The Wagger shouted, ‘Yeh in a fuckin’ race, pal?’
I never heard of such talk, and it shocked me. To hell with the whole lot of them, I thought.
The Joxer looked a rough sort, but it was a false image really. His voice was gruff. ‘How yeh.’ I nodded and smiled, but kept busy and kept my eyes down. A messy lump of dough landed in front of Mahogany, splashing Joxer with flour in the face. He stopped work and shouted fiercely, ‘Who’s the bleedin’ smart arse? Yeh won’t stop the bleedin’ berth like that.’
The Wagger added, ‘That’s right, yeh won’t stop the fuckin’ train by throwin’ dough at a passenger.’
‘You’re right there, Wagger,’ Jack said. ‘There’s too many fuckin’ passengers on this berth.’
After much laughter Jemser said, ‘Lookit what yeh started now, Wagger.’ I kept working, splitting my sides laughing.
The Joxer got my attention and said, ‘What yeh in for, pal, and how’d yeh get here to us?’
I kept my eyes down and gave no response. I noticed that Jack was watching from behind the Joxer. He continued, ‘You a jobber or what, or are yeh just passin’ by?’
The Wagger was quick off the mark. He shouted, ‘The fuckin’ sooner he passes by the better, Joxer. I feel like I’m on a bloomin’ train up here. You know, pal, I haven’t moved as fast since I came back off me honeymoon.’
The men caved in with laughter. Jimmy Quinn glanced at me and winked. I got the message.
The Wagger kept feeding the men with the scaled pieces of brown sodas to be moulded and tinned up by us. He paused to wipe the sweat from his face, whereupon Jack roared out, ‘Too hot for yeh, Wagger, is it? Or is our new friend too fast for yez?’
The Wagger’s response was fast too. ‘Yeh, Jack, I think we’ll have to see our shop steward about this one. I get the impression we’re on piece work.’
Joxer was only itching to get a word in. ‘What non-union hovel did yeh manage to creep out of?’
There was silence now as they all watched me. I knew I had to be careful in my choice of words. Suddenly the Wagger shouted, ‘He doesn’t bloomin’ know, Joxer. He has to feckin’ think about it first.’
Joxer responded quickly, looking at me. ‘I suppose you’re goin’ to give us a real fuckin’ cock and bull story and treat us like Jack does, like eejits.’ I decided to tell them and hope for the best.
‘I’m just back from New Zealand, lads. I got a job in the KC, and when the union came up we had to leave. So I’m a jobber now. Okay?’
For a few seconds there was silence, until the little Wagger shouted down at me, ‘All the bloomin’ way from where?’
The Joxer shouted, ‘New Zealand. The other end o’ the world, Wagger, to come here to confuse us.’ He paused. ‘Yeh sure get around, mate. D’yeh mind if I ask yeh how yeh got from down there to here? Enlighten us, will yeh?’
I said, ‘I’ll try. From Wellington I came through the Magellan Strait, to Santa Cruz in Argentina, on to Buenos Aires . . .’
‘Argentina, bejapers? Yeh come overland, did yeh?’
I was about to answer when the Wagger got down from his stand, stood at the table and banged it. ‘I’ve got it. He’s the Overlander. That’s it, men.’
The Wagger and the Joxer stood together, arms around each other, and shouted out, ‘Welcome to Boland’s, our new friend, the Overlander.’
Jack came across and in his crude way said, ‘When you get him noted in your book, Wagger, remember this berth is fucked from now on – broken up. This man can do the work of four men, so from now on you’ll have three men with you. Put that in your little black book and remember it.’ He laughed as he walked away, rubbing his hands through his white hair.
The Wagger was shouting after him. ‘You’ll remember the Overlander too, Jack, I promise yeh.’
The Joxer spoke quietly to me. ‘Yeh know we mean no harm. The Wagger and me just enjoy a bit o’ crack, and we know yeh can take it. See y’around, Overlander. And don’t go leavin’ us now for the Bridge or some kip.’
Overlander. That name was to stick with me for as long as I found a day’s work in a union house.
21
ON THE LAST day of 1971 I made my way to the Crystal Ballroom for the New Year’s Eve dance. It was my first visit to a ballroom since I returned from New Zealand in the middle of December. I was hopeful of meeting someone, and I felt in the mood the moment I entered the ballroom in Anne Street. Playing that night were my favourite showband: Joe Dolan and the Drifters.
The hall was crowded. Girls I danced with were pushed into me, and I could taste their mascara, lipstick and hair spray all in one. I knew I was home. Once I got among the girls I’d feel smashing. It was their beauty, gaiety and charm that created the atmosphere, along with the chat and the crack. The girls would assemble on one side of the hall, eyeing the male talent on the opposite side, and they would send their signals out to the lads they noticed watching them. Often the men in their haste stampeded across the floor to make sure they got to the girl of their choice.
I met Mando, and we stood on the balcony judging the form below. I had only one thing on my mind, and that was to get a date or to see some girl home. I looked at my watch and said, ‘Damn, I’ve got less than an hour to make my mark.’
It was great fun asking girls questions as we danced, like ‘Do you like the band? Where are you from? Do you like the hall?’ and best of all, ‘Do you like the floor?’ I had a problem in trying to find out exactly where some girls came from. More often than not they would say, ‘I’m from the west,’ with a total lack of interest, as though they were filling in time. I always got my own back whenever I was asked where I came from by replying, ‘I’m from the east!’
Pauline was with two other girls that night as I approached her. I noticed her looking my way, then her smile. The Drifters began to play. I stood near her friend, she said hello, I smiled at her and then at Pauline. I introduced myself and said, ‘I hope you’re enjoying the dance.’ Pauline introduced me to her sister, Anne, and then her friend, who seemed to enjoy looking at me. Then Anne said, ‘If you’re going to dance, Pat, you’d better hurry up.’ She pointed to Pauline. ‘That’s Joe Dolan who’s singing. She’s crazy about him.’
Joe Dolan was singing a slow, sexy number. The crowd suddenly stopped dancing for a while to watch their star, as the girls pushed towards the centre of the stage. Many of them were in raptures, screaming for a lock of Joe’s hair or to touch his sweaty shirt. I remember looking up to the ceiling and, lo and behold, I realised I was standing right beneath the crystal ball.
When Joe had stopped singing I looked at Pauline. She smiled.
I said, ‘You know we are beneath the crystal ball.’
She responded swiftly: ‘That’s for luck.’
My hands were down by my side; I moved my right hand and suddenly it found hers, waiting to clutch mine. The MC made an announcement: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this spot is two free tickets to next Thursday night’s dance. The spot goes to the couple standing beneath the crystal ball.’
‘Gosh, we’re up!’ I said, and I thought of her reply to me moments before, ‘That’s for luck.’ And so it was! As I eased my way up with Pauline to collect the two tickets, I whispered to her, ‘It’s a date. Okay?’ I could tell she was easy-going and jolly, and I liked the way she smiled.
It was the start of something that simply kept going, just as one day follows the next. Joe Dolan was her favourite singing star; Cliff Richard was next, and I came in close, somewhere behind her mother, but I hung in there. It wasn’t always easy. Life on the whole is along those lines: a two up and one down sort of way.
I had just moved into new lodgings, but I was beginning to think that I needed a place of my own. Mrs Megan was a widow, a fine Dublin woman. She certainly knew how to put up a good meal to a hungry lodger. She made the best Dublin coddle I ever had. One evening her words simply swept over me. ‘Get your own house, Pat, and find a nice girl to look after it for you. They’re building plen
ty of houses out in Raheny. It’s like living in the country, close to the city. You’d be mad not to, Pat. They’re going for a song, you know, those houses. That won’t always be the case. If I had a lad like you, I’d push you into one of them.’
Mrs Megan poured out the tea. She was curious. ‘Have you got a date tonight, Pat?’
Without looking up from the coddle I answered, ‘Yes, I have, and before you ask, she’s from Dublin.’
I left the house that night feeling terrific. I could feel that change was coming, and for once in my life it felt good. I also realised that it was up to me to make it happen, and to make the right decision for once!
As I drove into the city to pick up Pauline, so many things crossed my mind. I knew I could have been long since married, but it was I who chickened out. I never considered that the girl mightn’t have minded if I worked all night and slept all day. I was always afraid of the fact that if I married while I had very low wages and was working odd hours, it would never work out, certainly not how I would like it to. I had grandiose ideas of what married life should be like, but I was apprehensive about making the big decision.
As I paced up and down the pavement outside McBirney’s beside O’Connell Bridge, I was hoping Pauline wouldn’t be too late. A baker I worked with came by, known to us as Galway. He shouted, ‘Give her up, Paddy. She’s not comin’!’ I was raging that he knew, and I realised when I’d go into work on the Monday morning I’d be in for a fierce slagging over it, as he’d tell the Wagger and the chain gang.
I waited and waited, and still she didn’t come. One bus followed another until eventually I said, ‘She’d better be on this one. If she’s not then I’m off, and that’s it.’ If she wasn’t on this bus then my decision was made for me, as I detested bad timekeeping. I had been standing for over an hour in the cold. I stopped for a last look, anxiously watching the last person who stepped down from the bus. Never again, I swore, would I go through this waiting for a girl. I put my hands into my pockets and walked away. I heard a voice calling me: it was that baker again. ‘Still here, Paddy, yeh feckin’ eejit. I told yeh an hour ago I wouldn’t wait for my bird like that. Come and have a jar and get the feelin’ back into yeh.’
I felt cold, but I said, ‘Sorry, I don’t drink.’
‘What yeh mean yeh don’t drink. A baker! You’re the only baker I know who doesn’t drink.’
I began to walk away, and then I heard a voice calling. ‘Pat, wait. Pat, Pat, wait for me.’ I could see Pauline hurrying, one hand holding down her brown leather cap. As I walked across O’Connell Bridge I was thinking that only for that young baker meeting me again so suddenly I would have been off, and who knows where I’d have gone!
We used our spot prize won at the Crystal, and as we danced I began teasing her by asking her all the usual questions.
‘Do you like Eileen Reid?’
‘Yes, do you?’
‘Do you like the band? Do you like the Crystal?’
Pauline was quite quick off the mark and responded swiftly, ‘Well, do you like the floor, Pat?’
‘Yes, I love the floor, and better still, I love those standing on it.’
I could tell Pauline was taken aback. ‘Do you mean what you said?’
‘Yes, I do, but if you’d behave yourself and turn up on time I’d like you much better.’
She pushed me away from her. ‘What! Just who do you think you’re talking to? I’m not some girl working in Boland’s with that dirty-minded lot, like that baker friend of yours. You don’t bring me out to lecture me, even if I was a bit late.’
What have I got here, I wondered! A match, perhaps?
Pauline was a fighter, and would fight her corner. The coolness of the way she would get out of turning up late and then coolly dress me down often left me gasping. I soon learnt that I could never rely on her punctuality, so I began to drive out to her house and pick her up, which was, I suppose, what she really wanted all the time. I’m a slow learner.
I began to see Pauline three or four times a week. We toured the ballrooms; she was always keen to go to a dance, more so than to see a picture. Sunday nights were reserved for the cinema, and that was that. Pauline had one thing in common with all the other girls I had gone out with: they all got things their own way.
My first invitation to her home was for Sunday dinner. It was a nice spring day, and we could go for a drive to Bray afterwards, I thought. It helped that I was used to staying in lodging houses and having all kinds of landladies to drool over me, so when I entered Pauline’s home that first Sunday for dinner I really was at ease with everyone. I arrived early. I had met some of her family on different occasions, but only when picking her up or taking her home; I had never sat down with her parents. I had very little experience of the atmosphere that forms a part of family life.
As I sat down at the table with Tony, Jimmy, Anne and Jimmy’s girl-friend, Deirdre, I felt strange. Behaving politely was one thing, but being able to communicate in simple terms was quite another. I got the impression that all was well, though I could feel my every move I made was being scrutinised.
The moment I got home Mrs Megan called out, ‘How did you get on, Pat?’
I said, ‘Really smashing, great, so it was.’
‘You better buy that house, Pat. She’s got you, boy. I bet her mother was all over you.’
I smiled at her.
‘Your goose is cooked, boy.’
22
I WAS ALWAYS apprehensive about owning something new, for fear it would get damaged or stolen. I realised much later it was because as a child I never had much in the way of things such as new toys. Mostly the toys given to us at Christmas were second-hand, or I won them from some other lad in a game of conkers. Whenever I bought something new, be it clothes, shoes, a watch, or perhaps a radio, I took great care of it and had pride in it, as I still do today.
The biggest thing I ever purchased for myself in the first few years after I left school was a new bike, bought in for £17 17s 6d. For the first six months I couldn’t stop taking care of it and I was forever polishing it. One day I parked it outside the Catholic Boys’ Home for a few minutes; when I came out it was gone. Someone had borrowed it without asking me. The first thought that entered my mind was that I should never have bought a new bike; an old one would have done just as well, and no one would want to steal or borrow it. I made up my mind that once it was returned I’d sell it and buy a second-hand one.
When I moved towards putting down a deposit on the new house in Grangemore, I worried about all sorts of things. What if the roof blew off in a storm, or it was broken into, or it went on fire? It was only after I had paid my money that my worst fears began to be realised, though I couldn’t have made a better move, as time proved. I found it a real headache having so many things to take care of that were never my responsibility before, like changing a light bulb, replacing a fuse, fixing a cracked window, not to mention the upkeep of all interior and exterior painting and decorating, down to doing the garden.
The moment I was handed the key of number 156 Grangemore Estate on that lovely sunny afternoon in June 1972, I felt the weight of the responsibility take precedence over any sense of achievement, and rather than gloat over becoming a member of the home-owners’ club, I cast my eyes over the place and said, ‘My God, what have I done now!’
I couldn’t wait to get up on my bike to get back to collect my gear and say goodbye to my last landlady, the warm-hearted Mrs Megan. ‘You’ll never make a better move, Pat. May God bless you, son, and look after you. You deserve it.’
I checked again to make certain the belongings were tied securely on the back. After a few blasts of the horn from the Honda 50, I glanced at Mrs Megan, out at the gate waving, and then I was gone. I wiped the tears away as I turned into Tonelegee Road on the last lap to Raheny.
Within no time I was making my first cup of tea. I had no cooker, just a single gas jet, like the ones we used in the bakery to boil a kettle on. I sat th
e gas ring into an empty biscuit tin, and connected it to the gas pipe in the kitchen. I spread a tea towel over a couple of cement blocks I rescued from the back garden to use as a table, and sat down on top of another two as a chair.
As I poured the tea I quickly realised there was no milk either. As I stepped out of the front door I met my next-door neighbour. ‘Oh, you’ve just moved in. My name’s Kathleen. Pleased to meet you, and so soon too.’
I introduced myself, then I added neatly, ‘Sorry, but I’ve got to run down to the shops for milk: I’m dying for a cup and and it’s already made, you see.’ Kathleen swiftly dashed into her house and before I could say O’Brien’s Bridge she was back holding a bottle of milk, a plate of homemade scones and a cup of sugar. As I tried to take them from her I was afraid she would end up coming in to see how poorly I was set up. Worse luck, I moaned, as she did anyway. ‘Oh, goodness, my heavens, you’ve no furniture!’ she cried out, almost dropping the milk.
My first tea set came from Pauline’s mother. Each week I would buy one second-hand piece of furniture; each day I dug another bit of the garden. One day to my surprise a van pulled up and my future brother-in-law, Jimmy Brennan, got out to deliver a dining table and four chairs. A terrific feeling came over me with the thought that I was now able to sit at my own table in my own home and have a cup of tea with Pauline, though we were still only engaged.
By the end of the summer in 1972 I had done much to turn the house into a home, with a lot of help from Pauline’s mother and father. I had turned the front garden over a few times. One hot, sultry evening I was using a pick, and the sweat was oozing from every part of me. I swung the pick high and brought it down hard. I was shocked to see it suddenly fly from my grasp into the air, then land safely in the soil.
Just then my future father-in-law walked up the drive with Pauline, followed by Jimmy. Jimmy looked at me in amazement. ‘What happened? I saw the pick take off.’
I looked down at the plastic pipe it had hit. ‘Look,’ I said. ‘Down here, Jim.’ He was shocked. He shouted, ‘Good God, Pat, you’re lucky to be alive. You hit the electric cable.’ As we entered the house Jimmy turned to me and said, ‘For Christ’s sake, Pat, you must have nine lives. You were born lucky.’
Scars that Run Deep Page 17
