by Lee Dunne
Starting at the back, I swept the floor clean along the row. There was so much dust that I went looking for a bucket, which I found, along with some disinfectant, in the cupboard of the dressing room. I sprinkled the stuff lightly about the place and with the fresh air coming in through the front door and the open windows, and the place didn’t smell half bad.
Jimmy Frazer came into the hall and I could see he was pleased with the job I had done on it. But he sensed my unease and asked me what was wrong.
His tone was a caring one and I responded without caution and he knew the whole story before I could even thing of being embarrassed by my predicament.
He nodded in understand and said ‘Is that all that’s worrying you?’ I nodded my head and he said: ‘For a second or two you had me worried that you were in serious bother.’
I didn’t respond and he lit a couple of cigarettes and put one in my mouth. ‘Come on out to the wagon for a minute and let’s have a butchers.’
In his caravan home, he said: ‘It’s less trouble than tooth ache these days.’ He drew the curtains tight on the window and said casually: ‘Just in case anybody takes a gander in the window. We don’t want them thinking we’re a couple of poofs.’
I dropped my trousers and the underpants and Jimmy squatted down in front of me. I looked down and my heart skipped a beat. The cone looked grey more than pink and it looked a bit lopsided. And the eye was closed, stuck with a coloured discharge that sat along the lip like a zipper.
‘It’s Guntack alright!’ Jimmy stood up, nodding his head.
I said nothing and he went on: ‘Honestly Tony, it’s nothing. A jab or two and its gone in a couple of days.’
I sat down while he washed his hands. My legs felt weak, partly through fear but, more through being relieved.
‘You had a bunk-up some time last week, right!’
I nodded: ‘Saturday night.’
‘Was she rough?’
I nodded my head and told him I’d been drunk.’
‘We’ve all done it. The more you drink, the better they look.’
‘What can I do about it here, Jimmy,’ I asked, still more than a little concerned about my problem.
‘We’ll have a run through of tonight’s show, then I’ll take you to see Villiers, he’s the local sawbones and a decent skin.’
‘Will he treat this?’’
Jimmy grinned: ‘Treat you? For a bottle of whisky, he’d cut his sister’s nipples off!’
On the way to the hall, I tried to thank Jimmy for rescuing me but he wouldn’t have it. ‘I’m only glad you had the good sense to mention it...when there’s something wrong with your chopper, you can’t afford to be proud. You get help wherever you can, as fast as you can.’
By late afternoon, the discharge was drying up and I felt so good that I smiled at every female in the hall before the show, my good humour enhanced by a very encouraging nod from Jimmy as I headed for my duty at the entrance while he was heading backstage for the Open Chorus.
The hall was packet again and it seemed to me that many of the punters were sitting in the same seats as on opening night. So Jimmy’s hard work and his magical way with the punters was paying off, with a little help from his cast, and hopefully, before long, I would contribute in a meaningful was the every nights performance.
Pauline had run me through ‘Someone To Watch Over Me’ and ‘All The Things You Are’ before in the early afternoon and told me she loved the way I had sung them, which was a buzz since I had so much time for her, but even though I gave the numbers everything I had, I didn’t get within a mile of that Tuesday night audience. Admittedly, I got a fair response from the girls, and some of the younger women, but all in all, I wasn’t setting the place on fire, and that’s for sure!
From my place by the door, I watched the play and it was much the same as the other one. It ran on a very simple story -line, with some laughs thrown in to balance the required smattering of tears, the tale touching a lot of the women, and creating a fair deal of nose-blowing from the big tough country men in the audience. When it finished, I remembered Jimmy had said to me earlier ‘the trick is to give them what they want’ and it doesn’t take long to work out that its laughs and tears, and if you can work a nice bust in a tight sweater in the story, you’re away in a hack.’
As the punters were filing out with a plethora of thanks and good night, I was more than surprised by the number that lit up when my employer was talking to them personally. John Wayne might have got a bigger response, but it was hard to see how they could have been any more appreciative than they were for the attention Jimmy granted them.
I did my share of good-night-ing with the younger females and I noticed that May Mitchell got a lot of attention from the men, even though many of them were so shy in her nearness that they could hardly speak.
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Backstage a while later, as we were getting the make-up off and hanging up our costumes, I heard Pauline acting the fool with the words ‘O, hold me hand till the tram passes!’ as though she was about to faint.
Tom Hunter winked at me and Jimmy chimed in with: ‘don’t get your knickers in a twist, girl! All I said was that I’d buy the first round.’
‘In that case, I’ll come along, Jimmy old boy!’ Gary chimed in, creating a laugh that suggested he never bought a drink, anyway. This turned out to be a true state of affairs, not that, as I discovered, anybody thought him tight or anything. In fact, all in all, Gary was cherished some by one and all.
Tom Hunter got closer to me: ‘What do you think of it, of Us, Tony?’
‘Well, it’s a lot to take in...so much in each show, but I’m glad to be here.’
‘I’ve been on the road all my life,’ he said in a matter of fact way. ‘Born in a wagon in Tipperary, I was. The Father had his own Fit Up Company when I was born.’ His eyes had turned warm as he spoke: ‘Every play, every gag, all the sketches, I grew up on them.’ He shook his head gently: ‘And still, when I’m on the door and watching the show at the same time, I get as big a kick as ever I did.’
I nodded my appreciation and Gary Martin cut in with ‘Which adds weight to the argument that you are an ignorant peasant, so lacking in sophistication that it defies belief!’
Tom smiled and winked at me and I found myself grinning at the way in which he allowed this half-joking-whole-in earnest tirade to roll off him, like water off a duck.
‘That’s it,’ Tom said firmly, ‘that’s definitely it! No red handbag like I promised, for your birthday!’
Jimmy reappeared: ‘Right boyos! By two’s, down Main Street to Johnnie Cullen’s pub, quick march!’
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‘By the way,’ Tom Hunter said to me as we walked down the dark village street: ‘I liked your singing.’
‘I’m grateful somebody did, so thanks, Tom.’
‘Well, it takes guts to sing your kind of material in a place like this. But, you stick to your guns and you’ll have them by the end of the week.’
When we stopped outside Cullen’s pub, we were in complete darkness. I looked up and down the street, half expecting the law to show up at any minute.
Jimmy rattled the letter box as though he was trying to send it flying in through the shop, and after a minute I heard somebody approach the door as a corrugated voice asked who was there.
Jimmy bent down and put his mouth near the letter box.
‘There were four and twenty virgins in the town of Castlerea.’
The man inside said: ‘Oh, Jesus God, now there’s a thought for you.’
There was a tearing noise then, as a rusted bolt was drawn back across the door, and Jimmy threw his arms wide with a yell: ‘Open, o shant for me!’
It was a terrible joke but I laughed, which got me a glance of mild disgust from Pauline, who probably ha
dn’t laughed even the first time she heard it.
We moved into the hallway in single file and I could smell out host before I got a clear look at him. He stank of whiskey and stale tobacco and month-old-sweat, and I thought it fairly reasonable that his missus might not want to give him a cuddle every time she ran into him around the house.
The street bold closed behind us and the bold cried out again. A light now came to life and Johnnie Cullen and Jimmy were into a serious handshake that was a health hazard.
The short, thick-set publican was almost dancing with pleasure as he and Jimmy pressed serious flesh, his great shaggy head rolling about, his eyes blinking like red and white stripes, while his breathing reminded me of the train that had hauled me up here from Dublin. And you didn’t need to be any kind of mind reader to decide he was carrying more than his fair share of booze.
‘Welcome, welcome, one and all.’ He cried out, his puffs of breath pleasure filled as he went on pumping Jimmy’s arm, as he said with feeling: ‘Begod, Jimmy Frazer, and you’re a breath of fresh air.’
This compliment was a lot funnier than he realised, and the way that Pauline’s eyes flicked to me for a second told me that though so too.
Jimmy was grinning at the publican as he pulled his hand away. ‘You look well yourself, Johnnie, are you sick!’
Johnnie Cullen hopped ahead of us down the passage, the rest of us trooping along in a crocodile behind him, and he was cackling away at the most recent octogenarian joke that Jimmy had just provided: ‘Begod! And that’s a good one, Jimmy, you never lost it!’
He was opening the door to the bar as he said this, while my eyes opened like windows, since the huge room was more than occupied. I calculated that there were at least forty people intent on feeling no pain, and I remembered one or two of the faces from the audience we had played to earlier. And, somehow I was not in the least surprised that there wasn’t a woman of any description in that large bar.
The customers were likely farmers or farm workers, while in once corner, away from the counter, sat a uniformed police officer who looked to be about thirty years old.
He was very drunk, his loneliness a cloak about his shoulders. His cap lay beside his stout and an accompanying whiskey and he had, strapped about his waist, a revolver that was, presumably, standard issue to every member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
The man has a small, pale face; his forehead was marked by his cap; and his tenement eyes were those of a man on the run.
I shuddered at his misery, turning back to my work mates, to find Pauline studying me in a serious way. She pulled a face at then and we shared a harmless smile.
‘Tell us, Johnnie,’ Jimmy yelled, ‘is there any danger of getting a drink here?’
‘Danger, Danger! ’
Johnnie Cullen must have been Jimmy’s greatest fan, as he laughed a long bout, fighting for breath like a fella choking on the force of his own amusement.
Some of the men at the bar began to laugh with Johnnie, and it didn’t seem to matter that they didn’t know what they were laughing at.
I found I was making mental notes as I took in the rough, timber floor, the old wooden counter and the rough style tables and chairs. And the fireplace, big enough for a man to stand in, a great fire was yelling its way up the chimney into the cold of the night.
6
One second, Johnnie Cullen was standing there with us, the next he was nipping across the room towards the bar. In moments, he had hopped up onto the counter, using a wooden stool that seemed to be there as a step-up for himself.
He did a brief, not too bad, jig on the bar, somehow managing not to send glasses and bottles flying in every direction, before he unleashed a sort of wild Indian whoop, and landed back on the floor.
He began to pour whiskey and pull pints like a man in a hurry, all the time carrying on a one-sided conversation, a weird, half-rhetorical flood that was pure gold to listen to, at least, I thought so.
‘Whiskies all round for me friends from Gay Time, Two Shows for The Price of One! And in keeping with the principle of the house of Cullen, the first round is on me and my name is Johnnie and I’m not asking you or any other man for credit, and you Mickey boy, you wanted a pint of porter and no questions asked, and I don’t blame you one little bit, and a Powers Gold Label for your heart, which, if the truth were known, is really a swinging brick, may the lord and St. Anthony preserve us...’
The time I spent there could have been heavy since I wasn’t drinking - doctor’s orders - but it was one hell of an experience and I found myself writing down what I could remember, filling my mind with the rhetoric that had such a natural flow to it, that it had to be used someday in some kind of story.
It was nothing new for me to scribble things down, due to becoming hooked on scribbling as a serious pastime ever since I’d had a poem on Irish Radio and had published one article in a newspaper that died the death of all inadequate print offerings.
‘He’s a chronic piss-artist,’ Jimmy, sitting beside me, said laconically. ‘A one man show really!’
I didn’t go to the pub after work for the rest of my first week because I was on medication and I was scribbling all and everything that happened to me into the notebooks I carried with me everywhere. Yes, I might have gone back to gather even more material but, in all honesty, when, on that first night the publican began to repeat his act, without realising he had already been On, I felt he was in serious trouble with booze, and god knew what else, and I just didn’t want to be around it.
He did linger on my mind even though I tried not to concern myself with him and his problem. He was a colourful character, interesting to the scribbler manqué in me, but I had sympathy for his wife - a woman I never met - besides which, I was in no position to give advice even though I knew he was really a sick person in need of serious help.
The doctor, Villiers, not a nice man, had told me to leave drink alone for a while and, though I did not like this man at all, I was keen to do exactly as he had ordered. His direction to put the block on anything sexual was no hardship. Whatever my VD infection did to the mind, there was no way I was interested in
sex even though I was conscious of the way May Mitchell looked at me whenever we had reason to talk to each other. Sure, I could have been kidding myself but, I didn’t think so.
On Thursday afternoon, I had my final injection and, believe it or not, another lecture from this doctor who, was a prude with a stiff poker up his rectum, but, who, once he had enjoyed his moment of chastisement, assured me that all infection would have disappeared within a couple of days.
Meanwhile, I was rehearsing a couple of Dublin songs with my beautiful piano player, Pauline, who had turned out to be some kind of wonderful actress, stealing three of the plays - remember a completely different show every night - and I was so happy with her at the piano that I could have rehearsed eight hours a day and enjoyed every minute of it.
That night, free of the medical ban on alcohol, I joined the others in another trip to the pub that did all its real business after closing hours, the local cop being fed jar which kept him happy and off the streets, when bad things were happening in towns and villages all over the Six Counties. It interest me that nobody seemed to mind a Constable sitting jarred in an after hours pub with a revolver on his person, but, on Jimmy advice on my first day with the show, that the less said or even commented on was the route to survival. Loose lips, he said, could earn you a wooden overcoat, and I didn’t need to be told twice.
Thursday night, Jimmy had given me my first play part which I was to perform on the following Tuesday, with rehearsals over the weekend and, on Monday morning, with word calls in the afternoon of my acting debut.
When Jimmy handed me the play script he suggested I read it through first and let him know what I thought of it and the part I was going to be filling.
; There’s no denying that I was excited and I have to allow, nervous, but, I felt good about getting the chance, and as I read the part of Paddy O’Leary in the play script of ‘Noreen Bawn’ I honestly felt that I could handle it, and give a good performance.
I don’t know where the confidence came from and I never gave much time to wondering about it, it was just there, as it had been when I spoofed my way into the Top Hat gig in the Dublin suburb of Dunleary, the publicity of which resulted in Jimmy offering me a berth in his touring show, and as it had been when I offered a poem to radio that was broadcast, and an article to a paper The Times Pictorial that was published and earned me my first money outside of milk rounds as a kid and later the office job wages on a Friday that had helped my mother through some tricky years, money-wise.
When I was about to open the script as Jimmy handed it to me, he put his hand on my arm: ‘Forget it for now. Read it when you wake up in the morning, then drop over to my wagon and we can kick it around, see what you think.’
I wanted to tell him that I wouldn’t let him down, that I’d be better in the play than I was in Variety, but he was so busy rushing around as he dealt with his responsibilities, that I didn’t get the chance.
When Jimmy paid me on Saturday morning, I offered him ten bob as a start of paying him back for looking after the bill that my venereal interlude has cost. He said no, to keep it, and he grinned as he told me that I could do the same for him some time.
That morning he was in very good mood as he told the cast that we were staying put for another week. Business had been great all week and he felt sure we could do another before they got fed up with us. His description of the scene, delivered with a smile that lit up his handsome face.
The news cheered up everybody, because, it meant that, apart from an easy Saturday night - there would be no stripping the show down for a Sunday morning departure.
Normally, the show played a week in each place, and this meant that the stage frame had to come down after the show on Saturday night, and that everything had to be packed up and ready to go into the truck before anybody left the hall. Instead of which, we could all now saunter down to Cullen’s for a jar, and forget the show until the eleven o’clock call on Monday.
