Rugby Spirit (9 page)

T
he Maddens, with Mr Finn following behind, pulled into the car park of Ormondstown General Hospital shortly before 1pm. The sun had just emerged from behind a grey cloud and Eoin forced a smile onto his face, realising it was important not to look upset or worried in front of his grandad.

The old man was surrounded by pipes and wires when Eoin and his dad entered the ward. Dixie seemed to be asleep, but perhaps sensing the arrival of his only son – and only grandson – he slowly opened his eyes.

‘Ah Eoin, how wonderful it is that you could come. And Andy Finn drove you all the way? What a great chum he is.’

‘Mr Finn is outside, Dad,’ Kevin told him, ‘He wanted to let me in first. He’s dying to see you too.’

‘Dying to see me? I hope not,’ the old man chuckled. ‘There’s enough of us dying around here.’

‘Now, Dad, enough of that talk,’ Kevin said. ‘The doctor says you’re good for another twenty years – four Rugby World Cups anyway. You might even get another Grand Slam out of it.’

‘Grand Slam?’ the old man snorted, ‘Get out of that. Not a chance.
You’ll
be lucky to see another one of them,’ he directed at Eoin.

‘Great to see you back to normal, Grandad!’ laughed Eoin, ‘There’s nothing wrong with your spirit anyway!’

‘Indeed, young man. That sleep gave me a great boost. Sit down there beside the bed and we’ll have that chat.’

‘Hang on, Dad, are you sure you’re strong enough?’ interrupted Kevin.

‘I am, so go off and get yourself and Andy a cup of tea, and leave me with the boy. I have a lot to get through with this young man.’

Dixie and Eoin Madden looked into each other’s eyes. The old man saw a bright, independent spirit, eager to learn. The boy saw a sadness, but behind it lay a light that was fighting hard to stay lit, because it realised it had so much shining still to do.

‘I hated rugby,’ Dixie said, ‘hated it with a vicious, powerful, hurtful hatred. And it was stupid, I now know, because it wasn’t rugby that took her away ….’

Eoin sat silently by the bed. His eye kept being dragged
away by the digital readouts on the machines
monitoring
Dixie’s health.

‘It was the winter of nineteen sixty-eight, sixty-nine. We were living in Dublin at the time, I was working for the bank in Rathmines and playing my rugby up with Old Castlerock. Kevin – your dad – had been born the summer before, but there were ferocious snows all winter long and we hardly got a chance to take him out for fresh air. The rugby was going well, very well really … and I was lucky enough to be picked for the final Irish trial up in Lansdowne Road. The Saturday before was a rare sunny day and we had a game at home against the university. It really was a lovely day ….’

The old man paused, and rubbed his eyes.

‘There were two Irish selectors there to watch, and the lads kept ribbing me that I would be getting a new green jersey, and Irene had better not wash it with the nappies. All harmless teasing, I suppose … Anyway, the game was going well, and we were well on top. Just after the second half started a shocking wind got up, and started playing havoc with the kicking.

‘I noticed at half-time that your grandmother, Irene, had arrived, and she gave me a little wave. Kevin was in the pram, an enormous black thing with a bouncy suspension. A lot of the other wives and girlfriends were
around her, goo-gooing at the baby.

‘I was concentrating on the game, up the other end of the pitch, when I heard this unmerciful crack. It was like a bomb going off. The game stopped, everyone turned and saw that a huge branch had broken off near the top of an old willow tree that stood beside the rugby pitch.

‘It teetered for a couple of seconds, before down it tumbled. It was just as it started to fall that I saw that it was Irene who was standing underneath the tree,
talking
to another woman. As the branch crashed down through the tall tree I saw that she realised the danger and pushed the pram away. She only had a second or two, but she clearly decided that she had to save little Kevin …’

Dixie paused, looking out the window for a moment, before resuming his story.

‘And then the branch fell down, right on top of her.’

‘I sprinted those sixty yards faster than anyone ever has, but there wasn’t even a breath left in her when I got there. She had been killed stone dead.

‘Somebody called an ambulance, but she was already gone. I held her in my arms for a few minutes, but then I heard Kevin crying and knew I had to go to him. It was a terrible day, terrible …’

Eoin reached across and put his hand across the back
of Dixie’s. He felt awful that the old man had dragged up such painful memories for him. And that he had never really thought about why he only had one
grandmother
.

His grandfather looked him in the eyes again.

‘And that was the last time I ever wore rugby kit, or even kicked a ball,’ he said. ‘I blamed myself at first, because Irene would never have been near that field that day had I not been playing. People talked me out of that notion, but I just hated the idea that she had lost her life, and we had lost all our dreams of a life together, over something as stupid as a game of rugby football.’

Dixie sighed and stared out the window.

‘I even got visitors from the IRFU trying to talk me out of it. They thought I was a future Irish captain, they told me.

‘I burnt all my rugby kit, my boots, even my school team photographs – which I regret most of all. And I wouldn’t let Kevin play the game, imagine that?’ he asked.

‘Well, I don’t think he would have been any good at it,’ Eoin smiled.

‘True,’ agreed Dixie, ‘but it was selfish of me to deny him the opportunity of playing a game that had given me such a lot. And taken away a lot from me, too, I suppose.’

‘I don’t think Dad minds,’ said Eoin. ‘He’s becoming a keen supporter, but I don’t think he has any regrets that he never played.’

‘That’s why I was so keen that you go to Castlerock too,’ Dixie explained. ‘I knew you would take to rugby, and I confess that I’ve been watching a lot of the sport again this winter, trying to catch up with the changes. It is a very different game to the one I said goodbye to back in 1969.

‘I really hope I can get back to full health by the end of next week,’ Dixie grinned. ‘I wouldn’t want to miss the chance of seeing the first Madden at Lansdowne Road in more than forty years.’

Eoin’s face fell for a second, but he quickly composed himself, ‘I’d love that, Grandad; I really hope you can make it.’

They talked for a while longer about sport and school, before Eoin heard a cough behind him, and his father appeared in the doorway.

‘Hello, Dad, I hope Eoin’s not tiring you too much?’ Kevin asked. ‘Andy Finn is here too and he’d love a quick word. He says he has to get back to Dublin before dark so he won’t stay long.’

Eoin stood and watched as the two old pals, torn apart by tragedy and separated by half a lifetime of regret,
renewed their friendship.

‘God, Dixie, you’re looking fantastic. I had heard you weren’t well, but they were obviously mistaken …’ joked Mr Finn.

Dixie laughed again, and the pair began to bridge the lost years.

Kevin gave the old men twenty minutes alone together before he called a halt, and hugs and handshakes ended the emotional afternoon.

‘I hope this hasn’t been too much for you today, Dad?’ Kevin asked, after the teacher and pupil left.

‘Not at all, not at all,’ smiled his father. ‘It has been an absolute tonic.’

And Dixie was right. The visit of Eoin and Andy had perked him up so much that the next time a nurse checked his vital signs it was apparent the old man was well on the road to recovery.

A
s they started on their journey back to Dublin, Eoin and Mr Finn were in great form, as both had been enormously heartened by the visit to Dixie.

‘What a fantastic man Dixie is,’ Mr Finn kept saying. ‘It is the main regret of my life that I didn’t keep up our friendship. We never fell out, but he just removed
himself
totally from Castlerock. Then he left Dublin and we never met again. Even when your dad was at the school he never came to visit.’

Eoin felt freer now to talk about Dixie’s career, and Mr Finn filled him in on many of the gaps. He
confirmed
that Dixie had been on the verge of a glorious career in a green shirt, and that the IRFU bigwigs had come to try to coax him back to the game. Eoin told the teacher about how Dixie had so regretted burning his photographs, and Mr Finn shook his head slowly.

‘Grief is a terrible thing Eoin, I can’t blame Dixie for
not wanting to see an oval ball again. Like everyone else I was very sorry that he never got a chance to play for Ireland, but my real regret in the end was for our
friendship
. That was far more important to me.

‘I missed playing with him too, and to be honest rugby didn’t have the same appeal for me for much longer either. I gave up at the end of the following season after we lost the senior cup final to Lansdowne.’

The mention of one of Dublin’s oldest clubs reminded Eoin of something.

‘Did you ever hear of a player called Hanrahan who played for Lansdowne?’ he asked the teacher.

Mr Finn glanced across at Eoin, with a strange look on his face.

‘I did indeed, how ever did you hear about him?’

Eoin thought quickly. ‘I … I was reading about him in the library,’ he lied.

‘And what did you read?’ quizzed Mr Finn.

‘That he was killed in Lansdowne Road,’ Eoin replied.

‘Yes, he was. Another very sad story. Brian Fitzgerald Hanrahan,’ Mr Finn sighed. ‘He was a Tipperary man, just like you. Long before my time, but people spoke very highly about him as a player. The strange thing is, the last time I heard his name spoken was just after your grandmother was killed.’

Eoin stared back at his teacher, unsure where this conversation might lead.

‘It was about a week after the funeral, and I was around at Dixie’s house. He was in an awful state,
completely
swamped by the grief of it all. A knock came to the door and I went to open it. There were two men at the door, wearing long dark coats.

‘I invited them in and introduced them to Dixie. One of them was the IRFU president, but the other man, who was much older, did all the talking. He said his name was Charlie Hanrahan, and that he had seen Dixie in action on many occasions.

‘He said he wanted to sympathise with Richard on his terrible loss, and to offer the union’s support in any and every way. Dixie wasn’t happy to see them at first, but I made them tea and they all came into the kitchen.

‘Mr Hanrahan told Dixie that the whole rugby
community
joined him in mourning his loss, and would be standing with him for the rest of his days. He told him that he, too, had suffered a terrible tragedy through the game and that it was his fellow players who kept him going through the grief.

‘He went on to tell us the story of his brother Brian, who died after suffering a terrible injury out on the field in Lansdowne Road. Charlie himself was in Limerick
that day, playing for Dolphin, and didn’t hear about the accident until he got home to Cork that night. A friend drove him up to Dublin where he arrived barely in time to say goodbye to his little brother.

‘Charlie told us that he never wanted to play again, and pulled out of the Ireland team to play Wales the
following
weekend. Brian had been picked for Leinster to play Munster in a junior interpro on that very same day, would you believe. Charlie said he couldn’t bear to even look at a ball for weeks afterwards.

‘But his friendships in rugby kept him going, and he eventually took his place in the front row and played for Ireland twenty times over the next few seasons. “I don’t doubt that I wouldn’t be here at all if it wasn’t for my pals,” he told Dixie.’

‘They didn’t stay long, but strongly pressed Dixie on how glittering a future he had in rugby. They even
suggested
that he would captain Ireland one day …’

‘And that’s why he never played again, is it?’ asked Eoin.

‘Well, I can’t be sure, but that night Dixie cried harder than he ever cried before. I had to stay in the house with him I was so concerned about him. He just couldn’t see any sort of future for himself without Irene, and playing rugby definitely wasn’t going to help.

‘I called over a couple of days later and found him out the back, burning his rugby gear in a big oil drum. He just looked at me and turned away.

‘The next day I called he was gone. I heard after a while that he had asked the bank for a transfer and moved to County Tipperary. And that’s the last time I saw him, until this afternoon. I’ll never forget the look of pain in his eyes as he stoked that bonfire. He was lost, totally lost.’

Eoin remained silent for several minutes, and Mr Finn stared far ahead, trying to concentrate on the road ahead, but finding his mind racing back over the decades to the anguish of his dearest friend.

T
hat night, as he was going to bed, Eoin took care to undress in the bathroom. He didn’t want Rory – or any of his room-mates, really – seeing the green slimy bandage that lay under his shirt. He took the poultice off carefully, and hid it in an empty crisp bag before dumping it in the waste basket. He rubbed his hand along his rib-cage. There was no longer even the slightest twinge.

As he lay in bed, he stared at the ceiling and went over the many new things he had learned that day. He felt an enormous sadness for his grandad – and his own dad – for their terrible loss. He felt slightly ashamed that he had never really noticed the absence of his second grandmother, and had never thought to ask why she wasn’t there on Christmas morning or birthdays.

He thought about Brian too, and how his help had transformed him as a player. Wasn’t it strange the way
the Hanrahan story had weaved its way into his family history and had returned many years later? He
desperately
wanted to see Brian again.

The following morning he bumped into Mr Carey on his way to class.

‘Madden, how are those ribs? What did the doc say?’

‘Well, sir, he said I probably wouldn’t be ready for the final, but that I could check it out next week,’ he fibbed.

‘Well get Miss O’Dea to book you an appointment for Tuesday morning. If you get the go-ahead it will give you three days to train.’

Eoin spent much of the weekend out jogging,
stretching
the muscles that had become lazy and underused during his long spell out of action. He ran down to the stream to stock up on the comfrey herb, making up his own mixture locked in the top-floor loo on a quiet Sunday morning.

As he applied the poultice, a knock came to the door. Almost spilling the green sludge, Eoin asked ‘Who’s that?’

‘It’s Alan,’ came the reply, ‘what on earth are you doing up here?’

‘I could ask you the same thing – are you following me?’ said Eoin, opening the door.

‘Well, yes, I suppose I am,’ Alan replied. ‘I was a bit
worried about you. You were talking in your sleep last night …’

Eoin went a deep shade of red. ‘Really? Oh God, what was I saying?’

‘I haven’t a clue. You seemed to be talking about ghosts or something. It was very weird.’

Eoin went an even deeper shade, almost purple. ‘That’s mad; it must have been something I ate last night.’

‘What exactly are you doing skulking around the top corridor?’ Alan asked.

‘Oh, well to tell you the truth I was just putting on this bandage,’ showing Alan the green poultice. ‘I didn’t want Duffy’s “eyes and ears” to know. It’s an old wives’ cure for cracked ribs or something. It seems to be
working
, too.’

‘Brilliant – do you think there’s still a chance you could make the team?’ Alan asked.

‘Yeah, I’m sure of it now. I’ve conned Carey into
getting
another X-Ray done on Tuesday and I’ll be back in the running then …’

On Monday evening, Alan and Eoin walked out of the dining hall after an unexciting dinner of chicken and pasta. A crowd was gathered around the noticeboard.

‘Who is this A. N. Other guy?’ a junior school pupil asked.

‘Idiot! – Can’t you read? It means “another”. That means the place still hasn’t been decided,’ some one else replied.

Alan wormed his way to the front of the crowd.

‘It’s the team for the 13A final,’ he called back to Eoin. ‘And it looks like Mr Carey is going to wait for you.’

The team sheet carried fourteen names, but the strange name – traditionally used by uncertain selectors – was written beside No.12.

Eoin smiled, and headed off to change for another training run.

On Wednesday morning, he was again driven down to the hospital by Miss O’Dea, who gave him the fare for his Dart back to the school. Dr Shukla was very welcoming, and his face was puzzled when he returned with the X-Rays after a long delay.

‘This is very strange, Eoin, I’ve had to go back to check the machine wasn’t out of order,’ he said.

‘Is there something wrong,’ Eoin said, looking
worried
.

‘No, not at all. Your X-Rays are perfect. It is just that I would have expected there to be some sign of the previous injury, but this looks as if nothing at all has happened to your ribs since the day you were born. It is quite uncanny, unlike anything I’ve ever seen before …’

Eoin smiled. ‘Does that mean I’ll be OK to play rugby next weekend?’

‘You’ll be OK to go out and play rugby
today
if you wish,’ grinned Dr Shukla.

Eoin was bouncing as he arrived at the train station. He wanted to get back to school to tell Mr Carey as soon as possible. But just as he went to pay, he
remembered
Brian and how much he wanted to talk to him.

‘Lansdowne Road,’ he spluttered to the ticket
attendant
.

The train pulled up in the shadow of the stadium a few minutes later, and Eoin made his usual unannounced entry to the arena. He wandered around the tunnels and walked to the top of the stand, but Brian was nowhere to be seen. He even braved a trip to the VIP lounge and the First Aid room, but still the long-dead rugby player’s spirit failed to make an appearance.

Eoin had been more than an hour at the stadium when he finally gave up, shrugging his shoulders as he sneaked out the side gate.

Back at school, he sought out Mr Carey and told him the news from Dr Shukla.

Carey grinned, and patted him on the back. ‘That’s fantastic, Madden, I’ll see you for training at six.’