Charlie Savage

by Roddy Doyle

  But that’s what I’m doing – I’m shouting at the radio. I’m in the kitchen every morning, washed and shaved, standing or sitting in front of the radio and I’m shouting right through the News and on into Seán O’Rourke and Pat Kenny. (I skip Ryan Tubridy; he’d kill me.) And I keep going, right through the Angelus.

  –Bong, yourself!

  It’s a big online hit, that one, the daughter tells me, and we’re selling about twenty Bong, Yourself! T-shirts a day.

  Anyway, I stop about ten minutes into Ronan Collins, after I’ve hurled abuse at the birthday requests, and I’m given permission to go upstairs for a nap, so I’ll be fit and fighting in time for Joe Duffy.

  Talk to Joe.

  –I will in me hole!

  It’s not a sudden thing, or a late vocation. I’ve been shouting at the eejits on the radio all my life. Some men learn how to play the uilleann pipes from their fathers; others are taught how to mend fishing nets, how to keep bees or maim cattle. My da showed me how to shout.

  He spent long happy hours instructing me on the correct use of the word ‘gobshite’. He didn’t know he was doing this; I was just looking at him, and listening. But, nevertheless, that was what he did. I sat in the kitchen with him and learnt all about the different categories of gobshite. There was the ‘bloody’ gobshite, the ‘out and out’ gobshite, and the ‘complete and utter’ gobshite. There was a gobshite for every occasion, a label for every man he shouted at. A younger man just starting out in his career as a gobshite – a newly elected TD, say, or an economist just home from America who wore a cravat instead of a tie – he had ‘the makings of a gobshite’. There was still hope for him, but not much. The makings of a gobshite almost always rose through the ranks to become a complete and utter gobshite.

  He never shouted at women. Now, there weren’t many women on the wireless back then but he wouldn’t have shouted at them anyway. In my father’s world there was no such thing as a female gobshite.

  One thing is vital: he was happy. I spent large chunks of my childhood listening to my da shouting. But it never frightened me – never – and it often made me laugh. My favourite was when he came up from behind his newspaper, like he was climbing out of the pages, and roared.

  –Will you listen to that bloody gobshite!

  He’d look at me, grin, and go back behind his paper.

  He was happy. And – I hate admitting this – so am I. I’m exhausted and I’m spending the waking hours when I’m not shouting sucking throat lozenges. And fair enough, they do the trick. But five packs of Strepsils a day can leave you feeling a bit queasy.

  I’m shouting in my sleep too. According to the wife – and I’ve no reason not to believe her. She always tells the truth and, more often than not, it’s brutal.

  –Whoever you were dreaming about last night, Charlie, she says. –They were all gobshites.

  –Gobshites?

  –The bedroom was full of them, she says.

  –The room was full of men, so, I tell her.

  –In your dreams, Charlie, she says. –Not mine.

  She smiles. She can see it too: I’m happy. I’m exhausted and jumpy; I haven’t seen sunlight since – I can’t remember. My throat is killing me and I think I might have scurvy.

  But I’m a happy man – I’m a happy father. Because the fact is, I’m not the social influencer: the daughter is. I’m her performing monkey and do exactly what I’m told.

  –We’re building up the follower numbers, Dad, she says. –Then we’ll start campaigning properly, like.

  –Campaigning?

  –Yeah.

  –What’s our first target?

  –The banks.

  I stare at her: do we ever really know our kids?

  28

  I’m standing out in the back garden with the wife.

  Now, in actual fact, we don’t have a back garden. We have a hole where there used to be one. We used to have grass. No surprise there, I suppose; it’s kind of your basic ingredient, isn’t it? But we had a lilac bush that was spectacular for a few weeks in the year, and an apple tree that had real apples hanging off it in the autumn. We had all sorts of flowers. The garden – in its way – was lovely.

  Then we got the dogs and they ate it.

  Literally.

  It was gone in a month. You know those photographs of no man’s land, the stretch of muck between the German and British trenches in the First World War? That’s what we have now, except there’s much more muck.

  Don’t get me wrong – the dogs are great. They’d never eat anything live – well, human. But we had to make the choice, me and the wife: would we let them eat the house or the garden? So we decided – after some anguish and tears – to sacrifice the garden. It was either that or stand back and let them demolish the contents of the house, including the floors and walls.

  It never occurred to us to get rid of the dogs, and that surprises me now. It was a simple choice: house or garden. And, actually, the garden was a goner by the time we had the vote. They’d eaten the tree, the shrubs, the hedge, the rabbit hutch – it was empty; the rabbit had gone up to heaven years before – and most of the shed. They’d left us the walls.

  A section of the wall, the one at the very back, we called our memory wall. It was the wife’s idea. Everywhere we went, she’d bring home a stone from a beach, say, or a shell or a little tile, and we’d stick them to the wall. It was an idea she got from one of her sisters – Carmel – the sound one. After a while, probably about twenty years, it began to look great. When anyone came to the house and looked out the kitchen window, they’d see the memory wall and go out and have a proper look at it.

  Anyway, the dogs didn’t eat the wall but they ate all the memories off it. Every stone and shell. The wall, like my mind, is a blank.

  You know that phrase, ‘You had to laugh’? Well, we did laugh – but we had to work hard at it. The wife had to tickle me and I had to threaten to tickle her.

  I should make something clear: we feed the dogs – we feed them well. And we love them. Me, the wife, the kids, the grandkids – all of us love the dogs. And, in fairness, they seem to have big time for us. When they catch me looking out the window at them, all I can see is a sea of wagging tails.

  Anyway. Me and the wife are standing in what used to be our back garden. We’re out there in the muck and the rain because we’re making a video. Well, the daughter’s actually making the video. We’re just starring in it.

  It’s going to go up on my Shouter Facebook page.

  We’re Kate and Mick from that ad – you know the one; the couple who’ve just paid off their mortgage. Most of us, if we manage to clear the mortgage, go out for a drink and maybe something to eat. This pair, though, go on telly ten times a night and thump their chests.

  So, anyway. I’ve grown a handlebar moustache. It’s a bit lopsided; there’s only one handle. The dogs are charging around us.

  –We work well together, says the wife. –We do.

  Her American accent is very good.

  –Yeah, we do, I agree.

  –We have to, says the wife.

  The grandson is right behind me and he’s just stabbed me in the arse with something sharpish, but I still manage to smile at the wife and she smiles back.

  –There are memories in every nook and cranny, she says. –Every mark on the floor.

  –They were challenging times, yeah, I say. –A lot of hard work. But we knew we’d come the road together.

  –We just knew we’d make it work, says the wife.

  Then I turn to the wife and we look back at the house.

  –But do you remember the time they threatened to repossess the house? I say. –When I was out of work for a while.

  –Bastards, she says.

  –Humiliating, I say. –It was terrifying.

  –Heartless bastards.

  Then the grandson comes out from behind us and holds up his placard: We Back Belief Every Day.

  –And … cut, says the dau
ghter.

  The grandson sees us crying and he hugs our legs.

  29

  I’ve nothing against Bovril. In fact, I’m quite fond of a drop of Bovril. I even put a dab of it behind my ears once – kind of an experiment to see if the dogs would notice.

  I woke up in Beaumont A&E.

  What happened was this: I’d been down on my hunkers, in among the grandkids, when we’d performed the experiment. The dogs came at me so enthusiastically – before I’d even put the lid back on the jar – that they knocked me backwards and I whacked my head against the side of the fireplace.

  When I woke up in Beaumont I was still clutching the Bovril. The wife told me the dogs had attacked the ambulance men when they were trying to get me out of the house on a stretcher.

  –The kids thought they were trying to kidnap you, she said.

  –The dogs?

  –The ambulance men.

  –Would you have paid the ransom? I asked her.

  Now that I think of it, she never answered.

  But, anyway, I went home with my head bandaged, looking a bit like Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia – I thought – or a sheep’s head in butcher’s paper – she said. My head was killing me but I was just delighted to get out of the A&E with it still attached to my neck. I once heard about a chap who went in there with a sprained ankle and ended up donating one of his kidneys – a clerical error, they said. But I was safely out, with both kidneys tucked up where they should be, and the wife even got me a milkshake from the Artane McDonald’s on the way home. So I was happy enough and I never held it against the dogs – or Bovril.

  So, like I said, I’ve nothing against Bovril. But I don’t feel a burning need to keep telling the world that it’s my beverage of choice. Because (a) it’s not true – it’s far from bloody true. And (b) I feel like a gobshite doing it.

  But I have to.

  I think I do.

  It’s the daughter’s doing again. She tells me I’m a brand ambassador.

  We’ve thousands of people following me on my Shouter Facebook page and she says it’s time to start cashing in on my popularity.

  I stare at her – although it’s hard to tell what my face is doing these days. A few weeks back, I thought I was smiling at the young one behind the counter of the Insomnia up the road, but she burst out crying and said she was sorry for my trouble, and she wouldn’t let me pay for my cappuccino.

  Anyway, she – the daughter – says if I keep mentioning how much I love the product she’ll be able to organise a few quid for us from the manufacturers. Now, I’m all for the few quid – I’ve a special account in the credit union for the grandkids. But, like, there’s nothing coursing through my blood telling me to sing out for Bovril.

  –Could I not do Hugo Boss? I ask her.

  –They’ve got Gerard Butler, like.

  –I wouldn’t mind sharing with Gerard, I tell her. –I’m a better actor than he is, anyway.

  –Be honest, Dad, she says. –Do you really – really now – know what Hugo Boss is?

  I make an educated guess.

  –It’s either aftershave or underpants, I say. –Am I right?

  She doesn’t answer. No surprise there, I suppose – she comes from a long line of women who don’t bloody answer.

  Anyway.

  Here I am, sitting at the open kitchen door, looking out at the last of the sun going down behind the back wall. I’m wearing sunglasses and I’ve a Bovril mug in my hand.

  The daughter has her iPad right against my head. She’s filming me.

  I take a sip.

  –Ah, I say – and I do have to say it, because I don’t mean the ‘Ah’ – the sigh – if that makes sense.

  Or, I do mean the ‘Ah’ – it’s the genuine article, a sigh of genuine satisfaction – because I’m not sipping Bovril. It might say ‘Bovril’ on the mug but it’s full of gin and tonic.

  I turn to the camera.

  –You can’t beat a bit of Bovril at the end of a hard day’s shouting, I say. –In fairness.

  –We’ll have to go again, like, says the daughter.

  –Ah Jaysis – why?

  –I could see your ice and lemon poking over the side of the mug, she says.

  So fair enough. Once more with feeling.

  –Dad, she says.

  –What, love?

  –There’s no steam, she says. –There should be steam, like. It’s a hot drink.

  –No problem, I say. –How’s this?

  I look at the camera.

  –You can’t beat an ice-cold Bovril and tonic at the end of a long day doing absolutely fuck-all.

  She’s laughing.

  –Brilliant, she says.

  30

  I walk past the shop where I bought the suit for my wedding. It’s been turned into a Spar.

  I go back across the Liffey and come to the bank that turned me and the wife down for our first mortgage. It’s a Spar.

  The shop where we bought our first good telly – a Spar. The shop where the kids could buy toys for a pound – it’s a Spar. The shop where I bought my first Slade record – you’ve guessed it.

  I’m relieved when I get to the top of O’Connell Street and see that the Rotunda is still the Rotunda and not a colossal Spar. Our kids were born in there, and all of the grandkids – except the one who was born on the way there. She’s called Summer, because she was born in Summerhill, in the back of a moving taxi.

  It seems like nearly all the key buildings of my life – the architectural reminders of the decades I’ve lived and worked in this city – have become Spars. Why don’t they just change the name of the place to Spartown?

  The taxi driver – the chap who was driving my daughter-in-law to the Rotunda – was a decent enough skin. He went like the clappers, through a couple of red lights, and up onto the path in Ballybough. The daughter-in-law said she’d name the baby after him if it was a boy, if they made it to the hospital. Then she saw his name on the dashboard. He was African and she couldn’t read his name, let alone pronounce it. So he said she could name the baby after the taxi instead. Young Summer did her Junior Cert this year. She has no idea how close she came to being called Toyota.

  Anyway, don’t get me wrong: I’ve nothing against Spars.

  That’s not true. I hate them.

  When I was a kid there was a grocer down the road, Mister Baldwin. He wore a brown coat over his suit and he stood outside the shop when he wasn’t busy. He always held a brush. He’d pick up the brush, like John Wayne picking up his rifle, before he’d step outside to have a gawk at the world. He lived in the flat above the shop and you’d see his cigarette smoke floating out the window in the evenings, and hear his records – Peggy Lee, Frank Sinatra. He wasn’t married and my father once told me that the love of his life was Missis Kelly, who ran the grocer’s up the road.

  –She married the wrong grocer, he said.

  –Don’t mind him, said my mother.

  The only things my mother said more often than ‘Don’t mind him’ were ‘Wipe your feet’, ‘Jesus wept’, and ‘Ah, God love you.’

  Anyway, whether the story was true or not, everyone on the estate thought Mister Baldwin was a lovely man and Missis O’Neill was a weapon.

  Except me. I thought Missis O’Neill was the lovely one. The way she leaned on the counter, the way she stared at you like she knew you wanted to rob something, the way she shouted to Mister O’Neill in the back of the shop – Fergus! Beans! She was terrifying and the love of my ten-year-old life. Until she ran off with the man who delivered the Rinso. Spotless Tommy, my da called him.

  –She’ll put spots on that poor gobshite.

  –Don’t mind him.

  Anyway, Mister O’Neill came out from behind the shop and sold it. It became a chipper and he moved to Spain.

  I suppose what I’m saying is: the shops had personality. Each one was different. Some were dark, some had a smell that was unique. The people in charge were nice or mad, or ancient or gorg
eous, or kind or frightening. The shop was theirs and they all looked a bit like their shop. Mister Baldwin the grocer looked like a big spud – his brown coat was something a potato would wear on his wedding day.

  And that’s my objection to the Spars: they’re all the bloody same. When I walk into a Spar I step out of Dublin, into some boring, half-imagined vision of the future. If I owned a shop I’d want my name over the door, or a name I’d come up with myself, The House of Savage, or something like that.

  –But it’s hard to imagine anyone actually owning a Spar, isn’t it? I say to the wife. –An individual human being, like.

  I’ve brought chips home with me and I have my heart set on a chip butty.

  –We’ve no bread, says the wife.

  –What?

  –We’ve no bread.

  –Ah, Jesus, I say. –Where will I get bread at this hour?

  –The Spar, she says.

  –Would it still be open?

  –Ah, yeah, she says. –It never shuts.

  –That’s brilliant, I say. –Don’t go near the chips. I’ll be back in a minute.

  31

  I haven’t gone for a pint in ages.

  That’s a bit of a fib – it’s a lie.

  I’ve been out for a pint a fair few times. But I haven’t gone to my local. I’ve walked in the opposite direction, to a pub that’s nearer the house but definitely isn’t my local. I’ve sat there on my own – no one to talk to, no one I want to talk to. If the Canadian geese migrate to Dublin every winter, then all of Dublin’s gobshites migrate to this place every night. It’s like a gobshite zoo – it has every variety. And it leaves me wondering: am I a gobshite too?

  Probably.

  I’m miserable most of the time; it seems to be my natural state. But there’s a big difference between being happily miserable and being just miserable. And sitting in that place on my own, nursing a sloppy pint that was pulled by a barman who’s more interested in his beard than in his profession – well, I’m just miserable. I’ve even started wearing my reading glasses on my head, so I can read my phone while I’m there. That’s how fuckin’ miserable I am.