The Salesman

by Joseph O'Connor

  ‘So do you want to know a secret?’ she asked me.

  ‘Yes, all right.’

  ‘Will I whisper it to you, Billy?’

  ‘If you like.’

  She leaned close to me and put her hand on my shoulder. ‘I walked down from Harrington Street to Rathmines Church early on Christmas morning and went in. And lit a candle for you, so you’d have a happy little day. That was very bold of me, wasn’t it? But it was interesting. I was never in a Catholic church before.’

  She looked at me and smiled.

  ‘So you see now,’ she whispered, ‘you must have been on my mind after all, young Sweeney. Despite your thinking I was after forgetting all about you.’

  This struck me as a very good moment to ask your mother if she wanted to come with me to see the Beatles. Always be selling, as they say in my trade.

  Your mother sat back from me and scoffed. She folded her arms and told me to stop messing, the girls in her school had been trying to get tickets for weeks but with no success. Tickets for the Beatles could not be had for love nor money. One of the girls was practically engaged to a youngfella who worked in the Adelphi Cinema, where the concert was going to be held, but even he couldn’t get any passes. I took the two tickets from my pocket and showed them to her. Without saying anything. Not a word.

  Her eyes widened.

  ‘Billy Sweeney,’ she said.

  She snatched them out of my hand and stared at them. ‘Oh my God,’ she said.

  All week long I looked forward to our date. When the evening finally came I ran home from work. Literally. I took in a pair of shorts and an old singlet so that I could run home to Raytown when the shop closed. I wolfed down my tea and then I must have spent half an hour in the bathroom trying to comb the curls out of my hair. My father and your Aunt Molly, who was only a toddler then, caught me spraying myself with anti-perspirant and laughed at me. ‘Would you look at your brother,’ Dad went, ‘preening himself like one of the birds out the back yard.’

  ‘What’s that under your arms, Billy?’ Molly tittered disgustedly. ‘Is it hair?’

  ‘No, love,’ my father howled. ‘It’s feathers.’

  ‘Billy the bird,’ Molly laughed.

  Your mother was waiting for me under Clery’s clock on O’Connell Street, as we had agreed. I saw her from the top of the bus as it pulled up outside Eason’s across the way. She was wearing dark blue jeans and a blue velvet jacket that came down to her hips. She looked like some kind of impatient angel as she stared at her watch and peered up and down the street.

  ‘I thought you were after standing me up,’ she smiled.

  ‘No, I was kept in at work.’

  ‘Poor young Sweeney,’ she said. ‘Are they getting their money’s worth out of you?’

  The street was full of policemen and reporters and boisterous crowds of teenagers. It reminded me of an old newspaper photograph my father had once shown me of a famous riot that had happened during the 1913 Dublin trade union lock-out. Outside the cinema a gang of Teddy boys in full lurid regalia had converged on an old Morris Minor which they were bouncing and hefting on to the pavement. They all seemed very drunk. I remember the wildness in their eyes. Two policemen ran across the street and grabbed at one of them but he slithered out of their grip and ran away, roaring with laughter and brandishing a beer bottle. As he sprinted over towards Parnell Square one of his leopardskin-pattern shoes fell off and I saw an old lady pick it up and start to slap him around the shoulders with it.

  It was very hot inside the cinema and the air seemed damp and sweet. Dark red and gold curtains hung across the front of the stage. Many of the young girls were screaming as we pushed through the crowd to find our seats. There were gardaí and first-aid men from the Order of Malta lined down both sides of the hall. Loud rock and roll was playing over the speakers. I remember Buddy Holly and Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis hammering a piano, Gene Vincent lazily hiccuping ‘Be-bop-a-loola, she’s my baby’. When the house lights went out the screaming suddenly loudened. Your mother turned to me and smiled.

  ‘This is great gas, isn’t it?’ she said.

  The cinema remained in darkness for whole minutes. Then, from the upper balcony, a spotlight snapped on, spreading an undulating disc of whiteness across the gorgeous scarlet curtains. There was some kind of announcement but it could not be heard above the applause and cheering. The curtains slowly parted. Another spotlight illuminated the back of the stage. There, on a small podium, was Ringo’s drum kit. The screaming became frantic. The guards and first-aid men linked arms and tried to keep the crowd in their rows but it was useless, the young girls and boys ran at them, clambered over them, scuttled under them, all trying to get up to the front. Your mother put her fingers in her ears. The screaming got as loud as I thought it could possibly get. One more spotlight flickered on, picking out a flap in the curtains at the side of the stage, through which could now be seen four black silhouettes. And then the screaming got louder still.

  John Lennon strolled on first, wearing sunglasses and a leather cap, smoking a cigarette and waving to the crowd. Then came Paul McCartney, who did a thumbs-up sign, saluted and plugged in his bass guitar. A wail of feedback echoed around the cinema. George and Ringo ran on a few moments later and bowed. Then all four stood at the front of the stage and bowed several times in perfect unison. There were piercing screams and wild, anguished cheers. Ringo clambered up on to the podium, took a pair of sticks from his jacket pocket and bashed a few times at the cymbals and drums. Paul ambled over close to George and shouted something at him. John strummed a couple of loud power chords on his beautiful Rickenbacker guitar. And then it started. I could not believe it. This was Dublin. This was where I lived. Nobody famous ever came to Dublin. When you looked for Ireland on the weather map in my father’s News of the World, the Republic would actually be missing: all you would see was Northern Ireland, an island now, floating a few miles off the Mull of Kintyre. I lived in a place that did not even exist. But here were the Beatles, in the same country and city – in the same room – as me and Grace Lawrence. The only other famous person who had ever appeared in Ireland before was the Virgin Mary. But that was in Knock. So I missed it.

  And anyway, the Virgin Mary didn’t sing ‘Twenty Flight Rock’ quite the way John Lennon did. To tell you the absolute truth, love, I wanted to scream myself at that moment, and if your mother had not been with me, I believe I would have.

  I think the first song they played was ‘She Loves You’, but the screaming was so loud that I could not make out the words. There they were, John Lennon at one microphone, George and Paul at the other, bopping from side to side and stamping their feet in time with the clatter of Ringo’s drums. All around me people were dancing with their arms about each other, jumping up on to their seats, waving scarves and posters and record sleeves in the air. I was actually shaking with excitement by the time they had finished the song. The whole floor of the cinema seemed to be bouncing up and down. Fainting girls were being passed through the crowd. My shirt was completely soaked with sweat. I remember your mother nudging me and pointing out a girl of about sixteen who was a few rows in front of us and to the right. Her hands were clamped to the side of her face, her head was swaying from side to side and she was shrieking as though she was in some terrible agony.

  The more they played the louder the screaming got. They did ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ and ‘Good Golly Miss Molly’, then ‘Please Mr Postman’ and ‘Dizzy Miss Lizzy’ and ‘My Baby Says She’s Travellin on the One After 909’, then ‘All My Loving’, ‘Money’ and ‘Till There Was You’. It was a good half-hour into the concert before the screaming began to die down at all.

  My own favourite Beatles’ number at the time was ‘Love Me Do’. I particularly liked the part where John Lennon sings ‘so please, plee-hee-hease’ and then stops for just the smallest moment before going on ‘love me do’, the harmonica riff and so on. But that night in Dublin when they got to this part, John Lennon did
something unforgettable. He sang it just like he had on the record – ‘so please, plee-hee-hease’ – and then they just stopped playing. For maybe thirty seconds. He actually strolled away from the microphone and up to the front of the stage and shook hands with someone in the audience before finally slinking back to his place and laughing and hollering out ‘Love me do’. It was the coolest thing I had ever seen in my life. And as for the audience, I had never heard anything like the squealing that filled the cinema at that point. It was actually quite disturbing. It certainly didn’t have anything to do with music, but then, as your mother used to say, music often doesn’t.

  I remember that at one stage your mother and I were trying to dance in one of the aisles but the crowd had simply got too unruly by then. People were falling over seats and stampeding from side to side of the hall as they tried to get up to the front. During one particularly strong surge towards the stage your mother was pushed up hard against me, but when the crowd flowed away again she stayed where she was for a moment, pressed into my chest with her arms around my waist, before stepping away from me and beginning to jive again. She kept coming up to me and shouting in my ear but I could not hear a word. The Beatles started into ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’. Your mother turned to me, grinning as she mouthed the words, and then she held out her hand and raised her eyebrows in a silent question. I took it in mine and kissed it. She laughed and rolled her eyes but she did not take her hand away. The concert finished with ‘Twist and Shout’, John Lennon howling and barking into his microphone while the rest of us joined in, what seemed like every last person in the building, including, I noticed, several of the gardaí and most of the first-aid men. I had a sore throat for a week afterwards.

  Outside the cinema we waited for Seánie and his date, a nice girl called Angela Bledsoe who I think was a dress designer from Drimnagh, but we could not find them anywhere. The scene was chaotic. Television cameras had been set up in the street. Newspaper photographers had clambered up on to the plinth of the Parnell monument to get a better vantage point: I saw one chap actually swinging one-handed from the statue of Parnell as he pointed his camera down towards O’Connell Bridge. The police had blocked off the entrances to Henry Street and Abbey Street. Someone said there was a full-scale riot going on in the back lanes that led to the stage door behind the cinema. Young people were lying on the pavements in hysterical tears. The noise was constant, shouting, screaming, car horns, and chants, instructions being bawled through bull-horns by the police. Your mother and I decided not to wait any longer so we walked quickly up towards Grafton Street and she linked her arm in mine. Just outside the front gate of Trinity College we bumped into two girls she knew from Clanbrassil Street. We stopped and chatted to them for a few minutes and told them all about the concert. She introduced me and I shook hands with the girls. It made me feel excited to have been seen in public with Grace Lawrence.

  Bewley’s was closed so we went into a little coffee bar around the corner on Duke Street. It was a strange dark place that smelt of musk and peppermint. There were lurid posters on the walls advertising communist meetings, Republican demonstrations, folk music concerts. A young woman in a red floppy hat sat in a corner staring at a rose which she waved from side to side in front of her eyes. At the next table, singing in Irish under his breath, was a handsome, very tall man who looked like an Apache. Your mother asked for a cappuccino and I ordered one for myself too, even though I did not actually know what a cappuccino was. When it arrived I was relieved.

  ‘That was mighty,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe we’re after seeing the Beatles.’

  I told her I couldn’t believe it either. She did not seem to be listening to me.

  ‘You know,’ she said, ‘all the girls in school fancy the knickers off Paul. But I prefer George, he looks more sad, you’d want to mother him, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Well, I suppose I’d worry about you a bit if you did.’

  She sipped her cappuccino and licked the froth from her lips.

  ‘And do you like their songs too?’ I asked her. ‘Or just the way they look?’

  She grinned. ‘Looks aren’t important to me, young Sweeney. Amn’t I hanging around with you?’

  She could take care of herself, your mother. I wouldn’t want you to think she couldn’t.

  ‘Ah no, they’re great,’ she said, ‘I mean they were bloody brilliant tonight. And there’s only one Beatles. But I think I prefer the Rolling Stones in a way. I prefer bad boys, they’re more sexy. Tell us anyway, are you a bad boy yourself, young Sweeney?’

  She laughed before I could think of an answer. ‘I’m only messing with you,’ she said. ‘I’m an awful bitch, amn’t I?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘I am,’ she said. ‘If you’d any sense you’d gallop away full speed.’

  We drank more of our coffee. I reached across the table and took her hand. She twined her fingers through mine and looked around the café. She started to whistle.

  ‘So how d’you know how to dance then?’ she asked me, after a while.

  ‘My sister Nessa taught me to jive. She’s a great dancer. She’s won competitions for it.’

  ‘Runs in the family,’ she said. ‘You’re a nice dancer yourself, Billy. I love dancing too.’

  We finished the coffee and called for the bill. I told your mother that I wanted to pay. She shook her head and took out her purse. ‘You will not, go raibh maith agat,’ she said, ‘I’ll get my own.’ She insisted on giving me the money for her coffee and we even halved the tip.

  We went out into the street and walked up towards Stephen’s Green holding hands. She started to chant in a gentle singsong voice, ‘We saw the Bea-tles, we saw the Bea-tles,’ then she glanced at me and winked. ‘Wait till I tell them in school, Billy. They’ll only be raging.’

  We talked about her school for a while. There were a lot of Protestants there, she said. I told her that I didn’t think I knew any Protestants.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘well, they’re like us Jews. They have horns and tails too, of course. The only difference is, Protestants are blond.’

  She had good friends in school, she told me. She hoped they would all still see each other when they finished the Leaving Cert and went to college or got jobs. Of course, one or two of them were hard enough to keep in touch with already, she laughed, all the ones with steady boyfriends. Girls were awful for that, she said: as soon as they got a boyfriend you could kiss goodbye to them. They’d drop the oldest pal they had in the world for some louse of a boyfriend, she said, and you’d be lucky to hear from them ever again.

  ‘So do you have a boyfriend?’ I asked her.

  ‘God, of course. Loads of them. Poor Daddy’s nearly worn out beating them away from the door.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if you did. I think you’re lovely.’

  ‘Stop it, Billy. Don’t be embarrassing me.’

  ‘Well you are. I think you are.’

  ‘Oh I know. Gorgeous.’

  We walked on. She started whistling again, which I was beginning to realise was something your mother did when she was thinking.

  ‘You’re an odd fish,’ she said, ‘do you know that, young Sweeney?’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Well, do you really think I’d be strolling down the public street holding your paw like a gom if I’d a boyfriend?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘well, you don’t know much then, do you?’

  ‘I know I’m very fond of you,’ I told her. ‘I like being with you.’

  She tossed her hair and did her mock scowl. ‘God, you’re fierce bloody serious, aren’t you? You’re like a little pope.’

  We stopped into an Italian chipper on Camden Street and bought some lemonade and fried fish. Then we walked on together, eating from the oily sheets of newspaper. She asked me about work. I told her a bit about Randall’s but I coul
d tell that she was not very interested. I asked her more about school.

  ‘I love English,’ she said. ‘That’s what I’m going to study in Trinity.’

  I told her I liked English too, especially poetry. She said her favourite poet was Patrick Kavanagh. I told her that my father had met him once, in some pub in town, and that he had been very drunk. Her eyes seemed to shine, I noticed, when she talked about poetry. When I quoted to her from a Yeats poem which my mother loved, she squeezed my hand hard and said it was so sad that it made her want to cry. Before too long we came to her street. Her house was on the corner, a tall red-brick building, with a twelve-arm candelabrum in the window.

  ‘Thanks, then,’ she said. ‘It was a great night, really.’

  She folded her arms and peered at me.

  ‘So are you not going to kiss me then?’ she said. ‘Some boyfriend you are, Billy Sweeney.’

  I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  ‘Come here to me,’ she said. ‘I won’t bite, you know.’

  I took a step towards her. She put her arms around me and held me close. She signed and rubbed her nose against mine, smiling up at me. I said her name out loud, Grace. I liked saying it. She said my name a few times. Then she began to kiss me. Her lips were soft and they tasted of vinegar. We kissed on the mouth for a few minutes and then she lowered her mouth to my neck and kissed me there. I remember my lips brushing against the fineness of her long hair, and then she put her hands on my head and asked me not to move, just to stay still for a minute. We stood in each other’s arms and she stroked my face. I was trembling with happiness.

  She took my right hand, raised it to her lips and kissed it.

  ‘You’ve such lovely hands, Billy,’ she whispered. ‘They’re so gentle. It’s the first thing I ever noticed about you.’