Maggie's Breakfast (16 page)

Michael also loved to sing but he wouldn’t sing in front of anybody. If you weren’t looking at him he’d break out into song and would continue singing until you turned to look
at him. As soon as he saw you looking at him or even asking him the name of the song he’d stop instantly. It was as if he was caught stealing. My brother was different from me in a way that
was almost like my mother and father were different from each other. I believed my father and I were always looking for something fairer and brighter in our lives but felt we could never attain it.
Michael and my mother had a tighter grip on their reality and didn’t seem to question it much. This evening on the cattle boat bound for England Michael was much more certain about his
ambitions. He said when he got to England he’d look for Billy Breen or Seán Doyle.

“Are they in Liverpool?” I asked him.

“I think they are.”

I got the feeling he didn’t want to tell me where Billy and Seán were. They were pals of his who went to England a year or so earlier. They came home one Christmas wearing their
Teddy Boy suits and crepe-soled shoes and acted like returning millionaires. The girls stuck to them like flies to flypaper. Michael wanted to be part of that.

“What kind of jobs have they got?” I asked.

“Who?”

“Billy and Seán.”

“They’re workin’ in a factory some place.”

“Where?”

“How do I know?”

“How’re you goin’ to meet them if you don’t know where they are?”

Michael walked away from me. I got the feeling he didn’t want to tell me anything. I even got the feeling that he didn’t want me with him.

“I want to go with you,” I said, frightened and on the verge of tears.

“Go where?”

“When you meet Billy and Seán. I know them too a bit, you know.”

“They’re older than you. What are you goin’ to do? Hang around cryin’?”

“I won’t be cryin.’”

“That’s what you say now.”

“Can I go with you?”

“I’m not goin’ anywhere!”

Michael turned and went down the stairs where most of the passengers were singing, smoking and drinking tea. I stood on the deck and began to feel sea sick. After a few minutes of trying not to
cry, I burst out in tears.

An elderly man came up to me. “Are ya sea-sick, boy?” he asked.

I was too afraid to answer him and I went down the stairs after my brother.

Many passengers who sat in the hot steamy tearoom had girlfriends and relatives in different parts of England. Some talked about Manchester. Others knew Birmingham well.

I asked my brother what the tinkers were doing going over to England. He told me they travelled all the time. It was their way of life. Some of them sitting on the floor had dogs tied with twine
that were barking at everybody who passed them on the deck. Women wearing colourful woollen blankets around their shoulders with holes and food stains on them sat on the floor and leaned against
the wall. They had big broad faces that resembled what I thought the wind would look like if I could ever see it. Wrapped inside the blankets, babies sucked on their mothers’ nipples. The
cries of the children mingled with the sound of someone playing a mouth organ. I wanted to talk to the tinkers but I was afraid. Something about the way they didn’t care about anything or
anybody made me want to be with them. I couldn’t understand my feelings at the time but I knew there was some connection in my wishes. I’d often heard it said that the Travellers were
the original Irish who were thrown off their land when the English invaded Ireland years and years ago. They might have been the bearers of Cromwell’s curse and cruelty. The look on their
faces and the way they walked and talked reminded me of Ireland itself. The wilderness, the forests and mountains of Ireland. They were fierce, windy. Wild, wet and warm all at once. Rain and sun
mingled. Rainbows and mist and green hills and steep cliffs all crushed together by memories of a time gone by. It was as if they were walking talking trees. Wanting and aching and wishing and
hoping. Abused and victimised and still resilient. Ghosts and shadows of another time who were left with the look of fear on their faces as well as a great strength and handsomeness. They had got
used to owning nothing but the clothes on their backs and the caravans they roamed the country in. The life of detachment from anything official. From anybody in uniform. From stamps and lines and
waiting rooms. From alarms and warnings. From threats of weather to obligations of holidays. From any need to be anywhere at a certain time. Had they discovered something since the days of their
evictions? Had they stumbled upon some simple secret to life that most everyone else couldn’t see? Had detachment and homelessness forged in their hearts and minds the true way to live? I
wondered if they knew how free they were. How unaffected they appeared to be by everybody else who looked at them and ran away in fear. Maybe it was the freedom they seemed to have in their life
that made others afraid of them. I never was told why they were so bad. Everybody I knew looked down on them but some shadowy part of me longed to be with them. But I was shy and afraid to ever
mention it to anyone.

The boat’s engines roared. The cows in the lower deck began moaning as if to protest against the journey to Liverpool. A few men sitting on one of the large wooden benches were pale and
sad-looking. Across from them on the opposite bench others were singing and celebrating their departure from Dublin.

The journey was now real. The tinker children ran up and down the stairs, pulling at each other and fighting like scraggly dogs just let out of a kennel.

“Sit down for the love of God Almighty, will yis? Sit down!”

The women shook their shawls out and bits and pieces of bread fell to the floor. The children ran and picked up the morsels and ate them in a hurry. Their parents drank what remained in the
small bottles of whiskey. Some of the men, by now half-drunk, fell over others already asleep, provoking yells and curses louder than the ship’s bellowing horns or the cows mooing below.

Michael found himself a chair and sat down with a cup of tea and a scone. I sat next to him and watched him drink his tea in silence. He didn’t appear to be worried about anything. I
thought he was very brave.

I got a cup of tea and went up on deck again and saw seagulls flying low and landing on the railing. It was then I knew that we were very far out.

“Goodbye, Dublin – goodbye, Dublin!” I said.

Half-afraid, I sat down on a bench and sipped the warm tea I held between my hands. Wave after wave was bringing me closer to England.

Later, in the dark night, I thought of God again and began to talk to him: Somewhere throughout this pushing night you must be watching and smiling on this boat full of cows, horses and people.
Whatever you do, don’t let this boat sink. I can’t swim that far back to Ireland. Whisper in my mother’s ear that we’re all right.

The silence on the boat didn’t last long. Those who were asleep were now awake. Voices got louder and began to sing. Cows mooed as if to complain. A child ran around the deck and a mother
ran after him. Somebody said “How long does it take?” About fifty opinions followed. The sun was coming up and the deck was spread with tired bodies of people snuggling against each
other.

“Birkenhead! Birkenhead!” a loud call woke me up.

Everybody jumped up.

“It’s England, it’s England!”

The land was there for everybody to see. Boats and ships and buildings could be seen from the deck. Seeing it was like discovering a missing piece to a massive jigsaw puzzle. England was a real
place with real people. In about an hour we would be in Liverpool. We began to pass the shipyards and everything looked so big along the shore. We turned into a big dockside shed. It was a place
for the cattle to get off. After that we were let off.

* * *

At Customs a screaming English voice attacked my ears. “Bags up ’ere! Anything to declare, lad?”

I just looked at him with gawking open eyes.

“Wot’s in the case, boy?”

“Everything,” I said.

“Give it ‘ere then. Where’s the key to it?”

I had forgotten that the old suitcase ever had a key.

“Get to it, laddio!”

I could see he was getting very impatient. “It’s open, sir,” I said.

He pulled at my father’s tie and searched my suitcase with his hand till he came to my bar of used soap. He pushed it out of his way and I had to rearrange my alarm clock and two
fried-bread sandwiches.

When we’d both passed through the line, Michael asked me if I understood how these Englishmen spoke English. I’d heard enough English voices at the hotel and I wasn’t bothered
at all.

My brother and I got lost trying to find Lime Street. Lime Street Station was as large as Liverpool itself but still we wandered from street to street looking for it. We asked everybody we saw.
As we walked around in a circle I noticed the old taxis driving by. The damn things had no doors on them. At last we came upon a man who was sitting on a bench eating out of a brown-paper bag.
Before my brother asked him anything he asked us for a light. We didn’t have any matches.

“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.