by Lee Dunne
‘I know, Ma,’ I said, ‘but sure I’ll be spending it all on bus fares, anyway. If I had a bike I could get another paper round just for the mornings. That’d help pay for it and I’d be able to go for a ride on a Sunday. I’d love to get one, Ma.’
‘How much do you have to put down?’
‘You deposit a pound. I saw a poster in the bike shop on Aungier Street and it said a pound would do the trick. Can I get one?’
She nodded her head and I jumped up and went around the table and kissed her on the face.
‘Where’ll you get the pound deposit?’
‘Ah, I’ll save it up. A couple of months and I should have it. I won’t use the bus. I’ll walk up and down to save the fare.’
She knew bloody well that I didn’t mean this, and I knew that she knew, and she knew that I knew that she knew. It was a game and she was being just as wicked as I was. We both knew that I was after the pound note out of my first week’s pay-bag and she smiled as though she was calling me a right crafty little bastard.
‘You can use the pound out of your wages today,’ she said, and you could feel the pleasure she felt from being able to give.
‘Ah, thanks a million, Ma. You’re sure the twenty-five a week’ll be okay with you?’
She nodded, contented, and I didn’t feel so bad. If she was happy with the twenty-five shillings then what I kept for myself didn’t enter into it. Anyway, one pound five a week wasn’t bad for a fella of my age to be bringing home, no matter what he was earning. It really wasn’t, I told myself, and I kept on at it until I convinced myself that I was a great fella altogether to be giving the mother that much. And when I thought about the weekly dollar from Mrs. Kearney, I felt rich. Things were going just fine and I’d keep on going up to see her as long as she kept her promise, though it was getting harder and harder to fancy her since I’d seen Maureen Murphy and her yellow sweater.
**********
Saturday lunchtime I walked up to the bicycle shop on Aungiers Street to get the form for the hire purchase. I got an awful drop when the shop-keeper told me I’d have to get somebody to act as guarantor for a hire purchase deal on the bike. He tried to lighten things by letting me know this was set in cement, protection for the company, just in case I got tired making the payments. That was something I hadn’t even thought about, and I could have kicked myself for being so empty-headed,
In the moment, I thought goodnight and goodbye. Like, who, in the name of Christ, was going to guarantee me for anything except maybe a stretch in Mountjoy Jail?
I could take a risk and ask Mrs. Kearney, but that might somehow mess up my chances of getting the dollar a week out of her, and I couldn’t risk that.
Mr. Hayes had said he’d help me in any way that he could, but even with my hard neck, I couldn’t ask him to put his name on a hire purchase proposal form.
Then I thought about Larry Deegan. He was a great fella, and he wasn’t a worrier over money, and I felt that he’d tell me straight out yes or no - since he wasn’t the kind of fella to make a song and dance out of anything. So I decided, even though I knew it was an awful cheek on my part, to ask him on Monday morning.
When I got home I told Ma that I’d put down the pound deposit on the bike - just in case she changed her mind - and I tried hard to forget the bike for the rest of the weekend, keeping the guarantor angle totally to myself. Ma would flip out at the idea of asking anybody for anything.
**********
The Stella was a favourite haunt on Sunday afternoon. The film started about three, so you had time for a drink or two before the picture. And with most of the shows they’d been getting in recent months, you needed a few drinks to get you through them.
I was well known around Rathmines and there was always somebody to hold a place for me in the queue. Usually, when I crept in and started chatting to the fellas, some woman behind would start slagging me for not taking my proper place as the back of the line, turn and I used to turn a deaf ear and act as though she wasn’t there. You had to be careful all the same. Some of the oul’ones would give you a right hander, which didn’t do you any good, because no matter how badly you might want to thump one of them, well, you just couldn’t, could you!
Inside the cinema you never sat more than three rows from the back. There was always a load of lassies that were on the look out for a good neck and a grope, and it’s no exaggeration to say that they rarely went home disappointed.
To look at them outside in the queue you wouldn’t think butter would melt in their mouths, but when you got one of them in the back row, though, you knew it wasn’t your sister.
And it wasn’t just the odd one, There was no scarcity at all. Publican’s daughters, policemen’s daughters, girls from all over Rathmines and Rathgar and Terenure, some of them snooty enough that wouldn’t talk to you if they knew you came from a place like The Hill.
But they didn’t know, so maybe they just didn’t care. They didn’t even ask your name, and they forgot their class consciousness, anyway while they opened their brassieres for you in the darkness of The Stella.
There are people in Dublin who wouldn’t and couldn’t and can’t accept this, kidding them selves that our girls are all virgins until they go to their wedding bed. They believe in the Commandments of God and they listen to their priests. Maybe they did, and more power to them, but, in the privacy of a cinema with only a thousand people in it, they forget exactly what it was the priest had said, and they wanted to touch, and be touched, and get as much out of it as they could.
Sunday mornings now, I did one of two things. I left the house in time for eleven Mass. I didn’t ever want Ma to find out that I hadn’t been in a church since the day Larry was buried. And I went for a walk along The Dodder or I took a bus into town.
When I went into town I always went to the same ice cream parlour and I had a long jar mixed with fruit and chocolate syrup. It was cold and it helped to fix my stomach after the drinks of the night before, while I vowed to drink only Bulmer’s cider in the future. Of course, I also loved the ice cream, and with the fruit and everything, it was a real luxury, it was really living.
I couldn’t go to Mass or Confession. I didn’t believe in it, and I couldn’t accept anything about the whole set-up. I’m not knocking religion. It’s not important enough for me to kick it. It was just that I couldn’t take it and I felt this even more since Larry had died.
I reasoned that if there was a God - and I didn’t really think so for one minute - then he would, in his glory and his omnipotence and all the rest of it - understand what made me feel the way I did. And if he didn’t want to know, then good luck to him, for all I cared.
But for Ma’s sake, I shammed at being a Catholic. Sooner or later, I was bound to break her heart and I just wanted to postpone it as long as I could.
**********
This particular Sunday night I went to the Mansion House, to a Ceilidhe where admission was just one and sixpence.
It was my first dance, and I was only going along because Redmond, believe it or not, and a fella called Tooler Doogan, talked me into it.
We were having a drink in The Bleeding Horse, near the old Camden Cinema - where the screen was behind you when you walked in the door - and I was contented to stay there and get on with the drinking.
I couldn’t have been in better company from the point of view of hard drinking. Doogan, a really big guy who was a carpenter by trade, was as good at dropping pints as Redmond and, when he said of himself, ‘Boy, I’d lick porter off a dead soldier’s arse,’ you didn’t, not for one second, doubt him.
Anyway when the Mansion House was suggested for a change, I said I’d tag along. Redmond had been there before which surprised me. He always seemed too tired and lazy to a fault, so that I’d never dreamed of him dancing The Walls of Limerick or The Haymaker’s Jig.
&nbs
p; And yet, when I thought about it, it made sense. For an admission fee of one and sixpence, he could have a dance, chat to as many girls as he liked, and with it being all Irish dancing, the chances were that most of the lassies would be country girls. And it was a safe bet, that half of them would be in domestic work, which was right up Redmond’s alley, his smooth tongue gaining him access to a serious spit-swopping snog on many a night, and sometimes even more than that, or so he claimed.
We chipped in and took a cab over to Dawson Street - only the second cab I’d ever had a ride in - and though I would not have allowed Redmond know it, I was thrilled to be going to a dance, just because it was something new, and I was keen to see what the Round Room was like.
It really was a round room and there was an Eight Hand Reel going on when we got in there. The dancers were hopping about, dancing for the sake of dancing, if their expressions were anything to do by. But still, I thought you never can tell. Sometimes a fella had to act with a mot, even when he was dancing.
There was a large crowd and it seemed from the atmosphere that everybody was having a good time. Even the band, which was working its collective nuts off, seemed to be happy, and, to tell the truth, just for once, it felt good just to be there.
The next dance was ‘The Siege of Ennis’ and when Redmond shuffled off to get a partner I stood back beside Doogan.
The next thing Harry comes back with three girls and he gives one to Doogan, and one to me, as though they were cigarettes. I tried to get out of the dance but he wouldn’t hear of it, turning to my possible dancing partner: ‘What’s your name, Macushla?’ he asks her, she replying, in a soft lilting voice. ‘Nuala Ryan.’
‘Good girl, Nuala,’ said Redmond in his Trinity College voice. ‘This chap here is Paddy Maguire, son of the famous and sometimes notorious Eamon Og, but as this is his first time to a dance he’s a bit shy, despite his heritage. Will you give him the pleasure of your company in the dance?’
She nodded, just a little overwhelmed by Redmond’s mouthful, and when I looked from her to Tooler Doogan, I could see from the amazement on his face, that he wasn’t as used to Harry as I was.
‘Right,’ said Redmond, giving the other girl to Doogan as though there was no need for further explanation, ‘come on then. We’ll get into the same set and just follow me.’
The girl, Nuala, gave me her hand and I followed Redmond onto the dance floor, with Doogan and his partner behind me.
We had to stand while things got organised - those Irish dances take a few minutes to get under way - and while we did I had a good chance to look at my partner.
She was nearly my height, which was tall enough for a girl, and she was slim with apple breasts. Her hair was black and she had clear blue eyes, and, if she’d have had a decent hair-do and a bit of make-up on, she’d have been a real looker.
She smiled at me and her eyes were kind. She was probably a Civil Servant. Apart from anything else, you could tell by the softness of her hands that she wasn’t a kitchen mechanic, and it was a safe bet that someday she’d make some fella very happy. I liked her and I was grateful to her for being so nice.
The men stood in a line facing the women and then the dance began. Redmond was marvellous, not just a clod hopper like many of the guys in the room, including myself and Doogan, and while he danced he kept up a non- stop patter act when he met his partner face to face, and she never stopped laughing at whatever he said to her.
I hopped as well as I could and, thanks to the few jars earlier, I wasn’t the least bit shy. It was really enjoyable and I was sorry when it came to an end.
A bit later I danced The Walls of Limerick which is probably the easiest Irish hop of them all. All I did was copy Redmond, and I found that I was moving well and that the girls were having a great time. Honestly, if you made a wrong move, nobody pulled a face or did anything to make you feel a fool. It was hard on the legs, though, and when it that second hop finished, I went up on the balcony to have a sit down.
Dougan was already up there, sitting drinking orange with a mot, and a few minutes later, Redmond came up with a woman of about forty. She was well built and she had a nervous laugh that I could hear three seats away, but Redmond was looking at her as though she was Greta Garbo.
He had sat down giving me a wink, and cocking his arm with the fist closed behind her back. I smiled and shook my head. There was no stopping that Redmond. He mightn’t have been the best-looking fella in the place, but when he put on the charm, he could work wonders with the women. Or so he had always said. And there he was, proving to me he wasn’t all bullshit.
He sat with his back to me and, in about a minute and a half, he was kissing her as if they were on honeymoon. She was pushing him away in a playful way, while she checked that nobody was watching them, and you could see she was lapping it all up.
Then he said something to her and she nodded her head, and the next thing she was going downstairs. He walked over to where I was sitting and he had a crooked grin on his mouth. ‘I’m baling out now, off to do my good deed for the day.’
‘With your woman,’ I said, trying to sound impressed.
‘Yeh, she’s a widow, and from the way she trembles when you get near her, nobody’s sunk the log there in recent months, so I’m going to give her one. See you in the week.’
And he was gone down the stairs behind her, away to make urgent love to the well-built widow, and the behind of his trousers shining like a new pair of patent leather shoes. I want home shortly afterwards, tired and a bit nervous about the morning.
For all the fun, the bike was still at the head of my thoughts, and while I honestly didn’t think that Larry would turn me down, I couldn’t deny that it was a lot to ask of a fella that you’d only known for such a short time.
Monday morning, when I woke up, I was still thinking about the bike and the difference it would make to my life. I could get another paper round for mornings only. It would be easy to do the work with a bike of my own. And the pay for that would cover the weekly instalments. On weekends, as I had said to Ma, I’d be able to go off somewhere for a spin if I wanted to. The mountains and the seaside were very handy to Dublin, and there were plenty of girls about that would wear you like a glove if you had a bike. I even imagined myself giving a cross-bar to Maureen Murphy and her skirt blew up and I saw the tops of her legs and she had a yellow sweater on.
Larry came over to me for a chat at tea break and I asked him straight out if he’d go guarantor for me. I liked him too much to try and talk him into it, and anyway he was too smart a fella to wear that kind of approach.
He didn’t even ask me how much the bike was, or what the repayments were. He just took the form and signed it where the guy in the shop had marked it in pencil. And when I tried to thank him he shrugged and brought his hands up like wings from his chest.
‘Forget it, will you?’
So I left it at that, knowing that any further talk about it would only embarrass him.
***********
Ten days later I threw my leg over the crossbar for the first time and if it had been Trigger, instead of a Humber bicycle with twenty two inch wheels and a four and sixpenny lamp, I couldn’t have been more excited.
The fella in the shop was a bit snotty with me, telling me to take it easy and all the rest of it. You could see he thought I was too young to have a bike of my own, even though he was making a few quid out of the deal. Still, if he’d been the Lord Mayor of Dublin, I couldn’t have cared less about him, but I did think that the turd-strangler might have had the common decency to wish me luck.
Like a Prince, that’s how I felt as I rode up Aungier Street, the bike solid as a rock under me. It was a gift to ride, especially after the heavy thing I’d had to ride in the butcher’s job. It was like there here was nothing that could harm me, and there was nobody that could shoot me down.
I was a royal figure as I rode past the fish dealers stalls and I went through Charlemont Street, tall and strong in the saddle, and I didn’t give tuppence worth of cold spit for anybody.
God, it was a wonderful feeling, the likes of which a fella doesn’t feel many times in his life.
Near the tennis club on Ranelagh Road I caught up with Noggler Green, and I got a shock when I saw that he didn’t have a three-speed on his bicycle any more. It may seem strange that I noticed that so quickly, but not when you think of how crazy I was about bicycles. And Noggler had always had a good machine.
Whenever you passed the place he lived in off Charleston Road you’d see him polishing the bike. At one time I was worried that he’d rub the paint off it. Honestly, he never left it alone. Now, to see him without the three-speed was like seeing him without his cap, and that was something I couldn’t even have imagined.
‘Hello, Mr. Green.’
I was riding beside him and he turned his peak-capped head to look at me, his watery eyes like wet overcoat buttons.
‘Hello, Paddy,’ he sniffed. ‘Got your self a machine?’
‘Yeh,’ I nodded, ‘but what happened to your three speed, Mister Green?’
‘I took it off,’ he said, and, you’d think he was talking about his vest or his shirt, the way he said it.
‘Ah, Mister Green, why?’
I half expected him to tell me to mind my own bloody business but, when someone took a three-speed off a bike you had to try and find out why.
‘It slipped the other day when I was coming up over Charlemont Street Bridge. I nearly smashed me testicles.’
‘Your what, Mister Green?’
‘Me testicles, me ballocks!’ He said, a serious sliver of hurt coating his voice. ‘Bloody thing nearly ruptured me.’
‘Oh,’ I said, nearly pissing myself. ‘That’s no joke.’
‘Too bloody true, it’s not,’ he said in disgust, the look on his face just grey misery. Then he was gone along to the left towards Ranelagh, mumbling to himself about ‘the only bitta pleasure that’s left to us’ and I made off to the right and up the hill that led to the flats. And I was wondering if it would make any difference to him if he had damaged his nuts. Like, I couldn’t, not for the life of me, see him getting on the job, not Noggler. He looked more like an oul’fella who’d rather have a cup of sugary tea, than a slice off the legs, but then, as Redmond had illustrated by going to the Mansion House on that Sunday night, you can never be sure about people.
