Action I
The motley inhabitants of a Dublin house this evening were in a state more nervous and livelier than usual: the owner, Musya, led out the heartbreaking passages in the bagpipe; female prostitutes clutching with ex-boys, Rio Rita and Princess Grace, prejudicial to their craft; one girl caused a scandal because her client turned out to be a Pole, that is, a communist, but his pounds nevertheless reconciled the good Catholic with the prospect of an unnatural connection; in the room of Mr. Mallidy, Miss Gilchrist, a member of the charity, was caught and cast out in disgrace, although it was enough to glance at this person once to understand that she could make a living from anything except her own body.
The solid patriots of the Republic of Ireland are Pat, almost forty years ago (in the yard, in the sense of the stage, the year 1958), who lost his leg in the glorious battles with the royal troops and since then has been the manager of the house Musya, and his girlfriend the assistant, a retired employee of the brothel Meg, was just anxiously awaiting a certain event, short waiting for a conversation about life. From this conversation, the viewer mainly finds out what kind of house it is, who lives in it and what was supposed to happen here later tonight.
Let's start with the owner. His father was a bishop (calmly: not real - Protestant), and his mother was Irish, and because of this last circumstance, he somehow once in a youth suddenly realized himself as a freedom-loving Celt: he began to study the Irish language, began to dress up in a plaid skirt and play Celtic football in the five-year war with England that followed the Easter uprising, he was either a general, or a corporal, or perhaps an admiral (Pat did not see much difference between these ranks - it sounds something like that); He accepted Monsieur’s wonderful nickname, not wanting to be called "Mr." - this hateful word from the dictionary of the invaders. However, on the path of Irish patriotism, Mussie was waiting for continuous woeful disappointments, which undermined his reason, but not his spirit: to begin with the fact that he was understood only by specialists from Oxford, but not compatriots by his mother, and to top it off, the rebel leaders you live well gave the six northern counties to the British.
After the war (and for him it continues even after it) Musiu arranged in his house something like winter apartments for veterans of the Republican army, but money was needed, and so the economic Pat began to let sluts, thieves and other scum for a reasonable fee which now constitute the bulk of the tenants; Mussie, however, piously believed that all these were patriots who suffered for being faithful to the idea. Pat held two firm opinions about the owner of the house, not caring at all that one ruled out the other: then Musya he turned out to be an unbending fighter for the Irish cause, and then a half-witted old man busy with utter nonsense. About the same was his view of the current activities of the Irish Republican Army.
It was with the activities of Ira that the event that everyone was waiting for was connected. The fact is that the next morning an eighteen-year-old Irishman was to be hanged in Belfast, who shot and killed an English policeman. In response to this atrocity of the invaders, Ira decided to take the English soldier hostage and shoot him if the sentence in Belfast is carried out. As Musius solemnly announced, the hostage will be kept in his house.
Finally, at the door, Pat saw a man in a paramilitary uniform and with a badge informing oncoming people that his owner wanted to speak only Irish. “Officer Ira,” Pat realized. So it was. Having carried out a reconnaissance, the officer retired, and soon it was broadcast on the radio that an English soldier had been abducted by three unknown men in Ulster from dancing. Some time later, the officer returned, accompanied by two republican volunteers and a prisoner, who was frankly perplexed by who and why needed to spoil him on a pleasant evening.
Action II
The Englishman was very young, his name was Leslie, he served in the army for a week without a year. Much to the disappointment of the inhabitants of Musyu’s house, his beardless physiognomy did not bear the shadow of a beastly grin of the occupation regime, but this fact did not diminish the general interest in the prisoner. Miss Gilchrist got the first to Leslie and presented him with a bundle of Sunday newspaper clippings devoted to the unfiled details from the life of the royal house, but he did not care much about the queen, and even more so that they wrote newspapers.
Meg, however, reacted to the Englishman quite motherly, prepared a hearty dinner and sent a new young maid, Theresa, to tidy up his room and make up the bed.
Teresa, a village girl who had just stepped out of the walls of the monastery school, turned out to be the same age as Lesley — both of them were forties. The young people easily talked, and soon finding out that war, hatred and all that were past things and nobody needed them, they started chatting about this, telling stories from childhood. Out of kind feelings, Theresa put on her neck with a picture of Leslie with the Virgin to help the guy in the upcoming trials. The solitude of eighteen-year-olds was involuntarily facilitated by an officer who, for the sake of conspiracy, imposed severe discipline in the house and put the sentries to the doors of the prisoner's room. Everyone simply forgot about Teresa ...
When they remembered and found her at the prisoner, the officer was worried that she would not inform the police, but he was assured that it was impossible, all the entrances and exits were under reliable guard. Leslie still wondered what the Irish eccentrics had in mind until one of the tenants showed him a fresh newspaper. It reported that in spite of everything the sentence would not be canceled, and that Ira had been taken hostage, Private Leslie Alan Williams, who would be shot if the Irishman was executed.
Action III
Pat, Meg and Miss Gilchrist sat in the prisoner's room and purposefully drank, Leslie sang "Reign, Britain, by the seas!", And then switched to simple village songs. Warmed up by beer, Pat chatted about his military exploits, very cynically depicting the bar-duck created during the liberation war. Miss Gilchrist, this, according to Meg, the shadow of a deceased prostitute, noticed that it was not worth talking badly about the Irish in the presence of an Englishman, but she was quickly shut up, and Aesley was invited to the table.
A drunken political discussion ensued, and the young Englishman even admitted that one act of Queen Victoria’s so-called help was completely scum: she then sent five starving pounds to Ireland’s starving fund while donating the same amount to a shelter for stray dogs. But be that as it may, Aesley insisted, it happened a long time ago, and for what reason he should die not for that. Pat, drunk with complacency, promised that in the next fifty years he should be afraid of death except from the atomic bomb.
In addition to comforters, Leslie suddenly found defenders in the person of a delegation of prostitutes, led by Rio Rita, Princess Grace, and Mr. Mallidy, who demanded that the hostage be released immediately. Pat, in the absence of an officer who took over the functions of commander, put them out, and then, so that Leslie and Theresa could be alone, he drove everyone else away.
Leslie begged Teresa to go call the police, convinced her that the guy in Belfast prison would not want to see Leslie be sent after him to the next world. Teresa did not agree and did not refuse. The young people had already reached an agreement on the next dismissal, if, of course, Leslie managed to get out alive from this bad alteration, when their conversation was interrupted by an officer Ira, who this time had a gun in his hands.
But then there was a noise, shots, the lights went out. The officer, Pat, Meg, and Musy, who joined them, decided that this was the police, but, as it turned out, Mr. Mallidy, Princess Grace, and Rio Rita and his associates attempted to release him. Pat and Musya soon laid down their arms, the officer with the volunteer seemed to shy away and appeared already dressed in a woman’s dress, but were recognized and arrested by order of Mr. Mallidy, as it turned out, an agent of the secret police.
When everything calmed down, there was only one killed on the battlefield - the English soldier Leslie Williams. On his neck Princess Grace is perplexed - was the deceased really a Catholic? - noticed (noticed?) The scapular.
