The Street and other stories

by Gerry Adams

  When the red, red robin goes bob, bob bobbing along, … along,

  There’ll be no more sighin’ when he starts singing his old sweet song:

  “Wake up, wake up you sleepy head, get up, wake up get out of bed,

  Live, love, laugh and be happy”.

  Joe sang in a deep bass but he didn’t know one song the whole way through. His repertoire was limited. He stopped. Fred was missing. That in itself didn’t worry Joe, though it did surprise him, for while Fred went off on his own quite often he never left when Joe was singing, but sat at his feet and offered accompaniment.

  Fred, however, was trying to waken Paddy. A big soft lump of a dog, when he found Paddy’s sleeping form sprawled out on the grave behind Joe, he just instinctively tried to lick him awake.

  Joe, oblivious to all that was going on behind him, sipped at his sherry and contemplated the beauty of the starry sky. He wasn’t a religious man, but he did know the odd hymn from schooldays and he loved singing and, unlike songs, he knew hymns the whole way through.

  Sweet heart of Jesus,

  Fount of love and mercy,

  To thee we call

  Thy blessings to implore.

  O touch our hearts,

  So poor and so ungrateful.

  Thus it was that Paddy started to come slowly back to life. The first sensation he felt was of warm breath and wet panting in his face. As he slowly opened his eyes the panting stopped. Paddy peered cautiously from his marble bed. He trembled a little with the cold. Overhead, he could see that the starry sky was partially blotted out by a huge white angel which towered above him. As Paddy stared in disbelief the angel started singing.

  Sweet heart of Jesus,

  We you implore

  O make us love you,

  More and more.

  As he listened in petrified silence a strange wailing howl started up in harmony with the angel’s voice.

  Paddy slowly wet his trousers.

  The angel spoke to him in a loud, good-humoured voice. “Ah, I’m glad to see you, old friend. Where have you been? Why didn’t you stay with me? You’ll have to mend your ways, won’t you? You’ve been a bad boy, a bad bad boy.”

  Paddy nodded his head slowly. The angel started to sing again.

  Come Holy Ghost, Creator come,

  Descend from heaven’s throne.

  Come take possession of our hearts,

  And make them all your own.

  Quietly, almost silently, Paddy mouthed the words after him. As he did so he felt a sense of contentment envelope him. “Forgive me all my sins,” he whispered.

  It was at that moment, Paddy reckoned afterwards, that he entered into a state of grace. He was never to forget that exact minute, and years later as he decried the evils of drink, Paddy could pinpoint the time of his conversion exactly.

  Then, even as he savoured the change coming over him, the strange howling started up again. The angel fell silent. Paddy seized his opportunity: he leapt to his feet and dashed off into the bushes; and as he made his frantic escape towards the wall, he repeated over and over to himself a prayer his mother had taught him when he was a child.

  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I give you my heart and my soul. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, assist us in our last agony. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, may we bring forth our souls in peace with you today.”

  Later that night, after a bath, a shave and a good feed, he told his mother that he was taking the pledge.

  “I knew you would,” she said.

  Paddy was humbled at her faith in him. In all his forty-six years she had never deserted him. Not once.

  “I’m sorry, Mother, for all the trouble I’ve caused you,” he told her as tears of contrition trickled down his face. “I’ll make it up to you,” he promised. And so he did.

  His mother told Paddy nothing of her petition, but she resolved to make a special thanksgiving to Our Lady at the next day’s novena. She actually had to dissuade Paddy from going with her. Not that she didn’t want him to go, but she didn’t want anyone to realise that the petition Fr Browne had read out that day had been for her Paddy.

  Meanwhile, back at the Angel’s grave, Joe and Fred had been quite unperturbed by Paddy’s flight from the cemetery. Fred had gone off to investigate the noise and had returned tugging a plastic bag with a three-quarters empty bottle of Jameson inside it. Joe sniffed the three or four inches of golden liquid tentatively.

  “Aye, it’s whiskey all right! Good boy.”

  He took an appreciative slug from the bottle.

  “Ah, Fred; happy days. God is good. He works in wondrous ways.”

  Granny Harbinson

  From her seat at the window Granny Harbinson could see right up to the corner of Balaclava Street. She sat there always when Seamus was using the back room. “You can’t be too careful,” she’d tell him when the last of his friends had slipped in through the backyard.

  “I don’t want Minnie Clarke calling in when youse are here. Minnie’s a terrible ould one for lettin’ everybody know your business. She’s nivver happy till she knows your whole history. She couldn’t houl’ her own water.”

  Seamus didn’t use the house too often. Only when they were stuck for a place to meet. His granny embarrassed him with her conspiratorial ways when the boys were in, telling them to keep their voices down and turning the wireless up and then, sitting in the corner at the window, saying the rosary while they were in the back room. Her nerves were away with it, he thought, the way she carried on. Still, with all that, it was a good house, and he was glad to sleep in it when the Brits were raiding up the road. His granny was sound enough.

  He stayed after the meeting while she made him a cup of tea.

  “Houl’ on, son, and I’ll run down to the corner for a bap for you. You can wait for a wee cup of tea in your hand, can’t you?”

  Seamus flung himself into the seat by the fire.

  “Yes, Granny, I’m not going out till eight o’clock. I need the key,” he added, “I don’t want to keep you waiting up on me.”

  “Aye, all right, son,” Granny Harbinson replied as she bustled out the door. “Mind that kettle doesn’t boil over.”

  Seamus sighed resignedly to himself as he went into the scullery. The way she had replied, he knew his granny wasn’t going to pay any heed to him. When he returned that night he would find her keeping her usual vigil at the window; then she’d bolt the front door behind him and splash holy water everywhere. He returned to his seat by the fire when he heard her passing by the front window again. Might as well have a bit of a rest anyway before he went out, he thought; it wouldn’t be long till eight o’clock.

  That night Granny Harbinson sat by the window, the house in darkness. As the fire flickered shadows around the front room, in the distance she could hear the rattle of gunfire and, closer at hand, the whine of armoured pigs as they squealed their way up the Falls Road.

  Times hadn’t changed much, she reflected, from the years of the twenties when they had to use kidney pavers to force the cage-cars out of the area. Thon was a terrible time. Curfews and martial law, and the Specials arresting all the young men. British soldiers there as well, she recalled, at Paddy Lavery’s corner, and sniping coming down from Conway Street. No life for anybody to live, but sure, God was good and they’d come through it all.

  She glanced down the street again. The way Minnie Clarke was ducking out her window she wasn’t intending to remain long in this world, she thought to herself, as she watched Minnie poking her head out the bedroom window. She remembered Minnie the time Joe Devlin’s crowd had attacked Donnelly’s house. Minnie hadn’t been so brave then as the Hibernians smashed windows and splashed paint over Donnelly’s door. Poor Missus Donnelly, with her two republican sons in jail and that mob wrecking the only bit of comfort she’d had.

  Granny Harbinson—not a granny then, of course—had had to face them on her own. She had lost her job as a doffer over that. Her foreman, Ginty McStravick, had been a Hibernian. Ach, well, s
he sighed to herself, she’d outlasted the oul’ divil, God rest his soul.

  An explosion jarred her thoughts back to Seamus. She wished he was home. Outside, the street fell again as quiet as a grave, the silence punctuated now only by the near-distant echo of pistol and rifle shots.

  Forty years ago it had been the same during the Outdoor Relief riots. She smiled as she thought of the fix they’d been in. No money, and seven hungry children to feed. Only they had had unity then, of a sort, until the government had whipped up all the old bitterness and divided the working people.

  Another explosion boomed and the windows rattled. She wished Seamus would hurry up. Ah, there he was now. She stirred herself as the key turned in the lock.

  “Come in, Seamus son. I fell asleep there saying my prayers so I did. I’ve a wee mouthful of tea in the pot for you. Drink it up now before you go to bed.”

  Two or three nights later Seamus asked his granny if he could use the front room. She fussed a little and then took herself off upstairs. She didn’t like him using the front. Anybody looking through the window would see them, and Minnie Clarke was liable to call at any time. She resolved to warn Seamus about it when his friends weren’t there. And they hadn’t the wireless turned up. Sure, the people next door would hear the whole commotion. She listened as a scraping noise below the staircase caught her attention. This would have to be the end of it. In future Seamus would have to stick to the back room. All that hammering in the coal-hole. The whole street would hear it. That Seamus one would waken the dead if she wasn’t there to keep him in order. The noise stopped. She heard Seamus coming to the foot of the stairs.

  “We’re away on now, Granny; I’ll be in early tonight.”

  “Wait, Seamus son…”

  She sighed as she heard the door slamming. Downstairs everything was as normal. She pulled the curtain back from the coal-hole and peered into the space below the stairs. What had that wee lad been doing there?

  Groping in the dark, her fingers explored the joists and battens which supported the stairs. A few minutes later, with the help of a breadknife she had the new piece of wood prised off.

  “God take care of us,” she whispered to herself, “that wee lad needs his bake warmed.”

  Her heart leapt then, as she heard voices at the door. Who was that now, at this time of the day? Ah, it was only Minnie Clarke. She pushed the wood back into place. She would see Seamus about this some other time.

  It was the weekend before she had the chance to get talking to him. She shifted a little in her seat by the window and promised herself that she would have a word with him as soon as he came in. It was quiet tonight, thank God, and as soon as he’d arrive she’d make him a nice cup of tea and have it out with him. The noise of a Saracen in Cape Street made her heart jump. She heard the crashing of gears as it slammed to a halt and then, as another Saracen screamed round from Omar Street, she felt a dryness in the back of her throat.

  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” she whispered, “they’re coming here.”

  It was after midnight when Seamus arrived. He’d heard about the raid from Minnie Clarke. When he came in through the backyard to the scullery, his granny fussed about him in her usual fashion.

  “Now, Seamus son, no need to worry, everything’s all right. Here, get this wee cup o’ tea into you. I think you’ll have to stay out tonight. Minnie Clarke says you can stay in her house. Now, won’t that be…”

  Seamus swept past her and plunged into the coal-hole. His fingers searched among the joists. He felt sick in the pit of his stomach.

  The dump was gone. His hidey-hole was empty. He pulled on the splintered wood and stepped into the front room. His granny had tidied it up a bit, but evidence of the raid was still obvious. The settee was ripped, the pictures hung askew and the china cabinet was out from the wall. His granny sat quietly in her usual place by the window. He slumped into a chair by the fire.

  “Granny. I had stuff below the stairs and …and…”

  “I know, son.”

  He sat up as she tugged a package from below her apron. “I didn’t like you keeping it there, son. I found it the night you had the meeting in here. I never got around to telling you, so I just kept it beneath my corset, so I did. You can’t trust nobody nowadays. I kept it on me; it was far safer, son.”

  Seamus sank back in his seat as his granny shuffled across the room.

  “Here you are now.”

  She handed him the heavy package.

  “You’ll want to be more careful with that in future, so you will. Will you have your tea now?” She hobbled into the scullery. He heard her poking around the stove.

  “God save us, Seamus, but Minnie Clarke nivver came near the house while the soldiers were here. Thon oul’ one will nivver change. And you should have seen the many soldiers there was. Peelers, too, Seamus, they were everywhere, and me an oul’ woman on my own. I gave as good as I took, mind you.”

  She handed him his tea.

  “Now Seamus, son, do you think it will be safe enough for you in Minnie Clarke’s?”

  Exiles

  “A pint of bitter, Tom, please.” Eamonn Hoban, a fresh-faced man in his early seventies, draped his gangly frame on to a stool at the bar, propped his elbows on the counter and exchanged greetings with the two other customers as he waited for his pint.

  The public house consisted of one large room with a bar counter on one side and four snugs on the other. Three or four tables and a corresponding number of chairs filled the floor space and a half-dozen barstools were lined in front of the counter. It was an old-style east London pub. Posters adorning one wall declared the times and venues for set-dancing lessons, a benefit gig for the Birmingham Six and a series of concerts by country-and-western artists.

  Eamonn Hoban took a long, appreciative sip at his pint.

  “God bless you, Tom,” he said finally, setting his glass down on the counter. “I needed that.”

  He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and exhaled happily. “I suppose you’ll want paid for that.” He sighed good-humouredly as he fisted a handful of change on to the counter and arranged it into little silver and copper pillars of coins.

  “Indeed I do, Eamonn. Same as always.”

  “There you are there, all present and correct. Sorry about all the loose change.”

  “Pass no remarks about that,” Tom replied, picking up the money and transferring it to the till. “The more the merrier.”

  He moved to serve another customer. Eamonn took another, shorter, more contemplative sip of his drink.

  “Any word from home?” he asked. The discerning listener would have noticed the soft, sing-song, west-of-Ireland nuance underscoring his voice.

  “Not a word since the last letter I showed you. Have you any news yourself? Anything from Michael?”

  “No, I’m not due a letter until next week. He’s fine, thank God, according to his last note. He’s settled well and still getting plenty of work. And that’s half the battle.”

  “It is, to be sure. The way things are going here, and at home, the man that can get work is a lucky man.”

  “Had you any word of the Munster Final?”

  “Tipp won by two points,” one of the other customers chipped in. “Cork threw the game away in the last five minutes. Gave away three frees.”

  “Ah that was a costly extravagance.” Tom made a sour face. “You can’t do that at a Munster Final and expect to win. I’ll have the video anyway for Thursday night. I’ll show it about eight o’clock if ye’re interested.”

  “Indeed and we are,” Eamonn enthused. “But I didn’t think you’d be anxious now to show such a defeat. Fair play to you,” he winked at the others, “you’re a real sportsman… for a Cork publican.”

  The other customers joined in the banter. When they had exhausted their collective store of local and regional abuse, Eamonn and Tom had their nightly game of draughts. Then, victorious, he had another pint before leaving.

  “See you
on Thursday night, Tom.”

  “Right, me oul’ son, and if you’re writing home don’t forget to tell Michael I was asking for him.”

  “I will indeed. Good night to you all.”

  His flat was a street away from the pub. He enjoyed the walk. It was a fine night, and as he didn’t relish the prospect of going indoors so early, he strolled to the next corner. It adjoined a busier street with brighter lights, more people and more pubs. He paused for a few minutes, then decided to go to the all-night shop for milk and a packet of biscuits. Since Bridie had died he was always running short of some little thing or other. She would be laughing at him now, going to the shop at this time of night.

  Back at the flat he made a bedtime cup of tea, his thoughts turning again to Bridie. It was almost forty years since they had married; forty years in September. They had arrived separately in England, she in May, the year before they wed, from Galway; he, five years earlier from Mayo. He saw her first at Sunday mass in St Eugene’s, and they met later that night at the dance organised by Fr O’Brien in the parish hall. Bridie was in service to a couple who ran a boarding house in Camden. She was lucky: they were an easygoing pair. Other employers would not permit Irish girls time off for mass and dancing; even a night off was out of the question for many in those days. After a week or so he and Bridie started going out together and ten months later they were wed. On their wedding night they resolved to move back to Ireland as soon as they had enough money saved to buy or build a house for themselves. But they never went back, except for wakes or weddings, and as time went on their trips home became more and more associated with mourning or sadness.