by Lee Dunne
The train pulled in and there was some opening and closing of doors.
I pulled two pound notes from my pocket. ‘Have this then, Denny,’ I said, ‘it’s all I have at the moment.’
He shook his head and I said: ‘Go on, for the trunk and the other things,’ and I held the money out to him until he sighed and took it. ‘I didn’t want anything from you, but, it’ll help at the other end.’
We shook hands and he got on the train: ‘I’ll see you around, Dub.’
‘Sure, Denny,’ I said, ‘good luck.’
He found the hint of a dry grin: ‘There’s no such thing, Dub, no such thing.’
The train pulled away from the little station, and I felt sad. I hardly knew Denny O’Mara, he was just a fella I’d worked alongside for a little while, and yet, I was sorry to see him go, particularly to go the way he did., but he had to because he had pulled a stroke that made it impossible for him to stay. But, to see him getting on that train, his dignity lying behind him in the village hall, well, it was something I’d sooner have missed.
Jimmy had finished straightening up the seats and he was putting the rubbing into a sack when I got into the hall.
‘Did he say anything about his things?’
I answered with what Denny had said, mentioned that I’d given him a couple of quid, and Jimmy nodded, no surprise showing in his face.
‘You’re entitled to an explanation. Can I have another of your fags?’
I held a match for him and when he exhaled he said, ‘All he had to do was ask.’
‘I felt sorry for him, Jimmy.’
‘I knew he was a bit of a loser. Must be nuts as well to think he could get away with it.’
‘You didn’t call the police.’
He shook his head: ‘Never. We get enough of a bad name.’ He gave me a grin. ‘I’m sorry you had to see it, that’s all.’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ I assured him. ‘I’ve seen women fighting each other, plenty of domestic black eyes. There was no shortage of aggro back home.’
As it turned out, the end of Denny was a beginning for me. That same night, I took his part in the play and in one of the gags that he worked with Jimmy and Gary.
From then on I found that I was doing more each week, getting all Denny’s parts and feeding Jimmy in some of the two-handed routines, even helping with comparing the show.
Each morning, Jimmy checked his book of gags to make sure we didn’t repeat anything though, later on in the tour, he would repeat a long sketch - the very funny one - ‘to send you home with a smile instead of a tear’ - telling the punters that he had so many requests for it, that he just couldn’t refuse.
My singing hadn’t set the hall alright, not even once. Yet, I felt I was working well and Pauline never stopped assuring me that I was more than alright as a crooner.
Because I was doing so many other things, I stopped worrying whether my solo went over big or not. I was earning my money, or Jimmy would have dropped me from the tour. He and I got along well, but, he was business all the way.
8
We did eighteen nights in Butlers Town; because of it being predominantly Protestant, there was no chance of working Sundays; and by the end of that time, Jimmy was convinced that his bad luck was behind him forever.
I didn’t know about that, but I was glad that he’d stopped giving me the credit for the good run, just in case things went the other way again.
I was enjoying myself so much, just being an actor, and getting paid for it, that nothing was too much trouble for me. I swept the hall each morning and, after the run-through I printed another poster to advertise the show for that night.
A roll of white lining paper lasted for two weeks and I would cut off a strip, printing on it with black shoe-dye, paste the sheet to a billboard, placing it against a lamp-post outside the hall. I also helped Jimmy with odd bits of carpentry, helping to maintain the stage and the seating, and I was the first one into the hall each evening to make sure everything was as it should be.
Meanwhile, Molly, my landlady, treated me like a king, and we kept the conversation between us down to just chat, though she spent some time each night showing out to me.
To be honest, she was attractive in a comely way, and I had some kind of handle on me a lot of the time in her little kitchen. But, I knew that not accepting her unspoken invitations, was the smart thing to do, and anyway, psychologically, I needed time to get over the initial shock of touching for VD before I had left Dublin, for my bed in the sticks.
I was making notes every afternoon, keeping a log more than a diary, of how my life was now, and I honestly believed even than, that someday I would write a book about life on the road, even though we were still in the first step of my ongoing theatrical career, and I can say I felt happy while I was making this record about the daily life, and delighted that without either of us working at it, I was becoming friends with Gary, who had become my mentor, and quite enjoyed passing on his knowledge and his wisdom, and his built-in snobbery, which I allowed to roll off me like water off a duck.
He was all kinds of snob, which I found funny, though I never questioned him about his feelings. I gave him a battle at times about his snobbishness and whatever, but he paid me no heed and insisted that he intended, while allowing me to get actual stage experience, to be the catalyst to my moving on before too long - he would give me connections in London and, hopefully, set me on the right road, theatrically, ‘before I pop my clogs, dear chap.’
We were having a late night cup of tea in his caravan when he put me down, chastising me for being an inverted snob, even as he poured me another cup of his god awful brew. I didn’t know what he meant and I admitted it.
‘You must never apologise to anyone about your reading matter, love, that’s what I mean.’
I nodded my head. Earlier, he had asked me what I was reading and I had been embarrassed to admit that I was on my third Raymond Chandler in three weeks. ‘I didn’t mean to get caught by him,’ I confessed: ‘but, anyone talking books with you would feel inferior.’
He smiled and sipped his tea, before he put his cup down on the old linen table cloth. I’d noticed that the caravan was more or less falling to bits and, I had offered to help him do something with it. He said no and told me he was going to dump it and take digs.
‘I’m past all this looking after my self shit.’ His eye brows went through the roof when I burst out laughing at his language, before he let himself go and joined in with me.
When we simmered down, he said quietly: ‘Raymond Chandler is a great writer, love, one whose work can sit upon a shelf with the best. He chose his field and he is a master, and for me, more so than the great man , Hammett’
He went on: ‘Hammett, started something, granted, but it was Chandler that showed us what could be done with the thriller.’
He told me that even had I been reading something that was regarded as thrash, I shouldn’t apologise because any kind of reading was likely to lead to something better.
‘A low brow is someone that doesn’t read at all. Peter Hunter for instance, a nice chap, but, admits he has never read a book, not a single one, can you believe it, and has no intention of doing any such thing ever in his life. His words, dear boy, can you believe it!’
I listened then, and in the months that followed I dipped, with his blessing, into his great trunk of books, Gary having introduced me to Gorki and Tolstoy, loaning me ‘on peril of your youth-filled soul’ ‘War and Peace’ and ‘Anna Karenina’ and Maxim Gorki’s ‘Childhood’.
In these and other books of this kind, when I had accepted that some characters might have as many as ten to fifteen different names, I just couldn’t get too much of the Russian Masters.
Not that I was illiterate, thanks to the years I had spent in the Reading Room at the Library on Rat
hmines Road, which was just a quarter of a mile from the flat complex I had to live in until I took off for once and for all.
My family lived in a cold -water-flat rented from the Dublin Corporation - but I could not borrow a book from there because my father was not a Householder. Luckily for me, I was allowed use the Reading Room, and it was here that my love of the printed word began its lifelong journey to some kind of education.
And here I was touring Northern Ireland with a travelling show, being paid a fiver a week, one pound of which I sent to my mother, The rest paid for my digs and kept me in cigarettes and a few beers, and to tell you the truth, I wouldn’t, at this time, have called the Queen me Aunt!
Later, having moved through several towns and what you might call, big villages, I was finally working a few Irish songs into my repertoire and, with Pauline’s accompaniment, help and encouragement, I was getting a lot of applause for my rendering of Dick Farrelly’s song ‘The Isle of Innisfree’ which was to become a standard, and must at every party.
Pauline and I were working on a lyric I had written which had a tentative title ‘Goodbye to the Hill’ and while we were side-stage at the piano, Tom Hunter was up on stage working out some routines that involved walking on his hands and doing flips in every direction and other stuff that would give you aches and pains just from looking at it.
‘Boy, he could walk on his hands all day!’ I said, truly amazed at the shapes Tom was throwing even though he was upside down.
‘He had to learn to do that,’ Pauline said, tinkling the keys to let me know we had a rehearsal to attend to. ‘With feet like he’s got, it’s easier that way.’
I grinned enviously, wishing that I could think of things to say at a time like that. But there was only one Pauline, and for the time being she seemed to have a monopoly on the gift of repartee.
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Jimmy took me with him one afternoon. He was driving over to Haling Brook to see about booking the hall and he thought it would be good for me to see how he went about it, as he was already suggesting, here and there, that I had a future in Irish show business.
I was glad to go because, without thinking that my entire future was going to be spent touring to small towns and villages in rural Ireland, I was, for the moment, motivated by my growing respect for what Jimmy and the company were bringing to the countryside.
As soon as Jimmy was driving comfortably - he was not gifted behind the wheel - he caused me to smile when he asked me: ‘Did Gary have anything to say about you coming with me?’
I couldn’t hide my surprise and he chuckled: ‘Don’t worry, I don’t mind that old Gary thinks what we’re doing is shit. He had him time in London, no spoof there, but he’s such a huge snob he sneers at the Fit-Ups even though it has been giving him a living for the four years he’s work with us.’
‘He was disappointed to hear that I was coming with you, but, much as I like him, I told him I was here to learn all about the touring life, and to gain experience in every way I can. I didn’t get heavy about it, I do like the old guy, but he got the message that I do my own thing, and we left it at that.’
‘He’s nothing if not predictable,’
‘You know him well. You knew he would confront me about coming with you? Like, I hadn’t said anything to him about it.’
‘Like all the people I’ve known on the road that had their own show at some time, owned their own company, and lost everything, Gary has no good word for what we’re doing.’
‘I’d no idea he ran his own company.’
Jimmy shook his head, chuckling a bit. ‘He didn’t run it, which was why he went out of business and lost his missus to his leading man.’
I felt sorry to hear this but, I didn’t say comment because I was dealing with feeling sorry for the old guy, who seemed to have adopted me with nothing but good intentions.
Jimmy shook his head in remembered disbelief. ‘You’d think he would have known better. I mean, we’re entertaining people who don’t even have radios and that. The countryside is full of people that don’t have electricity, and according to the latest figures, many of them will be very lucky if they have it by nineteen fifty seven, that’s another five years. And he was out there trying to bring Shakespeare to warm them up, if you don’t mind!’
I soaked up what Jimmy was saying but, I had nothing to contribute and he went on: ‘People wanted a laugh and a good song well sung. When we got some decent melodramas going, it was obvious that they were happy if we went on providing the kind of show they’ve been getting for many a year.’
‘I was wondering about that, ‘I said quietly.
‘I knew that on your first night. The melodramatic way we produced the play, the over the top gestures and reactions, how we play our parts, the way we shout the tag line, you thought it was pretty awful.’
He was being so matter of fact that I felt no need to deny or to explain how awful I had thought my first Fit-Up Show to be.
But, I offered: ‘Well, I wouldn’t go that far, Jimmy.’
‘Maybe you didn’t think it was totally awful,’ he said in a tone that suggested he didn’t care.
‘Or, that we were a bunch of amateurs. Thing is, you have to give the punters what they want if you want to survive. And what they want is a laugh, a red-nosed belly laugh, in our variety show, with, as you’ve experienced, a few Irish songs thrown into the mix. You’ve already experienced that personally. You, a good looking guy with a natural stage presence, died on your first solo offering, because you were singing them your songs and not the ones they enjoy, no matter how often they hear them. And though the plays will maybe, make them weep a bit, most of them, as you will find out, are low comedy, and that’s about it. And the comedy sketch at the end, the lowest of low comedy, obviously, that’s like giving them some kind of a little rap up, it lands when the nights entertainment is finished, really, but they sit there knowing it’s coming, and they feel the better for that extra ten minutes, which is given to them like it was a cup or cocoa, or some fucking thing.’
I glanced at him with respect: ‘Thanks for telling me.’
‘Just so long as you know it was for you I said it.’
He gave me a grin: ‘You still sweep the hall well enough to suit me.’
‘Some of Gary’s discontent must have rubbed off on me. I knew I wasn’t doing it like I did when I started. Gary saying it was below an actor to labour, moaning on about playing to yokels gets to you. That may have happened, some snob thing, if you don’t mind, which, coming from me is a joke, and it won’t happen again.’
I didn’t look at him but, he knew I meant what I said, and he responded with: ‘More power to your elbow, Tony.’
The forty mile drive to Hayling Brook took us about an hour and a half but I wasn’t bothered. In fact, I liked Jimmy taking it easy behind the wheel - wasn’t the best driver in the world, and I didn’t want to end up in a ditch, or a wooden overcoat.
As we stepped out of the car, he said: ‘This place is so orange it should be called Jaffaville. So, if you can get any hint of Belfast into that Dublin accent...Know what I mean!’
He winked and he took a small black book out of his pocket, flicking through a page or two until he found what he was looking for.
‘Here we are!’ He said, in a harsh northern accent: ‘Mister Harold Craig’.
He read out a potted biog of the unsuspecting Mister Craig who was a big man on the Orange scene, owner of two gents
Clothing stores in the town.
‘And.’ Jimmy said, with a grin: ‘Brother of the man in Enniskillen who handles the hall there, which will help a lot.’
He put the book back in his pocket and, with a wicked grin on his mouth he said: ‘You don’t happen to know ‘The Sash’, do you!’
He was joking, of course, but all I could say was: ‘You kno
w me and Irish songs.’
He was hit by this and said: ‘That’s the first time I ever thought of The Sash as an Irish song.’
‘Well, isn’t it?’
‘Of course it is, but associating it with King Billy and To Hell with The Pope, and that, it seems more English than Irish.’
‘Well, it’s Northern Irish, and that’s different to being Irish per se, not matter what they say to the contrary.’
‘Fair enough,’ Jimmy said. ‘But, right now, let’s go and kiss Mister Craig’s Tangerine Orange Arse’.
In the moment, I remembered a fella quoting something similar from Ulysses one night in a pub, and I asked Jimmy: ‘Do you know Ulysses?
Jimmy grinned and exhaled smoke: ‘Sure I do. I’ll give you an introduction next time I run into him.’
9
‘Well, you crafty bugger,’ Jimmy said, grinning so wide that his eyes were half closed. ‘Didn’t I tell you that as soon as you got the pop, you’d forget that bit of VD?’
‘It was just one kiss,’ I said.
‘Only right, any guy flings one up without kissing and stroking thrown in, should be castrated.’
‘But that was all I did, honestly.’
He nodded his head, his face serious. ‘I know it was, Tony. Sure you don’t think for one second that I think that you’d take a liberty with poor, innocent little May, now, do you? Or that she’d let you if you tried.’ He couldn’t hold onto the deadpan face and his laughter filled the hall.
‘I believe you, honest, that you didn’t give her one. You didn’t have to, like, she helped herself.’
Tom Hunter joined in: ‘These Dublin Jackeens! They don’t take long to get their end in, Jimmy!’
Jimmy kept chuckling and Tom said, playing it with a serious sound in his voice: ‘I shared digs with her before she bought her wagon, tried to make many a move over the bacon and eggs, for months man, and I never got so much as a post card. Your man here, within a few weeks and he’s digging his grave with it. Now I ask you, Jimmy, is that fair?’