The Wake - Table of contents

The Wake - episode 44

Willie Henry looked up then for a reaction and, receiving none, held out his glass plaintively. Plaintiffly. This latter gesture was directed at me of course but I resolutely ignored it even though I had a strong idea how dire his state was. I felt sorry for him, as I did for myself, but there was no way the drink was coming out again till that bastard Braddock left.

Mister Abel Doak prosecuting stated that the defendant William Henry McGillycuddy, who had earlier made a submission to the court requesting that he be referred to as the plaintiff, had been intoxicated when he trashed and subsequently dismantled the wakehouse in Marlborough Terrace (the only items left intact being the softwood casket and its contents, viz., the earthly remains of one Maud Abilene Harrigan) yet by his own admission was not so intoxicated that he was unaware of what he was doing.

Defending, Mister Jules Bernestock made the point that all the defendant William Henry McGillycuddy, hereinafter hopefully called ‘the plaintiff’, had been seeking was one miserly shot of Paddy, being still in a badly shaken state after having encountered what he took to be a corpse welcoming him to the wake.

“To quote the plaintiff,” said Mr Bernestock consulting his notes, “I was just after saying a Hail Holy Queeng in the corphouse standing looking down into the face of the poor dead woman when I turned round and there she was fornenst me saying ‘It was wile good of you to come Willie.’ [At this point Mister Justice Tickel van Rumpole showed commendable Dutch courage in facing down a rumbustious courtroom, threatening to have the have the place cleared forthwith if the merriment did not cease, on foot of which threat order incrementally returned to the proceedings.] And all I got to bring me round were two nips of Paddy you could hardly see.”

Mister Justice van Rumpole, on occasion sipping from a hipflask which transparently contained water-coloured liquid, then asked Mr Bernestock to clarify Mr McGillycuddy’s request to be dealt with as a plaintiff. Mr Bernestock thereupon came out with a whole load of stuff in Latin to support the legal argument that a defendant can in certain cases, one of which this clearly was, ask the court to declare him a plaintiff.

Justice van Rumpole accepted that as it had earlier been established that Mr Jeremiah Coffey the householder, hereinafter called ‘the possessor’, had been aware of Mr McGillicuddy’s distressed state and therefore (it could be argued) was partly culpable for the Marlborough Terrace premises being effectively removed from future ordnance survey maps. “Yet,” he concluded, “although it may well be that there was equal fault on both sides, the burden is always placed on the plaintiff, and the cause of the possessor is preferred. How and ever this is a matter for another court thank Christ. Next case please. Now where did that flask go?”