was filled with great excitement about seeing what was in store for us.

The sign was there.  It was certainly odd when seen with the other signs which provided conventional information about distance such as:

TILLBURG  75km  →

EINDHOVEN  55km  →

MAASTRICHT  108km →

←  -2km  PMUREHIA

How very strange indeed.  I suggested we walk backwards from where we came to adhere to these directions. I was sharp-witted and unusually brained and such notions were common to me. My racist companion was initially reluctant and looked at me like I had lost all reason but soon capitulated and joined me.

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What about the mouse? I asked her.

I’m not sure if it was a mouse.  It may not have been.

Well, what about it, whatever it was?

What about it?

Are you going to let it scamper about the place?

It was probably nothing at all.  There’s a lot of visual information in this house and it can mess with your senses.

Ye’ve too much stuff, the pair of you.  You should open a shop.  Get rid of it all.

Collectively we’ve enough here to feed their intellects for another century – but what good would it do them?  These old films and books.  Aren’t there other means of edifying these days?

I understand what you mean but I wouldn’t write the whole town off.  There is a clear hunger for knowledge in some of them, I can assure you.

Hunger is the word, knowledge not quite the meal they’re after. 

Would you blame them?  Good food in the town if you know where to go.  I enjoy an old sausage in batter out of Noel’s every now and then.

You’ll get no argument from me about the sausage in batters in Noel’s.  His onion rings are another story. 

Whenever I saw Phyllis, taking into account her height (6’1, unusual for a Carrickphelimy woman) and her snowy yet age-defiant curls, I imagined she was a cool Russian schoolmistress who over the course of a miserable drama loosens the tethers of various protocols imposed on her.  Another striking thing about her was her eyebrows which you could clearly see she worked hard on every day sharpening them like they were fine art and for some they probably were that on a woman pushing seventy.  But I couldn’t be sure if anyone had ever seen them.  Neither Phyllis nor Oran left the house much.  In all the time I had known them, I hadn’t once seen them leave the place.  I had seen them in the back garden in the daylight, each at least twice, so I knew it wasn’t an evil curse that kept them from going outside.  Even so, beyond the doors and fences of Forgall Terrace they had no presence whatsoever in the town. 

The bellow of a flushing toilet out back.  From the sitting room you could see straight to the kitchen and the attached wash cupboard which Oran was now tumbling out of.  It seemed he was about to leave the door wide open but when he saw me standing there he turned back and pulled it closed. 

Well, how’s the trouble? he asked me.

It’s going well.  The tout’s finally hit a wall.  They’re outside the Examiner offices now screaming bloody murder.

It was not murder, he said.  It wasn’t even an accident.  Why is it the young are so credulous this day and age?

Ah now, don’t blame the young man, said Phyllis.  He aimed to be a writer like yourself.  Just got him killed in the end is all.

It’s a considerable fool that would believe anything we cobbled together in this old kip.

Well, it looks like Lavery’s patience has petered.  The Examiner no longer needs your services, I said, in his words.  You’ll have to start a blog now if you want your ravings out there.  Or you could ask for a job with your own name and report the news like a decent and normal man of the world.  Relay facts for a change. 

How much of it is left fact after the pen is done with it? he declared, loftily.

If Phyllis had the schoolmistress look, Oran had the head of a classical hero.  Full skull of hair, silver and black.  In his presence, I could feel every particle of house dust against my own evolving slaphead.  Oran looked older than Phyllis but in fact she had almost two years on him.  In adolescence they were often seen together being close in age.  On the bus to the grammar school, they made an odd pair, size difference between them at that time being so great that no bullies went near the boy when the sister was around.  She was still taller than him, not by much, but then again he had developed in his posture a curious stoop from the years arched over a desk and this further diminished his physical stature.  For sure they both towered over me.  There was something quite alien about them to be perfectly honest and I often wondered what it would be like to see them wandering the town square alongside the rest of us shrimps and plainbreeds.  How they’d come to exist among us? Might have been beamed in from another planet as there wasn’t much around that would qualify for comparison. 

Since when have you concerned yourself with facts? snarked Phyllis.