The Chisellers

by Brendan O'Carroll

  So it was that night that Agnes Browne, a widow with one child engaged, one nearly engaged, and at forty-one years of age, had, in a Corporation house in Finglas, her very first ‘organism’, and the man she was with had two.

  Chapter 14

  AGNES HATED THESE VISITS to the principal’s office. She’d had one or two courtesy of Dermot and, God knows, Frankie’d had her up to the school so often that some of the teachers thought she was staff. Miss Conway’s office was neat and tidy as Agnes had expected, but instead of the smell of dusty books and stale cigarette smoke that Agnes usually associated with a principal’s office, Miss Conway’s had a beautiful aroma of Estée Lauder. Miss Conway entered the office very busily. She looked every inch the school principal.

  ‘I’m terrible sorry to keep you waiting, Mrs Browne.’

  ‘That’s all right, luv, what’s up?’

  ‘I want to talk to you about Trevor.’

  ‘I guessed that. He’s the only one I still have at school,’ Agnes smiled.

  Miss Conway didn’t see the joke. ‘Quite so. Mrs Browne, your son is showing an amazing propensity for artistic endeavour.’ She dropped it like a bombshell. But it might as well have been a water balloon, for Agnes hadn’t a clue what she was talking about.

  ‘What d’yeh mean? Eh ... Miss?‘ Agnes asked.

  Miss Conway placed her elbows on the desk, put her hands together as if she were praying, and put her fingers against her lips. She was considering the best way of illustrating her point to an obviously puzzled Agnes Browne.

  ‘Take a look at that window, Mrs Browne,’ Miss Conway began, pointing to the window behind Agnes.

  Agnes turned in her chair and looked. What had once been a plain school window about eight feet wide by four feet high had now been painted in stained-glass style with the scene of the Last Supper. The colours used were stark and exciting, and the meal which was to be the basis of the Christian rite looked like a celebration rather than the wake it was usually depicted as. The artist obviously had a different spiritual point of view to the one most commonly held. The window was beautiful; on a sunny day one could imagine this office filled with colours. The work of art also served to distract one’s attention from the fact that there was a large crack, half-moon shaped, in the top right-hand comer of the window. Agnes turned back to Miss Conway.

  ‘What about it?’ She asked.

  ‘Your son did that!’ Miss Conway announced proudly.

  ‘The little bastard! I’ll fuckin’ kill him! How much will it cost to replace?’

  Agnes hadn’t seen the painting, all she had seen was the crack. This is a common thing with parents of gifted children.

  ‘The painting, Mrs Browne. Your son did the painting.’

  Agnes spun around again, and this time she saw the painting. Slowly she stood and walked to the window. She gently laid her hand upon the figure of Matthew, who was pouring wine for Judas. She turned her head to Miss Conway. ‘My son did this?’

  Miss Conway beamed a smile. ‘Yes, Mrs Browne, Trevor did that. Mrs Browne, I honestly believe that in Trevor we could have another Monet, Picasso, Salvador Dali...!’ Miss Conway was glowing.

  Agnes stared at her blankly for a moment, hoping the names Miss Conway was rattling off were artists and not terrorists. Agnes again returned her gaze to the window and slowly walked backwards to her seat and sat down hard.

  ‘That’s why I asked to see you, Mrs Browne. You see, I have a friend in the National College of Art. I’ve already shown him some of Trevor’s work and he too believes the child is gifted, so I would like your permission to send Trevor there immediately. I think he should start working with oils and acrylic as soon as possible. What do you think?’

  ‘How much will it cost?’ Agnes asked carefully.

  ‘I believe I can secure a grant from the Arts Council. Talent like Trevor’s is a national treasure,’ Miss Conway assured Agnes.

  Having granted her permission and signed the necessary application forms, Agnes left the school a happy mother. Walking back home, she racked her brain trying to figure out where Trevor’s talent had come from. She decided that the only candidate was Uncle Gonzo, the plumber, he was great with his hands.

  Agnes waited until everyone had finished their tea that evening before making the announcement that Trevor would be attending the National College of Art, and that Miss Conway regarded him as a national treasure. Everyone clapped and congratulated Trevor, who just shrugged it off.

  After bingo that night in the Carrick Inn, Agnes retold the entire encounter with Miss Conway to Carmel Dowdall. Now, it might have been the high of the last couple of days that caused Agnes to overstep her usual two glasses of cider. The drinks just seemed to be going down very fast and the lounge boy was replacing them as quickly as the girls were downing them. By the time they left for home they’d had five or maybe six each, and were a little tipsy. They rounded the comer of the Carrick Inn to go past the chip shop. There was a single lamp outside this chip shop and a group of men, about twenty or twenty-five of them, stood around it in a circle, playing pitch-and-toss. As Agnes got closer to the group she saw two young lads standing in the middle and recognised Dermot’s voice, as he cried, ‘Heads a half a dollar.’

  Agnes screamed, ‘Dermot Browne, are you playin’ in that toss school?’

  Agnes had got it slightly wrong. Dermot and Buster were not playing in the toss school, they were running the toss school. Quickly and without reply, the two young men gathered their money off the ground and scampered across the field towards home. The group of men were displeased. Dermot and Buster were obviously up a few bob.

  ‘What did yeh do that for?’ one of the men grumbled.

  ‘You should know better, yeh big bowsey. They’re only chisellers,’ Agnes replied, her speech slurred.

  ‘Yis go on home to yiser wives,’ Carmel Dowdall added to the attack.

  ‘Go on out of that, yis pair of fuckin’ drunken wagons,’ another voice called from the group, and the men laughed.

  Agnes stood unsteadily, with her hands on her hips, and Carmel Dowdall linked on to her - the blind leading the blind.

  ‘I’ll have youse know ... my daughter is goin’ out with a guard ... and one of me sons is a Managing Director ... don’t you call us wagons!’ Agnes declared.

  The two women turned to walk away and over her shoulder Carmel Dowdall added, ‘Yeh! And one of her chisellers is a national fuckin’ treasure, so there.’

  With that, Agnes and Carmel haughtily trotted off into the darkness.

  Chapter 15

  LONDON

  THINGS HAD NOT GONE WELL for Ben Daly in the six months since he’d stroked Manny Wise. The three thousand pounds he had stolen disappeared quickly. He gambled some, drank some more, and even lost seven hundred and fifty pounds of it from his pocket while he slept on top of a cardboard box in a lane one night, in a drunken, drugged stupor. He sold the cocaine for a pittance, and all of the heroin he used himself. What little remained would last him no more than three or four days. He had no clothes except what he wore on his back. The pants reeked of stale piss and the jacket of drug-induced vomit. His hair was now long and matted, and he had a beard and moustache, which made his sunken cheeks and eyes even more pronounced. The veins in both his legs and both his arms had collapsed, with so many puncture marks tracked along them - one would think someone had run a sewing-machine across them. He was now reduced to injecting the heroin under his tongue.

  His latest fix was beginning to take hold. He felt better - in a while he would feel wonderful. He sat on the steel steps that ran down to the basement of a dry-cleaning shop. It was after 2am but still the dry cleaner’s was working flat out and the warm air coming up from the extractor fans was comforting. He tucked his hands beneath his arms, turned up his collar and leaned against the red-brick wall. He closed his eyes and as so often before his thoughts drifted to home.

  He thought of the quays of the river Liffey, filling his nostrils with the sm
ell of roasted hops coming from the Guinness brewery. He floated over Henry Street and saw the colourful shoppers smiling and laughing, and the music from Golden Discs on the comer of Mary Street drifted up to meet him. He passed Moore Street - but didn’t go down Moore Street, no not Moore Street, he wouldn’t go down there, he couldn’t. Not now. Not ever again.

  As the potent drug began to take its full grip on him, he felt warm and wonderful, and a huge smile crossed his face. But salt tears flowed like fountains from his eyes. A few more days and then what? Ben Daly would cross that bridge when he came to it.

  Chapter 16

  ‘ITS LIKE HEUSTON STATION IN HERE,’ Agnes roared as Dermot crawled beneath her legs looking for a missing shoe.

  ‘Stay easy, Ma, will yeh?’ Rory told her for the fiftieth time.

  Rory was blow-drying Agnes’s hair. He’d already done haircuts on Mark, Dermot, Trevor and Buster Brady, and a trim, layer, and bob on Cathy. Everybody’s hair was ready for the wedding except his own. Rory looked over his shoulder at Dino, who was now putting on Trevor’s bow-tie.

  ‘Dino, will you do mine when I’m finished here, will yeh?’ Rory asked his friend.

  “Course I will, love,‘ Dino replied.

  The ‘love’ had slipped out. Rory shot Dino a glance and Dino grimaced, but the entire thing went completely over Agnes’s head. Rory then looked at Mark - it hadn’t gone over Mark’s head. Rory blushed. Mark walked over to him, a serious look on his face, and put his hand on his brother’s shoulder.

  ‘As long as you’re happy, Rory,’ he said simply, ‘that’s all I care about.’

  ‘I am, Mark.’

  ‘Good.’

  Mark went back out to the kitchen to make yet another cup of tea, for yet another visiting neighbour. For a man who was to be married in an hour and a half, Mark was remarkably calm. His brothers were running around like headless chickens trying to put all the pieces of their tuxedoes on as if they were jigsaw puzzles. The neighbours had been coming and going since early morning. This was traditional in a Dublin home on a wedding day. Mark made two cups of tea and carried both of them upstairs to the boys’ bedroom where Simon was standing in front of a mirror with a sheet of paper in his hand.

  ‘A ... A ... A ... And the Lo, Lo ... Lord J ... J ... Jesus sa ... sa ... said unto them ...’

  ‘Here, Simon, here’s tea.’ Mark placed the mug on the dressing-table.

  ‘Ta ... ta ... thanks, Mark.’ Simon sat on the bed and took a sip of tea.

  ‘Yeh don’t have to do this, Simon,’ Mark tried to ease the pressure on Simon.

  ‘I wa ... wa ... want to, Ma ... Mark,’ Simon declared.

  ‘Then, I want you to.’ Mark smiled at his brother.

  The turmoil was no less frantic in the Collins household. Mrs Collins wasn’t in the tea mode. She had cases and cases of bottles of Guinness. She had expected ten or fifteen callers that morning, but her sitting-room now resembled a rush-hour bus in Calcutta. There was barely room to move. It seemed that every customer she’d ever had had decided to pay a visit. Still, with Mark and Betty paying for their own wedding, the least she could do was lay on a decent spread at home, and she had certainly done that.

  Cathy was upstairs in the bedroom with Betty, helping her to dress, as the chief bridesmaid should.

  ‘Did yeh take a look at Pierre’s face?’ Cathy asked Betty, looking at her in the mirror.

  It had been a close shave for Pierre. When the eventual plans for the wedding were announced, the first thing Pierre noted was that he would not be taking the place of the father figure of the Browne family at the top table. This duty Mark had entrusted to Rory, with Dermot as best man, and Simon as groomsman. Mark immediately saw the disappointment on Pierre’s face, so he quickly carried on, ‘Oh, Pierre, Betty and I have a special favour to ask of you.’ Mark took Betty’s hand.

  Pierre tried to show interest and hide his disappointment at the same time, expecting a request from the happy couple that he should stand outside the church as people arrived and give them flowers or some such menial task. Instead it was Betty that spoke.

  ‘Pierre, I know how attached you are to the Browne family, but I wonder would it be possible just for one day to be my father - and give me away?’ She smiled. So did Pierre. His spirits lifted immediately. There could only be one thing better than being a father figure to the groom and that’s the father of the bride. He would get to walk down the aisle with a beautiful young woman on his arm, decked out in white. Pierre was overcome and accepted readily. That night he and Agnes celebrated with yet another bottle of champagne, and a couple of ‘organisms’ thrown in for good measure. Pierre now stood downstairs among the throbbing crowd in the Collins sitting-room, with a smile on his face that looked as if it had been put there by plastic surgery.

  At three o‘clock precisely, Mark and his three brothers sat in the front pew before the altar in Gardiner Street church. Although it was cool outside, the sun beamed through the stained-glass windows, and every conceivable colour was spread out along the church walls. Suddenly somebody said, ’She’s here.‘

  Three of the boys swivelled their heads immediately, but not Mark. He suddenly stiffened and for a moment the enormity of what he was about to do washed over him. The organist struck up ‘Here Comes The Bride’ and everybody stood up. That moment of panic that every groom knows lasted just a couple of seconds.

  Slowly Mark turned his head to look down the aisle. Betty saw him turn, and smiled. She wanted to cry but she held back the tears. Not so Pierre, who sniffled all the way up the aisle. Mark took in the vision that was his bride. Her satin dress had a layer of delicate hand-woven lace over it. The pattern of the lace was of tiny roses and each rosebud had a pearl stitched to the centre of it. It had taken Betty nearly two weeks to sew on over a hundred of these tiny pearls. For a moment she walked into the blazing sunshine as it beamed through the stained glass and Mark’s heart leapt. Surely, he thought, God has sent me an angel.

  The ceremony went without a hitch. Then came the reading. Simon got up and climbed the steps to the podium. He had been practising in front of a mirror for weeks now, convinced that a large intake of breath followed by a slow delivery would minimise, if not completely eradicate, his stutter. As he took his place and opened his little booklet, everybody sitting on the Browne side of the church took a large intake of breath.

  ‘A letter from St Pa ... Pa .... Paul to the Corinthians.’ For a moment everybody’s heart stopped, but Simon went on and completed his reading without one more falter. When he had finished and closed the booklet, Agnes began to clap. She was quickly joined by the rest of the Browne family and then by the entire congregation, the Collins side clapping even though they didn’t know why. At the reception in the Maples hotel in Drumcondra later, over thirty people approached Simon to congratulate him on such a well-read lesson.

  The meal of melon wedge, vegetable soup, and stuffed turkey and ham, followed by sherry trifle and tea, was quickly devoured by the one hundred and twenty guests attending the wedding meal. Finally, a teaspoon was hammered against a glass and the room fell into silence for the best man, Dermot Browne.

  Dermot stood up and began his speech. ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, Rev. Father. Yis are all very welcome here today to celebrate Mark gettin’ his leg over.’

  Nobody laughed except Buster Brady. Agnes’s thunderous look to Dermot was enough to tell him there were to be no more remarks like that.

  ‘What does he mean?’ the celebrating priest Fr Simmons asked Mrs Collins.

  ‘Ah, it’s somethin’ to do with the tradition of steppin’ over the broom, Father.’

  ‘Oh I see, very interesting.’

  Dermot’s speech became shorter than he had intended it to be as he stuck now to the bare essentials, thanking the priest for a lovely ceremony, thanking the bridesmaids for looking so beautiful, thanking the hotel for a ‘lovely bit of grub’ and thanking the guests collectively for the lovely wedding presents that Mark and Betty
had received. He then moved on to the telegrams and cards. Needless to say, there was one from Dolly in Canada, from Greg Smyth in England, and from Mr Wise, who couldn’t be there because of ill health and was still confined to the Bon Secours hospital. Mark’s heart sank a little bit at this one as his thoughts drifted back to the kindly man laughing heartily as he spoke to a snotty-nosed little boy outside of the turf depot all those years ago. The next, and last, telegram brought a smile to Agnes’s face. Dermot read it aloud.

  ‘“Congratulations and best wishes to both of you on your wedding day and wishing you future happiness always.” And that comes from Francis Browne in London - that’s me brother,’ Dermot announced and glanced sidelong at Mark’s puzzled face. This last telegram was greeted with a round of applause and under cover of the noise Dermot said from the comer of his mouth to Mark, ‘Two can play at your game’, and he winked.

  Mark smiled and looked down the table at his glowing mother. The meal was followed by a tremendous celebration. Most people got drunk. Old friendships were renewed and as is traditional on large family occasions in Dublin, many hatchets were buried for the day. At ten o‘clock that evening, as the party was in full swing, the new Mr and Mrs Mark Browne departed in Mark’s new company car for their honeymoon in Galway. They had planned a two-week honeymoon, the first week in Galway, the second in Killarney. However, circumstances were to interrupt Mark’s honeymoon when it was just eight days old.

  Nurse Maureen Clifford’s foam rubber heels squelched as she walked along the quiet midnight corridor of St Thomas’s ward. It was so quiet that even the noise of her nylons could be heard as they rubbed together at the knees. She stopped quite suddenly. The sound of the cardiac alarm was piercing. It was coming from behind her. She spun around. The light over the door of room seven was flashing on and off. In two strides she made it to the wall phone, dialed zero, the emergency number, and called ‘Cardiac arrest, room seven.’ Then she quickly replaced the receiver.