“Where’s Lime Street Station?” my brother asked.
“You’re on the bloody thing and behind the bloody thing!”
“We’re on our way to Birmingham,” I said as we moved away.
“Why don’t you Irish bastards stay the hell out of this country? Stay where you belong. The bloody place is full of you, goddamn it!”
I thought he was drunk or had made a mistake. We had just met and he already wanted a fight. Michael and I continued walking. I wondered if he knew anything about the Irish over in Ireland saying the same thing about the English.
It wasn’t long till we pushed into the swinging doors and heard the loudspeakers announcing arrivals and departures. The first thing my brother did was to leave me guarding the luggage while he went to the men’s room to take a piss. Lime Street Station was huge. I could only think that all of Dublin would fit into it. Then my brother came out of the men’s room and bought a newspaper. He couldn’t wait to read the papers that were banned in Dublin. He came rushing over to me with a copy of the News of the World. His eyes were wide open as he scanned the paper to read or find words that are never printed in the Dublin papers. In Dublin, after Mass on Sunday, the boys gathered behind the church to talk and discuss the News of the World that someone had smuggled in from England that weekend. Michael found what he was looking for: a photo of a girl with no clothes on.
We got the tickets to take us to Birmingham. It was to be a three-hour ride. I was turning my head in every direction. Boys were calling out and selling papers just as in Dublin. In a few minutes we were on a train heading towards Michael’s friends Billy Breen, Jimmy Doyle, Harry Combs. They had jobs in factories.
The conductor came into the compartment for the tickets and as I handed him mine he spat the tobacco he was chewing on the floor. The train pulled out and I began to feel faint. I saw row after row of small houses, clothes hanging on lines and house-windows broken, cats sitting on walls and dogs running everywhere, people smoking cigarettes and women with their hair-curlers.
I didn’t know why I was in England at all. It looked just like Dublin. I got depressed. What was I doing in England before my fifteenth birthday? Why did I get fooled by Blister Dempsey? I could be sitting in the lift and getting ready for dinner at Jury’s. I could be shaking my pockets with all the tips. I could still be wearing my uniform with the brass buttons. As the train neared Birmingham I asked my brother what I was going to do for a job. He had nothing to say about that.
When we got off the train in Birmingham we walked out to the main street. When I tried to walk alongside him he complained and said I was too slow. I told him it was the heavy suitcase.
He stopped walking and turned to me. “Look, I’m going on me own. You go wherever you want.”
I felt I had just been crucified. My brother walked away from me. I called after him but he didn’t turn around or say anything. I began to cry. I sat on my suitcase, wondering why my brother didn’t even shake hands.
After a few minutes I tried to forget about how afraid I was and I walked around Birmingham looking for the biggest hotel. I saw a big hotel across the street and I walked up to it. When I got to the main entrance I was told I was too small and too young to be out looking for work. After that I roamed up and down the streets not knowing where I was going or what I would do. The thought of finding a church entered my mind. The church would protect me because of all the prayers I had said during my lifetime. After looking for hours I couldn’t find a church that was Catholic. I then realised how different Birmingham was from Dublin. God’s houses in Birmingham weren’t Catholic.
Later that night I walked into a crowd who had gathered around a group of people carrying a sign reading: Join The Communist Party. They were waving the signs in front of everybody who passed. I began to remember what the word ‘Communist’ meant in Dublin. It was compared with Hell and the Devil. What was happening to me? Fire-everlasting was fleeting through my mind. I thought of Purgatory. Now I wanted to love God. I thought I was being punished for not liking him during the Retreat at the convent. Why did I run out of the convent that weekend when the priest was only trying to tell me about the bad things in the world? I should have listened more to him. I should have prayed more. Why did my brother leave me alone? I wanted to be back in Dublin with my mother and sisters and my snug home. I was cursing and hating Blister Dempsey and his mother.
Coloured people began to march around carrying the signs and I thought they were soldiers of the Devil. I had never seen coloured people before. Every face I saw seemed to bring me close to the image of Hell I had in my mind. I was beginning to believe that everything I was told was true and I hadn’t paid any attention. I had not concentrated when the priest and the Christian Brothers told me to behave and pray with meaning and sincerity. I was a sinner who was now paying the price. I had made a mistake and my life was now falling away from me.
“Dublin, where are you?” I cried. “Dublin, one of your sons is going to die in this foreign land! Help me!”
The crowd got bigger and bigger. Men were screaming at each other. A fight broke out when somebody jumped up and knocked over the microphone. Everybody was shoving about. The white people were fighting with the black people. Women were screaming. A couple of black fellas ran by me and knocked me off my suitcase. It was beginning to drizzle when policemen came along to break up the crowd. I walked away.
How I longed to hear someone say, “It’s time for Mass.”
I found my way back to the Birmingham railroad station and had a cup of tea. Over the loudspeaker I heard a voice calling out for passengers to go to Liverpool. That’s nearer Dublin, I thought. I went to the ticket office and was told that there would be another train for Liverpool in two hours.
I remember falling asleep and waking up to get on the train for Liverpool. I don’t remember the journey but I do remember waking up in the Lime Street Police Station. They told me that I was found loitering around the railway station.
“Why were yea sleeping in the waiting room, laddie?” a voice with a Scottish accent was saying down to me.
“I’m from Dublin!”
He licked the rest of his breakfast from his teeth and replied, “Oh now, that’s a fine place to be from.”
“I want to go back to my mother. I don’t like this country. I want to go back to Dublin for as long as I live.”
“Well, what brings yea over here by your wee lonesome self?”
“My big brother brought me over here and left me without anything in my pockets. I want to get out of this country and go back to Dublin.”
A Scottish smile spread on his face and I knew he was going to help me. He had another policeman escort me to the dockside. The policeman left me sitting on a barrel while he went over and talked to somebody in uniform on the ship, probably the ship’s captain. The man looked over at me as he shook the policeman’s hand. After a minute or two the policeman came back and told me to go on board.
I walked onto the boat as I had walked off it. I hardly knew where I’d been but I was anxious and happy to be on my way home again. To the sound of cows and screeching ropes I sat in a lounge identical to the one I came over on. Similar faces with the same kind of expressions were speaking with an Irish accent. After a minute or two somebody gave me a cup of tea. Shortly thereafter a horn blew. The ship departed the dock. I sat on my suitcase once more and felt safe and secure again.
* * *
Nine hours later the boat pulled into Dublin. Half of the passengers were standing on the deck cheering and singing. I stood among the crowd as the boat anchored. In the distance I could see the mouth of the River Liffey and O’Connell’s Bridge. It was early morning and I wondered if everybody in my house was still in bed asleep. And if either of my two younger brothers Larry or Gerard had slept in my bed while I was gone. As I walked along the dockside with my old suitcase, I realised I didn’t even have a chance to open it – except going through Customs. I only used it to sit on.
&
nbsp; When I turned the corner at Nash Street Billy Whelan and Noel Ward were walking to the North Wall.
“Where you goin’?” I asked them.
“Liverpool,” Noel said happily.
“We’re gettin’ on the B & I boat,” Billy added.
“I was on that boat,” I told them, feeling I was some kind of authority on the subject.
Billy and Noel looked at me as if I was telling them about a film they hadn’t yet seen.
“When?” Billy asked.
“Last night!”
“Jeez, I never knew that!” said Billy.
“I went to England with Mick. I was up in Birmingham as well.”
“Workin’?” Noel asked.
“No. I was only there for two days.”
“Where’s Mick?” Noel asked.
“He left me in Liverpool. I went up to Birmingham on my own.”
“Y’didn’t get a job?” Billy wanted to know.
“They told me over there I was too young. England is different.”
“What’s different about it?” Noel inquired.
“Don’t ask him. He was only there for two days!” Billy shouted and started to move on. When he got a little bit further away from me he turned and called back. “Did you get John Wayne’s autograph?”
“No. He didn’t show up at the hotel!”
“If ya ever see him tell him I saw all his pictures!” Billy yelled back at me and vanished as he and Noel turned the corner.
* * *
When I got home my mother was in the kitchen peeling potatoes. She turned and looked at me but didn’t say anything. I put my suitcase next to the staircase and sat on it. I couldn’t tell if my mother was angry or happy to see me back. I’d been hoping she’d be happy. I’d been hoping she’d give me a hug and welcome me back home and tell me she missed me and had been praying for me. I waited for her to inquire about my whereabouts for the last few days but she continued to peel the potatoes and was silent.
As I sat on my suitcase I tried to imagine what the house had been like without me being in it. Was everything the same when I wasn’t here? Did anybody ask about or worry about me? What did my father say about me when he found out I was gone? Did either of my younger brothers sleep in my bed? Who did they miss the most, me or Michael? I couldn’t understand why my mother was so silent. As I sat on my suitcase I thought she might have been thinking and worried about Michael. I wondered why she didn’t ask about him.
I was walking up to the bedroom with my suitcase when my brother Michael passed me on the stairs.
“Hey, what are ya doin’ here, Michael?” I called to him, hoping he was happy to see I made it home on my own.
He didn’t say a word and just passed me by.
He’d come back to Dublin on the same boat the same day we arrived in Liverpool.
In the bedroom I solemnly pushed my old suitcase under the bed as if I was putting away my dreams and whatever I thought of the future.
The next morning I lingered in bed because I couldn’t stop smelling my old bed blanket. It was an experience I was glad to be having again. For years it had been the only thing that had reminded me of myself. Holding it close to my nose was like hugging and kissing a friend. My mother was at the seven o’clock Mass and I knew I had a bit of time to think about the journey I had taken. Minutes later I could hear the church bells ringing for the eight o’clock Mass. The sound of the bells would signal the arrival of John Joe One-Ball, an old man who fancied himself a singer in the mode of Bing Crosby. He always showed up in the middle of the street. He appeared to be singing ballads he didn’t know the words to. The man was a regular on Saturdays. He wore two different kinds of shoes on his feet and a rag of an overcoat on his back. When he bent down to pick up the few coins that were thrown to him, the holes in the seat of his trousers exposed a dirty crusty bottom. People called him John Joe One-Ball because he had only one testicle. I don’t know how they knew that about him, but that’s the name he had. A neighbour said it was because he attempted to sing high notes too often. When he reached for a high note he put his hand between his legs and held himself until the high note passed. When John Joe’s voice faded I knew he had gone on to the next street.
After a minute of silence I jumped out of bed and got dressed as quickly as I could. I didn’t want my mother to find me in the house when she came home. Grabbing a crusty bread slice that was left on the kitchen table I exited the house as quickly and as quietly as I could. I made my way towards the church in case I bumped into my mother. If she saw me heading in that direction she’d think I was going to Mass.
As I got to the church two elderly sisters who lived down the street from me overtook me and passed me by in a hurry. They looked like they were running for their lives. They had a reputation of being the first to enter the church to attend Mass. They walked past me waving their hands in unison as if they were greeting everybody who passed them. The two sisters were rarely seen. They stayed home most of the time with their widowed father who was a foreman at the foundry. Mass seemed to be the women’s only form of recreation. The parish priest, before he was exiled to Donegal, said the girls were suffering from ‘Saint Vitus Dance’. In hindsight I came to realise that the stories I heard about Saint Vitus were probably made up to compensate for the lack of sunshine in Dublin or were told in a mocking way to entertain those of us who didn’t have a radio in the house. One telling of the story that stayed in my mind for a very long time was that when St. Vitus was a young man in the Middle Ages he swallowed poison rather than deny that God was a first cousin of his. After he swallowed the poison he started twitching so much it looked like he was dancing. His twitches were considered dance steps and because he danced so much he was made into a saint.
Whenever I saw the two sisters I was afraid to say hello in case they’d start dancing.
* * *
Two weeks after my ill-fated trip to England I was sitting on the edge of the local football pitch. The area was a small square where grass used to grow about a hundred years ago. The patch of land was between a row of houses and the foundry. When the men who worked at the foundry went to work in the morning they crossed the dusty football pitch; when they came out of the foundry at five in the evening they walked across it again. After kicking the ball around for about half an hour I sat down behind the goal posts (two old shirts with stones on them to keep the wind from blowing them away).
Seán Kelly, a neighbour about my own age, had just returned from England. Seán had attended Goldenbridge Convent with me years earlier. The last I heard of him was that he was put away in a reformatory school for stealing from luxury shops in the centre of Dublin. I hadn’t seen him around the neighbourhood in years. Seán was wearing a Teddy Boy suit: a jacket with a velvet collar and stovepipe trousers. His hair was dyed black and he wore a pair of bright yellow socks with heavy thick-soled shoes.
Before I could ask him where he’d been all that time he started talking to me as if he was somebody else altogether.
“Have you been to London, Walsh?”
“I was in Liverpool once.”
“Liverpool? That’s just over the water. Did y’go any place else?”
“Birmingham for about four hours.”
“Four hours?”
“I was lookin’ for work but I was too young.”
“Did y’get your gee over there in England Walsh?”
“Gee?”
“Yeah. Your gee.”
“No. I was only there for a few days.”
“You shoulda gotten your gee when you were there, Walsh. Them English girls are mad for a good ride.”
“Did you ride any of them?”
A smile the size of the football pitch grew across his face. He obviously couldn’t wait to tell me about his exploits.
“They don’t have to go to Mass or Confession. The English girls can do it all the time and not to have to worry about tellin’ the priest about it. Gettin’ a ride is not a sin over there. Not lik
e here. If you could get a ride and not have to commit a sin, wouldn’t you be mad for it?”
Seán Kelly kept the big grin on his face. This was the first time I’d seen him with his mouth closed. He looked at me and his head shook as if he couldn’t wait for me to answer him. What he said to me made sense. I was beginning to think I should have stayed longer in England. I could have met gangs of girls who wouldn’t have worried about committing sin if we did it. The whole idea of getting a ride and not committing sin at the same time was very exciting. No wonder so many Irish went over to England. Maybe that’s why my own father went over there in the first place. Maybe that’s why all the boys from Keogh Square and Inchicore went there. It wasn’t just to work in the factories or foundries. The English boys and girls could do it and not have to go tell a priest. It must have been a great feeling for them.
I wasn’t sure what it was that kept me from committing more sins and having more pleasure. Somehow before this moment I wasn’t able to put the two concepts together. I was suspect of pleasure and aware that any time I felt good about anything or anybody I was on the verge of committing sin. It was like I was carrying a big black umbrella around in my head that I had to open up whenever I felt a shower of pleasure coming on. The umbrella would keep the good feeling away from me and I would remain in a state of holy dry grace.
Seán took a toothbrush out of his pocket and began to brush his teeth. Most of his teeth were missing and the two or three that were still in his mouth had holes in them. After brushing his teeth Seán put the toothbrush back in his pocket. He licked his teeth with his tongue and started talking to me again.
“You didn’t get your gee there, did you, Walsh?”
I shook my head in disappointment. “No,” I answered and walked away.
“Where ya goin’, Walsh?” Kelly called after me.
I didn’t know where I was going. I had neither plans nor direction in mind at that moment. The sense I had of myself and where I was or where I was going just didn’t seem to exist. Failure was falling on me like the rain coming out of the sky. As I turned the corner I saw the bus departing the bus stop. It was headed for the city centre. Without thinking any further or even checking to see if I had the fare I jumped on the bus and ran up to the top deck and sat in the back seat. Halfway to the city the bus conductor approached me for the fare. I told him I didn’t have it. By the time he decided to throw me off the bus it was already at the James’s Street bus stop and it was no bother walking the rest of the way to the city centre.
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