by William King
‘No, Ma, I won’t.’
‘And talk to a priest if you need anything.’
They kiss on the lips, the girl rushes for an open door of the train and disappears inside, dragging her case behind her. Without looking back, the woman gathers about her three other children who are sobbing loudly, and shepherds them out of the station. With belts or twine around their suitcases, a gang of men makes a noisy entrance: they laugh loudly and jostle their way through the crowd, one or two are carrying hurley-sticks. Dressed in the faded jacket of the Local Defence Force, a boy with a forlorn look stands near the Eason’s kiosk. His shovel blade is wrapped in old newspaper; beside him stands an elderly woman in a black shawl. They are silent, except when, now and again, the woman looks up at him and speaks; he nods and throws a hooded glance around the station, a sheepish grin on his face.
My mother talks to the girl at the hatch and returns with a ticket. ‘Put that in a safe place,’ she says, and buries her hands deep in the pockets of her coat – a relic of her days in America. As an only child, she had to return from Chicago and look after the four cows when her father died in the County Home. ‘Wasn’t I the fool to bring that drunkard into this house, instead of going back to America for myself?’ became her lament whenever my father returned maudlin from a fair and had to be put to bed.
Now he is greeting people he has never seen before. ‘Soon there won’t be anyone left to bury us,’ he jokes with a porter.
‘Old stock,’ says the porter, taking a pocket watch from his waistcoat, ‘same every week. We’re losing the flower of the crop. Nothing here for the poor devils.’
‘Look out for yourself over there.’ My mother turns to me. ‘My poor son Mossie would be alive only for that place.’ At every opportunity she blames M.J. for persuading another brother to join him in England: Mossie disappeared one rainy night in Kentish Town, and was found floating in the Thames a week later. ‘Death consistent with a severe beating to the head’ was the coroner’s report. Our neighbours in Ardglass got a different version: Mossie had slipped and fallen off a ladder. There was no mention of the row he had started earlier that night in a pub.
‘I’d better be getting a seat,’ I say.
My father begins to sob: ‘Goodbye, my son. Write to us.’
‘I will.’
‘Phone Eily,’ my mother is already tightening the scarf around her head, ‘and tell her to keep an eye on that sister of hers.’ Even now, she won’t relax the bitter tone when she talks of my sister Pauline, who ran from the convent and joined Eily to train as a nurse in Leeds.
‘I’ll be back in no time. Sure I’m only going for three months.’
‘Don’t let him work you too hard.’ Her handshake is hard and dry.
‘No. Goodbye so.’
As the carriages begin to shunt, plumes of smoke fill the station, and a guard’s whistle pierces the sad air; my father waves and hobbles along the platform. A mournful cry rises from the girls I had seen earlier. Caring little for those around her, the woman with the shawl screams through the open window. ‘Come back, Mike, if ’tis too much for you. You’ll never be short of a bite at home, boy.’ Her voice breaks and she lets out a pitiful cry: ‘You’ll always have a roof over your head as long as I’m alive, d’you hear me, Mike boy.’
Her son casts aside his wary look and calls out: ‘I hear you, Mam. Goodbye so, and I’ll be back at Christmas. Mind yourself.’ He is calling so loud to his mother, a vein stands out at the side of his neck.
Sunlight floods the carriage as the train gains the open countryside. The clatter of a horse-drawn mowing machine catches the attention of the men with the hurley-sticks. Now they stand in the corridor, swaying to the train’s regular motion; they have bottles of Guinness they had brought with them. ‘No more slavin’ for oul John Farmer anyway,’ says one, indicating the half-cut meadow. Fragments of their conversation reach me. ‘An uncle in Wallesey – a subbie.’ And for the first time, I hear the password: ‘He’ll give you the start. Ask for the start – you’ll find him at The Lion’s Head in the Whitecliff Road. He has the shout.’
We are packed so tightly together that when the train jolts, we lurch as one; across from me a middle-aged man wearing a tweed cap and a black tie is in conversation with a young woman: their knees are touching. ‘Lemass and his crowd up there in the Dáil are doing nothing for the likes of us who have to take the boat.’ He had been over for a friend’s funeral in Abbeyfeale: ‘No shuttering – the trench caved in.’ He takes out a packet of Sweet Afton and offers one to the woman, who holds the cigarette in a clumsy way and coughs when she inhales.
‘That’s Irish subbies for you – saving money. Man, mind thyself.’ He draws on the cigarette.
‘And woman likewise.’
Each station repeats what we have already seen: girls in high heels, and scarves patterned with the Rock of Cashel and the Lakes of Killarney, lean against older women before they join us; men with peaked caps stand on the platform staring at us, and turn away when the train begins to move off with their children.
I stay out on deck as the boat pulls away from the North Wall. Others I had seen on the train are fixed on the receding harbour. A cluster of girls are crying, their arms loosely around each other. The youth with the shovel scans the shoreline with brooding eyes.
In the lounge, the air is heavy with smoke and the faint smell of cattle rising from the hold. Around the tables, covered with glasses and empty bottles, groups are singing raucously.
You’ll get no promotion this side of the ocean,
So cheer up me lads bless them all.
‘Up Dev.’
‘Fuck Dev.’
‘Fuck ’em all, the long and the short and the tall.
An accordion player starts up, and a small man sings ‘The Green Glens of Antrim’. They shout for more. By now some of the young women have dried their eyes; one or two are sitting on men’s laps. As one might with a child, a man is rocking a girl on his knees and singing:
Speed, bonny boat, like a bird on the wing;
Onward, the sailors cry:
Carry the lad that’s born to be king
Over the sea to Skye.
Loud the waves howl, loud the waves …
He is nestling his face in her hair; they are both laughing. Sitting on his own, the youth still guards his shovel, and out of a canvas bag he takes a bottle of milk and a sandwich – two thick slices of bread with wedges of bacon between them. Slowly and deliberately, as though lost in thought, he removes the soggy paper cork and puts the bottle to his lips. He takes stock of his surroundings and bites into the sandwich.
A man with a Guinness bottle lying idle in his strong hand makes room for me; his foot taps to the rhythm of the music and he speaks without taking his eyes off the singer.
‘Your first time, boy?’
‘Yeah.’
‘A well-fed lad like you will get work, no bother, but you’ll be hardened by John Lang before many moons.’ He stands and puts a hand on my shoulder: ‘Stay away from the Irish subbie, unless you’re badly stuck. They’d drag the heart and soul out of you, boy.’ He indicates a suitcase at his feet: ‘Mind that for me, boybawn. I’ll be back soon.’
I pick up a newspaper that lies on the slatted bench. Yvonne de Carlo is smiling out at me, her curves stretching a low-cut dress. Nine out of ten film stars like me use Lux Toilet Soap. Five Sligo men have been fined at Bury St Edmund’s Crown Court for starting a row over a barmaid outside The Jolly Roger. A youth from Cavan is recovering in St Andrew’s Hospital. The judge fined each of the men £10 or three months in prison. ‘Let this be a lesson for your countrymen,’ he said. ‘This is a civilized country. You come over here and behave like hooligans. Whatever you do over there, you’ll most certainly not do in my jurisdiction.’
The man who hates Irish subbies returns, picks up his suitcase, throws his gabardine over his shoulder and peers through a porthole. ‘It’ll be dark soon,’ he announces. ‘When you see dayligh
t again, boybawn, we’ll be on our way to Euston. Take a fool’s advice: look for factory work, boy, and go to school. Plenty of them in England. The Irish would skin you.’
By now the accordion player is silent; girls are asleep on the benches, their heads resting on each others’ shoulders. A stale smell of porter is lingering in the night air. I had reserved a bunk, so I decide to hit the sack as tiredness sets in, but first I climb up on deck for a last look. In the distance, a knot of people are gathered around a woman who is holding the railing with one hand while she sings; a man with a cap is sitting on a suitcase and playing soft and low on the fiddle. Some have bottles of stout in their hands; all are silhouetted against light from the ferry. I move closer. The woman’s face and tangled brown hair glisten with spray while she sings to the dark sky. Her coat is thrown open by the wind; her breasts rise and fall with the rhythm of her breathing:
Oh, well do I remember the year of ’48.
When Irishmen, with feeling bold, will rally one and all …
A couple have their arms around each other while the boat cuts through the water like a scythe through young grass.
I’ll be the man to lead the van beneath the flag of green,
When loud and high we’ll raise a cry – Revenge for Skibbereen.
Later, dozing in my bunk, I can still hear the plaintive music of the fiddle player above the steady sound of the boat and the occasional bellow from the exiled cattle down in the hold.
At some time in the night, I become aware of cigarette smoke; men are talking in the cabin.
‘A young fella, out of the nest,’ one of them says.
‘Always a first time.’
I hear the sound of shoes hitting the floor and belt buckles brushing against a bunk frame. ‘I wouldn’t mind givin’ a first time to that fine heifer from Wexford.’ Someone strikes a match. More cigarette smoke. ‘She’s goin’ to Manchester – herself and the other two – to be nurses.’
‘Majella from New Ross can nurse me anytime.’
I drift off again and am woken by a nudge on the shoulder.
‘Get up, young lad, we’ve landed in Liverpool.’
Beneath the lamps that line the quay, we hurry for the train; men with tousled hair and shirts carelessly open down the front shout ‘Up the Republic’ until someone says to keep quiet or we’ll all be deported.
Then the drowsy journey to Euston – yawning, stretching and the smell of cigarettes; the rustle of chocolate wrapping paper and sleepy throwaways about the size of fields. The train rattles on from one town to the next: street after street of redbrick, people making tea in their kitchens. Then the open country again.
4
AS THE GREY LIGHT OF MORNING gradually fills the carriage, the train rattles its way into London. With much hissing and releasing of steam and grinding metal, it comes to a halt at Euston. A big round clock with Roman numerals shows the time to be at a couple of minutes after six. Doors are thrown open. I join the flow heading for the exit: faces from yesterday, from a faraway land. The girls have renewed their lipstick; some of the men have put on neckties – a few carry bundles wrapped in brown paper.
The high arched roof amplifies the shunting and clanging of other trains in the vast station. Men with loud Cockney accents are pushing trolleys loaded with the morning newspapers along the platforms, the iron wheels of the trolleys grating on the concrete. Near the exit, a priest is standing on a stool and is talking nineteen to the dozen about work and lodgings to a group who had been on the train from Liverpool. They are handing him scraps of paper and he is giving directions about buses and the Underground; all the while his hands are gesturing rapidly. At the edge of the crowd and straining to hear is the youth with the shovel.
‘You must be Tommy.’
I turn to see a woman in a tight-fitting black dress and high heels.
‘I’m Bonnie Doyle, a friend of your brother.’ Gold bangles jingle when we shake hands.
‘How did you know me?’
‘A chip off the old block. And then the elbow patches – sure sign of a student.’ Her perfume softens the bitter smoke from the trains. ‘M.J.’s caught up in a cable-laying job out in Putney, so you’ll have to do with me.’
A burst of laughter erupts from the group who are listening to the priest.
‘Father John,’ she says with a wave of her hand, ‘never fails to get a job or a place to stay for anyone off the boat. Come over and meet him.’
The group is thinning out; a couple of men are talking into the priest’s ear while he writes in a notebook. His whole body is restless.
When they have gone, Bonnie approaches him. ‘Harty, shouldn’t you be in your bed.’
‘Bonnie, girl,’ he straightens, and puts the notebook in the side pocket of his jacket, a playful look on his round face. ‘No rest for the wicked, you ought to know that.’ He slips an arm around her waist, and winks at me, gestures very different from the priests in my boarding school – gaunt, and walking the grounds with measured steps.
‘This is Tommy, M.J. Galvin’s young brother,’ she says. ‘Over to help the boss.’
‘Wise move, Tommy. You’ll be rolling in it in no time. Welcome to London.’
‘Thanks, Father.’
‘John. My name is John.’ His blue eyes are dancing. ‘You’re lucky to have a tour guide like herself here.’ Again he is drawing her close; this time tickling her so that she laughs loudly, and tries to wriggle out of his hold. ‘I never had anyone to look after me when I came here.’
‘Oh, go on.’ She nudges with her hip.
Two young men rush up to him. They have just come off the train; one has a tattered piece of paper: ‘Where’s the Seven Sisters Road, Father?’
‘Where’re you from, lads?’
‘Askeaton.’
‘Know it well.’ He talks to them about work and digs and directions to the Seven Sisters Road. We leave with a promise to meet some night at the Irish Centre in Camden Town.
Outside the station the air is warm and grey and rumbles with the sound of London. Bonnie has parked her Mini Austin beneath a hoarding: a giant Yeoman of the Guard in bright red offers me a glass of Beefeater’s Gin. A transit van with Murphy printed on the side is parked by a footpath where men in navy dungarees are digging a trench; taxis, lorries, black Ford and Hillman cars fill the morning with the heavy smell of oil.
On the way to M.J.’s house in Chiswick, Bonnie gives me a potted account of her life: left Athenry at seventeen, worked as a chambermaid in different London hotels – The Imperial, The Royal and The Grosvenor. While there, she attended a catering college, eventually becoming one of the assistants to the manager at The Victoria in Holloway. ‘I’d the misfortune to meet that brother of yours in the Galtymore one night,’ she says while we are stopped at a junction.
M.J.’s house gives no indication of his growing wealth; like all the others in the reserved street, it has the standard bay window at the front; the walls are half redbrick, half pebbledash. ‘An old army officer owned it along with fifty acres at the back,’ Bonnie says as she pulls up into the driveway. ‘He has to get the borough council on his side for permission to build houses, but that man’ – she stretches for her handbag in the back seat – ‘he always gets his way.’
After she has gone to work, I lie on my bed and drift off with London fading in my head. When I awake to the smell of frying and the click of smart footsteps from somewhere below, the room has grown dim. In the slanting sun, I survey the slated rooftops at the back, the fifty-acre field so level and well-trimmed and stretching away into the distance; suddenly, the noise of a heavy engine invades my thoughts.
When I go downstairs, M.J. is holding the newel post for balance while he removes a pair of clay-encrusted boots. He is tanned, and his wavy mop is sun-bleached.
‘Bonnie look after you?’
‘Yeah, she did. Great.’
Settling into the habit of each other, we talk about the good spell of weather in Ireland and how, if
it continues, the neighbours will have the turf out of Hogan’s bog by July. Then we take refuge in the crossing to Liverpool.
‘You should’ve taken a flight. Anyone would say I’m a miser. How’re they at home?’
‘Fine.’
‘The girls were down for a couple of days. Pauline is’ – he glances towards the kitchen and lowers his voice – ‘she’s well. Yeah, she’s fine now. Ah, too much life in Pauline for places like convents.’
He talks while he washes in a small toilet beneath the stairs and then brings me to meet his housekeeper. ‘Vera makes the best bacon and cabbage in London. Home away from home. She’ll be a mother to you.’ He winks behind her back.
‘Enough of that, Mr Galvin. In here both of you.’ She sashays ahead of us and indicates the open door of a room where a table has been set.
‘You want to work with the men,’ he says. ‘Sure, why don’t you take a rest after all the studying?’ His shoulder muscles stretch the white shirt and he gives the impression of someone who is always at the starting blocks. ‘Take a holiday, why don’t you? – wander around London. Fine city, although God knows I haven’t had time to see much of it. “Have you been to Covent Garden, Mr Galvin, or up to Stratford?” says one of them smart-alecky bastards of town planners to me one day …. What’s at Stratford, Tommy?’
‘Shakespeare plays.’
‘Oh. Is that all?’
He takes a potato from the willow-patterned dish. ‘Go up to Leeds to see the girls.’
‘I will, but I’d prefer to do a bit of work first.’
‘Long enough you’ll be working on the site …. How’s himself?’
‘The same.’
‘Any sign of the new apples yet?’
We laugh at a shared memory.
‘“Come out till ye see the size of these lads”.’ He mimics our father’s excitement every September, when we were all expected to look in amazement as he picked a handful of crab apples off the tree at the side of the house. ‘“Look at them, did ye ever see the like a’ them”?’