Carn

by Patrick McCabe

  —The races for me. That’s where I’m going.

  —He’ll bring you? He will in his eye.

  —Yes he will he will he will.

  —A hacienda for me. Oh I can hardly wait.

  —A hacienda with Julio.

  —A heart-shaped pool.

  —With Julio?

  —With anyone.

  —Los Angeles for me, The City of Angels.

  —The Palais A-Go Go!

  —We will do the bossa nova!

  —The Hippy Shake Shake!

  —These bloody streets!

  —Farrell the foreman!

  —Have youse them packed yet, girls?

  —Yes Mr Farrell.

  —No Mr Farrell.

  —Go to hell Mr Farrell.

  —Damned rain!

  —Empty streets!

  —Damned rain!

  —And Barney The Buck with his hand on his—

  —Quit!

  Then, as every Saturday, after the initial euphoria had worn off, they settled back to lethargy as they stared at the melting colours on the neon flower that was the centrepiece of the jukebox. And across from them, eyes sized up their bodies over the rims of teacups, male fingers tapped ash and dredged their flesh hungrily. The Single Girls Needs A Sweet Lovin’ Man to Lean On, sang Sandy Posey. As far as the huddled male youths in the corner were concerned, any one of their number would have been more than willing to oblige with a few extras thrown in for good measure. They pulled on their cigarettes and tightened sweaty brows.

  —Would I, they said, would I what.

  —Would ya boy, by Jazus I would.

  —The lamps on that.

  —The one in the red.

  —The one in the blue.

  —Hold me back hold me back.

  —All the way and back for more, boys.

  They stubbed their cigarettes in the tray with a vengeance. As Sandy Posey took her leave and the record twisted back inwards, the girls looked up to see Francie Mohan making his Saturday night speech, dead on time, nine-thirty, five minutes after his ejection from the Railway Hotel where he had been drinking all day having slipped in for a quiet beer, leaving the Sunday dinner strapped to the carrier of his Humber bicycle which would lie against the gable end of the pub until Monday when his wife would beat him in to retrieve it, or what was left of it after the tinkers and the dogs had finished with it. He brought the girls out of their trance and gave the men a cosy smirk for themselves as they lit fresh cigarettes and prepared to enjoy to the full what they had heard a hundred times. Francie raised a single unsteady hand and demanded attention from one and all.

  “In nineteen twenty-two they shot Matt Dolan. The scum of British jails with a ticket from the king to kill all before them, and that’s what they did to poor Matt, left him lying above at the railway in his own red blood.

  “But now there’s no more of that, no sir. They took the boat, aye one and all and it was Fermanagh the rebel county that put the run on them. They showed Perfidious Albion where to get off. So now they’ve gone lock stock and barrel only for the six wee counties up the road and we’ll get them back any day now. The Fenian can hold his head up with the best of them. Now he can look the world full square in the teeth. I have two buck goats, four walls of my own two miles outside this town, what more do I want? Isn’t that right, lads?”

  He twirled a Players and looked through one end of it like a telescope. “Never got nothing by lying down, isn’t that right, lads? How much is a bag of chips?”

  “One and six small, two and six large,” said Sergio of the blue nylon coat tiredly and looked away as he dug deeper in the churning grease.

  One eye went into a slit and Francie fumbled for the imaginary revolver that had served him well in the troubled times. “What? What? Two and what? Robbers! Rogues and robbers! Where are you from? Roma? Roma! Three coins in the fountain! You’ll not rob Francie! Francie can put it up to the eyeties! Any ten of you!”

  Then he went down like a sack of potatoes, snug as a bug on the grease-caked tiles. Men in green uniforms and bandoliers pack-drilled through his dreams.

  And after all was over, Sadie Rooney the single girl walked home alone, deep in her handbag an arc of hearts curling from the supine head of a blonde who swooned into the arms of the rugged MG driver who momentarily removed his pipe to kiss her. For a brief moment she saw her own features on the face of the girl. As she passed the abattoir on the square, she conjured up swaying palms for herself but the broken fence rattling in the ditch shook her out of her reverie. A stray terrier sniffed at her ankle and she cursed bitterly as she asked herself why oh why was she born at the back end of the world to hook the anaemic legs of chickens and turkeys for the likes of Farrell the foreman with his bloodstained clipboard and his beady eye, to spend her evenings in Jubilee Terrace elbow deep in stewed washing, her scowling mother hovering over her with a pocketful of clothes pegs and a barb for every occasion, tales by the score of possibility thwarted. It’s all right for Sandy Posey, she sings of the single girl all alone in the bedsits of London but she knows that outside her window any time she wants the yellow lights will wink with promise, radios play through the night and the odd sports car stop outside. But here—Carn? The howl of dogs, the rattle of tin and a crabbed mother rotting in the chimney corner with fingers like sticks.

  She looked up to see her neighbour Mr Galvin doffing his cap as he wheeled his bicycle past.

  “Not too bad of a night,” he said. “I thought it was going to turn out a bit colder.”

  “Yes Mr Galvin,” replied Sadie, “warm enough now.”

  Mr Galvin lived in number four and ever since her days of cut knees her prevailing image of him had been that of a cocked backside above a pile of manure. Mr Galvin and his garden, man and wife. He loved his ridges more than his real wife. Ridges and manure and a little garden fork.

  Christ Jesus, thought Sadie, I wonder does our Sandy tend her ridges in London? The smell of manure in Croydon. Oh I’ll get away from this godforsaken hole yet, I’ll not die here an old biddy with veins and a teapot and hair like wire. ’Ello Mr Galvin, just got ’ome, didn’t I? How are your sweet peas coming along? Climbing up the trellis okay?

  Sadie smiled as she saw him in her mind, doffing his cap and searching its fabric for an appropriate response.

  —Oh aye Sadie, climbing, climbing sure enough, no trouble with the sweet pea but there’s damn the sign of the lettuce. I wonder did the grubs get at it? Them brown grubs are a curse. Do youse have much trouble with the brown lads Sadie? Eh?

  —No, as a matter of fact we don’t, said Sadie aloud, to tell you the truth we don’t have any grubs at all. No brown grubs. No black grubs. Not a grub in sight. And do you know what Mr Galvin? No ridges either. Nope. Not one.

  She saw the disbelief on Mr Galvin’s face. He looked at her as if someone dear to him had just been assassinated.

  —No, repeated Sadie, no grubs or ridges or manure. I’m a London secretary Mr Galvin. Do you like my Mary Quant dress?

  —Oh is that right, replied Mr Gavin, is that right now? God but isn’t the world a queer place too? Well I dare say you won’t be planting much curly kale in London. Boys oh boys oh boys.

  Finishing up her daydream, Sadie watched Mr Galvin as he settled his cap on his head and whistled a little tune as he bent beneath the clouds and went rigid as he spotted a rubbery grub making a bee line for a potato stalk.

  —I can’t wait, said Sadie, gonna be great, innit? Wotcher, gels? Wayne or Scott around?

  “Got you!” cried Mr Galvin as he leaped on the grub squeezing it between forefinger and thumb as Sadie opened the front door and heard her mother’s voice squirming out through the yellow bar of light under the kitchen door, is that you is that you Sadie and the bus for Croydon took off down the road as the furry slippers padded across the lino and she stood sourfaced as always surveying her daughter up and down as if she had just contracted a foul disease.

  For every day was
the same in the house for Sadie and her mother and father.

  —Have you the tea made? her mother would say, there’s more to be done around here than lie about the Golden Chip with Lacey and all the rest of the layabouts. Get that skirt off you and go down on your knees with this rag and you’ll find a bucket under the stairs.

  Carn Poultry Products took most of her steam away, so often she went to it without a whimper but what it was she wanted to say bubbled away inside her head—Ah to hell with you and your floor and Mr Galvin and his grubs, I’m going to England if it’s the last thing I do there’s not one of you can stop me, I’ll get a ticket and a bus to Euston and the whole lot of you can go to hell.

  ROOM TO LET: REASONABLE RENT YOUNG LADY PREFERRED

  —Wouldn’t that be nice now, she thought, just the one wee room, what more would I need, my hair backcombed and a wage packet on Friday for all the mod gear. Dahn the West End. Could I drink? Yes I could. In the Irish Clubs? The Walls of Limerick and Take Me Home to Mayo? Not on your life. Let the chambermaids and the country gawks jive to their hearts content. I’ll be in my stripey trousers and knee boots in a club where the lights carry you off into space and that will be the last you’ll see of Sadie, gone for good dahn the Old Kent Road.

  The sound of her father’s key in the lock sent all her thoughts scurrying for cover, gone with the wind like smoke. He stomped across the floor, all the dirt and dust of the town on his dungarees as he hung them up behind the door and whacked his hip with his squashed cap and sucked his Woodbine, the final favour of a condemned man, then thought for ten minutes before saying, “Hardy day.”

  In the scullery his wife scowled and grudgingly answered him with a curt platerattle, thinking of something bad he’d done years before. Then he closed one eye and covered a coal with a film of spit.

  “Hardy day right enough.”

  She set the plate of beef down in front of him and fled. He rubbed his dirt-caked hands and attacked it like a gorilla.

  The lights staccatoed in the River club in Holborn as Sadie saw herself dancing with an accountancy student from Tipperary. He told her he lived with his brother in Camden but he was only biding his time before he got into the big money and what he wouldn’t do then.

  —And you, he said, where do you live?

  —Me? said Sadie, eyeing up his country trousers and pre-war brogues, oh I live with Elvis Presley in 77 Walm Lane, Willesden. And Wayne. And Scott Walker. What do you think of that young man?

  —Walker? he replied, did you you say Walker? He wouldn’t be from Tipperary town by any chance?

  And as she flung the sodden cloth into the black water of the slop bucket, Sadie looked all around her in despair. As she lay down in her bed that night she stared at the picture of St Martin de Porres and the 1952 calendar with the faded kitten and the metalwork flowers of the fireplace. She looked up at Elvis in his army khaki and with tears in her eyes she said, What am I going to do Elvis Aaron Presley Elvis The Pelvis King what am I going to do at all at all.

  She waited and waited but there was nothing, only the wind and not a note from the king, not a single solitary sound.

  Then click went the light and out went the moon.

  IV

  The Easter Commemorations were in full swing when Josie Keenan arrived in her native town all the way from Moss Side, Manchester. For a split second she thought she had made a dreadful mistake and somehow come to the wrong town. She stared in awe at the bunting draped across the street and could not believe her ears when she heard music blaring from a speaker above a record shop. She had been expecting the burrowing eyes to fix on her without any delay but the crowds that lined the streets drinking from paper cups and eating chips from newspapers were completely unaware of her presence.

  It was only when she lay on her bed in her hotel room that she managed at last to come to terms with the sense of dislocation she was experiencing.

  She lay there listening to the sound of the birds twittering outside, in the distance the muffled sound of a bass drum. Far off children’s cries echoed and as she drifted towards sleep she saw herself now in that same street, many years before, walking behind her father as he wheezed and bustled ahead of her in his huge belted overcoat, picking her way through the cow pats that dotted the footpath, everywhere the fetid stench of urine. The shanks of beasts rose up above her, she stared in horror at the portwine faces of perplexed farmers who appeared from nowhere in the doorways of public houses.

  Her father took her hand, his hard skin rasping against hers like leather. Women in headscarves squeezed fruit and vegetables, squinting suspiciously at the hawkers. The herded beasts stared out helplessly from pens.

  She sat with him in the murky interior of a bar where he spat on his hand and slapped another man heartily on the back. The street was deserted as they made their way home. The gate of a makeshift pen rattled idly.

  When they reached home, it all began, as before and before that.

  “Meat? Call this meat?” he cried. He flung it from him and spat at her. Then he rose and took Josie roughly in his arms. His spiky chin rubbed against her face. “This is my wee woman here,” he said, “this is the only woman I care about. Are you my wee girl Josie?” He left her to her bed and the silence took over then. The night hung about Josie as she listened to the moans of her mother in the next room, the bedsprings creaking until there was nothing but the tapping of a branch on the window pane. Josie tried to rub the feel of his spikiness from her face but the more she did the more it spread.

  Outside in the square, a loudspeaker announced details of a singing competition which was to take place shortly in the primary school. But Josie’s mind could not go back with it or the sound of the voices passing on the street. Her mind went back to him as she watched him blubbering like a child at the open grave, his hands shaking as he cried out, “Cassie, Cassie come back to me, I can’t live without you.” Neighbour women soothed him, his wild, drink-fired eyes fixed on her and he clutched her by the shoulders, quivering. “What are we going to do now, Josie? How can we manage? She knew how to run everything. I can’t be expected to do it, Josie pet, I can’t!”

  The house fell to decay. Bluemoulded dishes cluttered the sink. Wallpaper peeled and potatoes sprouted on the scullery floor. The collars and cuffs of Josie’s favourite dress went black. In the nights he came to her and lifted her from the bed. The drink fumes suffocated her as she felt him draw a line with his finger from her neck to her navel saying, “You always were my pet. You and me miss Cassie. She was an angel, your mother.” He nipped her on the neck with his teeth and she felt the race of his heartbeat. Josie did not feel like a human being beneath. She was an inert rag doll. He turned from her and she winced as he spasmed and every nerve in her body tightened as he lay there, crying in the darkness.

  When the nurse came and gave her sweets, she brightened and thought of the happy time that the nurse said was coming. She wafted with the stories of pretty dresses and bright airy rooms. The nurse took her hand. She combed her hair gently and said to Josie, “We’re going to make you a nice little girl. Little Miss Josephine, that’s who you’re going to be.”

  The marble busts stared at Josie with piercing eyes and she walked the corridor with the nun and the huge rooms swept above her and made her dizzy. The room where they slept smelt of horsehair and rough soap and girls her own age looked at her with lifeless eyes. Her days after that became numbed, they fused imperceptibly into each other, measured by the ceaseless, ominous boom of the vast metal bell in the chapel corridor. The tiles echoed with the steady click of spartan heels. The smell of boiling cabbage hung perenially in the air. She curled up at night in a long grey cotton nightdress and sucked her thumb like an infant. The mornings found her in the potato field, bent beneath the sky, her whittled nails ingrained with dirt. Once a magician came and performed tricks with scarves and cardboard tubes but beyond that there was nothing but the icy hand on the wrist and the deadening chant of prayer.

 
; When Josie stood in the doorway of the orphanage for the last time, she turned back and looked at the rows of uncurtained windows set in the granite façade and she thought how much she hated the stifling presence of her own sex. Their body smell, their petulance and finicky moods, their feigned, brittle gentleness. She thought of their scattered clothes on the beds, the relentless exploration of skin in search of new blemishes, their coy deviousness. She never wanted them circling her so closely again.

  She found herself standing in Molloy’s Select Drapery in the town of Carn and plucked nervously at the buttons of her coat as Molloy pulled the tape measure to and fro on the back of his neck saying, “I don’t normally take girls from there you know. It’s only on account of the wife and Sister Benignus being so great. She says you’re not the worst. I’ll tell you this, mind. Any slacking and you’re gone. And whatever the wife tells you to do in the kitchen, no mouthing out of you. If you do, there’s the door. And no thieving. One thing I can’t stand, that’s thieving. The wife will give you a shopcoat. Now, away with you. I’ve work to do. What did you say your name was? Josie?”

  She was given her own room with faded wallpaper and a Sacred Heart lamp. A blond Jesus held up two fingers as he looked into Josie’s soul and beneath him a small light burned in a scarlet bell jar.

  Old women with musty smells tormented her about brassières and corsets.

  As time passed, the taint of the orphanage began to leave Josie and when she donned an ice-cream pink mohair sweater, it was not with either shame or fear.

  At first when the men came into the shop, her cheeks burned and her hands seemed to take on a life of their own. But the male voices were so different that she could not help following them, her eyes falling to the deep black hairs that covered their hands. She began to realise too that there was something stirring in her and when they stole surreptitious glances at her from behind the suit rack, she pretended not to notice but it filled her with a nervous excitment that all the dead years in the orphanage could not take from her. She lay at night beneath the Sacred Heart lamp and thought of the nun with the bristled chin who for ten years had waved her fist at them ranting and raving about purity and the pale innocent blueness of the virgin.