by William King
‘Whatever you say.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, Tomásheen.’ He turns on his heel.
‘What was that about?’ the surveyor asks him.
‘Ah, a young fella who’s talking through his arse.’
The two of them get into the jeep, M.J. banging his door.
Deadlines and fresh contracts, however, and The Royal Showband at the Buffalo dictate the rhythm of life in London. And whatever is smouldering inside about bribes, hard rock and hungry rats, I bury deep, lifting bags of cement and feeding the mixer.
We are ahead of schedule at Hitchin, which puts the men in good spirits. They know that their pay packet, whether from the site office each Friday evening, or from a roll of notes taken from the hiring-foreman’s trouser pocket in The Highway later, will be supplemented by a good bonus at the end of August: more five-pound notes to flash around in Ireland and show how well they are doing in London.
So the pressure is on to make more money. We are working at a scorching pace: twelve houses in each section. Horse is making sporadic raids and striking fear into the younger men, who have seen others failing to reach the chalk-mark and being hustled off the site before the midday break without a penny for the train back to London. ‘He’ll get what’s comin’ to him before many moons,’ they swear with impotent rage over pints, or in high-spirited moments on the Tube to New Eltham: football boots and togs in Caltex bags at our feet, and, across the aisle, disdainful looks over newspapers when our Irish accents rise above the clatter of the wheels.
Deano has the same news. ‘Do you see him?’ he nods one evening in the pub towards a raw-boned man with dark eyebrows – known as The Lone Ranger – who always sits on his own with his pint and packet of Woodbines. ‘He’s going back next month. Bought a bit of land near Labasheeda, but he swears he’s going to get Horse.’
A few days later it happens without warning. Horse has driven behind a lorry load of concrete to floor one of the substations for services. As always, he curses and swears his way onto the site. He doesn’t have all fucken day. ‘Back up,’ he roars at the driver, ‘or I’ll have to back the fucken thing myself.’ In his haste he nearly trips over a pickaxe. ‘Who the fuck left this here?’ He flings the pickaxe against a stack of bricks; the iron bar flies from the handle, glances off the stack and barely misses The Lone Ranger, who is working with a group of men putting down a kerb. The Lone Ranger throws him a menacing look, but Horse grins and strikes the side of the lorry with a lump hammer. ‘Come on, back up. Whoa!’
The pins jingle when he gives them an upward tap; the guard-rail falls and the hydraulic shaft slowly raises the front of the load, causing the wet concrete to flow smoothly into the open mouth of the sub-station and to give off a smell of lime and cement. Down below, a student from Sligo is levelling off the bottom of the pit with a shovel. Wet pebbles like hailstones rain down on him and dance on his shoulders. His shirt and trousers are covered with grey splashes and the concrete is rising around his ankles.
‘Bottom the fucken thing. Come on, bottom the fucken thing!’ Horse keeps shouting down. ‘Too much playin’ with yer goolies is what’s wrong with ye student fellas.’ From where I stand by the mixer, I can see the student’s blond head and the laboured movements of his body as he wades through the concrete and starts to climb the ladder.
‘Do you see what I see?’ Deano moves up beside me. ‘Look’. The Lone Ranger has stopped kerbing, and, like a jungle cat that has seen its prey, he glowers at Horse. Concrete sloshes in the forgotten drum of the mixer. ‘Get back down there and level off the fucken thing,’ Horse roars and waves the lump hammer threateningly at the student.
‘My clothes are destroyed.’
‘“My clothes are destroyed.”’ Horse mocks him. ‘“My clothes are destroyed.” Is it Savile Row you’re wearin’, you little bollix? Jaysus, what am I paying you for?’ His shouting has attracted the attention of the bricklayers, and the roofers, who rest on one knee against the felt and the battens and look down.
The student shades his face with one hand and keeps on climbing despite Horse’s abuse: ‘Get back down and bottom the fucken thing.’
As soon as the student reaches the top, Horse makes a rush at him, but he dodges and weaves out of his way. Remarkably nimble for his size, Horse closes in and makes to grab his shirt but again the student parries the attempt. Terror on his face, he keeps shouting. ‘Leave me alone, you fucken animal,’ but he gets trapped in a corner formed by two stacks of cement bags; and now, as if he were a rag doll, Horse wheels him around and draws a kick on his backside. ‘There,’ he says, breathing heavily, ‘get the fuck outa here.’
While he is catching his breath and looking around for approval, he fails to notice that The Lone Ranger has grabbed the pickaxe handle and has stolen up behind him. With a dull thud, the handle comes down on Horse’s back, his knees buckle and he collapses; on his upturned face is a frown of confusion as if he has a question to ask and is lost for words. For a moment, The Lone Ranger stands looking down at the struggling body near one of the lorry wheels, vibrating with the force of the hydraulic. Then he throws the handle aside, picks up his jacket and saunters off down the passageway.
The site has come to a standstill, except for the concrete, still sliding into the open mouth of the sub-station. One of the bricklayers steps forward: ‘Are you alright, Batt?’ he asks, picking up the sweaty hat from beneath the lorry.
Horse raises himself, blinks and looks around, all his actions in slow motion. ‘What the fuck? What happened me?’
‘The Lone Ranger,’ says one of Horse’s lackeys.
With a scowl, Horse turns around: ‘Where’s the fucker? He’s done for.’
‘Gone,’ says the lackey.
Horse rubs his large curly head. ‘I always knew he was a mad bastard. I’ll see he never gets a day’s work in this outfit again.’ He stands, a bit groggy at first, and feebly puts his hat on his head. They gather round: some only up to his shoulder. ‘Your man. Always drinkin’ on his own. He’s gone in the head, Batt.’ But as they return to their posts, I notice one or two grinning and winking to each other. Leaning against his shovel, Deano smiles at me and clenches his fist in triumph.
Keeping the mixer going, however, is the main agenda; that and buying silver watches for the holidays. And like desperados, the men take risks in order to meet the August deadline. Wearing an old cowboy hat and slapping the side of the loaded dumper, Sputnik steers in and out of the sun-hardened ruts, missing by inches the tea-boy lighting the brazier. One day, Hill of Howth swings around with a plank on his shoulder and flattens a bricklayer who is standing back to admire his work. I run to The King George and phone the ambulance. For a while the sight of their fallen comrade, his forehead cut open and blood streaming down his face, sobers the men. Sputnik eases off on the dumper, but thoughts of a bulging wallet, a new suit and a cigarette case to impress those who didn’t have to take the boat is too much to resist, and, by evening, the men on the scaffold are shouting for more fucken compo.
With just a couple of weeks left, we are on the home straight: the twelve houses in our section are up to wall plate. The tilers are already on the previous lot – so close to us, they shout as they work their way, supple as monkeys, over felt and battens: ‘Get off your arses, you fucken latchicos.’
We get our breath back during the morning and midday break when the purr of the compressor is the only background sound to the idle chatter. The arguments continue. There was no one like Seán Purcell. You’re talking through your arse. The best man that ever laced boots in Croke Park was Mick O’Connell. Fucken eejit, didn’t he leave the cup in the train? I saw it in the newspaper. Fuck you and your newspaper.’ Tis far away from newspapers you were reared, except to line the holes in your shoes.
After pints in The Highway, such crossfire would have led to blows, smashed glasses, and to Sandra phoning for the police. Not now. They had slaved together. The prize is in sight.
A few days before we finish, Deano saunters back from his lunchtime snooze in one of the trucks and throws himself beside me on a heap of sand. To boost his earnings, he has taken a part-time job in a pub, and is jaded by break-time. We laze in the sun watching Sputnik return from The King George.
‘Why do they call him that name?’ I ask.
‘Sputnik.’ Deano yawns and rubs his eyes. ‘Well, not because of any interest in space travel. Fastest man in and out of Richmond Street on a Friday night. D’you follow?’ Resting on one elbow, he scoops sand with an open palm, and lets it trickle through his fingers. ‘The women get their money; Sputnik gets his cocoa, so no complaints.’
‘You won’t be sorry to finish here,’ I say and sit up to survey the site; a loud cheer rises from the card players in the hut. Kamal, the Indian boy, is scouring the frying pan; while he scrubs, the shining metal glints in the sun. For over three weeks Greenwich has recorded unusually high temperatures, so between frying steaks and chops, Kamal has been running to and fro with bottles of milk, Cidona and Tizer.
‘I’ll be down to Barclays for my pot of gold and then out to Euston as fast as the Tube can take me. And I don’t ever again want to see a mixer or a dumper. I’ll be in Glenamaddy for the opening of The Dreamland Ballroom or else my name isn’t Paddy Conway.’
‘When’re your finals?’
‘May. The brass plate on the front door this time next year.’
‘I might visit you.’
‘I hope you will.’
As soon as the half-hour is up, Kilrush storms out of the site office blowing a whistle and scratching himself. ‘Come on, you lazy bastards, move your arses,’ he shouts. ‘Is it a shaggin’ holiday camp you think you’re in?’
Brickies climb the ladder; the mixer chugs into life and coughs up smoke, and I split open another bag of cement.
Raising a blanket of grey dust, a lorry pulls in with a load of sand; the driver calls me: ‘Hey Paddy, sign here.’
‘Sure.’
Approaching the cab, I overhear their put-down: ‘Can the blighter write his name?’
‘He can do an x, can’t he?’
They both snigger and the driver hands me down the slip through the open window. ‘Ta, Pat.’
‘My name isn’t Pat.’
‘Oh, is it not?’ They snigger again as I hand him back the book of invoices.
I return to the mixer and, to expunge the hurt, shovel all the harder. When the concrete is right, I stop the motor and tilt the drum onto a wheelbarrow. And all the while I rehearse in my head the crushing replies I should have made, but gradually my anger gets lost in the rattling pace: the tapping of trowels, and Deano whistling as he climbs the ladder, a full hod of compo on his shoulder.
We work in a contented silence, broken only by fragments carried in the breeze about fast women, or crops of hay and turf saved early in Sligo because of the good weather.
Then, without warning – like all great misfortunes – out of the sky falls a nightmare. A dreadful cry pierces the air; a cry that still, on occasions, works its way into my dreams, and causes me to start up in the bed.
‘Maaaam!’
My head shoots up and I see what spreads a pall over my world for months afterwards, changes even the course of my life’s path. Deano’s two feet are kicking against an indifferent sky, his hands are clawing and scratching in a futile effort to break his fall. With a sickening crack, his head hits the edge of a dumper and his body is hurled on to the pitiless clay: a shudder from his hands; a half-kick from one foot. Blood oozes from his mouth and ears.
Trowels and buckets are thrown aside, men are running. Garryowen cries out: ‘O sweet Jesus.’ His boots scrape the gravel when he falls to his knees; he puts a hand around Deano’s limp head, and, in a trembling voice, cries into his ear: ‘O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee, and I detest my sins above every other evil because they displease thee, my God, who, for thy infinite goodness, art so deserving of all my love ….’ His head sinks, and I throw myself on the dry earth and supply the forgotten words: ‘And I firmly resolve with the help of thy holy grace never more to offend thee and to amend my life. Amen.’
Pale-faced, Garryowen turns to me: ‘Run, boy, run for Jesus’sake. Run for the ambulance. And a priest.’
I dash over long grass and strips of wood, empty Tizer bottles and rusted hoops that nearly trip me up: down the railway track to The King George to phone. My frenzied mind argues against the horrid truth of what I’ve seen: if I run faster, the doctors will be able to make him all right again. Racing over the wasteland, I say Hail Marys: please, Blessed Mother, help Deano. Please.
The rest is a series of horrifying snapshots passing in front of my bewildered stare: the white sheet that covers the patches of blue on his face and neck, the head twisted in a dreadful manner, and the stretcher disappearing inside the back of the ambulance. The priest with a violet stole around his neck. Garryowen’s hand resting against the back of the ambulance until the driver very gently says: ‘Excuse me, sir.’ Bloody fingerprints left on the door. The tyres crunch the gravel passage and the siren fades as the ambulance races down King’s Row. I stand looking after it until I feel vomit rising to my throat.
With one hand against the back of the hut to steady myself, I retch into the nettles. A police car drives through the entrance, jolting over the rough ground until it comes to a halt beside a stack of cement bags. Like every site accident, self-preservation comes first: those without cards, and others who have fictitious names and are claiming for a wife and several children back in Ireland scurry into the dark cavities of the nearly completed houses.
Once they are satisfied that no treachery has occurred, one of the policemen closes his notebook and fastens it with a rubber band; the other winds up a measuring tape. ‘Right then.’ The notebook officer turns to Garryowen: ‘Sorry about your mate. Poor chap. Too young to die. You may be called on to testify at a later date.’
As soon as the police car has swung on to the main road, men start to appear at doorways, others from the backs of houses with empty wheelbarrows. ‘What’s one poor Irish gorsoon less to them boyos?’ says Sputnik, fumbling with his cap.
A frightening silence has descended on the site. Kilrush picks up a shovel, thrusts it into the heap of sand and, in a tired voice, says: ‘That’s it for today, men. I’ve phoned the boss. We’ll go home in God’s name, but let us say a prayer for the boy’s soul and for his poor father and mother.’
The tilers join us and every man on the site gets down on one knee beside where I have swept Deano’s blood into the sand. ‘What a story for his poor family,’ says Kilrush as we rise. ‘Load up, lads.’
Frame by frame, every detail of that awful day comes back as if it had happened only yesterday. No shouting now at attractive women as we drive back to Camden in silence, no talk about the greatest footballer. Even the motor seems hushed. Eventually one of the men speaks: ‘Who’s at home?’
‘The mother and father. Poor oul father.’ In the mirror I see him do a drinking motion with his hand up to his open mouth.
‘God help us.’
M.J. phones me that night at The Highway. ‘We’ll get a coffin in the morning and go back with the body when ’tis released.’
The next couple of days I spend at The Royal Hotel, or out with Deano’s family in their single-storey farmhouse with small windows and a corrugated iron roof, rusted in places. Cups of tea with too much sugar and milk, and Nice biscuits are put into my hands. Even now the sickly taste of those biscuits can bring back that bad time. I sit beside his mother at an open fireplace and speak in a grown-up way: ‘Everyone liked Paddy, Mrs Conway. And he was my best friend.’
‘Was he, boy?’
His father and other men, with bottles of Guinness in their hands, stand near the stairs at the gloomy end of the long kitchen and speak in low voices; women buttering currant bread, pause and wipe away tears.
‘Too good for this world.’ Without rais
ing her head, Deano’s mother speaks to the fireplace, letting the rosary beads lie idle in her lap. She looks up at the grandfather clock. ‘Before the priest brought the news, I knew. A mother knows, boy.’ I glance at the silent face, the dead pendulum and the black hands stopped at five past three. ‘A shiver went through me, Tommy. I knew something had happened to Paddy, and I’d just stopped the clock when the priest was standing at the front door.’
On the day of the funeral, as I’m climbing the lichen-covered steps to the village church, bees are humming in a fuchsia hedge at one side; a cock crows in a neighbouring farmyard. My father would have removed his hat, because that’s the sign of a soul going to heaven, he always said. Though the weather is sultry, a cold damp smell fills the sacristy where I volunteer to serve the funeral Mass.
‘And where did you learn Latin, young man?’ Over his glasses, the parish priest takes my measure.
I mention the boarding school.
He laughs. ‘Oh, the Jesuit Fathers, no less. And I thought you were a navvy in John Bull. What is someone the likes of you doing over there?’
‘Working for the summer, Father.’
‘It takes a tidy penny to go to that college. Who are you?’
I tell him.
‘The young brother.’ He laughs again. Dandruff lies on the shoulders of his soutane, and he gives off a smell of pipe tobacco. Leaning against the vesting bench, he turns the pages of the Roman Ritual. ‘Thanks, young man. But we’ve our own altar server here.’ He nods towards a stout boy in a corner who is struggling to pull a surplice down over his soutane.
‘Right so, Father.’
The people are gathering for Mass in the main body of the church: men are talking at the back and clearing their throats; women are huddled in the pews, a doleful tone to the rise and fall of their voices. I tell M.J. what had happened in the sacristy. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll settle this,’ he says. He leaves, and through the diamond-leaded windows, I can hear his footsteps on the gravel path beside the church.