Carn

by Patrick McCabe

  “Oh I just thought I’d go and have a look,” Sadie replied.

  “They’re a right-looking shower. There’s a gang of them camped out at the Hairy Mountains. A rare looking bunch of madmen if you ask me.”

  The band was already on stage when they got to The Sapphire. Goosepimples crawled on Sadie’s back as she watched the singer fall to his knees clutching the microphone like a chalice, the circling glitterball tossing specks of light on his t-shirt. A howl curled from the swaying mane of heard, Baby I neeeeeeed you sooooooo baaaaaaaaaaad! The jiving girls stood back, perplexed and not far from anger. The drums sent out a throbbing rhythm as the singer, still on his knees, spoke of love and harmony. “How are you tonight, Carn? Are you feeling all right?”

  The dancers stood motionless in the centre of the hall. They were dumbfounded. “What’s going on?” they said. “That isn’t singing.” Eventually they cobbled together whatever rhythm they could and continued around the floor in a half-daze.

  Sadie was in a daze herself, almost swooning under the relentless onslaught of male bodies that surged forward at the beginning of each dance. She looked up to see an outstretched arm and a long-haired youth at the end of it saying, “Dance?”

  He told her he was from Dublin and was with the people camping in the Hairy Mountains. They were setting off travelling the following day, he said. This was going to be their last night in Ireland for a very long time.

  “Where are you going?” Sadie asked anxiously.

  She knew he was going to London. She just knew.

  “Europe,” he said. “First Amsterdam—then who knows?”

  His eyes were half-closed as he rolled a cigarette. “There’s five of us. We have no problem making out. We make things.”

  He dragged on the cigarette and smiled. He put his arm around her shoulder. The singer lay on his back and howled again.

  Cars revved up and sped off into the night. Stray couples courted at the back of the dancehall. A fight threatened and bodies thrust themselves forward. Voices rose and dipped again, the gathering breaking up raggedly. Sadie Rooney, her back against the pebbledashed wall of the ballroom, stared up at the denim clad youth who said his name was Danny. He tickled her on the chin and smiled again. “All you need is thirty quid and you’re in,” he said. “Six is a perfect number.” Then he reached in his pocket and said, “I have something for you.” It was a tiny rabbit’s foot on a leather thong. “I want you to have it. Even if you don’t come, I want you to have it.” She clutched it in her hand and he kissed her.

  They stood outside the Railway Hotel. “We’re leaving at ten from here, this very spot. Promise me you’ll be here.”

  “Yes,” Sadie said.

  He nodded and then went off towards the Hairy Mountains. Sadie was unsteady with nervousness on her way home. She could not keep her hand from trembling as she spooned the tea into the pot. The late night deejay played a special request for all the young lovers of the world. At once Sadie found herself retreating to the security of the factory voices and rushing in fear away from them. Her head was a mass of jumbled wires. The side of her face was numb and her palms were drenched in sweat. The kitchen door opened. Her mother stood there in her dressing gown.

  “I didn’t know you were going to be late.”

  Sadie stammered awkwardly. “Please ma,” she began. “There’s something I want to ask you.”

  Her mother looked quizzically at her and replied, “Hadn’t you the whole day to ask me? A fine time to pick to ask anything when the rest of the Christian world are asleep in their beds. Go on up to bed before you have him down.”

  She closed the door behind her and Sadie just stood in the middle of the kitchen. A lightness came into her head. She put away the dishes and the teapot. Then she switched off the radio and went upstairs.

  She lay there beneath the ceiling and felt as if every drop of blood had been drained from her body. She could not stop her heart from racing.

  She lay there until first light. Outside she heard the sound of the first footsteps making their way down the lane to work.

  As the sun rose above Railway Terrace, she stared out towards the blunt silhouettes of the Hairy Mountains and saw in her mind the purring van waiting by the Railway Hotel, Danny anxiously checking his watch, then the sliding door being pulled shut, and as the engine revved up and turned towards the Dublin Road, Sadie began to weep as she cried silently and bitterly to herself, “I hate you Sadie Rooney, I hate you, I hate you, I fucking hate you!”

  VI

  Time passed and Carn got into its stride.

  The hottest summer for years came to the town. Through the open windows of the terraces wafted the smell of atrophying innards, along with the sound of tapping hammers but not a soul complained for it was James Cooney’s message that business was booming, and as the new extension of the Carn Meat Plant inched its way along the hill overlooking the town, the housewives and children went contentedly about their daily tasks, secure in the knowledge that all was well. And getting better. For, on the day the final rivet went in, the Turnpike Inn hummed with the news that forty new workers were wanted on the spot by James Cooney. And so Benny Dolan, along with his schoolmate Joe Noonan, found himself in the head office being surveyed up and down. The foreman wiped bloodstained fingers on his apron and said, “You’re Dolan. Your father and me went to school together. A wild man in his day, eh? I’m only codding you son. Do you see that woman below in the yard? you’ll be working on the line with her. Maisie Lynch is her name. Half daft but there’s no harm in her. Divides her time between here and the mental. If you have any trouble, see me.”

  He threw them overalls and caps.

  Maisie Lynch stood back with her hands on her hips and rasped at them, “Youse needn’t think youse’ll slack here! I’m in charge! Do youse hear that?”

  “Right Maisie,” said Benny.

  In the afternoons, the streets buzzed. The jukebox played in the Golden Chip, workers horseplayed throwing salt and sugar across the tables. The Turnpike Inn began to sell coffee and steak and kidney pies. Benny and Joe became friendly with the older workers, throwing darts and playing cards. They went drinking with them every Friday after work, stayed until closing time and emerged swaying and singing. “Good man young Dolan, you’re a good one. Your father was out there when the real fighting was going on!” They sang rebel songs all the way home, cursing England and British Imperialism much to the amusement of the smiling sergeant who was taking up his position outside the barracks to observe the patrons on their way to The Sapphire. Across town another voice echoed, “Fair play to James Cooney and to hell with the railway. What good is a Mickey Mouse railway to anyone? Carn’s flying now and nobody can say different. Here we go, boys, and let anyone stand in our way. Fifty quid of a bonus this week and I don’t care who hears it!”

  When Benny arrived into work complaining of a hangover like the rest of them, Maisie Lynch twisted up her face and said, “If you’d do your work, it would be more in your line. Do you think I’m going to pack all these by myself just because you’ve spent your night pissing your money up against Cooney’s wall? Well you’ve another think coming. You young people have it too easy, that’s what’s wrong. When I was your age, do you know what I had? I hadn’t even shoes on my feet. You don’t know what hardship is! Pack them hearts and less buck out of you!”

  “That’s the stuff, Maisie,” called someone from the yard, “you tell them. The smell of a barman’s apron’d knock them.”

  “I say Maisie,” called another voice, “would you take it?”

  Maisie screwed up her face. “Take it? Take what?”

  “Six inches. Thick!”

  Maisie flung her cap on the floor and disappeared into the toilet, muttering to herself.

  “Jesus,” said Joe Noonan, “what a spot.”

  By the end of his first month Benny felt as if he’d been in the factory for years. The summer stretched before him. He felt there was nothing he couldn’
t do.

  When the new motorcycle shop opened, he spent his evenings after work admiring the machines, chatting with the young mechanic who had moved from the north to avail himself of the new prosperity. They discussed brand names and maintenance at length. In the end Benny settled for a Yamaha 750 c.c. and took it for its maiden run all the way to Bundoran in Donegal. Joe Noonan cheered as they roared up the main street watched by gawping children and sullen adolescents. They bought a six-pack of beer and lay on the strand with straw hats over their eyes. “Hey amigo, she some machine, no?” said Joe with a broad grin.

  “Si senor,” answered Benny, “she cost me mucho dollar.”

  The local football stadium, for years choked with weeds and scored with graffiti, now, thanks to a donation from James Cooney who had recently become the club sponsor, sat proudly in all its refurbished splendour at the top of the town. This new-found interest in the club seemed to fire the players with a new dynamism. After years of abject failure and poor attendances, the mightiest teams in the province suddenly began to fall before them. Each week the Pride Of Carn Marching Band circled the returfed pitch proudly before the match. The supporters followed their heroes to all corners of the country, carousing until all hours in distant towns. Una Lacey’s father, Pat, the club’s newly-elected president, took most of the credit for the team’s success. From the moment he had taken over, all troubles that had for so long seemed to dog the team, melted into thin air. Pat Lacey had the Midas touch when it came to management and organisation of the team—there was no one in Carn who would argue with that.

  “There is nothing that Carn Rovers cannot do,” he cried after yet another victory as he waved to the jubilant crowds on the terraces. “We are going to conquer all before us.”

  From the window of the photographer’s shop, the ever-growing pyramid of trophies reflected their boundless pride back at the people. The team became known as Lacey’s Lions. And wherever the flag-decked coaches went, Joe and Benny followed on their decorated bikes chanting, “Rovers Rovers” as they roared through the wideyed villages of the midlands.

  Every week, as his victorious team made their way to the dressing room, Pat Lacey was joined by Father Kelly and James Cooney and, as the cheers rose to the sky, the people felt indissolubly bonded together by their faith in these men who now could no wrong.

  One warm Saturday in early July, Benny and Joe set off at the crack of dawn to watch their team ride over Drogheda United like a mighty wave. They stood in the market square whirling scarves as the dejected supporters of the vanquished team slunk home through the dusty streets.

  By the time they got back to Carn, the weekend festivities were in full swing and they shouted, “Hey you guys—look out! Carn’s Hell’s Angels are back in town!”

  They parked the bike outside the Turnpike and went inside where a group of women were cheering as one of their number, a mature red-cheeked woman, bumped and grinded on a table, pulling her dress coquettishly above her knee. They clapped along frenziedly as Joe said to the barman, “We hope you no gringo senor. You know what we do weet gringo? We keel heem.”

  “Two pints,” interrupted Benny, “and less lip Cisco.”

  At the end of July a notice appeared on the telegraph pole outside the meat plant and subsequently was to be seen covering every wall in the town. It read:

  All-Ireland Fleadh Cheoil

  Festival of Music for Young and Old!

  All roads lead to Carn August 1967!

  Beneath the circus-red typeface a stick man cavorted and played a tin whistle. Benny and Joe tucked their biscuit tins under their arms and said, “Now we’ll see some real action!”

  They squeezed the bulging hearts into their tight plastic containers as Maisie ranted furiously to herself about this latest development.

  “If the priest had any say left, there’d be no festival in this town! There’ll be no licentious behaviour in the town of Carn. Don’t think I don’t know what goes on. And you—you and your big motorbike, or who do you think you are? I see what goes on all right. I see them with their gins and tonics lying with their legs open for all the tramps of the day. Twenty years ago I know what they’d have got. But now? Into the bin with the holy pictures and bare your arse for the whole country. They’ll rue the day they let the whoremasters into this town, festival or no festival!”

  A marquee was erected on the fairgreen. Primary school teachers loaded down with violin cases and brochures bustled through the town all day long. Bunting was draped across the main street. Hotel yards were converted into public bars, with crude painted wooden notices advertising sangwitches and minerals.

  Tents appeared in odd places, long-haired youths in Aran sweaters loitered outside the hotel drinking out of paper cups. Bikers roared in on massive machines and converged on The Diamond. Benny and Joe drank with them into the small hours, listened eagerly as they swopped stories of Californian Highways and European autobahns. They came from Waterford and the north but there was nowhere they hadn’t been. Chains dangled from their leather jackets, they wore studded wristlets. The longhairs joined them and tuned up a guitar. From behind a swaying mane of hair a melody went up and the bikers sang along with their glasses raised. Joe Noonan took the instrument and sang a number by Donovan Leitch the Scottish minstrel. Then they went back to their tents and sang until dawn, stumbling back into town in time for the opening of one of the makeshift bars.

  “This sure is some machine you have, man,” said one of the bikers to Benny. “You guys sure know what you’re at. If you’re ever in Waterford, make sure and give us a call.”

  Beer-bellied ballad singers thrust out their stomachs and sang songs about Mexican peasants and Irish emigrants with equal enthusiasm. A crackling public address system struggled to be heard as it announced details of forthcoming competitions. Francie Mohan stood in the centre of The Diamond and waved a bottle as he cried, “Hah! You never thought you’d live to see the like of this, did youse? We’re a long way now from the boat train and the brown paper parcel! Here we go, the sky’s the limit, all we need now is Ulster back!”

  All along the roads leading into the town, prone bodies lay scattered beside empty crates and bottles. The longhairs seemed to be everywhere. They washed their clothes in the fountain and romped naked in the lake. An unsavoury incident had provoked a near-riot at a meeting of the urban council. A pair of men’s underpants had been draped over the Matt Dolan Memorial Plaque. “The men of 1916 didn’t die for these unwashed bastards!” the chairman snapped.

  But the shopkeepers didn’t concur as their tills were ringing like never before, so there was little more about it. Even when a youth climbed on the roof of the library and stood there in his pelt singing, “Even the president of the United States one day has to stand naked” the shopkeepers would not relent. They said that it was police business and no concern of theirs. They were there to trade and nothing more. Through the open window of the cinema, loud rock music blared, the soundtrack of the film which was showing, carefully selected by the projectonist for this week, The Sweet Ride.

  The bikers and the longhairs sat back with their arms folded and their legs up on the seats and watched with glee as their American counterparts zoomed across the sand on mighty motorbikes and threatened to reduce roadside cafés to rubble unless they were supplied with the day’s takings. They cheered from the front row where they sat munching crisps and drinking lager as the fuzz-bearded angel flung the puny owner right across his own shop. By the time the film drew to a close, the atmosphere in the cinema had risen to a frenzied climax, and the bikers climbed on each others’ backs as a girl in a wet t-shirt wiggled her breasts provocatively.

  The film became the talk of the town.

  The priest was apopleptic in the pulpit.

  The Fleadh Cheoil went on for three days. The streets were littered with battered cartons and beer cans. The bunting drooped forlornly over the main street. A smashed plate glass window looked emptily out from the draper’s premi
ses. The barmen began to take down their wooden signs and sweep up the yards. Benny and Joe gave the bikers a firm handclasp.

  “Come back to Carn,” they said. “It was real good to meet you.”

  “Carn Bikers Okay,” said the Waterford Angels.

  Joe and Benny stood watching them leave, followed by the dilapidated caravan of the longhairs with their pots and pans, waving to them as they faded from sight.

  “My head is lifting off me,” said Joe, “three days on the trot.”

  Benny hopped on the Yamaha and shook his head, then off they went to have a last one for their Waterford brothers.

  The following week the priest could not contain his fury. He was so upset that at times it looked as if he was about to use a few expletives himself. “What would our forefathers have thought?” he asked wistfully. He went on to say that people had now too much money. Too much of everything. They were like tigers who having once tasted blood, were now mad for more. More of everything. The parishioners looked at each other, redfaced. He quoted statistics from other European countries and alluded to lifestyles propogated by the glossy magazines and the seamier English dailies. “We are on a slippery slope,” he concluded darkly.

  The congregation gathered in small groups outside in the churchyard, smoking cigarettes and fiddling nervously with their prayerbooks. They said that the priest was right, that people in the old days, in the days of the railway and before that even were better off. “Do we want the place to be like Hollywood?” said an elderly man. But then the conversation turned to other topics and by the time they got home, they had forgotten everything the priest had said for it could not stand up to the seduction of an afternoon’s television and the smell of cooking roast beef.