Maggie's Breakfast

by Gabriel Walsh

  “That will teach you to cheat on God!” he said as the teacher, seemingly sympathetic, turned me back toward my seat.

  My mind was buzzing and spinning and I didn’t know where I was. The entire class fell silent. In my frightened state I silently cried as the pain raced through my face. When I reached my seat I could hear the voice of the priest calling after me. “Say an Act of Contrition!”

  I couldn’t answer. His voice became louder and louder but I still couldn’t talk. I couldn’t move my jaw.

  “Do you hear?”

  I murmured back, “Yes, Father.”

  “Say it while the sin is still in your mind.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  The other boys looked at each other and nervously shuffled their feet under the desks.

  “Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name,” I began.

  When I uttered my first word of the prayer the feet-shuffling stopped.

  “That’s not an Act of Contrition, that’s the Lord’s Prayer!” Father Brady roared.

  He rushed towards me, raised his hand again and hit me in the jaw. My teeth and brains began to shake and rattle and the light outside went on and off. I couldn’t remember the prayer but I knew it was for saying sorry for committing sin. I felt sorry for everything. I felt sorry for everybody and I felt sorry for myself.

  “Do you know what is meant by an Act of Contrition?” the priest demanded.

  I didn’t answer. My jaw was hurting me and I thought I was swallowing my teeth. I looked up at Father Brady and hoped he’d see my fear and pain. I was hoping that the fear in my eyes would convince him I was more than sorry for my sin.

  He looked down at me and spoke in the slowest voice I had ever heard coming from a human mouth. “You’re sorry. You are sorry for what you did. You admit to God that you are sorry for the sin you committed and you promise not to sin again. You beg and beseech God for forgiveness for committing sin. That’s paramount in God’s mind. He must know that you are truly repentant. He must know that you are truly and sincerely sorry and that you have no intention of ever committing sin again for as long as you live your life on this earth. Go on now, say it. Say an Act of Contrition.” He began to say the prayer himself: “Oh my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee . . .”

  I repeated the words: “Oh my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee.” I stopped and was more frightened and confused and more awkward than before. I didn’t know what I was saying. I was hoping I would remember the words to the prayer. I prayed to myself as Father Brady stood over me: Dear God, little Jesus in the crib with the ox and the animals breathing on you, help me remember the Act of Contrition! I then began to mumble, “O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee and I detest my sins above every other evil . . .”

  As I continued with the prayer Father Brady turned away from me and walked to the head of the class. He looked over the entire class and slowly walked out.

  At thirteen I was considered fit and able to seek gainful employment but finding work of any kind that would bring a few shillings into the house wasn’t simple or easy. It was almost impossible. In order not to be thrown out of the house I’d make a few pennies by boiling water and making tea for the plasterers on building sites who were plastering the interiors of new houses in what used to be considered ‘countryside’. This means of survival didn’t last long. Most of the plasterers were from Scotland and when they finished their work they went back to Scotland. When that happened I was unemployed and sat around the house for weeks and months on end. This didn’t please my mother or other members of my family who were working and making money. Three of my older sisters were in factories and my brother Michael was training as a house painter. Every day he’d come home covered with paint and smelling of paint-thinner. Wherever he walked or sat in the house it smelled like he had just painted the place. When I complained about the smell, my mother said, “Shut up and get a job! If you don’t get a decent job soon you’ll end up like Black Bart Joe Deegan!”

  Joe Deegan who lived down the street was supposedly allergic to soap and water. He let the dirt pile up on his skin until he looked like the cowboy named Black Bart in the movies. Black Bart had a black hat, a black suit, a black pair of boots and rode a black horse. Nobody ever saw his face because he wore a black mask. When my mother compared me to Joe Deegan I was convinced she didn’t like me all over again. Joe was not only idle and dirty but he was considered mad as well. He ran up and down the street with a wooden rifle, shooting at anybody who passed him. I used to pretend to shoot back at him with an imaginary revolver. He would fall down on the street moaning and groaning and stay there until someone came along and offered him assistance. Joe would lie on the street rolling about in pain for an hour sometimes. His acting at dying was close to the real thing.

  After being compared to Joe I was determined to find employment. Danny Dorgan’s shoe shop was across the street from the pub where the men from the foundry drank. Danny was often a customer in the pub and he was very well known. I had heard that his last messenger-boy quit and went to England to work in a bicycle factory. Half the boys who were sixteen or older had left Inchicore and gone to England to work. I was told that Danny needed a messenger boy so I went into Dorgan’s and asked for a job.

  “Ya need anybody?”

  “For what?” Danny Dorgan said without looking up at me. He was cutting the shape of a heel from a big swathe of cow leather. The place smelled but I liked it.

  “For work.”

  “Who sent you here?”

  “Nobody.”

  “How’d you know there was a job goin’?”

  “Is there?”

  “Can you ride a bike?”

  “Yis.”

  “D’ya have one?”

  “I can get a loan of one from my sister.”

  “What’s she goin’ to do?”

  “She gettin’ married soon.”

  “Yeah?”

  “She’s going to live in the city.”

  “You think you want to be a cobbler?”

  “I like the smell of the place.”

  “Good. That’s what you need first. You have to like the smell of glue and leather.”

  * * *

  “Need any boots or shoes mended, ma’am? Soles and heels mended cheap. Delivered free with a new pair of laces thrown in!”

  I rode a bicycle around Inchicore and knocked at doors to see if anybody needed boots or shoes repaired. When they did, I took their footwear to Dorgan’s and he repaired them. During the week I collected boots and shoes and sandals. On weekends I returned them repaired. I was delivering and collecting anything made of leather. Mostly boots and shoes but sometimes ladies’ handbags and straps and belts.

  I met a girl one day after I knocked on the door asking if they had any shoes that needed repairing. She laughed at me and made me fall in love with her. She had red hair and an inviting smile. She appeared to be happy. I couldn’t understand why she seemed to be so happy but she was. I wanted to be around her all day long even though I was only thirteen. She could make me happy if I was with her long enough. I thought about her all day and all night long. Her name was Maureen Quinn. I prayed that her shoes would wear out so I could collect them from her. I wanted to kiss her every time I saw her. I cycled up and down her street hoping I’d see her. Many times I pretended to be collecting shoes just to see her sitting outside her door. I used to get off the bike and pretend it needed a patch for the tire. Every day I came to work I was hoping that Maureen would come by with her shoes.

  Three weeks passed and I hadn’t seen Maureen. I was beginning to miss her so much I was forgetting pick-ups, deliveries and tagging. I’d be thinking of Maureen so much I’d put brown polish on black shoes and after a while it began to drive Danny Dorgan mad.

  “What in the name of Christ did ya do here?”

  I pretended I didn’t hear him. “What?”

  “What, me arse! Take a look at this!�
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  “What?”

  “This shoe is brown and you’ve put black polish on the blasted thing!”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Fuck bein’ sorry. Pay attention. What’s the matter with ya?”

  “Nuthin’.”

  “You must be sniffin’ too much glue here.”

  “I’m not. I hate the smell of glue.”

  “Are ya all right?”

  “Am I mad, you mean? Is that what you’re askin’ me?”

  “Somethin’s gone wrong with ya.”

  I don’t know why he didn’t fire me.

  Danny had been repairing shoes and boots for so long he forgot his mouth had purposes other than holding nails. When I talked or asked him something he would shake his head and point to his mouth with his hand. The first thing he did when he opened the shop in the morning was to put a handful of nails in his mouth.

  I didn’t tell him I was thinking of Maureen Quinn all day long. One day I asked him if I could go and look for customers. Danny nodded yes.

  The first house I went to was Maureen’s. I knocked on her door asking for shoes. Maureen’s mother opened the door.

  “Who are you?”

  “I work for Danny Dorgan.”

  “Danny Dorgan? Who’s he?”

  “Didn’t you get your shoes mended this year?”

  “What?”

  “You got any shoes to be mended?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t?”

  “I said no.”

  “What about Maureen?”

  “Maureen? Me daughter?”

  “Yis.”

  “Maureen’s gone to Australia for God’s sake! What’s the matter with you?”

  “Australia?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “She’s gone?”

  “Gone.”

  “Australia?”

  “Yeah. You know where that is?”

  “It’s far.”

  “Very far!”

  “How far?”

  “Farther than America.”

  “Jesus!”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said I hope Jesus doesn’t go there.”

  “To Australia? Jesus is in Australia. Don’t you know that?”

  “When’s he comin’ back?”

  “Who?”

  “Jesus! I mean, Maureen.”

  “Who are you workin’ for again?”

  “Danny Dorgan.”

  “What d’ya want to know about me daughter for?”

  “She wanted somethin’ mended.”

  “She did?”

  “Yes.”

  “What?”

  “She told me she had a pair of . . .” I didn’t know how to finish the conversation.

  I walked away in pain. I felt depressed and abandoned. I had so many fantasies of sitting with Maureen Quinn and telling her everything about my feelings for her. I felt I loved her so much she would have no choice but to love me back. I planned in my mind to marry her when I was eighteen. Now it was too late. I never got a chance to tell her anything. She didn’t know that she was the last person I thought about before I went to sleep at night. She didn’t know that I walked up and down the street hoping I’d see her. She didn’t know I was hoping her shoes would wear out fast.

  Maureen never came back from Australia. Later on, a year or so maybe, somebody said she got married to a fella she met at work there.

  After my painting brown shoes with black dye and black shoes with brown dye and doin’ everything else backwards Danny Dorgan decided to let me go. I didn’t blame him.

  A few months later I was cycling by his shop and it was closed. He had swallowed a mouthful of nails and was taken to the hospital.

  * * *

  Mrs. Nolan was a frail little woman with wire glasses leaning on her strange flat nose. Someone said her husband came home one night and gave it to her when he couldn’t wake her up from having one too many shots of whiskey. She was known in the street as ‘Whiskey Breath’. Mrs. Nolan said it was prescribed medicine that people smelled when they stopped to talk to her. She kept a flask in the pocket of her apron and never took her hand off it. Whenever she had a sip too many Mrs. Nolan was always generous with handing out a few pennies. She provided me with a bit of employment every Monday and Friday.

  “You’re up early, boy.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “How’s your poor mother? I see her pass every morning. On her way to Mass, I suppose. God love her. I’m sure He does too.”

  I could smell the whiskey.

  “Son,” she muttered again, “I want you to go to the pawnshop on James’s Street.” She stuck her tongue out as if to air it. Then her eyes came back to me. “Can you go?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Bless you. My husband’s suit is there and I want you to go and release it before he gets up.”

  She moved back into the front room to look for the ticket. I stepped inside and watched her.

  “My son’s shoes are there too, but I can’t get them yet,” she said to herself, lifting everything that had a lid on it as she searched for the pawn ticket. She found a batch of dockets and pulled one from the top of the bundle. “Here it is.” She handed it to me. Her hands were shaking and she looked nervously back into the house as she took some money out of her apron pocket and told me to give it to the pawnbroker. She’d give me a few pence for myself when I came back safely with the suit.

  Mr. Nolan was upstairs asleep in bed. It was Saturday and he would be sleeping late. He snored like my father. If he woke up and came down and wanted to put on his suit there’d be hell to pay. The man had no idea his suit was resting peacefully in the pawnshop on James’s Street. After a week’s hard work at the foundry most of the men in the neighbourhood slept till noon. On Saturdays the wives did their shopping and bought everything for the week. That included a bottle of whiskey that Mrs. Nolan hid away for herself. At the end of the Saturday shopping spree there’d be no money left for anything. The families then coasted until the next payday, Friday. To get extra cash during the week the wives pawned everything and anything of value. For most, the only valuable items they had were clothes or sometimes a clock or an iron or something brass. Anything of value was consigned to the pawnshop Monday morning after the men entered the factory gates. Mrs. Nolan’s husband had a new suit, which he won in a church raffle and Mrs. Nolan made sure it remained new for as long as possible. He was only allowed to wear it to Mass on Sunday and for his dinner after. After Sunday dinner Mrs. Nolan (and most other wives) stripped her husband of his suit. She covered it with brown paper and hung it up in the wardrobe behind some other items. Mr. Nolan wouldn’t see it again until the following Sunday. He never knew his suit spent the week in the pawnshop. The pawnshop gave a loan on the suit and Mrs. Nolan was able to replenish the small bottle of whiskey.

  * * *

  The pawnbroker stood up on the counter and held up the items.

  “Murphy! Brass clock?”

  “Here I am, sir. I want to redeem that before me oul’ fella passes away. We got it as a wedding present over twenty years ago.” A woman stretched her hand out with her pawn ticket. The man handed down the clock and she passed along some money with the ticket. The man reached back on to the shelf and began taking down every conceivable item you could think of. Brass buckets, stags’ heads, holy pictures, statues, cups and saucers. The women milled about, pushing each other aside. They all wanted to have the ornament at home for the weekend. Monday to Friday didn’t matter just as long as they had something nice to put up for the weekend when the country relatives came to visit after Mass.

  When the pawnbroker moved to the clothing department a wild rush followed him. The people in this bunch seemed more eager than the ornament seekers. He pulled out overcoats, trousers, blazers, suits, and shirts. There was something about the smell of the packed clothing that made everybody rub their noses. When the man called out the name “Nolan” I let ou
t a yell. The women next to me looked to see where the voice had come from. I was lost between thirty fat women. When I raised my hand showing the ticket, the women pushed me up to the counter and a few of them hoisted me up on it.

  “Here it is! Your first pair of long pants!” the man said as he threw the suit over my head.

  I gave him the ticket with the money. I couldn’t find room enough to get back onto the floor so I just stood there on the counter with Mr. Nolan’s suit. “Here y’are, son, let me give ya a hand!” With that I was carried all the way across the women waiting for their familiar threads to appear.

  I got out of the pawnshop as fast as I could. When I got back on the bus I was happy that my mother didn’t have any suits at home that were worth pawning.

  * * *

  By the time I turned fourteen half of the neighbourhood had emigrated to England, young women as well as young men. Money was as scarce as sun in Dublin. With nothing to do, a pal of mine and I found a new world for ourselves.

  Billy Whelan was considered by the neighbours to be in the same league as Biddy Sonics. Some even said he was as odd as Mrs. Mack. He might have been as odd as both of them put together but to me Billy was a hero. He lived every minute of the day believing and behaving like he was somebody else. Had anybody in Inchicore taken Billy seriously they would have called him Mandrake the Magician.

  Billy was also the first to see every new film that opened in Dublin. Watching films was Billy’s idea of Heaven. He wouldn’t want to go to Heaven if it didn’t have a cinema. If I didn’t have the money to go Billy would sit down and tell me the whole story from beginning to end. He acted out each part. I spent a lot of time with Billy. We saw nearly every movie that played in Dublin. In the morning we’d start off at the Lyric on James’s Street, then we’d go to the Tivo (the Tivoli) on Francis Street. In the afternoon we’d walk across town and go to the Mero (on Mary Street). Late at night we’d cross the Liffey Bridge and go to the last show at the Phoeno (the Phoenix). The next morning we’d be up early and be first in line to get into the Cameo on Grafton Street to see foreign films. The cinemas of Dublin in the forties and fifties were as culturally important to the minds of the poor as the churches were to their souls. I saw so many films and serials at the Tivo and the Mero I was in danger of losing touch with reality. Laurel and Hardy, the Three Stooges, the Marx Brothers and Bud Abbot and Lou Costello made me laugh and each laugh was like a new beginning. The American films of the fifties turned our damp days in Dublin into a world of Technicolor.