by William King
Bonnie is at the other side of the table; next to her, the bald man with the pipe I had seen that first morning at the cable-laying out in Stevenage: the chap who is mad for fishing in Killarney.
His head tilted in a listening mode, the Cardinal nods, while a flow of words comes from Harty, whose hands are darting and plucking the air like a highly strung conductor. Sometimes he laughs so loud, those nearby turn their heads in surprise, and then smile: the Cardinal smiles too, takes a sip from his wine glass and casts a shrewd eye around the hall.
Earlier Harty had given me a blow-by-blow account of his latest project: he is buying up old houses and converting them into flats for Irish families. ‘Your brother has a big heart. Sure I’d never have got the damn thing going only for him. But keep that under your hat. M.J. does a good turn but he wants no talk about it. Confidence, Tommy, that’s what they need.’ His whole body is involved in the telling: hands coming to life again. ‘To go into a bank and get a loan. We bring an oul fear of these places with us from across the pond.’
During the meal, Bonnie, with a discreet sidelong shift of her eyes, indicates the bald man, who has ignored his blue-rinsed wife and is leaning towards herself. After the main course, his wife leaves the table, and, when she returns, gives him a playful thump on the shoulder. ‘Right, Denis,’ she says in a Scottish accent, ‘I want to have a chinwag with this lovely Irish girl. Move over.’ Like a sulky child, he does as he is told.
As soon as the waitresses have finished pouring tea and coffee, the president of the Emerald Society stands, places his cigar in an ashtray, and taps the side of his wine glass with a spoon. His Eminence heads the list of dignitaries he addresses, then a government minister from Ireland, a Labour MP, the chairman of the Luton Borough Council, and others. After bestowing much praise on the McMurrows, he invites the Cardinal to present them with a Waterford Rose Bowl and honorary life membership of the Irish Club.
‘You have made an inestimable contribution to the restoration of this great city,’ the Cardinal tells the brothers, ‘and to the development of social order after the ravages of war. This applies also to the many professionals among us: doctors, nurses, engineers and building contractors from the shores of Ireland.’
Then he addresses the wider audience. ‘You are privileged to be Catholics and should be grateful for the fine religious upbringing you have received. You have a missionary role in a foreign and largely non-Catholic country.’ The Labour MP removes his glasses and rubs his chin. ‘Living up to your faith will impress those among whom you live and work, and will bring many converts to the Church.’ Seery, Horse Muldoon, Garryowen, bricklayers from Islington, cable crews I’d driven home many a night to Finsbury or the Seven Sisters Road when they were too drunk to find the Underground, all have their eyes fixed on the Cardinal. ‘Conversely, failure to live and worship as Catholics will scandalize and turn away many searching for the truth.
‘Your abiding love of your country, and your unswerving commitment to our heritage of the one, true, Catholic and apostolic Church make you exemplary.’
Word goes round that His Eminence would like to meet other builders, including M.J., so after the speeches, we line up to kiss his ring.
‘A future recipient of the award, I’ve no doubt,’ says the president when introducing M.J. ‘And this is his brother, Thomas.’
‘My goodness.’ The Cardinal smiles and takes our measure: ‘What great ambassadors for Ireland.’ He passes on to a huddle of Galvin men.
‘Now who’ve we got here?’
As if remembering how he should speak when the parish priest visited the school, a youth gives his name in a mannered way.
‘You didn’t go home for Christmas, young man.’
‘The summer, Bishop,’ another one of the group answers bravely, but his hand, holding a cigarette, is trembling behind his back.
The Cardinal delivers a short lecture about writing home and sending support. ‘And I hear Mr Galvin is an excellent employer.’
‘He is, Cardinal,’ says the brave one, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
‘What do you earn, young man?’
‘About twenty-five to thirty quid a week, bishop.’
‘Did you hear that, Father?’ He turns to his fussy acolyte. ‘My goodness, not even a Cardinal earns that much.’
As expected, the priest laughs, and others join in.
‘You do practise your faith, young men, don’t you?’
‘O yes, Cardinal,’ they chorus.
Looking ill at ease, the president of the Emerald Society touches the Cardinal’s elbow and spirits him away to meet the group of doctors and their friends.
‘You do practise your faith, young men, don’t you?’ Bonnie, who has been standing by, does a take-off into my ear. ‘So what did Scarlett have to say to the young priesteen?’ She takes a sip from her glass.
‘Who?’
‘Scarlett O’Hara. I saw you kissing his ring.’ Her eyes are glazed: ‘As the posh lady says to the bishop. “May I kiss your ring, My Lord?” “Well, you may,” says the bishop, “but the way it is, I keeps it in the arse pocket of me trousers.”’
‘I told him that I’m a seminarian.’ I joke: ‘He said, I might be a bishop one day.’
‘You wouldn’t be a Galvin if you weren’t ambitious.’ The smile dies and she lowers her voice: ‘Who’s this stuck-up one, Grace Healy?’
‘Oh, her. She’s just a neighbour from home.’
The attempt to sidetrack, however, fails to relieve the pout. I follow her gaze to where M.J., an attentive look on his face, is now bent low while listening to Miss Grace sitting upright in a chair. ‘You’d tell me, wouldn’t you, if anything was going on between them?’
‘Of course.’
‘I met her earlier. Such a high and mighty bitch. She looked me up and down and said: “Aren’t you lucky to have that little job in the hotel.” She has some creep with a pencil moustache – a Doctor Roger something. “What part of the bog are you from?” the creep asked one of the waitresses.’
‘Don’t mind them.’
Bonnie’s instincts are right: M.J. has only one interest. From time to time, he strains to check on the doctors’ table and even when the Cardinal was talking to his men, he was still keeping a weather eye open for Grace Healy.
Just as the musicians climb the stage and begin to tune up, the Cardinal, with a final wave and a gathering of his silk cloak, leaves with his mincing priest. Fortunately, I had learned to dance in the boarding school: a whole gymnasium of coupled boys on Sunday morning after Mass, stumbling and trotting their way around the floor to the starchy voice of the scholastic ‘one-two-three, one-two-three’. Crackle from the gramophone on the stage playing ‘The Blue Danube’.
Even on the dance floor, Bonnie keeps searching the hall, and remains indifferent to my attempts to praise the meal, the band, and the big turnout. We dance again when ‘The Walls of Limerick’ is called; then we get separated.
At an interval the bandleader asks for singers. A request goes up for Harty; he doesn’t need to be asked a second time. ‘Done more for us than the crowd at home in their big houses,’ says one of M.J.’s foremen as he passes by with three pints balanced between his hands. Harty coaxes the crowd to join him in ‘Come Back, Paddy Reilly’ and other songs: ‘Galway Bay’, ‘The Kerry Dances’ and ‘The Star of the County Down’. Delighted with himself, he trips down the steps and joins the others at one of the tables. The band leader reads from the back of a John Player cigarette packet: ‘A special request now for a lovely young lady. Miss Grace Healy on the piano.’ The doctors and their companions cheer as she gathers yards of taffeta about her and links Doctor Roger to the stage.
First she plays ‘The Vale of Avoca’ and then ‘Believe Me if All Those Endearing Young Charms’, finishing up with a few lively dance tunes. While he sips his brandy, M.J.’s eyes never leave the stage. A wave of cheering, clapping and shouting of ‘Bravo’ and ‘Summerhill House forever�
� sweeps over the hall as she descends the steps; Roger holds her hand lest she trip. The doctors break into the Blackrock College rugby song and stamp their feet on the wooden floor. The foreman, who had passed earlier with pints, is off again to the bar; he stands and looks at them for a moment: ‘That fucken crowd will never carry the hod, Tommy.’
‘That’s for sure.’
M.J. invites Grace to join us for a drink; Roger and two other junior doctors from Dalkey and their girlfriends come with her. His pencil moustache forming a sneer, Roger says it is great to be among real men who are doing an honest day’s work, building up Britain. The back-slapping and ‘we’re all from the same oul sod’ to one of M.J.’s bricklayers is overdone. He turns to me: ‘Another Kerryman, what? Ready to take on London. Do you know the Furlongs – they live just outside Tralee? Legal family. I can tell you, Gwen Furlong is a tricky character on the tennis court.’
‘No. Don’t know them.’
‘She’s a smashing dancer too. Spent many a good night in that town. And the Hilliards, the Killarney Hilliards.’
‘I wouldn’t know those people. I’ve passed by their shops.’
All this seems lost on M.J. Like a schoolboy on a first date, he keeps praising Grace’s performance, stands and offers her a place to sit, and when he hands her a gin and tonic off the waiter’s tray, Roger throws a shifty glance in their direction.
‘Right, chaps. Action stations,’ says Roger. ‘We’d better be getting back, lest we’ll be carpeted for our bad manners.’ His slit eyes recede when he grins. ‘So glad you lads are doing well. Keep the old flag flying up there in Camden,’ half-turning to one of the Mayo men, known as The Bruiser.
‘We always try our best,’ says The Bruiser.
Roger chuckles: ‘That’s a good one – we always try our best.’
One of the doctors has a camera and he goes around trying to bundle us into position for a photo. The Mayo men begin to sidle out of range, but M.J., who has come out of his trance and has positioned himself between Grace and Roger, calls them back: ‘No, lads, all of us. We’re all Irish.’
‘Hear, hear, M.J. Well said. We’re all Irish,’ says the doctor, adjusting the lens. ‘Come to a rugger game with us some Saturday; we’re playing Quins next weekend.’ He stands on his toes, and, in a matey way, reaches up to throw an arm around The Bruiser. ‘And loan me your man here for the team. Ever played rugger?’ He looks up at the sweating giant.
‘Ah no. Gaelic I play.’
‘Ah, Gallic, New Eltham, Croke Park.’ He pronounces the words in a broad accent, much to the enjoyment of his friends. ‘Ah, yes the GAA, tear into them, boy. Lay into them, isn’t that it?’
He flails his arms and makes jabbing movements with his fists, causing the camera to swing around his neck; the whole performance has his friends in whoops of laughter. And in the manner of a stand-up comedian, he goes through a routine. ‘I was in Croke Park once.’
‘Go on, we don’t believe you,’ the medics chorus.
‘Honest to God. A few of us from Belvo were playing cricket on the school pitch and our ball soared over the wall, and, of course, muggins here had to climb over and retrieve it. And that was my visit to Croke Park.’
While they are laughing, I see a cloud deepening on The Bruiser’s face, his great fists forming into sledgehammers. Then, as in The Highway, over Gene Tunney or Jack Dempsey and the greatest-boxer-ever debate, it all happens in a flash. The Bruiser catches the laughing photographer, and chucks him over a table as if he were a sack of hay: a fresh leather instep shows when he sails through the air. Those nearby freeze. A woman screams and a string of pearls crashes to the floor. Now others farther back are straining to see what is happening. In a moment The Bruiser has torn asunder the veil of good manners.
M.J. rushes in and helps the doctor, who looks stunned and, in an abstracted way, begins to examine his camera.
‘Of all the savages,’ says Roger. ‘Mr Galvin, you’d need to put some manners on that brutish fellow.’ And he turns to The Bruiser: ‘You’re not in the Crown now, or those wretched places up in Camden Town, my friend.’
The Bruiser looks as if he’ll lunge at him, but M.J. gets in between them. He winks at The Bruiser and indicates the bar.
The band strikes up a waltz, the doctors and their friends retreat, with much shaking of their heads and words of comfort for their hapless colleague. In the distance M.J. is in conversation with Bonnie. I go towards them, but then realize from the angry set of her body that they are having a row. He reaches out to touch her arm as if to talk her round, but she slaps away his hand. They see me before I can get lost in the crowd.
‘Bonnie has to go, I’m afraid. I’ll take her back. Hold the fort while I’m away,’ he says as he comes towards me.
Already she is storming off towards the front door, but she stops and turns back: ‘See you, Tommy, before you go.’ Her eyes are red-rimmed.
The lights dim, the crystal bowl sprays the dancers as the band strikes up ‘The Tennessee Waltz’; Harty glides by with a woman who had come to sit beside him as soon as the Cardinal had left.
A couple of days later, when I am coming out of Willesden Post Office where a line of men and women are buying postal orders, Harty pulls up at the kerb and lowers the window of the Austin Cambridge. His woman from the night at the Irish Club is at his side. Leaning in, I catch the smell of fresh leather from the seats; the dashboard is made of polished wood. I remark on what I’ve seen in the post office.
‘Same every week,’ he says, the fingers of one hand tapping the steering wheel. ‘These fellas and girls are putting the roofs on houses back at home. Will they get any thanks, Tommy?’
He catches his friend’s hand.
‘You met Mary.’
Mary leans over and smiles.
‘Mary’s from Limerick. I’m showing her the sights.’ He winks. ‘There’s a shindig in The Maid of Erin Friday night. We’ll see you there.’
‘Afraid not. I’m going back this evening.’
‘You’ll be missing a great night, Tommy.’ Already he is easing the gearshift into position. Fumes from the exhaust thin out in the frosty air as they join the stream of traffic; through the open window, Harty raises his arm: ‘See you next summer.’
14
THE FOLLOWING SUMMER I return to London, mindful of the first steps I’ve taken on another road that leads away from ground plans, quantity surveyors and site listing. Many of the faces are new to me, and in so far as they are prepared to accept the boss’s young brother who is going for the Church, they give me the freedom to hover at the margin of their banter and drunken plans. ‘Next year I’ll be back in Ahamore with my own trucks, and fucken London won’t see me again, boy.’ Nothing has changed – except for me. I had chosen All Saints, and, according to the mantra of the time, I had made my bed – a single one – and now I would have to lie on it. So the throbbing dance floor and the thousand sweeping stars of the Galty are out of bounds.
The president had laid down the law for me a few days before the holidays. ‘I’m not happy with your going to that godless country. Make sure you stay away from dances. You have set your hand to the plough. And remember, Thomas: custody of the eyes.’
‘Custody of the eyes, Monsignor.’
I sit at the side of his bureau while he lectures me on the temptations that can come my way in London. Then he places on the draw leaf a slip of paper. Ratio Mensis is a chart that will guide my spiritual programme, and keep me safe from girls who like to snuggle up and kiss in the dark of Eddington’s Lane.
Horse Muldoon still bursts in on the site without notice. He lopes over the rough ground like a primitive monster and shouts at the men that they are dragging their arses, or calls to youths to whom he had given the sub only the night before to ‘go across the road, and get me a packet of fags’, and no sign of paying them when they return. Some of those I’d worked with in Hitchin had gone to Birmingham or Sheffield or across into Wales.
‘W
here’s Kilrush?’ I ask one of the men.
‘Kilrush is up north. Big bypass job near Preston. Gone to follow the shillin’, boy.’ And pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with compo up a ramp, he breaks into song: ‘Way up north, north to Alaska, goin’ north the rush is on ….’
Building close to two thousand houses in Luton, McAlpine has farmed out sections to sub-contractors: to M.J. Galvin Construction he gives over four hundred. The wide expanse of land is an anthill: groups of houses are at different stages of development. Teams of men are putting down services and access routes, foremen are abusing navvies to dig the fucken drain and ‘stop giving suck to the shovel’, when one of them rests for a moment to catch his breath. The rasp of gravel when a lorry empties its load, dust rising into the blue sky and the constant beat of compressors fill the swarming site. Caravans appear selling bread, chops and sausages: among them is Peggy from Scunthorpe. Each day she stands inside her caravan, hands resting on her sturdy hips and calls out: ‘Right then. Come and get it.’ She swaggers from the shops with an armful of loaves, wearing high boots and a tight-fitting skirt, giving as well as she gets from her drooling audience.
After a few days I notice Sputnik hanging around Peggy’s caravan and being ever so helpful: hitching the generator on to the back of her caravan, or lifting trays of meat when the butcher’s boy arrives.
While one of the men is back in Limerick for his mother’s funeral, I do odd jobs: drive to the builders’ providers for bits and pieces, take orders for sand, cement and timber if the site foreman is elsewhere.
When the heat rises about midday, the hut smells of tar and fresh timber, and is strewn with rolls of wire, pieces of window frames and batches of handles for shovels. The wooden floor is stained with oil and dried clay, and sounds hollow when the men tramp about looking for nails and pickaxe handles. A shaft of sunlight through the open door shows up clouds of cigarette smoke while they are fumbling through boxes.