A Bed in the Sticks

by Lee Dunne

  While I accepted that it was no big deal, to me, now that I had seen the downhill slide, I knew that I had to do some fence mending before I left town with the touring show. This decision happened right there in that very moment, and it seemed the right thing to do, because it had landed on me while I was accepting responsibility for the behaviour that had been turning my mother’s hair from

  gray to white, as she had to watch me, like her father be-fore me, opt to lose my life, as he did, in the deadly embrace of John Barleycorn at the age of just forty one.

  Before I went to see Ma, I sent a telegram to Jimmy Frazer who ran a touring company ‘Show Time Parade’. He had offered me a spot on his new tour which would guarantee me at least 16 weeks work, this being a bonus since Jimmy had been impressed by shots in the Evening Herald of me singing at the Top Hat ballroom.

  I had earned this stand-in spot for the Top Hats resident vocalist - he was on honeymoon - by simply calling up the owner - Louis de Felice, and spinning him a yarn that I’d been singing in Jersey, which prompted him to say come on out and let me hear what you can do.

  This I did - auditioning with the resident orchestra - and nailing down the gig for the week end, which was a minor miracle that actually earned me some space in a couple of Dublin newspapers, and gathered the interest of Jimmy Frazer.

  This was a couple of weeks before my brain-storming short time in Liverpool, and it seemed to me that my stars were pointing me in the direction of the touring show.

  By the time I dropped in at home, Ma was so glad to see me that she burst into tears and asked my pardon for being so hard on me, and I let her know right away that I loved her to death, that I never ever intended, at any stage in our time together, to be anything but good for her, and that this wouldn’t change even though I would be away some of the time, with the touring show.

  I saw her clamp down on some things she might have said and, though I doubted she would ever get over my sin of throwing away a steady job, with a future, there was a hint of acceptance in her overall response to my sincere apology.

  When I had left the flat, I knew that she’d be handle her overall disappointment in me, once the dust had settled in her volatile nature.

  The next thing I did was send a telegram to Jimmy Frazer who was staying on the north side of Dublin, asking him to send me the fare to get me to Fermanagh, which was in Northern Ireland.

  This was like Indian Territory to a Dub because of the political divide up there in the Six Counties of Northern Ireland, where Catholics and Protestants were fighting and killing each other because they hadn’t yet found a way to living in peaceful difference.

  Jimmy had told me that this was where the show would open its Country Wide Tour in ten days time, and though I just didn’t have any money to get me up to Fermanagh, I didn’t tell him that. I was just another artiste seeking assurance from a possible employer that he was at least solvent enough to send me the fare.

  Next day an envelope containing two five pound notes was delivered by taxi to me at Larry’s address and that same afternoon, I made my way to The Iveagh Market in The Liberties of Dublin to see if I could pick up some cheap gear to wear both on and off stage.

  The market was busy enough for a weekday and in a matter of minute s, tearing myself away from just eating up the banter and the sales pitches, I was checking out a Dress Suit that would fit me. Obviously, it wasn’t new but, for fifteen shillings, I wasn’t complaining.

  My dealer was a bit fat woman, a Dublin ‘Oul’One, born and bred, as she told me, and everybody else, before you could catch your breath.

  She had about two teeth top and bottom, Red Biddy eyes, and breasts so gigantic that she surely had to throw them into bed and climb in after them.

  I bought the dress suit for fifteen shillings but, not before Clarrie had to find forgiveness in her heart, that I would take such advantage of an old-widow-woman who was almost totally responsible - so she assured me modestly - with dressing the poor and the impoverished of Dublin City and environs, for little more than a pittance.

  Her patter was non-stop and I ask your pardon here as I make a long story interminable, by telling you that she also sold me a regular suit - a good buy at three pounds - and she but a poor widow woman waiting for God to take her.!! All of her pitch, every word of it was delivered, and I do mean, delivered, with a straight face!

  As I was about to leave her, she said: ‘Here son, gimme your hand a minute.’

  When I didn’t move, because I didn’t know where she was thinking of putting it, she grabbed it anyway, and drew it close to her while turning the palm upwards.

  She then studied it for a few moments before she told me: ‘Y’ill live to be a hundred, so you will,’

  She exhaled a pause that made me step back a bit and she looked at me with an intense stare, and I could see that she was serious.

  ‘Yer lifeline is halfway up yer arm. Y’ill travel the len’tha the earth. I can see lights, lights about your feet, all the colours of the rainbow, y’ill have women about you like flies. Yill know a sort of happiness, but you’re goin’ to get yer fair share of sorra, too.’

  She looked into my eyes: ‘Whatever you do, be true to yerself, son. It won’t be easy for ye, yiv a heart bigger than you know.’

  She folded my hand and gave it back to me, looking into my eyes still.

  ‘Goodbye to ye now, me son, and the blessin’s a God on ye.’

  I probably thanked her and wished her good-bye, but I couldn’t swear to it. Her words had hit me hard, affecting me deeply, as though I believed her.

  That was a laugh for a start because I’d never had any time for fortune-telling. More than once Ma had kicked me out of the flat for laughing, when some oul’one was in reading the tea leaves, or telling the future through a pack of playing cards. To me, all that stuff was a joke, a con trick worked on people who wanted to hear anything that would give them a bit of comfort.

  Yet, I seemed to believe Clarrie, or was it that I wanted to believe her, seeing myself suffering, enduring all the sorrow that she had predicted, loving the very thought of it, in my own masochistic way?

  Anyway, it all slipped into the reservoir of my mind, since I had other things to think about, and I was, now that I had a hint of an actor’s wardrobe, excited and nervous enough at the thought of joining Jimmy Frazer’s road show.

  By the weekend, I had bought, besides the two suits in the market, a couple of second-hand shirts; four ties; two of them bows, one black for the dress suit, the other maroon, and a fairly decent suitcase that didn’t lock which was why I got it for two shillings. I also bought two sticks of Nine-and-Five make-up, a stick of carmine, a box of talcum and a powder-puff: six sheets of music, three of them popular melodies, the other three Irish, and I felt that I was set-up as a touring professional in Show Business.

  -------

  Without meaning to, Jessie gave me a hard time on the Friday night, as, over a drink, I had just finished telling her that I was joining the show on Monday.

  I was more than surprised when she asked me point blank not to take the job and she lit a fresh cigarette in a nervous way as I blinked at her in surprised.

  I honestly didn’t know what she was on about. ‘How do you mean, don’t go?’

  ‘Come to London,’ she said, ‘come back with me.’

  I looked at her. ‘And do what?’

  ‘Do whatever you want. I’ve bought a decent house in West London.’

  ‘I can’t. This is a real chance, a chance I’ve been dreaming about since I was a kid.’

  She ran her forefinger around the rim of her wine

  glass, her eyes following the dark red blob of her nail. ‘You could go to acting school in London,’ she said in a positive voice.

  I hardly knew what to say and looking right at me, she said, ‘I only w
ant to help you, Paddy.’ She smiled: ‘I care a lot about what happens to you.’ As I was talking

  I made a performance out of lighting cigarettes for the both of us, hopefully, help her understand that I had to make my own way, wherever it was going to lead, and that I didn’t want any thing for nothing, not from anybody.

  My inherent cowardice, my built-in desire not to offend, put a zip-fastener on my mouth and I said none of this. I told her that I only needed three months with the touring show, that I’d already been to acting school, and would hit London once I’d just got a bit of practical experience under my belt.

  ‘I love you,’ she said, ‘I just want to be with you.’

  I took her hand across the table, ‘And I want to be with you.’

  ‘Honest?’

  I nodded, thinking that I was doing okay in the acting bit right there: ‘Honest to God, Jessie!’

  ‘It doesn’t matter about me being on the game?’

  Her tone made it very clear that she needed to hear me give the answer.

  ‘Course not. It’s none of my business what you did before I met you.’

  ‘I’ll give it up, if you’d want that,’ she said fervently. ‘I’ll take a job.’ She broke into a grin: ‘Even one in a factory at six quid a week.’

  ‘Three months, I said, ‘four or five at the outside.’

  She nodded: ‘I’ll be there whether you come or not.’

  ‘I will, I will,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t say it if you don’t mean it, Paddy. I couldn’t bear that.’

  I wanted to tell her the truth, and she had given me the chance. It would be better for her if I broke it now. I owed it to her not to string her along. She was a great girl and she deserved honesty from me. But instead of the truth, I told her, even as I tried to fill her eyes with my sincerity: ‘I’ll be there’ I said,

  giving my acting skill a run around the block, as I tried to let her down as lightly as could.

  ‘You promise?

  I nodded and gave her my from the bottom of my heart sound and everything seemed okay for her after that. Me? I needed a bath because I felt filthy, yet wanting to be rid of her, to be removed from how gullible she was in her tarnished innocence, if you like, increasing my awareness of what a shit I was.

  Later, while I was drinking coffee in Larry’s kitchen, it hit me that, already, old Clarries hand-reading act was turning out to be on the ball. Whatever the reason, I had hurt myself by lying to Jessie, fluffing my first chance to be true to myself and the old dealer’s prophecy was hardly eight hours old.

  Larry came back to the flat on Saturday afternoon and I was chuffed to see him. But from the moment I mentioned his

  dancer he became a bit strange, and when I asked him if he was hung up on her, he hedged so much that I let the thing drop.

  Next day he told me he wanted us to have a night out on the town before I split for the north of Ireland. That night he drank a lot of whiskey but I took it easy on bottles of stout. We talked but we weren’t saying anything to each other and I felt a sting of resentment that he had to make conversation with me. Then I bought a round ordering large Jameson Tens and he chuckled, remarking that this was more like it. Three drinks later at about half nine we hit Jackson’s off Middle Abbey Street and though I had a bit of a glow on, for some reason I was still choked inside.

  ‘There’s usually plenty of talent here,’ he said, ordering whiskey and pints of stout. I was looking around and he was right about one thing. ‘No shortage of talent,’ I said.

  ‘All half-brass, really,’ Larry said, ‘but I’ve had a few that were very worthwhile in the feathers.’

  An hour later I was sitting by the fire in Larry’s flat, he and Julia already off into the bedroom with a bottle. I was sipping whiskey, while I held a match to a cigarette for Letty, at the same time looking over her head at a picture of Larry’s mother, a nice looking woman whose mouth had turned into a line under her nose, the photographer having captured the hopeless heart behind the once fierce eyes.

  Ireland, land of Saints and Scholars, she had watched the world walk away, her children, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, all intermingled as they embraced emigration that they might find a living somewhere, anywhere, away, away to earn and hopefully to save something, if only the fare to return one day. I’ll be back with pucks of money. Loaded, I’ll be, and we’ll eat like lords and we’ll drink Lough Erin dry.

  Away they went on Shanks’s mare. The streets are paved with gold and I’m going to have my share. I’ll be back though, Ma, I’ll be back, I will, I will.’

  Letty touched my arm, ‘What did you say?’

  She was feeling no pain and I kind of liked her if only because she seemed so harmless.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I was just day-dreaming.’

  She squeezed my arm, smiling. ‘But this is night time.’

  I had to smile. ‘Yeh, I know. Silly, isn’t it?’

  She put her arms around my neck and I kissed her. Her lips parted and I could feel the edge of her dental plate with my tongue. She was excited, hungry for the feel of a warm body.

  ‘Are we going to go to bed, Paddy?’

  ‘In a minute,’ I said. ‘Let’s have another drink and chat here by the fire.’

  The tears in her eyes seemed like a badge of gratitude. ‘God bless you for that,’ she said, touching my face with her hand.

  A bit later, we stood by the fire and I touched her glass with mine. ‘Here’s to temperance, Letty.’

  She nodded, smiling: ‘Aye, and thank God the bastard doesn’t raise his head too often.’

  I went on pouring drink into her and when she finally drifted into a sodden sleep on the couch, I covered her with a blanket, and then, as quietly as I could, I got out of there and began to walk.

  I was jarred but the night air soon sobered me up and I found myself walking up the hill from Ranelagh Road to the flats where I’d been born on a near Christmas morning, the home where I had lived until quite recently.

  I wasn’t quiet sure what had brought me here, putting it down to the booze, since it was a dab hand at taking me into pointless exercises, and I knew, on seeing the flats I had hated all my life, that, leaving out the fact it was three o’clock in the morning, I would not be knocking the door to awaken Ma.

  Maybe, just maybe, there might come a day when I could pay her a longer, less tense visit than my apology drop in, but the time wasn’t now, not even if it had been twelve noon.

  I turned around, dismissing the crocodile of memory that were striving to confuse me further. And as I walked back down the hill, I was, in a way, saying goodbye to the hill once more, but I knew I would come back before too long, because, no matter what madness has exploded between Ma and me on a recent Friday at lunchtime, she and I were bound by more than a birth certificate, and not anger and madness or time was going to negate the power of what we had shared from the earliest days of memory.

  As I came down the hill, the same one I had sworn to say goodbye to in my own festering way six mornings a week for three years, I didn’t feel I had ever had, any real connection with the place. On the surface anyway, it simply meant nothing to me at all.

  My feet took me along Ranelagh Road towards the bridge where I would turn right and walk along the canal bank in the near dark, pausing first, for just a w moments, as I was close to the end of Ranelagh Road. This was where I had seen a family evicted from their rented room along with their bits and pieces, a decent skin and his wife and kids dumped onto the side of the road because he was not earning enough to pay the few shillings rent, with nobody giving a tinker’s dam that such a crime was happening in the Land of Saints and Scholars.

  The unfortunate woman, and her husband, were like people having the breath slowly sucked out of them, her face a mask of surrender, all figh
t gone, not seeing the people gathering in support as she cuddled her youngest in her arms, her others jumping up and down on an old mattress, enjoying themselves in the warmth of their innocence.

  I remembered the man getting up on an old box beginning to address the small gathering of support while a policeman sat nearby on his bicycle. I knew his face, and I had heard many call him a bad pill but, in fairness, I have to say that there was enough compassion in his eyes that I didn’t, in that disgraceful scene, think he could be all bad.

  That night, standing in a shaft of memory, I recalled a small placard bearing the words last words of a poem that I not longer remembered but for the final line ‘The Roadside for the Poor!’

  I walked along the canal bank to Leeson Street Bridge, my teeth aching on the memory of the words ‘The Roadside For The Poor!’ And I found myself vowing through clenched teeth that I would find a way, some way, whatever fucking way it took, to ensure that nobody would ever put me and my bits and pieces on any roadside, anywhere.

  3

  Amiens Street Station is what you might call a stone’s throw from The Hill, where I was born, but I’d never been there until the morning I took the train to Fermanagh in Northern Ireland.

  It’s one of those things peculiar to Dubliners. You see, the Liffey cuts the city just about in two, and for the most part the northerners stick to the north side, and the southerners hold to their half, there being, apparently, no east or west to the city; at least, not in so much as anyone ever seemed to mention either.

  I’d been across to the north side: the odd dance; I once got my grip from a Philsboro girl; a knee-trembler on a cold night and a long walk home afterwards; but even though Dublin is not much bigger than a postage stamp, there were a lot of places in it that I didn’t know. And Amiens Street was one of them.

  I have to admit I was nervous. Going on the stage was a miracle, the realisation of a dream that could never be anything but a dream, This was enough to give anyone the jitters, and with the bitter, almost sick determination never to be poor, never to be a toe-rag for anybody again in my life,, well, it meant I was really carrying top weight. I mean, it’s a good thing to want to get on but it’s a bad thing to have to succeed.