A Bed in the Sticks

by Lee Dunne

  ‘Shame on you, Tom, for even thinking such a thing, sure all he gave her a goodnight kiss.’

  Tom nodded: ‘And she close her legs and broke his glasses!’

  I gave up while they went on messing, and I went to Pauline who was waiting for me at the piano.

  ‘Big giggles,’ she said, bored, ‘from school boys.’

  ‘Tom saw me kissing May in the digs. He makes it sound like I’ve been in the saddle all night.’

  Pauline looked up at me. ‘Well, haven’t you?’

  ‘Oh God, don’t you start. She kissed me and I couldn’t resist, but that’s as far as it went.’

  I watched her beautiful hands opening the sheet music that I was rehearsing. ‘You’re silly,’ she said.

  ‘How do you mean, I’m silly. I haven’t done anything.’

  ‘Well, May has hot pants for you. A blind man could see that.’

  ‘And that makes me silly.’

  ‘No, but not taking what she keeps throwing at you, is silly. At least I think so.’

  I was looking right at her as I came back with: ‘If someone offers you something you don’t want, do you take it because people might think you stupid for passing it up?’

  ‘I thought you wanted her,’ Pauline smiled. ‘Anyway, it’s none of my business.’

  ‘It could be. It could be your business.’

  ‘I don’t see why it ever should.’

  ‘It could be because, well...’ I touched her hair gently with my hand. ‘I’m sick about you, I love you.’

  Her fingers touched the keys and she didn’t look up.

  I stood there for a few seconds before I said: ‘Forget it, Pauline, I shouldn’t have.’

  Her eyes came up to meet mine. ‘I won’t ever forget that you said that to me. You’re nuts but you’re great with it.’

  She began to play and the moment was over. I sang the song through a couple of times, a good number called ‘Here in My Heart’ that Al Martino had flying in the American Hit Parade.

  Pauline shook her head, looking at me in sheer admiration as I sailed through it, as May came and stood by the piano. This was admiration which, coming from someone so talented, was no hardship, and I felt grateful to her, while at the same time I had to work hard to keep my eyes away from her sweater which seemed to be painted onto her breasts.

  Pauline caught my eye and, I believe, that in the moment, she felt I had been lying when I said I had no interest in the very talented Dublin girl who was, really, the star of the show.

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  Three or four weeks later, with some decent weather and the promise of a warm summer - this according to a new service that gave out long term forecasts - I was working more, taking leading roles, especially the romantic ones, and generally becoming more integrated into the general running, and the overall demands that is the price of night after night performing. And I have to say, I loved every minute of it.

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  Six weeks later, by which time I feel like I’ve been on the boards all my life, I have the leading role in three of the weeks plays, including that of Paddy O’Leary in ‘Noreen Bawn’ a romantic melodrama that became a huge favourite on the touring circuit.

  To judge by the response of everyone on the tour, I had given a sterling performance that, so it was said, had moved even some of the cast that had played in it for years, and knew every word off by heart.

  It was a play about the damage that emigration was doing to Ireland, while nobody denied that without the money that was sent home weekly, from the young men and women that had been forced to emigrate - as a nation we were paying a high price for the financial relief from overseas.

  In the last scene, Paddy O’Leary comes home from America to ask Noreen Barn to marry him, to discover that the love of his life has been taken by tuberculosis - a lung disease that decimated Irish life for several decades - and that she has just passed away.

  Paddy is, of course, shattered but, he has a major role to play yet in the final scene of the play, and a second role that has nothing to do with acting.

  Apart from playing the lead, I was also the Set Dresser for the production, the last scene of which finds Paddy standing over the grave of Noreen. Her resting place is identifiable since there is a fine white wooden cross (that could be seen even in the back row of the hall) with her name painted there in black.

  As Set Dresser I had looked for, and found plenty of lush grass which became a mound under the name NOREEN, painted in black, and as the light started to fade in this last scene, I stood sideways on, looking down at the grave while I sang the last verse of the song Noreen Bawn ....

  The background to Noreen’s death has been told by her mother, she revealing to Paddy O’Leary that her daughter had gone to America hoping to find him but, had been stricken with tuberculosis and had returned to Ireland to die at home.

  There is a Black-Out on this line from the broken-hearted mother, this strand resonating with people the length and breath of Ireland, including the mix of Catholics and Protestant that formed our audience night after night.

  The thirty seconds of darkness that followed allowed the audience to gather themselves - a lot of people don’t like to be seen weeping - but the en-mess sniffling was there for all to hear.

  Importantly, for us, and for the production, the half-minute of darkness allowed Jimmy enough time to insert a gauze-see through flat- in which Noreen - she has passed on, remember - played by May Mitchell - wears a white wedding dress and holds a bouquet as Paddy reprises the last verse of the song.

  I swear to you, now, if there was a dry eye in the house it wasn’t mine.

  As the lights go down, the audience rip into the kind of applause that you get only for something very special, and, as corny as this certainly was, it hit the spot in a big way, giving that audience just what it wanted, which was, whether they knew it or not, to be moved emotionally by the end of the story.

  Noreen was the perfect play to offer an audience that was a fair mix of Protestant and Catholic, and I had to hand it to Jimmy Frazer for the way in which he walked the tight rope between the two factions of fairly aggressive religion in the North of Ireland.

  The lyrics of the last verse were burned indelibly into my mind, so that, many years later, I can type them up without even having to think about it.

  I offer it to you now while memory serves, and I am taken back to that village hall, same shape and size, virtually, as so many halls from those days but, a special memory place to me in my first real starring role as a professional actor.

  Lyric

  So fair youths and tender maidens

  Ponder well before you go

  From your humble homes in Ireland

  What’s beyond you’ll never know

  What is gold and what is silver

  When you’re health and strength are gone

  When you speak of emigration

  Won’t you think of Noreen Bawn?’

  As Paddy O’Leary stands, sideways on to Noreen’s Grave, Jimmy adds the light from a hurricane lamp to the gauze effect,

  adding an eerie feel to the scene, and down all the times I played the role of Paddy, a great many times, the response to those final moments of the story were never less that incredible.

  We were into our second week in Hayling Brook and we were packing them in still. So much so, that Jimmy decided we would try it for three and maybe even four.

  The place was a lot bitter than Butlerstown - what you might call a small town as opposed to a village, with four streets of equal length, branch roads off each one, with no shortage of shops and pubs, including a fully fledged ladies hairdressers, and two shops owned by Harold Craig, who had rented the hall to us on behalf of the Orange Lodge.

  The hall was in very good r
epair, with its own seating fixed to the auditorium and two large dressing rooms and a small orchestra pit.

  It was looked after by a man called Devlin, a nice old guy with a waxed moustache and gold teeth in his top row, and he had a good fire going in each dressing room from about four o’clock on day one, and every day for the duration of our run Hayling Brook.

  This was a blessing and Prod or not, he was a man after my own heart, and the entire company were in unison on the old guy’s value and when somebody mentioned his way was a very Christian one, even the seriously practicing Roman Catholics in our group, didn’t object to the accolade.

  For myself, I was surely grateful as I warmed my costumes each night, before going on stag. I kept my feelings on the matter to myself - not everyone felt as I did - but I could not deny to myself, that I was more than impressed by what I’d call the Christianity of the Orangemen that hired us the hall to Jimmy. And, it has to be appreciated that they went to almost any length to sure we were as comfortable as possible, this as a normal way to behave, rather than any sort of game playing on the part of the Prods.

  The truth was that, in relation to the whole situation - if, as my father had claimed so many times - these Northern Prods were a herd of no good bastards, I was not only impressed to the contrary but, very grateful to be the recipient of the charity that was there in the overall decency that I, and the company, were granted by just about everyone we met, from our very first minutes in this thriving town.

  My digs were of the same standard and I wondered what my father would have said to see me eating in room that had a framed certificate on the wall which certified that my landlord was a member of the Orange Lodge.

  My father was not what you’d call religious, but he was a Catholic born and bred in Dublin, where the minority of Prods that live there were generally regarded as a low form of human life, certainly second class behind the Roman Catholics.

  He had usually gone to Eleven O’clock Mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation, and I’d never know him eat meat on a Friday, but, in fairness, we didn’t see much beef or whatever in the homestead while I lived there.

  He made sure that we did our bit, never questioning the laws that the church had laid down. He was a bit like Abraham in this, and had the parish priests appeared and told him that I was to jump out of the window, I wouldn’t have fancied my changes of getting away without a broken leg, yet, he wasn’t a craw-thumper or anything like that.

  He was a good man, helpless for the most part, bloody to Ma and the kids because he was frustrated to distraction by his inability to provide food and warmth for us, a lot of the time.

  He had the native intelligence of the Dubliner who had spent his boyhood and youth on the streets, but he wasn’t an educated man, so that he had all the built-in fear, all the culpable prejudices that flower so beautifully from the seed of ignorance. Orange Men were enemies because they were anti-Catholic, or so he had been told. This made them Black Orange Bastards, people so bigoted that they were hardly fit to live. He hated them one and all, with the fierce, venomous dislike of one that doesn’t understand that each man is entitled to his own point of view.

  John Hopkins, my landlord, was a marvellous man, running a shop next to the house. He sold everything from a box of matches to a combine harvester, but he was never too busy to be kind or considerate. He had a keen sense of humour that appealed to me, and we had lots of crack across the dining-table while the other cast members and I, stayed at his house.

  His wife liked having boarders, and though he didn’t need the money; and she hardly made very much profit to judge by the way the lady fed us - he was happy to share his home, because it gave his wife pleasure to have people about the place.

  Mrs. Hopkins was tiny, pipe-cleaner of a woman with energy to burn. Tom Hunter called her the human Hoover and the house was so spic and span he could hardly have been wrong. She fed and washed for us, never stopping work, and yet she seemed honoured to have us staying in her home.

  There was Gary, Jenny, May, Tom Hunter and myself. My old friend - Gary hadn’t yet got rid of his caravan just yet - he and others called their mobile homes wagons - my feeling was that he needed looking after rather than fending for himself but, I said nothing.

  He and I were sharing a bedroom in the Hopkins house and he made me laugh at night when he saluted the pictures of King George and Queen Elizabeth.

  ‘God bless you both,’ he would say, and he meant it. ‘I was educated in England, you know, dear boy! Wonderful! None of your Irish Bog Latin over there! O, no, love, the King’s English and all that!’

  My father had always been down on the English even though his younger brother had played for Manchester City at one time, and I’d never heard him refer to King George the Sixth as anything but a stuttering eejit, this being the slang word for fool.

  I hated my father at those times, being ashamed of him while he lampooned, in his own street-smart-assed way, the man- who had been afflicted with a stutter from boyhood - who, along with his great wife - stuck it out during the Second World war, remaining in London through the Blitz. In my book, it took all kinds of courage and guts to back up that kind of principle, and I disliked hearing anything against as man of such courage. Not that I argued with my father about it, I said nothing, while I disagreed with him, a thousand per cent, with all my heart.

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  At the Hopkins dinner table, Gary tended to hold forth but Mister Hopkins gave him a good run for his money. He had travelled as a young man and he had been an avid reader all his life, so that he had quite a bit to say about most things, and a lot of the time the conversation really sparkled.

  Even Jenny joined in though she rarely had a firm opinion about anything. She was a nice woman, naturally shy - like a lot of actors, I would discover in time - and at times she irritated Gary by apologising for not being all that bright. His knife and fork would rattle on the plate when she put herself down and he would chew like mad on his food, so that he could chime in.

  ‘For goodness sake Jennifer,’ he would cry, while the cast members took turns at a cooing routine which amused our landlady and her husband.

  Gary would have paused by now, shaking his head, his dark eyes blazing: ‘Ye gods but this life we live makes for strange and ignorant peasant bedfellows.’

  ‘Here now! None of that, Gary! - saving your presence, missus Hopkins.’ Tom would wink and our landlady would have to hide behind her napkin, while he would blow a kiss behind his hand to Peter, and the two of them would be convulsed.

  Jenny would smile and May would laugh, her mouth open and he head thrown back so that he breasts would look like they were going to burst out of her sweater, and I’m sure Hopkins got a belt out of seeing her do that. I do know that it bothered the hell out of me.

  Then Gary was abusing Jenny, gently but firmly, for not trying to improve her mind and she nodded, smiling a little, while Mrs. Hopkins nodded in agreement with Gary, at the same time smiling at Jenny in commiseration.

  Somehow the talk around the table managed to remain on a general level. There were the odd personal attacks, more in fun than anything else, but there was never any real talk of the show and the life it was.

  I soon realised that this was because the Hopkins, man and wife, decent though they were, were outsiders, and could not be allowed to take part in anything but general chat and fun making.

  The first evening, as we sat down to dinner, I had just started to express surprise that Gary didn’t get along better with Maria Maguire, who, is she had nothing else to offer, was at least nearer his age than the rest of us.

  Gary shook his head gently, mumbling: ‘Nanty, palaree.’

  I knew that this meant ‘don’t talk’, so I didn’t say any more, and the next afternoon, as Gary and I waited in his wagon for the story to begin on BBC radio, he mentioned that things like that shoul
dn’t be discussed in the company of strangers.

  By strangers, he meant people who were not in ‘the business’ and he went on to say that, regardless of what happened on a touring show, whether it was sex, violence, drink, perversion or whatever, we all owed it to each other and to the business that gave us out living, to keep it backstage where it belonged. And as for Maria, well, that really got his back up. ‘You must be completely out of your mind, love. Haven’t you learned anything at all about me after the time we have spent together?

  He unloaded a sigh that was laced with chagrin: ‘That creature is nothing but a fifth rate actress who honestly and truthfully believes that she could teach Sarah Berhhardt a thing or two. A polite, shallow bore, with not two penn’orth to brains to rub together, and her daughter, though basically kind and well-meaning, is little better. Honestly, what has she got to show for her time on earth, apart from over developed mammary glands?’

  I had been aware of he and Maria fighting each other on stage, and I realised that she was always trying to upstage him, while he did the same to her with consummate ease, both of them guilty of sacrificing the validity of the scene to their ego tripping.

  Of course, they had heard about their behaviour from Jimmy, who was never slow to pull up shoddy behaviour but this did not stop it entirely. The fact is, that Gary, who called me his only living friend, had upstaged me several times and though I knew it wasn’t intentional - at least I believed this - I finally had to tell him to quit, or I would get on to Jimmy about it.

  I have to admit that I hated this Upstaging routine that Gary was afflicted with, but while it was sad to watch when he and Marie were at it, I resented it bitterly since he was very glad of my friendship and made no bones about telling me so from time to time.

  Jimmy kept promising to do something about it again, but, he let it ride because when their egos were in full flow, they did created some kind of magnetism that added to whatever drama they were performing, so I kept my mouth shut, and went to trying to learn what I could, since I know, even though I was not much more than a beginner in the business, that this was only my first step to better things, and meanwhile, I wanted to learn all that I could before I decided to move on.