Heaps of Trouble (4 page)

‘Emily, do you know what Dillon told me after they had left?' And, not even waiting for the mother to respond, he continued, ‘That he's up there, nearly every week, treating the poor children for some mishap or other. Broken limbs, bruising, scalding and every other bit of misery the nuns can inflict on them. That fucking bastard has known what they have been doing to the orphans for years, and do you know what he had the gall to say to me?

‘“Ron,” he said, “you are wasting your time thinking that you can change anything. The nuns will justify their actions on the grounds that since the majority of the orphans were born out of wedlock, they are in fact the devil's incarnation, which has to be beaten out of them at all costs.” Can you believe that, Emily? And that statement came from one who I thought was an educated man?'

‘He's right, Ron,' the mother answered quietly, stunning him into silence. ‘Who will believe you? It will be your word against theirs and the church will always win out in the end. All you will do is make us the laughing stock of the neighbourhood. Also you have to think of your son: what do you think will happen to him?'

‘I can't believe it, my own wife as well. Are you so afraid of the power of the church that you would remain silent rather than do something about it? Well the hell with the lot of you, I'm going expose this barbaric conduct.'

‘No, you are not, and if you do I will leave you and take your son with me.'

That was the end of that conversation, because from there it exploded into a fully-fledged row and I slipped out of the kitchen while they were engrossed in shouting at each other. One thing I was certain about: whatever was happening up there, I couldn't believe that it involved Sister Charlotte, since she was nice. As for Sister Ann, well, that was a different matter entirely.

The schoolroom in which I was to spend the next three years was the first in a line of four. The left wall of my classroom ran alongside the street and had a door that led directly out onto the footpath. Sister Charlotte presided over us from a desk that was situated to the left of the large blackboard and was elevated about 3 feet above the floor, so she had a bird's eye view of the whole class. From day one she eliminated any thoughts of misbehaviour, for she could move like lightning. As soon as she spotted and identified any potential troublemaker, she would swoop down from her perch like a black bird of prey and, with a swish of her long ruler, quell even the most troublesome child. The nuns' main role in life, while attempting to bash the three R's into us, was to prepare us for our first confession and Holy Communion; as that date got nearer, the emphasis on religion took priority over the basic fundamentals of teaching us to read and write. My clearest memory of this period (apart from learning my sum tables and being able to write my name down, or copy simple phrases from a book) is of an endless series of mock confessional runs. These were conducted with the aid of a screen that lived permanently in the classroom. Sister Charlotte installed herself behind it and, one by one, we knelt at the opposite side and roared out ‘bless me Father, for I have sinned and this is my first confession.'

She even went so far as to tell us what sins we had committed, how we should present them to the priest, and in what order, for example: ‘Father I've had dirty thoughts.' None of us knew what this meant; however, true to brainwashing stereotype, we figured that we must have had them (and it must be a pretty bad sin), since this was the number one on the list. At first Sister Charlotte tried to get us to recite that we had had ‘impure thoughts', but as none of us could pronounce ‘impure' properly she gave up and amended this to ‘dirty'. She always enforced this statement, while pacing up and down the classroom, by changing her facial expression into a look of absolute piety, pointing to the front of her gown and saying, ‘You know, touching yourself down there.' Which caused more than one boy to piss in his trousers and he would have to be sent home for the rest of the day. Next in line for major sin-telling in confession was, ‘I have said bad words and taken the name of God in vain.' Failure to recite all of these sins in their correct order resulted in the poor ‘guilty' kid being placed in a corner for the remainder of the class, complete with a large pointed dunce's hat adorning their his head.

The practice for the first communion ceremony was always more fun, as this involved us all lining up in rows and waiting our turn to kneel, in groups, at the front of the class. We had to stick out our tongues as far as they would go and were given a piece of an ice-cream wafer, which the nun had broken down to the same size as the communion wafer that we would eventually receive from the Bishop. It was constantly pounded into our heads during this rehearsal that if we were to let the wafer drop out of our mouths during the real event we would be committing a mortal sin. For this was the ‘body and blood of Jesus our Saviour', and the shame involved in picking the wafer up from the floor of the church was far too great to contemplate. As for the culprit, well, he would be doomed for eternity into the fiery pits of hell. It was amazing the effect this threat had on some of us: we would concentrate so hard on keeping the piece of wafer balanced on our tongues that the nun would have to tell us to close our mouths and swallow.

During the winter, when the heating was turned on, head lice rampaged unchecked amongst the pupils. I had a mop of wavy blond hair and the mother (who didn't want to cut off my curls) produced the lice comb every evening when I got home and proceeded to remove the nits that had taken up residence during the day. Having succeeded in dodging the de-licing ritual for a few days, I passed the grandmother in the hall one evening, whereupon she noticed that I had fleas and lice leaping from curl to curl. This set the whole household in uproar, as she dragged me around like a sack of spuds and screamed at the top of her voice that once the fleas got into the house we would have to burn the place down to get rid of them. And hadn't poor Claus seen enough of them to last a lifetime during his mattress-making days, as turkey feathers were full of them? And what was the mother doing allowing me go around with a head full of lice and making a show of them? What was her Ronny going to say when he got home? While she roared all this out she was filling up the kitchen sink with hot water to execute the kill.

The mother had to endure all of this ranting from the shop front where she was serving customers – who by this time were backing out of the door in case they, too, became infested. She tried to tell them that the grandmother was going a bit batty and, in any case, the fuss was about our dog. That evening my curls were chopped off by my father with a brand new pair of hand shears, especially purchased for the task. I was not allowed near a barber's shop because, according to my mother, they never washed any of their combs and I would end up with a fresh load of fleas for our troubles.

From that day on bags of DDT powder were purloined weekly from the dispensary by the box-load and sprinkled liberally around the house – especially in the beds, as my grandmother insisted in showing off every real and imaginary flea bite that she got. I was kept from school until my mother had had a chance to talk to the Reverend Mother; the father refused to go anywhere near the convent, since he was still adamant that he was not going to let the ‘twisters' get away with beating up orphans. I eventually returned to school, minus blond curls and reeking of head-lice repellent.

A short time after that episode, at school one morning, it was clear that something major was in the air: the nuns were all babbling together in groups, clapping their hands and smiling as if the Second Coming had been announced. Actually, for them, it was the next best thing, for the news that caused them so much excitement was that the Pope was coming to visit Ireland. Scrap teaching the three R's again and put first confessions and Holy Communion on hold; the business in hand now was to teach us everything we should know about Pope John XXIII – and throw in a full history of the previous twenty-two Johns as well.

The Pope's forthcoming visit was perceived, by media and clergy alike, as if Ireland had been singled out especially by the Vatican: a sign from heaven that we, the Irish, were due to prosper. Well this certainly worked in our case, for the father was not one for letting an opportunity pass him by. He promptly went in to Hector Gray's wholesale shop on Liffey Street and bought up their entire stock of papal flags and bunting, which he sold as fast as he could load them on to the shop shelves.

A week before the visit the whole street went into a frenzy trying to outdo each other with decorations. We had flags flying from every upstairs window; the bunting linking our shop to Coleman's clothing shop across the road was taken care of by the 21A bus on its first passing.

The day of the Pope's visit finally arrived and, as school-kids, we probably knew more about the Pope than he did himself. We spent the morning in class receiving last minute instructions from the nuns on how we were to conduct ourselves; this instruction included two visits from the Reverend Mother, who appeared as fussed as if she was about to spend her first night in bed with a man. Then we were finally marched off in tightly packed columns, flanked and patrolled by nuns to the left and right of us, to ensure that no child tried to sneak off home. Even the orphans were let out that day and took up the rearguard. At the head of some two hundred shuffling kids, bound to silence by fear of retribution the next day if caught, strode the Reverend Mother with her long black robes swishing and blowing in the wind.

We marched down Emmett Road along by St Michael's church, where we turned into Tirconnell Avenue, then along Tirconnell Road, down towards the junction that joined Kilmainham to the Canal. On down to what must have been a prearranged area of footpath, left free for our arrival. It seemed that every other school in Dublin was lined up as far as the eye could see. The majority of children clasped little Papal flags mounted on thin bamboo sticks, which had a tendency to break if waved too vigorously and were completely useless for poking your companion in the sides. The flags had been ceremoniously issued by the nuns, with the strict instruction that they had to be returned the next day.

We waited for hours by the roadside and the tension mounted with every passing minute as the afternoon wore on. It seemed to get hotter and hotter, with the road dust blowing up around our knees with every gust of wind. The nuns patrolled up and down the lines getting us to recite the rosary, and repeated over and over the same instructions: as soon as He arrived we were all to bless ourselves, frantically wave our flags and cheer, and all at once.

False alarms were frequent and usually started by some gurrier shouting, ‘Jesus, he's coming, he's bleeding coming, look.' Which had us blessing ourselves, flag-waving and screaming our heads off until the nuns, arms flapping and running wildly up and down the road, shouted at us to ‘shut up this minute'. The Reverend Mother would then hold a meeting with all of her flock to see if they could identify the offender.

We had almost given up any hope of him coming, and sheer boredom had beset the children to the point that the nuns let us sit down on the curb of the footpath before half of us collapsed from fatigue. Suddenly, without any warning, two police motor bikes roared past and, before the nuns could galvanise us into the blessing-ourselves, flag-waving and cheering mode, a very large, jet-black car zoomed past. We could barely make out the vague silhouette of some fellow dressed in white, waving and making the sign of the cross at us, but it had the nuns throwing themselves to their knees and blessing themselves as if it was the end of the world. And that was that; at the rate the car was moving, the Pope must have been in a hell of a dash to visit all of Dublin in the quickest time possible. It was many years later (after a discussion in a pub involving the whole of that night's clientele) that I finally had to accept that it was only the Pope's second-in-command, the Papal Nuncio, who had visited Ireland at that time.

During that year, the father traded in the moped motor bike, which been our family's mode of transport, and invested in a brand new Ford Popular motor car, duck-egg blue in colour, at a cost of £500. This made us the envy of the roadway, as we were one of the few families on the street to possess a car. It also had the effect of elevating the mother to the role of chief mechanic and back-seat driver; she never allowed the father to drive over 35 miles an hour. After every 50 miles or so, she insisted on stopping at a pub to allow the engine to cool down. These were the worst parts of any journey, as children were not allowed into pubs then and I had to wait in the car, sometimes for hours on end, while the car rested.

Having the car opened up a completely new lifestyle for us, as relatives could be visited, both on my mother and father's side, instead of waiting for them to come to us first. Also, the father joined Newlands Golf Club at Newlands Cross, and he often frequented Wang's restaurant on the Naas road on his way back from golfing. My grandmother could now be deposited with ease for visits to her two sisters in Carrick-on-Suir, especially important because my grandfather had just recently died. A fact I hadn't been aware of at all, since my mother insisted that young children had no business being introduced to funerals at too early an age.

One of the advantages of going to Golden Bridge School was that it gave me the opportunity to meet other children of my own age. However, any potential new friend of mine was closely vetted by my mother. She posed questions to the new playmate in a manner that would have pleased even the most staunch Gestapo officer, and always followed the same format. ‘Where do you live and what does your father do?' If the poor fellow answered with an address, or a parental occupation that did not fit in with my mother's preconceived notion of suitability, well, that was that. He would end up being unceremoniously hunted from our doorway and I would be dragged inside and given a housekeeping task that involved any thing from washing-up to sweeping the floor. It was this snobbish approach that ensured that I didn't have very many friends at all, which made me a loner, preferring my own company to going through the bother of trying to get a new acquaintance approved.

As for the parents, they had a broad spectrum of visitors who constantly streamed in and out of the house. Most were people that my father had befriended, either in his job or through the local branch of the Fianna Fáil Cumann. He felt that being a member of the only political party that had always been in power and would continue to be re-elected (‘Who the hell would ever vote for that other lot of wasters?') would be good for our business. Since the shop remained open until late in the evening, the lights of the front windows attracted visitors like moths to a flame and our kitchen turned into a sort of ‘halfway house'. I never knew the real names of these people, for the father christened each and every one of them with nicknames that he used when talking about them to the mother.

Boy-o-Boy was a teacher at the local technical school and on average he called in on his way home two or three times a week. I was five years old the first time I met him, and the enduring memory I have of him is that I can't ever recall seeing the man sober. He frightened the life out of me, for he was a tall man with a long, black coat that he never took off, which had a multitude of inner pockets well stocked with a variety of whiskey, gin and brandy bottles.

On one particular evening my father heard the knock at the hall door, recognised the tall shape silhouetted against the frosted glass as the streetlights magnified his shape and cast his long, exaggerated shadow down our darkened hallway, and ducked out of sight. He told me to open the door and tell Boy-o-Boy he was not at home. Me, I promptly forgot the last request, being too young to tell lies (if I had, I would have been bright red the following morning at school when my conscience forced me to confess to Sister Charlotte during the communion rehearsals). I just opened the door and let him in without saying a word. The father, realising that I had not carried out his instructions, knowing that he could be heard, and certainly not wanting to appear inhospitable, called out to me to ‘open the door and let our guest in'. Boy-o-Boy stood swaying from side to side in our hallway. Focusing on me, he glared into my face with bright red, bloodshot eyes, causing me to recoil rapidly. I had never smelt anything so bad in my life.

Then he belched once and said, ‘Well, Ronny boy, at least he can be proud that he was born in a free state', before belching again and promptly falling over. After my parents had picked him up and deposited him in an armchair by the fire, he conjured up a bottle of whiskey from under his coat. I was mesmerised at this stunt, thinking that he was some sort of a magician, and was further impressed that his fall had not broken the bottle, as he had fairly hopped off the concrete floor. He then liberally filled the half-pint glasses that my father had produced (in anticipation of Boy-o-Boy's generosity with booze and his need for a stiff drink after his fall) and insisted that my mother join them. He would not let my father touch his drink until another glass was found. This he also filled to the brim before handing it to my mother, who was sitting down in the other armchair across from him on the other side of the fireplace. She was still officially tending shop from her armchair, but knew that a refusal was futile, so she waited for her opportunity when he turned to face the father. Whereupon, she threw the contents of the glass into the fire, causing an unexpected explosion. A whoosh of blue flames roared out from the hearth like a rocket launching and blew Boy-o-Boy out of his seat and halfway across the floor. He landed without spilling a drop of his whiskey and, picking himself up with the father's assistance, uttered ‘Boy, oh boy, Ron, but this is strong stuff,' before falling over again.

My hero was ‘Shady Steven', a regular caller to our shop; considering he was only in his twenties, he was certainly out of character with all of the other visitors who were generally the same age as my parents. I never saw him but he wasn't smiling and every birthday, no matter what the parents gave me, it was always Steven's present that I looked forward to receiving. He would arrive with the most astonishing boxes of Meccano sets that you could possibly imagine. When Lego came out, well, this opened up new boundaries of imagination; each year he would remember what he had given me the year before and expand on the set.

Not-My-Round-Jim always called at the weekend along with his wife. He earned his nickname by constantly trying to dodge buying a round of drinks, especially if he found himself in a large gathering. ‘Ambush Tom' earned his name during the Irish Civil War by setting up an ambush somewhere in the Wicklow Mountains and netting, as a prize, a busload of priests and nuns heading off to a ‘retreat'. When he and his men were threatened with instant excommunication from the Catholic Church for interrupting their travels, Jim had had to supply them with an escort to see them safely to their destination.

*

It was during this period that my mother became pregnant again and the serious rows between my parents began in earnest. Most of them started with the father arriving home late from work and bringing with him, either individually or all together, his drinking partners Boy-o-Boy, Not-My-Round Jim, or Klepto Joe, his boss at the Eastern Health Board. As I would have been hunted to bed hours before, I would hear the father's arrival, the ensuing period of merriment, and the final slam of the hall door announcing the departure of the guests. Creeping to the top of the stairs, I would wait for the row to begin. My grandmother, who was still living with us, would stand in the doorway of her room until the slamming of doors downstairs heralded the impending arrival of my father upstairs. Which would put me running back to my room, diving under the covers, and faking sleep – but still able to hear my grandmother's comment to my father, ‘Ronny, is she at you again?'

These fights placed an umbrella of gloom over our household. The worst part was not the rowing, since this only lasted for a few hours, but the days of silence between my parents, which turned all mealtimes into sullen gatherings. Only broken by the scuffle of my grandmother's feet across the lino flooring in the kitchen as she passed. On one particular day my mother had just washed the floor and covered it with old newspapers to stop dirty feet spoiling her handiwork. It was just after lunch and an exceptionally lengthy period of silence between my parents. The grandmother chose that time to shuffle past the table, dragging all of the newspapers up in her path. This resulted in the mother exploding with pent-up rage. Flying off her chair, she started to emulate the grandmother's actions across the floor, scattering newspapers in all directions with her feet, before hunting her out of the kitchen and down the hallway. The father got up from his chair, where he had remained silent throughout the whole episode, and quietly walked out of the house. Seeing this, I too hopped up and followed him up the street towards the dispensary. He completely ignored me, so I waited outside on the steps until he came out at around five in the evening and followed him across the road to the Workman's Club. Eventually he came up to me and informed me that he was finally going ‘to leave that bitch of a mother of yours'.

Being only five, I thought this was going to be the best adventure of my life and I begged him to take me with him, convincing him that I was worthy with statements such as, ‘I can't live with the bitch, either'. He decided that I could accompany him and, after he had installed me on a barstool, informed me that he was going to make arrangements for our escape just as soon as he had finished a ‘quick game of snooker'. My imagination sparked with visions of boat trips over the Irish Sea, long journeys across England fraught with danger while my father searched for employment, finding new friends and places to visit, and (possibly) finally meeting my father's relatives. I sat and dreamed of adventures unknown.

As the hours ticked by and more and more men came to fill up the bar (the father was finishing yet another ‘quick game of snooker'), my visions of great adventures diminished. Finally, at around ten that evening, my father collected me from my perch, led me out of the door and began walking away down the road in the direction of St Michael's church, with me skipping after him and still hoping that our journey was about to begin. He went straight into a small corner shop that was still open and purchased two tins of tomato soup, a loaf of bread, butter and some cheese.

Leading me by the hand, he brought me back to his office in the dispensary where he turned a small, two-bar electric fire over on its back. He then butchered open the tins of soup with a surgical scalpel he had acquired from one of the doctor's day rooms. He proceeded to heat up the soup, still in the tins, causing the labels to singe and smoulder before finally igniting. While the soup was ‘warming', he toasted the bread, applying liberal quantities of butter and cheese. Finally we settled down at his desk to devour the hastily concocted meal. As soon as we had finished, he suggested that perhaps we should postpone our departure until the next day. When we finally snuck back into the house well after midnight, he put me to bed with instructions to say ‘not a word about this to that old bitch', and suggested that we should leave as soon as I came home from school the next day.

Within two days some form of normality had returned to the house and the parents were beginning to exchange words again, which coincided with my mother's announcement that her father was coming to visit. My small bedroom was going to be turned over to him and I was to move into the grandmother's room. Grand Pappy, who at this time was well into his seventies, always enjoyed his visits to Dublin and would walk daily into O'Connell Street. Each day, when he returned, he would take me out for a walk, either up along the canal, to Memorial Park or the Phoenix Park.

During these walks Grand Pappy would ply me with vast amounts of chocolate (totally against the mother's strict instructions). Inevitably I ended up covered with melted chocolate and, rather than face the wrath of the mother, he would drop me at our door and skive off in search of my father. Over a drink Grand Pappy would commiserate with the father regarding the mother's temperament and explain why he had given his daughter a one-way ticket off the farm in the first place. My father never missed an opportunity, when having a row with the mother, to remind her of these conversations he had with her own father. And he constantly provoked her by telling her, ‘If your own family can't put up with you, then why the hell should I?'

But the visit Grand Pappy made to us after the electric fire feast was to be his last. Finally the simmering issue of the one-way ticket exploded into a blazing row between the mother and the grandfather. I recall my father driving him for the last time to Kingsbridge Station to catch the train to Cork. As we arrived at the door of his compartment, Grand Pappy reached into his waistcoat pocket, extracted a half-crown coin and, turning to me, pressed it into my hand. A whole half crown: I was rich beyond belief and it was
all
mine. On the way back home I kept staring at it to make sure that it didn't dissolve.

Even though the grandfather had returned to Cork, I was not allowed to move back into my old room. Instead the mother converted it into a small, upstairs living-room. Once it was decked out with new furniture, I was never allowed back in there, which I felt defeated the purpose of having the room in the first place. I was told that it was to be used only for entertaining ‘special guests' – which I took to mean her brothers and sisters and the local parish priest. Also, according to the mother, my father's ‘lot' was never going to set foot in that room.

*

It was approaching Christmas and, as I was now nearly six and had given up believing in Santa Claus, the father thought I was old enough to introduce to the ways of the business world and to bring around the wholesale outlets in Dublin. Now it was not the case that I had stopped believing in Santa as a result of my own process of logical thought. It was just that one day the father took me aside and told me that it was a load of made-up rubbish and that, in fact, all the toys for the kids in our area were bought in our shop. But, he warned, I wasn't to tell any of the other children that I came in contact with, as this bit of news could ruin our business.

To me, visiting the wholesalers was like discovering the New World. There was Millard Brothers on the quays, which supplied our fishing-rods, tackle, knives and, most importantly, guns of all descriptions. There were pellet guns of every make and size, from repeater rifles that looked identical to the Winchester rifles all the cowboys carried in the films, to hand pistols that fired all sizes of pellets. And there, standing shoulder to shoulder in the long gunroom (which appeared to be carved out of oak beams), were rows and rows of
real
guns, from rifles to shotguns and everything else in between. As soon as I entered that room, the smell of gun oil seemed to overpower my senses and set every fibre of my body tingling with excitement. I stared up at the racks of weapons that conveyed a sense of power, strength, and gave off an aura of potential, awesome destruction. Turning towards the aisle that ran the length of the floor, I saw endless stacks of large boxes containing packets of every kind of bullet imaginable. I lifted one small packet (which seemed to weigh a ton), carefully opened the top, and there, glaring out at me, were the polished tops of .22 calibre bullets. They looked so perfect and of such faultless beauty that I felt it would be criminal to even think of firing them. The smell of gun oil seemed to penetrate the very pores of my skin, lingering with me for weeks on end. So much so that, in later years, every time I entered the gunroom at Millard Brothers the same feeling came rushing back.