Scars that Run Deep

by Patrick Touher

  Our farewell gift to each other, I thought with a smile.

  16

  HELEN CONVINCED ME that New Zealand would be the best place for me to make a life, and I decided to stay in Bradford while I saved up for my ticket. I settled into my new lodgings with an Irish family in Bradford and I became friends of the man of the house. Frank was a soft-spoken Dublin man who worked as an accounts clerk with the High Class confectioners/bakers in Bradford. He showed me around the place, and then set me up with a job.

  I took it. It would pay for my trip to New Zealand. However, I was taken on with an immediate start on the 11pm night shift. I didn’t have much strength after my long illness in Jersey. But Frank’s wife, Nora, along with her mum, Mary Rose, promised to build me up in preparation for my forthcoming voyage to New Zealand. Frank took me on long walks to Shipley Glen, over bracken and thorn and along by old deserted woollen mills that housed the ghosts of the industrial past. I began to feel strong again. At weekends I’d ramble off alone with my dreams of Helen, the English teacher. As I stood on a small wooden bridge across the Aire, I gazed fondly across to the Bingley cricket ground. The sun was casting long shadows as it lowered to kiss the plush velvet lawn. A golden October day.

  I was to set off in late November for my trip of a lifetime on board the P&O cruise liner Orchades. The ticket was £170, which was really expensive in those days. But I had money saved from working in Jersey until I took ill and I was earning at least £16 a week on the night shift in Bradford. I’ll be okay for sure, I thought.

  In mid-October the weather grew much colder. I’d been out walking with Frank. When we arrived home Nora handed me an envelope. I pulled it open. The warm, fragrant scent sent shivers up through my body. It read: ‘Hi, Larry. Will miss you. Bon voyage. Love Helen and Gloria.’

  I just felt ill. I was shaken. I heard Mary call out to me. ‘What is it? You don’t look well, does he, Nora?’

  ‘Come over and sit yerself by the fire, young man. ’Tis like you’d seen a ghost.’ Mary pulled up an armchair and I fell into it.

  ‘Now tell me who sent the card to yeh. Was she an old flame from some place you’ve been to and left her behind?’

  I held out the card and stared into the open log fire. Mary’s voice broke the silence.

  ‘I knew it. I was right, mind yeh. I could tell you carried scars and be japers, I’d swear yours run deep.’

  I muttered, ‘You are dead right, ma’am.’

  ‘Larry,’ offered Frank. ‘Don’t take too much heed in what old Mary has to say. She thinks you are on yer way out. She will have you dead and gone before Christmas. Isn’t that right, Mary?’

  ‘Dinner is ready, folks, and enough of that pessimism now and leave the lad alone. He’s homesick. Can’t you see he’s sick? Lovesick and homesick,’ added Mary. ‘’Tis time yeh found a good woman that will make a home for yeh. Cook good food and be there for yeh when you need her. Now eat up that plate of beef stew, son. ’Twill do you good, now, and ’twill build you up.’

  ‘It will do yeh no harm anyway,’ said Nora.

  The next morning Mary served breakfast to me. Scrambled eggs and bacon and beans. I felt very tired and somewhat nauseous. I went up the steep stairs. My room was on the third floor beside the bathroom. Last thing I recall of that almost fateful morning was the smell of bacon and eggs. As I stepped into the bathroom on the top floor I collapsed. It was much later when I opened my eyes. To my horror and shock I could see white coats, bright lights, nurses taking my pulse. I cried. Then I heard a deep, soft Scottish voice.

  ‘Oh gosh, no, no. Not again,’ I cried out. I was in shock and in awful pain.

  ‘Do yeh know where you are, young man?’ I nodded and muttered, ‘No, no.’ I felt scared. I remember vividly the moment. How could I ever forget his words. ‘I’m a doctor and you have been in here with us. This is the Bradford Royal Infirmary. You are very, very lucky you are still with us. We in fact thought we had lost you. But the bad news is you have suffered a great deal due to a perforated duodenal ulcer. But we got you in good time. You are going to be with us for quite some time. Until the New Year.’

  I reached out and pulled at his arm or hand. I simply cried out, ‘No, no, no. I can’t. I’m booked on a ship to New Zealand in late November. I got to go on it, doctor. It’s paid for.’

  His tone was much softer. ‘I promise you we will take care of everything to get you well again. That includes your voyage to New Zealand. Our people will have that taken care of. So you will have no worries while you are with us. Right now you need to rest.’

  I closed my eyes to the bright lights once again. I found grief and heartache without warning. Thoughts of being here as the P&O cruise ship Orchades set sail for the twelve thousand-mile voyage made me so sick that I messed up the pure white starched sheets.

  Get-well cards arrived. There was one from Helen. I didn’t know how she could have found out. As I was left alone I cried for all I had lost.

  But then something happened that I hadn’t expected: Helen came to visit. She embraced me and I just cried as we held on to each other for a long, precious moment. Her smile was radiant. I felt I’d been raised up by her presence.

  ‘You know, Larry, you are one hell of a survivor. How many lives have you got, Larry? I’m so glad to see you smile through all of this, after all you’ve been through. How long are they going to keep you in here?’

  I drew in a long, deep breath. Gosh, how I tried to control my hurt, my anger, my emotion. ‘Till after Christmas,’ I said.

  Her eyes met mine at that moment, moist and blue. She leaned in over me, her voice a whisper. ‘I’m so sorry, Larry. You’ll miss your voyage to New Zealand next week. Has everything been taken care of?’

  I nodded yes. ‘The travel agent returned the full fare I had paid, along with a get-well card. Imagine that, Helen.’ I felt her hand squeeze mine. Her presence brought back memories of our time together in her home in Bingley and in her apartment in Jersey. How I dread November, and I always will, I thought then.

  She stood up and wished me well. My English teacher left me that Sunday in November with all of her charm, kind thoughts and fond loving memories, knowing I would never see her again. I lay down and closed my eyes as she wished me goodbye.

  I left Bradford Royal in the New Year of 1968, fit and fully recovered from my closest call yet. But I’ve learned old sayings, of which many ring true. Time waits for no one, for rich or poor. I returned to the place I could best call home: Dublin.

  Mrs Mooney’s words haunted me as I travelled back to Dublin: ‘A rolling stone gathers no moss, Pat.’ I seemed to have no control over making so many awful heartbreaking decisions. ‘You are your own worst enemy, Pat,’ May’s words rang so true. I cried my heart out on the trip home from Bradford, realising I had no home to actually return home to.

  In fact, my past returned to haunt me once I settled back into my usual work in the bakery trade. Though I could never have foreseen it, or planned it, as the blasted shadow of Artane returned to me once more.

  17

  ONCE BACK IN my home town, I found a very comfortable self-contained bedsit. The flat was on the third floor of a four-storey Georgian house. Mrs Fiona Ryan, a warm-hearted Tipperary woman, was my new landlady. She quite often invited me to say the Rosary with her in her living room. I quite often agreed to this as she served a nice supper afterwards. Her husband was a civil servant, a very tall, straight and erect man, an ardent Catholic, and far too fond of the drink.

  One evening I dropped in to see them. It was about ten o’clock – their prayer time. I noticed he was not there, and then I was ushered out by the Mrs Ryan. She looked very bothered. Suddenly I heard shouting as I walked up the stairs. ‘It’s him!’ I stayed a moment to listen. ‘You were with him again, Fiona. I don’t trust that new lodger of yours at all now. He’s been seeing you. Tell me or I’ll go up and drag him down here.’ I heard his wife shout at him. ‘You’re drunk, you fool, as usual. You’re not ha
lf the man he is. I swear to God on it, and he so young. Look at you, a bloody civil servant – a drunken lout, bedad!’ I hurried up to my flat and bolted the door.

  Suddenly there was a knock, then a whispering. ‘Are you in, Pat? Pat!’ I opened the door. She spoke hurriedly. This could only happen to me, I thought. ‘You must lock your door and put whatever furniture you can against it – quickly. Have you got any girls with you?’ I laughed at the question. ‘No. What a pity. None at all. No one loves me, Fiona, any more.’ She blushed and began to warn me of her husband. ‘He’s dangerous. We have a problem. He’s an alcoholic and he’s drunk and angry. He thinks you and I are seeing each other. You must leave here in the morning. I have a safe house for you to go to in Castle Avenue. Don’t worry, Pat.’

  How could he think such a thing? I heard him shout up at her, ‘I’ll kill him! I’m coming up!’ I closed the door and put all the furniture against it. I heard her shout, ‘I’m calling the guards. They’ll fix you, you mad drunken fool.’ I prayed they would hurry.

  As I sat waiting to see what was going to happen, a hatchet came through the door. He roared in at me, ‘I’ll get to you, lover boy. Say the Rosary with my wife, do yeh? I’ll say a decade over your dead body for yeh! Let me in!’

  I felt petrified as he smashed the door of the flat, and I had to hold him off. It was a fight for my life as I could see the hatchet in his hand. He was over six feet tall. He pushed me, then swung the hatchet down at me. I sidestepped, and as I grabbed hold of him, the guards arrived. He held me by the throat and I was really struggling at that point. His wife was shouting to me, ‘Hit him! Kill him! Kill him!’ The guards then led him away. I followed them downstairs and watched as he faced his wife in the hall. He swore at her. ‘I was right, Fiona, all the while. I knew he wasn’t coming in to say the Rosary with you. Oh, no, Fiona, you were seeing him also. Your own pretty toyboy.’

  I found new lodgings at two that morning, in a bedsitter in Castle Avenue. I felt I had been involved in a nightmare.

  When I took a walk later to get to know the area, I came across a bakery and confectionery shop. I looked up at the name: W. Ferguson and Sons. I thought I’d try my luck for a job. Ten minutes later I walked out smiling. I was to start at eight the next morning. The money was fine: sixteen pounds ten a week, including a fully cooked breakfast, dinner and tea every day. I was over the moon.

  Ferguson’s was a lovely place to work in. I loved getting up in the mornings to go to work, and I learnt quite a bit about confectionery and cake mixing there. I will never leave here, I thought. I can finally settle down.

  A strange thing happened a few weeks later. The boss took a call from Artane School, from the Brother in charge of settling boys when they were sixteen. Mr Ferguson called me into his little office, which was beneath the stairs leading to the famous Ferguson’s Tea Rooms. He sat me down and began to explain that my old school had requested that we take a boy, if not two, and train them, as the school was to close down as an industrial boarding school by the summer. I took a deep breath. For a moment there was silence. I was about to leave when he added, ‘By the way, I may need you to come with me.’ As I hurried home that evening I felt the shadow of my past engulf me. Why me? I thought.

  Mr Ferguson called me in again a few days later. ‘I’m going to ask you to go up to Artane with me. I’ve decided to take a boy off their hands and give him training. If he works out, then I may take a second. We need you, Patrick, to help us out and to help us choose the right one. I hear Brother O’Connor has quite a few orphan boys on his hands who have to be fixed up, as they hope to close by June.’

  It was 1969, over ten years since I had left. The trip brought back memories I had tried to suppress. As the car turned up the Malahide Road, within minutes I could see Marino Christian Brothers’ School, and then the dark, dreary buildings of Artane School, which dominated the whole area of Donnycarney and Artane, as they do to this day. Instantly I felt emotionally distressed.

  As the car turned to go up the main avenue, my heart beat faster and my hands were sweaty. We drove slowly up the avenue. Ferguson looked surprised at the neatness of the grounds and at how big the place was.

  I noticed Brother Joe O’Connor coming down the steps of the office. I could see he was delighted we came. He remembered me well as I introduced him to my boss. It was at that point I got the feeling I had never left – yet here I was, about to choose an orphan lad to come and learn a trade with us.

  I stood inside the infirmary, which had been turned into a small dormitory, and I was really taken aback: the rows of beds so neatly made up; the centre aisle polished to a glittering shine; the statue of Our Lady and the holy water font.

  I could clearly remember it all. I was sure I could hear the cries of the boys being flogged. It all came back to me. In many ways it was a blessing, being asked to go there, as my past had to come out into the open, and it reminded me of what my childhood really had been.

  I stared silently at the boys. Their hair was crew-cut and they were neatly dressed in their Artane serge cloth and hobnailed boots, and that awful lonesome, hungry appearance brought it all back to me. Ten years had passed, although it seemed like only a few months.

  I helped choose the boy. The choice was not a difficult one, as there were only three who wanted to work in a bakery. I saw this small, tubby, fresh-faced lad with a sad look on his round face. He gave me a slight grin. I could see he was longing for a break and hoped I would choose him. Brother O’Connor gave me a rather dry smile, as though he suspected I was thinking of the time he battered my bottom so badly I thought my buttocks were two lumps of rare meat, and, what’s more, I knew he enjoyed every second of it. He was just as cruel and perverted as the Macker, the Bucko and Hellfire, and so many more who got pleasure out of abusing the kids in their care.

  When I got home to my flat in Castle Avenue I was drained in so many ways. I lay down and closed my eyes. All I could think of was my past.

  About this time I saw an advertisement for a car going very cheaply. I called to the flat in Leinster Road, Rathmines, to see it. Who should answer the doorbell but the bold Quickfart himself. We chatted for what seemed like hours in his bedsitter. I gave him all the news I had – including what happened to me in London. When he heard he hit the roof with laughter. ‘Did you ever meet Oxo on your travels, Paddy?’ he asked me. ‘As a matter of fact I did. He worked in Lyon’s in London,’ I told him.

  I could see the tears in his eyes. He just talked and talked, about Artane in general and about Oxo. Some of the memories were painful for him. Suddenly I glanced at my watch and shouted, ‘Bloody hell, I’ve got to be going. Will you show me the car? Maybe you’ll let me have it very reasonable?’ I smiled at him. I was hoping to get his mind off his past. ‘Come on, Quickie, I’d like to test-drive that car.’ I was relieved to see him smile.

  He stood, shrugged his broad shoulders and agreed. I bought the car from him for about £160. ‘You know where to find me, Paddy, if it breaks down.’ I enjoyed a good laugh at that one, as he moved about more than even I did.

  18

  IN AUTUMN 1970, I was quite honestly gutted to hear that Ferguson’s were closing down. In late November, actually. So I had no choice. I was glad I had my passage booked to New Zealand. Mr Ferguson told me I was doing the right thing in emigrating. I believed strongly that I was, and decided that even if I got homesick I would stay at least twelve months and see a bit of the world before returning.

  The Shota Rustaveli was a Russian liner, and I was one of two thousand people from Ireland, England, Malta and Cyprus on board. It was enormous and spotlessly clean, and when I walked up the gangway into the shining corridors I felt as if I was in a hospital! For the five weeks I was on board, the great liner was like an incredible floating city.

  My first walk around after I had settled into my cabin, which was a four-berth, became a walk into another romance – within hours of coming on board! I was watching the English coastline fade sl
owly into the distance when I noticed a slim, tall young woman coming towards me. She had dark shoulder-length hair and was holding a cigarette. She looked at me and smiled. I got a whiff of her perfume and was attracted to her casual, film-star charm and her tantalising smile. Just like the beautiful French au pair, Maria.

  She spoke softly. ‘Have you got a match for me?’

  ‘I’m so sorry, I don’t smoke, I said apologetically. She put away the cigarette. I was overwhelmed by her beauty.

  ‘My name is Andrea. I’m from New Zealand.’ Her hand was outstretched and mine reached slowly to hold it as I introduced myself. What fine long fingers, I thought. I held on to her hand, as she wasn’t letting go. I felt at ease. We were alone on deck, and we both stood staring at the distant coastline. I imagined I was dreaming.

  Andrea turned and began to move along the deck. I followed with a certain reluctance, not sure of myself. Then she paused, long enough for me to catch up. I began to feel this could be my lucky day – and all this in the first few hours. It did strike me as something of a fantasy.

  We were now in a short darkened passageway, and the only sound was from the seagulls. My hand seemed to rest lightly at first around her waist. Her lips closed upon mine. Her long fingers rested in my hair. Losing any clear notions I had in respect of her charm and elegance, I let myself go as scenes of the flesh took hold of me.

  A light came on that brightened up the passageway. I noticed a huge deckhand, then another. They passed some comment and then roared with laughter. ‘Come on, Andrea, I’ll see you back to your cabin.’

  Before she went I could at last see how she really looked in the bright light. I was overwhelmed by her attractiveness. She asked me if she could share my table in the dining room. We had a table for two for the entire voyage.