I Dream Alone

by Gabriel Walsh

  Now after she delivered the sad news that she and her husband were leaving the domain it took all I could do to keep from crying in front of them.

  The kitchen door suddenly opened and Jim entered.

  “We’re gone this Saturday,” he said to Pat as he wiped his hands with the colourful kerchief he usually had tied around his neck. He then registered my presence by gently slapping me on the back. “Remember the first day, Gabriel?”

  I wasn’t sure what he meant and I responded, “What first day?”

  Pat handed him a hot cup of coffee and he sat down on the chair opposite me.

  “He’s talkin’ about the first day you arrived here,” Pat said.

  Jim looked out the window that gave a view to the front entrance as well as a good section of the estate. “You know every bloody blade of grass out there, young man, ’cause I showed you.”

  In the past I often sat next to Jim in the snow plough when he cleared the driveway of snow. In spring and summer I frequently volunteered to cut the grass with him as well. I enjoyed being on the tractors and listening to Jim complain about everything with what he called his “Yankee sense of humour”.

  “Maybe the next time we show up around here, Irishman, you might be the Lord of the Manor – it’s yours to dream for!”

  Pat, who knew me better than her husband, volunteered, “I don’t think he’d want that, Jim. Gabriel’s not cut out for workin’ behind a desk and wearing a pressed pair of pants every day.”

  Jim looked over at me and shook his head as if he was of two minds and didn’t know what thought to decide on. “If he’s the boss he can wear what he likes. Mrs. Axe is more than keen on grooming you, son, for a chair on the board. I know that because I’ve heard her say it more than once.”

  Pat then chimed in, “And I know I shouldn’t say it, but the old man ain’t goin’ to last forever and somebody’s got to step in.”

  Jim looked at the kerchief he was holding in his hands as if to inspect it for perspiration or anything else that might have landed on it since he came in from the garage.

  “Who’s goin’ to be in this place twenty years from now: the ghost that prowls about the garden every night?” Pat clapped her hands again but even louder this time. “No! The ghost thing that walks up and down the big staircase every morning. I know that ’cause I bump into it every morning I bring Mrs. Axe her breakfast.”

  I joined in on the merriment. “That’s Hamlet’s father you bump into, Pat.” I couldn’t resist quoting from the play: “My hour has almost come when I to sulphurous and tormenting flames must render up myself.”

  Jim laughed even louder than before. “The old boy, Mr. Axe, has you all learned up with that artsy crafty stuff.”

  For a second I was tempted to defend and even explain my appreciation of Mr. Axe and his scholarly demeanour but I resisted the temptation. Jim was not one to pay much attention to pronouncements from the gods of literature or to even know or understand Mr. Axe’s obsession with Shakespeare and the English language.

  Pat then walked to me and looked directly into my eyes. “I think you like the other world better, Gabriel, don’t you?”

  “What other world?” I asked.

  “The world of runnin’ about! Singin’ and actin’ and goin’ where the devil takes you. Isn’t that so, Gabriel? I think you have that in you and you like it better than sitting downstairs at the desk that has your name on it.”

  I wasn’t inclined to influence Pat’s thinking. I stood up and looked out the kitchen window again. “I like looking out there, Pat. I like seeing the seasons change and I know all of this and all of you have been almost like religious guardians to me.” I stopped talking because my throat seemed to want to burst and my mouth went dry. I sat down and covered my face with my hands to hide the fact that I was trying to stop the tears from drowning me. I took my hands from my face and put on as brave a face as I could. Jim approached me and gently massaged the back of my neck.

  “Make sure he’s got our address in Maine, Pat,” he said as he pointed his finger to the notepad in front of her.

  She immediately retreated to the pad in front of her and scribbled, in almost illegible handwriting, their address in Maine. I questioningly looked at the piece of paper and was about to ask for clarification when Pat took it from my hand and rewrote what was on it. When she handed it back to me I smiled in approval. The handwriting and information was legible and clear.

  I had put the page into my pocket when Jim called out, “Give him the phone number as well!”

  I retrieved the piece of paper and handed it back to Pat. She in turn and very clearly wrote their phone number in Maine on the slip of paper.

  “When I drive up to Maine you will be my first port of call,” I said and I meant it at the time.

  * * *

  It didn’t take long for Mrs. Axe to replace Pat and Jim. Within three days of their departure I was introduced to a couple from France who the night before had taken up residence in Pat and Jim’s apartment above the kitchen. Mr. Axe had had a few men from the grounds staff clean and paint the accommodation. The transfer and transition of domestic power depressed me somewhat. For the past three years I had spent a good part of the cold winter sitting in Pat’s living room watching television. As I observed the French couple standing in front of me and blabbering away in French, I accepted that past form of recreation had come to an end.

  After the introductions Mrs. Axe asked me to help her show the couple about the residence. We started in the kitchen and took a tour of the main areas of the castle. As I made the rounds with them I kept thinking about Pat and Jim and how much I missed them. What made it even more awkward for me was the fact that the French couple didn’t really speak English very well. I did my best to make the couple feel welcome and comfortable. As I contributed to the tour I tried to impress the new domestic staff with my limited knowledge of the antiques and some of the paintings hanging on the wall. By the look on their faces I wasn’t confident however that they understood me. When I advised them against touching and changing the book order on one of Mr. Axe’s bookshelves they seemed to think that I was offering them the books to read. I got the same reaction when I tried to explain Mr. Axe’s obsession with his collection of musical recordings. Mrs. Axe on the other hand spoke French and had to keep translating for me and the couple as we moved from room to room. When they spoke I hadn’t a clue as to what they were saying. At one point I told them that I was in a television production of The Scarlet Pimpernel and that I wore the uniform of a French soldier. The mention of ‘French soldier’ caused a little concern with the woman and she turned to Mrs. Axe for an explanation. Speaking in French Mrs. Axe explained in detail what I intended to be humorous. By the look of both faces I was glad I hadn’t mentioned the word guillotine. The dame of the couple then turned and spoke to her husband in what I considered to be a harsh tone of voice. He immediately raised his voice at her and they both were quiet for at least a minute, but just as fast as they went silent they turned to each other and began to argue – at least that was how it appeared to me. The gist of the conversation, according to Mrs. Axe as she simultaneously translated for me, was that Adele, the Frenchwoman, was anxious to get to work in the kitchen and to show off her culinary skills. Her husband, Jacque, looked more like a domestic butler than an outdoorsman. He was constantly complimenting the décor of the castle interior. This made me think he could not replace Jim, particularly when it came to working in the garage and on the grounds.

  As I walked alongside the couple I sensed that I would not be frequenting the kitchen as I did in the past. I also came to the conclusion that even if I did I wouldn’t be as comfortable there as I was when Pat ruled the roost.

  * * *

  Sitting in a booth in a coffee shop on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City one day before taking the train back to Tarrytown, I overheard a young man singing in the booth next to me. What got my attention was not the resonance of his voice
– which was pronounced and notable – but its distinct Irish accent. The man (who I guessed to be a few years older than me) was singing a song and seemingly talking at the same time.

  The mellifluous voice singing the recognisable Irish song obliged me to introduce myself. When I turned my head in his direction I said with as much humour as I could muster, “You’re not from Dublin, sure you’re not?”

  Without hesitation and with a sense of pride the voice bellowed at me, “I’m from Armagh!”

  Defensively and at the same time wanting to be friendly, I responded, “I’m from Dublin!”

  The man then laughed and reached to shake my hand. “A jackeen, is it?”

  For a moment I felt I had intruded on the fellow’s privacy and with the little knowledge I had of the rivalry between Irish counties I felt more than a bit insecure – even a tinge fearful. The term jackeen was a sobriquet used to refer to people from Dublin by the natives of other Irish counties; the “jack” in the word had an etymology that historically associated it with the “Union Jack”, England’s flag. Given that my father had once served in the British army, I felt even more vulnerable.

  Just as I withdrew my hand the man from Armagh got up and joined me in the booth I was sitting in.

  “Do you do any singin’?” he asked me.

  For fun I mockingly belted out, “In Dublin’s Fair City where the girls are so pretty!”

  He then reached back over to the booth he had been sitting in and retrieved his coffee cup.

  “Have ya done any actin’?” he queried me.

  “Done a bit,” I said and told him about my vast experience of playing two bit parts on television.

  When I introduced myself and asked him his name, he replied, “Just call me the Man from Armagh! Listen t’me – Ted Hanley – a fellow across the street – is puttin’ together a group of Irish actors and singers to go on tour of Connecticut. He asked me to find a few more Paddies.Ya want a job?”

  Thinking I had all of a sudden got lucky I quickly answered, “Yes.”

  Then unhesitatingly and with a happy smile on his face he introduced himself: “My name is Tommy Makem from the County Armagh.”

  The Man from Armagh informed me that the production he was helping put together was low in budget but high in quality. A few minutes later and without any kind of introduction I was sitting in Ted Hanley’s apartment across the street with about five or six other young Irishmen and a few older women. I learned from the Man from Armagh that Ted Hanley was an Irish-American who wanted to break into show business and came up with the idea of forming a group of Irish-born thespians and singers and sending them on a tour of Irish-American bastions in the nearby state of Connecticut. The idea was to put on two one-act plays – in this case Millington Synge’s Riders to the Sea and Yeats’ ThePot of Broth. In between the plays the group would sing at least half a dozen Irish ditties. Both of the plays and all of the songs were public domain and didn’t require any payment for usage. Mr. Hanley, the producer, informed the six or seven of us who were sitting in front of him that we were all cast in the show. None of us aspiring actors and singers even had to read a line from a play or sing a note from a song for him. He assigned each and every one of us the part we were to play and the songs we were to sing. I was given the part of the young son in the Riders to the Sea play and I was to learn the lyrics to about five or six songs. The songs were old traditional numbers and all of us already knew the lyrics. The parts in the two plays were tiny and they wouldn’t require much memorising. Mr. Hanley gave us a piece of paper with instructions on how to get to an empty warehouse the following Monday that was adjacent to a Catholic school somewhere in Yonkers. It turned out that Ted’s father was a janitor at the Catholic school and had the keys to the warehouse. This was another indication of how low the budget for the proposed tour was to be.

  * * *

  Back in Tarrytown later that evening I informed Mr. and Mrs. Axe of my new adventure and got their blessings to go forth. The following week I rehearsed the plays and sang the songs in the warehouse in Yonkers. A man with a very Greek-sounding name was in charge of directing the production and the scuttlebutt was that he was a former employee of the Greek diner where I first met the man from Armagh. One fact that stood out very clearly about the Greek director was that his command of the English language was very much in its elementary stage. A consequence of being exposed to this kind of mixed linguistics was that the cast under his command thought they were in plays by Sophocles and Euripides. The Greek director however left the singing of Galway Bay, Molly Malone and The Girl from Donegal to the Man from Armagh. The set for the play I was in had rolled-down red-painted bedsheets for the four walls of an Irish cottage.

  The first show of the tour opened in Bridgeport, Connecticut, to a half-empty house. This impacted on our yet-to-be-paid salary but we were promised that when we opened the next night in New London, Connecticut, we would be fully compensated. The ‘company’ of the ‘Irish Players’ arrived in a theatre in New London and prepared for the second show. This night the cast was told that the show would open with one of the two plays instead of the musical number that opened the show the previous night. It also meant that I was on stage and ready to roll when the call for “places” was given.

  The curtain went up. I stood on the stage with the actress Mary Boylan who played my mother and noticed that the vast auditorium of several hundred seats had only two people sitting in the back row. Mary looked out at the two people who were now making out in the back and said out loud, “Fuck ’em! I’m not going on with this!”

  I agreed wholeheartedly and both of us walked off the stage. Backstage the rest of the cast and the two crew members, one being Mr. Hanley and the other unidentified individual who spoke Greek, protested our stage desertion. The chorus, including the Man from Armagh sided with us. Within fifteen minutes the tour of the ‘Irish Players’ came to a sudden and sad end.

  With my bag in hand and while standing in the lobby of the theatre later that night the Man from Armagh came up to me and offered a gentle apology to me and the rest of the cast. Before he turned to go his own way I reached out to him and asked him what his plans were for the future and he said he’d “continue to look for acting work in Manhattan. Absent that, I’ll keep on singing.”

  Several years later I met the Bard of Armagh, Tommy Makem, outside Carnegie Hall where he was appearing on stage with the Clancy Brothers.

  * * *

  Early Monday evening the Axes and I went to the Metropolitan Club for dinner and then to the opera. While I drove home Mr. and Mrs. Axe got into a debate about the performances in the opera Rigoletto which we had just seen. Mrs. Axe favoured the singer who played the Duke of Mantua whereas Mr. Axe seemed to gravitate to the one who performed Rigoletto. I sided with Mr. Axe and supported him because I identified with Rigoletto, the hunchbacked jester. Identifying with people with deformities might have had something to do with my Catholic past.

  The Dublin of my childhood was diminishing like a distant star in the galaxies but, like a lingering hangover or the pain of rejection, it was not yet gone from my mind. Very welcome was the fact that living in New York was different: very different. Yet it wasn’t difficult for me to fall back into memories of my past. In fact there were many hours and days that I couldn’t escape it.

  * * *

  Morning, noon and night for the next month I spent as little time in the kitchen as I could. I made sure I got up earlier every morning than I usually did and consumed my breakfast before the gendarmes arrived. I would greet the couple entering the kitchen as I was exiting it. Part of what made my relationship awkward with the French couple was that they were not sure or aware of what my position and relationship with the Axes was. Neither I – nor presumably Mr. or Mrs. Axe – made an effort to explain what was perplexing even for us. They were likely confused by my presence when I accompanied Mrs. Axe as she gave them a tour of the castle. My propensity to prepare my own meals and sit alon
e at the kitchen table was likely seen in their eyes as an insult to their professionalism. I would not have been insulted if the culinary duo had looked upon me as the house cat. There were times when I actually felt that I was. The new reality of who controlled and commanded the kitchen was beginning to look more and more like the Battle of Borodino. Had the French not made so many tactical mistakes when invading Russia in 1812 Napoleon’s legacy might be more venerable. The times when we mutually occupied the kitchen I couldn’t help but notice that the couple approached the preparation of Mr. Axe’s meals as if they were field commanders in a military campaign designed by Robespierre. They watched over Mr. Axe’s eggs, bacon and toast with such strict culinary methodology it often looked as if they were painting a portrait of the man’s appetite. After breakfast they readied and organised what Mr. Axe was having for lunch. When they completed that chore, they re-decorated the dining-room table by placing flowers all over it only to be told to remove them by Mr. Axe who preferred to have books in front of him rather than flowers. Because of the language barrier I was limited in my efforts to make a suggestion of any kind regarding anything that concerned Mr. and Mrs. Axe. Adele and Jacque soon learned however that only occasionally did Mr. and Mrs. Axe sit together for dinner. Often the labour of love they invested in their efforts to showcase their gastronomic talents went unnoticed and even unappreciated. For me, the couple made the friendly terrain of the kitchen a less friendly place. Eventually I minimised my time and partly lost my desire to be in it. In a very short period of time the once big open friendly kitchen went from being a home to being more like The Bastille at the height of its storming.